Your mahujah reference in the your letter is incorrect. You state mahujah shows up in the book of giants. It doesn’t. It’s mahawai or mahaway. Yes, it’s still similar but your letter shows an exact match with the book of Moses which isn’t the case. Colby Townsend has an excellent rebuttal on the similarities.
I hour 6 minutes in... John Dehlin did not create the problem he offers life coaching or Mormon stories space and support to her address! Do you genuinely think people would not be having trust crisis and leaving in huge numbers if it wasn't for the existence of critics of the Church? Come on guys!
Went to grade school with Jeffrey Thayne. Wish I knew him better back when. Also, Mormon Christianity by the late Catholic Theologian Stephen Webb is compelling from a non-LDS perspective
1:19:00 I thought I would leave this alone, but I feel compelled to push back here. Look, I agree, if a critic is using these sorts of flimsy connections, that needs to be called out. This is why I aim for minimalism in making the naturalistic case when I do that. But, I've listened through and responded to multiple videos now on temple and Masonry, and the Book of Enoch, and BoM apologetics, and I've said many times that this is exactly what the apologists are doing. I found this part of the conversation deeply frustrating because of that. Yes, the BoM is unusual. Joseph Smith was unusual. But unusual or anomalous does not equal true or miraculous. In many ways, the BoM is also completely what one might expect. Certainly, there were others at the time that were doing things that captured at least parts of what Joseph was doing. Joseph and Mormonism just happened to be a convergence point where all those things came together in a way that was successful and survived. It's not common that that happens, but history is replete with similar stories.
When I no longer believed, what you described is how I felt. I appreciate your comment because it doesn't dismiss how rare or unusual the circumstances of the Book of Mormon are. For a non believer the Book of Mormon is just a set of fortuitous circumstances that came together in a miraculous, albeit natural way. For a believer it was a miracle in a divine sort of way. Thanks for watching!
RFMs response to that section by using a red herring (SEC fine) means he grossly misunderstands the purpose of the letter. It's a long letter so I don't blame him for having not read it yet but he clearly hasn't. But let's say I address the SEC fine directly and brilliantly in the 2nd edition, will that mean RFM and his audience will come back to church? Or will there be an endless list whataboutisms they to bring up next?
@@LightandTruthLetterthanks for answering my post! And I think you are absolutely right. there is no respone you can give that would get his audince (me included) to return to the church. Is it fair to say the purpose of the letter is to give current members reasons to stay in the church?
The CES letter was partly a letter of questions that the author was getting from investigators on his mission. Many of the questions had answers (like I was told) along the lines of “those are anti Mormon lies”. Those lies as it turned out were true as verified when the Gospel Topic Essays were issued AFTER the CES letter. It’s why many in my extended LDS family left the church. The church simply lied to us.
1:38:18 as a never Mormon I’m sure the plates existed but where are they? The proposition that they were taken back to heaven is very convenient. It means they could not be examined by the scientific community (like the kinderhook plates)
I've also wondered if they were made by Joseph Smith and not returned to an angel where are they? Buried somewhere or in the church's possession. If not returned to an angel where'd they go
@ I don’t know. Maybe he destroyed them. Maybe he buried them. I do think the metal plates existed. As someone who has never been LDS, the story of the plates being taken back to heaven is highly suspicious. To me it screams obvious fraud. I came from a very Catholic background and there are so many suspicious Catholic miracle accounts, it’s mind boggling. I grew up being taught that every single Catholic miracle account was 100% true. Once I entered young adulthood I put on my skepticism hat and I’ve worn it ever since…. for all religions. Also, I simply don’t possess the religious or spirituality gene like my parents and 1/2 my siblings. Lastly I truly appreciate you, your show, and your willingness to see both sides.
Did I miss something? I got through 45 minutes and didn't feel like they'd said much of substance. Was there something else later that I didn't get to?
I've noticed a pretty crazy trend in the comments section The people who largely already agree with The Light and Truth Letter think it's fantastic and holds up really well The people who largely disagree with The Light and Truth Letter think it's horrible and easily debunked.
Correct. I figured it would happen. I'm curious over time how it impacts someone with an open mind. So far the feedback from that group is fairly positive.
Austin, I haven't yet read your letter so I'll have to do that, but just last night I was watching the Mormonism Live episode about you where Kolby Reddish implied that you never went through a faith crisis. As someone who went through a deconversion similar to what you described here, I think they're completely wrong (and I'm still exmo).
