Why didn't Joseph Smith eventually just give in and admit this was a hoax? Why would this guy risk his life constantly to perpetuate a lie? Any thoughts on this? This is a frequent argument to my question about whether Joseph Smith was not just a con man and not the "simple, charming, farm-boy" that Mormons believe him to be.

Admitting it was a hoax would not have gotten him off the hook. The people who were after him would not have changed their minds, and then his followers would also have turned against him. Admitting his fraud would only have made things worse.

That makes sense - don't know why I hadn't looked at it that way before. I feel sad for all of the people who sacrificed so much because of him, like the people in Jonestown all of those years ago.

Just remember, he had arrest warrants on him from nearly every place he ever lived. An arrest warrant doesn't go away just because you say you are sorry.

Also, he was rolling in cash, booze, and babes, lots and lots of guys are willing to put up with a whole lot of legal troubles for that kind of stuff. Just look at any drug lord who lives in mansions while the DEA is after his tail.

For the same reason that Jim Jones didn't just drink the cool aid by himself.

He started to believe his own stories.

He wanted power. The picture of him in uniform on horseback looks like Napolean. He went to jail for treason. He declared martial law. He hadn't been a farm boy for a very long time.

I guess that's how cult leaders become cult leaders - somewhere along the way they believe in their own dog and pony show!!! I've always HATED that picture of Joseph Smith "reviewing the troops" - but the answer was always the same "Well he had to defend himself!!! Other armies were trying to destroy them so he had no choice..."

The picture gets worse if you know anything about military history. His military uniform had an inflated rank that he was not entitled to, even under his charter from Illinois, and it was an artillery commander's uniform, not because Joseph Smith knew anything about artillery, but because he liked the really big guns and thought they were neat.

might I inquire as to what part of Canada you're confused in? LOL

Ron Burr
Lethbridge, AB

Yep, you nailed it, IMHO. At first it was sex and power--and I'd really say it was mostly power, especially his sex life and the polyandry. But once he saw how much power he had over his followers, he was hooked and, I think, he convinced himself to believe his own BS. So hooked, and now a devout believer in his own deceit, he was willing to risk it all. Like Jim Jones. My thoughts.

I'm not so sure he ever believed the lies he told except for the really big lie. It was the one he told himself and believed. I think, like most dictators and even the Top 15 at LDS, Inc., the lie they tell themselves and force themselves to believe is that they are justified in manipulating the masses because they are doing it for our (the masses) own good. They (he) also believe that they are truly superior, smarter, and therefore entitled to the benefits their power/manipulation affords them. They (he) honestly believe they are being benevolent. And we, poor things, are so happy in the lie that if they tell us the truth we will lost and devoid of a life direction. That, in MHO, is the REALLY big lie. And it requires a really big ego to maintain. That is why I always laugh when I hear David Bednar begin his talks with how humble he is. If he didn't have the really big ego I know he has, he could never be a member of the twelve.

Read this book and you will understand:
http://www.amazon.com/Sociopath-Next-Door-Martha-Stout/dp/0767915828/

This is exactly what I think. Fawn Brodie hinted at the possibility that something happened to him because of the boyhood surgery on his leg without anesthesia and with blood all over everything. People should also remember how children used to be raised in the nineteenth century, with a strong hand. Also, their family was facing the wild frontier back then, which meant working all day and night. I can see how those conditions, coupled with the right temperament, could shape Joseph Smith into a sociopath. Nothing stops their need for stimulation and artificial confirmation. He was obviously a sick man.

When you are an narcissist egomaniac it's all about power and prestige. You never want to give that up. And people like that think they can always outwit their enemies and cheat death.

And to be honest, he probably would rather die trying than give any of that up. There are countless examples of people like this. Crooks, thugs, mafia, scam artists. Even when they make themselve rich, they still can't give it up. Why can't mob bosses just quietly retire in some tropical island? They can't deal with relinquishing control and they want more and more money and power.

Just look at all the middle eastern dictators who could have easily given up or escaped to some other country, even when all odds were against them, they'd rather die than give up.

