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FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
(→Response to claim: "Among the first sources I looked to for answers were official Church sources such as Mormon.org and LDS.org. I couldn’t find them.") |
(→Response to claim: "Among the first sources I looked to for answers were official Church sources such as Mormon.org and LDS.org. I couldn’t find them.") |
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|L2=Question: Are there no mentions of the seer stone and/or its use with a hat on LDS.org? | |L2=Question: Are there no mentions of the seer stone and/or its use with a hat on LDS.org? | ||
|L3=Gospel Topics on LDS.org: "Joseph Smith was sealed to a number of women who were already married. Neither these women nor Joseph explained much about these sealings, though several women said they were for eternity alone" | |L3=Gospel Topics on LDS.org: "Joseph Smith was sealed to a number of women who were already married. Neither these women nor Joseph explained much about these sealings, though several women said they were for eternity alone" | ||
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{{:Improvement Era (January 1968): "Often the funerary texts contained passages from the 'Book of the Dead,' a book that was to assist in the safe passage of the dead person into the spirit world"}} | {{:Improvement Era (January 1968): "Often the funerary texts contained passages from the 'Book of the Dead,' a book that was to assist in the safe passage of the dead person into the spirit world"}} | ||
{{:Question: Are there no mentions of the seer stone and/or its use with a hat on LDS.org?}} | {{:Question: Are there no mentions of the seer stone and/or its use with a hat on LDS.org?}} | ||
{{:Gospel Topics on LDS.org: "Joseph Smith was sealed to a number of women who were already married. Neither these women nor Joseph explained much about these sealings, though several women said they were for eternity alone"}} | {{:Gospel Topics on LDS.org: "Joseph Smith was sealed to a number of women who were already married. Neither these women nor Joseph explained much about these sealings, though several women said they were for eternity alone"}} | ||
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==Response to claim: "FAIR and these unofficial apologists have done more to destroy my testimony than any anti-Mormon source ever could"== | ==Response to claim: "FAIR and these unofficial apologists have done more to destroy my testimony than any anti-Mormon source ever could"== |
[[../Other Concerns & Questions|Other Concerns & Questions]] | A FAIR Analysis of: [[../|Letter to a CES Director]], a work by author: Jeremy Runnells
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Googling is not a synonym for seeking.
—Steven C. Harper, Joseph Smith's First Vision: A Guide to the Historical Accounts (2012), 11–12
Summary: The author concludes, "FAIR and these unofficial apologists have done more to destroy my testimony than any anti-Mormon source ever could. I found their version of Mormonism to be alien and foreign to the Chapel Mormonism that I grew up in attending Church, seminary, reading scriptures, General Conferences, EFY, mission, and BYU. Their answers are not only contradictory to the scriptures and teachings I learned through correlated Mormonism…they’re truly bizarre."
Jump to details:
FairMormon says... "Googling is not a synonym for seeking." Google is a search engine. It is simply a tool. It is not a source. It is not a destination. It is not a conclusion. Google is the taxi; not the location. It's the phone; not the conversation. This is like saying, "The library is not a synonym for seeking." The library is just a tool or gathering place of books, papers, works, and sources. FairMormon is now perpetuating the general perception and reputation that the Church and its apologists do not want its members to be balanced researchers or to look up information about the Church and its history on Google.
"Google" is a noun. It is the name of the tool used to search the online "library" of information. "Googling," on the other hand, is a conjugation of a commonly used 21st century verb "to google". It is a 21st century euphemism for the verb "to search."
"Library" is a noun. It is the name of a repository of information, not the tool used to search that library. There is no verb "to library." The author's phrase "The library is not a synonym for seeking" is a non-sequitur.
The author states, "When I first discovered that Joseph Smith used a rock in a hat to translate the Book of Mormon, that he was married to 11 other men’s wives, and that the Book of Abraham has absolutely nothing to do with the papyri or facsimiles…I went into a panic. I desperately needed answers and I needed them 3 hours ago. Among the first sources I looked to for answers were official Church sources such as Mormon.org and LDS.org. I couldn’t find them."Note: The Gospel Topics entry was added in 2014 after the Letter to a CES Director was written.
Jay M. Todd, ,"Egyptian Papyri Rediscovered," The Improvement Era (January 1968):
Perhaps no discovery in recent memory is expected to arouse as much widespread interest in the restored gospel as is the recent discovery of some Egyptian papyri, one of which is known to have been used by the prophet Joseph Smith in producing the Book of Abraham.
