FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Category:MormonThink
Responses to claims made on the critical website MormonThink.com
Pages in category "MormonThink"
The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 423 total.
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- ''Doctrine and Covenants and Church History Gospel Doctrine Teacher’s Manual'' (1999): "the Lord commanded some of the early Saints to practice plural marriage. The Prophet Joseph Smith and those closest to him...were challenged by this command"
- ''Ensign'' (1992): Emma Smith's "great trial came when the prophet revealed to Emma that they would be required to live the ancient law of Abraham—plural marriage"
A
B
- Backman (1985): "On at least four different occasions, Joseph Smith either wrote or dictated to scribes accounts of his sacred experience of 1820"
- Bernardino de Sahagun: "Fodder was provided the deer—horses—which the Spaniards rode"
- Book of Mormon the "most correct of any book"
- Book of Mormon/Plagiarism accusations/Comoros Islands and Moroni/Captain Kidd
- Book of Mormon/Textual changes/"white" changed to "pure"
- Book of Mormon/Translation/The lost 116 pages
- Brigham Young (1855): "I do not even believe that there is a single revelation, among the many God has given to the Church, that is perfect in its fulness"
- Brigham Young (1871): "whether the Lord...made it in six days or in as many millions of years, is and will remain a matter of speculation in the minds of men unless he give revelation on the subject"
C
- Church History in the Fulness of Times (2003): "The law of celestial marriage, as outlined in this revelation, also included the principle of the plurality of wives"
- Church's stance on the theory of organic evolution
- Criticism of Mormonism/Websites/MormonThink/Doctrine & Covenants
- Criticism of Mormonism/Websites/MormonThink/Joseph Running with the Plates
- Criticism of Mormonism/Websites/MormonThink/Kirtland Temple Dedication
D
- David Whitmer (1884): "I saw with these eyes and I heard with these ears"
- David Whitmer (1887): "We were in the spirit when we had the view...but we were in the body also"
- Did Joseph have lustful motives for practicing polygamy?
- Doctrine and Covenants 132:51-52: "all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph"
E
- Edward Stevenson (1870): Martin Harris said "my belief is swallowed up in knowledge; for I want to say to you that as the Lord lives I do know that I stood with the Prophet Joseph Smith in the presence of the angel"
- Elias and Elijah at the Kirtland Temple
- Ensign (1977): "plural marriage...Starting during Joseph Smith’s own lifetime but limited to a few dozen families until its official announcement in 1852"
- Ensign (1989): "The Prophet introduced several doctrines relating to the temple, including the temple ceremonies and plural marriage"
- Ensign (Jan. 2013): "He...referred to it using an Old Testament term, Urim and Thummim...He also sometimes applied the term to other stones he possessed"
- Ensign (June 1994): "Highlights in the Prophet’s Life 20 Mar. 1826: Tried and acquitted on fanciful charge of being a “disorderly person,” South Bainbridge, Chenango County, New York
- Ensign (Sept. 1977): "If his translation was essentially the same as that of the King James version, he apparently quoted the verse from the Bible"
G
- Gee: "Ferguson is largely unknown to the vast majority of Latter-day Saints; his impact on Book of Mormon studies is minimal"
- George Mantle (1888): Martin Harris said "Do you know that is the sun shining on us? Because as sure as you know that...he translated that book by the power of God"
- Godfrey: "Martin found a rock closely resembling the seerstone Joseph sometimes used in place of the interpreters and substituted it without the Prophet’s knowledge"
- Gordon B. Hinckley (1984): "I am not worried that the Prophet Joseph Smith gave a number of versions of the first vision"
- Gospel Topics on LDS.org: "Some evidence suggests that Joseph studied the characters on the Egyptian papyri and attempted to learn the Egyptian language"
- Gospel Topics: "During the first two decades of the Church’s existence, a few black men were ordained to the priesthood"
- Gospel Topics: "Even after 1852, at least two black Mormons continued to hold the priesthood"
- Gospel Topics: "Joseph Smith and his associates often used the term 'Urim and Thummim' to refer to the single stone as well as the interpreters"
- Gospel Topics: "The various accounts of the First Vision tell a consistent story, though naturally they differ in emphasis and detail"
- Gospel Topics: "Today, any person who practices plural marriage cannot become or remain a member of the Church"
- Gospel Topics: "Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life"
- Grayson: "extinct North American mammals...losses began in Mexico and Alaska during the Pleistocene and ended in Florida perhaps as recently as 2000 years ago"
J
- John A. Widtsoe (1943): "The Old Testament records a flood that was just over fifteen cubits (sometimes assumed to be about twenty-six feet) deep and covered the entire landscape"
- John A. Widtsoe (apostle, 1943): "That Joseph Smith actually was the person who introduced plural marriage into the Church and that he practiced it himself are amply proved by existing facts"
- John S. Lewis: "Considering that Doctrine and Covenants 77:6 refers to “…this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance, or its temporal existence,” what led Phelps to speak of Earth as 2,555 million years old?"
