re: #168 Obdicut

That’s why I’m so interested in Mormonism, it many ways it provides a model of how to start a successful religion with miraculous claims. E.g. there are early descriptions of rather ordinary events that decades later evolve into claims of miracles supported by witnesses (e.g. Brigham Young’s transfiguration into Joseph Smith). And the best part is that it’s documented all the way.

In regard to the plates it doesn’t seem that there was any specific artifact, beyond whatever Smith might have hidden under a piece of cloth, which could have been anything. Holy lies + “religious experiences” (“visions”) seem to account for the “witnesses”.