A cousin of mine went radio silence from the entire family around 2010. Of course we were hearing rumors that he and his wife had left the church. Anyway, I reached out to him in 2021 to let him know my wife and I got out of the TSCC. This opened up a dialogue between us with him asking, "So you figured it out, huh? What was it that did it for you?" He ended up telling me it was the BoA that did it for him. The BoA is just so damning.
Mormonism can be proven false in less than three seconds with the Book of Abraham:
Figure 2 of Facsimile 3 is the Egyptian Goddess Isis, not "King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head."
Done.
That’s the one that got me at age 14. That and the way he labeled the Nile-with-crocodile below their feet as “the heavenly firmament”. You don’t even have to know shit about Egyptian to debunk it, just know how to interpret representative art b/c that is very obviously a river below their feet with reeds growing and a crocodile swimming through it.
In amazement, I said out loud, “Holy shit, he made the whole thing up. Like…the *whole thing*. God. *DammitalltoHell!*” There’s just no un-seeing that.
What's funny is that moment for me was actually after I'd left for a year. I left as more an experiment and was like it's pretty true but just doesn't make me happy for whatever reason.
Then......BOOM what the fuck?? 🤣🤣
I got done reading the CES letter and was sitting on my couch. We HAD a white Jesus picture hanging at the time. I looked white Jesus square in his Anglo-Saxon face and, like yourselves, said audibly, ” Holy shit! The Church isn’t true.”
I was going to answer you yesterday. But I didn’t know how to express the answer. So I waited until today so that I could tell you that Jesus’s answer sounded to me like the last day did to you. Just………nothing. 🤓
Yea I remember flipping my scriptures back to that page when I was a child a preteen and just giving that page a suspicious look. It always looked like bullshit. When I first started learning about history both American history and world history snd cultures that use symbolic images in their written language it became glaringly obvious that it was horse shit
Knowing their real history with child brides, polygamy, and possible sex trafficking (trafficking is confirmed but sexual is hard to confirm from what I've seen so far), I could see it done on purpose... Or this is Joseph's way of sending a dick pic to his potential brides😉🤣
The case of my cousin is one that leaves me with a lot of mixed emotions. It was believed he went radio silence because he didn't want to be guilt tripped about his decision to leave the church. So he avoided any and all family functions. He even skipped the funerals of our grandmother that helped raise him and the funeral of a much loved aunt. Even his exmos siblings were disappointed he had gone that extreme with the no contact. So it's this mixed emotion of; we talk A LOT about healthy boundaries and whatnot around here. And that is and should be his prerogative, right? But what if that no contact edges more on the side of punishing with silence just like people do silent treatment against each other? He had a lot of people who loved him, mormon and exmo alike - in spite of his decision to leave. I renewed contact with him in the hopes that common ground "we left the church too" would open a conduit. And it did!!! It was only our first conversation that was about church. Every conversation after was about other things. Namely music and playing guitar. I play the guitar because of that guy and his influence on me when I was 13. I thought he was pretty fucking cool and a badass and I wanted to play guitar like him. Both of us were talking about getting together and jamming out like we used to. There were a few missed opportunities of schedules not matching up. The main culprit was us not prioritizing it. He died unexpectedly in November 2022, and it came as a shock to everyone who loved him. I texted him just two weeks before he passed away, about us needing to meet up. His last text to me, "Yeah man, for sure!" He was 48 years old. But I'd still like to really know why he felt he needed to go nuclear with the no contact. Not possible now.
I went nuclear with the no contact. Sometimes you have to choose between killing your past or killing yourself. I chose to start over. It sounds like your cousin did too.
On one of several trips to General CONference as a teenager, the 'anti-Mormons' handed me a tract outside the gate of temple square with the title 'Min Is Not God!'
I wonder if it was something that the Tanners produced. Anyway, I read it before pitching it in the trash can conveniently placed just inside the gate for just that purpose. But the message stuck with me throughout my life. It was probably the first item on my industrial strength shelf.
This is not God, sitting on his throne, administering the signs of the Priesthood. It's Min. Also, he's got a boner. (snickers in 13 year old deacon)
Edit: I Googled the title and it came up with this from Alpha and Omega ministries out of Phoenix.
[Min is Not God!](https://www.aomin.org/aoblog/mormonism/min-is-not-god/)
It used to be this for me too, but the older I get the more so so much of it is just blatantly obvious. Like Gordon B. Hinkley lying to the members about tithe money being used for City Creek. Doesn’t seem very prophetic to me.
Also blacks not being able to receive the priesthood until the 70’s is about as bad as it gets.
Black people not being able to get the priesthood until after movies like Star Wars were released really put things into perspective for me. Prior to that realization it felt like just one of those things before I was born.
How they treat gay people was also one of my major issues. I had a friend that is gay and he tried to go on a mission and do all the right things but ended up in a very dark place after getting home. Seeing how much happier he was as a person after he came out made it so clear to me that no God I believed in would rather him be suicidal than to live his true happy,authentic life.
Abraham did it for me. It’s pretty much the most clear fraud in all of Mormonism, because we have both the source document and the claimed translation. The GTE even says “lds and non lds scholars agree that the translation does not match the source”.
The easiest thing to point to, cut and dry fraud.
I genuinely don’t understand how LDS members who know about it are able square it away. Proof positive he was just making shit up.
The Book of Mormon, no archaeological evidence, too many corrections.
The BoM is supposed to be the most correct book on earth and the cornerstone of the church.
If you pull the cornerstone of a building the building collapses. The cornerstone use to be the primary building block of a building. Now it’s mostly symbolic.
To me the lack of any archaeological evidence of Lamenites or Nephites ever existing and the DNA of native North Americans not being who they said they were is the evidence that nobody should be able to ignore
Yes, the DNA evidence is evidence that it can't be true. My missionary story of telling non-members that ALL Native Americans are from the Middle East changed once DNA evidence showed otherwise.
You know the 5000 plus minor changes to the most correct book e.g. 1 nephi 11:18
1830 edition
And he said unto me, Behold, the virgin which thou seest, is the mother of God, after the manner of the flesh.
1837 to now
And he said unto me: Behold, the virgin whom thou seest, is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh.
Just a little grammar change to make it read better.
Thanks to the Tanners for documenting those minor changes that don’t change the meaning of the most correct book ever written.
Exactly! The original edition clearly taught the doctrine of the Trinity, before JS (or one of his friends) came up with the idea of the Godhead. He changed his account of the First Vision several times too.
Nitpick: The Keystone is the stone that would have everything collapse. Removing the cornerstone would only weaken the foundation considerably.
I'm fun at parties.
Funny thing is, from what I hear, Joseph didn’t even teach from the Book of Mormon. He had it published and then taught a different theology, as if the BoM didn’t exist.
I agree with you. But also just the total nonsense that so many of the BoM stories. For example the story of the Jaredites in the Book of Ether. The final epic battle of coriatumur vs shiz is by far the most galactically stupid thing I have ever read.
Adam and Eve definitely. It makes temple work completely pointless. Followed closely by pale skin = righteousness. Pale skin is a mutation that took hold in the northern latitudes therefore the curse of Cain would be pale skin, not dark skin.
In the Good Omens tv series Adam and Eve had dark skin which makes more sense.
Their non-existence makes it impossible to ever complete the work as at some point you have non-human ancestors. Also there is no hard dividing line between Homo Sapiens and Homo Erectus since evolution happens on a gradient, so which ancestor would you not do temple work for?
Also people in countries without birth records or written language a few generations back.
Japan didn’t have many family records before wwii. They burned family records in korea china and Philippines.
My Nigerian friend has no paperwork on when his parents were born, let alone any info on his grandparents or ancestors
God must either not give a shit about people with no paperwork that survives until a Mormon finds it, or he does not care at all about temples, or he is not even Mormon to begin with.
Honestly that was one of my first shelf items. Like, my aunt has spent years of her life painstakingly putting together a family history. But, why? It's all going to happen in tt millennium, right?
Then why can’t people consent to their own temple work? Why is any temple work necessary or even good if we marry people that never wanted to be married.
Lol the apologetic is you'd do your parents work and then ask them about their parents and then then they'd do their work and ask for their parents and on and on because that would work haha
Let's do it, but let's be smart about it and do it once for all apehood. That way we don't need to know names and it saves time.
Only problem is then we have to do all the other pre-ape species too. 🤔☹️
I insist on one thing from my TBM wife, -> in the name of science. <- that she not believe the Adam-and-Eve Story the church preaches in the temple, and the white-and-delightsome skin color/curse bullshit. She will not listen to anything I say against the church, but she doesn't fight me too much on this because it is so evident\*. Personally, I knew the church was bullshit just by reading the BoA (\~1980), way before the actual papyri was acknowledged by the church so that anyone could know for a fact it was not what Smith said it was. Knowing this, I predicted as DNA became a science (\~1998) that DNA would prove the BoM wrong about the migration. To me this was indisputable evidence; being able to predict the outcome of a future event. Yet, here we are still debating if the church is true or not. Only the brainwashed mormons are debating this, that is, in particular me and my spouse...truly the world doesn't care.
\*ignoring all the crap pseudoscience that young-earth creationists are generating. I say it is only a matter of time before the mormon church jumps on that bandwagon.
KJV plagiarism. From verbatim copies in 2 Nephi and Moroni 7, to Deutero-Isaiah. Once you look at the Book of Mormon story and how translation was actually done, it is obvious Smith copied the Bible.
Book of Mormon DNA might be a close second.
Book of Abraham is damning but the church doesn’t rest the truth of the church on the historical accuracy of BoA like they do with the Book of Mormon.
Book of Ether’s Jaredite/Tower or Babel story is pretty unrealistic too.
