From Benson’s crazy commie-hatin’ days, to Paul H. Dunn’s deep diving lies, to little discrepancies in Monson’s talks, this category of posts on my blog, “Exploring Mormonism” reveals how much these men speak as men.
Hopefully the in-depth fact checking of some of the more influential leaders, conference talks, Ensign articles, and so forth will help illustrate that even the very influential statements aren’t inspired, but should be counted about as worthy as any other old man’s advice.
It’s waiting time! General Conference is upon us with all that entails! As usual, it will take a bit of time for the juiciest nuggets to hit the discussion circuit. Apparently there’s also supposed to be something newsworthy in the batch of leaked documents that we’ll be hearing about soon….
A daguerreotype has been found that may well be an image of Joseph Smith. Joseph was 38 years old when he died; I suppose the photo looks like someone about that age, if they’d had a hard life. The man in the photo doesn’t look all that charismatic or appealing…
I’ve been reading an article at Mormon Matters about More Open Mormon History, and it seems to me there is a fundamental idea at play here: if you hear about “true Mormon history,” you’ll lose all hope and faith and then apostasize. OMG! The author, Mormon Heretic, tries to deflect…
This topic warrants a book all on its own.
i’ve enjoyed reading what you have written so far. 🙂
They claim even a much higher standard: “We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look, by silence, or by telling only part of the truth. Whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest.” From http://www.lds.org/manual/gospel-principles/chapter-31-honesty
So so many examples. Forgive me if you already mentioned this and I missed it. Here’s an example of the serious and destructive behavior of Hugh Nibley and the ritualistic abuse of his daughter Martha Beck. Martha tells her story, which was widely discredited among TBMs, in her book “Leaving the Saints”. I read this book and was shocked at the abuse and then the denial. Crazy! Thanks for shedding a little light in the dark corners of the church pews.
Just Jill, just for the record, Martha Beck’s accusations seem to be based on recovered memories which are not reliable evidence. I don’t know the truth of what happened, but given the evidence it is just as reasonable to believe that Martha suffers from false memory syndrome as to believe that she was sexually abused. I’d prefer to reserve judgement until better evidence comes in.