
FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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[[../Other Concerns & Questions|Other Concerns & Questions]] | A FAIR Analysis of: [[../|Letter to a CES Director]], a work by author: Jeremy Runnells
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CES Letter Response Main Page |
Googling is not a synonym for seeking.
—Steven C. Harper, Joseph Smith's First Vision: A Guide to the Historical Accounts (2012), 11–12
Summary: The author concludes, "FAIR and these unofficial apologists have done more to destroy my testimony than any anti-Mormon source ever could. I found their version of Mormonism to be alien and foreign to the Chapel Mormonism that I grew up in attending Church, seminary, reading scriptures, General Conferences, EFY, mission, and BYU. Their answers are not only contradictory to the scriptures and teachings I learned through correlated Mormonism…they’re truly bizarre."
Jump to details:
FairMormon says... "Googling is not a synonym for seeking." Google is a search engine. It is simply a tool. It is not a source. It is not a destination. It is not a conclusion. Google is the taxi; not the location. It's the phone; not the conversation. This is like saying, "The library is not a synonym for seeking." The library is just a tool or gathering place of books, papers, works, and sources. FairMormon is now perpetuating the general perception and reputation that the Church and its apologists do not want its members to be balanced researchers or to look up information about the Church and its history on Google.
"Google" is a noun. It is the name of the tool used to search the online "library" of information. "Googling," on the other hand, is a conjugation of a commonly used 21st century verb "to google". It is a 21st century euphemism for the verb "to search."
"Library" is a noun. It is the name of a repository of information, not the tool used to search that library. There is no verb "to library." The author's phrase "The library is not a synonym for seeking" is a non-sequitur.
The author states, "When I first discovered that Joseph Smith used a rock in a hat to translate the Book of Mormon, that he was married to 11 other men’s wives, and that the Book of Abraham has absolutely nothing to do with the papyri or facsimiles…I went into a panic. I desperately needed answers and I needed them 3 hours ago. Among the first sources I looked to for answers were official Church sources such as Mormon.org and LDS.org. I couldn’t find them."Note: The Gospel Topics entry was added in 2014 after the Letter to a CES Director was written.
Additionally, there are many references to many apologetic issues such as those raised in this document that can be found on lds.org.
Longer response(s) to criticism:
The author claims, "FAIR and these unofficial apologists have done more to destroy my testimony than any anti-Mormon source ever could. I found their version of Mormonism to be alien and foreign to the Chapel Mormonism that I grew up in attending Church, seminary, reading scriptures, General Conferences, EFY, mission, and BYU. Their answers are not only contradictory to the scriptures and teachings I learned through correlated Mormonism…they’re truly bizarre."See also the followup(s) to this claim from "Debunking FAIR’s Debunking" (20 July 2014 revision):
Response to claim: "Once again, Google delivers where the Church does not"
Response to claim: "If one assumes that FAIR's undisputed silence is acceptance of the facts..."
Kevin Christensen, "Eye of the Beholder, Law of the Harvest: Observations on the Inevitable Consequences of the Different Investigative Approaches of Jeremy Runnells and Jeff Lindsay":
A large portion of the complaints that Runnells makes both in his Letter and his response to FairMormon works from an assumption that LDS leadership should display no weakness, have no common manner of language, never err in their statements, never need to seek wisdom since they should already have it all on the shelf, never sin and therefore never need to repent, and have all knowledge from the start so that no one, especially not Runnells, might ever need to change their thinking on any subject, no matter how trivial, especially not after having attended EFY, read some “approved” books, and served a mission.[1]
Longer response(s) to criticism:
You cannot find this on lds.org or on any official Church website. In fact, you have to hunt it down on the internet. Once again, Google delivers where the Church does not. FAIR states: “The following is contained in the online archive of the Improvement Era." FAIR doesn’t tell the reader that this “online archive” is a non-LDS website archive.org that you have to do a Google search to locate. In other words, it’s archived and hidden off the official LDS websites and servers.
If one assumes that FAIR's undisputed silence is acceptance of the facts, FAIR agrees with 79% of Letter to a CES Director. You’d have a difficult time seeing this by looking at FAIR’s answers. The trick is in the silence; facts in the CES letter that FAIR leave alone and don’t dispute.
Longer response(s) to criticism:
Notes
[[../Other Concerns & Questions|Other Concerns & Questions]] | A FAIR Analysis of: [[../|Letter to a CES Director]] A work by author: Jeremy Runnells
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CES Letter Response Main Page |
FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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