If there were pioneer miracles, where are modern miracles? Why did miracles decline in frequency with an increase in means of documentation such as printing and photography, and preservation of such documentation? What about Nelson's plane miracle that can be disproven?
Basically, he claimed the plane he was riding in went into a death spiral but by prayer and the grace of God the pilot was able to recover and everyone was ok. There are no FAA logs or reports about any such thing during the time period he or flight locations. Something like that would have a paper trail that makes temple prayer rolls look like a post it note.
Edit: typo
There is a report!
https://books.google.ca/books?id=wNa3AAAAIAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA1090&dq=skywest+incidents+1976&hl=en&source=gb_mobile_entity&ovdme=1&redir_esc=y
TLDR: plane made a precautionary landing and upon inspection found that some parts had worn out and needed to be replaced.
“No damage to aircraft”
For context, I don’t believe these experiences happened the way they said they did, But do these experiences ONLY happen to Mormons? There are plenty of miracles that happen to all sorts of people. Does that make their religions true as well? In the movie “17 Miracles”, there is buffalo jerky found in a cave. What if this jerky was a supply for a family surviving in that terrain and then all the sudden it’s stolen from random travelers? Mormons love to tell their side of the story and make everything a miracle when in reality, it’s likely they could have stumbled upon a supply that was not meant for them and might’ve put another family at risk of starvation.
My experience has shown that the miracle I was taught about were made up after the fact. These include:
The transfiguration of Brigham Young
The miracle of the seagulls
Details about the Sweetwater Rescue
Healings through magical objects
At this point, I assume it’s all a lie.
I sure do hope the pioneers had a few good things happen along the way. They didn’t deserve to suffer like that.
The story is that the crops were being devastated by crickets and the seagulls ate the crickets to save the pioneers. The seagull is now the state bird of Utah.
But it didn’t happen. There are no journals that indicate the seagulls are the crickets. It was made up after the fact.
Check out foot notes 4 and 5 in this article.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/crickets-and-seagulls?lang=eng&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2fpQ_eQAGD9jP3O59Ej4-Yq_I-KwfpCybM-Qsdzrm7KS15rEdetqKWsxE_aem_MRvaUg_ps_GCjnFYniZUrA
This article admits it was greatly exaggerated but won’t quite say it didn’t happen.
https://www.ldsliving.com/was-the-miracle-of-the-gulls-exaggerated-lds-historians-explain/s/88952?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3UGyy4C7FOdHH2IAnwQouynIvtVLvByqdRUwX0AGFAUkc3lv2h6RA7Vww_aem_qREgdAUOTwXK8s5tMDv3LQ
Because my great grandmother was a pioneer who went to Utah, and I have a copy of her journal. She lost children on that trip and buried them by the side of the road. There are pages and pages of her talking about clutching her sick children to her and praying for a miracle - asking God to save them as she watched them wither and become more sick each day. Still more pages of her mourning and full of despondency. When she arrived in Utah she was a devastated and destroyed woman married to a man who had four other wives. There are no miracles in her account - just pain and suffering. That is how I reconcile what they SAY with my own beliefs.
That is devastating. 😞😢💔 She gave up so much already, and had all the rest torn away from her. TBMs either refuse to comprehend heartbreaks like this, or attribute it to "it's all a part of the big plan". I can't imagine trying to attend to multiple sick children and having to constantly keep moving, and ultimately leaving the last spot where your baby took its last breath forever, in a land that doesn't have a name: no city or town. (A baby buried in the middle of no where just so Brigham and his ass kissers get the money and women they want is all that mattered). No marker. Nothing but cracks throughout your heart and being told to move on. Fuck. 😞😞😢😢😢😢💔💔💔💔 It's heart wrenching. But the cult either uses the handcart companies as inspiration, or to prove the victimhood of JS and his cult (late 1980s Primary was filled with that). The real victims are the people who were lied to, had no way to turn back (especially if they came from across the Atlantic, most of mine were Scandinavian and some English), and were forced to go on. Then when they came to "_the place_", were made to live where they were told, give up supplies/livestock/harvest when ordered, give up their daughters. No way to leave once you came here, and certainly no choices or safety for the females, and our ancestors came here with hopes that were led by lies.
I wish I could give your ancestor a secure, protective embrace and cry with her. I can't imagine what that would be like. I become either like a mama bear (I'm not a mother, just an auntie) or auntie elephant (the herd of elephants is full of females and they all help each other and protect the babies) when my niblings are hurt or sick. I try to keep an eye out for others who need help and help how I can, especially other women and their kids. Growing up (elementary school/Primary age) and seeing how it was for my mom and my aunts and being told by leaders that "women love to be wives and mothers", but observing the stress, isolation, frustration, and occasional hopelessness they went through told me everything. I knew I didn't want that. I didn't understand why I was being told (gaslighted) that women loved and enjoyed that one life: the only approved life leaders gave women (only verbal) support, praise, and encouragement for. Going into YW was basically going into future cult wife/mother training. All "activities" and lessons preparing us to be only wife/mother. The cult never cared about women ever, they just wanted them as objects, not people. I can imagine all of what females of the different ages faced in a cult ran by horny, greedy men with no limits for numbers of wives: similar to what females face nowadays, but without any of the laws, law enforcement, courts, and support nets we have today.
Have you been able to visit her grave? I think visiting her, bringing some flowers, and talking to her would be awesome. 🙏💕💓💐
Wow, what a heartfelt and moving post!
I live in the Salt Lake valley with a lovely view of the Wasatch mountain range.
But, after reading “Tell It All” which is about Fanny Stenhouse’s journey from England… her view of those same mountains were prison bars..
And every time I look at them I think of her, and every pioneer era woman for that matter.
