The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a Plausible Religion

Joseph Smith was clearly insane and as he started the Mormon the religion, it is not valid. He is considered insane by todays standards. 1. Joseph Smith dug for treasure in his spare time. Joseph claimed an ability to use seer stones for locating lost items and buried treasure. To do so, Smith would put a stone in a white stovepipe hat and would then see the required information in reflections given off by the stone. ^ Quinn (1987, p. 173); Bushman (2005, pp. 49–51); Persuitte (2000, pp. 33–53). 2. Joseph Smith was a Wizard. Proof: D. Michael Quinn writes: Smith’s prayer “to commune with some kind of messenger” on 21 September 1823 occurred once the moon had reached its maximum fullness the previous day and just before the autumnal equinox. The 1665 edition of Scot’s works (upon which the “Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah” Smith parchment depended) specified, “And in the composition of any Circle for Magical feats, the fittest time is the brightest Moon-light” (Scot 1665b, 215). An occult book published in New York in 1800 also stated, “Dreams are most to be depended on by men at the full of the moon” (Beverly Gipsy 1800, 19). Because the full moon was the preferred time for treasure digging (Dorson 1946, 174; Granger 1977, 225; R. Walker 1984b, 443), it is probably no coincidence that, according to Martin Harris, Smith acted as treasure-seer earlier that night (J. A. Clark 1842, 225). In fact, his prayer “to commune with some kind of messenger” may have been in response to an unsuccessful group effort earlier that evening to locate a treasure in the hill. That Smith’s experience occurred at the autumnal equinox was also significant. Because the planetary hours of invocation began at sunrise which occurred at different times, Sibly’s Occult Sciences had specified that the equinox was the time when the planetary hours of invocation corresponded most closely with the common hours of the clock (1784, 174; also deVore 1947, 179). In the magic world view, the equinox was a time when the earth could be expected to experience the introduction of “broad cultural movements and religious ideas” (Brau 1980, 194, 107). Source: Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, p.120-121 Source: Quinn (1998, p. 30)("Joseph Smith's family was typical of many early Americans who practiced various forms of Christian folk magic."); Bushman (2005, p. 51) ("Magic and religion melded in the Smith family culture."); Shipps (1985, pp. 7–8); Remini (2002, pp. 16, 33). 3. Joseph Smith claimed to be able to both write and translate a form of Egyptian that is not a coherent language using a seer stone and did so from behind a curtain and apparently from memory as he did not actually have the golden plates. Source: Bushman (2005, p. 63); Remini (2002, p. 56); Roberts (1902, p. 19);Howe (1834, pp. 270–71) (Smith sat behind a curtain and passed transcriptions to his wife or her brother). Standard language reference works contain no reference to "reformed Egyptian". No non-Mormon scholars acknowledge the existence of either a "reformed Egyptian" language or a "reformed Egyptian" orthography as it has been described in Mormon belief. For instance, in 1966, John A. Wilson, professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago, wrote, "From time to time there are allegations that picture writing has been found in America… In no case has a professional Egyptologist been able to recognize these characters as Egyptian hieroglyphs. From our standpoint there is no such language as 'reformed Egyptian'. Klaus Baer, another Egyptologist at the University of Chicago, called the characters of the "Caractors" document nothing but "doodlings". An early twentieth century scholar said that the "Caractors" document looked more like "deformed English." Anthropologist Michael D. Coe of Yale University, an expert in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican studies, has written, "Of all the peoples of the pre-Columbian New World, only the ancient Maya had a complete script." Source: Standard language references such as Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds., The World's Writing Systems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) (990 pages); David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Roger D. Woodard, ed., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages (Cambridge University Press, 2004) (1162 pages) contain no reference to "reformed Egyptian." "Reformed Egyptian" is also ignored in Andrew Robinson, Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002), although it is mentioned in Stephen Williams, Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991). On their website, Bad Archaeology, two British archaeologists, Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews and Dames Doeser, say "The only writing systems to have been recognised in the Americas are those used by the Maya and the Aztecs, neither of which resembles Egyptian hieroglyphs, although Joseph Smith, the founder of the religion, produced a scrap of papyrus containing hieroglyphs he claimed to be a Reformed Egyptian text written by the Patriarch Abraham." 4. Joseph Smith claimed he received the plates from an angel, then he gave his only manuscript to some guy named Harris. Then the angel came and stole his plates and he magically lost the ability to translate the plates even though he never used them originally. Then he claimed the angel came back and gave them back. 5. Joseph Smith claimed that John the Baptist mysteriously appeared and baptized him and a friend. 6. Joseph Smith claimed that an angel for some reason decided to steal his plates permanently after he had finished his translation. Perhaps God just trusted his innate ability to flawlessly translate gibberish on golden plates through a maic stone and didn't think he even made one error. 7. Joseph Smith claimed that three of Jesus's apostles gave him and his buddy Crowdley full heavenly authority, however when Crowdley attempted to use the seer stone to locate "New Jerusalem" Crowdley somehow lost his authority and only Joseph Smith was the sole prophet. 8. Joseph Smith claimed that Kirtland Ohio was the eastern border of a place called "New Jerusalem" 9. Joseph Smith promised senior members that they would be endowed with a heavenly superpower. This was not done through an angel so apparently Joe was able to give others superpowers. 10. Joseph Smith claimed to buy a egyptian scroll on egyptian papyrius from a wandering salesman and translated into a religious text through a stone 11. Joseph Smith went to massachuesets to treasure hunt and when disapointed decided to establish a bank which somehow became a religious duty 12. Joseph Smith formed a militia and threatened to kill other non-mormons and promised a war of "extermination" 13. Joseph Smith bribed a sherrif to get out of jail for which he was in due to his "war of extermination" 14. Joseph Smith declared that whoever married him would go to heaven. In April 1841, Smith secretly wed Louisa Beaman as a plural wife, and during the next two and a half years he may have married thirty additional women, ten of whom were already married to other men,and about a third of them teenagers, including two fourteen-year-old girls. 15. Smith ran for president of the United States I'm sorry I do not have enough text for the sources. If you challenge any I will provide additional sources. These 15 points are more than sufficient by todays standards to declare him officially insane and arrest him for treason, pedophillia, and terrorism. Since the person who establiished the religion was insane. It is invalid.