- Kendall Buchanan on What Can We Learn from Visions of Glory? Part 2: “bhbardo, your questioning the universal applicability of a person’s revelation rings for me. Strange religious experiences are foundational to many people’s connections to God, and being flexible as you’re arguing takes pressure off us for demanding authenticity. RLD, thanks for the comments. Aliens and the gospel _does_ sound fun! The truth is Church members and leaders *alike* wrestle with revelation and uncertainty. Joseph Smith exhibits this throughout D&C (e.g. 46:7). Wilford Woodruff felt inspired to enact the 1890 manifesto, while simultaneously doubting it as a revelation. Jonathan, can you say more about the difference between the urgency of a personal encounter vs. a recorded manifestation?” Feb 1, 09:58
- on What Can We Learn from Visions of Glory? Part 2: “I suspect that most revelations and visions, including canonized ones, including the first vision, only give us an infinitesimal glimpse. And the light from that sliver, we necessarily perceive it according to our own understandings and dispositions. It may feel so real, that we assume it must be universal and want to proclaim it far and wide, when really it’s tailored to us, to help us learn our next line or precept. I can believe that none of the descriptions in D&C 130 are literal, while still believing that they are true and finding meaning and learning. Sometimes, to our peril, we forget the nature of symbolism.” Feb 1, 00:03
- on What Can We Learn from Visions of Glory? Part 2: “Translatio imperii culminating in Deseret. Great stuff. RLD, I’d qualify that a bit. If a person is claiming to receive revelation, then it does present an urgent problem of authenticity. But if some form of media claims to record revelation, people are pretty capable of treating it as interesting, while deferring any decision about its authenticity.” Jan 31, 23:36
- on Cutting Edge Latter-day Saint Research, January 2025: “It’s not just this time. There are usually at least a few articles of this type each month. The pattern is pretty noticeable. It’s a real problem that a substantial segment of academic research (and not just about the Church and related topics) is motivated by disdain or even disgust for its subject.” Jan 31, 23:32
- on Cutting Edge Latter-day Saint Research, January 2025: “Yeah, there’s definitely a defect/cooperate game theory dynamic going in some disciplines. In order to advance in those disciplines you have to do that dance, but on the whole the more those disciplines essentially become seminaries for a particular ideological worldview the less relevant they are to the real world, so they’re sort of in a doom spiral.” Jan 31, 15:32
- on Cutting Edge Latter-day Saint Research, January 2025: “Gonna agree with Mark, this batch is not very impressive. I’m just going off the abstracts here, so take it with a grain of salt, but it just seems like…renamings. No new data is being given, things are just being renamed, a new frame imposed. The church is being translated and its attack surfaces made legible to the academic left. Take the first one for instance. The late Elder Holland’s speech backfired, in the author’s interpretation, in part from an “abuse of the power differential”, but I don’t know how any preaching that does not explictly affirm its subject could be distinguished from that. Preaching invariably involves a power differential insofar as the preacher has some degree of authority stemming from institutional or doctrinal structure. Preaching is just getting renamed as a target for deconstruction. The same is true of the “garments also function as a tool of social control that shapes behavior and reinforces conformity around sexuality.” Yes…the garments are explicitly a didactic tool, a reminder of promises made and principles to be kept. Their purpose is to shape behavior and reinforce adherence to a standard, or “conformity” as the authors put it. There isn’t any new content here, just the imposition of a new frame. The authors have renamed the function of garments, using phrasing that marks it as a target for deconstruction. Somehow I don’t think “redefine and disassemble our internal social structures” is what most taxpaying citizens think they’re getting out of the funding deal between academia and the state.” Jan 31, 14:14
- on What Can We Learn from Visions of Glory? Part 2: “Stephen and I must have been writing at the same time and my final parenthetical was not meant to dismiss his question about boundaries. I do think it’s pretty straightforward though. I’m always down to discuss what the gospel tells us about aliens. I could imagine writing a fictional story based on my speculation. You could then evaluate whether you think I got it right. I could even publish it. If told you to keep it quiet, but I’d received a revelation about aliens, you should be skeptical. But it might be true. If you asked me if you could publish my revelation about aliens to the Church and I said yes, you should think “Uh oh, this person either doesn’t understand or doesn’t accept how revelation actually works. I’ll bet his revelation isn’t real anyway.” Real revelation to the Church comes through established channels and follows established procedures. If you think the Holy Ghost is telling you to publish my revelation to the Church, you’re wrong. If I claim a General Authority told me I could publish it to the Church, I’m wrong. Maybe it was a misunderstanding, or maybe I’m being deceptive. In the unlikely event a General Authority actually said it, he didn’t have the authority to do so and it’s still meaningless. Every member of the Church knows, or ought to know, 1) who they can receive revelation for, and 2) who can receive revelation for them. Any purported revelation that breaks those rules, whether it’s personal or something like Visions of Glory, is a mistake. We all make mistakes, even about revelation we receive, and those rules limit the consequences of our mistakes.” Jan 31, 12:01
- on What Can We Learn from Visions of Glory? Part 2: “These stories are certainly relevant to understanding the context of Visions of Glory, but there’s a big difference between a fictional speculative story and a purported revelation. A speculative story invites the reader to evaluate each element of the story for truthfulness. A purported revelation invites the reader to evaluate the revelation itself–who received it, the circumstances of its reception, etc.–and if they accept the revelation as authentic then they accept all of its elements as truth. (This almost shouldn’t have to be said, but the rules for evaluating purported revelation ought to be familiar to every Church member and Visions of Glory obviously breaks them.)” Jan 31, 11:00
- on What Can We Learn from Visions of Glory? Part 2: “This reminds me of a number of quotes. Brigham Young said that before joining Mormonism, he was frustrated with a popular Methodist preacher, Lorenzo Dow, for preaching “only morals” and not mysteries. I found some early quotes on Mormon success on the attracting converts who wanted such things. In his introduction to his publication of John Dee’s secret spirit diary, Meric Casaubon, condemned Dee and Plato for seeing out such mysteries. “Plato’s writings are full of Prodigies, Apparitions of Souls, pains of Hell and Purgatory, Revelations of the gods, and the like.” Aristotle was better “because he did not think that it was the part of the Phylosopher to meddle with those things that no probable reason could be given of.” Joseph Smith was staunchly on the mystery side. “I cannot believe in any of the creeds of the different denominations, because they all have some things in them I cannot subscribe to though all of them have some thruth [sic]. but I want to come up into the presence of God & learn all things but the creeds set up stakes, & say hitherto shalt thou come, & no further.—which I cannot subscribe to.” October 15, 1843 It also reminds me of a conversation I had on my mission with a woman who’d converted a while before and was interested in a book Deseret Book was selling on what the gospel teaches us about aliens. My comp and I weren’t really into it and one of us said something about this not being necessary for salvation. “Don’t tell me that!” she fired back. “That’s why I left the Baptists because they were always saying that.” So … where are the boundaries?” Jan 31, 10:58
- on Cutting Edge Latter-day Saint Research, January 2025: “The speech referenced in the first research article listed here greatly influenced how I perceive leaders of the church. They went from better than the rest of us to just like the rest of us in my mind.” Jan 31, 07:25
