u/Next-Geno_N

I'm asking this in good faith.

Scholarship, archeology, history, etc, are not very effective ways of verifying the church's truthfulness.

Instead, we're taught to take it to the Lord, and seek a confirmation through the Holy Spirit.

But the problem is: many religions have such mechanisms and experiences that to them confirm the truthfulness of their religion. If the method produces confident positive results across mutually exclusive claims, then the method itself can't be used to discriminate between true and false.

So when it happens to us church members, why should we have confidence that this does indeed mean the church is true?

We might be tempted to suggest additional mechanisms- study, faithful living, etc, but these don't self-evidently favour the lds church either, particularly given that people of other religions also use such mechanisms to strengthen their own convictions.

Often we might try to explain away other church's spiritual experiences by saying that they have "fragments of truth" and so on, and that this is what the Holy Ghost was testifying of.

But the thing is, that's not how the other-religion people receiving those experiences tend to interpret them. So the aforementioned explanation would mean that spiritual confirmations can seem to mean one thing but actually mean another. It would set a precedent, for example, that our lds religion only gets spiritual confirmations because it contains fragments of "the one true religion, Islam" or so on.

And so I'm looking for an intellectually honest reason to stay in the church, that wouldn't also be experienced by members of a false church.

I'm happy to "hang in there and have faith until a confirmation comes," but it's not like there's only one religion that this would apply to. There are thousands of religions out there; why should I prioritise investigating the lds religion over any other? And why should I value lds spiritual confirmations over the spiritual confirmations of the truthfulness of any other religion?

And besides, I'm supposed to be booking my endowment- which is a bit more of a commitment than just "hanging in there and having faith."

Frankly, it already worries me that this matter hardly gets raised in the church. It's pretty foundational to establishing the credibility of spiritual witnesses, and so you'd think that almost all critical-thinking members and investigators would have to confront this issue at some point.

Would appreciate your insight on this. Thanks.

Edit: many thanks to all. I ended up clocking in at my home store and will look to reimburse petrol costs.

Original: I've got a first aid coyrse tomorrow from 8:45am-4pm at another store. The notice apparently says I have to go to my normal store and clock in there first, even though my normal store is in the opposite direction from the training location. They're not super far apart (25 min between them on a bike) but it would still require me to get up at 5am.

My section leader said that previously clocking in at the other store would have been fine, as it would have shown as an alternative location, but they’re unsure how it works with the new exceptions report.

Has anyone done training at another store recently? Do you genuinely have to travel to your home store purely to clock in first, or can you clock in at the training store and have any exception corrected afterwards?

It's a bit weird, because obviously (I think) we know that Alex MacQueen's Master, which is exclusive to Big Finish, comes inbetween the Roberts master and the War master.

So that could make things a bit awkward if- for example- the BBC wasn't too keen on them legitimising MacQueen to the point of making Roberts regenerate into him.

The fact that every Master! box set ends with >!the Roberts Master being returned to the Eye of Harmony!<doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that Big Finish is being allowed to take big swings with the character.

It's a shame, because I *would* like to see the Master's timeline be bridged in the same way that Big Finish has given us The Eighth Doctor Time War/War Doctor content.

Someone asked the question a few years ago, but a lot has changed since then:

- The Disney era has flopped, with future TV spinoffs seeming unlikely for now

- In an unprecedented move, the 11th & 12th Doctor Adventures range are being started without their original actors, despite Smith & Capaldi still being alive and kicking

- Every Doctor (besides 14 and 15) now has an ongoing range. The First Doctor’s hiatus will end in 2028, and even Tennant has 15 stories releasing from 2027 to 2029.

- Billie Piper has joined The Ninth Doctor Adventures

- Tom Baker has stopped recording new audios, but he has an unreleased back catalogue of roughly five years.

- McCoy has recorded his final adventure (in terms of chronological timeline placement).

- Subscriptions were discontinued in 2025

- Big Finish’s license has been renewed until 2035.

________________________

Some of the challenges that Big Finish might have to confront are:

1. The increasing age of the classic Doctors
2. The increasing age of the classic companions (it’s one thing to recast a Doctor, but are they going to recast every single companion too? So far, large-scale recasts have only been for Doctors that Big Finish has hardly touched, like the early 1st Doctor era).
3. The increasing number of Doctors overall; assuming the TV series continues, would Big Finish be able to sustain ongoing series for 20 different Doctors?
4. The ever-decreasing demand for physical CDs, and how this will affect the size, timing, and purchase structures of future audio dramas.

What are your thoughts?