FAIR

Mike Parker

FAIR conference day 1 – open thread

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This is an open thread for participants and streaming listeners to comment on FAIR conference presentations on Thursday, 7 August 2008.

Today’s speaker lineup:

  1. Mike Ash (“Shaken Faith Syndrome”)
  2. Mark Wright (“The Book of Mormon and Mesoamerica”)
  3. Margaret Young and Darius Gray (“Nobody Knows, the Untold Story of Black Mormons”)
  4. Brian Birch, Blake Ostler, and James Faulconer (“Philosophy and Mormonism”)
  5. Jeffrey Bradshaw (“The Message of the Joseph Smith Translation: A Walk in the Garden”)
  6. Larry Poulsen (“Book of Mormon Geography”)
  7. Ugo Perego (“Joseph Smith’s DNA Revealed: New Clues from the Prophet’s Genes”)

We look forward to your comments!

FAIR conference countdown

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The 2008 FAIR conference is less than two weeks away!

Today (Friday, 25 July) is the last day to pre-register and have a box lunch included with your conference ticket.

Online pre-registration ends Saturday, 2 August. After that, tickets will be available at the door, based on available seating.

We’ll be liveblogging the conference from this site, so if you’re attending and you have a laptop, please bring it. We’ll have free wireless Internet access available.

If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below, or send an email to mparker (AT) fairlds (DOT) org.

On the origins of polygamy (or, What did Joseph know, and when did he know it?)

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Recently a small controversy ignited on Wikipedia over an article presumtively entitled “1831 polygamy revelation.” The original article doesn’t exist anymore (it’s since been merged into “Origin of Latter Day Saint polygamy“), but it raises an interesting and important question: When, exactly, did Joseph Smith start teaching plural marriage?

The trouble is that there are no contemporary first- or second-hand accounts of Joseph advocating polygamy [edit: in the early 1830s]. By that I mean there are no documents written by Joseph Smith himself (first hand), or by someone who personally heard Joseph say something (second hand) and wrote it down at the time (contemporary), that advocate the restoration of polygamy.

When it comes to verifying historical events, these criteria are important. Late reminiscences (things written from memory years later) and third-hand reports (“I heard Sidney Gilbert say that Joseph told him…”) are and should be treated with extreme suspicion. Memory is pliant and frequently influenced by later impressions and feelings, and stories passed from one person to another all too often take on a character remarkably unlike the original. One clear example of this is a late remembrance of W. W. Phelps of a supposed polygamy revelation received by Joseph Smith in 1831. [Read more…] about On the origins of polygamy (or, What did Joseph know, and when did he know it?)

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All the prejudiced sources that are fit to blog

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This week New York Times blogger Timothy Egan made a sophomoric attempt to connect the modern FLDS church’s practice of polygamy to that of early Mormon leaders Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Excerpt:

[Mitt Romney’s] faith was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith Jr., an itinerant treasure-seeker from upstate New York who used a set of magic glasses to translate a lost scripture from God. His personality was infectious, the religion very approachable.

It would have been just another Christian faith had not Smith let his libido lead him into trouble. Before he died at the hands of a mob, he married at least 33 women and girls; the youngest was 14, and was told she had to become Smith’s bedmate or risk eternal damnation.

Smith was fortunate to find a religious cover for his desire. His polygamy “revelation” was put into The Doctrine and Covenants, one of three sacred texts of Mormonism. It’s still there – the word of God. And that’s why, to the people in the compound at Eldorado, [Texas,] the real heretics are in Salt Lake City.

As his biographer, Fawn Brodie, wrote, Joseph Smith “could not rest until he had redefined the nature of sin and erected a stupendous theological edifice to support his new theories on marriage.”

It is hard for me to imagine more factual errors and loaded language that could be squeezed into four short paragraphs.

[Read more…] about All the prejudiced sources that are fit to blog

Lindsay on Clark on Book of Mormon archeology

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Blogger and apologist extraordinaire Jeff Lindsay discusses John Clark’s 2005 FAIR Conference presentation, “Debating the Foundations of Mormonism: The Book of Mormon and Archaeology.”

http://mormanity.blogspot.com/2008/04/where-we-stand-archaeology-and-book-of.html

Jeff, as usual, injects some good humor into his writing:

For this post, I’m not interested in getting dozens of the standard uninformed comments about how there is “no evidence for anything in the Book of Mormon.” And yes, I already know that there are serious questions about the evidence for horses, silk, metals, and iPods in the Book of Mormon.

I don’t know about iPods, but there is conclusive evidence that there are handheld electronic devices in the celestial kingdom. (See Revelation 7:9.)

A FAIR “Ask the Apologist” case study: Evolution

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First, a little background: FAIR is an all-volunteer organization. One of the things we do is answer questions submitted through the FAIR web site. These questions are forwarded to a group of about 100 volunteers, any and all of whom are likely to reply to the questioner. We try to answer every question. Some questions generate only one response; others spur several volunteers to reply.

The questions we get run the gamut, from criticisms of LDS beliefs, to questions about Church history, to help dealing with critical family members.

Sometimes we receive comments critical of FAIR itself. Most often these are from non-Mormons. Occasionally, however, they’re from Latter-day Saints who disagree with something published by FAIR.

[Read more…] about A FAIR “Ask the Apologist” case study: Evolution

“…but of you it is required to forgive all men.”

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The San Luis, Colorado Catholic Parish council has decided not to press charges against the LDS missionaries who mocked the Catholic church and allegedly vandalized a holy shrine. According to the Salt Lake Tribune

This recommendation came after Bishop Arthur Tafoya of the Pueblo diocese issued an Easter letter on Tuesday asking Catholics to forgive.

What a moving example of the pure love of Christ, one well worthy of emulation by all people who profess Jesus as their Lord.

Dealing with the “gray areas” of belief

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Over on By Common Consent, john f. has has started an excellent discussion on managing — or failing to manage — the “grey areas” of the gospel. Excerpt:

…I suggest that members who retain their faith/belief often do so by taking a nuanced view of Church life and policy — seeing many aspects of how culture or policy apply to real life situations as falling into a gray area that their flexible faith is able to accommodate.

By contrast, I have observed ex-believers saying that members of the Church view things as black and white and that things are really gray. But in taking this approach, I have seen some ex-believers attribute black and white type of beliefs to members of the Church that very few, if any, believing members actually hold.

[Read more…] about Dealing with the “gray areas” of belief