Mormon church now regards The Nauvoo Expositor as a “credible resource”

[Robert F. Smith]

22 hours ago, The Nehor said:

What? Joseph Smith’s marriages were at the end of the 19th century? How? He was dead.

Yes, you can deliberately reverse the argument and play fast and loose with stats, which is your wont.

22 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Again, if it was normal back then why were Joseph Smith’s opponents back then able to make a big deal of it.

Presentism is not a magic wand that justifies anything or everything. It also means you actually have to look at the time and see how normal marriages to 14 year old girls were. Spoilers: They weren’t common. There were cultures they were more common in in that time period and in other cultures throughout history but you can’t cry “presentism” if the people in the culture Joseph Smith were in thought it was weird and they did.

This is like Confederacy supporters talking about how slavery was normal. At the time it was not. It was despised by a lot of the world. When you have hordes of people at the time saying it was wrong you can’t appeal to ancient Rome or whatever and say that it was accepted almost completely by other unconnected cultures and that somehow makes it okay.

You have to know the actual culture and not base it on vague generalizations about the past. There are a lot of popular myths about the past such as everyone wanted large families, everyone married younger, etc. That could be true in some circumstances and high infant and child mortality meant you needed to have about twice the number of children you wanted but accepted truisms about the past as a whole are almost always wrong.

One thing I have learned by studying history is that when people complain about some newfangled social or cultural thing they hate it has probably been around since the beginning of recorded history. When people talk about how things have always been they are usually talking about some temporary social construct that is probably only a century old.

All good arguments for complete relativism, if that is what you seek.  Then anything and everything is "true."  And all facts are then meaningless.

[webbles]

25 minutes ago, MrShorty said:

At present, my sexual ethic is mostly built on principles of consent, mutuality, and agency. When I think of the problems I see in the 19th century practice of polygamy, those are the problems that I see. Let's face facts -- Emma never consented to Joseph's polygamy. Sure she occasionally gave verbal approval (always under some form of duress, IMO), but it's clear that she was never fully and wholeheartedly converted to the practice. On that basis alone, Joseph should have never married other women.

The bolded isn't really a fact.  We have nothing from her on whether or not she consented.  If we accept that Joseph lied in public about polygamy, then we can't just assume that Emma was telling the truth in public.  She could have been lying as much as her husband.  And we have no private statements from her.  And even that it wouldn't help because we have contemporary private statements from Joseph (such as his journal) that have him also denouncing polygamy.

All the stories about her are told to us much later and most are conflicted.  She probably was never fully and wholeheartedly converted, but it is possible to say the same thing about Joseph.  There are stories from people like Law who said that Joseph repented of introducing polygamy and was going to weed it out.  What ever happened was messy.

[Robert F. Smith]

22 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

 Nonsense Robert. I think you are misunderstanding the notion of presentism.

When you measure Joseph Smith's behavior by appealing to Old Testament contexts - when you appeal to Shakespeare, when you engage with other cultures at other times - this is also presentism.

I appealed to a broad range of cultural facts (including state law in Joseph's day) which do not fit our later, presentist assumptions as a society.  You carefully ignore the impact of very different societal norms -- which do change over time.

22 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

There is a huge gulf between what you are doing and what an anthropologist does. Your apologetics is in fact deeply interested in passing judgement. You do not have some sort of intellectual disinterest in the subject. And I can see this all over everything you write in this thread.

On the other side of the coin, I am not being presentist because I am focusing on the practice and not the culture. Consider that we believe in a notion of "human rights" (granted you might not, but most of us do). When we have a human right, then that is a right that exists and defines moral principles that exist outside of a cultural setting.

Presentists pass absolute judgment, as you are doing, on the actions of past peoples.  Anthropologists don't.  Historians don't.  They describe people as they were, warts and all.  This is especially difficult for fundamentalists and literalists who read the Bible and are shocked by the horrors to be found in Holy Writ -- often attributed to God.  Why are you afraid take people as they are?

22 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

To go back to your comments - you use the term "infantilizing" because it invokes the idea of relationships between adults and infants. This is something that we believe is abhorrent regardless of the cultural context. We don't believe that you could produce even an imaginary context in which such a thing would be considered acceptable or even moral. We have the same beliefs about slavery today, and murder, and so on. This means that we believe that slavery is wrong in every context. This isn't passing judgement on those cultures that have engaged in slavery. This is passing judgment on the idea of slavery itself. An anthropologist has little concern with this issue - because his job isn't about discussing the morality of slavery in a particular context, but of the role that slavery played in that society and the causes and outcomes of that slavery. But your interest isn't this sort of disinterested anthropological point of view. So your suggestion of presentism is at best the pot calling the kettle black, and at worst nothing more than hypocrisy.

You are quick with accusations, but slow on the uptake on the infantilization of youth -- which entails treating teens as babies, instead of giving them responsibility.  You claim this to be "abhorrent" only because you deliberately misinterpret the concept.  It has nothing to do with your personal need to see it as sexual.  It is rather the observable fact that young people raised with real chores to do, as a real part of the community, somehow mature more quickly -- whether living in a paleolithic group or on an Israeli kibbutz.

