Dr. Kingsfield wrote:If I showed a true believer in Mormonism a video of Joseph Smith having sexual relations with a teenager in a barn while he was claiming to be the prophet, would the video be enough to convince the true believer that Joseph wasn't actually a prophet?
It might. Mormons have been known to leave over information on the Internet. In fact, it doesn't necessarily need to be great information. Mormons often sense something isn't right, and are experts at avoiding "anti-lit". Consider this super great human being who was branch mission leader in an area I was serving in during my mission. Young law student and the cornerstone of the branch. We got along great, as we were both big Hugh Nibley fans. He had a born-again girlfriend who was always giving him anti-lit and taking him to her church. She was really sweet, aside from that. We'd always laugh about her church (speaking in tongues etc.) and laugh about the anti-lit. A couple years later, somebody at the Y told me I needed to write to this guy, because apparently, one of those anti books his GF gave him hit the topic of masonry, and that did him in. Without any further research, he left the church, dumped her (served her right), left school, and left the country to work on a fishing boat or something. Yes indeed, very committed people are known to leave the Church over information. Perhaps you meant apologists? DCP or John Gee as examples who would never leave no matter what? That's possible. Maybe all of us are just like DCP?
Now, you did provide a good example from Mormonism. No matter what videos of Joseph Smith's escapades with girls one might show to the senior apologists, they would not be convince that he wasn't a prophet.
I'm looking for the equivalent scenario here. Did one of these posters you think highly of offer evidence for their claims that rose to the level of a video tape of Joseph Smith abusing young girls, and we were unable to accept it?
A random issue, tell me if this is about right: Just like the apologists will never accept Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet based on video tape evidence of Joseph Smith's sexcapades, the woke liberals here in SP will never accept that the election was stolen, even if vans full of fake Biden ballots were recovered and video evidence of fraudsters filling in fake names by the tens of thousands were produced.
Social distancing has likely already begun to flatten the curve...Continue to research good antivirals and vaccine candidates. Make everyone wear masks. -- J.D. Vance