O’Connor on the BoM witnesses · Inspiring Philosophy Academy

5d (edited) • History

O’Connor on the BoM witnesses

Recently, Alex O’Connor had a debate with Trent Horn over the resurrection of Jesus. Alex is known for bringing up the Book of Mormon witnesses in objection to the resurrection witnesses. He also brought up the eight witness account, the apparent martyrs and persecution of Mormon witnesses, as well as the transfiguration story of Brigham Young. I might respond to those in later posts, haven’t researched those as much. I will give some short points addressing some of the three witness account claims by O’Connor below.

If we as Christians, accept as supporting evidence the witnesses of the resurrection, why not similarly with the gold plates brought forth by the Angel Moroni? Besides immediate theological objections you may want to bring up, such as the need for a restoration or the claim of the Father having a corporeal body(foundational LDS claims), let’s examine the historical basis for the three witnesses and what Alex missed or maybe doesn’t know about.

The claim is that three men, Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, and David Whitmer, said they saw gold plates revealed by the Angel Moroni just as Paul and other early Christian’s claimed they saw Jesus. One of O’Connors first questions, not verbatim but implied, was how do you account between the corroboration of the witness statements between Harris and the others, given Harris’ vision was away from the other two? First, I’d want to clarify what exactly he meant. Joseph’s own History of the Church provides us with the details of Harris withdrawing from the group. The other account he had originally mentioned before was the testimony of the three witnesses that was written by Oliver Cowdery, likely by command of Joseph, and was apparently signed by the other two. We only have a printers manuscript of Cowdery’s writing of the account with him signing for the other two witnesses. A prepared affidavit that presents the original experience as a group experience contrary to Joseph’s account in the church history, does not constitute a relevant type of corroboration. Joseph was the one who knew the account before it happened and decided whether Cowdery and the other two were in or not as he “received revelation” there was going to be three witnesses, inquired of God if they were to be the witnesses, and “recieved revelation” that the three were to be the witnesses (History of the Church Vol. 1 Chapter 6).

Besides Joseph’s own accounts and the curated document, we do have many statements made by the three witnesses in interviews they had. One mentioned by O’Connor was Martin Harris’ interview with Stephen Burnett in 1838, about 9 years after the original claimed experience with the plates. In Stephen Burnetts letter, he is writing to a current LDS member explaining why he stepped away from the church. He mentions his last straw as hearing Harris give a public statement in which “he never saw the plates with his natural eyes only in a vision or imagination…” O’Connor is quick to point out that Martin did however still mention later he saw them as he sees his own hands, from an undated quote, so how do you reconcile this? If Martin actually had the experience with the plates, he probably wouldn’t have told Anthony Metcalf he saw them, three days later in the woods, as opposed to just moments after he withdrew from Whitmer and Cowdery according to Joseph’s History. (Metcalf, Ten Years Before the Mast). One could object and say Metcalf is forging the quote as a dissenter to the LDS church, but then you have to adopt a mass conspiracy theory of all the dissenters with quotes of the three witnesses claiming of their experiences to be visionary rather than physical as implied. There’s also major amount of equivocating going on between “seeing” and the “natural” and “spiritual” eye statements which adds to the confusion and need for even interviewing the witnesses in the first place. So all in all, the three witness statement provided in the Book of Mormon needs to be supplemented with the witnesses statements made in interviews for a fuller picture of what actually took place as the affidavit included is underwhelming at best for an accurate account of what took place,

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