- Chad Nielsen on Susa Young Gates and Joseph F. Smith’s Vision: “That makes sense. I could see Joseph Fielding Smith either having his memory blur and compress the time or him reducing the time to make sure the revelation was seen as accurate by being recorded closer to the time that the vision actually happened.” Nov 29, 14:59
- on Susa Young Gates and Joseph F. Smith’s Vision: “In the 1938 publication of “The Life of Joseph F. Smith” written by Pres. Joseph Fielding Smith, he wrote on page 466 that the revelation was “written immediately” following conference. I am guessing but whoever wrote the heading for section 138 assumed that, because, it was his son who wrote the book and wrote the dictated revelation that it was correct but in hindsight maybe as you say “immediately” was actually 2 weeks after conference.” Nov 29, 13:39
- on Susa Young Gates and Joseph F. Smith’s Vision: “The Revelations in Contexts book indicates that Joseph Fielding Smith wrote down his father’s dictation 10 days after the conference, which probably goes along better with Joseph Fielding Smith’s journal. My guess is that the section heading has an error (or at least stretched the meaning of “immediately”). If that is the case, I’d be interested to look into how early that was included with publications of the vision.” Nov 29, 12:13
- on Susa Young Gates and Joseph F. Smith’s Vision: “Something i’ve wondered about this revelation is when it was written down. It says it was received on the 3rd of Oct. then in the heading of Section 138 it says it was “written immediately” following the General Conference. All well and good except that then Elder Joseph Fielding Smith wrote in his diary for the 17th of Oct. “I was at the temple in Council Meeting as usual. In the afternoon I wrote, at my father’s dictation, a revelation or vision, he received, on the 3rd”. It sounds like Elder Smith didn’t know anything about this until the 17th but who wrote it down “immediately” following conference? Were their two copies made? but why dictate it again on the 17th if it was written down immediately following conference on the 3rd? I know too it was presented at the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles meeting on the 31st and that is well attested. I’d be interested to find out when it was written down.” Nov 29, 12:00
- on Ancient Christians: An Introduction for Latter-day Saints: “That’s a good question, Jonathan. They don’t spend a lot of time addressing that in this volume (focusing mostly on what things ancient Christians said or did without delving into specific judgements about what was apostasy and what wasn’t). When they did bring it up, it was mostly along the lines of saying that the Restoration includes things “never before revealed”, so we can’t expect everything that we have today to be found in antiquity. They also note that even with Great Apostasy being a thing, we should approach early Christians with charity and acknowledge that most of them were doing the best they could with what they had and that we are indebted to them for keeping the flame of Christianity alight across the centuries and putting in a lot of the hard work into understanding the gospel and scriptures. So again, avoiding judgement calls while honoring the good things that came out of the first few centuries of Christianity. To some degree, I suspect that since several of the authors were involved in Standing Apart, they let that book speak to the subject of aligning their research with the existence of the Great Apostasy in a way that makes sense within the Church.” Nov 29, 09:09
- on Ancient Christians: An Introduction for Latter-day Saints: “Chad, thanks for the review. Beyond how the authors treat early Christianity, how do they treat the church’s teachings on a historical general apostasy? I assume there are a range of approaches, but I’m curious what the range is.” Nov 29, 07:19
- on If I Didn’t Believe, Part III: Living a Non-Latter-day Saint Life: “People marrying later means they’re single longer, and thus there are more single people. There’s a nice visualization down the page a bit at: https://www.businessinsider.com/average-marriage-age-united-states-2019-2 (Apologies if that doesn’t turn into a link–not sure how to do that here.) It shows the percent married at least once by age. In 1962 80% of 25-year-olds had been married; in 2019 it’s not 80% until over 40. But by age 60 the percentages are pretty close to the same. People are spending a smaller proportion of their lives married, which is tragic, but the proportion that gets married eventually is still very high. Of course there’s no guarantee that 80% of 2019’s 25-year-olds will have been married by a little past 40–there are definitely cohort effects as well as life cycle effects here. But the life cycle effects are big and explain a lot of the trends Stephen C posted.” Nov 28, 19:21
- on If I Didn’t Believe, Part III: Living a Non-Latter-day Saint Life: “Marriage is dying: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/unmarried-single-americans-week.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/unmarried-single-americans-week.html While people in surveys still say that they want to eventually get married, it’s fallen pretty low in the list of rank ordered life priorities, whereas religious people are consistently much more likely to get married and have kids, so yes, I think the secularization of society does lead to more non-white picket fence living arrangements. I suspect that the lower divorce rate is a selection effect as more and more the people getting married are the ones for whom the conventional marriage situation is a natural fit.” Nov 28, 12:33
- on Antipus, a Forgotten Hero: “I’ll take your word for it (over any one else’s) as to how things line up demographically. The way you describe the spread of those languages seems like the most natural thing in the world. If you were talking about finding these language elements in Tierra del Fuego or the Aleutian Islands it’d still be interesting–though we might be scratching our heads wondering how they got there. But where they *do* show up constitutes a gigantic hit, IMO.” Nov 28, 12:15
- on If I Didn’t Believe, Part III: Living a Non-Latter-day Saint Life: “Stephen, Yes–that’s why I think the only way to see the harm from a secular perspective is across generations–at least in the West, that is. Now that we have, among other things, a 40% fatherless rate (in the U.S.) we’re actually beginning to believe — in some quarters — that not all of the liberating philosophies of the sexual revolution are healthy. RLD, I agree–there does seem to be a resurgence of the idea that “marriage is cool.” I love it! Even so, I think we also need to keep in mind that fewer people are getting married–and that may account, in some measure, for lower divorce rates.” Nov 28, 11:51