{"id":3719,"date":"2016-04-03T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T14:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/?p=3719"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:39:54","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:39:54","slug":"ces-reply-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/ces-reply-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"CES Reply: Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This is an excerpt from &#8220;A Reply from a Former CES Employee.&#8221; The entire document can be downloaded for free.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/CESReply.pdf\" target=\"_self\" class=\"emd_dl_red_darker\" download>Download CES Reply<\/a><\/div>    <style>            \r\n    .emd_dl_red_darker {\r\n        -moz-box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #f5978e;\r\n        -webkit-box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #f5978e;\r\n        box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #f5978e;\r\n        background:-webkit-gradient( linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0.05, #f24537), color-stop(1, #c62d1f) );\r\n        background:-moz-linear-gradient( center top, #f24537 5%, #c62d1f 100% );\r\n        filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#f24537', endColorstr='#c62d1f');\r\n        background-color:#f24537;\r\n        -webkit-border-top-left-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-topleft:0px;\r\n        border-top-left-radius:0px;\r\n        -webkit-border-top-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-topright:0px;\r\n        border-top-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-bottomright:0px;\r\n        border-bottom-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -webkit-border-bottom-left-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-bottomleft:0px;\r\n        border-bottom-left-radius:0px;\r\n        text-indent:0;\r\n        border:1px solid #d02718;\r\n        display:inline-block;\r\n        color:#ffffff !important;\r\n        font-family:Georgia;\r\n        font-size:15px;\r\n        font-weight:bold;\r\n        font-style:normal;\r\n        height:41px;\r\n        line-height:41px;\r\n        width:200px;\r\n        text-decoration:none;\r\n        text-align:center;\r\n        text-shadow:1px 1px 0px #810e05;\r\n    }\r\n    .emd_dl_red_darker:hover {\r\n        background:-webkit-gradient( linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0.05, #c62d1f), color-stop(1, #f24537) );\r\n        background:-moz-linear-gradient( center top, #c62d1f 5%, #f24537 100% );\r\n        filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#c62d1f', endColorstr='#f24537');\r\n        background-color:#c62d1f;\r\n    }.emd_dl_red_darker:active {\r\n        position:relative;\r\n        top:1px;\r\n    }<\/style>\n<p><br class=\"clear\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is a line-by-line response to Jeremy Runnells&#8217; &#8220;Letter to a CES Director: Why I Lost My Testimony. <span style=\"color: #008000;\">Jeremy&#8217;s words are in green, the color of life,<\/span> while mine are in black, the color of darkness.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Introduction<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">[Name of CES Director Removed],<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Thank you for responding to my grandfather&#8217;s request to answer my concerns and questions and for offering your time with me. I appreciate it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Well, as is probably clear by this point, I\u2019ve never met you or your grandfather, and I\u2019m not the CES Director whose name you\u2019ve had removed. (Wonder who that guy is. Has he come forward? Is he in some kind of witness protection program? Is he hiding in the John Taylor bunker in the Logan Temple?) I recognize I\u2019m quite presumptuous of me to step into a conversation to which I was not invited, but that\u2019s the kind of guy I am. I thank you for your kind words which I\u2019m pretending are intended for me, even as I recognize that you may not appreciate my response after I\u2019m finished.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">I\u2019m interested in your thoughts and answers as I have been unable to find official answers from the Church for most of these issues. I\u2019m hoping you\u2019re going to have better answers than many of the ones given by unofficial apologists such as FAIR and Neal A. Maxwell Institute (formerly FARMS).<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And right here, I want to stop you and challenge some questionable assumptions right at the outset. You label both FAIR and the Maxwell Institute as \u201cunofficial apologists.\u201d This is a charge you repeat several times on your website and in your initial letter. The designation seems appropriate for FAIR, which is an independent organization with no official connection to the Church other than the membership of its researchers, but the Maxwell Institute is funded by BYU, a Church-owned school. Doesn\u2019t that give them any cache of officialdom? Surely if the official church thought what the Maxwell Institute were saying were nonsense, they\u2019d pull the plug. Are there only 15 \u201cofficial apologists\u201d whose office gives them the necessary credibility to respond to your questions? Do the Seventies count? Or the General Relief Society Presidency? I know they don\u2019t have the priesthood, but I do think it\u2019s cool that women say prayers in General Conference now. I\u2019d like to see more movement in that direction, but we\u2019ll get to that point soon enough.