Dave Bennett

DBA, Data guy, Dad, SF/F author, Okinawa-Te Blackbelt, non-Republican social conservative, follower of Jesus Christ

[Kevin Sorbo @ksorbs]

This woman with a "kindness" shirt is the epitome of leftism.

[@amuse @amuse]

POLITICAL VIOLENCE: James Carville said he does not want Trump dead because "I can't watch a dead person suffer." Democrats claim their hyperbolic rhetoric does not inspire violence. A Democrat donor just spent 75 hours on a train to DC to kill the president. Carville wants suffering. His base keeps trying to deliver it, permanently.

[@amuse @amuse]

POLITICAL VIOLENCE: It is the brand of the Democrat Party.

[Clint Teeples @TeeplesCY]

If the Book of Mormon were a fraud, the witnesses would have cracked. Here's why they didn't.

"I am a dying man. What would it profit me to tell you a lie?"

That was Oliver Cowdery. On his deathbed. Reaffirming the testimony he had maintained for over twenty years.

Here is how courts think about it:
Courts have used the same basic truth test for centuries. Three questions:

Was the witness honest?
Was the witness in a position to observe what they claimed?
Was the witness free from disqualifying bias?

Apply all three to the Book of Mormon's Three Witnesses.

Start with honesty.
Martin Harris was described by his own skeptical community as a "square-toed upright man," meaning someone honest to the point of being old-fashioned about it. Newspapers hostile to Joseph Smith still exempted Martin from charges of dishonesty. His neighbors could not reconcile his reputation for fastidious honesty with his claims of seeing an angel. Their actual words: "How to reconcile the act of Harris in signing his name to such a statement, in view of the character of honesty which had always been conceded to him, could never be easily explained."

They thought he was wrong. They never thought he was lying.

Oliver Cowdery was a lawyer, editor, and political candidate. He could have ended the ridicule with one short op-ed. He had access to printing presses in multiple states and spent years watching the association with the Book of Mormon cost him professionally. He never recanted. He took the hit and moved forward.

David Whitmer was elected city councilman and mayor by his non-Latter-day Saint neighbors. The Richmond Democrat wrote that no man had "more friends and fewer enemies." He was ranked alongside national statesman Alexander Doniphan in regional histories.

These were men their communities trusted.

Then comes the hardest test.
In July 1833, a mob of several hundred descended on the Latter-day Saint settlement in Jackson County, Missouri. Oliver barely escaped. A public bounty was placed on him. His workplace was reduced to rubble.

A schoolteacher named William McLellin, hiding in the woods nearby, pulled Oliver and David aside. He told them: our lives are in danger. Tell me the truth. Is the Book of Mormon true?

Oliver: "God sent his holy angel to declare the truth of the translation of it to us, and therefore we know. And though the mob kill us, yet we must die declaring its truth."
David: "Oliver has told you the solemn truth, for we could not be deceived."

McLellin believed them. He could not see a conceivable reason for them to lie in that moment.

David Whitmer's test was worse.
Two weeks later, a mob dragged David from his home, stripped him, tarred and feathered him, and lined him up at bayonet point in front of five hundred men. The commander offered him a deal. Deny the Book of Mormon. Confess it was fraud. Walk away a free man.

David raised his tar-stained hands and bore witness that the Book of Mormon was the word of God.

At least one mobster became a believer on the spot.

Now consider what they had to gain.
David and Oliver received no financial benefit from the Book of Mormon. Ever. Martin Harris lost his farm, his savings, and his marriage supporting its publication. Publishers warned him upfront that the book would be a commercial disaster. They were right. Martin spent years walking the streets of Palmyra with armloads of copies, selling almost nothing.

If money were the motive, recanting was always available. Critics tried alcohol, ridicule, legal pressure, and financial offers. None of it worked.

What courts call "the final test."
English and American law has long given special weight to deathbed statements. The logic is straightforward: when death is imminent, the usual motives to lie are gone. What remains is more likely to be true.