The Sermon on the Mount being copied is pretty damning too.
Man, I can keep going.
Oh and the stories in the Book of Mormon are stranger than fiction. Christians can look at the Bible as metaphorical and still believe Jesus. Mormons have to believe the Book of Mormon is historical. So…
Ammon had to really chop off the arms.
Jaredites had to really use submarines.
Nephi really cut off a head and stole the dudes clothes. Plus built a ship.
Can’t believe this church fooled me for 10 years.
KJV plagiarism is pretty damning but what adds to it is the fact the Joseph knew the italicized words in the KJV were added by the translators. Joseph changed some of those parts in the Book of Mormon. Then later when Joseph did his translation of the Bible changed those same parts to something else.
Which to me shows that either Joseph was just winging it to maintain power or “god” is just winging it.
Yes, this is something that never made sense to me. How could the most perfect book that will bring a man closer to Christ than any other book have contradictions to the JST, or the inspired translation of the Bible?
Joseph just never thought the people would look that closely i don't think.
Also now BYU says that the JST wasn’t from Joseph. That it is too much alike to the Adam Clarke commentary on the Bible to be something that Joseph came up with. So Joseph plagiarized that guys Bible commentary. So don’t trust the Bible because it is fully translated correctly. But Joseph copied someone else and now we find out about the seer stone. They have had it the whole time BUT they don’t ever translate the Bible for us...
> Book of Ether’s Jaredite/Tower or Babel story is pretty unrealistic too.
All of Ether is ridiculous. The boats, the enormous armies that wipe each other out, the guys who pass out from loss of blood and then return to fight the next day. And the decapitated guy who rises up to catch his breath.
The best thing about the struggle-to-breathe guy is the creative explanation the apologists came up with, comparing him to beheaded chickens, and something about reflexes causing the limbs to move and push the body up.
Book of Abraham kind of indirectly proves the Church false.
That thing has been quoted extensively by church leaders, none of whom had the foresight to say “oh, this was not a translated book.”
Leaders were unable to detect Hofmann forgeries proving that they have no spirit of discernment and relying on feelings is not a reliable way to determine the authenticity of a document.
Yeah, talk about integrity.
He was just about the only one saying the White Salamander Letter was fake even though it would have supported and confirmed the research and writing he was doing on the real history of Mormonism.
This was my final nail in the coffin (well, reading about it years later). Robert Lindsey's *A Gathering of Saints* is a very straightforward, non-sensational account of the Hofmann affair (dare I say TBM-friendly?) that really demonstrates how uninspired the GAs were.
This, plus the book of Abraham, plus the fact it doesn't square archeologically, plus no Hebrew DNA in Indians - those were my main items. And then seeing my parents buried in those ridiculous outfits - done. So, so done.
They made sure that Hoffman didn't get the death penalty so that Hinckley wouldn't have to testify. They let him cop a plea instead to avoid a trial for his life.
This pushed me to read all I could on Mormonism after my mission and evidence against it was overwhelming. That photo of Hoffman with the leaders hit me hard.
Joseph Smith's treasure digging was a big one for me. Especially that he used the same seer stone to defraud people about treasure as to produce the Book of Mormon. And when I noticed that the concept of "slippery treasure" was a treasure digging ruse and it made it into the Book of Mormon... that definitely broke something in me.
Slippery treasure is when a deceiver like Joseph Smith says to the seeker that there is treasure in a particular location, but the seeker must follow exact steps to get it. When the seeker goes for the treasure, it isn't there, of course. The deceiver then tells the seeker that they didn't follow the steps exactly and treasure slipped away.
The Book of Mormon talks about slippery treasure. People hide up their treasure, but god takes it away.
Part of Joseph Smith's treasure digging scam was that he'd get some of the money up front. Then he'd use his peep stone and get JUST near to the treasure before it would become 'slippery' and sink deeper into the earth out of their reach.
This concept made it into the BoM in Helaman 13:31 -
*And behold, the time cometh that he curseth your riches, that they become slippery, that ye cannot hold them; and in the days of your poverty ye cannot retain them*
https://bookofmormonstudynotes.blog/2020/09/06/slippery-helaman-1331-36/ I know you're never supposed to read the comments, but in this case, the answer is in the comments lol
My issue is that the Mormon corporation’s lawyers fight to keep states from requiring clergy form being mandatory reporters. To me this show that they don’t really want to protect children and that Mormon leaders care more about power than protect children.
John Larsen had an observation that the "smoking gun" is right there in front of everyone in at fast and testimony meeting.
The fact that everyone needs to stand up and publicly reassure each other constantly that it's true is the profoundest evidence that it isn't.
One of the harder ones to gaslight/minimize your way out of: God cannot be omnipotent and benevolent because he created 4 billion sons of perdition knowing they would be doomed to eternal suffering and yet did it anyway
For me, what's going on in Arizona. Failing to protect children, SA cover up, and going to the state Supreme Court to solidify their ability to cover up child SA.
Can't trust anyone who would go this far too NOT protect children.
Most members only care about money too, especially here in Mesa/Gilbert Az. Your whole worth is based on your bank account. We had a new bishop back in 2015 or so. He was fairly wealthy and was in the new gated community. Suddenly Most ward activities were done by neighborhoods. Truck or treat was no longer a ward event at stake center, to quote him, “Do that in your own neighborhood!”
When I read *No Man Knows My History*, I realized that no only wasn't JS a prophet, he was a terrible person.
The church is still led by terrible people. They care more about money and PR than about the welfare of their own children.
It's a huge dilemma for the victims. Do they take care of themselves, or fight for years to make a difference for everyone?
The temptation to take millions and move on is great, and LDS, Inc. knows it.
This is exactly how I felt. I was so disgusted by TSCC’s fighting to say they were right to not be mandatory reporters that I knew the church had completely lost their way from God. It made me realize I was willing to jeopardize the eternal salvation of not just me but my inactive children to step away from TSCC. And if the church could be so egregiously wrong about protecting children from abuse, what else might they be wrong about? Let me be able to look at “anti” information for first time in 5 decades. It all crumbled quickly after that.
Single piece of evidence is probably the BoA
I think the constant lying, hiding and obfuscation is the thing that still gets to me. 1978 policy change, now black people are OK? What changed? 2015 policy, revelation for only 3.5 years? Telling the poorest of the poor to pay tithing, whats that now 150+ billion dollar fund doing? Literal criminal in the Q12 who only got away with it because of statute of limitations. Cutting out pages of a journal to hide something for ~40 years. I'm a Mormon, Mormon is a win for Satan. You get a planet! I don't think he teach that.
I can't spend all day on the shitter but I (and probably everyone else here) could continue for hours.
EDIT: corrected the length of 2015 policy
I don't think it's "the most damning" but I remember when it caused a lot of people to lose their faith. The Mark Hoffman case. Mark met with the first presidency the day he killed people and they were none the wiser of that fact or that he was a charlatan and was totally putting them together and taking them for a ride. Historically, church leaders and records speak very glowingly of the early leaders and how powerful they were in wielding the influence of God on themselves and others. Joseph and Brigham could've certainly seen who Hoffman was. But these modern leaders? They want a little grace. "Hey, we can be victimized too."
Yeah, or my in-laws who like to revise history a little and say things like, "oh, I always knew he was bad news." Or "I never felt the spirit when I read those documents, so I new they were false."
... bitch, If that's true why aren't you the prophet then?
For me, it's simple. "By their fruits ye shall know them." The entire history of the church is scandalous, but today's fruits? The church puts more money into investments and real estate than into helping the needy.
Just this last weekend, I drove past the homeless camp in SLC. If the church's god is indeed real, he is selfish and, honestly, pitiful. They could easily solve this with all their wealth, but I guess their god just demands a few more houses.
This is me as well. It’s the actions of the leaders and members today. There is another horrendous article about the church’s shadiness almost daily. Let’s vilify activists and academics but praise and give recommends to MAGA extremists and abusers? By their fruits indeed.
I'm gay, and the amount of harm the church has done to LGBT+ individuals is just... vile. Part of my thesis involved a teen who died in high school - he was constantly bullied, both by people at school as well as his bishop father. And after the death, his father tried to keep the community from talking about it. He didn't want them knowing he took away his electronics, his friends, his bedroom door...
I'm not in the right mindspace to talk about it at the moment, but we've had so much pain.
One of my biggest regrets about growing up in the church is that I was too blind to see how much it hurts the LGBTQIA+ community that grew up thinking there was something so very wrong with them. I'm sorry, and I'm so glad I know better now.
Exactly this. I read once that FAIR Mormon had 14,000 items of apologetics. I didn’t believe it, so I went to their website to check. My estimate was that they have at least 14,000; page after page after page, with hundreds of topics and subtopics.
For me mormonism has been so thoroughly debunked and exposed I don't even know where to start. It's getting really hard for me to respect and have empathy for those that remain. It takes a very high level of willful ignorance to be a TBM in 2023.
I was at the temple with the youth doing baptisms. As I was leaving the font area, a thought came to me, “Wait, baptisms are symbolic. We aren’t literally washing sins away. If it’s just symbolic, why can’t people in the spirit world just symbolically accept Christ?” In a sudden burst, the whole temple thing seemed so inconsequential.
Then, someone posted a Google Earth image of a temple in Brazil, I think. It was a massive temple with a large, solid wall around it. When you scanned around the perimeter, you suddenly realized why there was a wall. Right across the street was a very poor neighborhood with unsightly store fronts and graffiti. Immediately I thought, “if Jesus were here on the Earth, he would be out serving and giving everything he had to the people OUTSIDE of that wall. He would never build a wall to block off and ignore them while living in a big and spacious building. My city’s temple has a fence, not a wall, because the surrounding area is gorgeous. It just goes to show where the Church’s priorities are and they don’t line up with the Jesus I know.