<\/p>\n<p>The basic problem here is a fallacious appeal to authority in an attempt to poison the well of anything that FAIR or FARMS may say because it lacks some kind of Mormon Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Their arguments, like your arguments, ought to be evaluated solely on their merits rather than on the credentials of those making them. Remember, they may be unofficial apologists, but you\u2019re an unofficial critic, too. (If you are official, I\u2019m going to need to see some paperwork and two forms of ID.)<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">I\u2019m just going to be straightforward and blunt in sharing my concerns.\u00a0 Obviously I\u2019m a disaffected member who lost his testimony so it\u2019s no secret which side I\u2019m on at the moment.\u00a0 All this information is a result of over a year of intense research and an absolute rabid obsession with Joseph Smith and Church history.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Fine by me. I\u2019ve had my shots.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">With this said, I\u2019d be pretty arrogant and ignorant to say that I have all the information and that you don\u2019t have answers.\u00a0 Like you, I put my pants on one leg at a time and I see through a glass darkly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Well, that\u2019s nice to know. Perhaps I shouldn\u2019t tell you that as I\u2019m writing this, I\u2019m not even wearing pants. So if you\u2019re watching me, that dark glass would really come in handy.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">You may have new information and\/or a new perspective that I may not have heard or considered before.\u00a0 This is why I\u2019m genuinely interested in what your answers and thoughts are to these troubling problems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I probably don\u2019t have any new information or\/nor a new perspective, which means that you\u2019re likely to hear a number of things you\u2019ve both heard and considered before, many of which come from those unofficial, disqualified sources you previously mentioned. But by the same token, having already read ahead, nothing you\u2019ve written is anything I hadn\u2019t heard or considered before. Yet somehow, the same information that drove you out of the Church has not damaged, and in many cases has even strengthened, my own personal faith.<\/p>\n<p>That shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise to either of us. In the age of the Internet, it\u2019s rather foolish to presume that the church has any capacity to hide any aspect of its practices or history from the world at large, so it always amazes me when people who are disaffected with the church, as they fixate on something that church does or did that they don\u2019t like, act like they\u2019ve uncovered something nobody else has ever discovered.<\/p>\n<p>This was the case when I had a telephone conversation with a man named Mike Norton, a guy who, by his own admission, has twelve fake temple recommends that he uses to sneak in to temples to film the endowment ceremony and post it on YouTube. He was very friendly at the outset, and he remained friendly even as he launched into a 45-minute diatribe against the church, all of which was stuff that I\u2019d heard before and have talked about on my blog beyond the point of endurance.<\/p>\n<p>Did I know all about the seedy elements of Joseph Smith\u2019s polygamy? Well, <a href=\"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/?p=2956\">yes.<\/a> What about the Kinderhook Plates? Yeah, haven\u2019t written about them, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fairlds.org\/authors\/misc\/ask-the-apologist-how-do-we-explain-early-comments-about-the-kinderhook-plates\">they\u2019re no big deal. <\/a>What about the lack of external evidence for the Book of Mormon? Well,<a href=\"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/?p=225\"> I think there\u2019s quite a bit more evidence, both internal and external, than enemies of the church will admit.<\/a> Didn\u2019t get a chance to say any of that, though \u2013 he tore through his spiel under the assumption that I\u2019d never heard such things, and I just listened as he recited them as he has likely done dozens, if not hundreds, of times before. The oddest complaint he had, the only one which I have not, in fact, heard from anyone else, was that Gordon B. Hinckley wasn\u2019t a prophet because he didn\u2019t act like Moses coming down from Sinai when he went on Larry King\u2019s CNN show. I had seen that interview, and I found him pleasant and inspiring, but maybe he should have parted some large body of water or something.<\/p>\n<p>So, to sum up, nothing here is going to be particularly new to either of us. But perhaps it might be helpful to someone else.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">I\u2019ve decided to lay down just about all the major concerns that I have. I went through my notes from my past year of research and compiled them together. It doesn\u2019t make sense for me to just lay down 5 concerns while I also have 20 other legitimate concerns that are keeping me from believing the truth claims of the LDS Church.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Lay away.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">A quick background might be helpful as to where I&#8217;m coming from. I was a very active and fully believing member my entire life up until around the summer of 2012. My grandpa already outlined my life events to you in his email so I think you get the idea that I accepted and embraced Mormonism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Again, I don\u2019t know your grandpa, but I take you at your word. I\u2019ll even assume you always had 100% home teaching and that you paid tithing on your gross income and not your net.