“Wise people do not rely on the Internet to diagnose and treat emotional, mental, and physical health challenges, especially life-threatening challenges. Instead, they seek out health experts, those trained and licensed by recognized medical and state boards. Even then, prudent people seek a second opinion.

If that is the sensible course to take in finding answers for emotional, mental, and physical health issues, it is even more so when eternal life is at stake. When something has the potential to threaten our spiritual life, our most precious family relationships, and our membership in the kingdom, we should find thoughtful and faithful Church leaders to help us. And, if necessary, we should ask those with appropriate academic training, experience, and expertise for help.

This is exactly what I do when I need an answer to my own questions that I cannot answer myself. I seek help from my Brethren in the Quorum of the Twelve and from others with expertise in fields of Church history and doctrine.”

1) To me the difference between a witch doctor and a doctor is that the doctor uses methods derived from clinical trials (i.e. scientific evidence) whereas the witch doctor derives his knowledge from personal tutorials from older witch doctors (i.e. not based on science). The medical and state boards enforce medical ethics and standards based on science and impose legal duties towards the patient—to seek the best interest of the patient above other considerations. A witch doctor may be more concerned about offending powerful spirits or maintaining cultural traditions than acting on behalf of the patient. Witch doctors don’t have legal duties towards their patients. At the same time, a witch doctor can often represent the best aspects of a culture and they help interpret things through the lens of that culture in a way that conveys wisdom. Finally, both witch doctors and doctors can unintentionally provide benefit through the placebo effect.

2) So for me:
BoM historicity: –> go with the DNA and archeology experts
Book of Abraham: –> go with the egyptologists
New Testament historicity: –> go with textual critics
Church history: –> go with academic historians

3) However, I take the brethren very seriously when they talk about how to live or how to serve God and my fellow men. I can find inspiration and guidance for how to live my life in the Book of Mormon. I can “follow the Spirit.”

I am still in the tribe if the tribe will have me.

4) I don’t think of the essays as progress, I don’t think anything of importance is being conceded in them. LDS liberals are naive to think so. I believe the brethren are entirely unreconstructed with respect to the issues the essays address.

5) One last quibble from Elder Ballard’s talk, which is a microcosm of the whole situation:

“Phoebe followed the prophet and gathered with the Saints in Ohio and eventually to Utah, where she died a faithful Latter-day Saint and equally yoked as the wife of Church President Wilford Woodruff.”

This sentence should end with

“equally yoked as one of at least 9 wives of Church President Wilford Woodruff.”

The New Testament has a host of problems as well. Read the gospels horizontally comparing and contrasting the various stories and then compare to history. There are many questions that arise such as where exactly was Jesus born? Why was there no census recorded anywhere other than in Luke? Also, the gospels were written in Greek by literate persons. The apostles weren’t literate. So, I don’t think the New Testament will save the church in the long run. It frankly looks like it is myth like the Book of Mormon.

http://boydpetersen.com/2016/03/08/elder-ballard-and-the-retooling-of-ces-pedagogy/

Here is part of his summary paragraph:

The Internet, I believe, has been a historical revolution unlike anything we have seen since the invention of the printing press. We cannot expect pre-Internet methods of teaching to work in the Internet age. I applaud Elder Ballard’s vision of that future. … But it is also the kind of education we need to provide in our Sunday school and priesthood classes. If young people need this kind of honest and faithful curriculum, their parents do too. How else are they going to respond to their children’s questions, doubts, and concerns? How are they going to know not to call into question or report on a something a teacher has said in a seminary or institute class?

@Sara suggested above that she avoids sharing her concerns so as not to infect others with them unnecessarily. Certainly many CES teachers feel the same way. Personally I would see the key as being the possession of credible answers to questions that can be troubling to some people. Raising a concern without having an answer or at least a productive approach to seeking an answer is probably just an act of selfishness. I thought that was one of Ballard’s points: figure these things out yourself, become experts (or find out to whom to turn), and then don’t shy away from entering into these conversations. To go back to the temple example, my wife sees all the standard “problems” some women have with the temple, but she has found answers and perspectives that remove these facts from the narratives that turn them into concerns, leaving them either simply as neutral facts or as empowering evidences of God’s love and respect for his daughters and Wife. The point simply being that nothing is inherently a concern–there are always going to be people with different perspectives who experience things a different way.

I think one of the keys to all of this is a serious consideration of the context that turns some set of facts into a problem. For example, students from a culture that practices polygamy are unlikely to be concerned about that. Accepting that certain facts are inherently problematic is a huge pitfall. “Why is that a concern for some people and not for others” should always be one of the first questions asked in these discussions. Sometimes it will just make the element of concern go away, and other times it will raise important additional questions that can help better identify what the concern is. For example, this line of thinking can reveal underlying misogyny, fundamentalism, and provincialism. Perhaps it would reveal things that we aren’t concerned about that we should be. For example, students may be concerned about hot-button topics like gay marriage, polygamy, and the Book of Abraham but completely unconcerned with poverty, war, or human trafficking. A byproduct of inoculation could conceivably be a better focus on Christian discipleship.

Two Cents (#10), I suspect the term “inoculation” means different things to different people. No doubt Elder Ballard has in mind the idea that early exposure to controversial issues of history and doctrine will make LDS youth less susceptible to the faulty criticisms of the Church that use these controversial issues as a wedge or starting point. I think that is only half the battle, however.

A problem with the oversimplified narrative that has become the standard LDS narrative is that, for those who have internalized it, real LDS history, warts and all, becomes threatening. You can’t really inoculate against real history. The solution to this problem is a reformed and upgraded curriculum that embraces “the best of LDS scholarship,” to use Elder Ballard’s term. I see a reformed and upgraded curriculum as an essential component of the first type of inoculation, properly performed. Unless the curriculum is reformed and upgraded, most LDS teachers and leaders will not have the tools to do the job!

Of course, religion is a topic on which reasonable people can differ. Reasonable Christians who reject Mormonism’s claims and reasonable atheists who reject any form of belief are unlikely to view any discussion of inoculation in the Mormon context as a positive thing. Inoculation is an insider discussion. If one is not, in one sense or another, thinking within Mormonism, the discussion doesn’t make much sense.

No one is saying that we need to be immunized from the truth. Inoculation is more around showing students how the primary version of past events has built up in their minds that church members in the past were always perfect, and that’s very much not true. It’s also showing how we don’t know everything about everything, and while a class of just speculation is bad, periodically walking students through different mind exercises on different possibilities and their explanations and consequences isn’t bad either.

Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young, (1997)

“Mormonism,” so-called, embraces every principle pertaining to life and salvation, for time and eternity. No matter who has it. If the infidel has got truth it belongs to “Mormonism.” The truth and sound doctrine possessed by the sectarian world, and they have a great deal, all belong to this Church. As for their morality, many of them are, morally, just as good as we are. All that is good, lovely, and praiseworthy belongs to this Church and Kingdom. “Mormonism” includes all truth. There is no truth but what belongs to the Gospel. It is life, eternal life; it is bliss; it is the fulness of all things in the gods and in the eternities of the gods (DBY, 3).

I want to say to my friends that we believe in all good. If you can find a truth in heaven, earth or hell, it belongs to our doctrine. We believe it; it is ours; we claim it (DBY, 2).

I agree with Exiled….why must we be inoculated against truth?

Religion in general and Mormonism in particular are forever possible. However, as time marches on, they are more and more improbable.