Response to Mr. Beat (not to be confused with Mr. Beast)
To watch this episode on YouTube, click HERE.
Transcript of David’s YouTube video below:
Mr. Beat (not to be confused with Mr. Beast) recently made a video about Latter-day Saint history and OH MY HECK, we’ve got a lot to talk about, so let’s get to it.
33:28 – 34:08 “There’s no way to sugarcoat this: Joseph Smith was basically a con artist, and anyone who says otherwise is trying to whitewash history … ”
This clip is from the end of his video, but I wanted to talk about it first because it’s very clear throughout the video that this belief — that Joseph Smith was a fraud — colors the way he talks about pretty much all of church history. He’s unfortunately very flippant and sarcastic in the video and is apparently a big fan of what South Park has to say about our faith, which he references many times. I don’t think he’s ever been a member of our faith, but the first hashtag he includes under his video is “#exmormon.” In the comments section, Mr. Beat expressed that anyone who believes that Joseph Smith was a true prophet has no credibility. Believers just cherry-pick evidence, while he says he considers ALL the available evidence.
True to that belief, if commenters pushing back on him were found to be believing Latter-day Saints, it seems they were too often simply dismissed. Now, I’m not pointing this out just to be rude to Mr. Beat — I’m just trying to make the point that, unfortunately, this source is far from fair and balanced, and while he does include many facts throughout his video, he leaves out many important facts that add important context. As a small example, after claiming that Joseph was a fraud, he says this:
33:36 Before his untimely death, he had been arrested at least 42 times, according to one source.
According to the transcript, that source was this 1977 BYU devotional, which actually claims that Joseph was “falsely” arrested 42 times. I started to wonder why Mr. Beat would have left that word out of his presentation and why he was getting information from an almost 50-year-old outdated BYU speech, but after finding very similar wording citing this same source on Wikipedia, my guess is that he probably never actually read the source. If he had dug deeper in more recent sources, he would have found that he actually faced closer to 50 criminal cases and “that not once was he found legally guilty of any charges against him….”
But let’s go back towards the beginning of the video and get a little deeper into some of Mr. Beat’s arguments:
[The clip about treasure-digging starts at about 5:47. Include the “wizard” line, and 6:28 where he talks about Joseph Sr. teaching Joseph Jr. “how to hustle people.” He drops the topic but comes back around 8:20]
Alright, so most critics that bring up Joseph Smith’s treasure-digging present you with two options: Either this was an evil witchrafty practice, or just outright fraudulent. Both options look bad for Joseph. But there’s a third option that Mr. Beat either isn’t aware of or chooses not to bring up: This article by anthropologist Manuel Padro indicates that “Treasure hunting was explicitly a form of Christian folk-religiosity as practiced in upstate New York and New England. For many rural Yankees, ‘treasure-seeking was a materialistic extension of their Christian faith. …’”
To read more: Keystone
