This could have been a demonic encounter. St. Paul even warns in Galatians 1 to reject angels who preach false gospels. But it could also be the product of excitable people prone to see visions around every corner. Consider the three witnesses of this alleged event.

First, there’s David Whitmer who said the angel had no appearance or shape but that it was an impression that he felt. He later left the Church saying, “God spake to me again by his own voice from the heavens and told me to ‘separate myself from among the Latter Day Saints.'”

Second, there’s Oliver Cowdery, who also left the Church before briefly rejoining for a few months before his death. Cowdery claimed to see visions before he met Joseph Smith, he knew Smith for years before he became one of his scribes, and believed dowsing rods could speak to him.

Third, there’s Martin Harris who mortgaged his farm to fund the publishing of the Book of Mormon, which means he had a huge financial motivation to convince people of its truthfulness. And multiple sources describe Harris as someone who was easily spooked, like seeing the Devil in candlelight flickers. In 1842 John Clarke said of him, “Harris was ready to be duped by anything, no matter where he went he saw visons and supernatural appearances around him. Once while travelling “he met the Lord Jesus Christ, who walked by the side of him in the shape of a deer for two or three miles talking with him as familiarly as one man talks with another.”

Harris also admitted he saw the plates with spiritual eyes, causing some people to leave the Mormon church. Harris also left the Church calling them ‘latt er day devils.”

Finally, there is also no conclusive record of all three men seeing an angel at once. This would not be a case of group hallucination, but of a group of people being brought into the wilderness primed by Smith to see an angel and after praying ecstatically for hours they each finally “see” it in their own mind’s eye.

The alleged golden plates themselves could have been natural artifacts, or simply frauds. In 1843 brass plates were unearthed in Kinderhook Illinois and Joseph Smith claimed they referred to an Egyptian descendant of Ham, but the plates were created by a blacksmith as a hoax.

In 1845 James Strang, an early LDS dissenter, claimed to have a translated metal plates describing ancient peoples, and unlike Smith’s plates, non-Mormons confirmed their existence. Martin Harris, one of the original Book of Mormon witnesses, even became one of Strang’s followers for a brief period.

Mormons don’t believe in James Strang’s plates or the Kinderhook Plates, and I don’t believe in Joseph Smith’s plates.