Author: bwv549

  • Testimony, Spiritual Experiences, and Truth: A Careful Examination

    Testimony, Spiritual Experiences, and Truth: A Careful Examination

    1 Introduction 2 Do spir­i­tu­al impres­sions teach truth? 3 What’s behind a spir­i­tu­al experience? 4 Tes­ti­mo­ny, bias, and propaganda 5 Cir­cu­lar­i­ties: pulling our­selves up by our bootstraps? 6 Conclusions 7 Addi­tion­al reading (note: This arti­cle is an updat­ed ver­sion of my orig­i­nal Ratio­nal Faiths arti­cle) 1 Introduction 1.1 Know the truth…

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  • All in Joseph Smith’s milieu: a response to LDSLiving article on Book of Mormon evidences

    All in Joseph Smith’s milieu: a response to LDSLiving article on Book of Mormon evidences

    Kathryn Jenk­ins Gor­don recent­ly read through the Book of Mor­mon with a dis­tinct purpose: I want­ed to deter­mine how many evi­dences were found in the Book of Mor­mon itself sup­port­ing the fact that it was trans­lat­ed from an ancient doc­u­ment and not writ­ten by Joseph Smith in the ear­ly 19th…

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  • Letter to parents: Thoughts on the Word of Wisdom

    Letter to parents: Thoughts on the Word of Wisdom

    Con­text: This is a let­ter I wrote to my moth­er and father about my cur­rent approach to the Word of Wis­dom. I recent­ly resigned from the Church, and I have oth­er sib­lings who have left and who I sus­pect will leave, so I want­ed to estab­lish some com­mon ground and…

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