Revision as of 22:48, 28 June 2009

Quick navigation

• Index of claims

About this work

Claims made in this work

A list of claims indexed by page number made in The Changing World of Mormonism with links to the corresponding responses in the FAIRwiki may be found here: Index to claims made in The Changing World of Mormonism.

Quote mining, selective quotation and distortion

Many critics who write about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not content to portray the Church and its doctrines fairly. Some critics mine their sources by extracting quotes from their context in order to make the statement imply something other that what it was originally intended to mean. Other critics make statements that are self-contradictions—instances in which a critic says or writes one thing, and then makes another statement elsewhere that flatly contradicts their first statement.

These examples do not prove that these critics' arguments are without merit; they do suggest caution is warranted before accepting these authors or their works as reliable witnesses when they speak of their own experiences connected with "Mormonism." In particular, one should also be cautious about accepting their interpretation of primary sources without double-checking the original sources themselves.

Joseph couldn't have seen God without having the priesthood?

Commentary

• The authors recite the two verses from the 1832 revelation, and then use Joseph Fielding Smith's quote by saying that "[n]ow, it is claimed that 'The Father and the Son appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith before the Church was organized and the priesthood restored to the earth'", implying that the story of the First Vision was fabricated later. The authors claim that Joseph Fielding Smith's statement changed what Joseph Smith stated in his 1832 revelation when he said that one had to have the priesthood to see God. One must also wonder why Joseph Smith would state the a man had to have the priesthood to see God in 1832, the same year he began writing his first account of the First Vision, and yet see no contradiction. Joseph Fielding Smith is answering this question by explaining why Joseph Smith was able to see the Father and the Son before he received the priesthood—A detail omitted by the authors when they mined the quote.

Endnotes

1. [note]  Lawrence Foster, "Career Apostates: Reflections on the Works of Jerald and Sandra Tanner," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 17 no. 2 (Summer 1984), 49.

Reviews of this work

Further reading