22 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The number one factor for delaying marriage in the US is economic instability. It isn't simply a "modern, enlightened POV". I would go so far as to suggest that it is this sort of attitude that makes it difficult for politicians to have an interest in trying to address the root causes of low marriage and fertility rates. There is a reason why, in other countries who face this problem, that there is a such a different set of approaches. More free child care. More free education. Japan offers monthly cash allowances for children of the middle class and below. We get mandatory parental leave. Limits on overtime, and 4 day work-weeks. Anyway, it's a long list. Instead, we have a system that penalizes marriage for most people (especially those with children). And if you don't have a religious system that places significant value on marriage, you don't really get a lot of incentives to get married - and you have a lot of uncertainty when having children. On top of that, much of the US has housing problems, where the cost of housing has outpaced inflation even more than, say, the cost of a college education. To provide some context, if housing costs had simply kept pace with inflation since 1963, the average home today would cost only 178K, instead of the real average cost of 431K. The state of our society and its commitment to families is far different today than it was for you and I when we were young and starting our families. So anyone who simply claims that the state of marriage in our society is caused because a "modern, enlightened POV" is spewing nonsense - albeit these are the talking points of those who favor continuing to erode our social safety nets.

Those are indeed our modern problems, which you use to attack a convenient and innocent target -- rather than simply understand in the broader historical context.  That is true hypocrisy.

As to politicians, you probably need to apply a Machiavellian interpretation to their actions.  It's all about power, Ben.  It always has been.

[Robert F. Smith]

20 hours ago, Doctor Steuss said:

If the judgment is that men shouldn't marry children, I'm totally ok with being morally abominable.

Good.  Now, how do you judge people living in the past who have done things we don't approve of today?  Presentist like Ben McGuire apply current moral judgments to everyone in the past.

[Robert F. Smith]

59 minutes ago, california boy said:

So Robert, if you have no problem with adult married men marrying a girl that is only 14, then why is this never discussed in Church lesson manuals and explained away, like you have here, as no big deal?  Seems like it needs to be discussed as being no big deal???  Maybe it should be made clear that God approves of adult men marrying 14 year old girls and the practice should be encouraged today since it seems obvious to you that this is what God wanted Joseph Smith to do.  

This isn't about presentism as much as it is about what is right in the sight of God by a man claiming to speak to God on a regular basis.

Any of us can take the modern moral high ground and condemn people in the past, and we can even blame God for it all -- instead of describing how people lived in those times.  This goes back to the false notion of infallibility of prophets or anyone else.

Absolute judgments are easily made, but seldom amount to more than an evanescent value judgment.

[The Nehor]

5 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, you can deliberately reverse the argument and play fast and loose with stats, which is your wont.

That makes no sense.

5 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

All good arguments for complete relativism, if that is what you seek.  Then anything and everything is "true."  And all facts are then meaningless.

You are accusing others of practicing presentism and at the same time warning about the dangers of moral relativism? That is an interesting choice. You might want to pick a lane.

And no, moral relativism does not require that everything be true or hold that facts are meaningless. Facts aren’t morally subjective things.

Are you okay?

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Any of us can take the modern moral high ground and condemn people in the past, and we can even blame God for it all -- instead of describing how people lived in those times. 

You can actually just do all of that. You want Joseph’s marrying young teenagers to be the norm at the time. It wasn’t. Was it extraordinarily rare? No, not really. Was it illegal? No. Would some people side eye it? Yep. Pointing out that the law allowed it doesn’t mean it was culturally normal. The law allows all kinds of things that people strongly disapprove of.

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

This goes back to the false notion of infallibility of prophets or anyone else.

No, those aren’t really related.

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Absolute judgments are easily made, but seldom amount to more than an evanescent value judgment.

Can I quote you on this? I plan to use it to tell off God on Judgement Day.

[california boy]

5 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Any of us can take the modern moral high ground and condemn people in the past, and we can even blame God for it all -- instead of describing how people lived in those times.  This goes back to the false notion of infallibility of prophets or anyone else.

Absolute judgments are easily made, but seldom amount to more than an evanescent value judgment.

I am trying to find out who defines the "high ground".  Your answer brings up a lot of questions.  I would love for you to naviage presentism with the nature of God.

I thought that God held the moral high ground.  Are you saying that Joseph Smith went against the will of God to marry a 14 year old??  Or are you saying that God has no problem with adults marrying 14 year olds?  Or does God makes it ok for his prophets to engage in immoral behavior because, well, others are doing it.  Or does God look at what is practiced at times by others and decides it is ok as long as others are practicing it for that time period.  If what we think is moral behavior changes from generation to generation, then is there really an eternal rule?  If there is no eternal consistent rule about morality, then morality just becomes subjective to a certain time period.  

You see, it is not me defining what the moral high ground is.  It is me trying to find out who you think dictates what morality is in any age whether it was 200 years ago or today.  And as others have asked, do you believe slavery in 1830 was moral because so many people practiced it??  I didn't see your answer to that question.  

