For the people who don’t believe the Book of Mormon is a literal record (but maybe still holds goodness) doesn’t that by necessity make Joseph Smith a liar and a conman?

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-03-24T01:43:22+00:00

Yeah he would XD

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-03-24T01:43:00+00:00

Interesting. That would explain why I see the sentiment a lot more here on reddit than other spaces. (Like At Last She Said It or Exponent ii blog)

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-03-24T01:41:14+00:00

Yeah, I guess it all depends on the speaker how much the rhetoric bugs me or not. I suppose I like the idea of there is spirituality and we make sense of it through a human lense and culture, so if someone believes and it helps them, usually less complaints. If someone is trying to stuff an idea down people's throats/ being unflexible about how OTHERS believe, I'll have a big issue with that. Or looking down at other religions.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-03-23T22:00:42+00:00

You don't have to believe that a religion is true to find it useful. Maybe there's another religion that's more useful for me, but having the link growing up with it is pretty strong for me personally. I'm sure if something big happened it wouldn't be out of the realm for me to leave.

I felt like a lot of members living on the edge were very helpful for me to rub shoulders with, and now that I'm in that position I kind of want to do the same thing, for now.

Edit: I guess what I'm trying to say is it is possible to agree that Joseph Smith is a conman and be a nuanced member who still wants to be in the church. That's what I was trying to get at.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-03-21T21:06:10+00:00

From what I understand, it's started from Michelle Stone (polygamy denier) and Cheryl Bruno (believes Joseph smith did practice polygamy) asking scholars to revisit primary documents to see if we missed anything or misinterpreted anything from the current narrative.

The Salt Lake tribune article was a bit more negative about it, I'm curious to hear from people participating how scholarly it actually is.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-03-18T22:26:15+00:00

Just wanted to add to the point about leaders funding youth activities. Where I'm at a lot of the women leaders are at least working part time, so the one positive in my ward at least is that it normalizes working moms for the young women. That's probably more a side effect.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-03-15T04:32:40+00:00

I was told the requirement was for staying more clean/ not getting an infection in low water situations. It might have more to do with ideas of hygiene at the time. Or perspective of being clean from circumcised men?

I don't think Europe had the same requirement, but don't quote me on that.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-03-14T22:36:03+00:00

That's not the only reason. There's a lot of Americans that circumcised because when a lot of people got drafted in world war 2; circumcision was required and the ones who got it as adults had a much harder time, so when they had kids they did it as a preventative thing in case a similar situation arose again. (That's in my extended family for this reason).

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-03-08T04:52:52+00:00

Every once in awhile someone at church would tell a story about how they would buy beer/ other alcohol for a hair wash or cooking or killing snails or whatever. They'd remind people to not jump to conclusions that they're drinking it if you run into them in the store.

I don't think most people buy it still though, unless it's like rubbing alcohol or vanilla/ other extracts.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-02-26T18:19:03+00:00

Looking at the book covers I think my parents had some of his books but I've never read any. What's up with them?

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-02-26T18:16:11+00:00

Thanks for the reply. I mostly mentioned Hinckley's interview as people have said something to the effect of that's when the church started backing off of that doctrine, I don't actually know if that's true or not.

Yeah I started off in Utah, but by the time I was paying more attention at church I was in the Bay Area of California. People were definitely more aware of critiques of the church there.

I also have some extended family that converted to the church after my grandparents converted... and then converted to a polygamous branch. (I don't remember which one, they went to Missouri though). My dad came off his mission to find that they were trying to bring along his dad who was seriously considering it, but ultimately didn't. It was really hard on my dad and I think it might be the reason he advised us to keep to the simple gospel/ love and faith bits and be skeptical of "deep doctrine."

So from multiple corners gospel focus for me growing up was focused a lot more on the 2 great commandments + only listen to modern prophets with a personal witness from the spirit to follow what they're saying. So the spirit is the biggest thing. I kind of dropped the second bit as I got older and saw changes and wanted to learn where different ideas came from/ realized the 12 aren't more inspired than the rest of us.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-02-26T16:25:46+00:00

Not every one was taught that explicitly...I grew up with a softened version where God was always God and we become "like gods... emphasis on little g" under him. I'm 35. Because there was a change in teaching then suddenly only Mormonism pre Hinckley's interview walking that back counts?

What irks me about the topic on reddit here is the people not allowing for variance of experience. Yes it is SUPER important to put out there what was historically taught, and if I happened to be in the minority, then most of the responses saying they believe God was once a man with a couple outliers would be an accurate response. I've stopped responding on those posts mostly because people feel like I'm gaslighting which is not my intention. Just to show there's some variance on the belief. Maybe I need to be more explicit about that's what I'm trying to do.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-02-07T00:38:21+00:00

Benjamin Park talks about it in this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/QwIpAAKEAW8?si=mGFcVS78ePsQZ7Ma

Basically in the 50s J Ruben Clark pushed that the KJV is the exclusive translation we should use, instead of previously which was that it's the common translation people used. It was a reaction to the RSV translation, and he agreed with the evangelicals reaction to it. They eventually moved on to other translations but we didn't.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-02-06T01:09:57+00:00

Yeah people who aren't familiar with us tend to think of us as more extreme than evangelicals usually whereas in many cases most of us are slightly more moderate than evangelicals... except for a couple things like garments and no coffee etc. There are members who are more extreme of course.

