Plus I think the idea of a peep stone in a hat compared to the U. & T. just doesn’t seem as spiritual. U. & T. ancient scriptual interpreting devices, peep stone in a hat, something done at party games or with an eight-ball turned over. We like to keep our images pure and spiritual.

I got the full gamut in Mormon seminary during the high school years. Didn’t bother me at all. Although I think the CTR class is a bit young to be throwing that out. Valiants, maybe.

As for the artwork, well, the church’s PR machine would have trouble with images akin to the SouthPark images. The only depiction I’ve seen of this prior to your post, Ronan, was a picture (animated .gif file at that!) on a anti website (can’t remember which one) attempting to point out the rediculous nature of such a method of inspiration. Rediculous methodologies or not, man, look what it produced! I’m amazed a dude could get something so extensive and influential from a couple of glowing rocks in a hat. I wish I had some.

On a somewhat related note, I recently became aware of Amazon “purchase circles.” The list of books bought at BYU is really shockingly vapid compared to any other major university I checked. I have been a defender of BYU in the past…is mormon culture in general or BYU in particular really that un-intellectual?

I can say in full openness that I thought, until about a year and a half ago, that Joseph had translated the Book of Mormon by looking at the gold plates through the spectacles. I am a life-long Mormon, and am a seminary and BYU graduate, and this was all the information I had until recently.

I think that the more confusing thing for me, as for others, has been the difference between the seer stone and the Urim and Thummim, the uses of the two, when each was used, etc.

Ronan noted here and on his blog that we were far from representative of “average Mormons.” This might well be true since I think that it was probably my father who taught us about seer stones. In fact, I seem to remember having the opposite experience as RT–that is, based on what I had learned as a kid, I always thought of the translation in terms of the seer stone(s) and hadn’t visualized Joseph strapping on the breastplate and spectacles of the U&T until much later on, probably freshman year at BYU.

Nevertheless, the 1993 Ensign article by Elder Nelson is pretty straightforward. No hint of a cover-up based on that article.

If there is a master plan by the Church to supress the truth about the Mormon past it hasn’t been especially successful. I think that we often confuse conspiracy and garden variety lack of interest on the part of most members. There were no doubt a lot of things that your Sunday school teacher did not know about Mormon history. This probably had as much to do with the fact that your Sunday School teacher wasn’t all that interested in Mormon history as anything else.

While it might seem snobby, I too feel like people that don’t know about these things don’t know about them because they haven’t been curious enough or simply haven’t had a desire to read about the minutiae of church history, not because there is some kind of cover-up going on. So, while the “conspiracy” part of the rhetoric is unfounded and straw-manish, the end result is a valid concern, and I think the effort with the Mormon wiki are to be lauded.

What happens when folks get this from the wrong source? Particularly because this self-selected group _doesn’t_ read church history, they stumble upon these facts when somebody makes sure that they’re visible. They don’t know where to go to find the whole truth, in context, not having been acquainted with these facts in the past, so the conspiracy theory at least _seems_ plausible. Without some guidance as to where to go, I can see that sewing some seeds of doubt, or at the very least, confusion.

So, to me, there still seems to be a need to find a way to help “garden variety lack of interest folks” find out about these things in another way. Not that we need some kind of PR campaign, but… the wiki seems like a good starting place, or at least a good idea. At least somebody’s thinking about it.