- Chad Nielsen on Jonathan Stapley on the Law of Adoption: “To be clear, Sute, I’m not uncomfortable with this doctrine or the fact that Church leaders taught and practiced it. Nor do I feel like pushing doctrines and practices onto Brigham Young accomplishes anything useful for Church members today, since he’s part of our history and line of succession. That’s a big part of my personal frustration with people who try to push polygamy onto Brigham Young instead of Joseph Smith. That being said, there are limitations to what we can say about what Joseph Smith taught and did in several topics that Brigham Young claimed to have learned from Smith. For example, the Adam God doctrine. There are things that we know JS said that created the context in which BY could offer his views on Adam being our God and it fit well enough within Latter-day Saint teachings. But we do not have an unambiguous statement on record that makes it so we can say that JS taught the same doctrine that BY did on the issue. Could JS have? Sure. But we don’t have enough evidence to prove that he did. (My personal opinion is that BY unintentionally exaggerated JS’s teachings on this or took a few logical leaps from what JS said and sincerely thought he was teaching the same as JS.) What I’m saying here is similar. BY claimed to have learned it from JS, but from what I recall, the historical evidence we have available to us to support that is shakey. JS could have, but it’s not clear. I’m fine with it either way and I was not trying to imply that BY was going rogue.” Oct 18, 22:48
- on Jonathan Stapley on the Law of Adoption: “I don’t understand Sute’s accusatory tone. It’s not like Brigham Young failed to innovate doctrines and that everything from Joseph is crystal clear. And the law of adoption is hardly something that would damage Smith’s image.” Oct 18, 21:22
- on Jonathan Stapley on the Law of Adoption: ““Brigham Young claimed he learned it from JS” is weasal language we resort to all to often if we want to pretend JS was Saint while BY was just going rogue. I see no reason to believe that BY didn’t honor and revere JS and would not lie about him. If some of the uncomfortable things BY taught were from Joseph, deal with denying them at your own loss of further light and knowledge.” Oct 18, 20:31
- on Thoughts on Our Polygamy Problems: “Right, I talk about the priesthood ban in the OP too. But racism was common to the culture, but polygamy was not. Bank failures were common, polygamy was not. I think comments on this thread indicate that the religion’s founder implementing of wicked policy that was very much out of step with the larger society calls into question the legitimacy of that founder.” Oct 18, 15:50
- on Thoughts on Our Polygamy Problems: “How about the black priesthood/temple ban? You can either throw God under the bus or paint BY in a bad light. I prefer not to blame God, but the “doctrine” continued until 1972. So there is at least one precedent for overturning a “doctrine” even though it had a long history. Neither JS nor BY were perfect. JS had polygamy, a bank failure, lying to Emma, etc. BY had the black ban, Adam-God, blood atonement, formalizing polygamy, and perhaps MMM. Our leaders, all of them, were flawed.” Oct 18, 15:40
- on Jonathan Stapley on the Law of Adoption: “My memory is that it isn’t clear. As with most things, Brigham Young claimed he learned it from JS, but it was mostly associated with BY.” Oct 18, 15:13
- on Thoughts on Our Polygamy Problems: “Texas, yes, I do see church leaders departing from Joseph Smith’s utopian teachings. Roger, this is one of the points I bring up in the OP and will discuss more later. Are you suggesting that we just pretend that the church presidents from JS to HJ Grant didn’t practice polygamy? That fact makes “moving on” is a real challenge, I’d argue. If JS was a real bad guy for implementing the practice, many would argue that that suggests problems with the church he founded.” Oct 18, 13:53
- on Thoughts on Our Polygamy Problems: “Polygamy was a failed (and/or disastrous) social experiment. Like the United Order. D&C 132 needs to be either edited or deleted. Trying to justify polygamy is a losing proposition. You end up throwing God under the bus, or painting JS in an extremely bad light. As for allowing men to marry more than one woman in the Temple, that practice needs to stop. As for how all this will be sorted out in the post-existence, it’s not worth speculating about. Apologists need to move on.” Oct 18, 12:20
- on Latter-day Saint Fertility Statistics: “There seems to be an underlying assumption that smaller families are bad (or at least a problem). That is only true if the Church is worried about membership numbers or future tithing sources. In today’s America, economic and practical realities make having large families impractical. For example, every child over 16 needs a car to handle their busy schedule of school and extra curricular activities. Particularly, if both parents work. One problem with smaller families is the graying of America and what that does for social safety nets. Half the current Church members live in developing countries. Many are barely eking out an existence. President Oaks needs to be careful about preaching large families for these members. The Church is a global organization and it needs to act like one.” Oct 18, 11:49
