Best products from r/lds

We found 23 comments on r/lds discussing the most recommended products. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 28 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.

Top comments mentioning products on r/lds:

u/josephsmidt · 12 pointsr/lds

> why isn’t there more evidence that proves the veracity of the Book of Mormon?

If your goal is intellectual integrity, stick to peer-review: As I have written about before, if you want to take an intellectually respectable approach to any field of intellectual thought, including Mormonism, you are best off sticking to the peer-reviewed literature over internet forums.

And if you would like one suggestion on this specific topic, it would be to read By the Hand of Mormon by Terryl Givens for four reasons:

  1. Unlike basically everyone giving you advice on Reddit, the author is an accomplished tenure-track professor who holds a prestigious chair at his university in a relevant field: literary theory.

  2. He published his work in a very respected peer-reviewed outlet: Oxford University Press. And the overwhelmingly positive peer-reviews showcased on the book come from many well known academics both in and out of the Mormon faith. Oxford does their homework before they publish something.

  3. He has entire chapters examining both reasons to be skeptical of the book as well as reasons to believe there is evidence for the book. I am not going to begin to rehearse those arguments here as again, that would go against my advice that you need to look to the peer-reviewed literature. Though I will at least say this is perhaps the best place to start, and that in his final analysis of the evidence he leans toward belief.

  4. He engages with the rest of the peer-reviewed literature. When you read his book you get exposed to what all the top minds have written on the subject, in the most honest light about what those authors were trying to say. His narrative is not so flimsy that he cannot up front about what the rest of the peer-reviewed community is saying and reference it extensively in the foot notes.

    I am proud believing Mormons can advocate this position: One of the things that make me proud of the believing intellectual LDS community is that there is so much great peer-reviewed stuff we can point to. Like my link above shows, there are literally dozens of authors and books that meet all the criteria above on a whole host of topics. And while the anti-forums typically appeal to un-reviewed "letters" that embarrassingly fail by every metric above, the believing Mormon is not forced into such a position.

    Sky is the limit to how much great peer-reviewed literature there is in harmony with LDS belief. My advice is to stick to it and be extremely skeptical of things that cannot pass any of the above criteria.
u/GreyCorrellation · 1 pointr/lds

I know that a lot of folks in this thread have come down on you for coming across like an opinionated jerk. Frankly, I don't blame them. I can see their side too. That being said, I also understand how hard it is to go to church when you feel different, or picked on, or even more enlightened than everyone else (that's just another way of being different).

Mormons have been raised with the idea that we should influence the behavior of others with scripture and doctrine. We have stories of prophets that call people to repentance, and risk personal injury to ensure that they get the Word out. We're not all supposed to be Samuel. Today we are definitely expected to live in a geographically determined ward and interact congenially with other members. Going down in a blaze of fiery rhetoric defending the truth doesn't help the fact that you still have to show up to church next week. Believe me, I'm sure you and I don't agree on lots of things, but this is one thing we can probably agree on.

Redditors are infatuated with the idea that logic and reason will always win the day. "If you don't agree with my logically sound argument and immediately change your behavior and opinion then you are sub-human." The real world, and real human beings don't work that way. Show me a scripture that directly contradicts my belief and my first reaction is not to change my belief, but to do the mental gymnastics necessary to justify my world-view. If I don't personally like you, I'll entrench myself even further. If I don't trust you, even worse. If I don't see myself as similar to you, still worse. If I don't know you well and think you're overstepping a social barrier, you guessed it. Logic always loses in the short-term.

You're a Mormon and a Redditor (so am I). I'm not making any claim as to how well you fit the stereotypes I've outlined here.

I also am familiar with statements made by general authorities indicating that the study of the gospel can more quickly change behavior than the study of behavior can. I take issue with this idea. I am absolutely sure that in SOME circumstances this is the case. I do not trust this as a blanket statement for every behavior in every situation. I also don't see it as a justification for trying to get someone to change their beliefs or behavior more quickly than they should. (My recommendations for influencing these people won't work after just one Sunday School class.) That is usually catastrophic.

>Nothing really. I'm reasonably polite in church, but I've never really been good at socializing outside of the ward by inviting people to dinner, parties, etc.

