False witnesses

For those wondering how to gain a witness of the Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon and the LDS Church, consider the teachings of Boyd Packer:

It is not unusual to have a missionary say, “How can I bear testimony until I get one? How can I testify that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, and that the gospel is true? If I do not have such a testimony, would that not be dishonest?”

Oh, if I could teach you this one principle. A testimony is to be found in the bearing of it!

This is the fake it till you make it strategy recently endorsed by Neil Andersen. It's supposedly that easy. All you have to do is want a spiritual witness really badly to the point that you start telling people you've had one even when you haven't and eventually you'll grow so comfortable repeating it that you might actually think you had one. Sound convincing?

I think it sounds like bullshit. Is this how apostles gain their "special witness"?

I also think it sounds a bit like bearing false witness, which happens to be one of the ten "thou shalt not"s. What does that commandment say again?

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Damn. It's "against they neighbor" not "to thine self and thine neighbors". I guess bearing a false testimony about Joseph is OK then.

Neil Andersen criticized

For any of you who have ever doubted Joseph Smith because of something you've read online or from uncorrelated material, please read or listen to Neil Andersen's recent Conference talk. His strategy of quoting Joseph Smith about himself, reading a crazy-ass quote from John Taylor and offering up brainwashy methods of "gaining a testimony" should be enough to make you wonder if he's sincerely illogical or carefully hiding something. I can't help but think that his talk will ultimately do more harm to members' testimonies than he could possibly imagine. (And he's showing much love when he categorizes dissenters as Judases.)

Why will it harm members' testimonies? Because, as in the case of the Church's anti-science stance, Neil's argument requires that you reject study (as least anything you study that the Church won't like) and favor ignorance instead. In this case instead of repeating "I don't know" to ourselves we're supposed to repeat Joseph's false history to ourselves until we believe it. A testimony like that can only be protected by plugging your ears and shutting off your critical thinking.