- John Welch (1999): "This sidelight in the book of Alma contains enough facts to support meaningful parallels between King Mosiah's weights and measures and those used in other ancient cultures"
- John Whitmer: "Joseph the Seer saw these Record(s) and by the revelation of Jesus Christ could translate these records"
- Johnson: "Probably it is safe to say that American Proboscidea have been extinct for a minimum of 3000 years"
- Joseph Fielding Smith (1941): "While the Church, as well as the world, would recognize that marriage while they are in the world, yet the fact remains that when they are dead the marriage comes to an end"
- Joseph Smith (14 Nov. 1835): "I received the first visitation of Angels which was when I was about 14"
- Joseph Smith (14 Nov. 1835): "I received the first visitation of angels, which was when I was about fourteen years old"
- Joseph Smith (1832): "a piller of fire light above the brightness of the sun at noon day come down from above"
- Joseph Smith (1842): "surrounded with a brilliant light which eclipsed the sun at noon-day"
- Joseph Smith (9 Nov. 1835): "a personage appeard in the midst of this pillar of flame...another personage soon appeard like unto the first...and I saw many angels in this vision"
- Joseph Smith (9 Nov. 1835): "a pillar of fire appeared above my head...a personage appeard in the midst of this pillar of flame"
- Joseph Smith (9 Nov. 1835): "I saw many angels in this vision...I was about 14 years old when I received this first communication"
- Joseph Smith and the Word of Wisdom
- Joseph Smith listed as author and proprietor of the Book of Mormon
- Joseph Smith Papers: "Although he hated adultery and was deeply loyal to his wife Emma, he believed he was to take additional wives as had the ancient patriarchs"
- Joseph Smith's First Vision/Did Joseph Smith join other churches/Methodist membership procedures
- Joseph Smith's First Vision/Lucy Mack Smith and the Presbyterians
- Joseph Smith: "Jesus Christ became a ministering spirit (while his body was lying in the sepulcher)...After His resurrection He appeared as an angel to His disciples"
- Journal of Book of Mormon Studies: "Pottery and other cultural materials were found in levels VII and above. But in some of those artifact-bearing strata there were horse bones, even in level II"
- Juncker (1994): "Unknown to many, the early church fathers often referred to Jesus as an Angel....in antiquity the word 'angel' meant 'messenger'"
L
M
- Martin Harris: "As sure as you see my hand so sure did I see the angel and the plates"
- Martin Harris: "The Book of Mormon is no fake. I know what I know. I have seen what I have seen and I have heard what I have heard"
- Martin: "no theoretical reason why a herd of mastodons, horses, or ground sloths could not have survived in some small refuge until 8000 or even 4000 years ago"
- Matthews: "To regard the New Translation...as a product of divine inspiration given to Joseph Smith does not necessarily assume that it be a restoration of the original Bible text"
- Miller and Roper: "Evidence for the survival of the elephant can be found in Native American myths and traditions"
- Miller and Roper: "This was long enough to bring them (mammoths) to the time of the Jaredites"
- Multiple accounts of the First Vision/Criticisms/Overview
- Multiple accounts of the First Vision/Oliver Cowdery not aware of First Vision in 1834-35
P
- Painesville Telegraph (1830): "The name of the person here, who pretends to have a divine mission, and to have seen and conversed with Angels, is Cowdray"
- Painesville Telegraph (1831): Martin Harris said that "He had seen and handled them all"
- Parrish (1838): "I have set by his side and penned down the translation of the Egyptian Heiroglyphicks as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration of Heaven"
- Peterson and Roper: "We know of no one who cites Ferguson as an authority, except countercultists"
- Peterson: "Thomas Stuart Ferguson's biographer...makes every effort to portray Ferguson's apparent eventual loss of faith as a failure for 'LDS archaeology'"
- Plural marriage and the Bible
- Plural marriage and the law
- Plural marriage practiced after the First Manifesto
- Plural marriage/Parley P. Pratt's marriage and murder
- Prothero (2003): "in the 1832 version, Jesus appears to Smith alone, and does all the talking himself. Such complaints, however, are much ado about relatively nothing"
Q
- Question: Are Church members required to believe in a global flood?
- Question: Are prophets simply "men of their time," without any special ability to guide the Church?
- Question: Are sacred garments used in religious traditions other than Mormonism?
- Question: Are the ages stated in Joseph's accounts of the First Vision 'all over the place?'
