FairMormon Feelings Quote

Confused? You should be.

This is the kind of circular nonsense you get from FairMormon. Jim gives us FairMormon's stupid quote in full as if it makes more sense or makes FairMormon's circular reasoning coherent. It doesn't. It's still asinine circular reasoning and gibberish nonsense.

• Feelings can be wrong
• Mormon Church "doesn't solely advocate the use of our own subjective feelings"
• We need the "full use of the Holy Spirit". What does this even mean? How do you use 100% of Spirit instead of 34% Spirit, for example? How do you know whether you're at 93% Spirit vs. 27% Spirit? How do you know you're not interpreting your own subjective feelings as the "full use of the Holy Spirit"?
• How does the Holy Spirit work? Feelings.
• But you said feelings can be wrong
• Holy Ghost! Not subjective feelings...
• ...What's the difference exactly and how do you know?
• Holy Ghost is feelings but it's different! You only know if you've experienced it.
• Lots of people, including members of the LDS Church, come to different and contradictory conclusions while claiming their answers were definitely from the Holy Ghost and not their "subjective" feelings. How is it different then? Who's right and who's wrong? How do you know? How is this method reliable in any way?
• ...fEeLiNgS

Are feelings reliable?

It's nonstop snarky, flippant and juvenile comments like this on very serious subjects - pervasive all over Jim's rambling 372-page Jim Bennett Mormonism® Manifesto that make it extremely difficult to take Jim or anything he has to say seriously.

Here's 2021 Jim acknowledging my above point that feelings are not reliable:

Source: Mormon Stories Episode 2

This little Nemo snark is part of Jim's deceptive twist and misrepresentation of what I actually wrote and what my actual points are.

jErEmY dIdN'T hAvE a tEsTiMoNy

This is Jim's ad hominem attack where he denigrates and attempts to belittle me by claiming that I didn't really have a testimony because "it shattered like a glass the moment it came into contact with new information".

The "sHaTtErEd lIkE gLaSs" phrasing Jim is using here sounds so familiar...oh, that's right, Jim plagiarized this term from his fellow Mormon apologist Kevin Christensen's asinine and stupid ad hominem hit pieces; which we debunked twice:

Here's me talking about my testimony and apologetic attacks like Jim's that attempt to erase it:

Here's my Mormon childhood:

I'm the baby - 1981

1985

All ready for church

Rocking BYU gear at 5

Baptism day @ 8-years-old

Admiring the 6,000-year-old Grand Canyon

Here's some of my journal entries and Sacrament talks from my teen years sharing my spiritual experiences and testimony of the Gospel:

Here's my Patriarchal Blessing. If you believe that Patriarchal Blessings are revelations from the Mormon god, have fun explaining this one:

Here's an embarrassing essay that I wrote as a 15-year-old for my Southern California high school non-Mormon English teacher:

Click to see PDF

I attended University High School in Irvine, California. In addition to being one of the best high schools in the country, it also has one of the best Deaf & Hard of Hearing mainstream programs in the country. Why am I telling you this? Because I lived 33 miles away in La Mirada, California and I would drive at least 66-80 miles a day round trip in California rush hour traffic. Okay, great, right? Well...guess who had two thumbs and woke up at 4am just about every morning just so that he could make it on time to early morning Seminary 33 miles away in Irvine? This guy.

Oh but wait...there's more. Guess who was on the Varsity Cross Country, Track and Soccer teams and who would have practices and often would not get home (thanks to Southern California traffic) until 7:30 or 8 at night just to be able to eat dinner, do homework and sleep for 4-6 hours so that he could wake up at 4am to go to Seminary again? This guy.

So, jErEmY dIDn'T hAvE a tEsTiMoNy? This alone debunks your attack as no teenager without a testimony will get up that early to fight Southern California traffic for 33 miles just to get to Seminary on time every morning for years. My father never forced me to do this and even told me that I could chill out on this. I was the fundamentalist in the family so there was no chilling out happening. When my dad would be overseas, as he often is for business, I'd still show up to Church on Sundays, Scouts on Tuesdays, Mutual on Wednesdays and Seminary in the mornings.

Here's me at Scout camp with the BYU hat that I wasn't ashamed or afraid to wear often in majority non-Mormon USC territory (most of my high school friends and peers came from Protestant/Evangelical USC alumni families):

Here's me at my Eagle Scout Court of Honor (standing next to Congressman Ed Royce):

Jim, will a letter from Grandma do the trick in convincing you I really had a testimony?

"Jeremy, you have always been a very special grandson to Grandpa and I. Ever since you were a small child, your sweet spirit and big brown eyes have captivated our hearts. We have always looked forward to and have been thrilled to be able to visit you or have you come and visit with us. We have always felt your love for us. We have seen you grow not only in stature but also in your faithfulness in the gospel. You have developed into a very personable, handsome young man. We have seen you fight to overcome the difficulties of a hearing handicap, which we know has not been easy. You have always had the spirit of forgiveness in your heart and have held no animosity to those who may have offended you. This is a very endearing trait.

We know you love the Lord and try to keep his commandments at all times. You have had some very spiritual experiences and have shared them with us..."

- Letter from Jeremy's grandmother

Getting my Endowment - San Diego Temple

Here's just some of the pictures from the LDS Church history tour that I took with my dad and brothers in July 2000 right before I reported to the MTC for my Mission in New York City, which strengthened my testimony of the Restoration and got me even more excited for my missionary service:

Top left: Carthage Jail; Top right: Hill Cumorah;
Mid left: Nauvoo; Mid right: Carthage Jail;
Bottom left: Adam-Ondi-Ahman; Bottom right: Susquehanna River

This was a two week tour that started in Boston (also went to Salem where Joseph stayed with his Uncle) and took us through Vermont (Joseph's birthplace), New York (Palmyra, Sacred Grove, Hill Cumorah, Whitmer Farm in Fayette, Niagara Falls), Pennsylvania (Priesthood Restoration sites, etc.), Ohio (Kirtland, Kirtland Temple, Amish country), Illinois (Nauvoo, Carthage), and ended in Missouri (Independence, RLDS Temple, Temple Lot, Liberty Jail, Adam-Ondi-Ahman).

Here's pictures from my Mission in New York City:

Top left: Mission Farewell; Second Top: MTC; Third Top: MTC; Fourth Top: Statue of Liberty;
Bottom Left: Liberty Island; Second Bottom: World Trade Center pre-9/11; Third Bottom: Central Park; Fourth Bottom: Wall Street;

I seriously cannot believe I'm actually sharing this but if this doesn't change Jim Bennett's mind that I really had a testimony, dammit...that I was willing to embarrass myself like this...nothing will:

Here's a very nice note from my Mission President after receiving our wedding invitation sharing with my wife about my missionary service:

"He was one of our finest elders"

Here's my Mastery certificate from my Mission President that I earned on my Mission (which was not required):

Here's my Book of Mormon that I read around 8 times on my Mission and which I marked the hell out of:

Here's my three Missionary Journals that I wrote faithfully everyday on my Mission writing about spiritual experiences and my testimony:

Here's a picture of my last Missionary journal entry on the return flight home from New York City the day I was honorably released:

I was a very successful missionary who baptized close to a dozen people (rare for ASL missions), including families. I asked to stay longer in the field and was granted another transfer. I was a District Leader both in the MTC and in the field (highest you can really go as an ASL missionary) who achieved the President's Mastery Program (intense Gospel / Scripture study and memorization).

Here's pictures of me in Israel and Egypt where I studied the Gospel:

Top left: BYU Jerusalem; Top right: Jerusalem;
Bottom left: Sea of Galilee; Bottom right: Christ's tomb;

Egypt

Here's my amazing fiancée and I as EFY counselors at BYU Provo:

Here's my gorgeous and very lovely bride and I on our wedding day at the San Diego Temple:

Here's my graduation at BYU:

My family:

Now...I could bullshit you with words but I cannot bullshit you with pictures and videos. Ask yourself as you see the above pictures/video throughout my life and what I was doing in each of those stages if I was a person without a true testimony of the Restored Gospel; like Jim and his apologist buddies are trying to sell you.

Ask yourself if I look like the evil person that they desperately try to paint me as.

One thing you will never hear from my LDS family, friends, peers and leaders from my Wards during my teen (and adult) years along with my peers from my Mission is that I never had a testimony or I wasn't a believing Latter-day Saint. They all know I had a testimony and they wouldn't be able to deny this.

I had a testimony, Jim. I just did. Jim's arrogant and horseshit ad hominem attacks here trying to deceive others that I was the village idiot without a testimony are just completely and totally false.

As for Jim's assertion that you don't have a real testimony if it "shatters like glass" upon contact with disturbing information? Here's Jim talking about what happened to his testimony and belief in the Church upon contact with disturbing information in the 1980s:

"I felt like a chump"

And here's Jim sharing about how his testimony of the Book of Abraham basically shattered like glass in recent years:

"I fully recognize that the Book of Abraham, intellectually, is probably the strongest argument against the Church. I'm not willing to leave the Church over it for reasons I've outlined in our discussions. There's no question that there are real challenges there and real problems there that I don't think the Church - we - have come to terms with."

-Jim Bennett, January 2021, Mormon Stories Episode 5

2021 Jim on the Book of Abraham

Jim nearly left the Church in 2015 over its discriminatory November Policy against the LGBTQ (guess his testimony "sHatTeReD lIkE gLasS" upon first contact then too?).

I've already responded to Jim's playing dumb by pretending to not know what "Chapel Mormonism" is here.

Simply put, all of Jim's above claims and ad hominem attacks here are just complete and total bullshit. It is an attack without compassion or empathy for people who discover the LDS Church's disturbing truth crisis. This is what 2018 Jim doesn't get:

Fortunately, 2021 Jim Bennett gets it now. 2021 Jim would not write something like this today as he has compassion and empathy for people who are confronted by disturbing information. 2021 Jim understands me and others who have gone on faith transitions now because he's gone on a faith journey himself. 2021 Jim is now a bridge builder.

Jim's Strawman

No, Jim. I don't. Nice strawman though.

Jim's little strawman of my "assumption" of "every church and faith" views the Spirit the same way as Latter-day Saints is not the argument or claim that I make.

Jim has entirely missed the point. There are numerous people in numerous faith traditions who point to spiritual experiences and connections or communications with God/the divine that have given them the message or impression that their own faith tradition is the correct one.

Watch and listen closely to people of other religions sharing their testimonies of their gods giving them affirmative spiritual witnesses and answers that their religion is the correct one:

My LDS Journey - Follow the Spirit

You will get to see, below in this debunking, many more testimonies from members of various different religions using this same method to arrive at contradictory and mutually exclusive conclusions while using this same method.

Jim not only deflects and does not answer the questions and problems of epistemology but he chooses to create an entire strawman by making and attacking claims and arguments that I never make.

Jim's Arrogant & Judgmental Gaslighting

Would you look at this gaslighting?

Jim misrepresents how I interpreted / interpret an experience with the Holy Ghost by misrepresenting that I claim that it's purely an emotional or "warm and fuzzy feelings" event (I never use those terms) and not an event that includes the mind as well. I directly debunk Jim's misrepresentations, ad hominem and gaslighting of my Mormon spiritual experiences and how I define and view a Mormon spiritual experience with the Holy Ghost here as well as in my response below.

Jesus, what an arrogant and judgmental statement. Who is Jim Bennett to decide what the Holy Ghost is and is not for others, including me, and whether or not their spiritual experiences with the Holy Ghost are valid or invalid?

Jim Bennett is the last person who can make such an unbelievably arrogant and condescending sneer while gaslighting me about my own personal Mormon spiritual experiences and encounters with the Holy Ghost or even what a Mormon spiritual experience and encounter with the Holy Ghost is and is not. By Jim's own admission and acknowledgment, Jim hasn't even experienced what I and so many other Mormons experience. Here's Jim talking about his frustrating attempts to get a witness from the Holy Ghost over the years, about how he can't recall ever experiencing an experience that is often described in Mormon spiritual experiences and how his Mormon testimony is rooted in suffering instead:

Jim's above arrogant judgment and condescending statement goes against what Jim has stated in 2021 about not judging or debunking other people's spiritual experiences. Jim believes in taking at face value what people share about their spiritual experiences. Well, Jim, please extend this grace and non-judgment to me about my spiritual experiences. Please just accept at face value that I really did have spiritual experiences with the Holy Ghost and Heavenly Father throughout my Mormon experience and that I really did have a testimony of the Restored Gospel.

I have had Mormon spiritual experiences and encounters with the Holy Ghost. One of them being a Priesthood blessing to restore my hearing with Elder Lance B. Wickman of the Seventy in September 1994. I can point to specific events and places. I have very detailed and specific journal entries with dates about my spiritual experiences. I still have dated copies of several Sacrament talks that I gave over the years sharing about my encounters with the Spirit and how foundational they were to my testimony and loyalty to the Restored Gospel.

I guess my interactions with the Holy Ghost while meeting with Elder Wickman in 1994 or at EFY or at various firesides or while reading the scriptures or while on my mission or in the Temple or at other times and places in my life are all now fake because Mormon apologist Jim Bennett says so.

This is an ad hominem attack against me that other Mormon apologists have used in the past where they claim that I really didn't have a testimony. I address this in the following 2-minute clip from my Mormon Stories interview:

2-Minute Clip - Jeremy's Testimony

What's "warped" and "inadequate" here, Jim, is your arrogant judgment of my and others' spiritual experiences and your attempts to invalidate and diminish them in your desperate efforts to make your own Latter-day Saint testimony and spiritual experiences the Only True and legitimate testimony and spiritual experiences.

A spiritual witness, as taught by scriptures and the LDS Church, is primarily a "burning in the bosom" experience. "It is a burning within that tells us what is right. It is when 'your heart tells you things your mind doesn’t know'". It's primarily feelings. I know you hate to hear this because you've never experienced a testimony this way (your 2021 Mormon Stories interview admission) and it goes against your Jim Bennett Mormonism® but I don't care what Jim Bennett Mormonism® teaches. I care what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has taught and teaches.

"...has members who claim..."

There you go again with your strawman, Jim. Jim completely ignores my argument: "...has members who claim..." and chooses to create strawmen and arguments that I never make.

Oh, look...Catholics debunking Jim Bennett by sharing their testimonies and spiritual experiences about how God led them to the Catholic Church and told them the Catholic Church is the only true Church:

Catholic Conversions & Testimonies

McConkie's BYU Students

I distinctly remember reading Here We Stand as a Mormon teenager in the mid 1990s. It made a mark on me.

Joseph Fielding McConkie was Jim's mission president who Jim learned about the rock in the hat Book of Mormon translation for the first time while on his mission but was told then by this same man that this future Gospel Topics essay verified fact was false.

