Joseph Smith was a con man. People paid him money to find treasures. His excuse for not finding treasure was it was guarded by spirits. He was arrested as a "juggler," or "con man." He was brought before a justice of the peace. The judge ascertained that there was enough evidence to try him. This was in Bainbridge, N.Y., in 1826, The judge was Albert Neely. Smith was labeled a "glass looker". The evidence against Smith was sufficient that, if Smith had not left town, he would have been judged guilty. Smith then went on and fabricated the Book of Mormon. He got his idea for the book from Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews, or "The Tribes of Israel in America".He supposedly used a pair of spectacles to "translate" the plates for the Book of Mormon, friends and relatives said he used the same stone he used in his former money digging scheme.The gold plates never existed according to a witness. An early Mormon convert heard Harris say "I never saw the plates."
Details can be found in "Joseph Smith and the Origins of the Book of Mormon", by David Persuitte.
There has not been found one piece of archaeological evidence to support the story of ancient America found in the Book of Mormon. In the 1950s, the LDS church financed "the largest archaeological project ever funded by a religious institution" It was successful in that it uncovered an enormous amount of archaeological information about ancient America, but as far as providing any evidence for the Book of Mormon, it was a failure. That has not been changed by any subsequent archaeological findings.
In his book, Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church, Simon G. Southerton shows that the American natives show no evidence of Israelite descent, which contradicts what the Book of Mormon says.
Joseph Smith had an eye for women, so he instituted plural marriage and took over 50 wives, some of them the wives of other men.
Mormon doctrine:
God was once a man He has a body of flesh and bone and lives on a planet near the star Kolob. The sun gets its light from the Kolob. God has at least one wife, our "Mother in Heaven," but she is so holy that we are not to discuss her nor pray to her. We can become like God and rule over our own universe. There are many gods. In the highest degree of the celestial kingdom men have more than one wife. A righteous Mormon will see the face of God in the Mormon temple. If a Gentile becomes Mormon, the Holy Ghost actually purges his Gentile blood and replaces it with Israelite blood.
. Jesus was married. Jesus and Satan are brothers, They are our brothers. We are spirit children of Heavenly Father. Jesus was conceived by God by having sex with Mary. We should not pray to Jesus. The "Lord" in the Old Testament is Jesus in the New Testament, but different from "God the Father". Christ will not return to earth in any year that has seen a rainbow.
Before coming to this earth we lived as spirits in a "pre-existence", in which we were tested. Dark skin is a curse from God, the result of our sin or our ancestors sin. If righteous, a dark-skinned person will become light-skinned. Not only will humans be resurrected to eternal life, but also all animals.
All humans before the Flood lived in the western hemisphere. The Ark transported Noah to the eastern hemisphere. Mormons should avoid traveling on water, Satan rules the waters. You can identify a false angel by the color of his hair, or by offering to shake his hand.
American Indians are "descendants of Lehi", but there is not a hint of the Hebrew language in any of the Indian dialects. The Garden of Eden was in Missouri.The Book of Mormon says that Lehi found horses in America. Horses did not exist in the Americas until the 16th century. The Book of Mormon says that Nephi had a bow of steel. Jews did not have steel in this time period and iron was not smelted in the Americas until Spaniard arrived. The book of Mormon mentions "swords and cimeters." Scimitars were not around until the rise of Islam (500A.D.) The Book of Mormon mentions silk. This did not exist in the Americas at this time