- Question: Are there any eyewitness accounts of the events that resulted in the trip to Canada to sell the Book of Mormon copyright?
- Question: Are there sources which identify the angel that visited Joseph as "Moroni" that date prior to the "Nephi" error?
- Question: Aren't tithing funds from "long ago" ultimately the source of all current Church funds?
- Question: At what age did Joseph Smith become concerned about religion?
- Question: By what name did Joseph Smith refer to the First Vision?
- Question: Could ancient Americans have expanded the definition of "horse" to include new meanings?
- Question: Could Joseph Smith have used Ethan Smith's ''View of the Hebrews'' as a guideline for creating the Book of Mormon?
- Question: Could Moroni have been an "angel of Satan"?
- Question: Did any of Joseph's scribes ever say anything about Joseph's story of the vision changing over time?
- Question: Did B.H. Roberts lose his faith in the Church and the Book of Mormon?
- Question: Did B.H. Roberts state that it was possible for Joseph Smith to have come up with the Book of Mormon on his own?
- Question: Did Church leaders ever teach that Blacks were neutral in the "war in heaven?"
- Question: Did David Whitmer ever deny his Book of Mormon witness because he thought that Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet?
- Question: Did God tell David Whitmer to leave the Church and repudiate Mormonism?
- Question: Did Gordon B. Hinckley claim that polygamy was "not doctrinal" on Larry King Live?
- Question: Did John Whitmer, one of the Eight Witnesses, actually say that he saw the plates by a "supernatural power"?
- Question: Did Joseph attempt to translate the Kinderhook Plates using the "gift and power of God?"
- Question: Did Joseph Fielding Smith say that it was not reasonable for Joseph Smith to use a seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon?
- Question: Did Joseph mention a "pillar of fire" or a "pillar of light" in his 1832 account of the First Vision?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith attempt to translate the Kinderhook Plates?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith become a member of Emma Hale Smith's Methodist congregation in 1828, eight years after the First Vision?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith begin his prophetic career with a "trinitarian" idea of God?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith change his stated motivation for praying in later years after he received the First Vision?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith confer the priesthood on several black men?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith consummate any of these marriages with married women?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith create the temple ceremony as a way of teaching polygamy to certain members while keeping it a secret from the general public?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith decide that all churches were wrong before he received the First Vision?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith derive the idea of "three degrees of glory" from Emanuel Swedenborg's book, ''Heaven and its Wonders and Hell''?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith ever publicly attempt to teach the doctrine of plural marriage?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith have access to materials related to Nahom at Allegheny College?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith incorporate his father's dream of the tree of life into the Book of Mormon?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith institute polygamy because he had a "voracious sexual appetite"?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith lose control of the Church during the 1838 Kirtland apostasy?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith make an error by claiming that Elias and Elijah are two different people, when they are in fact one and the same?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith marry Fanny Alger as his first plural wife in 1833?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith misidentify a Greek "psalter" as a containing "reformed Egyptian" hieroglyphics?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith originally identify the angel that visited him as "Nephi" instead of "Moroni"?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith place his seer stone in his hat while looking for lost objects?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith receive a revelation instructing him to to sell the copyright to the Book of Mormon in Canada and later claim that the revelation was false?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith revise his account of the First Vision in 1838 to respond to a leadership crisis?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith simply conflate elements of the 1818 and 1824-25 revivals in his story of the First Vision?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith use his own seer stone to translate the Book of Mormon?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith use the Nephite interpreters to translate? Or did he use his own seer stone?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith write a "love letter" to his plural wife Sarah Ann Whitney to request a secret rendezvous?
- Question: Did Lucy Mack Smith join the Presbyterian Church after her son Alvin died in 1823?
- Question: Did Lucy Mack Smith state when she joined the Presbyterians?
- Question: Did Martin Harris change his religion five times prior to the Restoration?
- Question: Did Martin Harris claim that he only saw the gold plates as they were covered "as a city through a mountain"?
- Question: Did Martin Harris ever deny his Book of Mormon witness because he thought that Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet?
- Question: Did Martin Harris tell people that he did not see the plates with his natural eyes, but rather the "eye of faith"?
- Question: Did Martin Harris tell people that he only saw the plates with his "spiritual eye"?
- Question: Did Oliver Cowdery ever deny his Book of Mormon witness because he thought that Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet?
- Question: Did Oliver Cowdery state that Joseph did not know if a "supreme being" existed in 1823?
- Question: Did one of the Book of Mormon witnesses actually only handle the plates while they were covered in a "tow frock"?
- Question: Did Solomon Spaulding's doctor state that Spaulding talked to him about the Nephites in his manuscript?