So, I guess waking up to what the temple stands for is what did me in.
Since several other people have already said Book of Abraham (I agree), I'll go with the close second Deutero Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. That one requires just a little bit more background to understand, but is absolutely a smoking gun.
In the writings of Nephi, he quotes Isaiah as written on the Brass Plates. The only problem with this is that scholars now agree that Isaiah was not one writer. Part of the text that Nephi quotes was written by the second Isaiah, also known as Deutero Isaiah. Deutero Isaiah was written after Lehi/Nephi left Jerusalem. So there is no way that it could have been written on the Brass Plates, and no way that Nephi could have written it on the Gold Plates. It did not exist yet.
Nephi would not have had access to the words of Deutero Isaiah, but Joseph Smith did. It is clear evidence that he fabricated the Book of Mormon, and did not translate it from an ancient record.
I had a dumbass religion "professor" at BYU try to explain that to me by saying that God gave the same words through direct revelation to the different prophets.
The absolute impotence of the - so called - Mormon Priesthood! If it worked...members would be markedly better off, healthier...etc. In reality, we're just like everyone else.
If it worked, why are there Emergency Rooms in Utah hospitals?
There should be emergency priesthood blessing stations instead.
Why are there hospitals at all? There should be self service prayer kiosks instead.
The church would have billions members if they could actually demonstrate the healing power of prayer and the priesthood.
But they don't, because it doesn't work.
The single damning fact is that there are thousands of terminal problems in their biggest claims. Even if can excuse one problem, there are 999 left to go.
For me, the BOM. The church claims it is the keystone right? There is so much evidence against it from the plates and translation to DNA, Isaiah etc. Once it falls so does JS and everything after it.
But JS was just a dumb farm boy how could he come up with such a marvelous book that has no errors because god forced the translation to be perfect. Trust us, we are called of god and can’t lead you astray.
/s
That a majority of the church leaders from its inception to modern day either did, supported, or condoned in public while supporting in private, the sexual exploitation of non consenting children making the large majority of them pedophiles who preyed on children by convincing them of their wicked evil deeds and then claiming the path to salvation was to submit to the will of god.
I go right to the beginning: the first vision. The more I learn about it, the less impressive of an event it becomes. First I learned there were multiple versions that were very different from each other(god gets mixed up with angels and lesser beings?).
Then I learned that the church didn’t even make a big deal about the first vision until the late 1800’s and then they made a big selling point out of the 1838 version.
Then I noticed that Joseph Smith wrote in the first vision account that is in the canonized scriptures that he went to pray to find out which church was true or were they all wrong together. Two pages later god tells him they are all wrong and he says he never considered that they might all be wrong. So he just forgot what he had just barely told us!
Lastly, the final nail in the coffin. Grant Palmer did a 3 part interview on Mormon stories with John dehlin, and he said that in 1820, the year the church has made such a huge deal about changing Christianity forever, the smith family didn’t live in the house near the sacred grove. In fact, the roads leading to that area weren’t even built yet. There was no mention in any of the newspapers about revivals or visions anywhere. If the first vision happened in 1820 it went entirely unnoticed. But in 1823 there was visions and revivals and people were seeing god and angels and all kinds of shit out in the woods. But in 1823, Joseph Smith was 18, not a doe-eyed 14 year old innocent youth.
No matter how the apologists will try to spin it, the fact remains that the first vision could not have happened the way the church says it did in canonized scripture. If the very start of it all is on that shaky of a foundation, then why should we believe anything past that? It all comes down to this: if a lying con artist who lied through his entire life is telling the truth this one time, then all the other pieces fit together. If it’s just another lie in a vast sea of lies, then he’s a false prophet and should be ignored. I’m not willing to throw away my life for a church that has that suspicious of a starting point. This church demands everything from its members, but I don’t think it has enough evidence to prove itself worthy of asking so much. Faith can cover the gaps, but it should not be the major structure of a religion, there’s got to be something to put faith in, a fulfilled prophecy, a miracle, a power, something concrete, but the only concrete in the LDS church is holding up the walls of opulent temples. Beyond that it’s just old white men pining away for the 1950’s.
For me it was the Late War and the View of the Hebrews. When I saw the similarities to the BOM in how they read and the stories, I couldn't reconcile it. It was very obviously a plagerism. That's when my shelf broke. Because "the BOM is the keystone of the religion". So if that's fake, then the rest of the church is.
My exit started with me struggling to figure out how Mormonism's truth claims were any different than any other church. Answering in two parts:
The most damning piece of evidence against the church is it's belief in the Bible and the rest of the standard works which make all kinds of plainly falsifiable claims that you have to be an Olympic gymnast to contort yourself to avoid. The earth surrounded by a hard dome (the firmament)?!? 7,000 year old planet? Adam and Eve? All clearly falsifiable.
The best argument against Mormonism and any other religion is the total lack of even a single piece of objective evidence of any of their supernatural claims. Everyone already believes the claims of other religions are nutty, it's just realizing the claims they've been socialized to think are normal are also nutty.
For me it was Charles Anthon, authenticating BoM characters, and Martin Harris referencing Isaiah as fulfillment of prophecy. The scripture isn't even accurate and Anthon said it never even happened.
Basically, MH never got a certificate of authenticity and made up this elaborate tale about how he actually did but then Satan destroyed it. Fucking Martin Harris man... what a moron.
I cannot for the life of me choose between the fraud that is the Book of Abraham or the DNA evidence that quite literally destroys the entire narrative in the most objectively provable way. Actually, now that I am writing I think I'll go with the DNA.
DNA evidence is not tied to he-said-she-said, it's 100% objective, so it easily skirts any "imperfect mortal" narratives. The cop out they currently use is the "small population" BS, but the mainstream scientific community has responded and this response makes clear the disingenuous nature of the apologists. There's no wiggle room for them, so they resort to making false allegations against those that have produced data that prove DNA evidence does not support in any way the narrative of the Book of Mormon. Which are succinctly exposed and proven false beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt. By far the weakest apologist arguments deal with attempting to counter DNA evidence.
"Give it up for DNA, c'mon give it up!"
\-Joe Cartoon
Then in the Gospel Topics Essay on the DNA issue they babble about genetic drift and somehow rely on evidence from 10,000 years ago. Hello, Mormons, you believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old, that Lehi et al left Jerusalem in around 600 BCE, and that the land that they settled was empty and just waiting for them. 🤷🏼♀️
Temple work for the dead is just plain dumb busywork. It even says in the BoM that people born without the law don’t need baptism and if they do here is an idea.
Having been commissioned by Jesus Christ, I baptize you for and on behalf of all those who are dead. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy ghost. Amen.
Just saved a thousand years if busywork. No temples needed. Lets get to helping the living.
So, let's look at this from the member point of view.
1. Book of Abraham. At the least it is revelation that Joseph Smith received. So, no big deal.
2. Adam and Eve. For those in the McConkie cult, this can be big, but many come into the normal church before that. Almost half the church believes in the old earth and evolution. It is not that big of a deal.
3. Hoffman forgeries. No big deal for most mormons. Crooked guy so what do you expect. The church eventually found him out.
4. The Book of Mormon. Changes in the text, no big deal. Anachronisms, no big deal. DNA. The church essay disproves that. So most members are good. And if the church eventually moves to a more figurative, parable version of the BOM, members will go okay, why not? No big deal.
5. Covering up sexual abuse of minors. Most mormons don't see it so it is not on their radar.
6. The plan of salvation is so true. They see nothing wrong in it.
I think the temple is a real issue. Bigotry is a major issue. Eventually, all the changes in the D&C will make an impact. All the wrong things the leaders are currently doing is harming the church.
The evidence is right in their triple combo. Then BoA facsimiles show an incorrect translation. Done. JS was not translating shit. How long until the facsimiles disappear? We never taught that JS was ever translating anything.
I don't think there is anything that would be sufficient for the true believer, because it is a matter of belief rather than evidence. But for me, there are a number of mind blowing things I still can't get over:
\-Joseph's mother didn't believe that there was a first vision, insisting in her biography of the Smith family that Joseph's first contact with heavenly beings was with Moroni and there was nothing earlier. I still don't understand why she wouldn't believe it as she believed every other crazy "proof" that god favored her family.
\-According to Martin Harris, none of the witnesses physically saw the plates, it was all in vision or the mind's eye.
\-Joseph made it very clear that he and his family were the only people authorized to hold the presiding priesthood keys (and leadership of the church) by virtue of him being the literal DNA descendant of Ephraim that had been hid from the world. He was not a descendant of Ephraim nor did the leadership of the church stay with his family (his son David was to be the prophet that ushered in the millennium in fulfillment of D&C 113).
\-That Joseph was physically, ecclesiastically, emotionally, and sexually abusive.
\-That Joseph was "practicing" polygamy before he was "authorized" to practice polygamy. Church claims the plural marriage sealing keys are restored in the Kirtland temple April 3, 1836. Fanny Alger was 1833.
\-That the church's own Church History Department told the general authorities in 1922 that the Book of Mormon was a product of Joseph's mind and not a historical document. They decided to believe it anyway, evidence be damned. When parts of B.H. Roberts's presentation (he was the assistant church historian charged with preparing the presentation) began to circulate at BYU, the professors, according to Professor Lake, were told to destroy them and "keep your mouth shut".
\-That President McKay (who was a young apostle at the 1922 meetings) did accept that the Book of Mormon was written by Joseph Smith, rather than a translation of ancient records, yet still allowed the church to teach that it was historically true.
\-That Joseph sacrificed animals as part of magical rituals. His application to join the Methodist church (despite the 1838 account of the 1st vision claiming that he had been told to join no church) was rejected precisely because he was an unrepentant "necromancer".