 

[Pyreaux]

23 hours ago, california boy said:

So Robert, if you have no problem with adult married men marrying a girl that is only 14, then why is this never discussed in Church lesson manuals and explained away, like you have here, as no big deal?  Seems like it needs to be discussed as being no big deal???  Maybe it should be made clear that God approves of adult men marrying 14 year old girls and the practice should be encouraged today since it seems obvious to you that this is what God wanted Joseph Smith to do.  

Or, if no one remembers, historians Don Bradley and others like Christopher Smith, have suggested that some early plural or dynastic "marriage" sealings (notably with younger women, such as Fanny Alger) may have actually been adoption-style sealings, later historically conflated with plural marriage. The Church historians attempting compile lists of Joseph’s "wives" sometimes treated any female sealed to him as marital. Since the only category in most minds was “marriage,” the adoption-style relationships got lumped in. Or they were sealed and evolved into wives when they got older. 

Fanny Alger sealed at 14. There’s no known firsthand statement from Fanny about Joseph Smith or being his wife. Our information comes secondhand from people like Benjamin F. Johnson and Oliver Cowdery. Johnson called her a plural wife, but that was his later interpretation, decades after the fact. Oliver Cowdery famously called the relationship a “dirty, nasty, filthy affair,” but he was also an embittered ex-member at the time, and this was also 3 years after the sealing when Fanny was 17.

Helen Mar Kimball sealed at 14, in her own later writings (especially her autobiography and letters) explicitly says her sealing was not consummated and was for dynastic/familial purposes. “I was young, and they did not think it proper to enter into marriage relations.” She married another man later, with no suggestion of impropriety or of leaving Joseph.

[webbles]

26 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

Fanny Alger sealed at 14. There’s no known firsthand statement from Fanny about Joseph Smith or being his wife. Our information comes secondhand from people like Benjamin F. Johnson and Oliver Cowdery. Johnson called her a plural wife, but that was his later interpretation, decades after the fact. Oliver Cowdery famously called the relationship a “dirty, nasty, filthy affair,” but he was also an embittered ex-member at the time, and this was also 3 years after the sealing when Fanny was 17.

This paragraph has some inaccuracies.

Fanny was born in 1817 (per her obituary in the family bible).  The earliest dating given for the relationship is 1833.  So, the she would have been at least 16, not 14.  The letter that Oliver Cowdery wrote was in January 1838 ( https://josephsmithspolygamy.org/oliver-cowdery-letter-to-warren-a-cowdery-olivers-brother-january-21-1838/ ) and Fanny would have been 21, not 17.  And Oliver Cowdery was excommunicated in April 1838, so he is not an ex-member at the time.  He also was questioned about the relationship in the summer and fall of 1837 and gave responses that made seemed like it was an adulterous affair (see minutes of his excommunication - https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minutes-12-april-1838/6 ).

The new research from Bradley and Smith show that the relationship may have started with an adoptive sealing but they still acknowledge that Joseph took it further than that.  They also put the sealing in 1836 so she would be 18/19 instead of 16.

[Pyreaux]

1 hour ago, webbles said:

This paragraph has some inaccuracies.

Fanny was born in 1817 (per her obituary in the family bible).  The earliest dating given for the relationship is 1833.  So, the she would have been at least 16, not 14.  The letter that Oliver Cowdery wrote was in January 1838 ( https://josephsmithspolygamy.org/oliver-cowdery-letter-to-warren-a-cowdery-olivers-brother-january-21-1838/ ) and Fanny would have been 21, not 17.  And Oliver Cowdery was excommunicated in April 1838, so he is not an ex-member at the time.  He also was questioned about the relationship in the summer and fall of 1837 and gave responses that made seemed like it was an adulterous affair (see minutes of his excommunication - https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/minutes-12-april-1838/6 ).

The new research from Bradley and Smith show that the relationship may have started with an adoptive sealing but they still acknowledge that Joseph took it further than that.  They also put the sealing in 1836 so she would be 18/19 instead of 16.

Thank you, though my point was there is no need to for the Church to normalize or apologize that Joseph had 14-year-old "wives", that is just a much later interpretation of the sealing records, journal entries, and rumors, without always clear evidence that these relationships were 'marital' in the 'intimate' sense, at least not at the time they were 14.

Edited August 10, 2025 by Pyreaux

[Benjamin McGuire]

On 8/8/2025 at 6:45 PM, MrShorty said:

I recognize that nothing I can say or do in the 21st century can change what was happening in these cultures 500 years ago, but I cannot simply say that human sacrifice was "good" because their culture said it was good. I feel like I can say the same kinds of things about historical practices of slavery and genocide and racial segregation.