It's a strange tactic for sure. Though we do it in the Church too. "They must have never actually believed." Or "They just wanted to sin." It's a coping mechanism for anyone who doesn't agree with you.
@@jacobmayberry1126 that’s mature of you 🤣 can I introduce you to the real Jesus? ❤️ you just don’t like being caught in a false religion, it’s embarrassing for you I’m sure
One hour 14 minutes in. You do not have to abandon a belief in God in order to apply rational analysis to whether or not the Book of Mormon is credible. If there is a naturalistic explanation whereby, as Terryl Givens put it, Joseph Smith is an "inspired synchretist" harvesting ideas and language from different sources he has read, particularly the king James Bible, when composing the Book of Mormon, then those ideas still need to be looked at entirely on their own merits to determine if they are credible. People who believe in God should do this for any book of scripture or religious truth claim since there are thousands of those in the world and they do not all agree with each other. This was another example of how dismissing criticism on the basis that "this church and its version of God are true and you should never ignore that when engaging in critical analysis" self sabotages rationally. You are muddying and confusing and conflating things that should not have anything to do with each other if you are seriously engaging in critical analysis and rebutting critical analysis of evidence. Labelling your critics as unbelievers, lazy learners or deceived by Satan like President Nelson does, and both of you do this repeatedly throughout this conversation either directly or by implication, unfortunately discredits you and means you are ineffective in making sense or being convincing. You are apologists engaging with rational critical and analysis of your church's truth claims and the evidence or you are propagandists bearing testimony of something you believe within the paradigm of a persecution complex that is endemic in Mormonism. Don't expect anyone to take you seriously who doesn't share those beliefs if you keep making that an essential component of your arguments. It shouldn't be necessary to go there if the critical arguments you are challenging are self evidently unjustified rationally or lacking evidence. Ad hominem attacks demonising critics as primarily motivated to attack believers from a position of evangelical atheism is really missing the points for most Mormonism adjacent people in trust crisis or communicating clearly about the reasons for that distrust. Mugging those waters is so normalised in our experience living within LDS Mormonism it is incredibly hard to recognise how often we do it and be disciplines enough to remain neutral or on topic in a debate based on rational arguments and evidence. This is why you both get criticised for not having had a "real" face crisis. Needs a review were out long enough or deep enough to really detach from those conflations so you are not seeing Watts lots of us are seeing as we listen to you. It can be a real struggle to fully disentangled from those compromises and adjust our reasoning and language accordingly. I am not saying that your experience of crisis was not real or very unsettling for you. At any stage it is a bombshell that's there are lots of people still out living in the nuclear winter who have not scurried back into the bombs shelter and their perspective and needs are going to be quite different to yours. They are facing up to things you are choosing to ignore or diminish as significant.
Well, lost my comment halfway through. I will just leave it at this then: if Brett McDonald's LDS Truth Claims series represents the best case for LDS truth claims, then the Light and Truth Letter is somewhere on the other end of that quality spectrum. At best, Austin's arguments get to a tu quoque fallacy, but it's honestly worse than that.
Light and Truth letter has shown some light on the CES letter. I had no idea Jeremy's Faith Crisis Letter®had so many holes in it. I took it at complete face value, as many of us did. I began to put my shelf back together when I found out that Jeremy lied---he wrote it not for a CES director like he said, but for his children. Besides, I always believed in God and Jesus, even though Jeremy doesn't anymore and wants you to not believe in God. Church history has bad and good parts in it. I wish some aspects were different. But the Light and Truth letter is a great resource to combat the many lies and deceptions in the Jeremy's Faith Crisis Letter®
This is my recollection. Jeremy’s grandfather knew the CES director. His grandfather asked Jeremy to write down his questions and concerns in a letter to be given to the director. Listen to the episode of John Dehlin’s Mormon Stories where Jeremy explains how the letter was generated. The CES director never responded to Jeremy’s questions.
RFM had an episode last night that carefully showed how this author had manipulated the data. It was quite compelling that he is not a trustworthy source.
Austin doesn’t deserve the slander he’s getting from RFM and Kolby They obviously feel that their positions are threatened by the letter’s mere existence and are trying everything they can to tear it down even to the point of claiming Austin never had a faith crisis. That was the moment I lost all respect for Kolby (not that I had any to begin) and he became yet another toxic psudeointeluctual critic with nothing new or nothing valuable to say. A literal npc with the same programmed dialogue.
