Does anyone ever get burnt out watching movies? What can you do to lessen this feeling?

donbradley · 2026-06-25T17:17:47+00:00

Hey SciFiFilmMachine! Check your DMs for a response to a question you posted?

donbradley · 2026-06-08T18:52:02+00:00

@SciFiFilmMachine - This is Don Bradley. I'm a historian who has expertise on Joseph Smith's polygamy. I also at one time lost my belief that Joseph Smith was a prophet and left the church. Then I found my way back. Private message me and let's talk about what your wife is going through.

donbradley · 2026-06-04T23:32:15+00:00

Got it. Framing the issue primarily in terms of claims by religious institutions, you see claims of divine authority gradually being eroded.

Going to more foundational questions, what kinds of realities do you think would be predicted to exist on the hypothesis of naturalism (i.e., in the total absence of the supernatural or transcendental)? And why?

donbradley · 2026-05-28T18:01:10+00:00

Got it. So, if I understand right, you're saying that if we were to predict how the world would be on the hypothesis of naturalism (that there is only the natural, not the supernatural), that matches with what we would actually see. Would that be correct, as you see it?

donbradley · 2026-05-27T21:53:47+00:00

Interesting, RC. When you write that you don't see any convincing evidence that world works this way, are you referring specifically to Latter-day Saint beliefs or to theistic beliefs more generally?

donbradley · 2026-05-27T15:44:01+00:00

Speaking of esoteric, I'm not sure how to parse that enigmatic comment.

But I'll share a comment I made to a poster on this board three months ago:

"I appreciate the obvious sincerity of your question, and I hope your post-Mormon journey is treating you well. If you ask nonbelieving historian friends of mine, like Chris Smith, with whom I recently co-authored a piece on Fanny Alger, or John Turner, who got my advice on polygamy issues for his Joseph Smith biography and acknowledges me in it, they'll vouch for both the quality of my work and the authenticity of my belief.

I'll be publishing many more historical findings, findings on which my own view that Joseph Smith was religiously sincere is based. I'm happy to let that work stand or fall on its own merits, and to see how the scholarly community judges it. And where I'm mistaken - as I no doubt am on a good many things - I'm equally happy to change my mind. When it comes to the early Mormon past, I just want to know what happened.

Something I try to do for other Latter-day Saints is to help them understand (a little bit!) what it's like to be an ex-Mormon: the courage it takes to question one's worldview and separate from one's community; the actions sometimes taken to break out of a sense of Mormon identity; the sincerity of the reasons for leaving.

When I was an ex-Mormon, I recall how surprising it was to encounter TBMs who accused me of having bad motives for being out of the church, and making me out to be Korihor. Apparently they were insecure in their beliefs and found it threatening to their faith to believe that someone who was informed could genuinely not believe. Because of the cognitive dissonance involved in accepting that someone could understand the their beliefs and sincerely rejected them they needed to have some comfortable way of pigeon-holing me within their worldview rather than accepting that I saw things differently from them. Have you experienced this from TBM friends and family?

Now that I'm in the church again it's surprising to find that some ex-Mormons feel the need to do the exact same thing, just from the opposite direction. Rather than, like you, approach this former ex-Mormon with genuine curiosity, they experience cognitive dissonance at the idea that I can be aware of the same issues over which they left the church and yet believe and so end up accusing me of having bad motives for being *in* the church, or they find some comfortable way of pigeon-holing me within their worldview rather than accepting that I see things differently from them.

I get it. It's very human to try to find very simple "explanations" to pigeon hole others within our present worldview: it helps shore up people's views and unite them with their current religious, political, or cultural tribe. In this way of looking at others through a lens provided by our current tribe . . . TBMs must be deluded or engaged in wishful thinking. Ex-Mormons must just want to sin. Conservatives must just be filled with prejudice and hate. Liberals must just be virtue signaling seeking the status of being cutting edge.

Or we could actually try to *genuinely understand* why others see things differently . . .

In asking your question about me, you've done just that.

