I don't know how long this site has been around, I just ran into it after reading about it's newly evolving section on the saints. I have not read the essays since they first came out. I look forward to reading them again now along with the annotations added by this sites author/s.
LDS Discussions
jfro18 from new order Mormon is the author poking around with this new section on the Saints.
Saints - chapter 1
LDS Discussions
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_I have a question
- _Emeritus
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Re: LDS Discussions
From the Saints link
A couple of observations about the footnotes/sources that the church uses in chapter one. There are 28 footnotes, with 22 of them occurring after the volcano. Of those 22 footnotes, Lucy Mack Smith's history is cited the most with 10 separate citations. This makes some sense considering this chapter is serving as a biographical chapter, but we will see in the next few chapters how heavily Saints relies on Lucy Mack Smith's history. There are a few problems with this:
1. Lucy Mack Smith did not have any of this information written down until 1844, which is decades after the First Vision and about 15 years after the church is formed.
2. During the time between the events taking place and Lucy Mack Smith writing down her history, the narrative of these events changed greatly. Because of that, the information becomes much more questionable for it's accuracy. We cover a lot of the changes in the church's foundation story in our other pages (First Vision essay, changes to the Doctrine and Covenants, Book of Mormon translation, Polygamy, etc), but what we see with most accounts written down much later is that as the stories in the church change so do the accounts given long after the fact.
3. Lucy Mack Smith is going to present Joseph's story in the best possible light - she is his mother, after all. It accounts for why the descriptions of Joseph are so dramatic such as "He had stayed awake and alert the whole time, his face pale and dripping with sweat. His mother, who was usually so strong, had nearly fallen apart when she heard his screams. After that, she probably felt that she could bear anything."
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
Re: LDS Discussions
Thanks for posting this - I didn't know about this forum but am glad to have found it.
I am going to be posting a chapter a day going over Saints, and then will try to keep beefing up the other pages on http://www.ldsdiscussions.com as well.
If anyone sees any areas where they have sourced information to add, please let me know. For the Saints recaps, I want to keep it semi-short so that people don't lose interest, but also want to try and cover all of the areas where the church is not being honest about "The Standard of Truth" as they love to proclaim it to be.
Thanks again for posting the link - curious to see what others think of the site!
I am going to be posting a chapter a day going over Saints, and then will try to keep beefing up the other pages on http://www.ldsdiscussions.com as well.
If anyone sees any areas where they have sourced information to add, please let me know. For the Saints recaps, I want to keep it semi-short so that people don't lose interest, but also want to try and cover all of the areas where the church is not being honest about "The Standard of Truth" as they love to proclaim it to be.
Thanks again for posting the link - curious to see what others think of the site!
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_Philo Sofee
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 6660
- Joined: Wed Jul 04, 2012 9:04 am
Re: LDS Discussions
jfro18 wrote:Thanks for posting this - I didn't know about this forum but am glad to have found it.
I am going to be posting a chapter a day going over Saints, and then will try to keep beefing up the other pages on http://www.ldsdiscussions.com as well.
If anyone sees any areas where they have sourced information to add, please let me know. For the Saints recaps, I want to keep it semi-short so that people don't lose interest, but also want to try and cover all of the areas where the church is not being honest about "The Standard of Truth" as they love to proclaim it to be.
Thanks again for posting the link - curious to see what others think of the site!
We NEED a site like this, I am looking forward to seeing what you have.
Dr CamNC4Me
"Dr. Peterson and his Callithumpian cabal of BYU idiots have been marginalized by their own inevitable irrelevancy defending a fraud."
"Dr. Peterson and his Callithumpian cabal of BYU idiots have been marginalized by their own inevitable irrelevancy defending a fraud."
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_I have a question
- _Emeritus
- Posts: 9749
- Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2015 8:01 am
Re: LDS Discussions
jfro18 wrote:Thanks for posting this - I didn't know about this forum but am glad to have found it.
I am going to be posting a chapter a day going over Saints, and then will try to keep beefing up the other pages on http://www.ldsdiscussions.com as well.
If anyone sees any areas where they have sourced information to add, please let me know. For the Saints recaps, I want to keep it semi-short so that people don't lose interest, but also want to try and cover all of the areas where the church is not being honest about "The Standard of Truth" as they love to proclaim it to be.
Thanks again for posting the link - curious to see what others think of the site!
For interest, maybe have a read of
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=49893
And
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=49974
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')