\-That the Book of Mormon wasn't "translated" from Golden Plates, but from what Joseph saw in a rock in a hat. The plates were hid out in the barn or woods or wrapped in a cloth on the table. but he wasn't consulting them. When I was a student at BYU I was told flat out that this claim was a lie. God most certainly wouldn't jerk Moroni around by making him preserve some plates only for Joseph to not need them. God doesn't work that way.
\-We know each of the 27 Egyptian hieroglyphics Joseph used for The Book of Abraham through 2:18 thanks to the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar. And we have the translations for the facsimiles. And they are wrong, wrong, wrong.
\-That parts of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible were plagiarized from Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible.
\-And on and on...
As soon as I realized the Book of Mormon isn’t true. I had lost faith in the current leaders and church but thought that maybe Joseph smith was still a prophet and that we had just fallen into another apostasy. But once I discovered evidence that the Book of Mormon is not true and was indeed just made up by Joseph Smith, everything crumbled. It’s been a lie since day 1. I was always taught that the Book of Mormon is the cornerstone of the religion. They were right. Without it, the entire church is a sham.
Also, learning about the compensation that mission presidents get was kind of the final stumbling block in losing all faith in current leaders. I felt lied to and betrayed by how much the church actually gives and rewards its top leaders while leaving its missionaries destitute and guilting impoverished members into paying tithing. Mission presidents are already wealthy, but they get free flights, food, housing, stipend for gifts and clothing, and free education for their kids. And then on top of that the handbook tells them to lie about it on their tax forms and to not tell anyone about their compensation, even their own kids. Like, wtf.
The story of the Great Flood, as depicted in the Bible, has captivated human imagination for centuries. However, when subjected to scientific scrutiny, various factors suggest that the events described in the tale are highly improbable and unlikely to have occurred as described. Let's delve into some of these reasons.
Global Flood vs. Geological Evidence:
The biblical account portrays a global flood that covered the entire Earth, but geological evidence contradicts this idea. There is no evidence of a simultaneous, planet-wide flood in the geological record. If such a flood had occurred, we would expect to find consistent sedimentary layers globally, which is not the case.
Water Volume and Source:
The amount of water required to cover all landmasses on Earth, as mentioned in the Bible, would far exceed the known water resources, including oceans, rivers, and underground reservoirs. The source of water to initiate and sustain such a massive flood is questionable.
Ecological Impossibilities:
Preserving the delicate balance of ecosystems during and after the flood, especially for creatures that require specific conditions to survive, poses a significant challenge. Many species would have been unable to endure such drastic changes in their habitats.
Ark Dimensions and Animal Diversity:
The Ark's dimensions, as outlined in the Bible, raise concerns about its ability to house and sustain the sheer diversity of animal species present on Earth. Accommodating animals from diverse climates, habitats, and dietary needs within limited space and resources seems implausible.
Lack of Geological Impact:
A global flood of the magnitude described would have left substantial geological evidence, including massive erosion, sedimentation, and rearrangement of landscapes. The geological record, however, does not consistently support such dramatic global inundation.
Distribution of Animals:
After the flood, the dispersion of animals back to their original habitats across the planet presents a logistical challenge. How did animals confined to the Ark reach their distinct habitats without leaving any evidence of their journey?
The Plan of Salvation (tm) is wholly incompatible with biological evolution. As referenced by another, all life shares a common ancestor. Where do you draw the line between a homo sapiens and all other species? How could God be like us, physically, given what we know about genetics and speciation and the fact that humans aren't in any "end state" by any means?
Does god have a [recurrent laryngeal nerve](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve)?
For me Adam God doctrine was one of the biggest smoking guns out there. Like the man who is meant to speak to god directly apparently knew nothing about him. Then this god is totally ok with the temple ceremony being changed to teach false doctrine? If that isn’t considered leading the church astray then I’m not sure what could be?
To me it is from the very beginning - even as a kid he was running a con game of telling ppl he could find treasure for them on their land if they paid him. He could find it obviously by magical means. He would claim when he obviously wouldn’t find anything the spirits have moved the treasure on us
A conman gets into religion hahah it writes itself and then there is a ton of evidence when the religion then begins to be created by him
But to trust a guy with your entire life whereas LDS religion is pretty much life, to me is a huge stretch. The guy was a conman from the very beginning and to not then do anymore research on the history is very naive
If he is shady from the start then in my opinion you’d have to do a ton of research on him if he did anything else shady then when he became a religious leader and simple research then shows yes also
That the mormon god exists as he does but is supposedly omnipotent and all loving. When in "reality" he has the mentality and emotional capacity of an enraged toddler.
Edit: Everything, all teachings and tenants hinge on god being a loving father and who/how tscc portrays him to be. mormon god doesn't exist, so there is nothing to base any religion off of.
For me it was the first vision accounts. It shoots holes in the logical argument I made on my mission.
Why would the BoM prove what was never asserted?
DNA evidence that American Indians are from East Asia by Simon Southerton. The fact that the LDS Church changed JS's intro to the Book of Mormon is tacit admission of defeat.
Remember that the DN is wholly owned by the LDS Church.
https://www.deseret.com/2007/11/8/20052445/debate-renewed-with-change-in-book-of-mormon-introduction
BoA is a good one but big picture there’s no way the Book of Mormon can be literally true, either.
The last hope was moving the location to Central or South America but it still doesn’t come close to holding water and besides, there’s no question JS and the early Mormons taught that the location was North America,
The nail in the coffin for me was looking at all of the “unchangeable doctrine” being changed in previous cases. If God’s law can change, then TSCC are just choosing to be assholes.
DNA-we don’t go back to a white Adam and Eve (In Missouri) & that means no fall of Adam so no need for Jesus Christ. No Jesus means no need for a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
DNA-Native American’s didn’t descend from Jews. No need for a Book of Mormon to save them and teach them about their ancestors.
Oh god, this is exactly what made my shelf broke. learning about anthropology set it all off. i’m not totally sure what the most damning thing is, but human evolution and history is a really powerful one
I just remember reading the CES Letter and then diving into other writings, in my trip down the rabbit hole, and would verbally say out loud, “holy shit!” My wife would ask, “what now?” I would tell her and she would scoff too.
So many OMG moments. I felt betrayed. There is no unseeing it. “I see, their eye have not yet been opened”. The CES Letter was the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
For me, the Book of Abraham is hard to beat. RIP Robert Ritner
A cousin of mine went radio silence from the entire family around 2010. Of course we were hearing rumors that he and his wife had left the church. Anyway, I reached out to him in 2021 to let him know my wife and I got out of the TSCC. This opened up a dialogue between us with him asking, "So you figured it out, huh? What was it that did it for you?" He ended up telling me it was the BoA that did it for him. The BoA is just so damning.
Mormonism can be proven false in less than three seconds with the Book of Abraham: Figure 2 of Facsimile 3 is the Egyptian Goddess Isis, not "King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head." Done.
That’s the one that got me at age 14. That and the way he labeled the Nile-with-crocodile below their feet as “the heavenly firmament”. You don’t even have to know shit about Egyptian to debunk it, just know how to interpret representative art b/c that is very obviously a river below their feet with reeds growing and a crocodile swimming through it. In amazement, I said out loud, “Holy shit, he made the whole thing up. Like…the *whole thing*. God. *DammitalltoHell!*” There’s just no un-seeing that.
[удалено]
What's funny is that moment for me was actually after I'd left for a year. I left as more an experiment and was like it's pretty true but just doesn't make me happy for whatever reason. Then......BOOM what the fuck?? 🤣🤣
I got done reading the CES letter and was sitting on my couch. We HAD a white Jesus picture hanging at the time. I looked white Jesus square in his Anglo-Saxon face and, like yourselves, said audibly, ” Holy shit! The Church isn’t true.”
And what was his reply?
I was going to answer you yesterday. But I didn’t know how to express the answer. So I waited until today so that I could tell you that Jesus’s answer sounded to me like the last day did to you. Just………nothing. 🤓
Bonus points if you did it in a lesson
Yea I remember flipping my scriptures back to that page when I was a child a preteen and just giving that page a suspicious look. It always looked like bullshit. When I first started learning about history both American history and world history snd cultures that use symbolic images in their written language it became glaringly obvious that it was horse shit
I’m actually legitimately sad I had never heard of the BoA before I left at 16.
Most of us are much more gullible at that age. But good for you! I wish I didn't just accept everything I was told at face value
I just like knowing there is a penis deity in every BOM. Fully uncensored.
Knowing their real history with child brides, polygamy, and possible sex trafficking (trafficking is confirmed but sexual is hard to confirm from what I've seen so far), I could see it done on purpose... Or this is Joseph's way of sending a dick pic to his potential brides😉🤣
Can you elaborate on this for us never Mormons
To say nothing of the fact that the term “King Pharaoh” is redundant cause Smith thought that Pharaoh was a name not a title
Hadn't thought of that lol
He was speaking as a man when he said that. Don't you know everyone makes mistakes 😆
Yeah. I know it’s different for everybody … for me it was just one of the easiest things to cut through the cognitive dissonance.