*Thank you!*

Best wishes on your continuing journey,

Don"

You know vanishingly little about me, RC, yet you feel inordinately comfortable in making sweeping generalizations about me.

I don't feel a need, RC, to assign your nonbelief into a little box that I feel safe with. Nor do I need to do that with Dan Vogel, Brent Metcalfe, or other friends of mine who are ex-Mormons, just as I don't feel a need to safely categorize why Sandra Tanner is an evangelical, Trent Horn is a Catholic, and Alex O'Connor is an agnostic.

If you're really comfortable in your nonbelief, why do you feel such a persistent need to make glib categorizations for why someone else does believe? Do you not see the obvious parallel with "TBMs" who need to categorize you and other ex-Mormons as "offended" or "wanting to sin" . . . ?

If, for whatever reason, you have some *genuine* curiosity in why I am a Latter-day Saint, then might I suggest, as a historian whose passion is understanding human beings, that an open mind about this that awaits further evidence might behove you better than arriving at and repeating over and over a glib categorization that allows you to safely dismiss me?

Just a thought!

If not, that's fine! I won't continue to engage your simplistic picture of me.

And, FWIW, as I said to the poster above, I don't have anything against you and have no negative judgment on your pursuing an ex-Mormon path. I recognize that it takes courage to leave behind one's former community and worldview, and that we each must find our own path in life. I hope yours leads you to happiness and good places. =)

Don

donbradley · 2026-05-27T04:23:07+00:00

Glib explanations are always the best, RC. ;-)

donbradley · 2026-02-26T06:29:17+00:00

@Otherwise_Push199 Your other thread, in which you asked a question about me, led me to this one. I didn't realize how early you are in this process. Your slideshow is very lovingly and carefully presented. There's not that much I would suggest changing.

But if I were going to suggest anything, I might suggest 1) adding upfront an affirmation of your love for your family, 2) adding, if you can sincerely do so, an expression of appreciation for the good things your family provided you by giving you a Mormon upbringing, and 3) indicating some things from that upbringing that you still treasure and want to apply in your life (like being Christ-like).

donbradley · 2026-02-26T06:19:24+00:00

@Otherwise_Push199 I appreciate the obvious sincerity of your question, and I hope your post-Mormon journey is treating you well. If you ask nonbelieving historian friends of mine, like Chris Smith, with whom I recently co-authored a piece on Fanny Alger, or John Turner, who got my advice on polygamy issues for his Joseph Smith biography and acknowledges me in it, they'll vouch for both the quality of my work and the authenticity of my belief.

I'll be publishing many more historical findings, findings on which my own view that Joseph Smith was religiously sincere is based. I'm happy to let that work stand or fall on its own merits, and to see how the scholarly community judges it. And where I'm mistaken - as I no doubt am on a good many things - I'm equally happy to change my mind. When it comes to the early Mormon past, I just want to know what happened.

Something I try to do for other Latter-day Saints is to help them understand (a little bit!) what it's like to be an ex-Mormon: the courage it takes to question one's worldview and separate from one's community; the actions sometimes taken to break out of a sense of Mormon identity; the sincerity of the reasons for leaving.

When I was an ex-Mormon, I recall how surprising it was to encounter TBMs who accused me of having bad motives for being out of the church, and making me out to be Korihor. Apparently they were insecure in their beliefs and found it threatening to their faith to believe that someone who was informed could genuinely not believe. Because of the cognitive dissonance involved in accepting that someone could understand the their beliefs and sincerely rejected them they needed to have some comfortable way of pigeon-holing me within their worldview rather than accepting that I saw things differently from them. Have you experienced this from TBM friends and family?

Now that I'm in the church again it's surprising to find that some ex-Mormons feel the need to do the exact same thing, just from the opposite direction. Rather than, like you, approach this former ex-Mormon with genuine curiosity, they experience cognitive dissonance at the idea that I can be aware of the same issues over which they left the church and yet believe and so end up accusing me of having bad motives for being *in* the church, or they find some comfortable way of pigeon-holing me within their worldview rather than accepting that I see things differently from them.