My perspective offering an explanation for the 'never had a faith crisis' idea is that there is a category of people who have a small wobble and think it's a full-blown crisis because it was disturbing to them but they quickly return to accepting irrational logical fallacy arguments as enough of an explanation to keep them active and faithful to the leadership. You see similar things going on with the "Faith is not Blind" project of the Hafens. The reason many of us are unimpressed is that if you really engage with all the evidence of the leaders lying and obvious logical fallacies, which the Light and Truth letter is riddled with from chapter 1, and I say that having read it for myself, not relying on other people's opinions, it is impossible to go back to that level of irrational mental gymnastics and ignoring evidence. If this project really wants to reach the vast majority of people who have left the church because of the lies and mental gymnastics and logical fallacies, it has no credibility by deploying all those same tactics to try and convince them to come back. It is going to be an epic fail for most of the people the LDS church needs to find a way to be relevant and credible to again if it wants to survive. It's fundamental weakness is that it brings salad tongues to a knife fight intellectually and is the hopefully sincere but unfortunately inexperienced and naive effort of a well-meaning amateur who has not really engaged fully enough with these issues to recognise its own logical errors. And how closely it replicates the Church's censorship and careful avoidance of the full scale of damming evidence. You need to 'Steel man' your opponent's strongest arguments to be convincing rather than playing all the same week manipulation tactics too many apologies have relied upon and thus failed to have much impact on the exodus of church member leaving. That's why not mentioning things like the SEC fine is such a significant omission. It has become the most powerful evidence of the first Presidency financial corruption so there is no way you are addressing criticisms about their financial management honestly if you leave it out. Should this not be obvious?
@@mormoncivilwar6189 "the first Presidency financial corruption" Getting a fine does not denote corruption. It's the investing equivalent of traffic ticket. Had they manipulated the market or unjustly enriched themselves then we can talk about corruption, but your comment is really just a bunch of blustering and posturing at this point.
@@jacobmayberry3566. ... which is why you really don't seem to understand the seriousness of this and why it has contributed to even more people leaving the Church in disgust after decades of loyal service to it. Have you read the SEC report? This was a lot more than the equivalent of a parking ticket. The whole point of the Securities and Exchange Commission is that investment portfolios and who owns them should be declared to them so that if an entity with large holdings suddenly starts selling, the kind of thing that triggered the Wall Street Crash, everyone needs to know who it is and why they are doing it otherwise it does destabilise the market. The LDS Church is one of the largest investors in Wall Street. The First Presidency repeatedly over several years despite warnings that it was illegal, which they knew anyway without needing to be told by other lawyers, chose not to follow those laws and instead disguised their investments in 13 shell companies and leaned on their employees in the church office building to pretend to be their managers living in different states and controlling those funds. Their overriding motivation, as they conceded in the SEC statement and the Ensign Peak fund Manager admitted to Wall Street journalists, was to deceive all the Church members so that we would not find out how much of the tithing they were hoarding and not spending on the Church. They were enriching themselves as the rulers and owners of all those funds in the corporate sole ultimately owned by the President of the Church beyond most people's wildest imagination, and paying themselves a significant salary in the top 2% of incomes for the USA from those funds. They DO enrich themselves personally in secrecy far beyond the 'modest stipend' President Hinckley told us all in General Conference is all they they receive from church funds. So they used religious coercion to encourage their employees to break the law and perjure themselves on legal documents as well as failing to honour and uphold the laws designed to prevent another Wall Street crash. In what way is any of that ethically the same as a parking ticket? Specially when it's done by people claiming to be exemplary prophets and apostles of Jesus Christ leading an organisation that demands being honest in all your dealings before having a temple recommend? Just from a legal point of view this is why the First Presidency were specifically condemned and fined by the SEC as well as the Ensign Peak managers. I find it amazing how quickly Latter-day Saints throw all their usual morals and scruples out of the window when they scramble to defend their general authorities doing things they would be excommunicated by them for doing if it was church funds THEY were managing. According to the general handbook and Doctrine and Covenants the First Presidency should have been put on trial and probably excommunicated as soon it was discovered they were doing this and breaking the law and bringing the Church into disrepute while holding a prominent position.