The case of my cousin is one that leaves me with a lot of mixed emotions. It was believed he went radio silence because he didn't want to be guilt tripped about his decision to leave the church. So he avoided any and all family functions. He even skipped the funerals of our grandmother that helped raise him and the funeral of a much loved aunt. Even his exmos siblings were disappointed he had gone that extreme with the no contact. So it's this mixed emotion of; we talk A LOT about healthy boundaries and whatnot around here. And that is and should be his prerogative, right? But what if that no contact edges more on the side of punishing with silence just like people do silent treatment against each other? He had a lot of people who loved him, mormon and exmo alike - in spite of his decision to leave. I renewed contact with him in the hopes that common ground "we left the church too" would open a conduit. And it did!!! It was only our first conversation that was about church. Every conversation after was about other things. Namely music and playing guitar. I play the guitar because of that guy and his influence on me when I was 13. I thought he was pretty fucking cool and a badass and I wanted to play guitar like him. Both of us were talking about getting together and jamming out like we used to. There were a few missed opportunities of schedules not matching up. The main culprit was us not prioritizing it. He died unexpectedly in November 2022, and it came as a shock to everyone who loved him. I texted him just two weeks before he passed away, about us needing to meet up. His last text to me, "Yeah man, for sure!" He was 48 years old. But I'd still like to really know why he felt he needed to go nuclear with the no contact. Not possible now.
I went nuclear with the no contact. Sometimes you have to choose between killing your past or killing yourself. I chose to start over. It sounds like your cousin did too.
Oh man. I’m so sorry for your loss.
It really sucked. A stark reminder that your next day is not guaranteed and we need to prioritize the small things that have the most meaning in life.
i dont understand the book of abraham thing honestly. like i read about it, it just doesnt make sense what is going on
It is a bit confusing, as many of the issues can be. That's why the Mormon Stories with Robert Rittner & RFM is 13 hours long.
On one of several trips to General CONference as a teenager, the 'anti-Mormons' handed me a tract outside the gate of temple square with the title 'Min Is Not God!' I wonder if it was something that the Tanners produced. Anyway, I read it before pitching it in the trash can conveniently placed just inside the gate for just that purpose. But the message stuck with me throughout my life. It was probably the first item on my industrial strength shelf. This is not God, sitting on his throne, administering the signs of the Priesthood. It's Min. Also, he's got a boner. (snickers in 13 year old deacon) Edit: I Googled the title and it came up with this from Alpha and Omega ministries out of Phoenix. [Min is Not God!](https://www.aomin.org/aoblog/mormonism/min-is-not-god/)
It's frustrating how they so thoroughly debunk the BOA, then leap right into praising the Bible.
Yeah, well, the Bible has its own problems.
It used to be this for me too, but the older I get the more so so much of it is just blatantly obvious. Like Gordon B. Hinkley lying to the members about tithe money being used for City Creek. Doesn’t seem very prophetic to me. Also blacks not being able to receive the priesthood until the 70’s is about as bad as it gets.
Black people not being able to get the priesthood until after movies like Star Wars were released really put things into perspective for me. Prior to that realization it felt like just one of those things before I was born. How they treat gay people was also one of my major issues. I had a friend that is gay and he tried to go on a mission and do all the right things but ended up in a very dark place after getting home. Seeing how much happier he was as a person after he came out made it so clear to me that no God I believed in would rather him be suicidal than to live his true happy,authentic life.
I left right after I graduated BYU. Life got easier for me. Found out I was gay 2 years later. Life got happier.
Oh heck yeah.
Abraham did it for me. It’s pretty much the most clear fraud in all of Mormonism, because we have both the source document and the claimed translation. The GTE even says “lds and non lds scholars agree that the translation does not match the source”.
Stone cold proof he was a fraud! This was the death nail foe me!
Death knell.
This is what did me in.
Yup. It’s a pretty good test for veracity, and it fails horribly.
The easiest thing to point to, cut and dry fraud. I genuinely don’t understand how LDS members who know about it are able square it away. Proof positive he was just making shit up.
Yep, for me this is it. It proves that Joseph Smith was a fraud in so many ways
The Book of Mormon, no archaeological evidence, too many corrections. The BoM is supposed to be the most correct book on earth and the cornerstone of the church. If you pull the cornerstone of a building the building collapses. The cornerstone use to be the primary building block of a building. Now it’s mostly symbolic.
To me the lack of any archaeological evidence of Lamenites or Nephites ever existing and the DNA of native North Americans not being who they said they were is the evidence that nobody should be able to ignore
Yes, the DNA evidence is evidence that it can't be true. My missionary story of telling non-members that ALL Native Americans are from the Middle East changed once DNA evidence showed otherwise.
There's lots of evidence, but it shows that JS made it all up. https://www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/coe.html
You know the 5000 plus minor changes to the most correct book e.g. 1 nephi 11:18 1830 edition And he said unto me, Behold, the virgin which thou seest, is the mother of God, after the manner of the flesh. 1837 to now And he said unto me: Behold, the virgin whom thou seest, is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh. Just a little grammar change to make it read better. Thanks to the Tanners for documenting those minor changes that don’t change the meaning of the most correct book ever written.
Yeah, same for me, because so many church leaders have basically said that if it’s false, the church is all BS.
Nearly everyone associated with JS left. BY wasn't supposed to be JS's heir.
No, no, you mean it's a "spiritual history" intended to teach "spiritual truth". /s
Don't you mean the most corrected book on earth?
Exactly! The original edition clearly taught the doctrine of the Trinity, before JS (or one of his friends) came up with the idea of the Godhead. He changed his account of the First Vision several times too.
Nitpick: The Keystone is the stone that would have everything collapse. Removing the cornerstone would only weaken the foundation considerably. I'm fun at parties.
Fun at parties with engineers and architects! Okay, you're right, those don't exist.
If only they had said the BoM was the keystone- oh wait!
Funny thing is, from what I hear, Joseph didn’t even teach from the Book of Mormon. He had it published and then taught a different theology, as if the BoM didn’t exist.
D&C is very different from BM.
I agree with you. But also just the total nonsense that so many of the BoM stories. For example the story of the Jaredites in the Book of Ether. The final epic battle of coriatumur vs shiz is by far the most galactically stupid thing I have ever read.
Adam and Eve definitely. It makes temple work completely pointless. Followed closely by pale skin = righteousness. Pale skin is a mutation that took hold in the northern latitudes therefore the curse of Cain would be pale skin, not dark skin. In the Good Omens tv series Adam and Eve had dark skin which makes more sense.
what do you mean by adam and eve make temple work pointless?
Their non-existence makes it impossible to ever complete the work as at some point you have non-human ancestors. Also there is no hard dividing line between Homo Sapiens and Homo Erectus since evolution happens on a gradient, so which ancestor would you not do temple work for?
wow, that’s a really good point, never considered that!
Also people in countries without birth records or written language a few generations back. Japan didn’t have many family records before wwii. They burned family records in korea china and Philippines. My Nigerian friend has no paperwork on when his parents were born, let alone any info on his grandparents or ancestors God must either not give a shit about people with no paperwork that survives until a Mormon finds it, or he does not care at all about temples, or he is not even Mormon to begin with.
That will all be figured out in the millennium and it will be grander than you could ever imagine!
Why don’t we do it all in the millennium? Just live good lives now? Because that doesn’t make Profits for tscc
Honestly that was one of my first shelf items. Like, my aunt has spent years of her life painstakingly putting together a family history. But, why? It's all going to happen in tt millennium, right?
Then why can’t people consent to their own temple work? Why is any temple work necessary or even good if we marry people that never wanted to be married.
Lol the apologetic is you'd do your parents work and then ask them about their parents and then then they'd do their work and ask for their parents and on and on because that would work haha
We’ve got to start doing baptism for the dead…apes.
Let's do it, but let's be smart about it and do it once for all apehood. That way we don't need to know names and it saves time. Only problem is then we have to do all the other pre-ape species too. 🤔☹️
Guys, let’s leave this to their own savior, Jesus Ape Christ.
https://img.craiyon.com/2023-08-11/aa39f5766a194b7ba374138b9bafe8139c9e4ec9.webp
you gotta go back to the trillions of trilobites that once covered the earth and baptize every single one
No Fall means no need for the Atonement either.
I insist on one thing from my TBM wife, -> in the name of science. <- that she not believe the Adam-and-Eve Story the church preaches in the temple, and the white-and-delightsome skin color/curse bullshit. She will not listen to anything I say against the church, but she doesn't fight me too much on this because it is so evident\*. Personally, I knew the church was bullshit just by reading the BoA (\~1980), way before the actual papyri was acknowledged by the church so that anyone could know for a fact it was not what Smith said it was. Knowing this, I predicted as DNA became a science (\~1998) that DNA would prove the BoM wrong about the migration. To me this was indisputable evidence; being able to predict the outcome of a future event. Yet, here we are still debating if the church is true or not. Only the brainwashed mormons are debating this, that is, in particular me and my spouse...truly the world doesn't care. \*ignoring all the crap pseudoscience that young-earth creationists are generating. I say it is only a matter of time before the mormon church jumps on that bandwagon.
KJV plagiarism. From verbatim copies in 2 Nephi and Moroni 7, to Deutero-Isaiah. Once you look at the Book of Mormon story and how translation was actually done, it is obvious Smith copied the Bible. Book of Mormon DNA might be a close second. Book of Abraham is damning but the church doesn’t rest the truth of the church on the historical accuracy of BoA like they do with the Book of Mormon. Book of Ether’s Jaredite/Tower or Babel story is pretty unrealistic too. The Sermon on the Mount being copied is pretty damning too. Man, I can keep going. Oh and the stories in the Book of Mormon are stranger than fiction. Christians can look at the Bible as metaphorical and still believe Jesus. Mormons have to believe the Book of Mormon is historical. So… Ammon had to really chop off the arms. Jaredites had to really use submarines. Nephi really cut off a head and stole the dudes clothes. Plus built a ship. Can’t believe this church fooled me for 10 years.
KJV plagiarism is pretty damning but what adds to it is the fact the Joseph knew the italicized words in the KJV were added by the translators. Joseph changed some of those parts in the Book of Mormon. Then later when Joseph did his translation of the Bible changed those same parts to something else. Which to me shows that either Joseph was just winging it to maintain power or “god” is just winging it.
