Astonishing Discovery!!! Mormons admit they are NOT helpful

[_Stem]

I need to amend my mistake about generations--but I won't edit it. I'll leave it for fun. I didn't realize Gen-X was as broad as it is. I figured it was more like born between '75-'85. So I looked it up and it appears someone could have been born in 1965 and still been a Gen-Xer. And I keep calling young kids entering the work force millennials. I didn't realize that many of these 18-22 year olds aren't millennials at all.

[_I have a question]

Once South Park outed the rock in the hat their hand is as forced.

The seer stone that when I was young regularly was discussed in the Ensign and even The Children's Friend? Admittedly as a Gen-Xer I was I guess more lucky than Millennials. But still...

I’m embarrassed for you.

[_Fence Sitter]

I'm not much older than you are, but I don't remember the seer stone being discussed regularly anywhere, though I know I'd heard of it as a child. The Friend reference is far clearer than the Ensign reference, which seems more geared toward debunking the Alvin Smith story. I don't ever remember anything about the stone-in-hat method of translation. Maybe we Californians were just out of the loop.

I am barely older than you are and this got me thinking about the church I grew up in.

Here are some random beliefs I held as a Mormon youth.

Joseph Smith looked through bright white stones set in frames at the gold plates and dictated the Book of Mormon to scribes.

Treasure hunting stories as well as an affair with Fanny were lies told by anti-Mormons.

Joseph and all the church leaders after him abstained from alcohol, coffee & tea throughout their lives.

Emma and Joseph were happily married.

Stuff like the WoW and the temple ceremony were strictly the result of Joseph Smith receiving a revelation from God.

Joseph only received the revelations we have in the D&C and they were written in the book just the way he received.

Oliver Cowdery's gift was the gift of Aaron.

We were taught a lot about Haun's Mill but nothing about MMM.

Brigham Young transfigured into Joseph Smith.

The seagulls saved the Utah settlers crops.

Utah was an uninhabited dessert when the settlers arrived and they made it bloom.

Handcart treks were the only way for some to get to SLC and no one was pressured to take that method to get there, they just didn't have any other choices.

Joseph Smith and others had seer stones but no mention of them being used to translate.

There was only one Hill Cummorah.

Native Americans were all Lamanites and we could turn their skins lighter by hosting them in our homes and giving them the advantage of living with white people. The Book of Mormon was written to bring them back to Christ and that was a focus of the Church.

The Book of Abraham was an literal translation from Egyptian papyri that Joseph Smith purchased in Kirtland.

The Kinderhook plates were authentic. (Okay that one got disproved when I was really young, but still.)

Joseph Smith was fluent in several languages including Egyptian and Hebrew.

All the atrocities committed in Missouri and Nauvoo were committed by non Mormons against Mormons.

The killers of Joseph Smith and those responsible for it suffered horrible deaths.

John Taylors watch saved his life.

All Joseph Smith had to do to save his life at Carthage was to deny his beliefs and the mob would have let him go.

Polygamy was necessary because there were a lot more single women than men and it increased the number of children being born into LDS homes.

Joseph Smith could run for an hour carrying a 60 pound weight without getting tired.

The men who were searching for the gold plates to steal them were Joseph Smith enemies, not part of a treasure seeking compact with whom he had agreed to share any treasure he found.

The witnesses all saw the plates and the 3 saw the angel with the plates.

There was only one version of the first vision.

Porter Rockwell was a hero and a good guy.

Joseph Smith never tried to join another church after God told him they were all wrong.

The Book of Mormon we have today reads just the way Joseph Smith dictated it.

[_ClarkGoble]

If local leaders have control does that mean there isn't correlation?

Why answer a question with another question that doesn't address the issue?

My point was that if the essays are part of correlated materials, then no, local leaders can't pick and choose. If local leaders can decide on, as you put it, "the particularities of how [material from the essays] gets manifest," then the essays are not part of correlation.

If that's the case, it suggests the material was not for the edification of the general membership but rather to address other problems.

Well I was trying to be a bit humorous in trying to point out the problem. "Correlation" is left vague. The changes in the lesson structure gives far more leeway this year in what is taught in RS/PH as compared to before where you had a formal manual and then a conference talk (often picked by the SP) on fifth Sundays. There already was some leeway for Stake Presidents and EQ/RS/Bishops to vary somewhat. And of course teachers typically have a lot of flexibility in terms of how to interpret the lesson from the lesson manual. However this year they've really opened things up a lot more.

So the question then becomes whether this year's course of study is correlated or not. That is the issue is the linguistics of that term.

Now what I think you're really asking is how much flexibility is there. Judging by people telling me not every ward has gone through the essays there appears to be at least some flexibility on the issue. Which, if I understand the introduced changes in January, was by design. So I have no idea how many wards have formally taught the essays. I know most of the wards I've heard of have. But what percentage? No idea.

[_schreech]

The seer stone that when I was young regularly was discussed in the Ensign and even The Children's Friend? Admittedly as a Gen-Xer I was I guess more lucky than Millennials. But still...

