The highlight of our year is here! Join us for the 2025 FAIR Conference on August 6–8 at The Barn at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah. The LAST DAY to get in-person tickets is Thursday, July 31st!  After that date only streaming tickets will be available! If you want to come in person, NOW IS THE TIME TO GET YOUR TICKETS! 🙂
🎤 Speakers include:
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by Junior Banza and Jeffrey Bradshaw at the 2024 FAIR Conference
That’s fun to do this, because if you’re an academic, if you’re a professor, you talk for a living. So, you’re glib; you don’t have to know anything about what you’re talking about, but you can sound really convincing. [Read more…] about Not By Bread Alone: Capturing the Inspirational Stories of the Saints in Africa on Film
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Scott asked me if I would share with you some of my work defending our LDS understanding of God and to that end I have prepared a bibliography. There’s two sets of materials being passed out, one is a packet. There is a copy of the bibliography in that packet and then there’s two individual sheets and you should either get the packet or the pair of two separate sheets and you’ll find the bibliography in one of them. I’ve also copied a few reprints of articles.
As time permits, I want to look at two or three of these articles but before I launch into a consideration of those, I’d like to provide just a little personal background if you will indulge me that will perhaps explain how I developed a passion for apologetics and also put apologetics in a proper perspective.
Growing up in Ephraim in Sanpete County I was acquainted, and then only casually, with four non-Mormons–two of whom subsequently converted. There must’ve been some in my community who openly challenged Mormon beliefs, but somehow I never encountered them. My first exposure to such challenges occurred after my sophomore year of college when I began my tour of active duty with the United States Army Reserve.
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by Mandy Davis at the 2024 FAIR Conference
Nine years ago, I had the opportunity to start attending meetings at the United Nations. After the very first time going, I knew that it was going to be a hinge point in my life; and that I would never be able to unsee just how calculated the efforts were to undermine and fight against God’s plan in many areas of society. I knew that I would have to get to a point in my life where it became a well-used habit to be able to view the culture and trends of the world with a gospel lens. [Read more…] about Viewing Today’s Culture Through the Lens of the Gospel
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I would like to thank the organizers of the conference for being invited to talk about two really great subjects and that is the Book of Mormon and DNA which, when you look at its structure and its design, is no less of a divine inspired molecule!
We live in a very exciting age. Now, by the time you finish watching CNN you may not think that, but there is a lot of good that is going on in the world today and actually we call- so this is sort of a public service announcement on DNA—you’ll often hear the word “genome” and genome refers to the entire complement of genes that each one of us has and for humans that’s between 30-80,000 genes and this is really going to be the basis of an economic revolution in countries that will take note. In fact Bill Gates has said that if he had the opportunity to do it over again he would be in biotechnology because with the early days of this type of research, it was pre-1995 (they call the ancient days), and now since we’ve actually looked at and deciphered the entire human genome there are many things that we think we can now do. We can use DNA as a biosensor to detect what we’re thinking; all types of diseases; cancers that now we treat after their clinical manifestations; long before there are clinical manifestations; so we really stand on a cusp and a threshold of a revolution much like the antibiotic revolution of the last century.
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by Brent Andrewsen at the 2024 FAIR Conference
How do we help our young people avoid deception, or keep them from “stumb[ling] exceedingly”? We keep the “plain and precious” parts of the gospel front and center in their lives. [Read more…] about Preserving and Protecting “Plain and Precious” Truths In Our Families
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I’d like to begin my presentation (there should have been an outline that was handed out that you have in front of you). But I want to begin a bit off outline. I was amused- I was reading this morning that we have (and Chris Buttars is a good friend of mine) and he’s wondering whether he should introduce intelligent design into Utah schools. And I was thinking intelligent design? Chris is a Mormon and he probably doesn’t even realize what he would be teaching isn’t Mormon cosmology.
And I was reading another article—as a matter of fact just last night—about how the Big Bang proved this story of Genesis and I was thinking, apparently the people who read- who know all about the Big Bang have never read Genesis. (Laughter)
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It’s an old and frequent spiritual question, and it shows up in many forms. It is the question Jesus asks the disciples who hear his troubling and offending discourse on being someone whose flesh must be eaten and whose blood drunk by those who would have eternal life. The discourse confuses many, who turn back and follow him no more, and then, to those who remain Jesus asks the question, “Will ye also go away?” To the man who seeks out Jesus to heal his deeply troubled son, the question is implied, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” To Nephi, approached by an angel after he is carried away to the top of a high mountain, the question is more direct: “Believest thou that thy father saw the tree of which he hath spoken?” And to the brother of Jared, who asks to see the premortal Jesus after hearing his voice and seeing his hand, the question is perhaps most clearly stated, “Believest thou the words which I shall speak?”
Believest thou? I am increasingly impressed by the implications of this simple question, and by how often it is at the heart of my mortal dilemmas. Do I believe God’s commandments and teachings, or do I find other explanations of reality more credible for getting what I want or keeping me safe? Do I trust him to tell me the truth, even when it includes improbable and invisible things? Do I trust him to have the love, the will, and the power to save me despite the ways I am not worthy? Do I trust him to keep his promises? Do I believe?
FAIR is having a free virtual conference this weekend entitled “Understanding and Defending the History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Friday evening, the keynote speaker will be Matthew McBride talking about Saints, Vol. 4 (which is coming out later this month). Saturday there will be other speakers talking on church history topics throughout the day. It will be streamed on the FAIR YouTube channel. More information is here.
The 2024 annual conference, FAIR and Valiant Voices: United in Faith, will be held Thursday, August 8 and Friday, August 9. The beautiful new location is the American Heritage School in Salt Lake City.
Questions? [Read more…] about Our Annual Conference Agenda Is Now Available