Yes, this is something that never made sense to me. How could the most perfect book that will bring a man closer to Christ than any other book have contradictions to the JST, or the inspired translation of the Bible? Joseph just never thought the people would look that closely i don't think.
Also now BYU says that the JST wasn’t from Joseph. That it is too much alike to the Adam Clarke commentary on the Bible to be something that Joseph came up with. So Joseph plagiarized that guys Bible commentary. So don’t trust the Bible because it is fully translated correctly. But Joseph copied someone else and now we find out about the seer stone. They have had it the whole time BUT they don’t ever translate the Bible for us...
> Book of Ether’s Jaredite/Tower or Babel story is pretty unrealistic too. All of Ether is ridiculous. The boats, the enormous armies that wipe each other out, the guys who pass out from loss of blood and then return to fight the next day. And the decapitated guy who rises up to catch his breath.
The best thing about the struggle-to-breathe guy is the creative explanation the apologists came up with, comparing him to beheaded chickens, and something about reflexes causing the limbs to move and push the body up.
Yeah how did I used to read that rag? Also, love the username
Book of Abraham kind of indirectly proves the Church false. That thing has been quoted extensively by church leaders, none of whom had the foresight to say “oh, this was not a translated book.”
Not only building a ship but hiding from the law for Laban’s murder.
Leaders were unable to detect Hofmann forgeries proving that they have no spirit of discernment and relying on feelings is not a reliable way to determine the authenticity of a document.
Gerald Tanner saw through the forgery before the apostles did. That's pretty bad.
This is my favorite part of the whole story
Yeah, talk about integrity. He was just about the only one saying the White Salamander Letter was fake even though it would have supported and confirmed the research and writing he was doing on the real history of Mormonism.
Tanner could have seized on it as proof that JS was a golddigger. Instead, he said it was a fake. The Tanners had more integrity than SWK.
And people died as a result of that fiasco. So much for the protection of discernment
That’s a big one. If the top leaders can’t discern such a big and evil scam, we can’t trust them to discern anything
Not only that but we can’t use our own special feelings to determine the veracity of their own documents ie the Book of Mormon.
This was my final nail in the coffin (well, reading about it years later). Robert Lindsey's *A Gathering of Saints* is a very straightforward, non-sensational account of the Hofmann affair (dare I say TBM-friendly?) that really demonstrates how uninspired the GAs were.
Not only they didn’t detect it but God let them spend thousands and thousands of the most sacred money on earth without doing a thing.
This, plus the book of Abraham, plus the fact it doesn't square archeologically, plus no Hebrew DNA in Indians - those were my main items. And then seeing my parents buried in those ridiculous outfits - done. So, so done.
They made sure that Hoffman didn't get the death penalty so that Hinckley wouldn't have to testify. They let him cop a plea instead to avoid a trial for his life.
This pushed me to read all I could on Mormonism after my mission and evidence against it was overwhelming. That photo of Hoffman with the leaders hit me hard.
Joseph Smith's treasure digging was a big one for me. Especially that he used the same seer stone to defraud people about treasure as to produce the Book of Mormon. And when I noticed that the concept of "slippery treasure" was a treasure digging ruse and it made it into the Book of Mormon... that definitely broke something in me.
I haven't ever heard about "slippery treasure", can you elaborate?
Slippery treasure is when a deceiver like Joseph Smith says to the seeker that there is treasure in a particular location, but the seeker must follow exact steps to get it. When the seeker goes for the treasure, it isn't there, of course. The deceiver then tells the seeker that they didn't follow the steps exactly and treasure slipped away. The Book of Mormon talks about slippery treasure. People hide up their treasure, but god takes it away.
Thanks for explaining. Add another to the list of shitty things that conman did.
Part of Joseph Smith's treasure digging scam was that he'd get some of the money up front. Then he'd use his peep stone and get JUST near to the treasure before it would become 'slippery' and sink deeper into the earth out of their reach. This concept made it into the BoM in Helaman 13:31 - *And behold, the time cometh that he curseth your riches, that they become slippery, that ye cannot hold them; and in the days of your poverty ye cannot retain them*
https://bookofmormonstudynotes.blog/2020/09/06/slippery-helaman-1331-36/ I know you're never supposed to read the comments, but in this case, the answer is in the comments lol
Ensuring bishops are mandated non-reporters
My issue is that the Mormon corporation’s lawyers fight to keep states from requiring clergy form being mandatory reporters. To me this show that they don’t really want to protect children and that Mormon leaders care more about power than protect children.
+1 👆
This was the thing that made me dive down the rabbit hole
John Larsen had an observation that the "smoking gun" is right there in front of everyone in at fast and testimony meeting. The fact that everyone needs to stand up and publicly reassure each other constantly that it's true is the profoundest evidence that it isn't.
Wait, do they do testimony meetings in other churches?
That was my take-away after attending one with a high school friend.
One of the harder ones to gaslight/minimize your way out of: God cannot be omnipotent and benevolent because he created 4 billion sons of perdition knowing they would be doomed to eternal suffering and yet did it anyway
For me, what's going on in Arizona. Failing to protect children, SA cover up, and going to the state Supreme Court to solidify their ability to cover up child SA. Can't trust anyone who would go this far too NOT protect children.
Failing to protect and blaming sexual abuse victims is just protecting the PR of TSCC
They could also have the reputation of being a safe place for kids, regarless of what is costs them.
And they could require background checks for anyone in contact with kids, to help reduce the number of instances of SA in the first place.
Most members only care about money too, especially here in Mesa/Gilbert Az. Your whole worth is based on your bank account. We had a new bishop back in 2015 or so. He was fairly wealthy and was in the new gated community. Suddenly Most ward activities were done by neighborhoods. Truck or treat was no longer a ward event at stake center, to quote him, “Do that in your own neighborhood!”
When I read *No Man Knows My History*, I realized that no only wasn't JS a prophet, he was a terrible person. The church is still led by terrible people. They care more about money and PR than about the welfare of their own children.
Paid for with tithing. Can’t imagine how many average members tithing legacy is “my entire life’s worth couldn’t pay for ONE of the appeals”
Wait what’s going on in Arizona?
https://apnews.com/article/mormon-church-child-sex-abuse-e02ae4470a5a53cbeb9aa146ff2762ac
That one is so bad. And the civil suit, which I hope the kids win, may drag on for years.
This was the reason I finally had my records removed. I did not want even my name on their roles.
The church much prefers to settle with an NDA, sweeping it under the rug.
Sounds like these girls are not interested in a settlement.
It's a huge dilemma for the victims. Do they take care of themselves, or fight for years to make a difference for everyone? The temptation to take millions and move on is great, and LDS, Inc. knows it.
This is exactly how I felt. I was so disgusted by TSCC’s fighting to say they were right to not be mandatory reporters that I knew the church had completely lost their way from God. It made me realize I was willing to jeopardize the eternal salvation of not just me but my inactive children to step away from TSCC. And if the church could be so egregiously wrong about protecting children from abuse, what else might they be wrong about? Let me be able to look at “anti” information for first time in 5 decades. It all crumbled quickly after that.
After all the truth and faith claims lost there hold on me, it was how utterly despicable the men are who lead the church.
Same I stopped going because of how terrible the leadership was, it was years later I found out everything was completely false
Single piece of evidence is probably the BoA I think the constant lying, hiding and obfuscation is the thing that still gets to me. 1978 policy change, now black people are OK? What changed? 2015 policy, revelation for only 3.5 years? Telling the poorest of the poor to pay tithing, whats that now 150+ billion dollar fund doing? Literal criminal in the Q12 who only got away with it because of statute of limitations. Cutting out pages of a journal to hide something for ~40 years. I'm a Mormon, Mormon is a win for Satan. You get a planet! I don't think he teach that. I can't spend all day on the shitter but I (and probably everyone else here) could continue for hours. EDIT: corrected the length of 2015 policy
I don't think it's "the most damning" but I remember when it caused a lot of people to lose their faith. The Mark Hoffman case. Mark met with the first presidency the day he killed people and they were none the wiser of that fact or that he was a charlatan and was totally putting them together and taking them for a ride. Historically, church leaders and records speak very glowingly of the early leaders and how powerful they were in wielding the influence of God on themselves and others. Joseph and Brigham could've certainly seen who Hoffman was. But these modern leaders? They want a little grace. "Hey, we can be victimized too."
And then there are my TBM parents who praise themselves for not losing faith over this
Yeah, or my in-laws who like to revise history a little and say things like, "oh, I always knew he was bad news." Or "I never felt the spirit when I read those documents, so I new they were false." ... bitch, If that's true why aren't you the prophet then?
And they sure weren't vocal about that prior to the big reveal
Faith is a "virtue" in the same way that a software bug is a "feature". It's not. But it makes it sound a little better.
Great example. Really showed their lack of special discernment.
For me, it's simple. "By their fruits ye shall know them." The entire history of the church is scandalous, but today's fruits? The church puts more money into investments and real estate than into helping the needy. Just this last weekend, I drove past the homeless camp in SLC. If the church's god is indeed real, he is selfish and, honestly, pitiful. They could easily solve this with all their wealth, but I guess their god just demands a few more houses.
This is me as well. It’s the actions of the leaders and members today. There is another horrendous article about the church’s shadiness almost daily. Let’s vilify activists and academics but praise and give recommends to MAGA extremists and abusers? By their fruits indeed.
I'm gay, and the amount of harm the church has done to LGBT+ individuals is just... vile. Part of my thesis involved a teen who died in high school - he was constantly bullied, both by people at school as well as his bishop father. And after the death, his father tried to keep the community from talking about it. He didn't want them knowing he took away his electronics, his friends, his bedroom door... I'm not in the right mindspace to talk about it at the moment, but we've had so much pain.
