FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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Category:An Insider's View of Mormon Origins
Responses to claims made in Grant Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins.
Pages in category "An Insider's View of Mormon Origins"
The following 154 pages are in this category, out of 154 total.
D
- Dallin H. Oaks (1987): "It should be recognized that such tools as the Urim and Thummim, the Liahona, seerstones, and other articles have been used appropriately in biblical, Book of Mormon, and modern times"
- David Whitmer (1884): "I saw with these eyes and I heard with these ears"
- David Whitmer (1887): "We were in the spirit when we had the view...but we were in the body also"
- Dr. Wendy Ulrich (2005): "How do the goosebumps and tearfulness I experience when someone speaks in a testimony meeting differ from the goosebumps and tearfulness I experience when the 4:00 parade begins at Disneyland?"
G
- Gospel Topics on LDS.org: "Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham"
- Gospel Topics on LDS.org: "Some evidence suggests that Joseph studied the characters on the Egyptian papyri and attempted to learn the Egyptian language"
- Gospel Topics: "During the first two decades of the Church’s existence, a few black men were ordained to the priesthood"
- Gospel Topics: "the Bible mentions other physical instruments used to access God’s power: the rod of Aaron, a brass serpent, holy anointing oils, the Ark of the Covenant, and even dirt from the ground mixed with saliva"
- Gospel Topics: "The Book of Mormon...does not claim that the peoples it describes were either the predominant or the exclusive inhabitants of the lands they occupied"
M
P
- Painesville Telegraph (1830): "Cowdry claims that he and his associates are the only persons on earth who are qualified to administer in his name. By this authority, they proclaim to the world"
- Painesville Telegraph (1830): "The name of the person here, who pretends to have a divine mission, and to have seen and conversed with Angels, is Cowdray"
- Painesville Telegraph (1831): Martin Harris said that "He had seen and handled them all"
- Preach My Gospel: "As you pray for inspiration, you should also confirm your feelings...Certainly the Spirit of the Lord can bring strong emotional feelings, including tears, but that outward manifestation ought not to be confused with the presence of the
Q
- Question: Are there any eyewitness accounts of the events that resulted in the trip to Canada to sell the Book of Mormon copyright?
- Question: Are there any known parallels between elements of Joseph's interpretation of Facsimile 3 with other ancient texts?
- Question: Could Joseph Smith have used Ethan Smith's ''View of the Hebrews'' as a guideline for creating the Book of Mormon?
- Question: Did B.H. Roberts lose his faith in the Church and the Book of Mormon?
- Question: Did B.H. Roberts state that it was possible for Joseph Smith to have come up with the Book of Mormon on his own?
- Question: Did John Whitmer, one of the Eight Witnesses, actually say that he saw the plates by a "supernatural power"?
- Question: Did Joseph attempt to translate the Kinderhook Plates using the "gift and power of God?"
- Question: Did Joseph Smith attempt to translate the Kinderhook Plates?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith become a baptized member of the Baptist Church in 1822?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith become a member of the Methodist Church while he was translating the Book of Mormon?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith begin his prophetic career with a "trinitarian" idea of God?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith change his stated motivation for praying in later years after he received the First Vision?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith confer the priesthood on several black men?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith create the story of Nephi and Laban by plagiarizing concepts and phrases from the story of Judith and Holofernes in the Apocrypha?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith decide that all churches were wrong before he received the First Vision?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith develop the story of Moroni's visit based upon information contained in the story ''The Golden Pot''?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith incorporate his father's dream of the tree of life into the Book of Mormon?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith join the Methodist, Presbyterian, or Baptist churches between 1820 and 1830 despite the claim made in his 1838 history that he was forbidden by Deity from joining any denomination?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith join the Presbyterian Church after the First Vision?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith misidentify a Greek "psalter" as a containing "reformed Egyptian" hieroglyphics?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith place his seer stone in his hat while looking for lost objects?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith revise his account of the First Vision in 1838 to respond to a leadership crisis?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith say that viewing the gold plates would result in death?
- Question: Did Joseph Smith simply conflate elements of the 1818 and 1824-25 revivals in his story of the First Vision?
- Question: Did Martin Harris claim that he only saw the gold plates as they were covered "as a city through a mountain"?