Please don't be insulted when I tell you that this was my assumption. Most members are this way. I would also hazard to guess that most members don't have the social influence they wish they had. If you really want to change the behavior and even belief systems of the people in your ward you're not going to do it without some significant social influence. Unfortunately, it's going to take some work, and it's probably not the kind of work you're used to or good at.

You've obviously got a good handle on the scriptures, church doctrine, testimony, and desire. When I read the quote above from your statement I can see exactly where this is going to go wrong. Reasonably polite is not enough. Not being good at socializing on a non-church level is suicide if you want to confront these people. My first piece of advice is to not confront them yet. When something controversial comes up, bow your head and shut up! You first need to build a social bank account with them. Then you can start to make withdrawals!

What if you could confront these people at some future time when they liked you, saw themselves as similar to you, trusted you as an authority, and felt indebted to you? I promise you'll get a different result.

Where do you start? Food. It works. Maybe you don't believe in evolution, so you might have to come up with another way to justify this, but sharing food is the first secret. We're built to do this. We wouldn't have survived what we've been through without other humans sharing food with us. It's hardwired into our psyche. Food brings us together. It allows us to socialize. It makes others indebted to us. It makes others like us, even if we see each other as different, and we start to see each other as more similar when we share food.

Next step? Go read this book. (I promise it won't turn you into a liberal mormon.) Already read it? Great, go read it four more times. Think about every single point he makes and how it applies to the situation you're in. I influence people's behavior for a living and credit this book with getting me my start.

Food and a cool book that you'll love? Sounds pretty easy so far. The hard part is creating the social bank account. You've got to go out and do the stuff, and you've got to do it with lots of people, and you've got to be patient while you build the deposits in the account. This bank doesn't offer a line of credit. You don't have the money, you don't get to spend it.

>This thread is expressing my anxiety over the almost assured prospect that such confrontations will occur.

You're right. It will happen. Your anxiety will also make it worse. Work on the anxiety and you'll have more patience to avoid an explosive encounter.

If all you want is to feel morally justified that you're right and the other members are wrong, and you're willing to take a stand for what's right and absorb their fiery darts, by all means, confront them this weekend. If, instead, what you really want is to change their behavior and belief system, then you'll have to take the long route. You're opinions are too far apart right now and you don't have enough social influence yet to bridge the gap. It won't work, whether you're version of "the truth" is right or theirs is, it just won't work.

Let me know if there is anything I can do to help. I'm good at this, and think that I can be of help. Don't want to push more advice than is wanted.

>I was thinking about hiring a bodyguard to come to church with me. I think he'll help me intimidate the cowards if he's big enough.

I'd like to apply for the job.

u/[deleted] · 4 pointsr/lds

Hmm...

The Art of War -- how to successfully deal with conflict

New Ideas from Dead Economists -- so that members understand how the Augustinian view of the "City of Man" works in practice

Rough Stone Rolling -- excellent biography of Joseph Smith

World War Z, Dies the Fire, or Lucifer's Hammer -- to encourage creative thinking of low-probability events, and how as a family and as an individual people would respond to life-shattering events

God Invented the Integers by Hawking (at least the biographical sections) -- so that people understand how the mathematics used to describe science came from, and so they recognize the amazing and important concepts God has inspired, and that we use every day

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn -- just an amazing read of how the world shifts in ideas and paradigms.

Teachings of Wilford Woodruff -- amazing experiences by President Woodruff recorded here, both from his lectures and from his journals. Not sure if it's still in print, came across it in a very old personal library on my mission

Tons of comparative mythology -- to see all the various ideas that people used to preserve their understanding of the gospel and, especially, eternal events in the face of general apostasy and illiteracy (Loki as Lucifer, anyone? Pan Gu as Christ--giving his life so the earth may live, etc.)

Declaration of Human Rights -- While perhaps this has some principles antithetical or orthogonal to Church principles, it's amazing to see what people view as the crowning ideals of a state's responsibility.

Great Speeches -- amazing speeches by historical figures

Guns, Germs, and Steel -- a great review on the development of societies. While some theories of his are not in vogue anymore, it's a great intro to prehistory

Hugh Nibley's Before Adam -- Not everyone in the Church is of the Joseph Fielding Smith school of thought regarding evolution -- many other believe similar to David O. McKay, James E. Talmage, Gordon B. Hinckley, and many others.

u/atari_guy · 1 pointr/lds

They're a little pricey, but Brant Gardner's Second Witness series is awesome. It goes through the BOM one bit at a time and details all the latest scholarship on it.

>Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary of the Book of Mormon, takes a detailed, nearly verse-by-verse look at the Book of Mormon. It marshals the best of modern scholarship and new insights into a consistent picture of the Book of Mormon as a historical document created in and reflecting a particular place, time, and culture. It takes a faithful but scholarly approach to the text, reading it through the insights of linguistics, anthropology, and ethnohistory. The commentary approaches the text from a variety of perspectives: how it was created, how it relates to history and culture, and what religious insights it provides. It does not back away from the potentially controversial aspects of the text, providing answers to most but noting where other questions may remain unanswered. For the cultural and historical background, the commentary accepts the best modern scholarship, which focuses on a particular region of Mesoamerica as the most plausible location for the Book of Mormon setting. For the first time, that location--its peoples, cultures and historical trends--are used as the historical backdrop for reading the text. The historical background is not presented as proof, but rather as the explanatory context. While reading the text against a cultural background, the commentary does not forget Mormon's purpose in writing. It discusses the doctrinal and theological aspects of the text and highlights the way in which Mormon created it to meet his goal of "convincing . . . the Jew and gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God."

Here's vol. 1, which just covers 1 Nephi:

https://www.amazon.com/Second-Witness-Analytical-Contextual-Commentary/dp/1589580419

u/aeneas1642 · 6 pointsr/lds

Here's some thoughts:

  1. One thing I've come to realize is that families are actually a really fragile thing. They're very much not something that in and of themselves are durable and able to last forever. There's so many that are broken by infidelity, divorce, and even little things like drifting apart from each other. So when God implements this temple sealing, it's to give divine strength to the family unit to transform it into an eternal unit.

  2. The argument Joseph Smith makes is that Jesus Christ is Yahweh, usually anglicized as Jehovah and substituted as "the Lord," while God the Father is Elohim, usually just translated as "God." It's actually an argument that makes more sense in the actual Hebrew and not the King James Version. I have a copy of the Jerusalem Bible, which uses the name Yahweh instead of "Lord" and the difference is a lot more stark. You also might want to read The Father and the Son, which is the official explanation by the First Presidency and the Twelve as to the relationship between God the Father and the Son.

  3. I'm reading a book about the doctrine of the apostasy and how it should be viewed in a historical manner, and yes, there's a lot of excellent questions as to how the apostasy exactly happened. Part of this is that first century records are really poor about these sorts of things. My personal view on this in a historical manner is that the priesthood authority was lost sometime during an age where the church was very disorganized, not only on an organizational level but also doctrinally.

    An interesting example would be Origen. Origen is a very important third century theologian from Alexandria who, during his life, was considered orthodox, but afterwards became known as a heretic and Justinian condemned his writings to the flames. During his life, he got into a massive controversy over his ordination to the priesthood. At that time, a person could not preach without the priesthood. Bishops and other church leaders really liked him and his thought and they started inviting him to preach and participate in debates. The bishop of Alexandria was not happy about this because Origen was not a priest. So when he was travelling in Palestine the bishop of Caesarea, who was not under the thumb of the bishop of Alexandria, decided to ordain him to the priesthood. Because Origen lived in Alexandria and thus, in Latter-day Saint thinking, "had his records there," the bishop of Alexandria was livid. He kicked Origen out of the priesthood, but the bishop of Caesarea didn't accept the bishop of Alexandria kicking Origen out of the priesthood. So, as you can see, there's a bit of a unresolvable spat there. That's a lot of the reason why the emperor or the eventually the pope was even looked to--there needed to be somebody to arbitrate these sorts of things.

    Does that mean that the Catholic Church is evil? No. They're a well-meaning organization and that Church should be lauded for the parts of Christianity they have preserved. But we can also believe too that the Catholic Church developed on a different path that was different from the will of God. As for why it could not have been restored sooner, I don't exactly know--it's difficult when we're talking about 1500 years of history to pin down every reason why God couldn't have sent an angel down with the restored gospel like he did to Joseph Smith. In all honesty, it's something beyond what history can answer, and we basically have to read God's mind at that point.

    Hopefully that helps to answer your questions a little, but if you have more, I'll see what I can do to answer them.
u/KURPULIS · 8 pointsr/lds

There's an excellent episode from the podcast "LDS Perspectives Podcast" that invites prominent LDS scholar and author, Robert Millet, to speak on this exact issue:

> I wouldn’t press young people or older people for that matter to insist we’re Christians just like they are, because I think that wouldn’t be true. It’s not true.