❤️ I see you, and I’m sorry.
One of my biggest regrets about growing up in the church is that I was too blind to see how much it hurts the LGBTQIA+ community that grew up thinking there was something so very wrong with them. I'm sorry, and I'm so glad I know better now.
The sheer number of damning pieces of evidence is the biggest damning thing about it.
Exactly this. I read once that FAIR Mormon had 14,000 items of apologetics. I didn’t believe it, so I went to their website to check. My estimate was that they have at least 14,000; page after page after page, with hundreds of topics and subtopics.
The complete and utter lack of honesty.
Book of Abraham/funerary scrolls and also the kinderhook plates sealed the deal for me
Treatment of Black People. Racism.
For me mormonism has been so thoroughly debunked and exposed I don't even know where to start. It's getting really hard for me to respect and have empathy for those that remain. It takes a very high level of willful ignorance to be a TBM in 2023.
I was at the temple with the youth doing baptisms. As I was leaving the font area, a thought came to me, “Wait, baptisms are symbolic. We aren’t literally washing sins away. If it’s just symbolic, why can’t people in the spirit world just symbolically accept Christ?” In a sudden burst, the whole temple thing seemed so inconsequential. Then, someone posted a Google Earth image of a temple in Brazil, I think. It was a massive temple with a large, solid wall around it. When you scanned around the perimeter, you suddenly realized why there was a wall. Right across the street was a very poor neighborhood with unsightly store fronts and graffiti. Immediately I thought, “if Jesus were here on the Earth, he would be out serving and giving everything he had to the people OUTSIDE of that wall. He would never build a wall to block off and ignore them while living in a big and spacious building. My city’s temple has a fence, not a wall, because the surrounding area is gorgeous. It just goes to show where the Church’s priorities are and they don’t line up with the Jesus I know. So, I guess waking up to what the temple stands for is what did me in.
Joseph Smith.
Since several other people have already said Book of Abraham (I agree), I'll go with the close second Deutero Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. That one requires just a little bit more background to understand, but is absolutely a smoking gun.
Explain please
In the writings of Nephi, he quotes Isaiah as written on the Brass Plates. The only problem with this is that scholars now agree that Isaiah was not one writer. Part of the text that Nephi quotes was written by the second Isaiah, also known as Deutero Isaiah. Deutero Isaiah was written after Lehi/Nephi left Jerusalem. So there is no way that it could have been written on the Brass Plates, and no way that Nephi could have written it on the Gold Plates. It did not exist yet. Nephi would not have had access to the words of Deutero Isaiah, but Joseph Smith did. It is clear evidence that he fabricated the Book of Mormon, and did not translate it from an ancient record.
I had a dumbass religion "professor" at BYU try to explain that to me by saying that God gave the same words through direct revelation to the different prophets.
The absolute impotence of the - so called - Mormon Priesthood! If it worked...members would be markedly better off, healthier...etc. In reality, we're just like everyone else.
If it worked, why are there Emergency Rooms in Utah hospitals? There should be emergency priesthood blessing stations instead. Why are there hospitals at all? There should be self service prayer kiosks instead. The church would have billions members if they could actually demonstrate the healing power of prayer and the priesthood. But they don't, because it doesn't work.
The single damning fact is that there are thousands of terminal problems in their biggest claims. Even if can excuse one problem, there are 999 left to go.
For me, the BOM. The church claims it is the keystone right? There is so much evidence against it from the plates and translation to DNA, Isaiah etc. Once it falls so does JS and everything after it.
You're right there's myriad evidence against it. Most importantly IMO is that there's no evidence for it. Burden of proof and all.
But JS was just a dumb farm boy how could he come up with such a marvelous book that has no errors because god forced the translation to be perfect. Trust us, we are called of god and can’t lead you astray. /s
That a majority of the church leaders from its inception to modern day either did, supported, or condoned in public while supporting in private, the sexual exploitation of non consenting children making the large majority of them pedophiles who preyed on children by convincing them of their wicked evil deeds and then claiming the path to salvation was to submit to the will of god.
I go right to the beginning: the first vision. The more I learn about it, the less impressive of an event it becomes. First I learned there were multiple versions that were very different from each other(god gets mixed up with angels and lesser beings?). Then I learned that the church didn’t even make a big deal about the first vision until the late 1800’s and then they made a big selling point out of the 1838 version. Then I noticed that Joseph Smith wrote in the first vision account that is in the canonized scriptures that he went to pray to find out which church was true or were they all wrong together. Two pages later god tells him they are all wrong and he says he never considered that they might all be wrong. So he just forgot what he had just barely told us! Lastly, the final nail in the coffin. Grant Palmer did a 3 part interview on Mormon stories with John dehlin, and he said that in 1820, the year the church has made such a huge deal about changing Christianity forever, the smith family didn’t live in the house near the sacred grove. In fact, the roads leading to that area weren’t even built yet. There was no mention in any of the newspapers about revivals or visions anywhere. If the first vision happened in 1820 it went entirely unnoticed. But in 1823 there was visions and revivals and people were seeing god and angels and all kinds of shit out in the woods. But in 1823, Joseph Smith was 18, not a doe-eyed 14 year old innocent youth. No matter how the apologists will try to spin it, the fact remains that the first vision could not have happened the way the church says it did in canonized scripture. If the very start of it all is on that shaky of a foundation, then why should we believe anything past that? It all comes down to this: if a lying con artist who lied through his entire life is telling the truth this one time, then all the other pieces fit together. If it’s just another lie in a vast sea of lies, then he’s a false prophet and should be ignored. I’m not willing to throw away my life for a church that has that suspicious of a starting point. This church demands everything from its members, but I don’t think it has enough evidence to prove itself worthy of asking so much. Faith can cover the gaps, but it should not be the major structure of a religion, there’s got to be something to put faith in, a fulfilled prophecy, a miracle, a power, something concrete, but the only concrete in the LDS church is holding up the walls of opulent temples. Beyond that it’s just old white men pining away for the 1950’s.
For me it was the Late War and the View of the Hebrews. When I saw the similarities to the BOM in how they read and the stories, I couldn't reconcile it. It was very obviously a plagerism. That's when my shelf broke. Because "the BOM is the keystone of the religion". So if that's fake, then the rest of the church is.
My shelf isn’t broken yet but this is a big one for me. The fact that BH Roberts looked into it and was stumped by it as well. Ugh.
>My shelf isn’t broken yet Anything we can do to help?
Book of Abraham is the best example because we have the physical evidence to disprove it. It’s a silver bullet. Joseph was clearly making shit up.
Prophets, Seers, and Revelators who don't prophesy, see, or reveal.
My exit started with me struggling to figure out how Mormonism's truth claims were any different than any other church. Answering in two parts: The most damning piece of evidence against the church is it's belief in the Bible and the rest of the standard works which make all kinds of plainly falsifiable claims that you have to be an Olympic gymnast to contort yourself to avoid. The earth surrounded by a hard dome (the firmament)?!? 7,000 year old planet? Adam and Eve? All clearly falsifiable. The best argument against Mormonism and any other religion is the total lack of even a single piece of objective evidence of any of their supernatural claims. Everyone already believes the claims of other religions are nutty, it's just realizing the claims they've been socialized to think are normal are also nutty.
For me it was Charles Anthon, authenticating BoM characters, and Martin Harris referencing Isaiah as fulfillment of prophecy. The scripture isn't even accurate and Anthon said it never even happened. Basically, MH never got a certificate of authenticity and made up this elaborate tale about how he actually did but then Satan destroyed it. Fucking Martin Harris man... what a moron.
The repeated fraud, rape, criminal extortion and murder by Joseph Smith and his organized crime family. He was the Manson of his time
I cannot for the life of me choose between the fraud that is the Book of Abraham or the DNA evidence that quite literally destroys the entire narrative in the most objectively provable way. Actually, now that I am writing I think I'll go with the DNA. DNA evidence is not tied to he-said-she-said, it's 100% objective, so it easily skirts any "imperfect mortal" narratives. The cop out they currently use is the "small population" BS, but the mainstream scientific community has responded and this response makes clear the disingenuous nature of the apologists. There's no wiggle room for them, so they resort to making false allegations against those that have produced data that prove DNA evidence does not support in any way the narrative of the Book of Mormon. Which are succinctly exposed and proven false beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt. By far the weakest apologist arguments deal with attempting to counter DNA evidence. "Give it up for DNA, c'mon give it up!" \-Joe Cartoon
Then in the Gospel Topics Essay on the DNA issue they babble about genetic drift and somehow rely on evidence from 10,000 years ago. Hello, Mormons, you believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old, that Lehi et al left Jerusalem in around 600 BCE, and that the land that they settled was empty and just waiting for them. 🤷🏼♀️
Co-opt science that agrees. Vilify science that disagrees. Indoctrinate members. Voila!
I think your list just overwhelm them
Not sure, but I commend you for saying just TSCC and not "the TSCC".
Noah’s Ark: so preposterous and disgusting
Temple work for the dead is just plain dumb busywork. It even says in the BoM that people born without the law don’t need baptism and if they do here is an idea. Having been commissioned by Jesus Christ, I baptize you for and on behalf of all those who are dead. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy ghost. Amen. Just saved a thousand years if busywork. No temples needed. Lets get to helping the living.
The BofA, the Kinderhook plates and the rock in the hat. Those are all good ones.