I have seen this from many ex-members and especially he ex-mo celebrities. When someone has a faith crisis then eventually comes back to church, the ex-member podcasters usually take offense to that. It's easy for RFM to feel resentment for someone who comes back to the fold. It's like RFM making a fake sunday school channel LOL
@@mormoncivilwar6189The thing about the SEC fraud is that it went on for 20 years and the church admitted it was fraud, not a mistake - conscious fraud. Most of my LDS family do not care at all. There is literally nothing the church could do to have them question their faith. It’s similar to my Catholic parents. They would NEVER reject their faith no matter the level of Catholic scandals and deception. For many this CES letter vs Light and Truth letter discussion is really meaningless for the majority of the faithful members.
Nah, that was a fine use of the word trivialize. And come on... just let us have our own beliefs. Seriously. No need for hate or hostility, right or wrong.
This idea that if the church was good no one would leave is a pretty ridiculous standard. Pretty much every organization on earth has people who leave, including super good ones
I'm literally everywhere right now on UA-cam 😅
Thanks for having me on Stephen!
Haha just the most famous guy right now
Your mahujah reference in the your letter is incorrect. You state mahujah shows up in the book of giants. It doesn’t. It’s mahawai or mahaway. Yes, it’s still similar but your letter shows an exact match with the book of Moses which isn’t the case. Colby Townsend has an excellent rebuttal on the similarities.
Thanks!
Murph is an excellent interviewer!! Love this channel! ❤
Agreed, Murph is a future Christian ❤ 🙏
@@mikespage0123 he is a Christian 😉
I hour 6 minutes in... John Dehlin did not create the problem he offers life coaching or Mormon stories space and support to her address! Do you genuinely think people would not be having trust crisis and leaving in huge numbers if it wasn't for the existence of critics of the Church? Come on guys!
Usually I can relate to a faith crisis. This one I don't relate to, it's still confusing
Went to grade school with Jeffrey Thayne. Wish I knew him better back when. Also, Mormon Christianity by the late Catholic Theologian Stephen Webb is compelling from a non-LDS perspective
Great episode!
1:19:00 I thought I would leave this alone, but I feel compelled to push back here. Look, I agree, if a critic is using these sorts of flimsy connections, that needs to be called out. This is why I aim for minimalism in making the naturalistic case when I do that. But, I've listened through and responded to multiple videos now on temple and Masonry, and the Book of Enoch, and BoM apologetics, and I've said many times that this is exactly what the apologists are doing. I found this part of the conversation deeply frustrating because of that.
Yes, the BoM is unusual. Joseph Smith was unusual. But unusual or anomalous does not equal true or miraculous. In many ways, the BoM is also completely what one might expect. Certainly, there were others at the time that were doing things that captured at least parts of what Joseph was doing. Joseph and Mormonism just happened to be a convergence point where all those things came together in a way that was successful and survived. It's not common that that happens, but history is replete with similar stories.
When I no longer believed, what you described is how I felt. I appreciate your comment because it doesn't dismiss how rare or unusual the circumstances of the Book of Mormon are. For a non believer the Book of Mormon is just a set of fortuitous circumstances that came together in a miraculous, albeit natural way. For a believer it was a miracle in a divine sort of way. Thanks for watching!
I'd like to hear Austin's response to RFM's claim that the light and truth letter does not address the SEC fine on the church and ensign peak
@@kraniodesign4555 I’ve asked Austin directly. He dodged it, so you can expect the same.
@mikespage0123 why am I not surprised?
RFMs response to that section by using a red herring (SEC fine) means he grossly misunderstands the purpose of the letter. It's a long letter so I don't blame him for having not read it yet but he clearly hasn't.
But let's say I address the SEC fine directly and brilliantly in the 2nd edition, will that mean RFM and his audience will come back to church?
Or will there be an endless list whataboutisms they to bring up next?
@@LightandTruthLetterthanks for answering my post! And I think you are absolutely right. there is no respone you can give that would get his audince (me included) to return to the church. Is it fair to say the purpose of the letter is to give current members reasons to stay in the church?
@@LightandTruthLetter I’m sure they’d appreciate you tackling issues affecting the church head on instead of dodging them as you just did here again 🤣
The CES letter was partly a letter of questions that the author was getting from investigators on his mission. Many of the questions had answers (like I was told) along the lines of “those are anti Mormon lies”. Those lies as it turned out were true as verified when the Gospel Topic Essays were issued AFTER the CES letter. It’s why many in my extended LDS family left the church. The church simply lied to us.