The papyri, long thought to have been burned in the Chicago fire of 1871, were presented to the Church on November 27, 1967, in New York City by the metropolitan Museum of Art, more than a year after Dr. Aziz S. Atiya, former director of the University of Utah's Middle East Center, had made his startling discovery while browsing through the New York museum's papyri collection.
Included in the collection of 11 manuscripts is one identified as the original document from which Joseph Smith obtained Facsimile 1, which prefaces the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price. Accompanying the manuscripts was a letter dated May 26, 1856, signed by both Emma Smith Bidamon, widow of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and their son, Joseph Smith, attesting that the papyri had been the property of the Prophet.
Some of the pieces of papyrus apparently include conventional hieroglyphics (sacred inscriptions, resembling picture-drawing) and hieratic (a cursive shorthand version of hieroglyphics) Egyptian funerary texts, which were commonly buried with Egyptian mummies. Often the funerary texts contained passages from the "Book of the Dead," a book that was to assist in the safe passage of the dead person into the spirit world. It is not known at this time whether the ten other pieces of papyri have a direct connection with the Book of Abraham.[1]
We found the following mentions of a seer stone being used to translate the Book of Mormon, with a few mentions of the hat, on lds.org:
We found the following mentions that the Joseph Smith papyri does not contain the text of the Book of Abraham on lds.org:
"Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo," Gospel Topics on LDS.org (October 2014):[2]
Following his marriage to Louisa Beaman and before he married other single women, Joseph Smith was sealed to a number of women who were already married.[3] Neither these women nor Joseph explained much about these sealings, though several women said they were for eternity alone.[4] Other women left no records, making it unknown whether their sealings were for time and eternity or were for eternity alone.
There are several possible explanations for this practice. These sealings may have provided a way to create an eternal bond or link between Joseph’s family and other families within the Church.[5] These ties extended both vertically, from parent to child, and horizontally, from one family to another. Today such eternal bonds are achieved through the temple marriages of individuals who are also sealed to their own birth families, in this way linking families together. Joseph Smith’s sealings to women already married may have been an early version of linking one family to another. In Nauvoo, most if not all of the first husbands seem to have continued living in the same household with their wives during Joseph’s lifetime, and complaints about these sealings with Joseph Smith are virtually absent from the documentary record.[6]
These sealings may also be explained by Joseph’s reluctance to enter plural marriage because of the sorrow it would bring to his wife Emma. He may have believed that sealings to married women would comply with the Lord’s command without requiring him to have normal marriage relationships.[7] This could explain why, according to Lorenzo Snow, the angel reprimanded Joseph for having “demurred” on plural marriage even after he had entered into the practice.34 After this rebuke, according to this interpretation, Joseph returned primarily to sealings with single women.
The author claims, "FAIR and these unofficial apologists have done more to destroy my testimony than any anti-Mormon source ever could. I found their version of Mormonism to be alien and foreign to the Chapel Mormonism that I grew up in attending Church, seminary, reading scriptures, General Conferences, EFY, mission, and BYU. Their answers are not only contradictory to the scriptures and teachings I learned through correlated Mormonism…they’re truly bizarre."See also the followup(s) to this claim from "Debunking FAIR’s Debunking" (20 July 2014 revision):
Response to claim: "Once again, Google delivers where the Church does not"
Response to claim: "If one assumes that FAIR's undisputed silence is acceptance of the facts..."
{{:Christensen (2014): "His Letter and his response to FairMormon works from an assumption that LDS leadership should display no weakness, have no common manner of language, never err in their statements, never need to seek wisdom since they should already have it all on the shelf"}}
The author, after noting that he was troubled by Elder Nelson's talk in the Ensign which mentioned Joseph's use of a stone in a hat, said that "FAIR confirms polyandry and the rock in the hat translation. Both of these issues usually cause severe cog dis in members. They did with me." One should not reasonably expect FairMormon to deny things that are printed in the Ensign, such as Elder Nelson's talk which mentions the stone in the hat, yet the author claims that he found FairMormon's "version of Mormonism to be alien and foreign." This raises the question: How, then, did FairMormon do "more to destroy" the author's testimony than any anti-Mormon source ever could? (This actually reflects a popular and common meme among online ex-Mormons that tries to cast FairMormon as an "anti-Mormon" site. The promotion of this idea is well represented in "Letter to a CES Director.")
It is clear from the author's statements online (shown below) that he went to MormonThink and online discussion boards well before looking at FairMormon. It is also evident that the author is only familiar with selected quotes from a variety of primary sources (including lds.org) that are included on critical websites.
