Can someone explain to me the big fuss with the Kirtland Egyption Papers?

[Chris Smith]

And he/she never really develops a more mature understanding of the problem of pain and other thorny questions of life that theism is actually quite capable of satisfying.

I'm curious what theistic answer to the problem of suffering you find "satisfying".

[Benjamin McGuire]

cinepro writes:

I will raise Michael Shermer's observation that in such cases (people with apparently irrational beliefs maintaining those beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence), the person usually formed those beliefs at a time when their critical thinking skills weren't fully developed (i.e. as a child or teenager), and then then they use their mature thinking skills to justify their earlier formed beliefs.

Just a possibility.

But I think it's an unlikely possibility. This cannot cover all of the situations (like my own, for example, when I obtained my "testimony" at around 20 years old. And of course, my views on all sorts of stuff that I held in my younger days have changed since then. Nor does it acount for adult converts who are then exposed, and so on. No, I don't think that this is the case. And I certainly don't accept the point of view that these are irrational beliefs. So ....

What is the funniest thing about this (and your later comments) is that the basis for what is rational is usually community driven (and not defined by some kind of objective rule). In a nutshell it is more about why people don't think like I do than why they do. Seeing angels might be irrational, unless of course, there really are angels, and you see them, in which case, not believing them is quite irrational.

Ben M.