Amen. Congrats to your family that left. 👏
1:38:18 as a never Mormon I’m sure the plates existed but where are they? The proposition that they were taken back to heaven is very convenient. It means they could not be examined by the scientific community (like the kinderhook plates)
I've also wondered if they were made by Joseph Smith and not returned to an angel where are they? Buried somewhere or in the church's possession. If not returned to an angel where'd they go
@ I don’t know. Maybe he destroyed them. Maybe he buried them. I do think the metal plates existed. As someone who has never been LDS, the story of the plates being taken back to heaven is highly suspicious. To me it screams obvious fraud. I came from a very Catholic background and there are so many suspicious Catholic miracle accounts, it’s mind boggling. I grew up being taught that every single Catholic miracle account was 100% true. Once I entered young adulthood I put on my skepticism hat and I’ve worn it ever since…. for all religions. Also, I simply don’t possess the religious or spirituality gene like my parents and 1/2 my siblings. Lastly I truly appreciate you, your show, and your willingness to see both sides.
Just joining after having watched RFM and kolby. Time to speak to the criticisms cause they are verifiable.
don’t hold your breath. they are afraid of legitimate criticism
Did I miss something? I got through 45 minutes and didn't feel like they'd said much of substance. Was there something else later that I didn't get to?
I've noticed a pretty crazy trend in the comments section
The people who largely already agree with The Light and Truth Letter think it's fantastic and holds up really well
The people who largely disagree with The Light and Truth Letter think it's horrible and easily debunked.
Correct. I figured it would happen. I'm curious over time how it impacts someone with an open mind. So far the feedback from that group is fairly positive.
@@LightandTruthLetterthe sheep love it 😂
@@mikespage0123 sheep love the CES letter. See how this works?
Austin, I haven't yet read your letter so I'll have to do that, but just last night I was watching the Mormonism Live episode about you where Kolby Reddish implied that you never went through a faith crisis. As someone who went through a deconversion similar to what you described here, I think they're completely wrong (and I'm still exmo).
Yeah they do that to anyone who comes back.
@@MormonAuditor congrats on your escape from Mormonism ❤️
@@mikespage0123 youre acting like a real tool in these comments. My religion isn't anything that needs to be escaped from.
It's a strange tactic for sure.
Though we do it in the Church too. "They must have never actually believed." Or "They just wanted to sin." It's a coping mechanism for anyone who doesn't agree with you.
@@jacobmayberry1126 that’s mature of you 🤣 can I introduce you to the real Jesus? ❤️ you just don’t like being caught in a false religion, it’s embarrassing for you I’m sure
One hour 14 minutes in. You do not have to abandon a belief in God in order to apply rational analysis to whether or not the Book of Mormon is credible. If there is a naturalistic explanation whereby, as Terryl Givens put it, Joseph Smith is an "inspired synchretist" harvesting ideas and language from different sources he has read, particularly the king James Bible, when composing the Book of Mormon, then those ideas still need to be looked at entirely on their own merits to determine if they are credible.
People who believe in God should do this for any book of scripture or religious truth claim since there are thousands of those in the world and they do not all agree with each other. This was another example of how dismissing criticism on the basis that "this church and its version of God are true and you should never ignore that when engaging in critical analysis" self sabotages rationally. You are muddying and confusing and conflating things that should not have anything to do with each other if you are seriously engaging in critical analysis and rebutting critical analysis of evidence.
Labelling your critics as unbelievers, lazy learners or deceived by Satan like President Nelson does, and both of you do this repeatedly throughout this conversation either directly or by implication, unfortunately discredits you and means you are ineffective in making sense or being convincing.
You are apologists engaging with rational critical and analysis of your church's truth claims and the evidence or you are propagandists bearing testimony of something you believe within the paradigm of a persecution complex that is endemic in Mormonism. Don't expect anyone to take you seriously who doesn't share those beliefs if you keep making that an essential component of your arguments.
It shouldn't be necessary to go there if the critical arguments you are challenging are self evidently unjustified rationally or lacking evidence. Ad hominem attacks demonising critics as primarily motivated to attack believers from a position of evangelical atheism is really missing the points for most Mormonism adjacent people in trust crisis or communicating clearly about the reasons for that distrust. Mugging those waters is so normalised in our experience living within LDS Mormonism it is incredibly hard to recognise how often we do it and be disciplines enough to remain neutral or on topic in a debate based on rational arguments and evidence. This is why you both get criticised for not having had a "real" face crisis. Needs a review were out long enough or deep enough to really detach from those conflations so you are not seeing Watts lots of us are seeing as we listen to you. It can be a real struggle to fully disentangled from those compromises and adjust our reasoning and language accordingly.