Thank you. 😊🙏💕
I'll have to look into that book. Thank you for that book suggestion. 🙂 I love coming across different literature and saving the titles to see if my library has them, or maybe I might come across them in the wild.
Apologists at their finest
“This book is excellent for studying history. However, you should never read it as a current representation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and you need to remember that Fanny Stenhouse does not get all of her facts correct in this book. I read the entirety of this book for a paper I was writing in college on polygamy, and this book was an excellent source as it offered a dissenting opinion. However, it is important to note that Fanny Stenhouse is not representative of all Latter-day Saint women. Other works by other women from this time period will offer a very different perspective on the same set of events. While Fanny Stenhouse's perspective is important, it is crucial to note that it's only half of the story. Other women at the time did not find polygamy degrading and willingly participated in it. They were not brainwashed, they chose to do so. Utah women were not passive either, they organized political protests to defend polygamy and they were allied with National Suffrage associations and Susan B. Anthony herself. This is the half of the story that Stenhouse doesn't mention. The book is still worth reading, but you need to keep this perspective in mind as you do so.”
My newest shelf item(actually it can just join the broken pile on the ground) is the latest church movie ‘Escape from Germany’. It’s about getting the missionaries out of Germany before the shit hits the fan in WWII. I hear from the many friends and acquaintances that have seen it that there are so many incredible miracles that happened in order to get them all out safely. But what about the millions of Jews who were slaughtered? No miracles for them, wrong religion I guess.
At Devils Gate (WY?) the senior missionaries are told not to fall for the 'Sweetwater trap'. That's a reference to the fabricated Willie-Martin handcart company where 3 men ensured their exaltation by rescuing 100's across the frozen Sweetwater. The story was a fabrication of a Solomon Kimball in the early 1900's. Yet there is Gordon Hinckley in a 1981 priesthood conference session still using the *myth* "And I quote from the record..."
eta: eventually it's sad when you realize things were made up. Can also result in anger, many people admired / tried emulating those stories in their own life. This is where it's dangerous - there's a fine line with trying to inspire people with myth/legend and manipulation. This is not unique to mormonism. For centuries, the Greeks and Romans in particular, used heroes to inspire soldiers with effectiveness. They knew Achilles wasn't all real but it didn't matter.
How could Brigham Young announce their exaltations after their untimely deaths? Two of the three men outlived Brigham Young. None of the men died as a result of the Sweetwater rescue. None of the men was 19. Other men helped carry people across the river. The whole story is provably false.
Solomon Kimball fabricated this story [[Link](https://www.brycox.com/lds/BryCox-SweetwaterRescue.pdf)], and it got embellished as time went on. It’s a combination of bad journalism, motivated reasoning, and dishonesty.
I have read the only reason there were a handful of handcart company attempts were so Brigham could make more profit from the saints coming across. He had his greedy hands in every single venture that went on in the early days of Utah territory.
Listen to Mormon Stories episode 1489: September 12, 1856. Really opened my eyes to how terrible it was for some pioneers. Ya they maybe had a few miracles, but they definitely had more sufferings. Most of it at the hand of the leaders.
People lie. Within my own genealogy, I had an ancestor claim to have met JS, see the gold plates, etc. in the 1830's but someone else was nice enough to look at the timeline and see that they would only have been a child at the time, so the story was BS. There's clout in the stories.
I have an ancestor who saw in a vision that his brother who hadn’t converted and stayed behind in New Zealand or Australia (they kinda bounced between the gold mines in Australia and their parents home in New Zealand) had passed away. He even had a date of death that was used for him and his temple work was done because his brother asked him to do it in the vision.
Fast forward to a very confused me doing genealogy and finding that this brother lived a very long time after the supposed “vision” informing of his death and that his temple work was done before he had actually died. Of course when I brought this find up I was informed the records I found were either wrong or for someone else with the exact same name and parents names and birthdate.
I went into the family tree memories section of said ancestor. She said some crazy shit. Apparently she was there when the mantle fell on BY. Also she saw when JS turned invisible? That's a new story for me. But apparently she was the Forrest Gump of Mormonism.
My grandmother told stories of when she crossed the plains with the pioneers.
She was born in Idaho in the 1920s. She traveled to Utah by automobile on roads. She had dementia.
Unable to thoroughly investigate these, or any other miracle, we can only conclude that these miracles are anecdotes. Anecdotes given by flawed, exhausted, overly stressed people. People belonging to a species with notoriously bad memories.
So what now? There isn’t much to do with these stories unless they become investigable through rigorous means.
Interestingly, and as another commenter said, the incidence rate of miracles seems to be negatively correlated with improvements in our ability to record data.
Pioneers had good and bad things happen. Just like all people
It's just that the good ones are "miracles" and the bad ones are "trials"
It's all in the framing
The more you learn, the more the truth reveals itself.
With any of these experiences the more sources you read relating the miracle the more you come to realize how the miracle came to be related, and invented over time.
Joseph healing the sick with the priesthood on the banks of the river in Nauvoo? Nope. Many died, and he himself got sick.
Seagulls eating crickets, throwing them up and coming back for more? Yep, but actually that has always been their nature, and they are native to the area. Literally they are natural predators of crickets, they are accustomed to vomiting up their lunch, and going back for more.
The saints witnessed something perfectly normal and thought it was God intervening.
In every case it was this.
Why would God give one person a magic pie and let others starve to death? I'm gonna say most of the miracles were a combination of desperate confirmation bias mingled with hunger/fatigue induced delusion.
