View source for Question: Is someone unreliable because they practiced "treasure hunting" and believed in the use of seer stones to find lost objects?

{{FairMormon}}
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==Question: Is someone unreliable because they practiced "treasure hunting" and believed in the use of seer stones to find lost objects?==
===To imply that someone is unreliable simply because of things that they believed were valid is a ''ad hominem'' attack===

Some of Joseph Smith's associates practiced "treasure hunting" and believed in the use of seer stones to locate lost objects. Some claim that many of these individuals believed in "second sight." Do these characteristics make these men unreliable witnesses?

Those who accuse people of being unreliable witnesses because they believed in "treasure hunting" or "second sight" are employing what is known as a "ad hominem" attack on the witnesses' character. The term "ad hominem" is defined, according to Merriam-Webster, as:
#appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect.
#marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made.

One can see that this accusation applies both of these definitions:
#The terms "treasure hunter" and "second sight" are intended to evoke feelings of prejudice in the 21st-century reader. We typically reject such things as "superstition." Applying these attitudes to how we view 19th-century individuals is called "presentisim."
#One critic implies that, despite the fact that the witnesses never denied what they said, that "in light of their superstitions and reputations," we will somehow find their testimony to have less value. The witnesses, incidentally, had reputations for honesty. <ref>Jeremy Runnells, "Letter to a CES Director" (original draft posted on the critical website "FutureMissionary.com") (2013)</ref>

How exactly does the belief that one can locate buried treasure by means of a seer stone speak to one's character or honesty?

Some have claimed that this rebuttal is a misapplication of the ad-hominem fallacy. It's easy to claim that an ad-hominem fallacy is misapplied by invoking the fallacy fallacy, which means that an argument can still be true even if it contains a logical fallacy. Thus, even if it's an ad hominem attack, it may still be true and necessary for evaluating someone! This is a common counterclaim to make when an interlocutor accuses you of ad hominem. But let's revert to the original argument being made here. The original argument states that the witnesses are unreliable because some of them hunted for treasure occasionally. It ''is'' ad hominem to claim this and does not address the consistency of the witnesses, even when their feelings for Joseph turned sour at different points of their lives. It does not address the multiplicity of occasions when they went on record to testify, the occasions when they went our of their way to correct their testimony when misrepresented by the public press, the both tangible and revelatory nature of their experience, the witnesses other than the 11 that saw the plates and handled them, and so forth. The argument is bunk.

===All Three Witnesses left the Church after disagreements with Joseph Smith, yet they never denied having seen the plates and the angel===

One must also consider this: The Three Witnesses all left the Church after serious disagreements with Joseph Smith, and yet never denied that they had seen the plates and the angel, even near the end of their lives.

The fact that three different men allowed their name to be printed below a statement saying that they saw an angel, and then continued to affirm that they had seen the angel in public statements (some of them even published in newspapers) until the end of their lives, tends to tip the scale more toward "it really happened" than "it didn't happen." That's the ''point'' of a signed statement after all.

===Is someone's ability to see something affected by their seeing something else?===
As it regards the witnesses, the extent to which any were involved is not certain. Even among historians today, the extent to which Joseph Smith was involved is in dispute. It was originally the idea of his father to undertake the practice. It is in doubt if many of the witnesses were involved at all in treasure seeking. For instance, there is no record of the Whitmers being involved in treasure seeking and magic before the organization of the Church (Not to say that they absolutely weren't. Just that there is no evidence.)But let's think of it this way

As it regards the eight witnesses, even if all of them were treasure hunters, is their ability to see something affected by their seeing something else? It's just a silly question to imply that these eight men can't look at a physical object with their physical eyes when they looked at something else with their physical eye. According to John Whitmer, none of them ever denied seeing the physical plates with their physical eyes. 

In the case of the three witnesses, some people have suggested that these men may have hallucinated their experience or only seen things with their "spiritual eyes". Aside from "spiritual eyes" being scriptural language that they were commanded to use, there has never been a recorded case in the history of scrying of two people hallucinating the same thing at the same time<ref> See Theodore Besterman, Crystal-gazing: a study in the history, distribution, theory and practice of scrying, London, W. Rider & son, limited, 1924, 123. As they write “What is perhaps the most interesting of these miscellaneous phenomena can be best described as collective scrying, coming under the general head of simultaneous hallucination. In such a case two or more persons simultaneously see approximately the same vision in the speculum. The qualification is necessary, for in none of the best attested and detailed instances of such visions did the scryers see precisely the same vision. This forms the most puzzling of the various aspects of this puzzling matter.”</ref>. It strains credulity to suggest that these men could do that and hold their testimony of the Book of Mormon after falling away from Joseph and the Church.

The following video introduces all witnesses, both formal and informal, to the Book of Mormon, examines several of the hardest-hitting claims against them, and demonstrates the emergent strength of their composite testimonials.
<embedvideo service="youtube">Mm-AXJNXiB8</embedvideo>

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{{endnotes sources}}
[[Category:Letter to a CES Director]]
[[Category:MormonThink]]
[[Category:An Insider's View of Mormon Origins]]

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[[es:Pregunta: ¿Es que alguien poco fiable porque practicaban la "caza del tesoro" y creían en el uso de ver las piedras para encontrar objetos perdidos?]]
[[pt:Pergunta: Será que a crença na "clarividência," magia popular ou escavações de tesouros tornam as testemunhas não confiáveis?]]