This is why presentism is a challenge. In fact, to avoid presentism you avoid discussing both what is "bad" and what is "good" in the other context. An anthropologist avoids making all judgments of this sort in their work. Robert F. Smith, as I recall (and perhaps incorrectly) is himself opposed to the idea that the study of religions needs to be done outside of a position of belief. The academy often implicitly believes that a religious believer cannot avoid a presentist perspective in their approach to the study of belief. This split on the idea is the reason why, when someone raises the specter of presentism in a discussion, they are almost always engaging in it themselves. Why? Because they are trying to pass judgment in one way or another. Most discussions don't occur within that anthropological framework, disinterested in truth or morality. And the reason why this is important is that we are generally going to be discussing the past (or discussing other cultures) in a context that doesn't require this sort of strict neutralism. This is especially true in a religious context. We aren't having a history of religions discussion about Mormonism here. We aren't engaging in an anthropological approach to religion. So there isn't this need for some sort of strict presentism. And this is why I was pointing out that in the context of a discussion like this, the only real effect of arguing that your opponent is engaging in presentism is in fact to make an argument for a moral relativism. And while there are and can be a range of views on the place and importance of moral relativism, most of the time, my experience has been that those who are arguing that presentism is going on are in fact at least moderately opposed to the idea of moral relativism. The claim of presentism is a way to try and shut down the argument rather than a way of furthering the discussion.

[Benjamin McGuire]

On 8/9/2025 at 11:24 AM, teddyaware said:

The bottom line is I think it’s more than likely that so many members of the church coil in revulsion at the very thought that many early leaders of the restoration had plural wives is because their own fallen natures and carnality won’t allow them to see through the fog of cognitive dissonance so as to be able grasp the possibility that plural marriage can be practiced in righteousness by those who are spiritually mature and sanctified by the Spirit.

And now we get a claim of cognitive dissonance from someone who has no idea what the term means.

[Benjamin McGuire]

On 8/9/2025 at 1:01 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

I appealed to a broad range of cultural facts (including state law in Joseph's day) which do not fit our later, presentist assumptions as a society.  You carefully ignore the impact of very different societal norms -- which do change over time.

No, you didn't appeal to a broad range of cultural facts. Cultural facts are not created by state law. Cultural facts are created by reality. For example, regardless of what the state law says, the average age of first marriage for a woman in 1840 would have been somewhere between 20 and 21. Marriage of 14 year olds was not at all common in that time period. I think that you are fabricating societal norms. Romeo and Juliette? We do have Romeo and Juliette laws which generally prevent prosecution when children who are similar in age engage in consensual intimacy. But that's a different issue.

I will spell out the problem I have with you specifically though (well the narrow one involved in this discussion). Your argument is that we are "infantilizing" young people - giving them an unnecessary adolescence. You are arguing that if it wasn't for our modernist preference for delaying marriage, that we would (and perhaps should) still be marrying off children to older men. These views are wrong. The evidence for the value of adolescence isn't simply anecdotal. It isn't based on modernist trends. It is based on our growing understanding of human development (both biological and neurological). Our societal desire to restrict the age of marriage is coupled with a recognition that we need to protect children's autonomy, and that we need to limit child abuse, and that we need to have some protections for their health. These are not factors that have somehow mysteriously changed over time. Individuals do not finish their neurological or biological development any faster in the past than they do in the present. You want to ignore all of this.

On 8/9/2025 at 1:01 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Presentists pass absolute judgment, as you are doing, on the actions of past peoples.  Anthropologists don't.  Historians don't.  They describe people as they were, warts and all.  This is especially difficult for fundamentalists and literalists who read the Bible and are shocked by the horrors to be found in Holy Writ -- often attributed to God.  Why are you afraid take people as they are?

You are ignoring everything I am saying aren't you. Probably because it doesn't really fit with what you are saying. I am not passing judgment on anyone. I am passing judgment on practices. It is immoral to have 14 year old girls get married. It doesn't matter what the context is. I can say this because I believe in the notion of human rights - that there are things which people morally should have - regardless of the context. This is different from saying that those in the past were immoral for violating human rights. You may not be able to recognize the distinction, but it is there. If you cannot recognize the distinction, then, as I suggested above, you are entirely in a world of moral relativism - where moralism is based on the whims of society and there is no underlying moral framework to start from.

I don't think that there is anyone here who would ever believe that I am a fundamentalist. 

Do you think that it is moral for children to be place into arranged marriages with old men? That is a question that I would like you to answer. It doesn't have to be a historically consistent answer. You might think that it is immoral now, and not immoral in the past. How your belief is parsed isn't so important as to have you produce it.

On 8/9/2025 at 1:01 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

You are quick with accusations, but slow on the uptake on the infantilization of youth -- which entails treating teens as babies, instead of giving them responsibility.  You claim this to be "abhorrent" only because you deliberately misinterpret the concept.  It has nothing to do with your personal need to see it as sexual.  It is rather the observable fact that young people raised with real chores to do, as a real part of the community, somehow mature more quickly -- whether living in a paleolithic group or on an Israeli kibbutz.

See, this is simply wrong. We aren't treating teens as babies. We don't make them wear diapers. We don't feed them in high chairs (because they can't do it themselves). Your hyperbole is part of the problem here. I am not misunderstanding the concept. I am disagreeing with it (as do most people and professionals today). The idea that we are infantilizing children by giving them an adolescence is a fringe belief - not a normative belief. And the reality is that most children I am aware of have real chores to do - most get jobs. The thing is, though, we tend to put limits on the types of chores (and jobs) that adolescents are allowed to have. One of the things that we do not believe that young teenagers are ready to do is to be married and raising children. There is a certain sense of irony in your comments when you talk about the idea of it being sexual - and then use as examples Romeo and Juliette, or King Josiah (who had a child at the age of 13). This is the idea that sex is included here. And you are the one bringing it in to the picture. Sex isn't abhorrent. But coerced sex between a 14 year old girl getting married to a much older man through a marriage arranged by her parents - that is abhorrent. And part of our abhorrence is the violation of the human rights that most of us accept. Perhaps you don't value those human rights. Perhaps in your perspective, this is all about modernism (and post-modernism) corrupting those pre-modern values that we should return to. I am not interested in going there.