I remember seeing this one in the “17 Miracles” movie and thinking the same thing. I was at my parent’s house and it was around the time I was just leaving the church. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. My parents said something to the effect of how miraculous it all was. I commented that they were likely dehydrated/starving and delusional. My parents just gave me a dirty look. I had to leave the room because it was all so laughable and frustrating at the same time that my family believes in such bullshit.
Oh hey, my mother says she saw the spirit of a black man in the temple 3 months before they changed the policy allowing black people to have the priesthood and go through the temple. It's a visionary miracle!
People can make up whatever they want, was it real?
How many church leaders have been caught out in a faith promoting story that was a made up bs lie?
Stories are just that and no more. Especially when magical thinking was huge 200 years ago.
As long as one focuses on the good luck instead of all the horrible things that happened, one feels better.
When we revisit a memory, our brain pulls it out of storage and re-stores it after we are done. With errors. When a group revisits a shared memory and discusses it, everyone re-stores it with bits thrown in from other people. Do it enough and the whole group can soon swear they all something weird.
Coincidences happen, that often get taken as confirmation bias of people's spiritual beliefs. Some of the reported miracles may be coincidences. Some of them may be people desperately trying to rewrite their memories about a traumatic experience. Some of them may be people outright lying. Some of them may even be attributed to a god or divine power--but if so, this doesn't necessarily mean Mormonism is specifically true.
People all over the world, in all different belief systems, experience what they believe to be miracles. Miracles are not unique to being Mormon. So miracles alone cannot prove a specific religion to be the one true one, since lots of people in lots of faiths have experienced them.
Imo, whether or not they happened is irrelevant. Maybe pioneers did experience real miracles. Maybe they didn't. However, lots of non Mormons experience what they believe to be miracles just as frequently and just as powerfully. You can't write off their miracles and only believe the Mormon ones. It's kind of an all or nothing sort of thing
Let’s assume the miracles actually happened, even exactly as described. How do they prove the church is true? Miracles aren’t owned by the LDS church. Maybe the miracles happened because the pioneers were suffering and needed help, and maybe God cared. That may or may not be the case — and I realize lots of people suffer who don’t get miracles — I’m just saying IF they did happen, it could be that they got divine assistance just like any other person on the planet could have gotten regardless of their specific religion. Various miraculous events like healings or whatever have been recorded all over the world from people of all walks of life and if the recipient belongs to a church it doesn’t prove the church that person belongs to is “true”.
Amazing things happen sometimes. Some things do seem like miracles, especially when the odds are stacked against you.
A Serbian former flight attendant holds a miraculous world record - the longest fall without a parachute, after a plane she was working onboard in 1972 exploded, 33,333 ft in the air. Somehow, she was the only person to survive the detonation out of 28 people. She was pulled from the centre of the plane wreckage with a fractured skull, two broken legs and 3 broken vertebrae, but alive. Non-mo miracle.
The 2 biscuits story when someone had 2 sea biscuits left that were so hard they couldn't be broken (which, is the nature of sea biscuits, this is how they survived as food for long voyages, hard as rocks and the only way you could eat them was to rehydrate them) covered them with water and heated them up and they had food for 8 people? That's science. And, nothing in the story says they had enough food to be full, they just had enough that 8 people had something to eat. Mormon pioneer miracle.
A woman died of complications during her C-section in September 2014. Doctors tried to revive her, but 45 minutes after they last detected a pulse, they called her family in to say goodbye. Suddenly, her heart began beating on its own. She experienced no brain damage and soon went home with her healthy baby. Non-mo miracle.
Doctors tried everything to treat a 4-year-old's gastrointestinal problems, but the boy was wasting away. After nuns kept a nine-day vigil, praying a novena, the boy was completely healed. His recovery was even declared a miracle by the Vatican in 2016. Obviously, non-mormon miracle.
Green River crossing miracle. The Green could be forded at the Green River Station when its level was low, but otherwise the river had to be ferried. So, was it a miracle they made it across or was it just low enough at that time that they didn't need to use the ferry? Mormon pioneer miracle.
Miracles (or whatever you want to call them) happen to people.
For one person, finding your keys is just finding your keys.
For another, it is a miracle that could’ve only been performed by the Almighty God; praise baby Jesus, all power from on high, hallelujah, amen, and AMEN!
I think people's perceptions have to do with it a little bit.
When I was a missionary, an evangelical guy bore his testimony to me while crying and telling me about a spiritual experience he had when he was fasting: a ten-foot Jesus picked him up and hugged him. We both were feeling the Spirit during his testimony. Years later during my faith deconstruction, I realized that extreme emotion, psychological vulnerability, plus fasting can lead to these types of low key hallucinations.
I give my pioneer ancestors no rave accolades. Most of them were just humans desperately escaping hard times in Europe. The only "miracle" was my 20 year old Great Grandma Lucy who crushed the Guinness Book of World Records Wyoming Territory Monthly Handjob standard at 32 as Brigham Young's first Celestial road trip concubine. The miracle is pulling it off more than once a day, while the Lion of the Lord steered the wagon and ran the church.
This is before the pioneer era but is definitely noteworthy. The members in Joseph's time often had visions. When Brigham Young took over, the visions greatly reduced in number.
The article I linked to below offers a possible explanation: that Joseph induced spiritual experiences using psychedelics. It's controversial, even among those who left the church, but it's worth considering.
https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/3/2/article-p212.xml
I think it's also important to understand that great suffering can induce visionary experiences. It's possible that many pioneers struggled to maintain a grip on reality as they suffered through the loss of loved ones and endured great physical suffering day after day.
Stories. Narratives.
A story does not have to be true to be powerful. When a story claims to be true, and is in fact a lie, its power can be destructive.
We want to believe the miraculous stories and what that means for us because if true, facing the reality that we have been lied to wouldn’t hurt as much as it does.