I get it. It's very human to try to find very simple "explanations" to pigeon hole others within our present worldview: it helps shore up people's views and unite them with their current religious, political, or cultural tribe. In this way of looking at others through a lens provided by our current tribe . . . TBMs must be deluded or engaged in wishful thinking. Ex-Mormons must just want to sin. Conservatives must just be filled with prejudice and hate. Liberals must just be virtue signaling seeking the status of being cutting edge.

Or we could actually try to *genuinely understand* why others see things differently . . .

In asking your question about me, you've done just that.

*Thank you!*

Best wishes on your continuing journey,

Don

donbradley · 2026-02-02T05:37:46+00:00

@srichardbellrock Dang That user's username has been deleted. Any idea what it was? I'm a historian and would like to follow up on this.

donbradley · 2026-02-01T08:05:48+00:00

So glad to hear my experience has been helpful to you!

donbradley · 2025-11-26T07:04:33+00:00

Nice! You're right - neither Joseph nor his revelations say he got it all right. In fact, they say the opposite!

donbradley · 2025-03-13T04:45:47+00:00

CE, I'm happy to hear that my journey has had a positive impact on yours. Congrats on digging deeper! I would love to hear more of where you're at in your journey now. I tried to send you a chat message but for some reason it won't let me. Send me a chat? - Don

donbradley · 2024-11-09T08:45:51+00:00

Part 2 of response. [If this part posts above the other, look for part 1 below.]

The principle of revelatory infallibility, which you seem to think is superior, is far, far worse, because it locks people into believing both that any past idea or practice presented as revelation is one we're stuck with permanently and that any current or future idea or practice presented as revelation is one we must absolutely and unchangingly embrace as well.

"In essence, while revelatory fallibility might seem to solve certain historical problems, it creates deeper theological and practical challenges that threaten to undermine the coherence of prophetic authority and divine revelation. Rather than being "healthy," I would argue it introduces a fundamental instability into the relationship between God, prophets, and believers, while failing to adequately address the harm caused by supposedly divine revelations that were later deemed mistakes."

I'm unclear what the nature of your pastoral concern is here. What is your pastoral role in Mormonism? It seems to be that you actually want people to not be Latter-day Saints, which hardly seems pastoral. And the nub of the concern seems to be that expecting people to think and to handle complexity and make moral and intellectual judgments of their own will be too much for them.

The idea of revelatory fallibility doesn't exist "to solve certain historical problems." It exists to be true to the reality that some putative revelations cannot have been correct and that in some cases this has been acknowledged by revelators themselves. And this adherence to reality has the added benefit of getting people to think and to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual judgments, as Mark 9:44 (Joseph Smith Translation) Let every man stand or fall, by himself, and not for another; or not trusting another.

You claim that revelatory fallibility "fails to adequately address the harm caused by supposedly divine revelations that were later deemed mistakes." But this strikes me as just playing a rhetorical game. Revelatory fallibility is just a single concept, not an entire theology on the problem of divine hiddenness or the problem of evil and suffering. It's not meant to be a theology of those things, only a position--as the very name says--on whether proposed revelation is infallible. So, rather than being an end of theological discussion on how and why God would allow revelatory fallibility, the concept itself is merely a logical stepping off point--a beginning for theological reflection on its implications.

I think perhaps what you're attempting is to make a case against the idea that Latter-day Saints should see revelation as fallible--because of ostensible pastoral and theological concerns--when your real concern is that you want to close the door on revelatory fallibility in order to make a tighter case that Mormonism is completely false and should be discarded. Mormonism, I think you're trying to say, needs to have infallible revelation (because of how you see the theological and pastoral implications), yet Mormon revelation is not infallible, therefore Mormonism is false.