On 8/9/2025 at 1:01 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Those are indeed our modern problems, which you use to attack a convenient and innocent target -- rather than simply understand in the broader historical context.  That is true hypocrisy.

And yet you are failing to respond to the issues. Let's keep at it. I asked a specific question, perhaps you would be kind enough to answer it.

[teddyaware]

33 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

And now we get a claim of cognitive dissonance from someone who has no idea what the term means.

How is believing the restored church is true while simultaneously believing that Brigham Young, John Taylor, Lorenzo Snow, and Willford Woodruff were all adulterous apostates not an example of cognitive dissonance? Perhaps you could suggest better terminology to describe this baffling phenomenon?

[Benjamin McGuire]

34 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

How is believing the restored church is true while simultaneously believing that Brigham Young, John Taylor, Lorenzo Snow, and Willford Woodruff were all adulterous apostates not an example of cognitive dissonance? Perhaps you could suggest better terminology to describe this baffling phenomenon?

That you can ask this question means you don't understand what cognitive dissonance is.

Beliefs exist in frameworks. That is, we believe all sorts of things. We believe that we know all sorts of things. These things are all in various states of agreement and disagreement, and we place all sorts of different values on them. Some beliefs are far more important for our behaviors than others. And sometimes, we have behaviors that dominate beliefs. When we have beliefs that are contradictory - and have equal weight - they create this thing we call cognitive dissonance, which is a psychological discomfort. Usually this discomfort is very brief - because our minds don't like it. We change something to reduce this conflict. So we sometimes experience cognitive dissonance, but we unconsciously (and consciously) take steps to eliminate it - much like we get rid of that feeling of hunger by eating something.

So to go back to your example - you present two explicit beliefs, and a third implicit belief. The two explicit beliefs are 1) that the restored church is true, and 2) that Brigham Young, John Taylor, Lorenzo Snow, and Willford Woodruff were all adulterous apostates. The implicit belief 3) is that the restored church cannot be true of these four individuals are adulterous apostates. Since these are all beliefs, the ways to relieve that discomfort (that cognitive dissonance) are really fairly simple. We change one of the beliefs, or we add a belief that changes the relationship between these three. And once we do this, the equality is gone, and we stop having the cognitive dissonance.

What this means is that cognitive dissonance is something that causes change. We don't usually speak of having cognitive dissonance - we speak of having changed because of past cognitive dissonance that was resolved by the change we made. You can read all of this in more technical terms in the link above.

Before I explore this in application to your example, I want to point out one of the classic examples because it involves more than belief. A person addicted to cigarettes may also know that smoking causes cancer and may lead to death. Since an addiction isn't easy to change by belief, most smokers who do not change their behavior end up finding ways to reduce the conflict between the two. Changing behavior can partially help - after all, vaping is less risky than smoking. But, they may also decide that cancer is just a risk. Not everyone who smokes gets cancer, like my uncle who smoked a pack a day for 40 years and didn't get cancer. That sort of thing. In your example, there are lots of ways to resolve the cognitive dissonance - lots of ways to change. One would be to change any of the three fundamental beliefs. We could decide that the restored gospel is not true (leave the church). We could decide that polygamy is just a complicated historical problem and that most of it isn't true - that polygamy was a sealing thing and not a real marriage sort of thing (it's not particularly convincing to me, but, denial is an easy out for cognitive dissonance). We could decide that belief three is wrong - that people have their weaknesses, and that the truth of the restored gospel is not predicated on the non-apostasy of these four men. Each of these changes would shift the relationship so that cognitive dissonance goes away.

But, it is easier in some ways (if those three beliefs are really strong), to shift the balance by adding something. For example, we could add the belief that the restored church is true and continued with Joseph Smith III and not Brigham Young. This would confirm all three of these beliefs - allow them to remain equal in strength, and make you a member of the RLDS church. The addition of that belief resolves the cognitive dissonance. Adding the belief that polygamy was commanded by God would reduce the strength (or eliminate it) that these four men were both adulterous and apostate. Cognitive dissonance is resolved, and no change is necessary in behavior. This could get really complicated - what if we decided that the LDS Church grew out of a restorationist context and eventually abandoned its restorationist roots - but that polygamy, as a part of that restoration, was a misunderstood component of the restoration that wasn't abandoned with Brigham Young, but embraced because of its connections to the early temple rights and the more critical sealings of adoption necessary to structure the hereafter. The four men are then neither apostate nor adulterous but misguided, the restored church becomes a bit of a misnomer because the restoration was really a new revelation, and so on. Each extra belief we toss into the pile changes the relationship between the original beliefs, altering or reducing cognitive dissonance until a comfort level is reached and cognitive dissonance is gone.

