What is "Defending LDS Beliefs"?
The purpose of this website is to provide answers to big questions that Church members face by providing access to reliable information. Most of what I'm going to be doing is providing links to articles/essays that answer the questions satisfactorily to me. Before the links, I will give a little synopsis on the general idea behind the article that I'm linking to. On doctrinal issues, I will be citing scripture.
You could say that this site is a product of the times. With the advent of the Internet, critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have a new, effective medium through which they can disseminate lies, half-truths, and also some very real concerns - but often in a twisted context. I do recognize that not everything ever said or done by Church leaders has been perfect, but I also think that we all can do a better job at understanding the historical context. When that happens, misunderstanding begins to fade.
The Church, as a whole, has a beautiful history. The doctrines restored are majestic and offer salvation equally to all of God's children (whether in this life or the next). The Church's early members (and current members for that matter) were normal people called upon to do an extraordinary work. Sometimes we forget that these early Church members had only been members for a few years at most and had lived their previous adult lives believing and doing other things. Their lives were colorful and complex, just like ours. Complexity can easily be twisted to look bad. Polygamy is a great example of this. It's important to remember that truth is a knowledge of things as they actually are - not just how they can be made to appear (all too often by 2nd, 3rd, and 4th hand accounts).
I don't pretend to have the answer to every nitty-gritty detail about Church history, scripture and doctrine, but I do hope to be able to show you where you can find some good answers to the biggest questions.
*****
Also, some things should be made clear from the get go:
1) Science isn't perfect. As a neuroscience student, nearly every day one of my professors will say something along the lines of, "Just 5 years ago, we taught "X", now we know that "X" is false, so we teach "Y". We simply don't know how everything works. We're human. We often make false assumptions.
2) History isn't perfect either. Just because something wasn't written down until a few years later doesn't mean that it didn't happen. I have a one-and-a-half-year-old son. Have I written about his birth or a single instance of how wonderful he is in my journal yet? No. Has he had a tremendous impact on my life? ABSOLUTELY! Now that I'm thinking of it, I should probably write down some of my experiences before I forget. How ridiculous it would be for a "historian" 200 years down the road to declare that my son was actually born in 2015, not 2013 like I claimed in my journal, and that I just made up the 2013 date for some selfish reason. Yet, critics of the Church say the same thing about historical facts all the time.
3) There is only one source of pure, undefiled knowledge - the Holy Ghost. You can trust what you have felt in the past, and you can trust what you will continue to feel.
4) This site is under construction, so there is more to come soon.
You could say that this site is a product of the times. With the advent of the Internet, critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have a new, effective medium through which they can disseminate lies, half-truths, and also some very real concerns - but often in a twisted context. I do recognize that not everything ever said or done by Church leaders has been perfect, but I also think that we all can do a better job at understanding the historical context. When that happens, misunderstanding begins to fade.
The Church, as a whole, has a beautiful history. The doctrines restored are majestic and offer salvation equally to all of God's children (whether in this life or the next). The Church's early members (and current members for that matter) were normal people called upon to do an extraordinary work. Sometimes we forget that these early Church members had only been members for a few years at most and had lived their previous adult lives believing and doing other things. Their lives were colorful and complex, just like ours. Complexity can easily be twisted to look bad. Polygamy is a great example of this. It's important to remember that truth is a knowledge of things as they actually are - not just how they can be made to appear (all too often by 2nd, 3rd, and 4th hand accounts).
I don't pretend to have the answer to every nitty-gritty detail about Church history, scripture and doctrine, but I do hope to be able to show you where you can find some good answers to the biggest questions.
*****
Also, some things should be made clear from the get go:
1) Science isn't perfect. As a neuroscience student, nearly every day one of my professors will say something along the lines of, "Just 5 years ago, we taught "X", now we know that "X" is false, so we teach "Y". We simply don't know how everything works. We're human. We often make false assumptions.
2) History isn't perfect either. Just because something wasn't written down until a few years later doesn't mean that it didn't happen. I have a one-and-a-half-year-old son. Have I written about his birth or a single instance of how wonderful he is in my journal yet? No. Has he had a tremendous impact on my life? ABSOLUTELY! Now that I'm thinking of it, I should probably write down some of my experiences before I forget. How ridiculous it would be for a "historian" 200 years down the road to declare that my son was actually born in 2015, not 2013 like I claimed in my journal, and that I just made up the 2013 date for some selfish reason. Yet, critics of the Church say the same thing about historical facts all the time.
3) There is only one source of pure, undefiled knowledge - the Holy Ghost. You can trust what you have felt in the past, and you can trust what you will continue to feel.
4) This site is under construction, so there is more to come soon.