- Question: Did Martin Harris tell people that he did not see the plates with his natural eyes, but rather the "eye of faith"?
- Question: Did Martin Harris tell people that he only saw the plates with his "spiritual eye"?
- Question: Did Oliver Cowdery "neglect to mention" that Joseph Smith consulted a Bible during the Book of Mormon translation process?
- Question: Did Oliver Cowdery state that Joseph did not know if a "supreme being" existed in 1823?
- Question: Did the story of Moroni's visit to Joseph Smith evolve from that of a magical spiritual treasure guardian to an "angel"?
- Question: Did the three witnesses's experience of seeing the plates and the angel take place only in their minds?
- Question: Did William Smith claim that a religious revival led to the Joseph's "first vision" of an angel in 1823?
- Question: Do all other religions confirm their beliefs through spiritual witness?
- Question: Do Latter-day Saints diminish the importance of Jesus Christ and His atonement?
- Question: Do Latter-day Saints discount the spiritual witnesses that members of other religions may receive?
- Question: Do Martin Harris's statements related to the "spiritual eye" or "eye of faith" contradict the reality of his witness?
- Question: Do Mormons believe that other religions can be inspired by God?
- Question: Does the belief by the witnesses that the experience had visionary qualities contradict the claim that the Book of Mormon plates were real?
- Question: Does the Book of Mormon plagiarize the King James Bible?
- Question: Have any relationships been found between New World languages and Hebrew?
- Question: How can the Book of Mormon contain the "fulness of the Gospel" if it does not speak of ordinances such as baptism for the dead or celestial marriage?
- Question: How can you know if an answer to prayer, a personal revelation, is true?
- Question: How can you know if your answer to prayer, your personal revelation, is true?
- Question: How could Joseph Smith come to the conclusion that all churches were wrong on his own?
- Question: How did Joseph Smith use his seer stones as a youth?
- Question: How exactly did Joseph Smith translate the gold plates?
- Question: How is it possible that there were three days of darkness in the New World and not in the Old World?
- Question: How long did the Church know about the papyri before they published information about them?
- Question: How much did the gold plates weigh?
- Question: How reliable are the accounts of the discovery of Zelph?
- Question: If the Joseph Smith Translation (JST) is Joseph Smith's 'correction' of Biblical errors, why do these corrections not match known Biblical manuscripts?
- Question: Is a "burning in the bosom" simply a subjective, emotion-based, unreliable way to practice self-deception?
- Question: Is a man unreliable because he lived in the 19th-Century?
- Question: Is finding links between Hebrew and ancient American languages realistic?
- Question: Is Joseph Smith papyri Facsimile 1 common and similar to other such scenes?
- Question: Is original sin a biblical doctrine?
- Question: Is prayer the only element required in the determination of truth?
- Question: Is someone unreliable because they practiced "treasure hunting" and believed in the use of seer stones to find lost objects?
- Question: Is the Church trying to hide something through its use of artwork?
- Question: Is the concept of "original sin" part of all Christian theology?
- Question: Is there a cave in the Hill Cumorah containing the Nephite records?
- 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?
- Question: Of what did the Strangite witnesses testify?
- Question: Was Bishop M'Kendree, a Methodist revivalist preacher, the model for King Benjamin in the Book of Mormon?
- Question: Was Joseph Smith afraid to reproduce the text of the lost 116 pages of Book of Mormon manuscript because he could not do so?
- Question: Was Joseph Smith aware that the date of the autumnal equinox was somehow significant?
- Question: Was the ''View of the Hebrews'' theory of Book of Mormon origin advanced during the lifetime of Joseph Smith?
- Question: Was the Church forthright in identifying the rediscovered papyri prior to their examination by non-LDS Egyptologists?
- Question: Was the fact that the recovery of the Book of Mormon plates occurred on the autumnal equinox somehow significant?
- Question: Was the young Joseph Smith a teller of "tall tales"?
- Question: Were the Isaiah passages in the Book of Mormon simply plagiarized from the King James Bible?
- Question: What about those who pray and don't receive a confirmation the Book of Mormon is true?
- Question: What are the criticisms regarding Joseph's interpretation of specific textual elements of Facsimile 3?
- Question: What are the criticisms related to Facsimile 3?
- Question: What are the differences between the Strangite witness statements and those of the Three and Eight Witnesses to the Book of Mormon?