The point of all of this? People generally don't consistently stay in a place where there are opposing beliefs that cause cognitive dissonance. The idea of having opposing ideas isn't itself cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance describes the psychological pressure created by having opposing beliefs - but we are constantly working to reduce that pressure by changing - either what we are doing, or what we belief. If you think that there are people who belief both of the beliefs that you put forward, and they seem to be comfortable with it, then there are going to be other beliefs that are part of their framework that prevent these two beliefs from having the conflict that you envision them creating. In the same way, I wouldn't suggest to you that you must have cognitive dissonance because you believe that 1) the Book of Mormon is scripture, that 2) the Book of Mormon condemns polygamy, and 3) that Joseph Smith and other early Mormon leaders practiced polygamy in spite of the Book of Mormon's condemnation of polygamy. Clearly, you do not have cognitive dissonance about this - and I would guess it is because you have additional beliefs that we could enumerate that would change the relationship between these three beliefs. 

Cognitive dissonance is useful for explaining changes in behavior. It works very well to explain why some of the followers of Harold Camping doubled down after the first couple of missed predictions. It does very little to help us understand what is going on in a discussion like this - because when we attempt to limit or emphasize differences without understanding the complete process in an individual, it stops being a useful term or a useful process. We all go through this process (yourself included) even if we don't recognize it. But it's use in forums like this always a misapplication - and the term is generally meant as some form of a pejorative.

[bluebell]

On 8/8/2025 at 4:45 PM, MrShorty said:

Presentism is a tough nut to crack.

The other day, I listened to a podcast talking about changing attitudes in the church and the broader culture towards tattoos. In my youth in Utah, tattoos were very much "sinful" since they tended to represent rebelliousness. Today, tattoos are much more acceptable in the broader culture and carry multiple meanings. Of course, there are other cultures and times (thinking of the Pacific islands here) where tattoos were considered good. Was it wrong to villify tattoos in the past? Is the current laissez-faire attitude towards tattoos closer to how God views tattoos? However I and the culture of my current time and place might feel about tattoos, I sense that tattoos are not that morally significant, so maybe it doesn't matter that different cultures in different times and places have different opinions about tattoos.

How far does that go, though? Ancient meso-American clutures (the Aztecs, Mayans, and others) believed in human sacrifice. Perhaps I am just committing the sin of presentism, but my sense of right and wrong says that human sacrifice is wrong no matter the time and place. I recognize that nothing I can say or do in the 21st century can change what was happening in these cultures 500 years ago, but I cannot simply say that human sacrifice was "good" because their culture said it was good. I feel like I can say the same kinds of things about historical practices of slavery and genocide and racial segregation.

The problem with the church and Biblical history is that my church traditions tell me that I should accept the Bible and our prophets and apostles as moral authorities in my life. That they are important in helping me determine what is right and wrong. But these traditions don't tell me what to do when these moral authorities have their own questionable morals. Why should I accept the Bible as a moral authority when the Bible's morality includes genocide? Why should I accept 19th and 20th century LDS leaders as moral authorities when their morality included racism and segregation? If there are moral issues that have an absolute answer that is independent of time and place and culture, how will these sources help me recognize moral absolutes and distinguish them from issues that aren't morally absolute? So often, it seems that we get so worried about somehow "condemning" historical figures that we don't address the more important implications for our own efforts to discern right and wrong today?

I think it helps a little to think of history and moral judgments less about what is true (whether or not something is actually good or bad) and more about whether or not they should have known something was good or bad in the context that they lived, were educated, experienced life, etc.  Sometimes they probably should have.  Others, that's asking something that isn't fair.

I also think the general idea about scriptures is that they are useful as a moral authority, not because they present perfect morals, but because they help us develop a relationship with God and He is where our morals should come from.  From my perspective they also help us to see that we don't have to be perfectly moral all the time to be useful to God or to others.  It's a merciful doctrine that the scriptures help illustrate because we can see ourselves and our dysfunctional families in them, and also see how God can take such dysfunction and weakness and use it anyway.

Edited August 11, 2025 by bluebell

[Pyreaux]

7 hours ago, teddyaware said:

How is believing the restored church is true while simultaneously believing that Brigham Young, John Taylor, Lorenzo Snow, and Willford Woodruff were all adulterous apostates not an example of cognitive dissonance? Perhaps you could suggest better terminology to describe this baffling phenomenon?

Yeah, I know we see "Cognitive Dissonance" thrown around online. You've surely seen the Ex-LDS use it to label the condition they might have had before leaving, so they think in order to remain LDS in the face of Anti-LDS materials, unlike they did, millions of people must all exist in a constant state of mental discomfort from the conflict, because they think the beliefs can't be reconciled. That isn't reality, because that isn't a natural state to constantly be in. The reality is people do reconcile their beliefs, because despite they being unable to reconcile it, people just don't all think like them.

The strange phenomenon can simply be: Disagreement. They have a framework that makes the historical issues fit their worldview, whether you agree with it or not. In your case, any LDS may reconcile it by: redefining what "true church" means to them (e.g., "God’s truth was restored but leadership can sin or personally apostatize for a time"). That’s an interpretation, not an unresolved mental conflict.