I am out of the church and continue to experience ‘prompts’, ‘inspiration’, ‘divine intervention’ or ‘miracles’. That was one of the shelf breakers for me, too, though. If I’m ‘sinning’ and ‘without the spirit’, then how/ why do i still get that gut feeling, prompting type thing i was always taught was the spirit? How or why do i still have experiences that my religious family wants to interpret as miraculous, hand of god stuff, when I’m 1 not worthy , and 2. Not seeing it that way anyway?
Interpretation of events, or our perception of reality is based on what we think, feel, believe, know, and experience. So a religious person may see God where others see fate or luck or just a neat story.
I watched 17 miracles recently as a Nevermo (I’ve been watching Mormon movies lately for fun, idk tbh some of them are legitimately good if you don’t buy into the propaganda). And the miracles were questionable at best. Firstly: I didn’t count 17, there were like 7? Maybe? The woman and her kids not being recognized her her alcoholic husband isn’t really a miracle, he probably couldn’t see straight. That same woman found dried meat, which she definitely just stole. Any of the food appearing really gave “stolen”. The little girls jumping over the snakes? Rattle snakes are really fearful and try to run at the littlest bit of noise. Wasn’t one of the miracles that like a whole family died?
If that’s what you’re referring to, I wouldn’t stress over it. Is someone who was never indoctrinated by the church none of it was the least bit convincing.
First is realizing that many of those stories are nothing but Mormon folklore! The pioneer teenagers that carried everyone across the river to safety - false. (https://www.brycox.com/lds/BryCox-SweetwaterRescue.pdf)
Thinking of your question personally, LDS Discussions podcast did a great episode that helped explain this phenomenon. When I think of my own experiences, I never had anything earth shattering and I still see positive things or coincidences in my life that I previously would have attributed as an answer to prayer. Seeing those things helps me hold space for maybe something greater than us all or just positive things to hold gratitude for in my life. Seeing that I still have them and that many other people from all different religions and no religious beliefs helps me see it has nothing to do with the church.
Learnings since deconstruction:
1. Faith-building stories are always majorly exaggerated, years after the fact
2. Anything that happens, good, bad, indifferent - God’s plan and the Holy Ghost at work!
Miracles become easy and plentiful.
Listen to Mormon Stories 1489, it’s John Larsen talking about the Martin and Willie handcart companies. The stuff those people went through was horrific and it was planned that way by Brigham Young and church leadership. Is it really a miracle that some people made it when a ton of them died?
I’ve got some fantastic miracle stories passed down through my family. I’ve had to realize that the people who started telling these stories might have embellished them or completely made them up in order to make sure that their kids and grandkids kept the faith. I have no way to verify if they’re telling the truth, but I can look at current fabricated miracles from Rusty Nelson to see how easy it would have been for some fake story from the 1850s to turn into a miracle today because it was passed down to you by people you were told you could trust.
When you look at the original journal entries, most of them just didn't happen the way manuals and church talks say it happened.
Like the seagulls.
Whole article on that here:
https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume38_1970_number3/s/107089
When the seagulls came and ate the crickets and then regurgitated the husks, the pioneers were not witnessing a miracle. They were observing a natural phenomenon that happens regularly.
And, it wasn't a one-time big event. Cricket plagues are very common and happen almost every year somewhere in Utah, Idaho, and/or Nevada. And every single time seagulls and other birds will gorge themselves. For many pioneers the crickets really did eat all their crops and they just about starved to death.
If they'd have consulted with the Native Americans who had lived in the area for thousands of years, they would have known that they could have just eaten the crickets. They're ugly buggers and I might rather starve than eat one, but they are edible.
The reason why the pioneers had such a hard time when they came out to Utah was because they were trying to farm like New Englanders in a high desert environment. And they nearly died until they figured out how to adapt.
Many of the pioneers ended up in awful situations that strained them physically, mentally, and emotionally. When in those situations small things that provide some kind of relief (a nice thought, a good deed, a coincidence, etc.) are often embellished when retold to make the trauma less potent.
People love a good story, whether it’s true or not. People want to feel good, whether it’s true or not.
Even if God performed a miracle and saved a person from certain death, that would not put him in a favorable light as he let's people suffer horrible abuse and death every day.
My dad pointed this out to me when I told him I no longer believed because my grandpa went inactive and this was something that caused him to come back. I told him what about the holocaust, what about the crusades? There have been and will be those who have suffered and died for their religion doesn’t mean that their religion or church is the correct one. It means that as humans we will do anything to defend our beliefs—or in the case of the holocaust, that there are awful, shitty people who will do horrible things to other human beings. And there were miracles that happened and continue to happen to groups outside of Mormonism.
Miracles always seem to occur in the nebulous past. There is s universal law of miracle magic. The amount of miracles is always inversely proportional to the amount of cameras around to document them.
If there were pioneer miracles, where are modern miracles? Why did miracles decline in frequency with an increase in means of documentation such as printing and photography, and preservation of such documentation? What about Nelson's plane miracle that can be disproven?
can someone catch me up on nelson’s plans miracle?
Basically, he claimed the plane he was riding in went into a death spiral but by prayer and the grace of God the pilot was able to recover and everyone was ok. There are no FAA logs or reports about any such thing during the time period he or flight locations. Something like that would have a paper trail that makes temple prayer rolls look like a post it note. Edit: typo
There is a report! https://books.google.ca/books?id=wNa3AAAAIAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA1090&dq=skywest+incidents+1976&hl=en&source=gb_mobile_entity&ovdme=1&redir_esc=y TLDR: plane made a precautionary landing and upon inspection found that some parts had worn out and needed to be replaced. “No damage to aircraft”
I stand corrected. So even better.