This entire exercise and claim is asinine and unproductive. I have dozens of videos on this page alone showing people using the "ask God if it's true" method if XYZ religion is the true and correct religion. Several of the videos include people pointing to their gods telling them their scriptures are the correct ones. People pointing to these spiritual experiences of their god or divine source telling them that XYZ is the true and correct religion is way more common than Jim is willing to admit.

A couple of Mormon BYU students in Professor McConkie's Provo, Utah classes sharing their biased and limited opinions and experiences does not change this reality.

"Uniquely Latter-day Saint idea"

What an unbelievably arrogant statement and claim.

Says who, Jim? Mormons? What non-LDS evidence do you have to support this unsupported assumption?

This sounds just like the arrogant exclusivity claim that Mormons make of non-Mormons' marriages being invalid in the eternities because they didn't get married in a Mormon temple.

Or just as arrogant as claiming that non-Mormon baptisms don't count because they didn't get baptized in the Mormon church by the correct "authority" or priesthood.

No wonder so many other Christians and non-Christians think Mormons are not Christians and/or a cult. Mormons are too stuck on their high horse making insulting, pompous and ridiculously exclusionary claims and statements, like Jim just did, to make many friends.

Asking your version of god(s) if you're on his/her/their path of truth to give you a revelatory answer in the affirmative is not a "uniquely Latter-day Saint idea", Jim. The videos on this page alone completely debunks your above ridiculous claim and assumption.

LDS Lens Strawman

No, Jim. I don't. Stop putting words in my mouth and making claims that I do not make. I reject your strawman.

I do not claim that other religious traditions follow the LDS model nor do I assume that they follow the LDS model. I said that members of other religious traditions point to spiritual experiences and connections to their gods or divine sources in getting confirmation that their beliefs and traditions are the true and correct faith traditions.

Unlike you, Jim, I back up my statements with dozens of videos demonstrating this truth. All you're giving us are your incorrect opinions, strawmen and mischaracterizations of my claims and position.

Please stop mischaracterizing and misrepresenting what I'm saying, Jim.

FLDS

Jim completely ignores my questions or arguments and instead creates strawmen and instead proceeds to attack those fake arguments I never make.

With this one, Jim just shits on and throws under the bus thousands of decent average members of the FLDS religion who are not "child molesters". I can just see Lindsey Hanson Park fuming red over there prepared to throw her Diet Coke at Jim.

My argument focuses on the epistemology utilized by the average member. Jim completely ignores this and creates a strawman focusing on the sexual deviancy of "the highest levels of" FLDS leadership.

Jim's opinion on the FLDS is irrelevant here. The argument and focus here is that there are FLDS members who sincerely believe that the Holy Ghost has testified to them that Warren Jeffs is the Lord's true prophet and that their branch of Mormonism is the Lord's true Church.

We have recordings of FLDS and other Mormon splinter group members sharing their sincere testimonies about how the Holy Ghost testified to them the truthfulness of their prophets and religions:

Mormon Splinter Groups Testimonies

Bonus: Song from Rulon Jeffs Academy Boys' Choir

Same method. Different results. Who's right and how is this method reliable?

What's interesting here is that Jim measures the spiritual health and validity of a religion based on the moral and sexual conduct of the religion's leaders.

What does this say about Joseph Smith and his sexual misconduct? The sexual misconduct of other founding LDS leaders? What does this founder's conduct mean for the LDS Church?

As one person said in other words:

Again, as usual, Jim completely misses / ignores the point and doesn't answer the epistemological question and problem of FLDS members pointing to spiritual experiences and communication with the Holy Spirit as verification of FLDS truth claims.

Oh, here's a video for you, Jim. You might want to put on your fanny pack and make a day trip down to Colorado City to get to know these people before casting stones and judgment on them and their religion like you just did with your "child molestation" attack.

Jehovah's Witnesses

Oh, look...Jehovah's Witnesses debunking Jim Bennett by sharing their testimonies and spiritual experiences about how Jehovah led them to His true Church and their receiving confirmatory answers to prayers to Jehovah that this is His correct and true religion:

Jehovah's Witnesses Conversions & Testimonies

Ask yourself, after watching the above personal accounts of these Jehovah's Witnesses, if they believe in a "dogmatic legalistic", cold, impersonable, silent and distant god that Jim is misrepresenting and trying to paint them as believing in here.

Jim, you can Venmo me your "serious money" at venmo.com/jeremyrunnells. Even better, I'll take ETH too.

You're wrong, Jim, in assuming that I never heard a Jehovah's Witness testify of having a spiritual experience confirming the truth of their faith. I had a good friend in high school from my sophomore year to senior year by the name of John Fee. John had a cochlear implant and it was our common struggle of hearing loss that connected us as friends. John was a Jehovah's Witness. Here's a picture of him from my 2000 University High School yearbook:

Naturally, we talked about our respective religions. I shared my testimony to him about Mormonism and he shared his testimony with me about his religion. He shared about how Jehovah touched his and his family's hearts and how this experience converted him and his family into the faith.

You forgot where I served my mission, Jim. I served in New York City, which was the Mecca of the Watch Tower organization before they relocated their headquarters from Brooklyn, New York to Warwick, New York.

I had to deal with the Jehovah's Witnesses on an almost daily basis on my mission. I had my own personal copy of their New World Translation scripture. I had a stack of their Watchtower and Awake! magazines in my missionary bedroom. It was not unusual for us to knock on doors only to be told that they were Jehovah's Witnesses and were not interested. The JW missionaries were direct competitors of ours and they were a pain in the ass during my mission. They "contaminated" our investigators and we felt we had to debunk the JW religion first before we could get them to consider Mormonism.

One funny story: My companion and I went to an investigator's door in the projects one evening and rang their special doorbell (we don't knock on Deaf people's doors and you need to ring their doorbell for flashing lights). As we waited, the nearby elevator chimed and out walked two female JW missionaries I immediately recognized. I flinched knowing the awkwardness coming my way. They came over and rang the same doorbell and stood right next to us. I can only imagine the reaction of our investigator behind the door looking through the peephole seeing two Mormon missionaries and the JW missionaries trying to get his attention.

The door never opened and we went our separate ways. But I have talked to JW missionaries throughout my mission. They have shared their testimonies to me about how Jehovah has touched their hearts and revealed the truth to them about their religion. Two of them I very distinctly remember sharing their testimonies with tears in their eyes.

So, pay up, Jim. You don't get to talk down on me here with the Jehovah's Witnesses as I have had way more experiences with them than you have. Your disrespectful attempt to deny and reframe them on how they utilize their spiritual experiences just falls completely flat for me. Your claims contradict my myriad of experiences and encounters with them. They really do have spiritual experiences and they really do share their spiritual experiences and testimonies to others as evidence for the truthfulness of their faith. I've seen it myself - both in high school with my friend John and especially on my mission in New York City.

Now, were all their testimonies exactly like my Latter-day Saint testimony? Of course not. And I don't claim that they do despite your annoying strawmen and misrepresentations that I do.

Jim keeps missing or ignoring the point: It's not about whether or not these people are having exact Latter-day Saint / Moroni's Promise spiritual experiences. It's about epistemology and about having their own spiritual experiences within their faith traditions where they point to their gods or divine sources as evidence that their faith traditions are the correct and true one. It's about the glaring and fundamental epistemological problems of these mutually exclusive claims and how we all cannot be right together.

Same method: read, ponder and pray. Different testimonies. Why are we using such an unreliable method for truth when it is leading so many astray?

Catholic

There you go again with your strawman, Jim. Jim completely ignores my argument: "...has members who claim..." and chooses to create strawmen and arguments that I never make.

Oh, look...Catholics debunking Jim Bennett by sharing their testimonies and spiritual experiences about how God led them to the Catholic Church and told them the Catholic Church is the only true Church:

Catholic Conversions & Testimonies

After watching and listening to the above Catholic testimonies, ask yourself if the god that Catholics believe in and receive answers to their prayers is the cold, distant and mysterious Deity that Jim is attempting to paint them as believing in.

Again, as usual, Jim completely misses or ignores the point:

Catholics have spiritual experiences where they claim that God, Mother Mary or another divine source has touched their hearts and testified to them in their spiritual experiences that Catholicism is true.

Jim keeps deflecting by focusing on institutional and leadership protocols and tradition and practices while ignoring that my claim focuses on members of these faiths and their spiritual experiences where they are told by their gods and divine sources that their faith traditions are the correct ones.

Jim is so hung up on whether or not these other religions have Moroni's Promise or Fast & Testimony meetings that he completely misses or ignores the point entirely that members of these other religions can and do ask their gods if he/she/it/they accept their faith traditions as the true and correct religion.

It appears Jim just can't bring himself to simply acknowledge and admit that members of other faiths really do have spiritual experiences from their gods confirming to them that their own religion is the true and correct one.

Jim cannot bring himself to acknowledge this because it exposes serious epistemological dilemmas and problems to his own LDS epistemological framework and foundation; as I demonstrate in the CES Letter.

Seventh-day Adventist

There you go again with your strawman, Jim. Jim completely ignores my argument: "...has members who claim..." and chooses to create strawmen and arguments that I never make.

Oh, look...Seventh-day Adventists debunking Jim Bennett by sharing their testimonies and spiritual experiences about how God led them to the Seventh-day Adventist Church and told them the Seventh-day Adventist Church is the only true Church:

Seventh-day Adventist Conversions & Testimonies

After watching and listening to the above Adventist testimonies, ask yourself if the God that Adventists believe in and receive answers to their prayers is the cold, distant and "dogmatic" God that Jim is attempting to paint them as believing in.

Muslim

There you go again with your strawman, Jim. Jim completely ignores my argument: "...has members who claim..." and chooses to create strawmen and arguments that I never make.

Oh, look...Muslims debunking Jim Bennett by sharing their testimonies and spiritual experiences about how Allah led them to Islam and told them Islam is the only true and correct religion:

Islam - Conversions & Testimonies

After watching and listening to the above Muslim testimonies, ask yourself if the God that Muslims believe in and receive answers to their prayers is the distant, impersonal and cold god that Jim is trying to sell you that Muslims believe in.

LDS Spiritual Experiences Strawman

Oh, look...all these testimonies and spiritual witnesses from Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists and Muslims debunking Jim Bennett. Ask yourself as you watch and listen to these testimonies if they're really so different, as Jim is attempting to sell you:

Catholic Conversions & Testimonies

Jehovah's Witnesses Conversions & Testimonies

Seventh-day Adventist Conversions & Testimonies

Islam - Conversions & Testimonies

Oh, look...there's Jim's strawmen that just won't go away: "none of these faith traditions speak or spiritual experiences the way Latter-day Saints do" and "testimony meetings".

Jim, I'm going to try this in a simpler way this time with hand clap emojis while saying it slowly. Fingers crossed that you get the message.

It's 👏 not 👏 about 👏 LDS 👏 testimonies 👏 or 👏 Moroni's Promise 👏 or LDS Fast & Testimony meetings 👏. It's 👏 about 👏 epistemology 👏 and 👏 how 👏 members 👏 of 👏 other 👏 religions 👏 - as 👏 abundantly 👏 demonstrated 👏 in 👏 the 👏 above 👏 videos 👏 - have 👏 spiritual 👏 experiences 👏 and communication 👏 with god 👏 or the divine 👏 in validating 👏 that their religion 👏 is the correct 👏 and true 👏 religion 👏. Yet, they 👏 all 👏 cannot 👏 be 👏 correct 👏 and 👏 true 👏 together👏.

I am not claiming that other religions officially teach people to have LDS style spiritual experiences or even that non-Mormon people have LDS spiritual experiences. You are with your strawmen and with your putting words in my mouth. I'm saying that members of other religions simply have spiritual experiences where they are told by their gods that their own religion is the true and correct one.

I'm pointing to the problems and flaws in this epistemology and method as its unreliability is leading so many people to so many contradictory conclusions.

Notice that Jim begrudgingly acknowledges that the FLDS (he ignores other Mormon sects that likewise have similar spiritual experiences confirming their own sects) has similar spiritual experiences the way Latter-day Saints do but he refuses to go further due to his own personal opinion that the religion is invalid due to its highest leaders' sexual deviancy while ironically ignoring the sexual deviancy of his founding prophet Joseph Smith and other founding LDS leaders and what that means for the validity of the LDS Church.

Jim refuses to answer or address the real question and problem presented in this section: the unreliability of the ponder and ask God if the religion is true method as it is also used by members of other religions to arrive at completely different conclusions.

"We love those other churches"

Here's what Joseph Smith also said in July 1838:

Does this sound loving and inclusive to you? Sounds pretty hostile to me.

Q: "Will every body be damned but Mormons?"

Joseph Smith: "Yes, and a great portion of them, unless they repent and work righteousness.

This doesn't answer the question or address the problem, Jim. It's just a stupid rosy PR script to obscure and obfuscate what Mormons really believe about other faiths and their validity. Mormons were saying this publicly with a smile while presenting/acting non-Mormon clergy as agents of Satan in their Temple Endowment ceremonies before being removed in 1990.

It's also completely useless. Guess what, Jim? Mormons aren't the only ones saying this. The Catholics say the exact same thing you're saying here:

Whoa. I had to do a double take there to make sure the guy wasn't Mormon the first time I listened to this. He sounds just like one. Or is it the other way around and the Catholics think the Mormons sound just like them when they hear the same thing from Mormons? Weird. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Catholics are just as sure as the Mormons are that they are God's chosen and that their religion is the only correct and true religion.

So, who's right? Who's wrong? How do you know? Because the ponder-and-ask-God-which-church-is-the-true-and-correct-one method sure as hell isn't reliable or working here.

Jim completely ignores and does not respond to my above statement. Every religion cannot be right and true together.

LDS Movement Testimonies

"Where's the Catholic testimony?"

Here you go:

Catholic Conversions & Testimonies

"Where's the Jehovah's Witness testimony?"

Here you go:

Jehovah's Witnesses Conversions & Testimonies

"Where's the Muslim testimony?"

Here you go:

Islam - Conversions & Testimonies

"Your original premise was that all churches operate this way, yet you only use groups rooted in a common theology as your examples"

No, Jim. It's not my premise. It's your strawman.

I'm not talking about the "churches". I'm talking about the members of these religions pointing to their gods and spiritual experiences as evidence that their gods and religions are the only true and correct religions.

Stop putting words in my mouth and misrepresenting my position and claims.

The reason why I group sects only from the Latter-day Saint movement here is to drive home my epistemological points even further by demonstrating that this unreliable read, ponder and pray method of praying if the Book of Mormon is true still renders false answers as members of the other Latter-day Saint sects go away believing that the Mormon god has told them that their own sect and their own different prophet is the true one and the LDS Church and its prophet is the false one.

The fact that you misunderstand why I grouped Latter-day Saint movement testimonies here as an example here and you think it contradicts "my original premise" demonstrates that you do not fundamentally understand (or you are just choosing to ignore) entirely my central epistemological points in the Testimony & Spiritual Witness section of the CES Letter.