I am not saying that your experience of crisis was not real or very unsettling for you. At any stage it is a bombshell that's there are lots of people still out living in the nuclear winter who have not scurried back into the bombs shelter and their perspective and needs are going to be quite different to yours. They are facing up to things you are choosing to ignore or diminish as significant.
Well, lost my comment halfway through. I will just leave it at this then: if Brett McDonald's LDS Truth Claims series represents the best case for LDS truth claims, then the Light and Truth Letter is somewhere on the other end of that quality spectrum. At best, Austin's arguments get to a tu quoque fallacy, but it's honestly worse than that.
Light and Truth letter has shown some light on the CES letter. I had no idea Jeremy's Faith Crisis Letter®had so many holes in it. I took it at complete face value, as many of us did. I began to put my shelf back together when I found out that Jeremy lied---he wrote it not for a CES director like he said, but for his children. Besides, I always believed in God and Jesus, even though Jeremy doesn't anymore and wants you to not believe in God. Church history has bad and good parts in it. I wish some aspects were different. But the Light and Truth letter is a great resource to combat the many lies and deceptions in the Jeremy's Faith Crisis Letter®
Awesome, thanks!
How has this “lie” impacted your faith?
This is my recollection. Jeremy’s grandfather knew the CES director. His grandfather asked Jeremy to write down his questions and concerns in a letter to be given to the director. Listen to the episode of John Dehlin’s Mormon Stories where Jeremy explains how the letter was generated. The CES director never responded to Jeremy’s questions.
@@Zeett09 I’m still waiting for a logical explanation as to how that being “a lie” impacted someone’s faith.
Great discussion, guys.
Thanks for watching! 🫡
Hopefully you’re putting it on Audible?
Eventually yes! Right now I'm uploading chapter by chapter to UA-cam.
RFM had an episode last night that carefully showed how this author had manipulated the data. It was quite compelling that he is not a trustworthy source.
💯 Totally agree. Crazy others can’t see that or refuse to listen to the truth. But that’s Mormonism in a nutshell 😂
I'll have to check it out. Not sure he would draw that conclusion from chapter 1.
Chapter 1 doesn't cite "data". It's about fallacies.
And ward radio had an episode on how rfm manipulated his data! You believe what you want to!
Austin doesn’t deserve the slander he’s getting from RFM and Kolby They obviously feel that their positions are threatened by the letter’s mere existence and are trying everything they can to tear it down even to the point of claiming Austin never had a faith crisis. That was the moment I lost all respect for Kolby (not that I had any to begin) and he became yet another toxic psudeointeluctual critic with nothing new or nothing valuable to say. A literal npc with the same programmed dialogue.
My perspective offering an explanation for the 'never had a faith crisis' idea is that there is a category of people who have a small wobble and think it's a full-blown crisis because it was disturbing to them but they quickly return to accepting irrational logical fallacy arguments as enough of an explanation to keep them active and faithful to the leadership.
You see similar things going on with the "Faith is not Blind" project of the Hafens. The reason many of us are unimpressed is that if you really engage with all the evidence of the leaders lying and obvious logical fallacies, which the Light and Truth letter is riddled with from chapter 1, and I say that having read it for myself, not relying on other people's opinions, it is impossible to go back to that level of irrational mental gymnastics and ignoring evidence.
If this project really wants to reach the vast majority of people who have left the church because of the lies and mental gymnastics and logical fallacies, it has no credibility by deploying all those same tactics to try and convince them to come back.
It is going to be an epic fail for most of the people the LDS church needs to find a way to be relevant and credible to again if it wants to survive.
It's fundamental weakness is that it brings salad tongues to a knife fight intellectually and is the hopefully sincere but unfortunately inexperienced and naive effort of a well-meaning amateur who has not really engaged fully enough with these issues to recognise its own logical errors. And how closely it replicates the Church's censorship and careful avoidance of the full scale of damming evidence.
You need to 'Steel man' your opponent's strongest arguments to be convincing rather than playing all the same week manipulation tactics too many apologies have relied upon and thus failed to have much impact on the exodus of church member leaving. That's why not mentioning things like the SEC fine is such a significant omission. It has become the most powerful evidence of the first Presidency financial corruption so there is no way you are addressing criticisms about their financial management honestly if you leave it out. Should this not be obvious?
