But, first, two quite distinct but related items from the religious liberty front:
“Will Barronelle’s faith cost her everything?”
“I’m a T-Shirt Maker With Gay Customers and Gay Employees. I Still Was Sued.”
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Compare and contrast these stories:
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Darn. Somebody brought this 2005 article to my attention earlier today, and I failed to make a note of who it was. I apologize, but am grateful for the tip:
“Centuries-old bones of horses unearthed in Carlsbad”
Does anybody out there happen to know what, if anything, came of the find?
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In response to my 22 September blog post “Extraterrestrial intelligence and the existence of God,” somebody — again, I can’t remember who it was; plainly, I need to take better notes — called my attention to this piece in the New York Times from earlier this summer:
“Don’t Believe in God? Maybe You’ll Try U.F.O.s”
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Here are three items in connection with David Whitmer that I’ve long found of interest:
On the day following the death of David Whitmer, in 1888, the Chicago Times reported an interview with an unnamed “Chicago Man.” This man related a conversation that he had had with another individual some years before, a prominent resident of the county in which David Whitmer had lived, who had been a lawyer and a sheriff there and who, he said, had known the Witness very well and told him a remarkable story of David Whitmer’s later life. — “In the opinion of this gentleman, no man in Missouri possessed greater courage or honesty than this heroic old man [David Whitmer]. ‘His oath,’ he said, ‘ would send a man to the gallows quicker than that of any man I ever knew.’ He then went on to say that no person had ever questioned his word to his knowledge about any other matter than finding the Book of Mormon. He was always a loser and never a gainer by adhering to the faith of Joseph Smith. Why persons should question his word about the golden plates, when they took it in relation to all other matters, was to him a mystery.”
[Cited in Lyndon Cook, David Whitmer Interviews, 224.]
From an interview with Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith (1878) — “I saw [the plates and other artifacts] just as plain as I see this bed (striking his hand upon the bed beside him), and I heard the voice of the Lord, as distinctly as I ever heard anything in my life, declaring that the records of the plates of the Book of Mormon were translated by the gift and power of God.”
[Interview with Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith (Richmond, Missouri, 7-8 September 1878), reported in a letter to President John Taylor and the Council of the Twelve dated 17 September 1878. Originally published in the Deseret News (16 November 1878) and reprinted in Cook, David Whitmer Interviews, 40.]
From an interview with Joseph Smith III (1884) — “Rather suggestively [Colonel Giles] asked if it might not have been possible that he, Mr. Whitmer, had been mistaken and had simply been moved upon by some mental disturbance, or hallucination, which had deceived them into thinking he saw the Personage, the Angel, the plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the sword of Laban. How well and distinctly I remember the manner in which Elder Whitmer arose and drew himself up to his full height — a little over six feet — and said, in solemn and impressive tones: ‘No, sir! I was not under any hallucination, nor was I deceived! I saw with these eyes and I heard with these ears! I know whereof I speak!’ “
[Interview with Joseph Smith III, et al. (Richmond, Missouri, July 1884), originally published in The Saints’ Herald (28 January 1936) and reprinted in Cook, David Whitmer Interviews, 134-135 (emphasis in the original).]
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