Why are we using this unreliable method when even with the Book of Mormon, it has led people to different sects and different prophets?

"You would never hear a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Muslim bear this kind of testimony."

Sigh. Another strawman. I am not claiming that a Catholic, Protestant, Jew or Muslim bear LDS or Mormon style testimonies. I'm saying that they have spiritual experiences and connections / communication with the divine that told them that their XYZ god and XYZ religion is the true and correct one.

1975 RLDS Testimony

What's really telling here, Jim, is that you don't bring up to your readers why I have to go back to 1975 for the RLDS Church and why a modern Community of Christ member no longer speaks this way. As I wrote in my Debunking FairMormon and other Debunkings (over 2,000+ pages of detailed answers!) that Jim ignores:

Many Mormons are discovering facts about Joseph Smith and the Church’s origins and history in the Information Age that the Church was able to conceal from them in the pre-Google Age; and they are leaving. Members are openly demanding openness and transparency from the Church in light of what's at stake. Indeed, current Church historian, Elder Steven E. Snow, acknowledges the Church’s concealment:

"I think in the past there was a tendency to keep a lot of the records closed or at least not give access to information. But the world has changed in the last generation – with the access to information on the Internet, we can’t continue that pattern; I think we need to continue to be more open."

- Elder Steven E. Snow, Church Historian, Truth In Church History

The Changing LDS Narrative

The reason why the Church “can’t continue that pattern [of concealment]” and is heading toward honesty and transparency via its new essays in 2013 and 2014 is because the Information Age is forcing it to. The reality is that the Church has known most of these problems and issues for decades, at least since the 1910s but more especially since the "New Mormon history" in the 1960s and 1970s.

The 1960s and 1970s saw a new era in Mormon scholarship known as “New Mormon History.” Both the LDS and RLDS Churches had professionally trained Church historians for the very first time. The LDS Church opened up its vaults and archives to historians for the first time.

The LDS Church and the RLDS Church both stood at the crossroads. The RLDS Church accepted, acknowledged, and made no attempt to conceal the ugly facts about Joseph Smith and the Church's origins. The RLDS Church reformed itself over the next few decades by, among other things, granting women the Priesthood, granting open communion, and by eventually renaming and rebranding the Church as the Community of Christ in 2001.

In the beginning, the LDS Church appeared to be taking a similar path to that taken by the RLDS Church. The LDS Church, for example, appointed professional historian Leonard Arrington in 1972 and embarked upon what would later become known as the “Camelot years” due to unprecedented open access to Church vaults and archives. However, this was short-lived as the Church removed Leonard Arrington and shut down its History Division to BYU in 1982, bringing the era of open Church archives to a close. This was also around the time when Elder Boyd K. Packer gave his infamous “Some things that are true are not very useful” speech at a CES Symposium.

LDS Historian Leonard Arrington’s assistant, D. Michael Quinn, went on to teach at Brigham Young University and was later part of the September Six in 1993 in which he was excommunicated from the Church. In contrast, RLDS Historian Richard Howard’s assistant, W. Grant McMurray – Quinn’s counterpart – went on to become the first non-Smith RLDS Prophet in 1996. Under McMurray’s administration, the RLDS Church reformed itself in 2001 into what is now known as the Community of Christ.

The RLDS Church chose to acknowledge and accept the problems of Joseph Smith and the Church's origins. The LDS Church, on the other hand, chose to ignore them and conceal the facts from its members for the next 30-40 years. It is only now, in the Google Age, that the LDS Church “can’t continue that pattern.” It is only now that the LDS Church is finally setting out to do what it should have done and which the RLDS Church has been doing for decades: being honest and transparent to its members about Joseph Smith, the Church's origins, and the Church's history. Indeed, it is this honesty that drives the Community of Christ still today. As stated by Prophet/President Stephen M. Veazey on their Church's website:

"The 'apologetic' approach to church history—presenting our story in as favorable a light as possible—is not sufficient for the journey ahead. That approach does not evidence the integrity that must be fundamental to our witness and ministry."

- Prophet-President Stephen M. Veazey, Community of Christ, Perspectives on Church History

I personally believe the LDS Church is not going to look the same in 10-20 years. The Mormonism I grew up in and testified to others about in the mission field is dying before my very own eyes. No longer is it a Mormonism of...

This Mormonism will continue to die as the Church continues to release its essays and head towards honesty and transparency (at least to a greater degree than it has in the past).

So, the reason why I had to go back to 1975 for the RLDS Church, Jim, is because they did something that the LDS Church refused to do: be honest. The RLDS Church saw that the history and data destroyed its narratives about Joseph Smith and Mormonism's founding and so they changed.

Unlike the LDS Church, the RLDS Church refused to deceive its members about the truth and instead they reformed their religion.

The LDS Church chose to lie and hide the truth from its members for the next few decades and here we are with the LDS Church's truth and narrative crisis.

Funny how things look when you get the complete information and context, huh? Why didn't you get this information and full context from Jim when he attacked me about going back to 1975?

Again, Jim completely ignores and misses the point that I'm making: members of different Latter-day faith traditions use the same method to arriving to truth...yet this method is leading them to different prophets and different Latter-day Saint sects.

How then is this method a reliable pathway to discerning truth when it's leading so many people to different conclusions?

"Tiny splinter groups"

I think it's hilarious and rich how quick Jim is in dismissing and invalidating other Latter-day Saint sects due to "corruption, fraud and pedophilia". It is dripping with irony considering the corruption, fraud and sexual deviancy of the founders of Jim's own religion (Kirtland Banking fraud, Book of Abraham fraud, Joseph marrying women, young girls, women already married to living men - polyandry, mother/daughter sets, sister sets, lying and hiding from Emma, etc.).

Further, Jim attacks these religions as "tiny" to imply that there's no way God's true religion would be "tiny" while ironically ignoring the reality that his own religion is very "tiny" compared to the membership of other world faiths and compared to the entire world population. Later in this same page, Jim defends his religion's "tininess" by stating:

Also, at no point in the history of the world were God's people anything but a tiny minority of the world's population. Even in the last days, when the Church reaches its zenith, Nephi tells us he "beheld the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few." (1 Nephi 14:12)

As usual, Jim misses the point. The point here is that the FLDS and LDCJC use the same model of asking God and receiving a confirmatory answer that their sect and their prophet is the Lord's true church and the Lord's true prophet.

Yet, they are mutually exclusive and they both cannot be right together.

Same method: read, ponder, and pray. Different testimonies. Why are we using such an unreliable method for truth?

Same Method: read, ponder, and pray

There's Jim's annoying strawman again. Members of these religions use the read, ponder and pray method - as evident in the dozens of video testimonies on this page alone - to arrive at different contradictory conclusions about the truthfulness and validity of their own religions.

Rather than respond to this epistemological problem and dilemma, Jim chooses to create and attack strawmen and claims that I do not make.

Again, here's dozens of testimonies from all these different religions pointing to this method in their conclusion that their XYZ religion is the only true religion:

Catholic Conversions & Testimonies

Jehovah's Witnesses Conversions & Testimonies

Seventh-day Adventist Conversions & Testimonies

Islam - Conversions & Testimonies

What does this say about the reliability of this method when it is leading so many people astray?

All Four Testimonies

Jim, this just demonstrates your ignorance of my arguments and claims in this section along with your ignorance on why I grouped the Latter-day Saint movement testimonies together in an example separate from the testimonies of other non-LDS movement testimonies.

Jim is trying to create the illusion of a problem that isn't there by continuing to focus on his strawman arguments that I don't make.

Again...I do not claim that these major religions (Catholicism, Islam, etc.) teach LDS style testimonies. I've already demonstrated and proved my points that members of these various religions point to divine or spiritual experiences about the validity and truthfulness of their religions but that all these religions cannot be true or correct together.

After I've made my above points, I've moved on and zoomed in on sects within the Latter-day Saint tradition to drive home my point - that Mormon epistemology is completely unreliable - even further as these other sects do have Latter-day Saint style testimonies and epistemologies.

Jim rambles on about his own personal opinions on why he thinks this religion or that religion is "corrupt" or "venal" that he ignores the point of my argument:

There are members of these sects at one point or another who used the ponder and ask method to find out if their own church/prophet was true. They received a confirmatory answer from the Spirit and based their lives on the divine answer they received.

In the example I gave of members from 4 different Mormon sects...they all used the same method but got four different testimonies, prophets and LDS movement churches.

How is this method a reliable mechanism to objectively discover truth when it leads people to different conclusions?

Jim ignores and refuses to answer this single question and epistemological dilemma. Jim continues to obfuscate with strawmen and nonsensical arguments that I do not even make.

What's "moot" here, Jim, are your irrelevant and nonsensical strawmen that you continue to use to avoid answering my questions about the fundamental unreliability and problems of Mormon (and any religious) epistemology in arriving at objective reality and truth.

The best God can do?

There you go. More evidence that Jim Bennett refuses to have a real discussion about the problems and unreliability of Mormon and religious epistemology in arriving to objective truth and reality.

Jim completely ignores the serious problems of God's method to revealing "truth" as I've demonstrated in the CES Letter, here and in my other apologetic Debunkings (which is ignored by Jim in his "Reply").

Billions of people, past and present, have and are asking their gods the same questions about if he/she/it/they are in and approve of their faith traditions and faith claims and they receive answers in the affirmative.

Yet, this is mutually exclusive as they all cannot be true and right together.

How then is the "we ask, and He answers" method a reliable vehicle to discovering truth when this process leads so many to contradictory answers?

2018 Jim still hasn't confronted and answered this problem but 2021 Jim basically gave up and wisely decided this isn't the hill he's willing to die on.

Mormon god's inefficiency

Only in a Mormon's mind is an afterlife version of "my way or the highway" astonishingly inclusive.

It's a cop out and it's very convenient for Jim to ignore the obvious inefficiencies here and now by throwing the problem into an unfalsifiable and future supernatural realm while pointing to a "our way or the highway" system disguised and marketed as "astonishingly inclusive" universalism.

When a Church is based on the premise that God will confirm its truth to people, it does not make sense that the Church would continue to be so irrelevant compared to larger religions. While Jim is right that LDS theology teaches that the Church believes that proxy work would ultimately grow the Church in the eternities, it still does not make sense that so many people around the world receive a spiritual witness from God to join other religions when we are told by the Mormon Church that they are the only true and living Church of God.

If you then say, "Well, those people are wrong and they weren't told by God to join those false religions", you're inadvertently conceding that the "ask God if it's true" method is completely unreliable and untrustworthy as a pathway to truth.

By the way, the Plan of Salvation creates the worst testing conditions ever. Uneven. Imbalanced. Unfair. The Mormons get screwed and banished to a lifetime without coffee and never-ending 10% donations to the $100 Billion slush fund. Meanwhile, ignorant non-Mormon people like Dan Bilzerian live a lifetime of fun and partying (keeping their coffee, Sundays and extra 10%) while eventually getting the awesome option in the afterlife / Millennium of making it to the same Celestial location as the poor suckers who bought all that unused food storage and attended an ungodly amount of brain numbing meetings.

At least in the afterlife / Millennium the dark glass becomes clear glass and they can see clearer the one true Church...unlike in Mortality where a popular Broadway Musical and a quick Google search reveals a weird racist Rocky Mountain polygamy Bible Fanfiction cult founded by a treasure hunter who practiced secret polygamy and polyandry while hiding it all from his wife...scares them off.

In other words, it's clearer over there that the clumsy Rocky Mountain polygamy cult is shockingly really Jesus' legit Church.

What about the poor women of 19th-century Mormon polygamy? Who endured decades of this nightmare? That they considered a test or a trial of their faith? How come they have to go through that multi-decade torture chamber out in the desert while Nora in Norway, who had never heard of Mormonism in her wonderful and polygamy-less lifetime, accepts the Church in the afterlife and gets the same eventual reward in the Celestial Kingdom as the poor wives of Brigham Young? How is this just and fair or in any way a legitimate "test" in any universe?

It reminds me of the born-again Christian scam where the murderer on death row gets to go to Heaven along with Bible-thumping Grandma. All because he accepted Jesus a week before croaking in the chamber.

It also turns missionary work into an extremely harmful and dangerous enterprise. One of the worst things we could do to Dan Bilzerian, for example, is to "Mormonize" him. It can be argued that Dan is much better off being ignorant about Mormonism so that he can have his fun and partying before eventually being able to push the Celestial "Deal!" button in front of afterlife and phobia-cured Howie.

It reminds me of this:

Praying about Book of Mormon...

Which "spiritual answer" to whose prayer is the one and true answer then, Jim? And how do we know that that particular "spiritual answer", which contradicts another person's "spiritual answer", is the correct one?

The FLDS and other LDS "splinter" groups say the same thing. The same "spiritual answer", as Jim calls it, that leads members of these Mormon groups to conclude the Book of Mormon is true is also the answer they point to in claiming that their different prophet and their different sect is the Lord's true prophet and the Lord's true church.

Yet, they all cannot be right and true together. They're mutually exclusive.

Others believe in Book of Mormon

This is Jim's arrogant hand waving and flippant dismissal of others' sincere spiritual experiences because he doesn't like these competitors of his own religion.

Jim ignores the heart of my arguments because he can't help himself not to lump decent average members with church leadership in other sects while completely missing the irony and hypocrisy of this in his own religion.

Jim also thinks that he can dismiss the validity and value of belief and testimony in other religions because they do not have the same degree of belief or orthodoxy that he thinks they should have in order to be valid. In the case of the RLDS Church, Jim criticized me elsewhere on this page for using a 1975 RLDS testimony without explaining to his readers why I had to go back to 1975, in the case of the RLDS Church. Here, Jim attacks the Community of Christ for what he perceives as heterodoxy while not explaining to his readers why the RLDS Church had become more heterodox over the past few decades. Jim also ignores that they consider the Book of Mormon as canonized scripture.

Jim also dismisses them based on his opinion that they're "in grievous sin" which is not an answer and which is ironically also often used against the validity and truthfulness of his LDS Church. As I said in the CES Letter:

"Just as it would be arrogant for a FLDS member, a Jehovah's Witness, a Catholic, a Seventh-day Adventist, or a Muslim to deny a Latter-day Saint's spiritual experience and testimony of the truthfulness of Mormonism, it would likewise be arrogant for a Latter-day Saint to deny others' spiritual experiences and testimonies of the truthfulness of their own religion. Yet, every religion cannot be right and true together."

Once again, Jim doesn't directly respond to the epistemological problems I'm presenting and he just goes off about his own personal opinions of other religions and its peoples.

Mind & Heart

This is Jim's Jim Bennett Mormonism® attempt to redefine encounters with the Holy Spirit and to gaslight us all on the role that feelings and emotions play along with its use within the context of Mormonism.