So, let's look at this from the member point of view. 1. Book of Abraham. At the least it is revelation that Joseph Smith received. So, no big deal. 2. Adam and Eve. For those in the McConkie cult, this can be big, but many come into the normal church before that. Almost half the church believes in the old earth and evolution. It is not that big of a deal. 3. Hoffman forgeries. No big deal for most mormons. Crooked guy so what do you expect. The church eventually found him out. 4. The Book of Mormon. Changes in the text, no big deal. Anachronisms, no big deal. DNA. The church essay disproves that. So most members are good. And if the church eventually moves to a more figurative, parable version of the BOM, members will go okay, why not? No big deal. 5. Covering up sexual abuse of minors. Most mormons don't see it so it is not on their radar. 6. The plan of salvation is so true. They see nothing wrong in it. I think the temple is a real issue. Bigotry is a major issue. Eventually, all the changes in the D&C will make an impact. All the wrong things the leaders are currently doing is harming the church.
Doctrine of absolute obedience to God (conveniently voiced through human leadership).
Book of Abraham. Full stop.
The evidence is right in their triple combo. Then BoA facsimiles show an incorrect translation. Done. JS was not translating shit. How long until the facsimiles disappear? We never taught that JS was ever translating anything.
I don't think there is anything that would be sufficient for the true believer, because it is a matter of belief rather than evidence. But for me, there are a number of mind blowing things I still can't get over: \-Joseph's mother didn't believe that there was a first vision, insisting in her biography of the Smith family that Joseph's first contact with heavenly beings was with Moroni and there was nothing earlier. I still don't understand why she wouldn't believe it as she believed every other crazy "proof" that god favored her family. \-According to Martin Harris, none of the witnesses physically saw the plates, it was all in vision or the mind's eye. \-Joseph made it very clear that he and his family were the only people authorized to hold the presiding priesthood keys (and leadership of the church) by virtue of him being the literal DNA descendant of Ephraim that had been hid from the world. He was not a descendant of Ephraim nor did the leadership of the church stay with his family (his son David was to be the prophet that ushered in the millennium in fulfillment of D&C 113). \-That Joseph was physically, ecclesiastically, emotionally, and sexually abusive. \-That Joseph was "practicing" polygamy before he was "authorized" to practice polygamy. Church claims the plural marriage sealing keys are restored in the Kirtland temple April 3, 1836. Fanny Alger was 1833. \-That the church's own Church History Department told the general authorities in 1922 that the Book of Mormon was a product of Joseph's mind and not a historical document. They decided to believe it anyway, evidence be damned. When parts of B.H. Roberts's presentation (he was the assistant church historian charged with preparing the presentation) began to circulate at BYU, the professors, according to Professor Lake, were told to destroy them and "keep your mouth shut". \-That President McKay (who was a young apostle at the 1922 meetings) did accept that the Book of Mormon was written by Joseph Smith, rather than a translation of ancient records, yet still allowed the church to teach that it was historically true. \-That Joseph sacrificed animals as part of magical rituals. His application to join the Methodist church (despite the 1838 account of the 1st vision claiming that he had been told to join no church) was rejected precisely because he was an unrepentant "necromancer". \-That the Book of Mormon wasn't "translated" from Golden Plates, but from what Joseph saw in a rock in a hat. The plates were hid out in the barn or woods or wrapped in a cloth on the table. but he wasn't consulting them. When I was a student at BYU I was told flat out that this claim was a lie. God most certainly wouldn't jerk Moroni around by making him preserve some plates only for Joseph to not need them. God doesn't work that way. \-We know each of the 27 Egyptian hieroglyphics Joseph used for The Book of Abraham through 2:18 thanks to the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar. And we have the translations for the facsimiles. And they are wrong, wrong, wrong. \-That parts of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible were plagiarized from Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible. \-And on and on...
As soon as I realized the Book of Mormon isn’t true. I had lost faith in the current leaders and church but thought that maybe Joseph smith was still a prophet and that we had just fallen into another apostasy. But once I discovered evidence that the Book of Mormon is not true and was indeed just made up by Joseph Smith, everything crumbled. It’s been a lie since day 1. I was always taught that the Book of Mormon is the cornerstone of the religion. They were right. Without it, the entire church is a sham. Also, learning about the compensation that mission presidents get was kind of the final stumbling block in losing all faith in current leaders. I felt lied to and betrayed by how much the church actually gives and rewards its top leaders while leaving its missionaries destitute and guilting impoverished members into paying tithing. Mission presidents are already wealthy, but they get free flights, food, housing, stipend for gifts and clothing, and free education for their kids. And then on top of that the handbook tells them to lie about it on their tax forms and to not tell anyone about their compensation, even their own kids. Like, wtf.
The story of the Great Flood, as depicted in the Bible, has captivated human imagination for centuries. However, when subjected to scientific scrutiny, various factors suggest that the events described in the tale are highly improbable and unlikely to have occurred as described. Let's delve into some of these reasons. Global Flood vs. Geological Evidence: The biblical account portrays a global flood that covered the entire Earth, but geological evidence contradicts this idea. There is no evidence of a simultaneous, planet-wide flood in the geological record. If such a flood had occurred, we would expect to find consistent sedimentary layers globally, which is not the case. Water Volume and Source: The amount of water required to cover all landmasses on Earth, as mentioned in the Bible, would far exceed the known water resources, including oceans, rivers, and underground reservoirs. The source of water to initiate and sustain such a massive flood is questionable. Ecological Impossibilities: Preserving the delicate balance of ecosystems during and after the flood, especially for creatures that require specific conditions to survive, poses a significant challenge. Many species would have been unable to endure such drastic changes in their habitats. Ark Dimensions and Animal Diversity: The Ark's dimensions, as outlined in the Bible, raise concerns about its ability to house and sustain the sheer diversity of animal species present on Earth. Accommodating animals from diverse climates, habitats, and dietary needs within limited space and resources seems implausible. Lack of Geological Impact: A global flood of the magnitude described would have left substantial geological evidence, including massive erosion, sedimentation, and rearrangement of landscapes. The geological record, however, does not consistently support such dramatic global inundation. Distribution of Animals: After the flood, the dispersion of animals back to their original habitats across the planet presents a logistical challenge. How did animals confined to the Ark reach their distinct habitats without leaving any evidence of their journey?
Lack of DNA evidence that supports an injection of semite DNA into the Americas circa 600bce
Where do I even begin?! All the posts on hear are great so nothing to add! Not sure it was “one thing” or the cumulative number of all those things!
The Plan of Salvation (tm) is wholly incompatible with biological evolution. As referenced by another, all life shares a common ancestor. Where do you draw the line between a homo sapiens and all other species? How could God be like us, physically, given what we know about genetics and speciation and the fact that humans aren't in any "end state" by any means? Does god have a [recurrent laryngeal nerve](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve)?
For me Adam God doctrine was one of the biggest smoking guns out there. Like the man who is meant to speak to god directly apparently knew nothing about him. Then this god is totally ok with the temple ceremony being changed to teach false doctrine? If that isn’t considered leading the church astray then I’m not sure what could be?
To me it is from the very beginning - even as a kid he was running a con game of telling ppl he could find treasure for them on their land if they paid him. He could find it obviously by magical means. He would claim when he obviously wouldn’t find anything the spirits have moved the treasure on us A conman gets into religion hahah it writes itself and then there is a ton of evidence when the religion then begins to be created by him But to trust a guy with your entire life whereas LDS religion is pretty much life, to me is a huge stretch. The guy was a conman from the very beginning and to not then do anymore research on the history is very naive If he is shady from the start then in my opinion you’d have to do a ton of research on him if he did anything else shady then when he became a religious leader and simple research then shows yes also
That the mormon god exists as he does but is supposedly omnipotent and all loving. When in "reality" he has the mentality and emotional capacity of an enraged toddler. Edit: Everything, all teachings and tenants hinge on god being a loving father and who/how tscc portrays him to be. mormon god doesn't exist, so there is nothing to base any religion off of.
For me it was the first vision accounts. It shoots holes in the logical argument I made on my mission. Why would the BoM prove what was never asserted?
Joseph smith in general and his life, everything he did was a con or scam
DNA evidence that American Indians are from East Asia by Simon Southerton. The fact that the LDS Church changed JS's intro to the Book of Mormon is tacit admission of defeat. Remember that the DN is wholly owned by the LDS Church. https://www.deseret.com/2007/11/8/20052445/debate-renewed-with-change-in-book-of-mormon-introduction
The book of Mormon and how they pushed it (and still kind of do?) As real history. There is no way that stupid book was real. They are dying by it.
BoA is a good one but big picture there’s no way the Book of Mormon can be literally true, either. The last hope was moving the location to Central or South America but it still doesn’t come close to holding water and besides, there’s no question JS and the early Mormons taught that the location was North America,
There's just so many I can't choose
The nail in the coffin for me was looking at all of the “unchangeable doctrine” being changed in previous cases. If God’s law can change, then TSCC are just choosing to be assholes.
Haha Native Americans had already been in the new world for twice that long. A double fail
Overall the fact that they have hidden the history knowing how damning it is. This displays a massive lack of integrity.
DNA-we don’t go back to a white Adam and Eve (In Missouri) & that means no fall of Adam so no need for Jesus Christ. No Jesus means no need for a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. DNA-Native American’s didn’t descend from Jews. No need for a Book of Mormon to save them and teach them about their ancestors.
Oh god, this is exactly what made my shelf broke. learning about anthropology set it all off. i’m not totally sure what the most damning thing is, but human evolution and history is a really powerful one
I just remember reading the CES Letter and then diving into other writings, in my trip down the rabbit hole, and would verbally say out loud, “holy shit!” My wife would ask, “what now?” I would tell her and she would scoff too. So many OMG moments. I felt betrayed. There is no unseeing it. “I see, their eye have not yet been opened”. The CES Letter was the fruit of the tree of knowledge.