- Question: Did the actual words "God the Father" and "Jesus Christ" appear in Joseph's 1838 account of the First Vision?
- Question: Did the Church refute the "neutral in the pre-existence" teaching only to preserve their public image?
- Question: Did the Church repudiate the idea of neutrality in the "war in heaven?"
- Question: Did the prophet Nephi visit Joseph at some point in time?
- Question: Did the Three Witnesses consider Joseph Smith a "fallen prophet" after they left the Church?
- Question: Did the three witnesses's experience of seeing the plates and the angel take place only in their minds?
- Question: Didn't Hugh Nibley claim that a record of this trial would be "the most damning evidence in existence" against Joseph Smith?
- Question: Do academic translators copy translations of other documents to use as a "base text"?
- Question: Do Martin Harris's statements related to the "spiritual eye" or "eye of faith" contradict the reality of his witness?
- Question: Do Mormons believe that the temple garment will protect them from physical harm?
- Question: Do the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon link a person's skin color to their behavior in the pre-existence?
- Question: Does Cain still roam the earth, and does this account for stories about "Bigfoot"?
- Question: Does Church art always reflect reality?
- Question: Does Doctrine and Covenants 84 say that one cannot see God without holding the priesthood?
- Question: Does Jesus Christ's statement "they neither marry, nor are given in marriage" contradict the Latter-day Saint doctrine of eternal marriage?
- Question: Does Martin Harris' involvement with other faiths after the Restoration discredit him?
- Question: Does Martin Harris' involvement with the Shakers undercut his testimony?
- Question: Does the 14 November 1835 account reference to the "first vision of Angels" mean that Joseph Smith did not see Deity?
- Question: Does the belief by the witnesses that the experience had visionary qualities contradict the claim that the Book of Mormon plates were real?
- Question: Does the Bible forbid plural marriage?
- Question: Does the Book of Abraham state that the sun gets its photons from Kolob?
- Question: Does the Book of Mormon contain mistakes?
- Question: Does the Book of Mormon refer to "coins"?
- Question: Does the Smithsonian Institution send out a letter regarding the use of the Book of Mormon as a guide for archaeological research?
- Question: Does the use of the capitalized word "Angel" in the 14 November 1835 account refer to Deity?
- Question: Doesn't the Bible say that the continents were divided immediately after the Flood?
- Question: Has God used his power to enforce sleep on other occasions?
- Question: Has the book ''View of the Hebrews'' been readily available?
- Question: Has the Church tried to hide Joseph's use of a seer stone?
- Question: Have any ancient horse remains from the Nephite period been found in the New World?
- Question: Have edits to the revelations been discussed in the present day?
- Question: How can President Hinckley claim that polygamy is "not doctrinal" if it was a required practice in the 19th-Century Church?
- Question: How can we accept David Whitmer as a valid Book of Mormon witness if God told him to leave the Saints?
- Question: How could Joseph and Fanny have been married in 1831 if the sealing power had not yet been restored?
- Question: How could the Garden of Eden have been in Missouri if the Flood was local?
- Question: How did Elder Holland respond during a BBC interview when asked how the Book of Abraham was translated?
- Question: How did Emma Hale Smith react to Joseph's practice of plural marriage?
- Question: How did Joseph Smith use his seer stones as a youth?
- Question: How did Latter-day Saint scholars respond to the attempt to sell the Book of Mormon copyright prior to Page's letter coming to light?
- Question: How did newspaper accounts describe the nature of the witnesses experience?
- Question: How did the "curse of Ham" or "curse of Cain" become associated with Mormonism?
- Question: How did the apostle Paul describe spiritual experiences?
- Question: How did the erroneous story of the attempt to sell the Book of Mormon copyright develop over time?
- Question: How do critics of the Church portray Joseph Smith's letter to the Whitney family as a "love letter"?
- Question: How do Latter-day Saints reconcile scriptural accounts of the Flood of Noah with scientific evidence of continuous human habitation on the earth?
- Question: How do non-Mormon artists treat the Nativity?
- Question: How do the First Vision accounts compare on the subject of Joseph's motivation for praying?
- Question: How do the goals of Freemasonry compare to those of the Latter-day Saint endowment?
- Question: How do we reconcile the actual age of the earth to the "seven thousand years of its continuance" mentioned in D&C 77:6?
- Question: How does archaeology in the New World fit with the Book of Mormon?
- Question: How does archaeology in the Old World compare to the first chapters in the Book of Mormon?
- Question: How does David Whitmer's account of the attempt to sell the Book of Mormon copyright compare to those of the eyewitnesses?
- Question: How does the Church explain the existence of human-like beings on the earth prior to Adam?