LDS Indoctrination and Retentive Socialization

LDS Indoc­tri­na­tion and Reten­tive Social­iza­tion Intro­duc­tion In A Mes­sage To The Most Ardent Crit­ic Of The Mor­mon Church, Ben Arkell quotes a name­less mem­ber of the church who had recent­ly dropped off their daugh­ter and son at the Mis­sion­ary Train­ing Cen­ter (MTC) of the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints (empha­sis added): “I wish I…

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Book of Mormon parallels to 1800s thought

Book of Mor­mon par­al­lels to 1800s thought Richard Bush­man, well-known Mor­mon his­to­ri­an, recent­ly stat­ed: … there is phras­ing everywhere–long phras­es that if you google them you will find them in 19th cen­tu­ry writ­ings. The the­ol­o­gy of the Book of Mor­mon is very much 19th cen­tu­ry the­ol­o­gy, and it reads like a 19th cen­tu­ry under­stand­ing of…

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Questions to Ask

Intro­duc­tion These ques­tions are designed to probe var­i­ous aspects of the LDS Church’s his­to­ry and truth-claims.1 The list was made for 1) inves­ti­ga­tors to ask the mis­sion­ar­ies, 2) active mem­bers to ask them­selves, or 3) those expe­ri­enc­ing a faith tran­si­tion to ask their par­ents or eccle­si­as­ti­cal lead­ers. The major­i­ty of links pro­vid­ed are to LDS…

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Swords and Spears

Swords and Spears For over a decade I’ve been hung up on the dearth of phys­i­cal evi­dence, par­tic­u­lar­ly Iron Age arti­facts, sup­port­ing the Book of Mor­mon. Recent­ly I had a mini-enlight­en­­ment in this regard: swords and spears do not grow on trees; they do nor fall as man­na from Heav­en. They are made, by men. With­out pretending…

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Issues and Questions Regarding LDS Doctrine and History

Four­teen years down the road, the ques­tions and issues raised in this let­ter remain sub­stan­tial­ly unan­swered, to my knowl­edge unad­dressed, by The Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter Day Saints. August 30, 2003 153 Canemah Way Ore­gon City, OR 97045 Pres­i­dent Gor­don B. Hinck­ley The Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter Day Saints 50 East North Temple…

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Too Big to Fail

I con­sid­ered titling this “Too Big to Fail?” But no, with bil­lions in assets, mil­lions of Saints tithing ten per­cent, and cat­a­stroph­ic cul­tur­al impli­ca­tions, like Chase Man­hat­tan and Gold­man Sacks, The Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter Day Saints is too big to fail. While fis­cal fail­ure of the Mor­mon church por­tends eco­nom­ic shock­waves beyond reck­on­ing, such…

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The Shunning Key

The Shun­ning Key: Whom Mor­mons shun and why Intro­duc­tion The lead­ers and man­u­als of The Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints fre­quent­ly empha­size broth­er­ly love and char­i­ty to all. Con­sid­er this state­ment by Elder M. Rus­sell Bal­lard: Let us reach out in friend­ship and love to our neigh­bors, includ­ing those of oth­er faiths, thus…

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Problem Summaries: resources discussing LDS-truth claims

Prob­lems with LDS truth-claims Before read­ing about the prob­lems, you may want to first con­sid­er the pros and cons of inves­ti­gat­ing the truth-claim data. Very short sum­maries Five Key Facts (~ 1 page) 50 Prob­lems with the Mor­mon Church (~10 minute youtube video) More sig­nif­i­cant sum­maries Mor­mon Primer (mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives: main­stream, crit­i­cal, apolo­getic, and pro­gres­sive) Let­ter For…

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Joseph Smith’s Polygamy Denials

Joseph Smith’s Polygamy Denials Intro­duc­tion Joseph Smith denied the prac­tice of polygamy1 on sev­er­al occa­sions. He was also respon­si­ble for the pub­li­ca­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion of sev­er­al addi­tion­al denials. A com­plete list­ing of ear­ly Church leader polygamy denials up to 1850 is avail­able here. A few notes: Hyper­links to orig­i­nal source mate­r­i­al may be found by clicking…

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Faith of a naturalist: response to “Faith of a Science Teacher” questions

Intro­duc­tion On Feb­ru­ary 12, 2017, The Faith of a Sci­ence Teacher pub­lished a post enti­tled “Ques­tions about the Church and Gospel of Jesus Christ”. I think many of these ques­tions are very poignant. Hav­ing thought for many years about these same kinds of ques­tions, I decid­ed to offer up some respons­es. The author indi­cates that…

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