>>17751615>>17751622Mormonism and scientology have nothing to do with each other, and nothing in common. When you say things like this it only discredits you as being ignorant of not one but two religions.
>>17751689Pure gold plates would be too soft to hold engraving well. An alloy of gold and copper called "tumbaga," known in Mesoamerica, would suit both the appearance and weight of the plates. The plates were not a solid block of gold, but a set of page-like leaves, which reduces the weight by about 50%.
The witnesses all agree that they weighed around 60 pounds.
"I was permitted to lift them. . . . They weighed about sixty pounds according to the best of my judgement." —William Smith
"I . . . judged them to have weighed about sixty pounds."—William Smith
"They were much heavier than a stone, and very much heavier than wood. . . . As near as I could tell, about sixty pounds."—William Smith
"I hefted the plates, and I knew from the heft that they were lead or gold." —Martin Harris
"My daughter said, they were about as much as she could lift. They were now in the glass-box, and my wife said they were very heavy. They both lifted them." —Martin Harris
"I moved them from place to place on the table, as it was necessary in doing my work." —Emma Smith
Joseph's sister Catherine, while she was dusting in the room where he had been translating, "hefted those plates [which were covered with a cloth] and found them very heavy." —H. S. Salisbury, paraphrasing Catherine Smith Salisbury
Each of the pages was about the thickness of tin.
"of the thickness of tin" - Oliver Cowdery
"of the thickness of plates of tin" —Martin Harris
"about as thick as parchment" — David Whitmer
"[We] could raise the leaves this way (raising a few leaves of the Bible before him)." — William Smith
"They seemed to be pliable like thick paper, and would rustle with a metalic [sic] sound when the edges were moved by the thumb, as one does sosometimes thumb the edges of a book." — Emma Smith