Brigham Young said "The only men who become Gods, even the sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy" (Journal of Discourses 11:269). Last I checked, Journal of Discourses is not anti-mormon.
....Respected LDS Historian and "Rough Stone Rolling" author Richard Bushman totally lied and deceived me....Elder Russell M. Nelson also endorsed this stone in hat method of translation of the Book of Mormon in his July 1993 Ensign "A Treasured Testament" talk. You might want to have a quick chat with him to get his talk corrected. Like, pronto....Joseph Smith's own journals have obviously been tampered with....LDS-owned FamilySearch.org listing Joseph's teen brides....he, according to FAIR, FARMS, FamilySearch.org and LDS historians, really did practice polygamy....that lie is in the Journal of Discourses...might want to delete it pronto....
Because the "Ouija Board" that he used to con people in his treasure hunting days is the same "Ouija Board" that he used to bring forth the Book of Mormon. Additionally, the church's spin on how the BOM came to be vs. how it actually happened are universes apart.
A person has to do their own convincing. Your dad is doing the research and is asking questions. Let it take its course. Hopefully you pointed him to the right resources (MormonThink.com, etc.)
I'm BIC, RM, Temple Married who left the church a few months ago (haven't resigned yet)....I have a TBM wife who still takes kids to church. I want to know the most effective way to save them from Mormonism so they won't have to go through what I went through.
Yeah, reading "The Mormon Murders" and other stuff about the Mark Hoffman disaster did really did some damage on how I look at Hinckley and the modern church. Specifically, the buying and hiding the embarrassing forgeries along with the lack of discernment.
http://www.lds.org/ensign/1993/07/a-treasured-testament?lang=eng He [Elder Russell M. Nelson] quotes David Whitmer's testimony of rock in the hat translation method.
Need Feedback! My TBM grandpa asked me to speak to his CES Director friend, about my concerns. CES guy offered to talk to me. This PDF is a rough draft of what I'm sending over to both CES guy and grandpa. Need your feedback/advice, guys. Thanks!
Final draft of letter is done! Let me know what you guys think before I send.
FAIR confirms polyandry and the rock in the hat translation. Both of these issues usually cause severe cog dis in members. They did with me. I mean, once the rock in the hat story was confirmed, the whole thing collapsed because the rock in the hat ruins the official story of ancient prophets creating gold plates for Joseph and the testimony of the witnesses of the gold plates (since Joseph never used the plates anyway).
You cannot find this on lds.org or on any official Church website. In fact, you have to hunt it down on the internet. Once again, Google delivers where the Church does not. FAIR states: “The following is contained in the online archive of the Improvement Era." FAIR doesn’t tell the reader that this “online archive” is a non-LDS website archive.org that you have to do a Google search to locate. In other words, it’s archived and hidden off the official LDS websites and servers.
If one assumes that FAIR's undisputed silence is acceptance of the facts, FAIR agrees with 79% of Letter to a CES Director. You’d have a difficult time seeing this by looking at FAIR’s answers. The trick is in the silence; facts in the CES letter that FAIR leave alone and don’t dispute.
Those who wish to achieve a substantial level of income would be well advised to avoid LDS apologetics entirely, as it can consume substantial amounts of a person's "off-time." Most LDS apologists perform volunteer work to defend the faith while holding down their normal "day job."
FAIR is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and all of its members (with the exception of some administrative staff) are unpaid volunteers.
All efforts devoted to FAIR are performed only after its members spend time with their families, perform their "day job," and fulfill church responsibilities. FairMormon is not, and should not be, the top priority in any of its members' lives. This means that the work sometimes proceeds slowly, but it does proceed forward.
Some individuals who practice LDS apologetics happen to be employed by institutions sponsored by the Church: typically Brigham Young University. Critics often use the ad hominem fallacy to claim that those who work for BYU are being paid by the Church, and so shouldn't be listened to.
Being employed at a Church school is certainly a form of bias. But those who work at a secular institution have their own sources of bias—if they argued that angels appeared to farm boys and provided gold plates, their colleagues might think less of them!
Employees at Church schools are not paid for apologetics&mash;they are paid for whatever scholarly research they do. This may or not have apologetic value.
Certainly no one at BYU is compelled to do apologetics, or worries about losing their job if they don't—if anyhthing, we wish BYU employees would do more to defend the Church than they do.
As always, the only way to know if an apologetic argument is worthwhile is to read and engage with the argument and the evidence offered.
Notes
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