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Question: Many who listened to Elder Dunn's stories felt the spirit. Why would one feel the spirit upon hearing a story that was fabricated? Doesn't this confirm a lie?
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Question: Many who listened to Elder Dunn's stories felt the spirit. Why would one feel the spirit upon hearing a story that was fabricated? Doesn't this confirm a lie?
Simply receiving a warm feeling about a speech or article is not enough to call it revelation or a confirmation of the spirit
It should be noted that those who bring up this criticism frequently do not bring up accounts to be examined of these experiences. But given what we can know right now, the answer to this question is near identical to that given for why we might feel the spirit while we watched a movie or read a fictional work. Simply put, a spiritual revelation is both a inspiration or revelation to the mind and a phenomenon (not just a feeling or emotion) in the heart. Additionally, many can describe themselves as feeling the spirit in a passive way as an abiding peace when one is doing what is right or in the presence of something good. It’s not surprising. We may be feeling the Spirit that is supposed to be with us as we live up to sacrament covenants (Moroni 4,5). We are encouraged to seek after all good things (A of F 1:13) and all good things come from God (Moroni 7:12). Or, when one is trying to receive revelation, they can feel it in a more dynamic way. If those that felt the spirit from these events felt it in a dynamic way where it was giving them inspiration or revelation, then it could have been thoughts to the mind about the importance of courage, or other revelation tailored to their life.
We shouldn't rule such a possibility out. That is, learning a truth through an exaggerated and/or fictional story. It seems almost counter-intuitive to our post-enlightenment senses but that is precisely what we find in the parables of Jesus or (likely) the stories of the Tower of Babel or the Noachian Flood. We're finding meaning and truth through stories. That isn't to say that all the scriptures are fictional or that there isn't some historical truth behind such things as Babel and the Ark, but that we can learn truth or have truth confirmed to us through fictional stories. We should simply study from the best of historical and archaeological scholarship to find out what is and what isn't historical. Our theology should be guided by every empirical discipline; not threatened by it (D&C 88:77-79). We see here that Dunn's stories were exaggerated but that we may have still learned truth from them in that God works miracles and that he is involved in our lives. We can be taught such a thing through parable or exaggerated story and experience the same (and thus have the truth of the principle confirmed to us) in our everyday life.[1]
But the point is that confirmation from the spirit (as part of a more dynamic influence) is going to be something manifested as both knowledge and a phenomenon. Spiritual epistemology is something that involves all of our faculties (See also Alma 32:27). It is a complex interaction between and evaluation of the thoughts of our mind , the feelings of our heart, the health of our body, the light of Christ, everything that God has deemed good in the world, and the outside influence of the Holy Ghost. We need to be careful to evaluate those impressions carefully.
The key is to pay attention to both our mind and our heart (D&C 8:2) when discerning the Spirit's influences.
Notes