Admitting it was all a hoax would have dried up all the money...to name one reason...

The Mormons like to say that he was martyred for his faith. But if you look at non-Mormon sources as to why he was killed, it really had nothing to do with the Church.

You had this guy who was after their wives and who had stolen the secret Masonic rituals. He had stolen peoples money in the Kirkland Bank scandal. He had destroyed a printing press.

I imagine there were a lot of people with a lot of motives to go after that guy.

Don't you mean "anti-Mormon sources"?? LOL.

For the same reason the "Prophets" today don't admit it is a fraud. They would be in worse shape than if they just go along and let people keep believing it.

You don't think that the Big 15 would have their lives threatened if as a group at GC they said, "The whole thing is a fraud. We've been laundering tithing money to ourselves, our family, and friends under business expenses, business contracts, perks, and any other way we can divert funds that are all legal (but not ethical) with IRS laws. We have no intention of paying back any money, because we are not legally required to."

It was an evolution and happened in phases..The first phase it was just a minor hoax to bolster his money digging/folk magic con, plus I think he may have been a little superstitious and believed a little of it for himself, phase two became a book with mysterious origins that he tried selling for a profit, third was a movement that incorporated all of the previous things PLUS the money and property he could get from followers. Combine it with power and sex and the man became unstoppable. It was worth the risk of death to be the Rock Star that he was..

Like has been said, the man was a narcissistic meglo maniac.

For Money, For Women, For adulation.

That's plenty of motivation for many psychopaths to throw all caution to the wind.

He went past the point of return, where openly admitting that it was a hoax would only cause more problems for him, and he already had plenty of trouble on the way.

Pink Floyd - "Money"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkhX5W7JoWI

Kanye West -- "Power"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L53gjP-TtGE

George Michael -- "I Want Your Sex"

I think Joseph Smith went from desperate to lying to believing his own BS.

Because he was sick. He probably eventually convinced even HIMSELF that it was real, and that he really WAS a prophet.

You have to understand JS's mindset. He really was a superstitious man who believed in the occult and so forth. The Book of Mormon was the original con... I don't think he thought it was going to explode the way it did.

Suddenly, JS has all these followers that worship him like a God and this religion was developing behind him. He couldn't help but feel that all this was part of his destiny. The stars were aligning for him and this religious movement was falling into place.

I don't think that he thought it was a CON like some people say. He really felt that he had some sort of divine destiny behind him. The power also got to his head, but he felt that the power was his right.. this was all according to divine will.

JS was promoting communal living and that was the big draw. It pulled alot of people from Europe eager to escape the smell.

Once he recruited the Cochranites it became a full-on Sex Cult and made missionary work much easier.

Fun Fact:

JS had a lot of his fellow mormons after him so it wasn't just the "angry villagers" who wanted to cut his nuts off.

Like movie stars and rock stars he also had handlers. You've got Elvis and the Colonel. Joseph and Sydney.

It got to the point where it didn't matter if he believed it or not. Other people believed it. Lots of them. Not only that, but they were willing to give him money to support their belief.

He'd been dirt poor all his life. He wasn't about to give up the pot of gold that he'd finally found. No matter that it was based on his gold digging adventures. The story paid off, if the digging did or not.

"An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins" by former LDS Church Educational System instructor and director Grant Palmer explains that JS “was brought to court three times for stone-gazing” (also called "scrying") for imagined buried treasure.

Throughout the 1820s, JS REPEATEDLY scammed people in his area with his bogus claim that he possessed the supernatural ability to help them - for a fee - find concealed wealth using his "peep" stone.

Palmer politely noted in his book that JS “never obtained any riches by this method” ("scrying"), a fact that “may argue against the efficacy of the endeavor.” No kidding!

In the summer of 1830, "Prophet" JS was jailed and later appeared before Justice of the Peace Joseph Chamberlin in South Bainbridge, Chenango County, New York. A physician who attended the court proceedings in July of that year, Dr. Abram Benton, reported that a witness, Addison Austin, asked defendant Smith about his touted mystical ability to see hidden treasure. Under oath, Mormonism's founder confessed: "To be candid, between you and me, I cannot, any more than you or any body else; but any way to get a living."