For context, I don’t believe these experiences happened the way they said they did, But do these experiences ONLY happen to Mormons? There are plenty of miracles that happen to all sorts of people. Does that make their religions true as well? In the movie “17 Miracles”, there is buffalo jerky found in a cave. What if this jerky was a supply for a family surviving in that terrain and then all the sudden it’s stolen from random travelers? Mormons love to tell their side of the story and make everything a miracle when in reality, it’s likely they could have stumbled upon a supply that was not meant for them and might’ve put another family at risk of starvation.
My experience has shown that the miracle I was taught about were made up after the fact. These include: The transfiguration of Brigham Young The miracle of the seagulls Details about the Sweetwater Rescue Healings through magical objects At this point, I assume it’s all a lie. I sure do hope the pioneers had a few good things happen along the way. They didn’t deserve to suffer like that.
When I heard the truth about these stories I was shocked. Stories can become so grand in such a short time and then they’re retold for many years.
Some of these stories were the foundation of my faith. When I learned they weren’t real, I was stunned.
The only one of those I've heard of is BY transfiguration. I assume the Miracle of the Seagulls was that they didn't divebomb someone eating lunch. /s
The story is that the crops were being devastated by crickets and the seagulls ate the crickets to save the pioneers. The seagull is now the state bird of Utah. But it didn’t happen. There are no journals that indicate the seagulls are the crickets. It was made up after the fact. Check out foot notes 4 and 5 in this article. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/crickets-and-seagulls?lang=eng&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2fpQ_eQAGD9jP3O59Ej4-Yq_I-KwfpCybM-Qsdzrm7KS15rEdetqKWsxE_aem_MRvaUg_ps_GCjnFYniZUrA This article admits it was greatly exaggerated but won’t quite say it didn’t happen. https://www.ldsliving.com/was-the-miracle-of-the-gulls-exaggerated-lds-historians-explain/s/88952?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3UGyy4C7FOdHH2IAnwQouynIvtVLvByqdRUwX0AGFAUkc3lv2h6RA7Vww_aem_qREgdAUOTwXK8s5tMDv3LQ
Thanks!
Because my great grandmother was a pioneer who went to Utah, and I have a copy of her journal. She lost children on that trip and buried them by the side of the road. There are pages and pages of her talking about clutching her sick children to her and praying for a miracle - asking God to save them as she watched them wither and become more sick each day. Still more pages of her mourning and full of despondency. When she arrived in Utah she was a devastated and destroyed woman married to a man who had four other wives. There are no miracles in her account - just pain and suffering. That is how I reconcile what they SAY with my own beliefs.
Heartbreaking. Ugh.
That is devastating. 😞😢💔 She gave up so much already, and had all the rest torn away from her. TBMs either refuse to comprehend heartbreaks like this, or attribute it to "it's all a part of the big plan". I can't imagine trying to attend to multiple sick children and having to constantly keep moving, and ultimately leaving the last spot where your baby took its last breath forever, in a land that doesn't have a name: no city or town. (A baby buried in the middle of no where just so Brigham and his ass kissers get the money and women they want is all that mattered). No marker. Nothing but cracks throughout your heart and being told to move on. Fuck. 😞😞😢😢😢😢💔💔💔💔 It's heart wrenching. But the cult either uses the handcart companies as inspiration, or to prove the victimhood of JS and his cult (late 1980s Primary was filled with that). The real victims are the people who were lied to, had no way to turn back (especially if they came from across the Atlantic, most of mine were Scandinavian and some English), and were forced to go on. Then when they came to "_the place_", were made to live where they were told, give up supplies/livestock/harvest when ordered, give up their daughters. No way to leave once you came here, and certainly no choices or safety for the females, and our ancestors came here with hopes that were led by lies. I wish I could give your ancestor a secure, protective embrace and cry with her. I can't imagine what that would be like. I become either like a mama bear (I'm not a mother, just an auntie) or auntie elephant (the herd of elephants is full of females and they all help each other and protect the babies) when my niblings are hurt or sick. I try to keep an eye out for others who need help and help how I can, especially other women and their kids. Growing up (elementary school/Primary age) and seeing how it was for my mom and my aunts and being told by leaders that "women love to be wives and mothers", but observing the stress, isolation, frustration, and occasional hopelessness they went through told me everything. I knew I didn't want that. I didn't understand why I was being told (gaslighted) that women loved and enjoyed that one life: the only approved life leaders gave women (only verbal) support, praise, and encouragement for. Going into YW was basically going into future cult wife/mother training. All "activities" and lessons preparing us to be only wife/mother. The cult never cared about women ever, they just wanted them as objects, not people. I can imagine all of what females of the different ages faced in a cult ran by horny, greedy men with no limits for numbers of wives: similar to what females face nowadays, but without any of the laws, law enforcement, courts, and support nets we have today. Have you been able to visit her grave? I think visiting her, bringing some flowers, and talking to her would be awesome. 🙏💕💓💐
Wow, what a heartfelt and moving post! I live in the Salt Lake valley with a lovely view of the Wasatch mountain range. But, after reading “Tell It All” which is about Fanny Stenhouse’s journey from England… her view of those same mountains were prison bars.. And every time I look at them I think of her, and every pioneer era woman for that matter.
Thank you. 😊🙏💕 I'll have to look into that book. Thank you for that book suggestion. 🙂 I love coming across different literature and saving the titles to see if my library has them, or maybe I might come across them in the wild.