Let's put Jim Bennett Mormonism® aside here and see what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints actually teaches what a testimony / encounter with the Holy Ghost is and how it's defined:

A testimony is a spiritual witness given by the Holy Ghost. The foundation of a testimony is the knowledge that Heavenly Father lives and loves His children; that Jesus Christ lives, that He is the Son of God, and that He carried out the infinite Atonement; that Joseph Smith is the prophet of God who was called to restore the gospel; that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Savior’s true Church on the earth; and that the Church is led by a living prophet today. With this foundation, a testimony grows to include all principles of the gospel.

-Testimony, Gospel Topics - LDS Church
(Emphasis mine)

"A testimony of the gospel is a personal witness borne to our souls by the Holy Ghost that certain facts of eternal significance are true and that we know them to be true. Such facts include the nature of the Godhead and our relationship to its three members, the effectiveness of the Atonement, and the reality of the Restoration."

"What do we mean when we testify and say that we know the gospel is true? Contrast that kind of knowledge with 'I know it is cold outside' or 'I know I love my wife.' These are three different kinds of knowledge, each learned in a different way. ..."

"One of the greatest things about our Heavenly Father’s plan for His children is that each of us can know the truth of that plan for ourselves. That revealed knowledge does not come from books, from scientific proof, or from intellectual pondering. As with the Apostle Peter, we can receive that knowledge directly from our Heavenly Father through the witness of the Holy Ghost.

When we know spiritual truths by spiritual means, we can be just as sure of that knowledge as scholars and scientists are of the different kinds of knowledge they have acquired by different methods."

"Those who have the gift to know have an obvious duty to bear their witness so that those who have the gift to believe on their words might also have eternal life."

-Testimony, Elder Dallin Oaks, Ensign, May 2008

"It is a burning within that tells us what is right. It is when 'your heart tells you things your mind doesn’t know'" (Harold B. Lee, “Be Loyal to the Royal within You,” in Speeches of the Year: BYU Devotional and Ten-Stake Fireside Addresses 1973).

"...a personal testimony is granted by the Holy Ghost. It can aid others in gaining knowledge for themselves — a knowledge abiding in the heart that leaves no room for doubt."

"Our testimony is a knowledge of who we are—a child of God..."

"A direct answer to this prayer was many years in coming. While serving a mission in Scotland, Elder McKay received a powerful spiritual manifestation. He later commented, “Never before had I experienced such an emotion. … It was a manifestation for which as a doubting youth I had secretly prayed most earnestly on hillside and in meadow. It was an assurance to me that sincere prayer is answered ‘sometime, somewhere.’”

- The Importance of Receiving a Personal Testimony, Elder Robert Hales

Notice that they use the word "knowledge" and not belief in describing what a testimony is.

The LDS Church's definition of the word is exactly what I've been indoctrinated to understand the word to mean and which definition and understanding of the word was congruent with my entire Mormon experience and especially my Mormon missionary experience in New York City.

So, you can keep your Jim Bennett Mormonism® redefinition of "testimony", Jim...but I'm going to go with the LDS Church's definition, meaning and use of the word.

Jim again mischaracterizes my position by implying that I'm ignoring the "mind" part. In the Testimony section of the CES Letter, I stated:

Same method: read, ponder, and pray. Different testimonies.

Jim goes on in preaching his own homemade version of Mormonism by trying to minimize the percentage of the pie that feelings play in a spiritual experience or Mormon testimony.

Notice that Jim doesn't use, for example, the very heavy feelings based D&C 9:8-9:

But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.

But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong; therefore, you cannot write that which is sacred save it be given you from me.

Let's see how "prophet, seer, and revelator" Dallin Oaks defines receiving a witness from the Holy Ghost or bosom burning:

I have met persons who told me they have never had a witness from the Holy Ghost because they have never felt their bosom 'burn within' them. What does a 'burning in the bosom' mean? Does it need to be a feeling of caloric heat, like the burning produced by combustion? If that is the meaning, I have never had a burning in the bosom. Surely, the word 'burning' in this scripture signifies a feeling of comfort and serenity.

-Teaching and Learning by the Spirit, Elder Dallin Oaks, Ensign, March 1997

Jim continues on with his weird demolition attempt of the role and influence that feelings have in Mormon testimonies by creating a "warm and fuzzies" strawman (I don't use the term) and uses the Joseph Smith - History 1:12 verse that clearly shows an emotional / feelings event: "into every feeling of my heart".

What does Jim do? "Well, yeah, feelings are a big part here but, but he reflected!"

Every faithful Latter-day Saint who has a testimony - and I was one of them despite Jim's attempts to smear / belittle / gaslight me and claim otherwise - knows how we were taught by the Church and correlation that a witness from the Spirit was a "burning in the bosom" experience. As Oaks stated, a "burning" in the bosom signifies a "feeling of comfort and serenity".

A spiritual witness, as taught by scriptures and the LDS Church, is primarily a "burning in the bosom" experience. "It is a burning within that tells us what is right. It is when 'your heart tells you things your mind doesn’t know'". It's primarily feelings. I know you hate to hear this because you've never experienced a testimony this way (your 2021 Mormon Stories interview admission) and it goes against your Jim Bennett Mormonism® but I don't care what Jim Bennett Mormonism® teaches. I care what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has taught and teaches.

"And it's a very reliable and effective way to teach truth, change lives, and build enduring faith."

Jim contradicts his above nonsense assertion elsewhere in this section by writing:

"Yet the Lord never interferes with agency, and people can too often receive 'answers' that conveniently coincide with the answers they wanted or expected, which is a case of mistaking their own desires for the will of God."

Exactly, Jim! Congratulations, you just unlocked the problem of religion and the unreliability of this method in discerning truth and reality. This is one of the main points I'm making in this entire section on one of many reasons why this method is an unreliable vehicle and pathway to truth.

If it's so "reliable" why are other people who likewise study in their minds and go to their gods in prayer receive completely different answers than the Latter-day Saints do? I show video testimonies of people of other faiths doing exactly this.

So, no, Jim...it is not "reliable" nor is it "effective". It's actually the opposite in that it leads so many astray in contradictory answers - as you acknowledge above.

Religiocentrism

False. I've provided dozens of testimonies from members of different religions doing just this on this page alone.

My statement includes not just today's religions but thousands of religions all over the world over mankind's history. Anyone who lives on Planet Earth can clearly see the truth in that mankind has been tribal most of its history with their own religions and gods that they sincerely believed had the stamp of approval of their gods while the religions of competing and opposing tribes had the false religions and false gods. No matter how much Jim wants to gaslight us here because it's a threat to his Mormon epistemology, the reality is that mankind has been and still is rooted in religiocentrism and tribalism with its superstitions and gods while claiming that their true gods back them up in their true religion and true religious beliefs.

Jim claims that I "can't" do this because "they don't" and that "outside of the LDS tradition, that's not generally how other religions define their relationship with their church or with God" but I demonstrate that I can and I just did. I demonstrate this with evidence of dozens of video testimonies showing members of vastly different faiths being told by their gods that they're in their gods' true religion/church.

All Jim offers us is his own unsupported opinions and arrogant assumptions that the LDS model is not only the only model but that it is the One True Model®. It's absurd, arrogant and just not true.

2021 Jim, as evident in his statements, knows that there are members of other religions who point to their gods as telling them they're in the true and correct religion and he is no longer interested in devaluing or invalidating these people and their claims in order to make his own LDS claims valid and true.

See my previous answer above.

Jim employs his strawman again here by claiming that I'm claiming others' spiritual experiences are "a Latter-day Saint approach" when I'm not making any such claim. I'm simply stating that other members of other religions have spiritual experiences and communication with their gods or divine source telling them that their religion is the correct and true religion.

I've demonstrated this ad nauseam here in this debunking.

They cannot all be right together

Which god, Jim?

Apparently, Jim forgets that humans believe in many different gods who are mutually exclusive.

Even within Christianity, you have different Christian sects that believe in very different versions of Jesus. Just ask the Evangelicals if they like the Mormon version of Jesus.

"They cannot all be right together, if at all." Jim completely ignores this statement and dilemma as well as the problem that it conveys. Jim instead decides to activate his own Jim Bennett Mormonism® and goes on an incoherent and weird universalism tangent that is not in congruent with the actual and official teachings and practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Jim ends with an ad hominem attack by claiming that I "clearly believed in a much more adversarial, un-Christian approach to people of other faiths than Church teachings would warrant."

Here we see an example of Jim Bennett Mormonism® and how it contradicts the Mormon god, Joseph Smith, other LDS prophets / apostles and the teachings and practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: "they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof."

- Joseph Smith - History 1:5-19

"And also those to whom these commandments were given, might have power to lay the foundation of this church, and to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness, the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth..."

- D&C 1:30

"This is not just another Church. This is not just one of a family of Christian churches. This is the Church and kingdom of God, the only true Church upon the face of the earth..."

- Prophet Ezra Taft Benson, Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, p. 164-165

"When the light came to me I saw that all the so-called Christian world was groveling in darkness."

- Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v.5, p.73

"With a regard to true theology, a more ignorant people never lived than the present so-called Christian world."

- Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v.8, p.199

"The Christian world, so-called, are heathens as to the knowledge of the salvation of God"

- Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v.8, p.171

“... all the millions of apostate Christendom have abased themselves before the mythical throne of a mythical Christ.... in large part the worship of apostate Christendom is performed in ignorance, as much so as was the worship of the Athenians who bowed the Unknown Gods.”

- Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, pp. 269, 374-375

“Believers in the doctrines of modern Christendom will reap damnation to their souls.”

- Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, see pp. 45-46

"Doctrines were corrupted, authority lost, and a false order of religion took the place of the gospel of Jesus Christ, just as it had been the case in former dispensations, and the people were left in spiritual darkness."

- Prophet Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, v.3, p.266

"After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, there were only two churches upon the earth. They were known respectively as the Church of the Lamb of God and Babylon. The various organizations which are called churches throughout Christendom, though differing in their creeds and organizations, have one common origin. They all belong to Babylon."

- Apostle George Q. Cannon, Gospel Truth, p. 324

Funny how Jim didn't share all of these adversarial verses and statements, huh?

Or how for decades we portrayed a priest or non-Mormon clergy of other denominations as agents of Satan in our Temple Endowment ceremonies.

Sure, we smile and pretend in public that we are accepting and graceful of other religions with fluffy PR statements but when we're among our own behind closed doors, we go back to making hubris comments about how our 12-year-old kids have more authority in the tip of their pinky fingers than the Pope does or how it's so sad that this family is missing out on eternal families and the true Priesthood power because they're members of false XYZ Church.

We are taught and encouraged as missionaries and even as members (every member a missionary) to deconvert people of other faiths (even Christianity) so that we can then convert them into Mormonism.

Every Mormon knows this. I knew it as a Mormon. Jim thinks he can gaslight us all and revise and create this alternate Mormonism that we didn't experience and which does not exist. It is not the Mormonism we see in our scriptures or our history and it is certainly not the Mormonism that the Brethren and Correlation peddled to Chapel members and missionaries.

Sell Copyright Revelation in Canada

So, the way that the Mormon god who, as Jim admits, "has the capacity to flood the Church with riches by miraculous means" decides to get his startup Church going and to infuse it with the revenue it needs is to sell away the patent, rights and licensing of its core "keystone" product and scripture? And to sell it to likely non-Mormons and / or potential enemies of the Church in Canada?

Canada Copyright Mission Failed

Jim gives Joseph Smith an out by saying that the revelation wasn't wrong because the "people hardened their hearts" which is Joseph Smith using wiggle room in the revelations where he was not directly able to steer the outcome.

In other words, Joseph Smith was smart enough to write in an escape chute into those revelations because he knew he could not guarantee the outcome. So, Joseph knew to write into the revelations preconditions such as "the people not hardening their hearts" in the event that if the revelation fails (as it did) Joseph would not be directly to blame for its failure.

But, come on..."hardened" Canadian hearts? I don't believe that for one second.

David Whitmer "God, man or devil" Stone Revelation

Here's 2021 Jim Bennett debunking 2018 Jim Bennett on his above 2018 anti-rock in the hat statement and position:

Jim wrote his above "I'm prone to agree with them" on rejecting the LDS Church's Book of Mormon Translation essay fact in September 2018. Yet, in his above 2021 video, he states that it wasn't until he read the Church's essay on this that he went, "Oh, okay" and he accepted this fact and changed his mind and position.

The problem though? This Book of Mormon Translation essay that Jim is referring to that changed his mind was released and published on December 30, 2013...a little under 5 years before Jim wrote his above statement and released his latest Jim Bennett Mormonism® Manifesto in September 2018.

Jim can't claim ignorance about the essay at the time he made his September 2018 anti-rock in the hat statement because I placed the link to this essay in multiple places in the CES Letter that he was responding to.

So...which is it, Jim? Why did you reject this Church essay fact in September 2018 - close to 5 years after its release - only to reverse course in 2021 after stating that it was because of reading this 2013 Church essay?

Moving on to Jim's claim that Book of Mormon witness David Whitmer is unreliable and his testimony is written 57 years after the fact:

This is a common problem with Mormon apologetics where they will accept any long-dated testimony that backs up their claims while dismissing sources that undermine their position as being "too late to count". Furthermore, as mentioned above with the essay, the Church itself admits that Joseph Smith used the stone in a hat. They acknowledge this not just because of David Whitmer's testimony but because of Martin Harris' account as well, which was published in the Millennial Star - a Latter-day Saint newspaper that was printed in England from 1840 until 1970, when it was replaced by the Church's Ensign. Emma Smith also described the process this way.

Even though all three accounts are given later (an argument that Jim uses to try to invalidate Book of Mormon witness David Whitmer), all three later accounts are simply not in dispute among the majority of LDS or non-LDS historians and scholars, which is why the LDS Church conceded this as fact in its December 2013 Book of Mormon Translation essay...that thankfully, 2021 Jim has wisely changed his mind on and which fact he now accepts.

Bonus video in case Jim Bennett still has any doubts about the validity of the rock in the hat translation:

Follow the prophet. Source @ 3:25 mark

"Whitmer didn't participate in going to Canada, and accounts from those who accompanied Joseph on the trip contradict Whitmer's opinion. The contemporaneous document makes it clear that the Lord told Joseph that the people of Canada had a say in whether or not the copyright would be sold. Whether or not Joseph actually said what Whitmer says he said does not change the fact that the actual outcome was consistent with the revelation."

While David Whitmer might not have gone to Canada to sell the copyright to the Book of Mormon, David Whitmer was in the inner circle enough to know about the mission in the first place, which is a pretty good indication that he knew what happened because the revelation about selling the copyright to Canada was not published in the Book of Commandments or Doctrine and Covenants - which the majority of the membership were unaware of.