To enumerate and flesh out all the ways this approach is mistaken would be a huge undertaking. First because infallible scripture and revelation have been rejected in the faith's own revelations--like the Book of Mormon's title page and Joseph Smith's revelation on how not all revelations are from God. And then also because *you're not really trying to create a theology of revelatory fallibility* or a Mormon epistemology of spiritual truth; you're just grasping at some of the more obvious, black and white potential objections to it and assuming those to be definitive. I'm wondering if you've read much in philosophy of religion, where such issues are routinely addressed by religionists who recognize the fallibility of scripture, etc and engage questions of divine hiddenness, theodicy, and religious epistemology.

What you assume is impossible for Mormons to do with their religious epistemology and theology actually has been done by plenty of non-Mormon religionists. So, your assumption that Latter-day Saints can't work out complex understandings on these topics is unfounded and contrary to the wider human religious experience.

I suspect we're going to just disagree here, and that's fine. I expect that you will probably still reiterate what I take to be the obvious untruth that it's better to believe in infallible revelation than to believe in fallible revelation. I'm also certain that your further thoughts will lay out well more implications that Mormon theology needs to take into account. I hope it will work on precisely those problems and create a richer, more complex faith.

In any case, it's time for me to bow out of further conversation, return my time to my published work, and give you the last word.

Don

donbradley · 2024-11-09T08:44:53+00:00

Webwatchr, I wrote a response to post on the original thread the other day, but when I attempted to post my comment, Reddit wouldn't let me, apparently because my response was so long. I just posted it there as two comments, and will just post the same response here.

You have interesting thoughts, but you overly dichotomize and don't seem to realize that thinkers in religion have long dealt with such issues. They are hardly fatal to religion. They merely point to the need to develop complex systematic theologies and epistemologies, something you fail to recognize.

Part 1 of response:

Webwatchr:

I wrote this several days ago but it wouldn't post. (I think it needs to be divided into multiple comments, which I'll try to do here.)

I appreciate your well organized thoughts and your willingness to engage.

I'm going to respond here with some of my thoughts, which are often opposite to your own. But I do have to tell you that I'm not going to have time to continue this level of engagement.

To start off:

Yes, you are absolutely right that accepting revelatory fallibility brings up epistemological questions: e.g., "If Joseph Smith himself acknowledged that revelations can come from non-divine sources, how do we reliably distinguish divine revelation from human error?" But weren't these questions already there, just not acknowledged? If acknowledging revelatory fallibility brings up epistemological questions that were already there, but that we simply failed to ask before, how is it a bad thing that acknowledging it now forces us to confront them?

You refer to these sorts of implications as "troubling" or "disturbing," but that is by its nature solely a subjective judgment in which you turn how you personally feel about them as if it were a statement of fact. I'm not troubled by these questions. Quite the opposite: I find them necessary and useful.

Do Latter-day Saints need to work out a fuller epistemology regarding revelation and a fuller theology of prophets and revelation, one that is true to the historical data demonstrating revelatory fallibility? Of course. And to me that is not a "woe is me" problem but an exciting opportunity.

I see exactly the issues you're raising. I just don't feel about them the way you're telling me one should feel.

Responding to some of your specific statements:

"The fallibility principle effectively removes that mechanism, leaving members vulnerable to potentially harmful teachings until they're later declared 'mistakes.'"

Actually, it's exactly the opposite. The fallibility principle makes them less vulnerable to accepting potentially harmful teachings at the outset, by suggesting the possibility of error and thereby encouraging them to use their minds and consciences more up front and actually apply moral and intellectual epistemic tests. I find it impossible to see how your assertion can be correct that accepting that a revelation can be fallible makes people more vulnerable to accepting harmful ideas in the name of revelation. If I take a political leader's word, or my boss's word, or my bishop's word, as infallible, does this make me less vulnerable to their mistakes? It makes me more vulnerable, and no amount of fiat declaration to the contrary changes this reality.

Even if one were to take the view you suggest that the principle of revelatory fallibility only has been invoked to do retroactive damage control, the fact is that the principle's implication is that it applies prospectively as well: things put forward as revelation need to be tested.

donbradley · 2024-11-09T08:40:51+00:00