In early 1831, Dr. Benton wrote about JS and his stone-gazing, legal troubles, and budding religious movement in a letter to the editor of an American periodical, the Evangelical Magazine and Gospel Advocate, as follows (I've inserted a few paragraph breaks to make reading Benton's text a bit easier):

"In the sixth number of your paper I saw a notice of a sect called Mormonites; and thinking that a fuller history of their founder, Joseph Smith, Jr., might be interesting to the community, and particularly to your correspondent in Ohio, where, perhaps, the truth concerning him may be hard to come at, I will take the trouble to make a few remarks on the character of that infamous impostor. For several years preceding the appearance of his book [the Book of Mormon], he was about the country in the character of a glass-looker; pretending, by means of a certain stone, or glass, which he put in a hat, to be able to discover the lost goods, hidden treasures, mines of gold and silver, &c [etc.]. Although he consistently failed in his pretensions, still he had his dupes who put implicit confidence in all his words. In this town [Bainbridge Township, New York], a wealthy farmer, named Josiah Stowell, together with others, spent large sums of money in digging for hidden money, which this Smith pretended he could see, and told them where to dig; but they never found their treasure.

"At length the public, becoming wearied with the base imposition which he was palming upon the credulity of the ignorant, for the purpose of sponging his living from their earnings, had him arrested as a disorderly person, tried and condemned before a court of Justice. But, considering his youth, (he then being a minor,) and thinking he might reform his conduct, he was designedly allowed to escape. This was four or five years ago. From this time he absented himself from this place, returning only privately, and holding clandestine intercourse with his credulous dupes, for two or three years.

"It was during this time, and probably with the help of others more skilled in the ways of iniquity than himself, that he formed the blasphemous design of forging a new revelation [Mormonism], which, backed by the terrors of an endless hell, and the testimony of base unprincipled men, he hoped would frighten the ignorant, and open a field of speculation for the vicious, so that he might secure to himself the scandalous honor of being a founder of a new sect, which might rival, perhaps, the Wilkinsonians, or the French Prophets of the 17th century.

"During the past Summer he was frequently in this vicinity, and [with] others of the baser sort, as Cowdry, Whitmer, etc., holding meetings, and proselyting a few weak and silly women, and still more silly men, whose minds are shrouded in a mist of ignorance which no ray can penetrate, and whose credulity the utmost absurdity cannot equal.

"In order to check the progress of delusion, and open the eyes and understandings of those who blindly followed him, and unmask the turpitude and villany of those who knowingly abetted him in his infamous designs[,] he was again arraigned before a bar of Justice, during last Summer [July 1830], to answer a charge of misdemeanor. This trial led to an investigation of his character and conduct, which clearly evinced to the unprejudiced, whence the spirit came which dictated his inspirations.

"During the trial it was shown that the Book of Mormon was brought to light by the same magic power by which he pretended to tell fortunes, discover hidden treasures, &c. Oliver Cowdry, one of the three witnesses of the book, testified under oath, that said Smith found with the plates, from which he translated his book, two transparent stones, resembling glass, set in silver bows. That by looking through these, he [Smith] was able to read in English, the reformed Egyptian characters, which were engraved on the plates.

"So much for the gift and power of God, by which Smith says he translated his book.... Two transparent stones, undoubtedly of the same properties, and the gift of the same spirit as the one in which he looked to find his neighbor’s goods. It is reported, and probably true, that he commenced his juggling by stealing and hiding property belonging to his neighbors, and when inquiry was made, he would look in his stone (his gift and power), and tell where it was.

"As for his book, it is only the counterpart of his money-digging plan. Fearing the penalty of the law, and wishing still to amuse his followers, he fled for safety to the sanctuary of pretended religion."

Nine years after JS was killed at Carthage Jail, a book by his mother, Lucy Mack, was published. The title was "Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and His Progenitors for Many Generations", and in it Lucy wrote:

"During our evening conversations, Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, mode of travelings, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities, their buildings, with every particular; their mode of warfare; and also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life among them."

