Another shot at Runnels CES letter

[20/20hind]

TBM family posted this on facebook. Its honestly cringe worthy..looks like Jeremy's CES letter is just full of lies

happiness-seekers.com/2017/07/17/influential-anti-mormon-caught-spreading-lies-about-lds-church/

Sorry couldn't get the link to make it able to click on. You will have to search it

[nibbler]

Everyone wants to be the one that put the critics in their place in a definitive manner. Think of the bump in community standing.

[Red Ryder]

Link Fairy to the rescue....

http://happiness-seekers.com/2017/07/17 ... ds-church/

[oliver_denom]

Meh. Whatever helps people get through life. They believe what they need to.

[Corsair]

Meh. Whatever helps people get through life. They believe what they need to.

That's a delightfully zen attitude and I concur. This is simply what Mormons do. I have read point and counterpoint rebuttals from both camps and certainly I know where my attitudes are pointed. The "Happiness Seekers" faction has long since ceased to be compelling to me.

[didyoumythme]

Another click bait article that will be shared by countless TBMs on social media. Another article mischaracterizing all "critics" as Jeremy worshipping apostates whose sole purpose is to destroy faith for the sake of it. The issues are a lot more muddy then authors of these blogs understand and it continues to muddy the water.

[2bizE]

The most interesting part is that the CES letter has been downloaded nearly a million times. About as many as 1 in 3-4 active members of the church.

[20/20hind]

One part of the article claims that joseph was just to busy to have sex with his plural wives. Ya, starting up an illegal bank and then obsconding to Missouri to avoid criminal and civil litigation would put a damper on his sex life

[blazerb]

I feel a need to respond briefly to the claims in this article. Nothing is new here for this audience. I am mostly writing this for me, since I am not in a place where I can share these thoughts with my family and member friends. I am thinking of this post as "5 lies told by an anti-anti-Mormon."

Lie #1
In this section, the author mischaracterizes trinitarianism and the Mormon view. There is a huge difference between a book that sometimes talks as if Jesus and God the Father were separate and a book that always (maybe "almost always") talks as if they are separate. That theological gulf is just ignored here. Also, the Zoramites were not trinitarian.

Lie #2
The author acts like Joseph never could have heard of places in Canada. It's Canada. It's close by, not like the capital of the Comoros Islands.

Lie #3
The author acts like early anti-Mormons were the only ones trying to convince people that Joseph had sex with women other than Emma. This ignores the facts that Mormon leaders were trying to convince people that Joseph had sex with women other than Emma. The author also uses the phrase "in an era before birth control." There has never been an era before birth control. Maybe it was in an era before effective birth control. That's a different topic. I once did a basic calculation of the probability that Joseph having no children or few children with women other than Emma. It is not likely, but it is also far from impossible.

Lie #4
The author fails to discuss that Joseph Fielding Smith thought that the differences between the earliest account (maybe 1832, maybe later) were big enough that he had to hide it.

Lie #5
The author fails to deal with the statistical measures that have been put forward showing unusual numbers of parallels. I am not an expert in statistics, but I am a knowledgeable layperson. It seems difficult to just brush those away quantitatively. Also, the FAIR article indicates to me that the Late War is a definite candidate for source material for the BoM. I think plagiarism cases have been won on less evidence.

[document]

Confession: I have never read the CES letter.

[Not Buying It]

Well, I suppose we can completely discount the testimony of women in the Temple Lot case who said they had sex with Joseph Smith, Mr. Phelps clearly knows more about it than they did. Besides, he was too freakin' busy to get busy, he can't have had all of those women for lustful purposes. It was really just for...wait a minute, why exactly does a man in his late thirties need to have a marriage relationship with a 14 year old girl or an already married woman for any reason?

Polygamy is not what really bothers anyone. What bothers people is the possibility that Joseph introduced polygamy—not because of revelation but out of a desire to satisfy lustful feelings.

Actually, no. Clearly Mr. Phelps has never been a woman and is completely unable to empathize with someone who wouldn't want to share her husband. We should all be down with Emma having to share her husband with over thirty other women, and over thirty other women having to share a husband with him? Sex isn't the only troubling aspect of that situation, although as I pointed out above, other wives in fact testified they had sex with Joseph.

But most members who read this will go, "oh, good, I don't have to feel icky about this icky stuff, someone has a semi-plausible answer". Mischief managed.

[StarbucksMom]

This is both hilarious and awesome. Just free publicity for the CES Letter and more TBMs learning about it, reading it, and no longer sending 10% of their paychecks to LDS Inc's land aquisition/shopping mall fund.