- Question: What are the different levels of knowledge that members may have about Church history?
- Question: What are the Kinderhook Plates?
- Question: What are the Kirtland Egyptian Papers?
- Question: What authorship theories are proposed by non-believers to account for the authorship of the Book of Mormon?
- Question: What criticisms are put forth regarding the restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood?
- Question: What criticisms are related to Oliver Cowdery's 1834-1835 history of the Church?
- Question: What did B.H. Roberts say about ''View of the Hebrews'' and the Book of Mormon?
- Question: What did David Whitmer's associates say about his character?
- Question: What did Martin Harris's non-Mormon associates say about his character?
- Question: What did Oliver Cowdery's associates say about his character?
- Question: What did Peter Ingersoll claim about Joseph Smith in the Hurlbut affidavits?
- Question: What did the Book of Mormon witnesses mean when they used the word "supernatural" to describe their experiences?
- Question: What did the Church announce in 1968 when the Joseph Smith papyri fragments were discovered?
- Question: What did Willard Chase claim about Joseph Smith in the Hurlbut affidavits?
- Question: What do we know about the origin of the priesthood ban on Church members of African descent?
- Question: What does it mean when it is said that the Book of Mormon contains the "fulness of the gospel?"
- Question: What does Joseph's attempt to translate the Kinderhook Plates tell us about his "gift of translation?"
- Question: What does the lion couch scene in Book of Abraham Facsimile 1 normally represent?
- Question: What events resulted in Joseph Smith's 1826 court appearance in South Bainbridge?
- Question: What have been the responses to Joseph's interpretations of Facsimile 3?
- Question: What if the "rod of nature" was indeed a physical object such as a divining rod?
- Question: What is "empirical evidence"?
- Question: What is Joseph Smith's 1826 South Bainbridge "trial" for "glasslooking"?
- Question: What is Moroni's promise?
- Question: What is the correct interpretation of Facsimile 3?
- Question: What is the date of the restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood?
- Question: What is the origin of the doctrine of original sin?
- Question: What is the relationship of the Joseph Smith Papyri to the Book of Abraham?
- Question: What is the story of Zelph?
- Question: What material were the plates made from?
- Question: What to Latter-day Saints believe regarding the concept of "original sin"?
- Question: What was Joseph Smith's motivation for going to the grove to pray in 1820?
- Question: What was the appearance of the engravings on the gold plates?
- Question: What was the size of each of the gold plates?
- Question: What was the thickness of each gold plate?
- Question: What was the thickness of the entire volume of gold plates?
- Question: What were the characteristics of the rings which held the gold plates together?
- Question: What were the characteristics of the sealed vs. unsealed portion of the gold plates?
- Question: Who was James Strang?
- Question: Who was Paul H. Dunn and what happened to him?
- Question: Why did Brigham Young initiate the priesthood ban?
- Question: Why did Elder Dunn exaggerate elements of these stories?
- Question: Why did Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer accept Hiram Page's seer stone revelations as authoritative?
- Question: Why did several years pass before Oliver Cowdery talked about the priesthood restoration?
- Question: Why did the Church modify the introduction to the Book of Mormon from "principal ancestors" to "among the ancestors?"
- Question: Why didn't the newspapers in Palmyra take notice of Joseph Smith's First Vision?
- Question: Why doesn't the art match details which have been repeatedly spelled out in Church publications?
- Question: Why is priesthood authority transferred by the "laying on of hands"?
- Question: Why were the gold plates needed at all if they weren't used directly during the translation process?
- Question: Why would "camp meeting" elements appear in the story of King Benjamin's temple speech in the Book of Mormon?
- Question: Why would Martin Harris use the phrases "eye of faith" or "spiritual eye" to describe his visionary experience?
- Question: Would alterations in a different handwriting to the stolen 116 pages of Book of Mormon manuscript have been readily apparent?
- Questions: Are there contemporary witnesses that confirm that Joseph Smith didn't join any church after the First Vision?
S
- Source:David Whitmer:Rebuttal to John Murphy 19 March 1881:EMD 5:69:Which has so long since been published with that book as one of the three witnesses
- Source:Gardner:Joseph the Seer:2009 FAIR Conference:long before golden plates complicated his position as a local seer
- Source:Rediscovering the Book of Mormon:Ch:19:1:Kingship patterns in Mosiah 1-6