By 1829/30, it had assuredly become apparent to con-artist and master story-creator/teller JS that unless he was able to dupe enough "weak and silly women, and still more silly men" to join his budding religious movement and part with a considerable portion of their earnings to support of his religious organization, he would face a difficult life of hard toil. Why? Because he'd received little formal education during his formative years, was a working-class nobody, and had gotten in trouble with the law for "scrying."

If JS continued to scam people as a "Glass Looker" to make a quick buck, he'd likely end up being jailed and/or heavily fined because of his previous convictions. He was poor, so he wouldn't be able to pay a hefty fine, and he'd likely do a full sentence of jail time. He needed another way of conning unsuspecting persons that wouldn't get him in trouble again with the law. So, "he fled for safety to the sanctuary of pretended religion."

The rest is early Mormon history.

"holding clandestine intercourse with his credulous dupes"

Isn't this phrase from one of the Articles of Faith? :-P

You mean why did he choose the path where he was the most important person in history and in the local community instead of coming clean and becoming an outcast hated universally even amongst his dearest followers?

What was unique was the situation.
He simply exploited a new market. It happens all the time.
The American religious milieu was highly credulous, as it still is today relative to western secularism.
There was sense of destiny, people felt they had been led by God to their situation, making them pushovers for fantastic schemes. Mormons are still like that. Everything that happened to me in the context of Mormonism was destiny to me, however inevitable it might have been. And, I was a sucker for fantastic schemes. I was propositioned by a multi-level marketing scheme soon after my mission, and I thought it was destiny. Even though I had doubts, I held myself to it and spent hundreds of dollars in startup and "training" costs, never earning a penny on it, while backsliding somewhat in college. It was the dilemma of having to choose college or the scheme that finally broke the spell, because both were competing gospel imperatives to me. Luckily the church heavily favors education and actually helped me decide in favor of school and not the sales scheme.
But I digress.
Smith, to me, was a fairly common smart-ass. I've met lots of witty people in my life who compulsively take advantage of others.
Also, I've met a number of pathological liars who 1)lie despite disproportionate risk, and 2) keep lying after they've been caught.
But, IMO, the church started out as a criminal racket. Rigdon, Cowdery, Smith, and other accomplices were demonstrable liars. Even if you can't disprove their supernatural claims, you can prove they told lies, and defamed people who were demonstrably telling the truth. This is a factual observation IMO.
As long as Smith said he believed his own words, he was essentially protected from charges of fraud and just exercising religious freedom. If he had ever admitted lying he'd be open to compensation claims (same as the church today), and criminal charges.
Plus, like in any criminal racket, he would have risked revenge by accomplices.
The codependent relationships between the accomplices is circumstantial evidence of fraud IMO. Even when they hated Smith and were excommunicated, Rigdon and Cowdery waited for a chance to take back a piece of the scam. And, they couldn't blow the whistle on Smith without incriminating themselves anyway.
Furthermore, Smith didn't know he was about to be murdered. The whole "lamb to the slaughter" story is folkflore. He had plotted for the Nauvoo Legion to free him.

I've noticed that people get used to having power and become very reluctant to give it up.

I suspect that by the end of his life he had been lying to so many people for so long that he at least somewhat believed it himself.

I don't know that he believed he was risking his own life.

He got a lot out of it - wealth, power, adoration, women...

Status, power, and sex.

Steve

Maybe as a semi-literate 18 year old, who had never read the bible, he wanted recognition from his mother or family?


"Throughout the turmoil of the revivals, Lucy had revealed her anxiety and her determination that her family would "get religion," so she shares her joy in the eventual unity of faith young Joseph brings to the Smith family with his vision of a "restoration."

Lucy tells the story very movingly. Three years after the First Vision of young Joseph, she observes, "I presume our family presented an aspect as singular as any ever lived upon the face of the earth—all seated in a circle, father, mother, sons and daughters, and giving the most profound attention to a boy, eighteen years of age, who had never read the Bible through in his life"