Saturday, January 20, 2024, 6:00 P.M.
Friendswood Texas Stake Center
505 Deseret Drive, Friendswood, Texas 77546
You are cordially invited to attend a fireside in the Houston, Texas, area featuring Executive Vice President of The Interpreter Foundation, Steve Densley, who will speak on the topic: Proving the Church is True.
Skeptics of religion and even faithful adherents often say we cannot “prove that the Church is true.” In this presentation, Steve will compare the meaning of the word “prove” as it is used in the modern American courtroom with how the scriptures use the word “prove.” We will find that, depending upon the standard of proof, it is not only possible to “prove that the Church is true” but that God expects to prove it to us and also expects us to prove it to each other.
If the US court system can find OJ Simpson not guilty of murder, then I suppose it can also find the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints true.
The Interpreter crew just keeps pumping out the hits!
This will be good. I'm guessing the logic will be along the lines of the recent BYU Education Week presentation where the imaginary "provenance" of an angel-possessed (i.e. nonexistent) artifact was used to "prove" the "truth" of the historicity of the Book of Mormon.
I apologize for putting so many words in quotes, I do that to indicate where deluded mopologists substitute alternative meanings. And by "alternative" I mean un-used by any other humans.
(Apropos of nothing, did anyone else see the new BYU philosophy course based on the lyrics of Taylor Swift? The professor in charge has a life-size cut-out of Taylor Swift in his office, and he looks unnervingly like at least 3 or 4 of my cousins. The professor, not the cut out. Maybe Rosebud will now discover she looks like TS. )
Saturday, January 20, 2024, 6:00 P.M.
Friendswood Texas Stake Center
505 Deseret Drive, Friendswood, Texas 77546
You are cordially invited to attend a fireside in the Houston, Texas, area featuring Executive Vice President of The Interpreter Foundation, Steve Densley, who will speak on the topic: Proving the Church is True.
Skeptics of religion and even faithful adherents often say we cannot “prove that the Church is true.” In this presentation, Steve will compare the meaning of the word “prove” as it is used in the modern American courtroom with how the scriptures use the word “prove.” We will find that, depending upon the standard of proof, it is not only possible to “prove that the Church is true” but that God expects to prove it to us and also expects us to prove it to each other.
If the US court system can find OJ Simpson not guilty of murder, then I suppose it can also find the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints true.
The Interpreter crew just keeps pumping out the hits!
I realize that the expectation Marcus explained is quite likely. Similar manipulations of information might also be possible.
Perhaps instead of meaning prove in the same manner as in court it is meant prove in a different manner. Perhaps its a talk saying people need to live the gospel proving its goodness. A talk like that might be better liked by believers than by those uncertain or doubting.
Daniel Peterson is fond of using the court room example for why we should believe the witnesses to the Book of Mormon. In his mind, if we don’t believe the witnesses, then we should just throw away the entire legal system.
He really, really hates that people don’t believe the witnesses. And he has built a whole narrative around why it must be true despite the vast majority of humanity thinking they were most likely either liars or dupes.
What’s more likely, that Joseph Smith restored a religion that conveniently allowed him to seduce dozens of women, or that the witnesses were wrong?
The squib quoted in the OP isn't very clear on what this guy's thesis is. It sounds like an enormous equivocation on the term "proof." Under the existing rules of evidence, the chances that anyone could prove the church to be "true" by any conventional standard of proof is basically zero. The evidence that could be presented in support of the church is 99% inadmissible hearsay. So, to make the claim by critics false, it sounds like the speaker is simply going to redefine the word "proof." Yawn.
he/him When I go to sea, don’t fear for me. Fear for the storm.
Jessica Best, Fear for the Storm. From The Strange Case of the Starship Iris.
Ugh. Good grief, all you need to do is research 'Joseph Smith and the criminal justice system' and the phrase 'Book of Mormon plagiarism' to come to the conclusion the religion is a fraud and that Smith was a con-man! Throw in the CES letter and the 'church's' own essays relased in 2014 and it becomes blatantly obvious the whole thing is a charade. Anyone learning this stuff yet still defends the official narrative and this multi-hundred billion dollar corporation as a 'true religion' more than likely has a financial stake in the 'church' being true.
My favorite Steve Densley piece is the one where he uses to his mad skills as an art critic to dis both Picasso and the Church's critics.
Though he mentions neither by name, he compares Picasso's masterpiece, Guernica, to Rembrandt's Landscape with a Stone Bridge.
He says:
Authors that are hostile to the Church regularly portray Joseph Smith as a fraud, with a variety of descriptions. However, when these depictions are strung together to form a historical narrative, it is fraught with internal inconsistencies as well as contradictions to the historical record.
As artwork, it creates a Picasso painting that is disjointed and fragmented. In contrast, the historical record without the antagonistic overlay portrays a more even unfolding of the organization of the Church and the expansion of Joseph Smith’s teachings, more like a Rembrandt masterpiece.
So, the critics and Picasso are inconsistent, disjointed and fragmented, compared to the bucolic pastoralism that is LDS Church history and Rembrandt? He can't really believe that.
I wish Densley had looked at Guernica a little closer. In this case, maybe even Wikipedia would have been his friend.
I hope he's a better attorney than he is either historian or art critic.
My favorite Steve Densley piece is the one where he uses to his mad skills as an art critic to dis both Picasso and the Church's critics.
Though he mentions neither by name, he compares Picasso's masterpiece, Guernica, to Rembrandt's Landscape with a Stone Bridge.
He says:
Authors that are hostile to the Church regularly portray Joseph Smith as a fraud, with a variety of descriptions. However, when these depictions are strung together to form a historical narrative, it is fraught with internal inconsistencies as well as contradictions to the historical record.
As artwork, it creates a Picasso painting that is disjointed and fragmented. In contrast, the historical record without the antagonistic overlay portrays a more even unfolding of the organization of the Church and the expansion of Joseph Smith’s teachings, more like a Rembrandt masterpiece.
So, the critics and Picasso are inconsistent, disjointed and fragmented, compared to the bucolic pastoralism that is LDS Church history and Rembrandt? He can't really believe that.
I wish Densley had looked at Guernica a little closer. In this case, maybe even Wikipedia would have been his friend.
I hope he's a better attorney than he is either historian or art critic.
He has his causation backwards. The fact that Smith was a fraud is what leads authors to be "hostile" toward the church.
he/him When I go to sea, don’t fear for me. Fear for the storm.
Jessica Best, Fear for the Storm. From The Strange Case of the Starship Iris.
Throw in the CES letter and the 'church's' own essays relased in 2014 and it becomes blatantly obvious the whole thing is a charade. Anyone learning this stuff yet still defends the official narrative and this multi-hundred billion dollar corporation as a 'true religion' more than likely has a financial stake in the 'church' being true. 