>How we define ourselves. A religious group ought to have the right of self-definition if anything, and [Mormons] haven’t generally been given that right.

It's popular in an evangelical-LDS dialog to have the principle of “let us define for you what you believe.” Mormons do the same thing. We have in our heads, “You believe this. You believe this.”

The LDS Church has a published essay on the issue of "Are Mormon's Christian?"

Finally, as a source and study of Mormon thought in the context of Christian Theology as it evolved over the centuries I would recommend, "Wrestling an Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity", by Terrly Givens.

u/lord_wilmore · 1 pointr/lds

https://www.amazon.com/Who-Truth-Reframing-Questions-Richer/dp/1733738339

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. If we look at Jesus Christ as Truth Embodied, a whole host of concepts shift and faith becomes more about loyalty to a loving and benevolent deity and less about weighing evidence on a scale.

u/KJ6BWB · 4 pointsr/lds

Maybe they're not cotton. I don't know anything about dye. I recommend calling the Distribution Center and speaking with someone who works there and who can possibly transfer you to someone more knowledgeable. :)

http://www.foulawool.co.uk/natural.htm says:

> What sets the Shetland Sheep apart from so many other breeds of sheep is the diverse array of natural colours that can occur within a flock and none more so than the Foula Sheep flock. In fact it often comes as a surprise to people when they learn that not all sheep are white. White wool is a long-held preference selectively bred into sheep that has now become the standard wool colour that we are all familar with. The easiest explanation for this probably lies in the ease of dyeing white wool as apposed to coloured wool. However this is not a trait that has been favoured in Shetland Sheep and especially not so in Foula Sheep, where white is probably the least common natural wool colour.

> The Foula Wool colours that we offer for sale are quite simply those same natural colours that you will see out on the Foula hill on the back of the Foula Sheep. These are the real colours of sheep as nature intended and we hope that you will agree they translate into knitting yarn every bit as inspiring as you could wish for, all without the need for any dyes or chemicals.

It links to http://www.shetlandorganics.com/wool/index.htm where gray is a yarn color choice.

I don't know, though. Maybe they're dying their yarn gray. shrug I don't know anything about dye. Given that there's black sheep and white sheep and brown sheep, though, it would seem plausible that gray sheep (or sheep with a bit of mixed color in their hair that are mostly white but not wholly all one color) are not only possible, but genetically would come to predominate over a flock unless a flock was kept "pure" and not otherwise allowed to mix with non-pure sheep.

https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-dye-wool-to-a-pure-white-colour-without-using-bleach and http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/FAQ/wool.shtml indicate that wool can be dyed white.

Again, though I don't know anything about cotton or any other fabric, but https://www.amazon.com/Rit-Dye-8-Ounce-Whitener-Brightener/dp/B00AQ72WWQ purports to be able to dye about any fabric white.

shrug I could be wrong.

u/Briggs2326 · 1 pointr/lds

Regarding #6, I've found this book to be extremely low pressure but highly informative. It's also a super easy read.

u/Gray_Harman · 1 pointr/lds

Your comment history is pretty clear about what you think.

But if you want good answers on Joseph Smith's polygamy, beyond the exmo nonsense (full disclosure - I left the church at around your age but pulled my head out of my rear quarters in my 20s), then you need to read the work of Brian and Laura Hales.

Here is the condensed book version of their research.

Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00V5AOLP4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_QLByDb1AJ9778

And here is the Hales' website:
https://josephsmithspolygamy.org/

If you want to really know something about this subject, Brian Hales is the expert on the subject. Start there.

u/ryanmercer · 1 pointr/lds

Buy the Maxwell edition off Amazon, it's a better reading experience (formatted like a novel) and then you don't have to worry about missionaries.

u/shemnon · 3 pointsr/lds

All four volumes are on the Amazon Kindle store - and free currently. $1.99 is the official price.

u/ldsracer · 2 pointsr/lds

If you want a new perspective on the Book of Mormon, I suggest Grant Hardy’s Understanding the Book of Mormon. In it he looks at the three narrators (Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni) and why they included what they did.

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Book-Mormon-Readers-Guide/dp/0199731705