Apologetics | The Benjamin DeMann Blog

July 2, 2023

Book of Mormon Translation Part I

Part of my Response to The LDS Gospel Topics Essays: A Scholarly Engagement Intro We’re not going to be reviewing these essays in any significant order. It’s just in the order of what I am most interested in researching right now. The Book of Mormon translation is the topic that got me into this whole thing so we’re starting here. The pattern that we will be following is I will give my recollection of events to the best of my knowledge and try to give my perspective on how I felt as these…

August 30, 2023

Book of Mormon Translation Part II

This is part 2 of my perspective of the topic of the Book of Mormon translation: part of my Response to The LDS Gospel Topics Essays: A Scholarly Engagement Objective My purpose in reviewing the Gospel Topics Essays: I want to look over them to see what (if anything) is different from what I was taught growing up in the church. If anything is different I want to explore why it might be different. Finally I want to address if these differences might constitute church leaders hiding the truth…

October 31, 2023

Book of Mormon Translation Part III

Introduction to Book of Mormon Translation Theory A Preface to Part Three of My Book or Mormon Translation Gospel Topics Essay Review The last two posts about the translation of the Book of Mormon were building up to this moment where I review John-Charles Duffy's1 review of the Church's Gospel Topics Essay about the translation of the Book of Mormon. I was surprised that his essay focused mostly on the translation process and less on the translation tools. I feel like most of the controversy is…

March 3, 2024

Book of Mormon and DNA Studies Part I

Off the bat, I feel like this one doesn't really fit into the same theme of answering the question, "Is the church hiding stuff?" So I'm going to approach this topic a little differently. For part one, I'll try to go through what I already know about this topic, my feelings, and my opinions on it before doing further research. In part two, I'll go over the Gospel Topics Essay and point out anything new I learned from it. I've already looked at the essay a little bit, and I already know there is…

July 9, 2023

My Objectives: An Interlude

Some additional information has come to light (for me) about the Book of Mormon translation that I need to dig into more before I publish part two of my Book of Mormon translation analysis (long story short I might be wrong about everything). In the meantime, here is something that I have been working on to try and better express what I am trying to accomplish with my blog, and address some of my limitations and biases. I thought I would share it with you. What is the purpose of this blog? There…

June 9, 2023

Response to The LDS Gospel Topics Essays: A Scholarly Engagement

I started reading this book, a collection of essays, edited by Matthew L Harris and Newell G Bringhurst. In it, various author, each a scholar focused on Mormon history and/or religious thought, analyze and respond to the Gospel Topics Essays that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereafter referred to as “the church”) published about 10 years ago. As a faithful member of the church, I had a lot of feelings about this book. The essays ranged from inane to intriguing. While I am…

June 4, 2023

Sin of Apologetics

There is a mistake that I feel like a lot of apologists make and I almost made it. A critic will say, “Joseph Smith couldn’t have done this because of this,” or “the church can’t be true because of this”, and then the apologist responds with “well actually the church is true because of this physical evidence or because of thing that happened that contradicts your claim”. For example, a critic might say, Joseph Smith just made up the Book of Mormon, he’s a savant and was just able to dictate it…