(November 1, 2015 at 4:33 pm)Redbeard The Pink Wrote:(November 1, 2015 at 3:50 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: Are you not just making an appeal to ignorance???
No, he's saying that if you're looking the information at hand to assert that it's uncertain exactly why Joseph Smith died, he is justified in looking at the (even smaller) amount of information at hand and asserting that it's uncertain exactly why Paul died.
He's using your standard of evidence to discredit your argument/conclusion.
Ok... my question is if you are looking at the information at hand, or appealing to what we do not know. I admit, that this is the first I have looked at the beginning of the early Mormon church. But from the information I have gathered, it appears that he was arrested because he ordered the destruction of a printing press (which spoke against Mormons), and a vigilante group mobbed the prison in which he was held, and killed Joseph Smith.In Missouri and Illinois, from the information available, I think that a case can be made, that there was a lot of political tension that at least partially contributed.
Although sometimes exaggerated, I do not think that scholars disagree, that Christians where persecuted for simply being Christian. This can be seen in Paul's accounts of his own actions before his encounter on the road to Damascus, and other places throughout the new testament. Pliny the younger also admits to as much in his letter to Trajan. He even asks how to deal with those who recant their beliefs.