A better description might be:

(Theological) Compartmentalization – mentally separating historical claims from doctrinal claims so they don’t clash.

Narrative Dissonance – believing in a spiritual narrative while rejecting parts of its historical continuity.

Prophetic Exceptionalism (in the Critical Sense) – believing a prophet can restore the truth but still be deeply immoral in his personal life.

Selective Legitimism – choosing which leaders/eras count as “legitimate” based on one’s own standards, while still claiming continuity of authority.

Edited August 11, 2025 by Pyreaux

[let’s roll]

I admit this thread is a bit frustrating.  When someone shares their frustration regarding what things they believe have been omitted from Church curriculum, my response has always been to remind them what was included in that curriculum: the teaching that we are sons and daughters of Deity and the teaching that Deity has promised to share their perfect wisdom and perfect rest with us and inquire how those teachings were received and acted upon.  

Why pose your questions to mortals if God has promised to answer them?  And if the response is some variation of the lament of Laman and Lemuel, then isn’t the best advice an invitation to examine why that is so and focus efforts on making the necessary changes that will enable two way dialogue with the Divine.

Debate can be had about the efficacy of reviewing and interpreting historical records, but if the purpose is to use those interpretations to evaluate the bona fides of past or current prophets isn’t that better raised with Deity?

[Calm]

39 minutes ago, let’s roll said:

Debate can be had about the efficacy of reviewing and interpreting historical records, but if the purpose is to use those interpretations to evaluate the bona fides of past or current prophets isn’t that better raised with Deity?

I do agree with this.  Though I also understand why others see it more useful to decide what a prophet actually is and then compare to that standard. Of course, then the argument becomes how does one determine the standard and why.

For you, is there any point in discussing what one believes one accomplished by asking Deity about if a particular person or group are Deity’s prophets?  Such as these potential answers along with any nuances:  certain people were prophets who were misguided in somethings or they were fallen prophets (once were, but removed. From authority due to sin), God never called them as prophets, God has not given an answer yet, or there is no God to give an answer (there are others along the spectrum of belief, but hopefully these are enough to understand what I am thinking of.

Edited August 11, 2025 by Calm

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, let’s roll said:

I admit this thread is a bit frustrating.  When someone shares their frustration regarding what things they believe have been omitted from Church curriculum, my response has always been to remind them what was included in that curriculum: the teaching that we are sons and daughters of Deity and the teaching that Deity has promised to share their perfect wisdom and perfect rest with us and inquire how those teachings were received and acted upon.  

Why pose your questions to mortals if God has promised to answer them?  And if the response is some variation of the lament of Laman and Lemuel, then isn’t the best advice an invitation to examine why that is so and focus efforts on making the necessary changes that will enable two way dialogue with the Divine.

Debate can be had about the efficacy of reviewing and interpreting historical records, but if the purpose is to use those interpretations to evaluate the bona fides of past or current prophets isn’t that better raised with Deity?

Tried it in many cases. Didn’t work.

[MrShorty]

On 8/9/2025 at 10:28 AM, webbles said:

She probably was never fully and wholeheartedly converted, but it is possible to say the same thing about Joseph.

Exactly. That lack of full, wholehearted conversion suggests to me a lack of full and complete consent. That Joseph, himself, may have been uncertain about the rightness of the practice is also problematic, IMO. We claim that God values agency very highly, sometimes above all else. It's quite a tangent from the OP, but how does God value doing something that runs counter to your sense of right and wrong -- even if you believe that He commanded it? How do angels with flaming swords and threats of eternal destruction figure into God's idea of how we consent to the choices we make? Because we tend to use historical precedent to judge the morality of our own choices, what are the implications for the things we declare right and wrong today?

[The Nehor]

38 minutes ago, MrShorty said:

Exactly. That lack of full, wholehearted conversion suggests to me a lack of full and complete consent. That Joseph, himself, may have been uncertain about the rightness of the practice is also problematic, IMO. We claim that God values agency very highly, sometimes above all else. It's quite a tangent from the OP, but how does God value doing something that runs counter to your sense of right and wrong -- even if you believe that He commanded it? How do angels with flaming swords and threats of eternal destruction figure into God's idea of how we consent to the choices we make? Because we tend to use historical precedent to judge the morality of our own choices, what are the implications for the things we declare right and wrong today?

The more I study history the harder it is to believe that God designed this world to give a ton of agency to humanity. The culture Joseph Smith lived in would have seemed absurdly individualistic to the early Christians in the Roman Empire. If they saw our culture they would suspect we are all insane and have no respect for community and family at all. And even there Roman society was very individualistic by the standards of the ancient world. Most cultures between the agricultural revolution and the industrial one lived in incredibly intricate webs of obligations, responsibilities, and expectations. Your place in life was for the most part set at birth. Your occupation, your social status, who you defer to, who defers to you, and all kinds of obligations and social contracts with lords, neighbors, family members, etc. Sometimes it is called a patriarchy but some misunderstand this as rule by men when it means rule by fathers. Silly men who want to go back to the "good old days" when women were subservient don't realize that that subservience applied to most men as well. They imagine the individual freedoms they have now and women who obey them. No, it meant you did what you were supposed to do, marry the woman you are told to marry, and live the life you are supposed to live.