The wording that David Whitmer used is very similar to what Joseph Smith himself wrote into the Doctrine and Covenants 46:7 revelation. From Deseret News' Newly found revelation of Joseph Smith:

"Whitmer's memory of Joseph's response to 'revelation' is similar to a later revelation found in Doctrine and Covenants 46:7 that says some commandments 'are of men, and others of devils.'"

Jim Bennett then gives Joseph Smith an out by saying that none of it matters anyway because the "outcome was consistent with the revelation," which is Joseph Smith using wiggle room in the revelations where he was not directly able to steer the outcome. In other words, Joseph Smith was smart enough to write in an escape chute into those revelations because he knew he could not guarantee the outcome. So, Joseph knew to write into the revelations preconditions such as "the people not hardening their hearts" in the event that if the revelation fails (as it did) Joseph would not be directly to blame for its failure.

God, devil or man if Prophet can't tell?

Jim doesn't answer the problem and question. All he has for us is "we have an individual responsibility to discern truth from error by the power of the Holy Ghost". Okay, greatthankssomuch, Jim...but how we can really discern truth and error by the Holy Ghost? If the Prophet Joseph Smith and his successors (bans on Black and LGBTQ+ people) have trouble with this method and can't tell what's coming from the Mormon god, boogeyman Stan or from their own brains...how the hell can the rest of us tell?

This brings us back to the Worst Phone Company Ever problem that I talk about in the next two boxes.

As for Jim's "Joseph got better and better at telling the difference as he grew and learned":

This is Jim Bennett Mormonism®'s "charitable interpretation of the prophets" in action.

In Jim's 2021 Mormon Stories interviews where he and John talk about the problems of the Book of Abraham - which was written 5-12 years after this 1830 revelation took place - Jim tells us that Joseph Smith is still learning and making mistakes in what he thinks is revelation and what isn't as a defense for why Joseph got the Book of Abraham wrong.

In Jim's universe, the prophetic training wheels never come off. There is no litmus test of Joseph's fraud because Jim's "charitable interpretations" of Joseph's words and actions are boundless and endless.

Jim's statement of "understanding the things of the Spirit requires effort and diligence" and "skill" and "discernment" validates my previous points:

"Is this the best God can come up with revealing His truth to His children?"

"If God's method to revealing truth is through feelings, it is a very ineffective and unreliable method."

Jim doesn't answer my question. "Try harder next time" or "Keep developing your skill set" are not answers to the absolute absurdity of this problem. How are we supposed to know what revelations are from God, from the devil or from the heart of man if even the Prophet Joseph Smith couldn't tell?

We see the unreliability of this method across a myriad of examples in Church history and even recently with the Brethren's catastrophic November Policy banning LGBTQ+ (before getting another "revelation" 3 years later to reverse it) that resulted in the suicides and deaths of thousands of gay Latter-day Saints. The senior Brethren have been around for decades and should know where their so-called revelations are coming from.

So, while Jim has no problem charitably letting these "prophet, seers, and revelators" have their permanent training wheels on and their dangerous target practices on our dime and time, I do.

Real life tragic consequences happen here because of this insanity.

150 years of pain and hardship for Black Latter-day Saints and families because these guys could not tell what revelations (now called "theories") are from God, from the devil or from the heart of man.

Thousands of Latter-day Saint deaths from these men's treatment and banning of LGBTQ+ members because these men don't know what revelations are from God, from the devil or from the heart of man.

There has to be a litmus test. There has to be a point where we say, "Enough" and recognize the futility and archaic practice of following these "prophets, seers, and revelators" when they've done nothing to demonstrate that they are such and so much to demonstrate they aren't.

The emperor has no clothes. It's time that we stop unnecessary human tragedy and suffering and recognize just this with these blind 15 men.

False spiritual messages

Thanks for your condescending Plan of Salvation rundown, Jim. How about you respond to my actual question and argument instead? This whole gibberish nonsense is apparently Jim's long way of saying, "I'm not going to answer your actual question or argument."

While Jim is rambling on about "test", "learn and to grow", "choose good over evil" while strawmaning and misrepresenting my position with stupid "cheat sheet" and "no effort" attacks, I'm all the way over here talking about something else entirely that Jim is completely ignoring: reliability.

Packer is saying that we can be "deceived by inspiration from an unworthy source" and that we can "be given false spiritual messages" from "counterfeit spirits" and the "devil [who] may come disguised as an angel of light." Further, Packer takes this home by admitting that people can misinterpret and falsely believe that they receive spiritual promptings from God when they are instead fake messages from either ourselves or from the adversary.

This exposes serious problems, deficiencies and flaws to an already unreliable method or system that is the foundation of Mormon epistemology.

It reveals an absurd and asinine invisible Guess Who? game we have to play in order to try to get a straight answer from the right source. And we have a 1 out of 3 chance that we'll get it right.

It reveals a stupid, unreliable and incompetent god who is operating the worst phone company of all time. A god who can't or won't secure his bat phone line to his children which is used for critical communications such as Moroni's Promise.

Jim talks about "test" and "choosing good over evil" but what kind of test is this when we have to play Guess Who? games with a 1/3 chance of getting the right person on the other end of the line just so that we can initiate Moroni's Promise? How are we supposed to choose good or evil when, as Packer states, Stan can disguise himself as "an angel of light" and be so good at counterfeiting messages that we can misinterpret Stan's counterfeit message as God's message?

It's all just so absurd.

Jim fails to address or respond to the actual problems and deficiencies of such an asinine invisible Guess Who? game and how it makes an already extremely unreliable method exponentially more unreliable.

You don't get it, Jim. It's not about "mortality" this or "test" that or "learn and grow" or "choose good or evil". It's about reliability. It's about the unreliability and absurdity of an insane system where you're never positive on whether you're getting accurate answers let alone whether the "answer" is coming from the Mormon god, boogeyman Stan or from your own brain.

It's asking why the hell we should ever place our trust in such an erratic, unpredictable, inconsistent and totally unreliable system or method to getting foundational answers in which we base our entire lives on (converting to Mormonism, who to marry, etc.).

As I wrote next in the CES Letter after quoting Packer's above talk:

"What kind of a method is this if Heavenly Father allows Satan to interfere with our direct line of communication to Him? Sincerely asking for and seeking answers?

Are we now expected to not only figure out when a prophet is speaking as a prophet and not as a man while also trying to figure out whether our answers to prayer are from God, from the devil, or from ourselves?"

The ramifications of this are huge. Moroni's Promise...how do you know that it isn't Satan who is deceiving you that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith is the Lord's true prophet? That you're being deceived from joining the Lord's true church elsewhere outside of the LDS Church?

This whole absurdity reminds me of the following Terminator 2 scene where the Terminator and young John Connor had to guess whether or not they were really talking to John's foster mother on the other end of the phone line:

Warning: some profanity and gore

I further illustrate the absurdity of this below in the next box.

Worst Phone Company Ever

(This is a continuation of the conversation initiated from the previous box answer)

"When our hearts are pure and we are truly sincere, the Lord's voice will cut through any attempts by Satan to stifle it."

You don't seem to get the absurdity of this, Jim. Why is a powerful God allowing "stifling" on his bat phone connection with His children, to begin with? Why the invisible Guess Who? games?

So, you're saying that the integrity of our phone line to Heavenly Father and escaping Satan's hack is on us? The burden is on us? It's our problem? We have to have Terminator (see previous box answer) level discernment and skills to figure out the invisible Guess Who? answer?

The Mormon god is playing the worst phone company ever by putting all kinds of conditions on us in order to have an unhacked conversation and an unhacked connection with Him?

How about no conditions instead, Jim? Especially with a critical phone line that is used by His children to ask for help in finding His one true Church and to find their way back to Him?

As a father, I can assure you...Stan would be nowhere near my direct line of connection and communication with my kids. Period. The responsibility would 100% mine and not whether or not they put their hands in the cookie jar or if I like the "purity" of their hearts (whatever that means) or if their "sincere" offering on the altar is acceptable to me. I just skip all this red tape nonsense and just leave my door always open with zero conditions and with an iron-clad promise of safety, security and privacy in my communications with them. This is just what a real father with unconditional love does for his kids. End of conversation.

Why can't it be the same with our Heavenly Father and our line of communication with Him?

"Yet the Lord never interferes with agency, and people can too often receive 'answers' that conveniently coincide with the answers they wanted or expected, which is a case of mistaking their own desires for the will of God."

Exactly, Jim! Congratulations, you just unlocked the problem of religion and the unreliability of this method in discerning truth and reality. This is one of the main points I'm making in this entire section on one of many reasons why this method is an unreliable vehicle and pathway to truth.

Speaking as a man or a prophet

This is a cop out and does not answer or address the problem, concern and question.

It's also strawmen as I never claim that prophets are not fallible or mortal men. I never claim there's a "Super-Brigham" nor do I ever use that term. I do not know of any other critic who uses this term or claims that prophets are not human or fallible.

This is a common go-to attack that apologists use against critics ad nauseam. They create a strawman that critics are claiming that prophets should be perfect and infallible. Critics do not make such a claim. Jim often uses this card and strawman against me throughout his Jim Bennett Mormonism® Manifesto.

Joseph Smith said:

"I never told you I was perfect, but there is no errors in the revelations which I have taught..."

- The Words of Joseph Smith, ed. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook [1980], 369.

Here Joseph Smith is acknowledging personal fallibility but is teaching doctrinal infallibility.

Mormon apologists like to play in the mud squealing about personal fallibility while ignoring doctrinal infallibility.

Critics are focused on doctrinal infallibility and not on personal fallibility.

If we can't expect basic honesty, consistency and morality while these fallible men are speaking as prophets...what's the point of prophets? If yesterday's doctrine can be today's false doctrine and yesterday's prophet can be today's heretic...what's the point of prophets?

If these so-called "prophets" are just fallible and mortal men who have no greater connection with God than the rest of us...why then are we propping these men up or listening to anything they have to say? Especially in light of a clear and horrible ~200-year track record of consistent fraud, racism, bigotry and fake revelations?

If there's no real "Thus saith the Lord" and they're making stuff up as they go along...who cares what comes out of their mouths?

If you're truly a "prophet, seer or revelator", it is a reasonable expectation for you to act and demonstrate as such.

It is beyond reasonable to expect the "Lord's servants" to have basic integrity and consistency and to not teach divine racism or that Adam is God or claiming a revelation to ban LGBTQ+ before claiming another revelation to undo the previous LGBTQ+ ban just 3 years earlier.

"We will always teach the truth"

Figure out from God, devil or ourselves

Would you look at all this gaslighting and misrepresentation?

Not only is Jim clueless on the absolute absurdity of all of this but Jim misrepresents and attacks me on what he thinks my Church experience was and was not and what he thinks it should and should not have been instead.

On top of all of this, Jim fails to address or respond to the actual problems and deficiencies of such an asinine invisible Guess Who? game and how it makes an already extremely unreliable method exponentially more unreliable.

You don't get it, Jim. It's not about "thinking" or "spiritual effort" or "mindless automation". It's about reliability. It's about the unreliability and absurdity of a system where you're never positive on whether you're getting accurate answers let alone whether you're getting accurate answers from the Mormon god, boogeyman Stan or from your own brain.

It's asking why the hell we should ever place our trust in such an erratic, unpredictable, inconsistent and totally unreliable system or method to getting foundational answers in which we base our entire lives on (converting to Mormonism, who to marry, etc.).

It's worth copying / pasting my previous response here as it's very relevant and it further highlights how absurd and asinine this whole thing is:

---

CES Letter says:

"What kind of a method is this if Heavenly Father allows Satan to interfere with our direct line of communication to Him? Sincerely asking for and seeking answers?"

Jim Bennett says:

"When our hearts are pure and we are truly sincere, the Lord's voice will cut through any attempts by Satan to stifle it."

You don't seem to get the absurdity of this, Jim. Why is a powerful God allowing "stifling" on his bat phone connection with His children, to begin with? Why the invisible Guess Who? games?

So, you're saying that the integrity of our phone line to Heavenly Father and escaping Satan's hack is on us? The burden is on us? It's our problem? We have to have Terminator (see previous box answer) level discernment and skills to figure out the invisible Guess Who? answer?

The Mormon god is playing the worst phone company ever by putting all kinds of conditions on us in order to have an unhacked conversation and an unhacked connection with Him?

How about no conditions instead, Jim? Especially with a critical phone line that is used by His children to ask for help in finding His one true Church and to find their way back to Him?

As a father, I can assure you...Stan would be nowhere near my direct line of connection and communication with my kids. Period. The responsibility would 100% mine and not whether or not they put their hands in the cookie jar or if I like the "purity" of their hearts (whatever that means) or if their "sincere" offering on the altar is acceptable to me. I just skip all this red tape nonsense and just leave my door always open with zero conditions and with an iron-clad promise of safety, security and privacy in my communications with them. This is just what a real father with unconditional love does for his kids. End of conversation.

Why can't it be the same with our Heavenly Father and our line of communication with Him?

"Evidence" & "logic" on our side

The "evidences" and "logic" that I held onto as part of my testimony of the Gospel turned out to be either false or incomplete when I discovered the rest of the story of the LDS Church's truth crisis.

Jim tells us that the Church is "doing a magnificent job in offering greater transparency and information than ever before" but he doesn't tell us why the Church has had to offer "greater transparency and information than ever before". The reason is because the Internet age has forced them to. Critics forced them to. They didn't do it out of concern for members' and investigators' free agency in having all of the information on the table as they knew all this information for decades and went out of their way to keep it all hidden from membership. The Church did it kicking and screaming because, as Jim said in his interviews, "we have no choice".

Jim has acknowledged that the Internet age was a major factor for more transparency in his Mormon Stories interviews and former LDS Church Historian Elder Snow has acknowledged this as well.

As for "magnificent job"? Not really. More transparent than the Church has ever been? Sure. But the Gospel Topics essays are still problematic and filled with omissions and obfuscations. Ditto for Saints, which Jim can't stop gushing over.

Moving over to Jim's "STONE IN HIS HAT!!!!!!!" comments:

Jim's constant juvenile mocking, snark and belittling of my shock, dismay and deep betrayal (and the millions like myself) of discovering that the Book of Mormon translation process was not what the Church taught me in my entire Mormon experience and which I falsely taught many others demonstrates a complete ignorance, lack of compassion, empathy and understanding on Jim's part of why this information is so damning, troubling and disturbing to so many people. I talk about all of this in detail in the Book of Mormon Translation section.

Jim made his above "magnificent job" comment about the Church's "transparency" in 2018. Here we are 3 years later in 2021 and this is the Church's "magnificent job" in display:

This is a screenshot of the recent January 2021 Liahona. Look at the inaccurate gold plates "translation" still being portrayed to the general membership:

This is a screenshot from the recent January 2021 Friend magazine:

"Magnificent job"? No.

