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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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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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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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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To peek behind the curtain: weighing the decision to investigate LDS truth-claims

Why not inves­ti­gate? From the per­spec­tive of a believ­ing mem­ber, there are many valid rea­sons to avoid crit­i­cal­ly1 inves­ti­gat­ing the truth-claims of the Church.2 Lack the time, ener­gy, inter­est, or capa­bil­i­ty To inves­ti­gate requires time and effort. Most mem­bers are busy rais­ing a fam­i­ly and have many demands on their time and focus. Maybe now…

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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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I Desire to Understand

Years ago when my son left the church, I chose to dig deep and find the answers to the dif­fi­cult ques­tions about church his­to­ry and its doc­trine. I went into this ven­ture with full con­fi­dence that I would find the faith affirm­ing answers that would help save my son’s eter­nal sal­va­tion. Because of this effort…

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