Criticism of Mormonism/Online documents/Letter to a CES Director/Debunking FairMormon

A FairMormon Analysis of "Debunking FairMormon - Letter to a CES Director"

Googling is not a synonym for seeking.

—Steven C. Harper, Joseph Smith's First Vision: A Guide to the Historical Accounts (2012), 11–12

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Does FairMormon agree with a large percentage of the claims made in the Letter to the CES Director?
Jeremy Runnells has claimed that FairMormon has agreed with him on a large percentage of various claims he has made, even going so far as to claim agreement on items that FairMormon did not respond to. With regard to historical facts, Mr. Runnells's citations are sometimes incorrect and his interpretations, even of correctly cited historical facts, are unwarranted. In short, FairMormon disagrees entirely with the conclusions reached by Jeremy Runnells.

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Overview

Approximately eight or nine months after we produced our original response to the Letter to a CES Director, the author produced an apologetic called "Debunking FairMormon". Much of the material is simply an incorporation of our original summary responses to the individual issues, and the author's reassertion of his original claims. Our original summary responses to most of these issues have now been incorporated into the text of the full wiki articles that are now transcluded into the CES Letter response. The are some new claims in direct response to FairMormon, however. In this page we highlight only new individual items which were not covered in the original CES Letter response.

Detailed responses by section are found in linked subarticles below

Response to section "Polygamy/Polyandry Concerns & Questions"

Summary: Regarding Joseph's practice of polygamy, the author states that "Joseph Smith’s pattern of behavior or modus operandi for a period of at least 10 years of his adult life was to keep secrets, be deceptive, and be dishonest – both privately and publicly."

Notes (click to expand)