So, yes, while the Church will occasionally release essays and videos that superficially go over some troubling historical issues (rock in the hat Book of Mormon translation, etc.), the reality is that when they are encountering the mass membership who aren't asking questions...either via General Conferences or when mass producing materials such as the Liahona and Friend magazines, the Church continues to fall back on incorrect and long disproven narratives, claims, images and sources.

This tells you everything you need to know about the Church's confidence, that if they ever told members on the mainstream channels the real history, on whether or not the members will continue to stay in the Church.

What Jim fails to tell his readers here is how the Church was not transparent for decades to its members and it was only in the Information Age that the Church was forced to become more transparent and more honest about its origins and history. 2021 Jim, however, acknowledges this in his Mormon Stories interviews:

Gap couldn't be further apart

This is just disingenuous.

What Jim isn't telling you here is what kind of a "believing Latter-day Saint" he is. Jim isn't telling you what really happened as a result of his looking at the same documents and encountering his own religion's truth crisis.

The result is that Jim has abandoned Orthodox Correlated Mormonism in favor of his own homemade Jim Bennett Mormonism® that conflicts and contradicts the teachings and correlation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its top leadership. Jim's homemade Mormonism is not condoned or accepted by the Brethren.

Here's Jim admitting to his Jim Bennett Mormonism®:

Further, Jim isn't sharing with you on how his views have changed and evolved:

---

In response to Jim's attack in the last part of his above paragraph:

"Maybe it's because at every opportunity to interpret that same evidence, you take the point of view that is the most critical of Joseph and the Church and refuse to give the Latter-day Saint argument the benefit of any doubts."

A key foundational pillar of Jim Bennett Mormonism® is, as Jim states:

"I think so many of our challenges and problems with the Church go away if we can charitably interpret the actions of leaders of the Church...who are just men...who are doing the best they can."

Once you understand this, you understand Jim's approach to the CES Letter and his methodology and strategy in dealing with the LDS Church's truth crisis.

Let's take this Jim Bennett Mormonism® idea for a test run:

Well...that test run didn't go so well.

The problem with Jim's "charity" is that he overuses it and very liberally dispenses of it to the point of effectively destroying any litmus test for fraud. There is nothing that his religion and its leaders can do, with the exception of further mistreating the LGBTQ+ (Jim almost left the Church in 2015 over its November Policy), that will trigger Jim's litmus test alarm.

As we saw in the above video, Jim was very charitable toward his LDS leaders to the point where he boldly declared that no one was deliberately dishonest or deceptive. When John debunked Jim's unsupported claim and assertion by pointing to Joseph Fielding Smith ripping out and hiding the 1832 First Vision account, Jim's reaction wasn't that of introspection of his position and its weaknesses but rather an automatic "I want to be charitable to Joseph Fielding Smith."

With the Book of Abraham, Jim acknowledges that it's very problematic but rather than allow this problem to raise the red flag on Joseph Smith, Jim showers Joseph Smith with "charity" by clinging onto unsupported, unsustainable and absurd apologetics.

So, it's important to understand Jim's worldview and how he operates in relation to the Church, its leaders and its history to understand why he is constantly turning off alarm bells that otherwise would activate another's litmus test for fraud or raise red flags.

Anyway, Jim attacks me by claiming that "at every opportunity" I "take the point of view that is most critical of Joseph and the Church" and that I "refuse to give the Latter-day Saint argument the benefit of any doubts."

This is such a dishonest and unfair attack. Jim completely ignores that I did give "Latter-day Saint arguments" the benefit of an open mind and careful consideration not just the entire year during my "faith crisis" before being approached by the CES Director but that I've done thousands of pages worth of line-by-line responses to Latter-day Saint arguments since then. You can see these responses on my Debunkings page, which Jim ignores.

Jim doesn't tell you that it was exactly because of my open-mindedness and willingness to give Latter-day Saint arguments the benefit of the doubt that threw me deeper into crisis by dismantling and destroying my testimony that I was trying to save. It was in this crisis and despair of my testimony being annihilated by Latter-day Saint arguments (aka apologetics) that set into motion a chain of events for the CES Director to approach me asking for my concerns and questions in March 2013.

In other words, I went through a similar process that Jim did with the Book of Abraham. Notice in the above Book of Abraham video that Jim states that he's no longer open to Book of Abraham apologetic arguments. What happened? Is Jim closed-minded? Not willing to give Latter-day Saint arguments the benefit of the doubt?

No. What happened was Jim evaluated the Latter-day Saint arguments on the Book of Abraham and found them to be absurd and unsustainable. I experienced the same not just with apologetics on the Book of Abraham but apologetics on every topic of the LDS Church's truth claims and truth crisis.

What this really is is a subtle ad hominem attack by Jim in that he's pushing the narrative that I'm basically a closed-minded "lazy learner" who didn't take my religion or my decision to leave it seriously nor did I do so with complete, thorough and balanced research.

I completely reject this bullshit ad hominem and mischaracterization of me and my experience as it's just not true.

Be wary of appeal to authority fallacies like the one that Jim just committed by creating the illusion and deception that he basically came out of all of this unscathed and that he still believes in Orthodox Correlated Chapel Mormonism - when the reality is very different.

Redefine faith in response to facts

"I cannot second-guess someone else's experience."

Sure didn't stop Jim from second guessing, mischaracterizing, gaslighting, diminishing and undermining my own spiritual experiences, testimony and Church experiences along with doing the same to people of other faiths that Jim seeks to invalidate in this section alone.

"What's interesting, though, is how critical you are of those who bear their testimonies when confronted with difficult information, yet that's exactly what you're doing here."

? I do? Where's your support for this, Jim? I don't ever recall ridiculing or disrespecting anyone who was sharing their testimony to me. Stop projecting onto me your own personal experiences (see below) and making the misconception that I would do the same. Again, I cannot recall anything of the sort and I would like to see your evidence.

"It's impossible to argue with a testimony, which may be why so many people, when backed into a corner, toss that out as the best they can do."

Jim said something similar in his 2021 Mormon Stories interviews where he talked about a situation where an LDS missionary is confronted by a hostile person shouting criticisms and that a missionary who bears his testimony is doing so because he feels cornered and unconfident. It's interesting that Jim uses this again here and is projecting this onto me as if I've done the same. It appears that in Jim's mind that every critic does this and since I'm a critic I must've surely mocked a Latter-day Saint bearing testimony. I'm very highly confident that I've never done such a thing to a person as this is not how I roll.

I don't know if it's a Freudian slip or what but it appears that Jim doesn't see the bearing of testimonies as a manifestation of power or confidence because he keeps using the bearing of testimonies in a context of weakness and "being backed into a corner".

Jim contradicts his first sentence where he says he can't second-guess someone else's experience in reference to the former member's testimony but then proceeds to attempt to undermine and trash this very same person's testimony with his "backed into a corner" comment - implying the person is weak. Jim does himself, in the very same paragraph, what he tries to claim that I do to others - without evidence.

"For my part, all I can say is that my experience has been markedly different than this one, and I don't believe for one second that Latter-day Saints "have to re-define faith in order to believe," and that science, fact, history, and faith all have truth that can be circumscribed into one great whole."

Oh, look...Jim contradicts himself here by acknowledging in his 2021 Mormon Stories interview that "I don't really have that kind of a faith anymore":

Oh, look...Jim contradicts himself here by talking about how he went on a faith journey and evolved in his positions on epistemology:

Oh, look...Jim contradicts himself by talking about how he's had to redefine and adjust his faith in the Book of Abraham:

Jim had to redefine and alter a faith he once had in response to facts, historical and scientific evidence countering certain LDS truth claims. This is not a criticism as I think it's a good thing to evolve and change but I think Jim is just being disingenuous here on the truth and reality that Latter-day Saints have and are going on faith journeys in the internet age where they are confronted with Gospel Topics essays facts. They're having to redefine faith in certain LDS truth claims as a result.

Paul Dunn

Paul H. Dunn's lies

Jim and I agree that Paul Dunn was an Area Authority, that he was a popular speaker and that he told powerful faith-promoting war and baseball stories. We also agree that Dunn made false comments (Jim calls them "tall tales") in his talks for which he was forced by the Church to publicly apologize years later.

In response to my "What about the members who felt the Spirit from Dunn's fabricated and false stories?" CES Letter comment, Jim contradicts his previous "I cannot second-guess someone else's experience" along with his 2021 statements that he's not interested in debunking people's spiritual experiences...by attempting to debunk and diminish other people's spiritual experiences. In this case, the people listening to Paul Dunn's talks.

Jim reluctantly admits that Dunn and his stories "tugged at the heartstrings" of his audience but then tries to arrogantly claim that this was "not the same thing as feeling the Spirit"...again, contradicting his previous "I cannot second-guess someone else's experience" while also contradicting his 2021 statements that he cannot judge other people's spiritual experiences nor is he interested in debunking them.

Finally, Jim acknowledges that people had spiritual experiences with Dunn but tries to undo and minimize the damage of Dunn's talks, which included falsehoods.

Jim also says that "we have a responsibility to discern truth from error" but does not address how members who received their testimonies from the Spirit listening to Paul Dunn and his fabricated stories could have done such a thing. Paul didn't publicly apologize and acknowledge his dishonesty until decades later in 1991 after his falsehoods were exposed.

As usual, Jim does not answer or address my direct questions and the core problem: there are members who have had spiritual experiences from listening to Paul Dunn's speeches that were sprinkled with fabricated war and baseball stories.

What does this say about the Spirit and what the Spirit really is? What does this say about the reliability of the Spirit in discerning truth and reality?

Here's a fascinating Mormon Stories episode about Paul Dunn:

Elder Packer's immoral counsel

Jim goes on a rambling tangent about "leap of faith" this and faith that and faith this and here's a picture of my son on a rope course in 2017 and faith that and faith this...but, as usual, Jim doesn't address or answer the core problem that I present:

Elder Packer is telling the missionary to lie by bearing a testimony that he does not have and subsequently is sharing this terrible immoral counsel to the general membership.

Of course, it's not surprising that Packer is dishing out advice of dishonesty as it's his modus operandi:

Of course, Jim calls this counsel to lie "great advice" and proceeds to attack me by claiming that I'm "missing the point of it entirely" and that I "didn't read the whole talk". I read the entire talk and it still doesn't make Packer's turd and dishonest advice any legitimate or morally defensible.

The one who is "missing the point entirely" here is the same person who is defending immorality in the name of faith and apologetics. Hint: it ain't me.

Elder Oaks' immoral counsel

What universe is Jim in? Are we even in the same universe?

Let's unpack this nonsense slowly:

Packer

Missionary: "Hey Packer...I don't have a testimony...so, how the hell am I going to claim to know things to an investigator that I really do not know? If I bear witness to claims that I do not know to investigators, that's dishonest, right? In a court of law, it's called 'perjury'...right?"

Packer: "Bear a testimony you don't have to an investigator telling that investigator you know facts you really don't know and you should hopefully get an actual testimony after you've lied the first time to an investigator who has no idea that you're lying to him the first time before you hopefully get your actual testimony after you lied to the investigator the first time a few minutes before."

Missionary: ...

---

Oaks

Mormon: "I don't have a testimony so would bearing a testimony I don't have be dishonest? You're a lawyer...would that be acceptable under oath in a court of law or would that be perjury?"

Oaks: "You gain a testimony by bearing a testimony that you don't have yet."

Mormon: "...but, isn't it dishonest to claim something I don't know in the first place? How is this honest and fair to the person I'm testifying to who doesn't know that I really don't know what I'm claiming to know the first time I'm claiming to know what I don't know?"

Oaks: "Do you want a testimony or not?"

---

"Neither he nor Elder Packer are asking people to bear a testimony that they do not believe to be true."

Notice Jim's above little crafty word game. No, Jim, Oaks and Packer are asking people to bear a testimony that they do. not. have.

In true Mormon apologetic fashion, Jim has changed the goal posts and is attempting to reframe and change the entire context of what's going on here with his above phraseology.

Jim, it's not even about whether or not they believe it to be true or false. They don't know. A testimony is claiming a knowledge of the validity of LDS foundational truth claims.

"Believe it to be true" is not even a condition in either apostle's dishonest turd counsels. Both turd counsels are advising the missionary / member to lie and mislead others with a testimony that they don't have in order to gain one.

Of course, Jim pulls out the overused apologetic card of "context!" while attacking me by claiming that I didn't read the talks (I did and there is nothing in all the talks to legitimize or make lying to others okay or morally acceptable). In what "context" is lying to another human being that you know xyz is true when you really do not know xyz is true ever okay, Jim?

One of Jim's favorite attacks he likes to use ad nauseum against me in his Jim Bennett Mormonism® Manifesto as well as in his interviews, in his attempts to avoid the issues and to attempt to denigrate and undermine me, is his bullshit "jEReMY dIDn'T ReAD tHe SOuRCe". In these examples? Jim knows that these apostolic statements are indefensible so he tries to wiggle out of the problem by pointing to the talks while claiming that I didn't read them and I'm taking it all out of context.

I read all three talks. I'm not taking anything out of context. These counsels from apostles are wrong and indefensible as they are both advocating dishonesty as a means to an end. Period. Full stop.

In the real world, it's called "lying", Jim. No "leap of faith" or rope course pictures changes this fact.

Bearing a testimony that you do not have is not only a lie but it's a misrepresentation to the person listening to this fake testimony. If a missionary follows Packer's and Oaks' unethical counsels and bears a fake testimony that he does not have to an investigator, who is investigating whether or not to invest her life in Mormonism? It's something worse: fraud.

Investigator's Point of View

Elder Packer and Oaks are telling people to bear testimonies they don't even have yet in order to gain one!

This is dishonest counsel. Period. Full stop.

The only dishonest attempts happening here are your attempts, Jim, to gaslight all of us that your apostles are not dishing out immoral advice for missionaries and members to lie to others by bearing a testimony that they do. not. have....in order to gain one.

Notice that Jim avoids looking at this from the investigator's point of view. Jim completely ignores my above exercise and questions.

Imagine that you're a never Mormon investigator and you're taking the missionary discussions for the first time. You're studying with the missionaries to gather all of the information you need so that you can make a decision as to whether or not you want to devote your life to Mormonism.

Across the room from you are Elder Cunningham and Elder Price. Elder Price is the new junior companion who is the missionary that Elder Packer gave his lying advice to. Elder Price starts bearing his very first testimony to you about how he knows that Joseph Smith is a true prophet and that the Book of Mormon is true and that the LDS Church is the Lord's true Church today.

You're impressed by his testimony and with his use of words like, "I know". This testimony becomes a key part of your desire to join the LDS Church.

How would you feel if you found out that Elder Price's testimony was fake and he was simply following Elder Packer's and Oaks' advice to bear a fake testimony in order to hopefully gain a real one? But at your expense?