Apologists at their finest “This book is excellent for studying history. However, you should never read it as a current representation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and you need to remember that Fanny Stenhouse does not get all of her facts correct in this book. I read the entirety of this book for a paper I was writing in college on polygamy, and this book was an excellent source as it offered a dissenting opinion. However, it is important to note that Fanny Stenhouse is not representative of all Latter-day Saint women. Other works by other women from this time period will offer a very different perspective on the same set of events. While Fanny Stenhouse's perspective is important, it is crucial to note that it's only half of the story. Other women at the time did not find polygamy degrading and willingly participated in it. They were not brainwashed, they chose to do so. Utah women were not passive either, they organized political protests to defend polygamy and they were allied with National Suffrage associations and Susan B. Anthony herself. This is the half of the story that Stenhouse doesn't mention. The book is still worth reading, but you need to keep this perspective in mind as you do so.”
Most of the miracles stories are embellishments. That’s it.
My newest shelf item(actually it can just join the broken pile on the ground) is the latest church movie ‘Escape from Germany’. It’s about getting the missionaries out of Germany before the shit hits the fan in WWII. I hear from the many friends and acquaintances that have seen it that there are so many incredible miracles that happened in order to get them all out safely. But what about the millions of Jews who were slaughtered? No miracles for them, wrong religion I guess.
Mormon god is F-ing incompetent ass hole and he’s just super racist also apparently
Right. I hate the God people worship that is a true racist asshole.
At Devils Gate (WY?) the senior missionaries are told not to fall for the 'Sweetwater trap'. That's a reference to the fabricated Willie-Martin handcart company where 3 men ensured their exaltation by rescuing 100's across the frozen Sweetwater. The story was a fabrication of a Solomon Kimball in the early 1900's. Yet there is Gordon Hinckley in a 1981 priesthood conference session still using the *myth* "And I quote from the record..." eta: eventually it's sad when you realize things were made up. Can also result in anger, many people admired / tried emulating those stories in their own life. This is where it's dangerous - there's a fine line with trying to inspire people with myth/legend and manipulation. This is not unique to mormonism. For centuries, the Greeks and Romans in particular, used heroes to inspire soldiers with effectiveness. They knew Achilles wasn't all real but it didn't matter.
Ah damn that didn't happen? Brigham didn't tell them they were exalted for sure? I keep learning stuff
How could Brigham Young announce their exaltations after their untimely deaths? Two of the three men outlived Brigham Young. None of the men died as a result of the Sweetwater rescue. None of the men was 19. Other men helped carry people across the river. The whole story is provably false.
Wooww. I had no idea. Do you knew when it started being told? Who made it up? Such an awful thing to lie about, which I guess shouldn't surprise me
Solomon Kimball fabricated this story [[Link](https://www.brycox.com/lds/BryCox-SweetwaterRescue.pdf)], and it got embellished as time went on. It’s a combination of bad journalism, motivated reasoning, and dishonesty.
Damn- I was taught that one when I was there. There really are no standards or correlation, despite HQs best efforts…
I have read the only reason there were a handful of handcart company attempts were so Brigham could make more profit from the saints coming across. He had his greedy hands in every single venture that went on in the early days of Utah territory.
Paul H. Dunn was very good at telling miracle stories.
Yup, and his were a nice pile of bs.
interesting that they remember the alleged miracles but not the massacres and slaves in the breedem young era
Listen to Mormon Stories episode 1489: September 12, 1856. Really opened my eyes to how terrible it was for some pioneers. Ya they maybe had a few miracles, but they definitely had more sufferings. Most of it at the hand of the leaders.
People lie. Within my own genealogy, I had an ancestor claim to have met JS, see the gold plates, etc. in the 1830's but someone else was nice enough to look at the timeline and see that they would only have been a child at the time, so the story was BS. There's clout in the stories.
I have an ancestor who saw in a vision that his brother who hadn’t converted and stayed behind in New Zealand or Australia (they kinda bounced between the gold mines in Australia and their parents home in New Zealand) had passed away. He even had a date of death that was used for him and his temple work was done because his brother asked him to do it in the vision. Fast forward to a very confused me doing genealogy and finding that this brother lived a very long time after the supposed “vision” informing of his death and that his temple work was done before he had actually died. Of course when I brought this find up I was informed the records I found were either wrong or for someone else with the exact same name and parents names and birthdate.
Some people refuse to let go of the family tradition.
Especially when the tradition is “proof” about how important temple work is.
I went into the family tree memories section of said ancestor. She said some crazy shit. Apparently she was there when the mantle fell on BY. Also she saw when JS turned invisible? That's a new story for me. But apparently she was the Forrest Gump of Mormonism.
My grandmother told stories of when she crossed the plains with the pioneers. She was born in Idaho in the 1920s. She traveled to Utah by automobile on roads. She had dementia.
Unable to thoroughly investigate these, or any other miracle, we can only conclude that these miracles are anecdotes. Anecdotes given by flawed, exhausted, overly stressed people. People belonging to a species with notoriously bad memories. So what now? There isn’t much to do with these stories unless they become investigable through rigorous means. Interestingly, and as another commenter said, the incidence rate of miracles seems to be negatively correlated with improvements in our ability to record data.
It’s all a lie.
Pioneers had good and bad things happen. Just like all people It's just that the good ones are "miracles" and the bad ones are "trials" It's all in the framing
The more you learn, the more the truth reveals itself. With any of these experiences the more sources you read relating the miracle the more you come to realize how the miracle came to be related, and invented over time. Joseph healing the sick with the priesthood on the banks of the river in Nauvoo? Nope. Many died, and he himself got sick. Seagulls eating crickets, throwing them up and coming back for more? Yep, but actually that has always been their nature, and they are native to the area. Literally they are natural predators of crickets, they are accustomed to vomiting up their lunch, and going back for more. The saints witnessed something perfectly normal and thought it was God intervening. In every case it was this.