@@mormoncivilwar6189 "the first Presidency financial corruption"
Getting a fine does not denote corruption. It's the investing equivalent of traffic ticket.
Had they manipulated the market or unjustly enriched themselves then we can talk about corruption, but your comment is really just a bunch of blustering and posturing at this point.
@@jacobmayberry3566. ... which is why you really don't seem to understand the seriousness of this and why it has contributed to even more people leaving the Church in disgust after decades of loyal service to it. Have you read the SEC report? This was a lot more than the equivalent of a parking ticket.
The whole point of the Securities and Exchange Commission is that investment portfolios and who owns them should be declared to them so that if an entity with large holdings suddenly starts selling, the kind of thing that triggered the Wall Street Crash, everyone needs to know who it is and why they are doing it otherwise it does destabilise the market. The LDS Church is one of the largest investors in Wall Street. The First Presidency repeatedly over several years despite warnings that it was illegal, which they knew anyway without needing to be told by other lawyers, chose not to follow those laws and instead disguised their investments in 13 shell companies and leaned on their employees in the church office building to pretend to be their managers living in different states and controlling those funds.
Their overriding motivation, as they conceded in the SEC statement and the Ensign Peak fund Manager admitted to Wall Street journalists, was to deceive all the Church members so that we would not find out how much of the tithing they were hoarding and not spending on the Church.
They were enriching themselves as the rulers and owners of all those funds in the corporate sole ultimately owned by the President of the Church beyond most people's wildest imagination, and paying themselves a significant salary in the top 2% of incomes for the USA from those funds. They DO enrich themselves personally in secrecy far beyond the 'modest stipend' President Hinckley told us all in General Conference is all they they receive from church funds.
So they used religious coercion to encourage their employees to break the law and perjure themselves on legal documents as well as failing to honour and uphold the laws designed to prevent another Wall Street crash.
In what way is any of that ethically the same as a parking ticket? Specially when it's done by people claiming to be exemplary prophets and apostles of Jesus Christ leading an organisation that demands being honest in all your dealings before having a temple recommend?
Just from a legal point of view this is why the First Presidency were specifically condemned and fined by the SEC as well as the Ensign Peak managers.
I find it amazing how quickly Latter-day Saints throw all their usual morals and scruples out of the window when they scramble to defend their general authorities doing things they would be excommunicated by them for doing if it was church funds THEY were managing.
According to the general handbook and Doctrine and Covenants the First Presidency should have been put on trial and probably excommunicated as soon it was discovered they were doing this and breaking the law and bringing the Church into disrepute while holding a prominent position.
I have seen this from many ex-members and especially he ex-mo celebrities. When someone has a faith crisis then eventually comes back to church, the ex-member podcasters usually take offense to that. It's easy for RFM to feel resentment for someone who comes back to the fold. It's like RFM making a fake sunday school channel LOL
@@mormoncivilwar6189The thing about the SEC fraud is that it went on for 20 years and the church admitted it was fraud, not a mistake - conscious fraud. Most of my LDS family do not care at all. There is literally nothing the church could do to have them question their faith. It’s similar to my Catholic parents. They would NEVER reject their faith no matter the level of Catholic scandals and deception. For many this CES letter vs Light and Truth letter discussion is really meaningless for the majority of the faithful members.
RFM and Kolby tore this letter to shreds again last night. Embarrassing for the author I’m sure
Umm not really, Mike. Nice try though trying to trivialize the Light and Truth letter.
Have you read it yet? Or are you just echoing what your chosen biased YT channels preach? sincere question btw
@ you clearly didn’t listen or watch their show 🤣 nor do you understand the word trivialize 🤣
Nah, that was a fine use of the word trivialize.
And come on... just let us have our own beliefs. Seriously. No need for hate or hostility, right or wrong.
I don't think he is embarrassed over his own life and beliefs. It's a personal thing.
If the church were so good, nobody would be leaving. Currently, seven out of 10 people who once believed no longer attend. That is not a good metric.
Pretty much every study conducted on the church shows that they retain their members much better than other religions.
so true 💯 Mormons running’ from the church now that they can google more than just LDS org 😂
@@jacobmayberry1126 not if 70% are inactive.
@sdfotodude dude. I've read the studies. There isn't a single one that disagrees with me on this. Which ones have you read?
This idea that if the church was good no one would leave is a pretty ridiculous standard. Pretty much every organization on earth has people who leave, including super good ones