No wonder Jim doesn't want to do this exercise while completely ignoring the investigator's point of view - it cuts right through Jim's apologetic nonsense and gaslighting.

Neil Andersen Nothingburger "scandal"

What a nothingburger. Jim is attempting to manufacture this as some Jeremy's evil-mustache-twirling nefarious lie and misrepresentation of a Mormon apostle when nothing of the kind is happening here.

Jim knows he can't defend apostolic immorality so he chose to manufacture nefarious bullshit and fake outrage to distract his readers from this indefensible problem. This is also why all we're getting from Jim on the problem of apostolic immorality is gaslighting that the apostles didn't really say what they clearly said or mean what they clearly meant along with Jim's refusal to look at this from the investigator's point of view.

What's being "grossly distorted" here is Jim's attempt to twist and misrepresent my statement as saying something else entirely while lying that I'm "distorting" and misrepresenting an apostle's words and intent.

I'm not. The one here doing the actual distorting and misrepresenting is Jim Bennett.

Let's unpack this:

My Neil Andersen quote in the CES Letter:

“It may come as you bear your own testimony of the Prophet...Consider recording the testimony of Joseph Smith in your own voice, listening to it regularly...Listening to the Prophet’s testimony in your own voice will help bring the witness you seek.”

– Neil L. Andersen, Joseph Smith

Now, let's look at the "pertinent statement without the ellipses" from Jim:

Next, read the testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith in the Pearl of Great Price or in this pamphlet, now in 158 languages. You can find it online at LDS.org or with the missionaries. This is Joseph’s own testimony of what actually occurred. Read it often. Consider recording the testimony of Joseph Smith in your own voice, listening to it regularly, and sharing it with friends. Listening to the Prophet’s testimony in your own voice will help bring the witness you seek.

The points in Jim's above "pertinent statement" is in my above CES Letter Andersen statement highlighted in yellow:

“It may come as you bear your own testimony of the Prophet...Consider recording the testimony of Joseph Smith in your own voice, listening to it regularly...Listening to the Prophet’s testimony in your own voice will help bring the witness you seek.”

– Neil L. Andersen, Joseph Smith

Going back to the first sentence that Jim states, "is from an entirely different paragraph and is not connected to the rest of the text." I don't claim they're in the same paragraph and I clearly show through ellipses that there's text in-between. Further, you can clearly see that the first sentence is making its own separate point in that "it" (a new testimony) "may come" when you "bear your own testimony". The first sentence clearly has nothing to do with the rest of the quote because it's making a separate point that you get a testimony by bearing one.

This first sentence is a main point. Elder Andersen is telling people to bear a testimony (that they do not have) so that "it [testimony] may come". The first sentence clearly is its own statement and claim as it's stating that "it [testimony] may come" as "you bear your own testimony of the Prophet".

In other words, just like Packer's and Oaks' above turd dishonest counsels, Andersen is encouraging the same by telling people to bear testimonies that they don't have in the hopes that "it" (testimony) "may come".

Rather than address this dishonesty on the part of his apostles, Jim seeks to distract his readers by manufacturing a nothingburger disguised as a nefarious scandal and misrepresentation of an apostle when it is nothing of the kind. Jim is banging drums over ellipses instead of actually addressing the arguments and points I'm making: Mormon apostles are dishing out immoral counsel / advice to membership and missionaries to lie to others by bearing a testimony they do not have in hopes of getting a testimony after they've lied to someone else the first time.

Moving on to Jim's other blatantly dishonest misrepresentation of what I actually wrote and what I'm actually saying:

He’s not asking people to bear their own testimonies and listen to themselves saying “I know Joseph Smith was a prophet.” He’s asking people to read Joseph Smith – History, which will strengthen their testimony. He then asks them to consider recording the testimony of Joseph Smith – i.e. “I saw a pillar of light, etc.” – not recording their testimony of Joseph Smith – i.e. saying “I know it’s true” over and over again.

Here's what I actually wrote in the CES Letter after Elder Andersen's quote that Jim completely bastardizes, strawman's, misinterprets, misunderstands and misrepresents me on:

In other words, repeat things over and over until you convince yourself that it’s true. Just keep telling yourself, “I know it’s true...I know it’s true...I know it’s true” until you actually believe it and you have a testimony that the Church is true and Joseph Smith was a prophet.

What Jim doesn't get here is that this is not about what Andersen literally said. It's about that Andersen is using a cult brainwashing technique where you get people you want indoctrinated or further indoctrinated into the cult to tape record cult materials, talks and sermons in their own voice. It's part of self-hypnosis where it puts you in a trance and allows you to unwittingly reprogram your subconscious into a deeper acceptance on whatever it is you're chanting (in this case, Joseph Smith's testimony).

It's even in the BITE Model under "Thought Control": "Hypnotic techniques are used to alter mental states and undermine critical thinking".

I didn't say that Andersen is asking asking people to bear their own testimonies and listen to themselves saying “I know Joseph Smith was a prophet”, Jim. You are by bastardizing and misrepresenting what I actually wrote. I'm saying, as mentioned above, that Andersen is using a cult brainwashing technique where you repeat cult talks and materials that you record in your own voice (in this case, Joseph Smith's testimony) over and over until you're convinced that it's true. Stop misrepresenting what I'm actually saying, Jim.

"He’s asking people to read Joseph Smith – History, which will strengthen their testimony. He then asks them to consider recording the testimony of Joseph Smith – i.e. “I saw a pillar of light, etc.” – not recording their testimony of Joseph Smith – i.e. saying “I know it’s true” over and over again."

Again, a strawman and blatant misrepresentation of what I wrote and what I'm saying. Yes, he's asking them to read Joseph Smith's testimony and yes, he's asking them to record - in their own voice, by the way - the testimony of Joseph Smith. And finally...no. I never wrote that Andersen said for them to record their own testimony of Joseph Smith by saying "I know it's true" over and over again. This is Jim's misinterpretation and misrepresentation of my words.

I'm saying that Andersen is crossing the line by using cult brainwashing techniques and my statement of "I know it's true...I know it's true...I know it's true" is conveying this deeper cult brainwashing technique as its sole purpose and exercise is to deeply indoctrinate and/or indoctrinate further the subject who is listening to their own recorded voice of the cult material that they recorded.

"If you follow Elder Andersen’s instructions – a suggestion, really, as advice to “consider” something isn’t really an apostolic mandate – you won’t be telling yourself “I know it’s true” over and over again; you’ll be listening to and pondering Joseph’s words, not your own."

Sigh...see above for my response as Jim is missing the point entirely while creating a strawman on a claim that I didn't make and that I'm not making.

"You’ve grossly distorted both Elder Andersen’s words and his intent here, and you need to be honest with your readers or simply remove this charge altogether."

The one who is "grossly distorting" words and intent here is you, Jim. You need to stop making up shit and actually start addressing the real questions and problems. But you can't so you resort to strawmen, creating fake scandals and falsely lying about me ("jErEmY dIdN'T rEaD tHe sOUrcEs", "jErEmY iS lYiNg aBoUt aN aPosTLe", "jErEmY dIdN'T rEaLlY FeEl tHe sPiRiT", "jErEmY iS sAyInG OtHeR fAiThS hAvE LdS sTyLE tEsTiMoNiES", "lOoK gUyS! jEReMy dOeSn'T kNOw mUfaSA IsN't ReAl lOLz", etc.)

How is this honest?

See what Jim did here? Rather than confront the actual problems of apostolic lying and counseling of dishonesty as a means to the end of gaining a testimony, Jim ignores this and turns the table onto me with his dishonest manufactured nothingburger "scandal" that he created to distract his readers from the problems.

The one who is "grossly distorting" words and intent here is you, Jim. You need to stop making up shit and actually start addressing the real questions and problems. But you can't so you resort to strawmen, creating fake scandals and falsely lying about me ("jErEmY dIdN'T rEaD tHe sOUrcEs", "jErEmY iS lYiNg aBoUt aN aPosTLe", "jErEmY dIdN'T rEaLlY FeEl tHe sPiRiT", "jErEmY iS sAyInG OtHeR fAiThS hAvE LdS sTyLE tEsTiMoNiES", "lOoK gUyS! jEReMy dOeSn'T kNOw mUfaSA IsN't ReAl lOLz", etc.)

What kind of apostolic advice is this?

Of course, Jim pulls out the overused apologetic card of "context!" while attacking me by claiming that I didn't read the talks (I did and there is nothing in all the talks to legitimize or make lying to others okay or morally acceptable). In what "context" is lying to another human being that you know xyz is true when you really do not know xyz is true ever okay, Jim?

One of Jim's favorite attacks he likes to use ad nauseum against me in his Jim Bennett Mormonism® Manifesto as well as in his interviews, in his attempts to avoid the issues and to attempt to denigrate and undermine me, is his bullshit "jEReMY dIDn'T ReAD tHe SOuRCe". In these examples? Jim knows that these apostolic statements are indefensible so he tries to wiggle out of the problem by pointing to the talks while claiming that I didn't read them and I'm taking it all out of context.

I read all three talks. I'm not taking anything out of context. These counsels from apostles are wrong and indefensible as they are both advocating dishonesty as a means to an end. Period. Full stop.

In the real world, it's called "lying", Jim. No "leap of faith" or rope course pictures changes this fact.

Bearing a testimony that you do not have is not only a lie but it's a misrepresentation to the person listening to this fake testimony. If a missionary follows Packer's and Oaks' unethical counsels and bears a fake testimony that he does not have to an investigator, who is investigating whether or not to invest her life in Mormonism? It's something worse: fraud.

How is this not lying?

They're being advised by Mormon apostles to testify to others making claims that they do not yet know is true in order to hopefully magically gain a testimony - but only after first lying to another person that they know something is true when they actually don't.

So, no, Jim. You're incorrect. Apostles are advising people to say something that isn't true the first time by bearing a witness they do not have in order to hopefully gain a testimony.

Difference between "know" and "believe"

This is Jim's Jim Bennett Mormonism® attempt to redefine the word "testimony" and to gaslight us all on the word and its use within the context of Mormonism.

Let's put Jim Bennett Mormonism® aside here and see what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints actually teaches what a testimony is and how it's defined:

A testimony is a spiritual witness given by the Holy Ghost. The foundation of a testimony is the knowledge that Heavenly Father lives and loves His children; that Jesus Christ lives, that He is the Son of God, and that He carried out the infinite Atonement; that Joseph Smith is the prophet of God who was called to restore the gospel; that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Savior’s true Church on the earth; and that the Church is led by a living prophet today. With this foundation, a testimony grows to include all principles of the gospel.

-Testimony, Gospel Topics - LDS Church
(Emphasis mine)

"A testimony of the gospel is a personal witness borne to our souls by the Holy Ghost that certain facts of eternal significance are true and that we know them to be true. Such facts include the nature of the Godhead and our relationship to its three members, the effectiveness of the Atonement, and the reality of the Restoration."

"What do we mean when we testify and say that we know the gospel is true? Contrast that kind of knowledge with 'I know it is cold outside' or 'I know I love my wife.' These are three different kinds of knowledge, each learned in a different way. ..."

"One of the greatest things about our Heavenly Father’s plan for His children is that each of us can know the truth of that plan for ourselves. That revealed knowledge does not come from books, from scientific proof, or from intellectual pondering. As with the Apostle Peter, we can receive that knowledge directly from our Heavenly Father through the witness of the Holy Ghost.

When we know spiritual truths by spiritual means, we can be just as sure of that knowledge as scholars and scientists are of the different kinds of knowledge they have acquired by different methods."

"Those who have the gift to know have an obvious duty to bear their witness so that those who have the gift to believe on their words might also have eternal life."

-Testimony, Elder Dallin Oaks, Ensign, May 2008

"It is a burning within that tells us what is right. It is when 'your heart tells you things your mind doesn’t know'" (Harold B. Lee, “Be Loyal to the Royal within You,” in Speeches of the Year: BYU Devotional and Ten-Stake Fireside Addresses 1973).

"...a personal testimony is granted by the Holy Ghost. It can aid others in gaining knowledge for themselves — a knowledge abiding in the heart that leaves no room for doubt."

"Our testimony is a knowledge of who we are—a child of God..."

"A direct answer to this prayer was many years in coming. While serving a mission in Scotland, Elder McKay received a powerful spiritual manifestation. He later commented, “Never before had I experienced such an emotion. … It was a manifestation for which as a doubting youth I had secretly prayed most earnestly on hillside and in meadow. It was an assurance to me that sincere prayer is answered ‘sometime, somewhere.’”

- The Importance of Receiving a Personal Testimony, Elder Robert Hales

Notice that they use the word "knowledge" and not belief in describing what a testimony is.

The LDS Church's definition of the word is exactly what I've been indoctrinated to understand the word to mean and which definition and understanding of the word was congruent with my entire Mormon experience and especially my Mormon missionary experience in New York City.

So, you can keep your Jim Bennett Mormonism® redefinition of "testimony", Jim...but I'm going to go with the LDS Church's definition, meaning and use of the word.

Also, notice that Jim ignores Oaks' Testimony talk that I got the above immoral Oaks "lie your way into one" quote from. Look at how Oaks defines a testimony in that talk versus on what Jim is trying to Jedi mind trick us on here - in Jim's attempts to weasel Oaks out of his turd immoral counsel.

Jim closes with a misrepresentation and false claim that I misrepresent Elder Anderson when I do nothing of the kind.

Rely on Spirit in Life Decisions

What about the couples not as lucky as you are with marriage, Jim? The couple who both individually received a spiritual confirmation that they were to marry each other in the Temple only to end up in a terrible divorce, nasty custody battles and non-existent co-parenting that completely destabilizes the children's childhoods and destroys lives?

Fault lies on individual and never the Spirit

Jim is either skirting the real question or doesn't understand my question and point. In the case of the previous answer of the unlucky couple who both received spiritual confirmations that they were to marry one another in the Temple...why are you blaming the couple for following the promptings of the Spirit instead of the Spirit for misleading them into marriage?

If you say that the Spirit didn't mislead them but rather, they misinterpreted or invented the promptings of the Spirit in their own minds...how then is this method of relying on the Spirit for answers to anything - including the validity and truthfulness of Mormonism - reliable and trustworthy in any way?

This is not my point. Keep reading onto the next section.

Flaw and dilemma

Thanks for your condescending rundown on what you think the Holy Ghost is and how you think He operates along with your asinine "megaphone" strawman and misrepresentation of how I perceive/perceived the Spirit. How about you respond to my question instead? This whole gibberish nonsense is apparently Jim's long way of saying, "I'm not going to answer your actual question or argument."

Let's do this again but slowly:

Individuals rely on the Spirit not just for discerning Mormonism's truth claims but also in receiving answers to prayers and promptings on major life decisions. When they take the Spirit out for a test drive on life decisions that turn out to be disastrous and catastrophic for the individual but the individual was absolutely convinced the whole time that they received their answer from the Spirit...what does this say about using this same method and Source in determining the validity and truthfulness of the LDS Church's truth claims?