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">In February of 2012, I was reading the news online when I came across the following news article: Mormonism Besieged by the Modern Age. In the article was information about a Q&amp;A meeting at Utah State University that LDS Church Historian and General Authority, Elder Marlin K. Jensen gave in late 2011. He was asked his thoughts regarding the effects of Google on membership and people who are &#8220;leaving in droves&#8221; over Church history. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\"> Elder Marlin K. Jensen&#8217;s response:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">&#8220;Maybe since Kirtland, we&#8217;ve never had a period of \u2013 I&#8217;ll call it apostasy, like we&#8217;re having now; largely over these issues&#8230;&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">This truly shocked me. I didn&#8217;t understand what was going on or why people would leave &#8220;over history.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>That quote from Elder Jensen has infamously made him the most quoted General Authority on anti-Mormon sites and has been the source of much mischief, especially since it\u2019s usually cited by people who claim that Elder Jensen himself made the claim that people were \u201cleaving in droves.\u201d To cite one example, John Dehlin\u2019s website <a href=\"http:\/\/www.staylds.org\/mormons-leaving-the-church-in-droves\/\">StayLDS.org<\/a> links to the article with the following description of Elder Jensen\u2019s remarks:<\/p>\n<p><em>This year, Elder Marlin Jensen, the <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/topics\/topic\/Religion+and+beliefs\/Religions,+Denominations\/Church+of+Jesus+Christ+of+Latter-day+Saints\"><em>Mormon Church<\/em><\/a><em>\u2018s outgoing official historian, <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/uk.reuters.com\/article\/2012\/01\/30\/uk-mormonchurch-idUKTRE80T1CP20120130\"><em>acknowledged that members are defecting<\/em><\/a><em> from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints \u201cin droves\u201d and that the pace is increasing<\/em><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The problem is that Elder Jensen said no such thing. The \u201cleaving in droves\u201d premise came from the questioner, not Elder Jensen. Perhaps Elder Jensen should have corrected the questioner in his answer \u2013 i.e. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s accurate to say people are \u2018leaving in droves,\u2019 buddy. And just how much is a \u2018drove,\u2019 anyway?\u201d &#8211;\u00a0 but I\u2019m betting he didn\u2019t realize that he would be attributed with the designation of droves from then to forevermore. It\u2019s also dishonest to say, as Dehlin\u2019s site does, that Jensen claimed \u201cthe pace [of drove leavers] is increasing.\u201d He said no such thing. He\u2019s later clarified his statement by saying \u201cTo say we are experiencing some Titanic-like wave of apostasy is inaccurate.\u201d That statement would appear to contradict both the droves and the increasing pace, but it\u2019s a statement that\u2019s generally given short shrift when critics cite Jensen as proof of the Church\u2019s implosion.<\/p>\n<p>To your credit, you make the proper attribution of droves to the questioner and not to the General Authority, but since so many others do not, I thought this issue bears mentioning here. It\u2019s also worth reading all of Elder Jensen\u2019s answer, which, in context, described the great lengths to which the church is now going in order to provide greater access to historical information. You can read the full answer here at this <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.fairmormon.org\/2013\/01\/15\/reports-of-the-death-of-the-church-are-greatly-exaggerated\/\">unofficial apologetic website.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">I started doing research and reading books like LDS historian and scholar Richard Bushman\u2019s <a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Joseph-Smith-Rough-Stone-Rolling\/dp\/1400077532\"><em>Rough Stone Rolling<\/em><\/a> and many others to try to better understand what was happening.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And good for you! I adore <em>Rough Stone Rolling<\/em> and heartily recommend it to all readers, both LDS and not. A terrific read, thoroughly researched, and one that vastly increased my testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">The following issues are among my main concerns:<\/span><\/p>\n<p>All right, strap yourselves in, folks \u2013 incoming droves of stuff coming at us, starting tomorrow\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<em>Thisis an excerpt from \"A Reply from a Former CES Employee.\" The entire document can be downloaded for free.<\/em><br class=\"clear\" \/>This is a line-by-line response to Jeremy Runnells' \"Letter to a CES Director: Why I Lost My Testimony. <span style=\"color: #008000;\">Jeremy's words are in green, the color of life,<\/span> while mine are in black, the color of darkness. ... <a title=\"CES Reply: Introduction\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/ces-reply-introduction\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about CES Reply: Introduction\">Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3719"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5139,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719\/revisions\/5139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}