If you were, then the spirit can touch you when people tell you lies, that hardly seems consistent with Church teachings on the matter.
But was the overall message a lie? PHD still led people to Christ. Some indeed moved away from Christ upon hearing of his embellishments and exaggerations.
How can you trust those feelings anymore?
Because the word of God is stil the word of God no matter where it is sown (see the parable of the sower). Good people are still flawed which doesn't mean they can't bring the Spirit. PHD's deficiencies are obviously a stumbling block to you. Not to me. You need to learn how to sift something, even from hard ground.
Seems to me that if there were true faith-promoting material out there, nobody would have to resort to making stuff up. The fact that they do resort to (or more like jump at every chance) to make stuff up, weakens the message of the church oh, just a little, you know.
The person who is certain and who claims divine warrant for his certainty belongs now to the infancy of our species. Christopher Hitchens
Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions. Frater
When the purpose of the lies is to get a person to pledge their allegience to an organization that asks for 10% of your income, a lot of your time and gives you a hella lot of rules to follow it is not okay. Do we even need to mention the sexism, etc?
When the purpose is to get people to believe in things that cannot even be proven as true that is not okay. Telling lies to make people feel that other myths are actually literally true...Not good in my book.
At least when I buy a fiction book from the store it doesn't ask any of those things of me. I can read it, feel all good and inspired and not have all those expectations of me. Heck, or even a lot of non-fiction makes me feel all inspired. Not sure why lies have to be told.
Saying that your best friend died in your arms when they are still alive is pretty icky, in my opinion.
~Those who benefit from the status quo always attribute inequities to the choices of the underdog.~Ann Crittenden ~The Goddess is not separate from the world-She is the world and all things in it.~
That is an excellent argument explaining why God doesn't care what church you belong to.
Not at all. The word of God says there's only one true Church. Doesn't have any bearing at all on what baseball team PHD did or did not belong to.
The clearest analogs to your intellectual failure to understand might be the boy who cried wolf (the sheep were still eaten) or hypocrisy (in which the truth is still communicated and is still the truth despite the actions of another).
So how do you know that Joseph Smith's stories about receiving authority from divine beings are not just faith-promoting tall tales, and the Spirit isn't just witnessing the truth of general principles, not the actuality of the claimed events?
The clearest analogs to your intellectual failure to understand might be the boy who cried wolf (the sheep were still eaten) or hypocrisy (in which the truth is still communicated and is still the truth despite the actions of another).
The sheep were still eaten because the boy 'cried wolf.' If the boy hadn't 'cried wolf,' but had done his job, the sheep would have survived.
The clearest analogs to your intellectual failure to understand might be the boy who cried wolf (the sheep were still eaten) or hypocrisy (in which the truth is still communicated and is still the truth despite the actions of another).
The sheep were still eaten because the boy 'cried wolf.' If the boy hadn't 'cried wolf' but had done his job the sheep would have survived.
What truth was still communicated?
If the townspeople had fired him and hired an honest shepherd the sheep would have lived, too.
~Those who benefit from the status quo always attribute inequities to the choices of the underdog.~Ann Crittenden ~The Goddess is not separate from the world-She is the world and all things in it.~