Thinking about that time Joseph Smith held a conference where he was supposed to perform miracles and then his miracles straight up didn’t work
If you’ve never been Mormon like how I’ve never been Mormon you might not know how much Mormons put their faith in like. What they see as facts. Things that they think are provable real facts. Because they think they’re the only real church so obviously they’ve gotta have facts. The facts have to be on their side.
So that’s why a Mormon learning about that time Joseph Smith told a dead body to get up and walk and it didn’t and it kept being dead might shatter their entire worldview. To non-religious folk or religious folk like me who recognize our own religions have contradictions in them and are fine with that, that first Mormon conference sort of feels mildly funny almost 200 years removed from it but to a devout Mormon that’s really a strange thing to learn about. Apparently for some people learning about the full facts of the life of Joseph Smith is what causes them to leave the faith.
To me and anyone else who isn’t Mormon it seems pretty clear he was a conman that wanted an excuse to force himself upon teenagers and the early Mormons forced themselves upon communities with no warning and really bothered them and that was the main factor behind a lot of the attacks they endured in those early years. And you know, religions have been founded off of less. You could over time forge yourself something decent out of that while recognizing the flawed place you came from. A religion doesn’t necessarily always have to be restrained by how it was founded.
But what I’ve learned recently is that Mormons that are really deep in the sauce need to believe that everything they’ve ever learned about Joseph Smith is fact. The Book of Mormon can’t just be a nice story that isn’t real in a literal sense but can be meaningful spiritually like how to me as a science believing Lutheran genesis is just a nice story that can still have spiritual significance. It’s gotta be real. Everything has to be real in a literal sense.
There’s no dna or archeological evidence that anything in the Book of Mormon is real though and Joseph Smith did by most accounts tell a dead body to get up and it didn’t. That little child stayed dead and many people left his church because of it.
Does this mean Joseph Smith wasn’t a prophet? I mean I don’t think he was but I’m not Mormon. Never have been, never plan on being one. Many rational people might hear about him being a conman and still think he was a prophet anyways. God works in mysterious ways after all. Others will have their entire worldview brought into question upon learning that.
Anyways, dude also reportedly told a man’s broken hand to work again and then it didn’t. Like two dozen people left after that fiasco.
Also also Joseph Smith really did “translate” the Book of Mormon by sticking his whole face in a hat and dictating what he said he saw in the hat. You may have seen depictions where he’s reading off the golden tablets behind a curtain or something but no. No. That’s not historically accurate. Dude stuck his face directly in a hat. Everybody who transcribed for him said that’s how he did it. Face in hat.