Hnau
Banned
I'm reading Rough Stone Rolling, a biography of Joseph Smith who started the Latter Day Saint movement. One interesting part of the book describes how Joseph Smith was skeptical of religion as a child. The fact that so many churches asserted their superiority over one another during the Second Great Awakening caused him to ponder the reason for it all. This prompted him to go into the woods near his house and pray to God for an answer as to which church was true. In doing so, he later reported that he was visited by the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ, who explained to him that none of the churches were true and that Joseph Smith was to be a prophet that would restore the original Church of Jesus Christ that had fallen more than a thousand years ago.
As an LDS missionary in Brazil, I remember joking with one of my companions about the First Vision. I said, in classic Alternate History fashion: "What if Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ, they told him that none of the churches were true, and then just left without revealing what Joseph Smith needed to do?" We thought it would have been kind of funny and anticlimactic for Smith to leave the woods scratching his head, wondering why Christ had appeared to tell him that there wasn't a true religion on the Earth and yet had not informed him of what really was the true path.
Ignore my original joke, that would be strange. But what if Joseph Smith's skepticism continued and he decided that there really wasn't a God? What if instead of becoming a prophet he instead becomes a vocal atheist leader and says that non-believers should join one another to create a new utopian society? His ideas on a "City of Zion", on polygamy and communal socialism could even eventually manifest themselves in this movement. Utah might be settled by atheists fleeing persecution from Christian America rather than by religious radicals.
Thoughts? And, yes, I agree that Smith and whoever decides to follow him will be much more hated than they were in OTL. It is one thing to say during the 1830s/1840s that God has revealed a new set of scriptures, that He was once a man and that there are many gods in the universe... it is another thing to say that God doesn't exist and that humanity would better itself in abandoning religion. People would be much more hostile.
You know, I think it'd be hard to be an honest atheist in the early pre-Darwinian 19th century, because the "how was the Earth/life created if not by a Creator?" argument would still hold so much weight. I don't know how this alternate Smith will validate himself and his movement until later on. If it doesn't seem plausible to you, then we can ask ourselves what would happen if Smith became simply a utopian humanistic Deist leader of some sort...
As an LDS missionary in Brazil, I remember joking with one of my companions about the First Vision. I said, in classic Alternate History fashion: "What if Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ, they told him that none of the churches were true, and then just left without revealing what Joseph Smith needed to do?" We thought it would have been kind of funny and anticlimactic for Smith to leave the woods scratching his head, wondering why Christ had appeared to tell him that there wasn't a true religion on the Earth and yet had not informed him of what really was the true path.
Ignore my original joke, that would be strange. But what if Joseph Smith's skepticism continued and he decided that there really wasn't a God? What if instead of becoming a prophet he instead becomes a vocal atheist leader and says that non-believers should join one another to create a new utopian society? His ideas on a "City of Zion", on polygamy and communal socialism could even eventually manifest themselves in this movement. Utah might be settled by atheists fleeing persecution from Christian America rather than by religious radicals.
Thoughts? And, yes, I agree that Smith and whoever decides to follow him will be much more hated than they were in OTL. It is one thing to say during the 1830s/1840s that God has revealed a new set of scriptures, that He was once a man and that there are many gods in the universe... it is another thing to say that God doesn't exist and that humanity would better itself in abandoning religion. People would be much more hostile.
You know, I think it'd be hard to be an honest atheist in the early pre-Darwinian 19th century, because the "how was the Earth/life created if not by a Creator?" argument would still hold so much weight. I don't know how this alternate Smith will validate himself and his movement until later on. If it doesn't seem plausible to you, then we can ask ourselves what would happen if Smith became simply a utopian humanistic Deist leader of some sort...