I'm not much older than you are, but I don't remember the seer stone being discussed regularly anywhere, though I know I'd heard of it as a child. The Friend reference is far clearer than the Ensign reference, which seems more geared toward debunking the Alvin Smith story. I don't ever remember anything about the stone-in-hat method of translation. Maybe we Californians were just out of the loop.

No hat mentioned in either of those articles. So much for open and transparent, it didn't even mention the method he used the seer stone in either of the 2 examples he provided to show the "transparency" of the lds church. Even when being "transparent" they hide the key details. Do Mormons not believe lies of omission anymore? These articles just prove the points people here are making about the hiding of historical details - its like he set out to disprove his own argument.

I mean, jesus, I had already bought into the weird ass Urim and Thummim nonsense but they still felt like omitting the fact that Joe stuck his face into a hat to translate off a rock. Anyone who says the lds church has been "transparent" is trying to convince themselves more than anyone else...

[_The Soap Maker]

The seer stone that when I was young regularly was discussed in the Ensign and even The Children's Friend? Admittedly as a Gen-Xer I was I guess more lucky than Millennials. But still...

I think this is a reason why people think that the church has been deceitful about its history - In order to know about these controversial aspects of church history, you had to be lucky. Then, if you weren't one of the lucky ones that happened to see or read about things like the rock in the hat that were "regularly" published or portrayed, well, it's not the church's fault, it is the fault of the unlucky member.

Let's be real for a sec - the true church history has never been regularly taught to the average member. The information had been controlled pretty tightly by the church up until the internet came along and forced the church to start addressing the real truth of the history of the church. If these controversial aspects of church history were regularly published or taught, why did the church even need to publish the essays? It's because the church knew it couldn't contain the information like it could pre-internet and average members were demanding answers because their whole understanding of church history was being turned upside-down. The essays are just an attempt to gain back some of the control they have lost over the past 20 years.

When people claim that they knew about these issues with the church's history yet still remain faithful, it makes me wonder why the church didn't just teach what really happened all along. For me, it isn't necessarily the topics that are the problem (even though they do make the church look goofy). The problem is that your average, unlucky member, like myself, feels deceived by an organization that they trusted. The lucky ones don't feel this deceit so they wonder what the big fuss is all about.

[_candygal]

Every week in primary..sunday school..MIA..graduate of Seminary...I did not know anything about it.

When this was brought to my knowledge I was in my 40's..and immediately, I pictured a curtain..plates on one side with Joseph..and Oliver on the other side..the pictures all framed in mind included the vision of two personages...it is a dumb thing now..but to that little girl..it was real. What a betrayal because I...was not lucky. I was just stupid.

[_ClarkGoble]

No hat mentioned in either of those articles. So much for open and transparent, it didn't even mention the method he used the seer stone in either of the 2 examples he provided to show the "transparency" of the LDS church.

What's the big deal with the hat? It's just to keep out the light. I don't quite understand people harping on the hat. The main issue was the stones.

That said the hat was frequently mentioned too. i.e. Sept 77 "“Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light." Dec 12 "Orson asked if John Whitmer might act as scribe in his place. Joseph Smith agreed and “produced a small stone called a seer stone, and putting it into a Hat soon commenced speaking.”" July 93 "Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light;" etc. And that's ignoring books of course.

I don't see this really as luck, although I'll fully admit that in my view the quality of the Ensign went down in the late 90's with a focus on basics for new members. It used to be there was a good mix. Of late it's improved again but I recognize the complaints are for the era from 1996-2012 or so.

[_Fence Sitter]

No hat mentioned in either of those articles. So much for open and transparent, it didn't even mention the method he used the seer stone in either of the 2 examples he provided to show the "transparency" of the LDS church.

What's the big deal with the hat? It's just to keep out the light. The main issue was the stones.

I don't see this really as luck, although I'll fully admit that in my view the quality of the Ensign went down in the late 90's with a focus on basics for new members. It used to be there was a good mix. Of late it's improved again but I recognize the complaints are for the era from 1996-2012 or so.

If there is no big deal with the hat, why does the church continue to publish photos like this?


Instead of photos like this?


Of course it's a big deal. The church itself is obviously embarrassed by any pictures of Joseph Smith head buried in a hat. The "blocking out the light to read the stone" reasoning isn't the problem. The representations of him like this raise issues that the church does not want members to consider. Beside the fact that the face in hat are it looks ridiculous, it is the same method he used to treasure hunt without any success, it shows that the plates were not being used for translation and it raises the question of why Joseph Smith isn't using the stones he purportedly found with the gold plates which were set in a breastplate.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Clark,

I'm a GenX'er, too. The big deal is that I was BIC, served a mission, attended seminary faithfully, read a ton of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saint's book faithfully, and didn't know about the face in the hat and the seer stone until WELL AFTER I was out. When I was TBM I thought Joseph Smith propped the plates up on a table, donned a breastplate, put on god-given spectacles, and commenced with "translating" the plates via these devices and revelation.

C'mon.

- Doc