The idea that people choose their religion was absurd in virtually all of these cultures. The Roman Empire was a rare exception to an extent. Christianity needed the Empire to spread. Choosing your religion was something of a novelty in the days of Joseph Smith. Before then it was mostly only leaders and rulers who could make major religious choices and often they couldn't either or they did and regretted it pretty quickly. One historian I read remarked that in medieval Europe a noble or wealthy peasant choosing to take holy orders and becoming a monk or nun was probably the first, last, and only major life decision they would ever make.

Also it is hard to pull this love of agency out of the Old Testament. The Mosaic Law is clear that if your family member chooses to worship anything other than Yahweh it was time to break out the stones and show no pity. The Book of Mormon tries to get around this by quoting Joshua saying to choose whom you will serve but meh, that was more hyperbole and was probably directed more at Israel's leadership and not telling Joe-Bob the Israelite peasant that he has a decision to make.

If God only starts caring deeply about agency when it is more freely available is it just a moral fad? Does stoning heretics become moral again?

[Calm]

4 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

The more I study history the harder it is to believe that God designed this world to give a ton of agency to humanity

I never thought we had much agency once I studied basic psychology and childhood development.  So much of our behaviour, including (especially relevant to agency) our motivation, is formed in early childhood prior to the time when we are aware of such influences, let alone when we can actively choose to accept or reject such influences.  And even as adults, there are plenty of influences we are not consciously aware of and so cannot control.

I believe this world was designed to provide experiences that lead in the future to greater agency, just as kindergarten and elementary school don’t have much opportunity to learn any ultimate or even advanced knowledge, but can help lay the foundation for being able to learn more advanced knowledge later.  If one never learns to read, it will be harder and impossible in some cases to study and research advanced knowledge.

Quote

If God only starts caring deeply about agency when it is more freely available is it just a moral fad?

Even though it may appear to many we have more agency because we have more choices available to us, if our behaviour is as determined by outside influences as much now as in the past and given the impact of biological (genetics and the prenatal environment as well as the present physical environment around us…for example, the heat of summer has massive control over my behaviour 2-3 months out of the year) and childhood social influences on behaviour, my opinion is there isn’t much more agency in our lives than for previous centuries and millenniums.

But I see this life as more playacting in preschool than actual human adulthood as well, so the lack of agency at this time is not an issue.  I believe we are given the (mostly) illusion of agency here to prime our desire of it to help us be motivated to do the work that is coming according to Joseph Smith.  I believe the full endowment that Joseph taught will be comprehended only much, much later in our next stage of existence (see my signature) is the gateway to adulthood, some of us are given a shadow of it to create a sense of purpose and drive just as children look at the adults around and want to be someone cool or heroic or good when they grow up, which along with many other factors starts creating brain space for the needed knowledge and thought processes adulthood requires.  Others are given other shadows of things to come to develop abilities to accept the blessings/opportunities God has prepared for us as we grow into eternal human adulthood.

[bluebell]

41 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

The more I study history the harder it is to believe that God designed this world to give a ton of agency to humanity. The culture Joseph Smith lived in would have seemed absurdly individualistic to the early Christians in the Roman Empire. If they saw our culture they would suspect we are all insane and have no respect for community and family at all. And even there Roman society was very individualistic by the standards of the ancient world. Most cultures between the agricultural revolution and the industrial one lived in incredibly intricate webs of obligations, responsibilities, and expectations. Your place in life was for the most part set at birth. Your occupation, your social status, who you defer to, who defers to you, and all kinds of obligations and social contracts with lords, neighbors, family members, etc. Sometimes it is called a patriarchy but some misunderstand this as rule by men when it means rule by fathers. Silly men who want to go back to the "good old days" when women were subservient don't realize that that subservience applied to most men as well. They imagine the individual freedoms they have now and women who obey them. No, it meant you did what you were supposed to do, marry the woman you are told to marry, and live the life you are supposed to live.

The idea that people choose their religion was absurd in virtually all of these cultures. The Roman Empire was a rare exception to an extent. Christianity needed the Empire to spread. Choosing your religion was something of a novelty in the days of Joseph Smith. Before then it was mostly only leaders and rulers who could make major religious choices and often they couldn't either or they did and regretted it pretty quickly. One historian I read remarked that in medieval Europe a noble or wealthy peasant choosing to take holy orders and becoming a monk or nun was probably the first, last, and only major life decision they would ever make.

Also it is hard to pull this love of agency out of the Old Testament. The Mosaic Law is clear that if your family member chooses to worship anything other than Yahweh it was time to break out the stones and show no pity. The Book of Mormon tries to get around this by quoting Joshua saying to choose whom you will serve but meh, that was more hyperbole and was probably directed more at Israel's leadership and not telling Joe-Bob the Israelite peasant that he has a decision to make.

If God only starts caring deeply about agency when it is more freely available is it just a moral fad? Does stoning heretics become moral again?

I’m not sure if I’m understanding you correctly. Are you saying that since we are all held to different moral standards in the use of our agency than that is evidence that God doesn’t care that much about agency?