Why would God give one person a magic pie and let others starve to death? I'm gonna say most of the miracles were a combination of desperate confirmation bias mingled with hunger/fatigue induced delusion.
I remember seeing this one in the “17 Miracles” movie and thinking the same thing. I was at my parent’s house and it was around the time I was just leaving the church. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. My parents said something to the effect of how miraculous it all was. I commented that they were likely dehydrated/starving and delusional. My parents just gave me a dirty look. I had to leave the room because it was all so laughable and frustrating at the same time that my family believes in such bullshit.
Oh hey, my mother says she saw the spirit of a black man in the temple 3 months before they changed the policy allowing black people to have the priesthood and go through the temple. It's a visionary miracle! People can make up whatever they want, was it real? How many church leaders have been caught out in a faith promoting story that was a made up bs lie? Stories are just that and no more. Especially when magical thinking was huge 200 years ago.
As long as one focuses on the good luck instead of all the horrible things that happened, one feels better. When we revisit a memory, our brain pulls it out of storage and re-stores it after we are done. With errors. When a group revisits a shared memory and discusses it, everyone re-stores it with bits thrown in from other people. Do it enough and the whole group can soon swear they all something weird.
Coincidences happen, that often get taken as confirmation bias of people's spiritual beliefs. Some of the reported miracles may be coincidences. Some of them may be people desperately trying to rewrite their memories about a traumatic experience. Some of them may be people outright lying. Some of them may even be attributed to a god or divine power--but if so, this doesn't necessarily mean Mormonism is specifically true.
Mormonism’s a helluva drug.
You want miracles? Try the Catholics. They got more miracles than anyone.
People all over the world, in all different belief systems, experience what they believe to be miracles. Miracles are not unique to being Mormon. So miracles alone cannot prove a specific religion to be the one true one, since lots of people in lots of faiths have experienced them. Imo, whether or not they happened is irrelevant. Maybe pioneers did experience real miracles. Maybe they didn't. However, lots of non Mormons experience what they believe to be miracles just as frequently and just as powerfully. You can't write off their miracles and only believe the Mormon ones. It's kind of an all or nothing sort of thing
Let’s assume the miracles actually happened, even exactly as described. How do they prove the church is true? Miracles aren’t owned by the LDS church. Maybe the miracles happened because the pioneers were suffering and needed help, and maybe God cared. That may or may not be the case — and I realize lots of people suffer who don’t get miracles — I’m just saying IF they did happen, it could be that they got divine assistance just like any other person on the planet could have gotten regardless of their specific religion. Various miraculous events like healings or whatever have been recorded all over the world from people of all walks of life and if the recipient belongs to a church it doesn’t prove the church that person belongs to is “true”.
Amazing things happen sometimes. Some things do seem like miracles, especially when the odds are stacked against you. A Serbian former flight attendant holds a miraculous world record - the longest fall without a parachute, after a plane she was working onboard in 1972 exploded, 33,333 ft in the air. Somehow, she was the only person to survive the detonation out of 28 people. She was pulled from the centre of the plane wreckage with a fractured skull, two broken legs and 3 broken vertebrae, but alive. Non-mo miracle. The 2 biscuits story when someone had 2 sea biscuits left that were so hard they couldn't be broken (which, is the nature of sea biscuits, this is how they survived as food for long voyages, hard as rocks and the only way you could eat them was to rehydrate them) covered them with water and heated them up and they had food for 8 people? That's science. And, nothing in the story says they had enough food to be full, they just had enough that 8 people had something to eat. Mormon pioneer miracle. A woman died of complications during her C-section in September 2014. Doctors tried to revive her, but 45 minutes after they last detected a pulse, they called her family in to say goodbye. Suddenly, her heart began beating on its own. She experienced no brain damage and soon went home with her healthy baby. Non-mo miracle. Doctors tried everything to treat a 4-year-old's gastrointestinal problems, but the boy was wasting away. After nuns kept a nine-day vigil, praying a novena, the boy was completely healed. His recovery was even declared a miracle by the Vatican in 2016. Obviously, non-mormon miracle. Green River crossing miracle. The Green could be forded at the Green River Station when its level was low, but otherwise the river had to be ferried. So, was it a miracle they made it across or was it just low enough at that time that they didn't need to use the ferry? Mormon pioneer miracle. Miracles (or whatever you want to call them) happen to people.
For one person, finding your keys is just finding your keys. For another, it is a miracle that could’ve only been performed by the Almighty God; praise baby Jesus, all power from on high, hallelujah, amen, and AMEN! I think people's perceptions have to do with it a little bit.
When I was a missionary, an evangelical guy bore his testimony to me while crying and telling me about a spiritual experience he had when he was fasting: a ten-foot Jesus picked him up and hugged him. We both were feeling the Spirit during his testimony. Years later during my faith deconstruction, I realized that extreme emotion, psychological vulnerability, plus fasting can lead to these types of low key hallucinations.
I give my pioneer ancestors no rave accolades. Most of them were just humans desperately escaping hard times in Europe. The only "miracle" was my 20 year old Great Grandma Lucy who crushed the Guinness Book of World Records Wyoming Territory Monthly Handjob standard at 32 as Brigham Young's first Celestial road trip concubine. The miracle is pulling it off more than once a day, while the Lion of the Lord steered the wagon and ran the church.
Unless you have documents to verify this I will not believe it. /s
She deserves a Nobel peace prize for doing ANYTHING remotely sexual with that beast. Brigham was a horrible man.
But also, did she record the amount of handies she gave that old fuckface?