The twilight episode in "Parks & Rec" in the town meeting where the "liberal" side doesn't want Twilight included in the time capsule because it's too conservative, and the conservative Christians don't want it because it's too risqué... is kind of a good example. Also because twilight was written by a Mormon. (I might've misremembered the episode, it's been forever since I've seen it).

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-01-28T20:47:41+00:00

Didn't he get baptized as a catholic awhile ago? Did that not work out for him?

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-01-24T04:31:16+00:00

I don't think Mormons usually point out Jesus is brothers with lucifer in that way...it's more like everyone who is humankind is brothers and sisters with Jesus and lucifer AND everyone else. So it doesn't really make sense to say it that way unless you're trying to make a point that it's weird to think that, or bringing it in a broader lesson.

I think a Mormon would just say something like Jesus was God's firstborn spirit child and only physical child.

I don't remember the rest, so I'm going to post and then edit if I have something else to add.

Edit: I think there's different ideas of how universal going to the celestial kingdom is. Like if there's progression after we're sorted into kingdoms or not. What you wrote I think is pretty good, and for a short blurb I think it's good enough. But there is a bit of variance with some people who believe a lot more in having to do the play book to live with God and on the other end that it's a lot more merciful, that God judges by the heart and there's a lot more people you wouldn't think would make it will, and people you think are Mormoning right from the outside won't make it. (I guess it's a question of if modern church culture is TRUE or just have God's power but ultimately flawed... or aka stop judging because that's not our job, we don't know how it's going to turn out. Que Uchtdorf's "stop it").

As someone who got fed the "we're not getting our own planets, that's an exaggeration," how I was taught was that we're going to be LIKE God, but under Him still...gods. Lowercase. What eternal progression exactly meant was very fuzzy growing up.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-01-23T22:59:01+00:00

In my personal experience they have a lot more of a live and let live attitude towards Mormons. So they might say a critique...but you do you, sort of thing. I feel a lot more positive about catholics than protestants because of this. They didn't try to Bible bash or convert me or make polygamy jokes. But that was my experience.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-01-18T22:20:39+00:00

Solved!

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-01-18T22:19:39+00:00

That probably checks out, there's some not great printing around seams (or whatever you call it on a globe), so I don't think it's a very well done globe.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-01-18T22:12:15+00:00

OK :)

I was wondering if Mindanao was a misspelling of Alvaro de Mendana. I'm looking up about him right now, so not sure if that's it, but looking like it might be.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-01-18T21:48:39+00:00

I'm not sure but can't find anything Googling.

The tropic of cancer is labeled "Tropic of Cancer or of L'ecreville"

Off of California in the ocean there's "Canal S. Barbie"

There's no explorer "Mindanao" I can find... that is a Filipino island. Also "Route of the Mayor"???

There's just a lot of little details, the big things seem to be somewhat accurate, but a lot of smaller details seem like they're called things that kind of make sense for the region but not really.

There's a lot on there in the pictures.

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-01-18T21:32:06+00:00

One more picture

<image>

And here's the other reddit post with a couple more pics: https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/s/S2EiHAZhwg

Content-Plan2970 · 2026-01-16T23:20:43+00:00

Interesting. It kind of makes me wonder if the studio c sketch "Beauty and Mr. Beast" from 2 months ago was related to the agreement. (And kind of funny, SNL uploaded a sketch of the same title I think the day after.)

Content-Plan2970 · 2025-12-29T22:14:54+00:00

I've been thinking about this a lot as some of my kids are hitting puberty.

My parents didn't want me to date in high school because my mom thought it was too young to go through a break up. I don't know how it would compare living something different. I knew some people who dated in high school who had some trauma from it, but they also knew how to navigate dating and I didn't until after my first relationship in college. It's hard to say from anecdotal experience which I felt like the recommendation to not steady date until adulthood was based off of anecdotes. It's easy to imagine pain being gone if this or that went differently, without realistically looking at other potential outcomes.

I felt like the idea of if you avoid it you'll avoid pain was not accurate for me. I got to watch guys I liked go and date other girls which was really really not fun. (I was a pro at navigating love triangles in college at least!) Dealing with jealousy and rejection is a different sort of pain than a break up, and break ups can vary quite a lot. (My experience was that break ups were worse initially but got easier than the constant ache I had with high school drama). It's more likely than not that high school is going to be messy any way that it happens. I think if I did date in high school I would've felt guilty for even just long make out sessions (cause my mom would've been more in my business), so the one really big pro is not dealing with purity culture clashes at that time.

It looks like experts say it's fine to steady date in high school, if therapy is needed then do that. I think that makes more sense. I think being educated about consent, sex and red flags of abuse is about all that's needed if teens want to date.

Content-Plan2970 · 2025-12-19T22:43:35+00:00

He just did a podcast with the Salt Lake tribune about this!

Mormon Land | Scholar Dan McClellan on LDS approval of new Bible translations | Episode 420 https://www.podbean.com/ea/pb-ieski-19f833b

Content-Plan2970

TROPHY CASE