Rivers

Haven’t we changed some ordinances too?

I can explain it for you. Let’s say you are speeding down the highway and an ice cream truck pulls you over…

Can’t Catholic clergy also trace their authority all the way back to Christ?

Two questions: How do we know that the Catholics no longer have the proper priesthood authority originally bestowed on the apostles? How do we know we still have it?

The priesthood ban is best explained, in my opinion, as a mistake of men that God allowed to exist. It is not based in scripture. Plural marriage is.

A recent convert in my ward told me that the Church’s ability to foster a good community is what drew him to the Church.

How do you reconcile this with Jacob 2?

Now we have a present that that is going senile. Yes. Things are really silly now.

Both statements are correct. Nobody is talking about abolishing interracial marriage. And nobody is going to try passing any law doing so. There are maybe two or three people in the entire country that are against interracial marriage. It’s ridiculous that we are even talking about this.

No state will abolish interracial marriage. That’s just plain silly.

I understand that. That’s why many supported the civil union compromise. It gave gay couples the benefits associated with marriage without calling it marriage. Is marriage itself a right? Or is marriage a specific thing with a specific definition? That was the argument.

Polygamy maybe. Priesthood ban no.

The whole argument over marriage was definitional. It was a question of how we define marriage.

The church is admitting defeat on the battle over marriage. Your side won. Congratulations.

Literally nobody is talking about abolishing interracial marriage.

I really like this guy. He’s very articulate. I want to here more talks from him. I’m really tempted to say, “Take that progmo’s!” But that would be contrary to what he taught.

I remember first hearing about the horse problem in God’s Army. In fact, that was probably the first time I had heard a critical argument against the church.

Honest question. Of all the Book of Mormon anachronisms, why is there so much disproportionate attention given to horses?

Their witness testimony collaborates Joseph Smith’s claim concerning the origin of the Book of Mormon.

True. But on a sociological level, the lack of tattoos is something that helps make us distinguished as a a people.

It was a little jarring to hear a joke so soon after a tragic story.

I’ve always thought that the very thought of Same-sex sealings was too outlandish to take seriously. But just maybe, open theism opens the door for such a thing.

I’m willing to have some epistemological humility and say there’s a lot of things that can’t be ascertained using historical tools. Foundational religious beliefs like the divinity of Christ require faith. But if even if I lost that faith, I would still acknowledge that the Judeo-Christian religious tradition has been a force of good in the world. I wouldn’t ever become an angry ex-Mormon because I know that the tradition I was raised in had a positive influence on me. So while historical inquiry on religious topics is really interesting, I separate that from my lived experience in the church.

It would be a little problematic because the gold plates represent a tangible object connecting heaven and earth as Richard Bushman puts it. Saying the plates are are in the imagination of the witnesses is like saying the resurrection of Christ was in the imagination of the apostles. And the term “true imagination” sounds like an oxymoron.

Thanks. He announced this project several years ago. I’ve been looking forward ever since. It should be an interesting book.