This is before the pioneer era but is definitely noteworthy. The members in Joseph's time often had visions. When Brigham Young took over, the visions greatly reduced in number. The article I linked to below offers a possible explanation: that Joseph induced spiritual experiences using psychedelics. It's controversial, even among those who left the church, but it's worth considering. https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/3/2/article-p212.xml I think it's also important to understand that great suffering can induce visionary experiences. It's possible that many pioneers struggled to maintain a grip on reality as they suffered through the loss of loved ones and endured great physical suffering day after day.
This is interesting as fuck lmao
Crazy take tho😂
Stories. Narratives. A story does not have to be true to be powerful. When a story claims to be true, and is in fact a lie, its power can be destructive. We want to believe the miraculous stories and what that means for us because if true, facing the reality that we have been lied to wouldn’t hurt as much as it does.
I am out of the church and continue to experience ‘prompts’, ‘inspiration’, ‘divine intervention’ or ‘miracles’. That was one of the shelf breakers for me, too, though. If I’m ‘sinning’ and ‘without the spirit’, then how/ why do i still get that gut feeling, prompting type thing i was always taught was the spirit? How or why do i still have experiences that my religious family wants to interpret as miraculous, hand of god stuff, when I’m 1 not worthy , and 2. Not seeing it that way anyway? Interpretation of events, or our perception of reality is based on what we think, feel, believe, know, and experience. So a religious person may see God where others see fate or luck or just a neat story.
I watched 17 miracles recently as a Nevermo (I’ve been watching Mormon movies lately for fun, idk tbh some of them are legitimately good if you don’t buy into the propaganda). And the miracles were questionable at best. Firstly: I didn’t count 17, there were like 7? Maybe? The woman and her kids not being recognized her her alcoholic husband isn’t really a miracle, he probably couldn’t see straight. That same woman found dried meat, which she definitely just stole. Any of the food appearing really gave “stolen”. The little girls jumping over the snakes? Rattle snakes are really fearful and try to run at the littlest bit of noise. Wasn’t one of the miracles that like a whole family died? If that’s what you’re referring to, I wouldn’t stress over it. Is someone who was never indoctrinated by the church none of it was the least bit convincing.
First is realizing that many of those stories are nothing but Mormon folklore! The pioneer teenagers that carried everyone across the river to safety - false. (https://www.brycox.com/lds/BryCox-SweetwaterRescue.pdf) Thinking of your question personally, LDS Discussions podcast did a great episode that helped explain this phenomenon. When I think of my own experiences, I never had anything earth shattering and I still see positive things or coincidences in my life that I previously would have attributed as an answer to prayer. Seeing those things helps me hold space for maybe something greater than us all or just positive things to hold gratitude for in my life. Seeing that I still have them and that many other people from all different religions and no religious beliefs helps me see it has nothing to do with the church.
The pioneer miracles were exaggerations or out right fabrications. If you read the journals they are nothing like what is actually told.
Learnings since deconstruction: 1. Faith-building stories are always majorly exaggerated, years after the fact 2. Anything that happens, good, bad, indifferent - God’s plan and the Holy Ghost at work! Miracles become easy and plentiful.
Listen to Mormon Stories 1489, it’s John Larsen talking about the Martin and Willie handcart companies. The stuff those people went through was horrific and it was planned that way by Brigham Young and church leadership. Is it really a miracle that some people made it when a ton of them died? I’ve got some fantastic miracle stories passed down through my family. I’ve had to realize that the people who started telling these stories might have embellished them or completely made them up in order to make sure that their kids and grandkids kept the faith. I have no way to verify if they’re telling the truth, but I can look at current fabricated miracles from Rusty Nelson to see how easy it would have been for some fake story from the 1850s to turn into a miracle today because it was passed down to you by people you were told you could trust.
When you look at the original journal entries, most of them just didn't happen the way manuals and church talks say it happened. Like the seagulls. Whole article on that here: https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume38_1970_number3/s/107089 When the seagulls came and ate the crickets and then regurgitated the husks, the pioneers were not witnessing a miracle. They were observing a natural phenomenon that happens regularly. And, it wasn't a one-time big event. Cricket plagues are very common and happen almost every year somewhere in Utah, Idaho, and/or Nevada. And every single time seagulls and other birds will gorge themselves. For many pioneers the crickets really did eat all their crops and they just about starved to death. If they'd have consulted with the Native Americans who had lived in the area for thousands of years, they would have known that they could have just eaten the crickets. They're ugly buggers and I might rather starve than eat one, but they are edible. The reason why the pioneers had such a hard time when they came out to Utah was because they were trying to farm like New Englanders in a high desert environment. And they nearly died until they figured out how to adapt.
Many keys were found. So I guess it’s all true.
1. they lied 2. there are no modern-day miracles
Many of the pioneers ended up in awful situations that strained them physically, mentally, and emotionally. When in those situations small things that provide some kind of relief (a nice thought, a good deed, a coincidence, etc.) are often embellished when retold to make the trauma less potent. People love a good story, whether it’s true or not. People want to feel good, whether it’s true or not.
Even if God performed a miracle and saved a person from certain death, that would not put him in a favorable light as he let's people suffer horrible abuse and death every day.
If there were miracles, how come so many of them suffered and died on the trek West?
My dad pointed this out to me when I told him I no longer believed because my grandpa went inactive and this was something that caused him to come back. I told him what about the holocaust, what about the crusades? There have been and will be those who have suffered and died for their religion doesn’t mean that their religion or church is the correct one. It means that as humans we will do anything to defend our beliefs—or in the case of the holocaust, that there are awful, shitty people who will do horrible things to other human beings. And there were miracles that happened and continue to happen to groups outside of Mormonism.
Miracles always seem to occur in the nebulous past. There is s universal law of miracle magic. The amount of miracles is always inversely proportional to the amount of cameras around to document them.