On Monday, November 5, 2018 at 3:08:27 PM UTC-7, Quadibloc wrote:

On Monday, November 5, 2018 at 2:50:49 PM UTC-7, Gary Harnagel wrote:

So your claim that an angel "explained the truth" to Joseph Smith is
egregiously incomplete and misleading. He claimed the Father and the Son
visited him. When he asked which church he should join, he was told none
of them. And he didn't run off and start a religion after having an
experience MUCH more profound that Mohammed.

He started a denomination, if not a religion.

Ten years later.

Although one could claim that Christianity is a sect within Judaism,
so it's not clear to me that this is an important distinction.

He started a group of people with a particular set of beliefs, distinct
from everyone else. How closely their beliefs might be related to some
other people's doesn't seem to me to be a significant factor.

Also "after having an experience" implies that you accept his claims
for what he had experienced. Why would anyone be even remotely inclined
to do that?

John Savard

That was just his first experience. He had quite a few similar experiences,
many with others who corroborated them. And then there was the Book of
Mormon.