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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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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Five Key Facts

This is a very short sum­ma­ry of what I view as the 5 most impor­tant facts in under­stand­ing alter­na­tive mod­els for LDS truth claims. To the best of my knowl­edge, every point made in this doc­u­ment is accept­ed as fac­tu­al by both LDS and non-LDS schol­ars (please cor­rect me if I am mis­tak­en and I…

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Leaving the Church, Part 8 — Polygamy and Polyandry

1. Back­ground: The LDS Church pub­lished an essay, Plur­al Mar­riage in Kirt­land and Nau­voo, on Octo­ber 22, 2014, dis­cussing its polyg­a­mist past. The essay admit­ted the fol­low­ing, which will be dis­cussed in fur­ther depth dur­ing the remain­der of this sec­tion: (1) Joseph mar­ried girls as young as 14; (2) Joseph mar­ried women who were married…

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Leaving

Writ­ten in Jan­u­ary, 2012: In Decem­ber of 2011, my hus­band, Justin, and I respect­ful­ly resigned from our call­ings and stopped going to church. It’s been a long, tir­ing, enlight­en­ing process. I’ll start with the day that real­ly got us going down this path. It was a Sun­day in May or June of 2011. I got ready for…

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Examining the Fruits of the Church in Practice

I first need to make a cru­cial dis­tinc­tion here, between the Cor­po­rate and Insti­tu­tion­al Church, and the Church that exists in the lives of the indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies that com­prise the var­i­ous Wards and Branch­es of the Church. Even though I was a con­vert to the Church, I raised my fam­i­ly in it, and was…

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