The reason I presented the two choices the way I did is that I thought it clearly and fairly represented the actual positions taken by me and by rick.

At first the dichotomy was “the Book of Mormon is a true work of scripture brought forth by divine intervention, or your position is right and the Book of Mormon is a work of pure fiction brought forth by unscrupulous men seeking power over others.” Now you’ve simplified it to whether it’s a fraud or not. You created it because there are other scenarios (the book is fiction brought forth by divine intervention, for example). Nevertheless, this isn’t really the post for this discussion

Ltbugaf, you’re the only one who’s discussing these issues, and they have nothing to do with the topic. As per the commenting policy, please refrain from threadjacking.

And either choice, fraud or truth, seems to lead away from the idea that Lehi’s vision could be a hallucination induced by fatigue.

Your creation of a dichotomy doesn’t make any sense. Are you saying people shouldn’t discuss the moral implications of events and characters in fictional works?

And this page: http://www.boap.org/LDS/History/HTMLHistory/v1c18history.html
(See footnote 23)

tell the story of Sidney Rigdon being physically worn out by the experience of receiving “The Vision” recorded in Doctrine & Covenants 76, with Joseph Smith.

If my position is right, and the Book of Mormon was brought to us through the power of God, then it seems to me that it makes little sense to think God would have gone to such trouble to bring us the record of a people led by a man who merely tired himself into a hallucination, rather than a true vision.

If your position is right, and the Book of Mormon is false, then Lehi is a fictional character who never had any visions. It makes no sense to talk about what could have been the actual cause of a vision that never happened. It’s like asking whether Snow White’s decision to marry a prince she had met only once before was motivated by a dislike for dwarfs.