I think Jim deserves a medal for the number of conditions, hoops, experience, effort, commitment and focus that he attaches to the Spirit in order to get a straight and clear answer from the Spirit. It's almost as if Jim is describing an insane process and checklist that ensures that God / Spirit are always blameless and never accountable. When things turn out great? God / Spirit get the credit. When everything hits the fan? You weren't committed, focused, experienced or worthy enough and you didn't get the answer you thought you did from the Spirit. So sorry...try again.

This insanity also makes sense when you remember that Jim is also fine with the Mormon god playing the worst phone company ever in allowing Satan to hack the line of communication to Him.

Again, rather than focus on the reliability and utility problems of using the Spirit as a source of objective truth and reality, Jim rambles on about stupid irrelevant details that are not germane to the actual discussion and argument.

Reliable pathways to truth

Watch this and then ask yourself if Jim is a good and reliable source on what the Spirit is and what a Mormon spiritual experience is and is not:

I'm sorry but why are we putting Jim on a pedestal on matters that he himself has acknowledged he has little to no experience in and that his "testimony" is rooted in "suffering" instead?

I'm so over a guy who openly admits he never had a spiritual experience, as the LDS Church, Correlation and Mormons in general teach and accept, constantly gaslight and demean me and my own Mormon spiritual experiences and encounters with the Spirit.

The problem here with Jim and his Jim Bennett Mormonism® attempts to redefine the Mormon spiritual experience is that he is trying to minimize and water down the percentage of the pie that feelings play in a spiritual experience or Mormon testimony.

A spiritual witness, as taught by scriptures and the LDS Church, is primarily a "burning in the bosom" experience. "It is a burning within that tells us what is right. It is when 'your heart tells you things your mind doesn’t know'". It's primarily feelings. I know you hate to hear this because you've never experienced a testimony this way (your 2021 Mormon Stories interview admission) and it goes against your Jim Bennett Mormonism® but I don't care what Jim Bennett Mormonism® teaches. I care what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has taught and teaches.

I've already addressed this into deeper detail in the Mind & Heart section.

You can believe anything based on faith

Jim skirts and avoids the question and points that's being asked and brought up here.

It's not the wrong question, Jim. You just don't want to answer it. So...let's talk about it.

Let's start with some example beliefs (Disclaimer: I don't personally hold any of these beliefs but am merely using them as examples):

• I can say that Black people were less valiant and honorable in the pre-mortal life and this is my faith-based belief.
• I can say that Cain is Bigfoot and this is my faith-based belief.
• I can say that there's an invisible set of pixies that invade my home and make it filthy every night and that this position is based on faith.
• I can believe there's an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire that lives in my garage (thanks Carl Sagan) and this is a faith-based belief.

I can hold onto all of the above beliefs on faith alone. I don't have to give you any actual evidence. I can just have faith that these beliefs are true.

Now, each and every one of the above example faith-based beliefs is absolute nonsense. Especially the despicable "Black people were less valiant" belief held by many LDS leaders and members in the 19th and 20th centuries (and even still by some older members today!).

If faith can lead us to true conclusions and false conclusions then faith is not a reliable mechanism for finding the truth.

Again, Jim activates Jim Bennett Mormonism® by trying to increase the mind/intellectual percentage of the testimony pie while attempting to minimize the feelings percentage of the testimony pie. I've addressed this here.

Faith unreliable pathway to truth

You're wrong, Jim. As I've repeated myself ad nauseam in this section, members of a myriad of faiths rely on faith, feelings and spiritual experiences in affirming that they're in the correct religion.

I've demonstrated this with dozens of video testimonies of all these different people in different faiths doing exactly this.

All you have for us is your own unsupported personal opinions.

A spiritual witness, as taught by scriptures and the LDS Church, is primarily a "burning in the bosom" experience. "It is a burning within that tells us what is right. It is when 'your heart tells you things your mind doesn’t know'". It's primarily feelings. I know you hate to hear this because you've never experienced a testimony this way (your 2021 Mormon Stories interview admission) and it goes against your Jim Bennett Mormonism® but I don't care what Jim Bennett Mormonism® teaches. I care what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has taught and teaches.

Felt Spirit watching R movies

Damn it, Jim. We were so close to 90% agreement here until you had to throw in that last paragraph. 😃

"It’s odd, though, for you to say you felt the Spirit watching these movies, as you don’t believe there is such a thing as the Spirit."

...When do you think I watched those movies, Jim? It looks like your really bad habit of creating completely false assumptions and narratives about me has kicked in again.

I watched both movies in the late 1990s as an older teenager. I was a fully believing and active Mormon getting ready to go on my mission and yes, I fully believed in the Spirit when I watched these movies then.

Forrest Gump and The Lion King

Yep, a minority position:

Spiritual experience at Conference

Says the man who, by his own admission, never had a spiritual experience which included feelings and whose testimony is rooted in "suffering" instead.

The above arrogant statement gaslighting me and my spiritual experiences contradicts Jim's other statements where he states that he cannot second guess another's experience as well as judge another's spiritual experiences.

A spiritual witness, as taught by scriptures and the LDS Church, is primarily a "burning in the bosom" experience. It's primarily feelings. I know you hate to hear this because you've never experienced a testimony this way (your admission) and it goes against your Jim Bennett Mormonism® but I don't care what Jim Bennett Mormonism® teaches. I care what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has taught and teaches.

I experienced the Spirit at this event. Jim Bennett doesn't like this answer I received from the Spirit so Testimony Police Jim Bennett says I didn't really experience what I'm saying I really experienced. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The one here who doesn't understand spiritual experiences, which primarily include "burning of the bosom", is you, Jim.

By the way, the conference was the 2012 Mormon Stories Conference. Guess who else was there? Richard Bushman. Claudia Bushman (speaker). Jana Riess (speaker). All active and believing Mormons. Here's a clip of one of the sessions where people shared their testimonies:

Watch with an open heart and mind and maybe, just maybe you'll finally feel the Spirit too, Jim. 😉

Cartoon Misrepresentation

You not only completely ignore and miss the points I'm making here with my rhetorical questions but you completely twist my words and the intent of my rhetorical questions to give your readers the false impression that I'm not sure if Mufasa or The Lion King is real or not. Of course they're not real and I never claimed or assumed or believed or wondered if they were.

The fact that you took my two rhetorical questions about The Lion King and Mufasa, twisted it, and ran off with it demonstrates that you are determined to misunderstand me and misrepresent me at the expense of integrity, truth and facts. You pulled the same bullshit stunt with misapplying and twisting my "Ouija Board" comment by lying that I'm lying that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon with an Ouija Board when I wrote or claimed nothing of the kind. This lie ended up in the TITS Show (a Kwaku / FairMormon video version of Jim Bennett Mormonism® Manifesto) as a further smear.

The real points that I'm making here with my rhetorical questions is that you can feel the Spirit consuming books and movies and talks that are 100% fictional and 100% made up. You argue that it's obvious that Mufasa is fake and no Spirit is needed but this Mufasa is an extreme example to convey a deeper point, which you ignore and distract your readers from with your "lOoK gUyS! jEReMy dOeSn'T kNOw mUfaSA IsN't ReAl lOLz" line of attack prevalent in this section and in your Jim Bennett Mormonism® Manifesto.

If you can feel the Spirit in such a completely fake movie like The Lion King with completely fake characters like Mufasa...what about the movies or books or talks that are not so obviously fake containing not so obvious fake characters, not so obvious fake events and not so obvious fake claims?

If you can feel the Spirit at 100% fiction, what do you do when you're dealing with Church movies, books and talks that contain 100% fictional claims and falsehoods mixed with actual people?

Some examples:

Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration Fictional Translation Scene

First Vision that contradicts Joseph's handwritten 1832 Account

Paul H. Dunn's lies

Fake Carthage Jail Account

Many people felt the Spirit watching films and talks like the above and walked away impressed that what they watched and heard was a true and accurate account of real events when they weren't.

My goal with starting out this thought exercise with my rhetorical questions from the extreme side of an obviously fake and 100% fictional movie and character (Lion King and Mufasa) was to ask how the Spirit is reliable in the not so obvious fictional movies, books and talks...especially within the realm of religious movies, books and talks.

This is a serious subject because people are basing their entire lives on Church books, movies and talks where they feel the Spirit but these books, movies and talks contain fiction that are just as fictional as Mufasa and The Lion King.

As part of Jim's long pattern throughout this section as well as throughout his Jim Bennett Mormonism® Manifesto, Jim gaslights me and misrepresents how I perceived and experienced the Spirit while lecturing me on what I should have experienced instead...despite Jim's own admission that he's atypical with his own spiritual experiences and his testimony is rooted in "suffering" instead.

Felt the Spirit listening to apostates

There you go again with your incorrect and completely false assumptions, Jim.

As I mentioned above in talking about this conference, it was the 2012 Mormon Stories Conference held in Salt Lake City in June 2012.

As we discussed in our offline 3-hour meeting together in December 2020, Jim, I gave you a timeline of all the dates and events that happened since I first encountered the LDS Church's truth crisis.

My "faith crisis" kick-started in February 2012 and I was still hanging onto the Church and I still believed in the Spirit when I attended the Mormon Stories Conference that June. It was during this time that I was deep in researching "Latter-day arguments" (aka apologetics) that you attacked me elsewhere on this page as never having considered - another false assumption of yours.

So, no...I didn't reject the existence of the Spirit then. I still believed in and felt the Spirit when I attended this conference listening to the testimonies of others.

Please learn the actual facts before arriving at incorrect assumptions and before you put these incorrect assumptions in a PDF to defame and slander me, Jim.

Jim then creates a strawman and falsehood by asserting that I "think feeling the Spirit confirms the physical existence of cartoon characters". I don't and I never have. This is a gross misrepresentation and lie of what I actually wrote and what my actual points are. I address this above in the previous answer.

Stop misrepresenting me and claiming things about me that are just not true, Jim.

Unreliable and inconsistent Spirit

In congruence with Jim's pattern throughout this entire section, Jim has consistently refused to respond to or face head on the problems of Mormon epistemology and the obvious unreliability of relying on the Holy Ghost for objective truth and reality.

Jim has refused to see the absurdity of the Worst Phone Company Ever problem.

Rather than provide answers, Jim creates strawman after strawman and misrepresentations after misrepresentations and gaslighting after gaslighting.

Here we see that Jim contradicts his assertions that he cannot second guess another's experience or judge another's heart or condemn their spiritual experiences.

A spiritual witness, as taught by scriptures and the LDS Church, is primarily a "burning in the bosom" experience. It's primarily feelings. I know you hate to hear this because you've never experienced a testimony this way (your admission) and it goes against your Jim Bennett Mormonism® but I don't care what Jim Bennett Mormonism® teaches. I care what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has taught and teaches.

Just because you don't like my spiritual experiences and encounters with the Spirit, Jim, does not give you any right to judge me, gaslight me, disrespect me, misrepresent me and slander me. I'd like a public apology.

Jim has inadvertently acknowledged the unreliability of this method elsewhere by admitting that "people can too often receive 'answers' that conveniently coincide with the answers they wanted or expected, which is a case of mistaking their own desires for the will of God."

This is the same point I'm making here with this question asking about the reliability of this method.

Inconsistent Source

More gaslighting, judgment and disrespect from Jim Bennett.

As usual, Jim on one hand continues to refuse to acknowledge that Latter-day Saints get mixed signals from the Spirit while believing very strongly that they received signals from the Spirit but yet Jim will, in rare moments, inadvertently concede the unreliability of this method elsewhere by admitting that:

"people can too often receive 'answers' that conveniently coincide with the answers they wanted or expected, which is a case of mistaking their own desires for the will of God."

He refuses to see the absurdity and unreliability problem of boogeyman Stan hacking the bat phone line to the Mormon god.

He refuses to see the problem of all these people in all these different faiths using the same method of asking their gods if their own religions are the correct ones and receiving affirmative answers.

Follow the Spirit Video

Questions and challenges that you have not single-handedly answered or addressed in this entire section. Instead, you have flooded us with asinine strawmen, misrepresentations, snarks, sneers, judgments, unsupported personal opinions, a rope course, a wedding picture, gaslighting and blatant disrespect.

What's mind-blowing here is how judgmental and unfair Jim Bennett is toward myself and others in his rabid attempts to diminish and demolish the testimonies and spiritual experiences of others in order to validate and preserve his own Mormon testimony and Mormon epistemology.

What's mind-blowing is how you are asserting yourself into a conversation about a subject of spiritual experiences that you yourself have admitted you are atypical of and which you haven't personally experienced. Yet, despite this lack of experience, you still arrogantly have the audacity to shit on me and others by claiming that we didn't really experience the Spirit and that our spiritual experiences weren't really true spiritual experiences.

The hubris so prevalent on display here in this Jim Bennett Mormonism® Manifesto is just unreal.

Anyway...here's the video embedded so you can see the testimonies that Jim has completely ignored in his entire non-existent "response":

Hebraisms & Book of Mormon

It's spelled Napoleon. But tell us more, Jim, about how The First Book of Napoleon is debunked nonsense.

What Jim doesn't tell you is that, for example, the Late War also has Hebraisms in the book and this in turn is one of many things about that book that discredits the Book of Mormon. This article goes into more details on the weaknesses of Hebraisms being used to defend the Book of Mormon. Many of these "remarkable" Hebraisms appear to be natural human literary forms and can be found just about anywhere you look for them, including in Solomon Spaulding’s Manuscript Found, James Strang’s Book of the Law of the Lord, and other Bible-inspired 19th-century pseudepigrapha.

Oh, since we're on pseudepigrapha:

Similar to Hebraisms, Mormon apologists love to point to chiasmus as evidences for the Book of Mormon as well. Well, you can find chiasmus in Dr. Seuss' book Green Eggs and Ham too.

It's pretty weird that Jim is sliding this into the Testimony & Spiritual Witness section when it has nothing to do with Testimony & Spiritual Witness. You can go to the Book of Mormon section to see deeper details and responses to all of this.

It's just embarrassing that Jim is pointing to Hebraisms as evidence to support the Book of Mormon. I'll let Jim's fellow FairMormon apologist buddies have the last word on this:

"The Book of Mormon does indeed have authentic Semitic constructions in it, but LDS need to tread cautiously in establishing them. Each must be evaluated on its own merits. Hebraisms that could have been known to Joseph Smith may still be authentic, and may still enhance our appreciation of the text, but they are weaker evidence for Book of Mormon antiquity since Joseph could have gotten them from his contemporary environment."

- FAIR, Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon

Here's a funny but illuminating conversation between a Latter-day Saint and two atheists on the topic of Mormon epistemology and the unreliability of faith as a pathway to truth: