Mormons publish photos of 'seer stone' used by founder

[deucemagnet]

16. Here's the thing about the gold plates:

Description of the Plates

Joseph Smith said that the ancient records were engraved on plates which had the appearance of gold, each plate was six inches wide and eight inches long, and not quite so thick as common tin. They were filled with engravings, in Egyptian Characters, and bound together in a volume as the leaves of a book, with three rings running through the whole. The volume was something near six inches in thickness, a part of which was sealed. The characters on the unsealed part were small, and beautifully engraved. The whole book exhibited many marks of antiquity in its construction, and much skill in the art of engraving.

http://www.mormonwiki.com/Gold_Plates

So the gold plates were approximately 6" x 8" x 6" (15.24 cm x 20.32 cm x 15.24 cm). This works out to a volume of 288 cubic inches or about 4720 cubic centimeters. Gold has a density of 19.32 g/cm3 making Joseph Smith's gold tablets about 91 kilograms or 200 pounds. That's a pretty fucking heavy book to be lugging around, unless, of course it was a magical book with "the appearance of gold" or those who touched the book were imbued with incredible strength by the Divine. Or I suppose the whole story could be horseshit.