Appearance
Testimony & Spiritual Witnesses
The CES Letter's testimony section opens with a psychologist's soundbite — "Feelings Aren't Facts" — and builds from there.[1] Every religion claims spiritual confirmation. Feelings are unreliable. Paul Dunn made people cry with fabricated stories. You felt the Spirit watching The Lion King. Therefore the entire epistemological framework collapses.
Nine numbered points, stacked to feel overwhelming.[2] And every one of them depends on a single premise: that Latter-day Saint epistemology reduces to "pray and trust your feelings."
What if that premise is wrong?
The straw man at the foundation
LDS scripture doesn't teach what the CES Letter attacks.
D&C 8:2-3 describes confirmation "in your mind and in your heart" — two channels, not one.[3] D&C 9:7-9 requires you to "study it out in your mind" before you ask.[4] Moroni 10:3-5 demands sincere intent and real pondering, not passive emotion.
Cognitive and spiritual. Study before prayer. The version the CES Letter attacks — close your eyes, feel warm, call it truth — is a caricature.
That matters. Every argument in the section assumes the caricature is the real thing.
The competing-claims argument proves less than it seems
"Same method: read, ponder, and pray. Different testimonies. All four testimonies cannot simultaneously be true."[5]
Look at those four testimonies. All four come from Restoration splinter groups — FLDS, Community of Christ, Strangites, and other Latter-day Saint offshoots.[6] Same founding prophet, same Book of Mormon, 90% of the same theology. No testimony from a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Jew appears despite the claim about "every major religion."
And here's what the CES Letter doesn't notice: all four groups testify that the Book of Mormon is true. Their disagreement is about post-1844 succession, not about whether Joseph Smith was a prophet or whether the Book of Mormon is scripture. The "competing" testimonies actually converge on the Church's most foundational claim.
LDS theology already predicts that people across traditions will experience God's influence. Alma 29:8 teaches that God grants truth to every nation. Moroni 7:16 describes the Light of Christ given to every person. The 1978 First Presidency Statement affirms God's universal distribution of spiritual light.[7]
The CES Letter presents this as a devastating problem. LDS doctrine treats it as an expected feature.
Discernment is hard — and scripture says so
The Paul Dunn case is real. Members felt the Spirit during fabricated war stories.[8] People do mistake emotion for revelation. The "Spirit at movies" point lands because the experience is familiar — you have felt something powerful watching Saving Private Ryan.[9]
Worth Acknowledging
Spiritual discernment fails sometimes. The question isn't whether that happens — it clearly does. The question is whether failure makes the entire enterprise worthless or whether it means the skill requires development.
Scripture doesn't pretend otherwise. "Try the spirits," John wrote, "whether they are of God" (1 John 4:1). D&C 50:17-22 provides a specific test for distinguishing true spiritual communication from false. The Light of Christ — a general moral and aesthetic influence given to every person — is theologically distinct from the Holy Ghost's specific revelatory witness.[10]
Discernment is a skill you develop, not a switch you flip. The fact that it can go wrong doesn't prove it's worthless. It proves it requires the kind of maturation the scriptures have always demanded.
Spiritual experience holds up as a way of knowing
The CES Letter treats religious experience as the opposite of rational inquiry. Philosophers who study the question disagree.
Alvin Plantinga argued that basic beliefs about God can be "properly basic" — warranted without external evidence, the same way your belief that other minds exist is warranted.[11] William Alston showed that mystical perception is epistemically parallel to sense perception: both can misfire, but neither is discredited by the possibility of error.[12] William James identified the "noetic quality" of spiritual experiences — they carry a sense of genuine knowledge, not just emotion.[13]
Alma 32 reads like James's pragmatism translated into scripture. Plant the seed. Observe whether it grows. Test it by its fruits over time. That's an experiment, not blind trust.
Over 3,000 studies reviewed by Koenig, King, and Carson show that people who report spiritual experiences demonstrate greater psychological resilience, lower rates of depression and substance abuse, and more prosocial behavior over decades.[14] Population-level patterns sustained across cultures and methodologies. They don't prove God exists. But they're hard to square with the claim that spiritual experience is nothing more than emotional manipulation.
A system designed for growth, not shortcuts
The CES Letter asks: "Is this the best God can come up with?"[15]
Turn it around. What would a better system look like? One that requires no effort, no sincerity, no growth? Truth delivered without any participation from the seeker?
LDS epistemology demands something harder. Study first. Ask with real intent. Test what you receive against scripture and reason. Develop discernment over years, not minutes. Accept that you'll sometimes get it wrong — and that getting it wrong is part of learning to get it right.
That's not a bug. It's a feature of a system designed to produce spiritual maturity, not just correct answers.
Bottom line: The CES Letter reduces testimony to "trust your feelings" and then dismantles the thing it built. LDS scripture has always taught something more demanding — study it out, seek confirmation in mind and heart, test it by its fruits, and develop discernment as a skill. The competing-claims argument, on inspection, actually shows convergent testimony for the Book of Mormon. And the philosophical literature treats spiritual experience not as the opposite of rational inquiry, but as a legitimate form of it.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Testimony & Spiritual Witness," p. 74. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Testimony & Spiritual Witness," pp. 74–79. ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 8:2–3. "Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost." ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 9:7–9. "You must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right." ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Testimony & Spiritual Witness," p. 75. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Testimony & Spiritual Witness," p. 75. All four testimonies cited are from Restoration-tradition groups that accept the Book of Mormon. ↩︎
First Presidency Statement, February 15, 1978. See also Alma 29:8; Moroni 7:16; D&C 84:46. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Testimony & Spiritual Witness," pp. 77–78. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Testimony & Spiritual Witness," p. 79. ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 84:45–46 (Light of Christ given to every person) and Moroni 10:5 (Holy Ghost as specific witness). See also Boyd K. Packer, "The Light of Christ," Ensign, April 2005. ↩︎
Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Plantinga argues that belief in God can be "properly basic" — warranted without propositional evidence, analogous to belief in other minds or the reliability of memory. ↩︎
William P. Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). Alston argues mystical perception is epistemically parallel to sense perception — both are fallible, but neither is defeated by the mere existence of disagreement. ↩︎
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, Green, 1902), Lectures XVI–XVII. James identifies "noetic quality" as a defining mark of mystical experience — the sense of insight into truth, not merely emotion. ↩︎
Harold G. Koenig, Dana E. King, and Verna Benner Carson, Handbook of Religion and Health, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Reviews over 3,000 empirical studies on religion, spirituality, and health outcomes. ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Testimony & Spiritual Witness," p. 76. ↩︎