We recently had an anonymous poster bring up the old anti-Mormon claim that the many witnesses of the gold plates of the Book of Mormon never physically saw the plates but just had some kind of a purely spiritual/hallucinatory experience. But the repeated affirmations of the witnesses and the many statements they left behind indicate something quite different. Critics must ignore a vast expanse of consistent detail in the historical record to offer the myth that they never actually experienced the physical reality of the plates. In this case, the divinity is in the details: details that point to the physical reality of the sacred ancient gold plates of the Book of Mormon. One important contribution in dealing with anti-Mormon efforts in this area is Richard Lloyd Anderson's article, "Attempts to Redefine the Experience of the Eight Witnesses (PDF) (Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2005.

In surveying the extensive literature on the witnesses, it is overwhelmingly clear that these people saw and experienced something real. We can see that we are dealing with plates that weighted about 60 pounds, were made of fine, thin sheets of a deep yellow metal with engravings on both sides, and bound by 3 D-shaped rings. A miraculous spiritual experience did play a role for three of the witnesses, who not only saw the plates, but saw the Angel Moroni showing them the plates and testifying that they were of God. But though this was a spiritual experience, spiritual as well as physical eyes did the beholding. It was a real experience, not one imagined in religious frenzy. And for the many other witnesses of the plates, they were seen and handled in plain daylight and were obviously real and physical. Not one of the witnesses ever denied their testimony, even though some would have differences with the Church and leave, even in bitterness. In spite of that, none would ever deny the physical reality of what they experienced. That's an amazing level of corroboration.
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