[Not Buying It]

Besides, Mr. Phelps, if all of this really is just hunky dory, where are the General Conference references to any of these issues? If it is all so freakin' innocent, why don't we talk about them? Seems the Brethren could fairly easily clear up a few misconceptions in Conference and we could all go back to being fully believing members. So why don't they, if all of these things really are OK?

[blazerb]

Besides, Mr. Phelps, if all of this really is just hunky dory, where are the General Conference references to any of these issues? If it is all so freakin' innocent, why don't we talk about them? Seems the Brethren could fairly easily clear up a few misconceptions in Conference and we could all go back to being fully believing members. So why don't they, if all of these things really are OK?

I remember reading what a scientist said about ethics in scientific inquiry. I think it was Feynman, but it doesn't matter. This person pointed out that, in a scientific disagreement, a scientist has a responsibility to represent opponents' arguments in the best light possible before trying to convince people that those arguments are wrong. I would argue that the church does not even meet the legal ethical requirements of making sure the other side knows everything needed to make their case. This is not a faith-promoting situation.

[Korihor]

Besides, Mr. Phelps, if all of this really is just hunky dory, where are the General Conference references to any of these issues? If it is all so freakin' innocent, why don't we talk about them? Seems the Brethren could fairly easily clear up a few misconceptions in Conference and we could all go back to being fully believing members. So why don't they, if all of these things really are OK?

Stop using logic!!! It's not faith promoting!

[Corsair]

Besides, Mr. Phelps, if all of this really is just hunky dory, where are the General Conference references to any of these issues? If it is all so freakin' innocent, why don't we talk about them? Seems the Brethren could fairly easily clear up a few misconceptions in Conference and we could all go back to being fully believing members. So why don't they, if all of these things really are OK?

This painful realization is the paradoxical marketing problem that apologists also have. They all are quite confident in their answers to the toughest questions and I can respect that. But at a low level they all pretty much understand that if someone in a faith crisis reads one answer on FairMormon then they will often discover a dozen new problems. While each has an answer, the emotional weight of seeing so many problems in one place is still disconcerting. It's not hard to find stories on reddit.com/r/exmormon talking about how FairMormon led someone out of the LDS church.

One of the thin slogans of apologetic theory is that that people don't study "too much" LDS history, they study "too little" before finding faithful answers. If an apostle were to present the best answers to the challenges of polygamy in conference, it would open up that can of worms to a much larger audience and cause more problems than it solved. The writers at Happiness Seekers are playing defense for the LDS church by sharing apologetics with a narrow, concentrated audience of Mormons. Still, they cannot bring themselves to state the name "Jeremy Runnels" or provide a link to "cesletter.com". Answers to the toughest questions remain in the realm of quiet, individual study, not with official, public teaching where it would be subject to public criticism.

[Stig]

Every single attempt I've seen to address the CES Letter completely misses the point. If an apologist wants to actually be helpful relative to the letter, acknowledge the validity of the criticisms and then provide their faith-promoting way to look at it. Instead, they all seem to want to undermine the very credibility of every damn point and, in so doing, end up looking like fools.

That being said, Runnells does himself very few favors with his emotional responses and grandstanding. But, that's a debate for another day...

[Vlad the Emailer]

Besides, Mr. Phelps, if all of this really is just hunky dory, where are the General Conference references to any of these issues? If it is all so freakin' innocent, why don't we talk about them? Seems the Brethren could fairly easily clear up a few misconceptions in Conference and we could all go back to being fully believing members. So why don't they, if all of these things really are OK?

It's not hard to find stories on reddit.com/r/exmormon talking about how FairMormon led someone out of the LDS church.

Yep. FAIRMORMON is directly responsible for my disaffection, and that was long before the CES letter.

I have long been in favor of a crusade by those of us in the DAMU to make sure all the faithful receive it (FAIRMORMON). Besides the essays, that's the one way in which the dark underbelly can be revealed without concern about accusations of spreading anti-Mormonism.

[wtfluff]

Confession: I have never read the CES letter.

Confession: I haven't read through the entire letter either.

I've glanced through it, and self-righteously said to myself: "I already know all of this. Nothing to see here. Move along..."


It is pretty hilarious that they consider Jeremy "The One Mighty And Strong 'Anti-Mormon'."

[Culper Jr.]

FAIRMORMON is directly responsible for my disaffection, and that was long before the CES letter.

Yup, I remember looking up something on there and seeing a link to a discussion about JS marrying teenagers and other men's wives. Say wut???

The most interesting part is that the CES letter has been downloaded nearly a million times. About as many as 1 in 3-4 active members of the church.

Wow, yeah, that really struck me too. I don't know why anyone who is not connected in some way to the LDS church would want to read it, so that's a lot of exposure.