Never trust that you have the whole truth from someone who won’t let you look at all of the evidence.

In the case of Joseph Smith and the gold plates, his claim that he gave them back to the angel Moroni smells of deceit. When I had my faithful Mormon hat on, I accepted his claim without a second thought really. Of course he had to give them back to the angel Moroni because God didn’t want the world to mess The Book of Mormon up like it messed up the Bible, right? Now that I have my skeptic’s hat on I’ve realized that an intentional withholding of the very evidence that would validate your claim is a classic characteristic of con artists and magicians. Grant Palmer helped me realize that Joseph Smith believed the ends justify the means when you’re bringing people to Christ. The faithful might say that God withholds evidence to test our faith, but that doesn’t work in the case of The Book of Mormon (if ever). Why? Because even with a historically authenticated set of gold plates in a museum, it would still require faith to believe that the supernatural events that the plates describe actually happened and aren’t just ancient stories.