All three witnesses gave deathbed testimonies. All three explicitly rejected the idea that they had been dreaming, hallucinating, or imagining things. All three reaffirmed that they had seen, heard, and in some cases handled real physical objects.

Martin Harris, too weak to raise his arm, asked a friend to lift it for him in the position of a courtroom oath. Then he testified that he had seen the angel, seen the plates, seen the sword of Laban and the Urim and Thummim, and heard the voice of God.

He died with a copy of the Book of Mormon on his chest. His neighbors buried him that way.

The question courts ask last:
Could they have been hallucinating?

Clinical psychology has a straightforward answer. Group hallucinations do not occur. Hallucinations are private, subjective, and unshared. The witnesses described multisensory experiences, specific physical details, shared observations, and separate confirmations that matched each other across decades.

As two leading clinical psychologists in the field put it, there is no documented case of even two people sharing the same hallucination at the same time.

The witnesses experienced these events in separate groupings, in open settings, in daylight, with no staging equipment available within miles.

What this leaves you with.
You may not believe the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be. That is a reasonable position. But the Three Witnesses were honest men, confirmed by skeptics and enemies alike. They were mentally competent, trusted with civic responsibility. They had no financial motive. They maintained their testimony through mob violence, poverty, excommunication, estrangement from Joseph Smith, and death.

The simple dismissals don't hold.

Whatever the Book of Mormon is, dismissing it by dismissing the witnesses requires ignoring most of the available evidence. Courts would not do that. You probably should not either.

Source: Authentic by Lundwall and Lundwall

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 WOW! Sen. Mike Lee just went WAR MODE on the floor for the SAVE America Act

"Not a CHANCE IN HELL am I giving up on this!"

"We're NOT going away. I'M not going away. I will be back on this floor, in this chamber, DAY AFTER DAY, WEEK AFTER WEEK, MONTH AFTER MONTH, as long as it takes. I'm. Not. Giving. UP."

"This is about the American dream, this is about the fact when you allow noncitizens to vote, you are ROBBING something from the American people!"

"Something which is distinctively, rightfully, THEIRS."

"We MUST not tolerate it — and WE WILL NOT."

[Dave Bennett @ergoface]

@CNviolations @Grock, please translate the dialog

[Dave Bennett @ergoface]

@ClownWorld We just need to give her address out, so that her fantasy can have a quick encounter with reality when they break in and take over her house.

[Planet Of Memes @PlanetOfMemes]

So true. 😆

[Dave Bennett @ergoface]

@catturd2 If they were so pissed, they shouldn't have turned his death into a left-wing propaganda tour.

[MAZE @mazemoore]

This is how Obamacare was sold to the American people.

It was all lies and has cost this country a fortune.

Democrats not only don’t take any responsibility for this, they blame Trump for the current cost of healthcare.

[Dave Bennett @ergoface]

@bfwebster @LukeFHan My father was fond of saying that you know the church is true because otherwise the missionaries would have destroyed it already. Who in their right mind sends young immature people out to represent their faith?

[Dave Bennett @ergoface]

@BasedMikeLee BBB!

[Dave Bennett @ergoface]

@ClownWorld @mattvanswol Sadly, most of these folks picked their politics in or around 1969 and have never woken up to their mistakes.

[Dave Bennett @ergoface]

@akafaceUS Tell me you have no clue about economics without saying you have no clue about economics.

[Dave Bennett @ergoface]

@robbystarbuck You are forgetting that taxes are how politicians reward their allies and penalize their foes. It's not mostly about raising money for the government.

[Dave Bennett @ergoface]

@amuse Pretending = Government propaganda

[Dave Bennett @ergoface]

@WallStreetMav If you ask the bottom 50%, they'll tell you the top 1% should be paying 100% of the taxes.

[Dave Bennett @ergoface]

@SaltyGoat17 Note that even as she is sprayed, she still works to obstruct traffic. She's no victim.

[Dave Bennett @ergoface]

@catturd2 Paid 0.99 per pound for mine

[Andy Ngo @MrAndyNgo]

There were no protests in Charlotte for the young Ukrainian woman m—rdered on public transport.