Mormon Bandwagon

16 chapters My Search for Truth Wes T

A series

My Search for Truth

by Wes T · 16 chapters · about 77 min

I reli­gious­ly lived my faith for 30 years, and then while try­ing to defend my faith I dis­cov­ered its weak foun­da­tion. This essay attempts to explains how I came to that conclusion.

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Contents

  1. 1 Why I No Longer Believe I have always appreciated that LDS members are taught to value intelligence and truth. I want the church to be true. It has generally been a positive force… 4 min read
  2. 2 Should We Avoid Doubts and Questions? There is a real fear among the some faith­ful that ques­tion­ing the verac­i­ty of the church or the Book of Mor­mon is a sure way to lose your… 4 min read
  3. 3 Nature of Spiritual Confirmation I would first also address hope­ful­ly briefly why I don’t just rely on a spir­i­tu­al inspi­ra­tion as the con­fir­ma­tion of the true­ness of Book of Mor­mon or any… 6 min read
  4. 4 The Book of Mormon: Keystone I will be pre­sent­ing and explain­ing what issues have most trou­bled me as I inves­ti­gat­ed the truth­ful­ness of the Book of Mor­mon. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, most of the issues… 4 min read
  5. 5 Book of Mormon Issue 1: Animals The Book of Mor­mon is very clear that there were par­tic­u­lar ani­mals among the Nephites and Laman­ites. Thanks to pale­on­tol­o­gists and oth­er researchers, we now know which ani­mals actu­al­ly did… 11 min read
  6. 6 Book of Mormon Issue 2: Agriculture Zeniff records some of the Book of Mor­mon seeds: Mosi­ah 9:9 And we began to till the ground, yea, even with all man­ner of seeds, with seeds of corn,… 3 min read
  7. 7 Book of Mormon Issue 3: Technology We already dis­cussed the char­i­ots which I think is a huge prob­lem. Sev­er­al addi­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy advances are com­plete­ly out of place. I’ll go through these more briefly than… 11 min read
  8. 8 Book of Mormon Issue 4: Language The text of the Book of Mor­mon indi­cates that the peo­ples with­in the nar­ra­tive took great care to pre­serve their lan­guage from evolv­ing or frac­tur­ing into dif­fer­ent dialects.… 5 min read
  9. 9 Book of Mormon Issue 5: Hebrew DNA I will go into this in more depth at some time, but until just recent­ly (2006), the intro­duc­tion page in the Book of Mor­mon said all of the… 3 min read
  10. 10 Book of Mormon Issue 6+: Everything else Quoted Isaiah Scriptures Schol­ars divide the book of Isa­iah into three parts. There is very lit­tle dis­agree­ment about this fact. Here are the three parts and when they… 8 min read
  11. 11 Book of Abraham The major­i­ty of mem­bers don’t know where the Book of Abra­ham (found in the Pearl of Great Price) comes from. Here is a brief his­to­ry from Wikipedia: Sev­er­al… 2 min read
  12. 12 Book of Abraham: Facsimile 1 This is Fac­sim­i­le 1, locat­ed at the front of the Book of Abra­ham in the Pearl of Great Price. Joseph Smith described this scene as “The idol­a­trous priest… 3 min read
  13. 13 Book of Abraham: Facsimile 2 Fac­sim­i­le 2 is actu­al­ly a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a “hypocephalus”. Egyp­tians would put these under the head of mum­mies, like a pillow. Here are lots of real hypocephali as… 2 min read
  14. 14 Book of Abraham: Facsimile 3 Fac­sim­i­le 3 is described by Joseph Smith as “Abra­ham sit­ting upon Pharaoh’s throne, by the polite­ness of the king, with a crown upon his head, rep­re­sent­ing the Priest­hood, as… 8 min read
  15. 15 Other translations by Joseph Smith, Jr I had pre­vi­ous­ly been able to con­vince myself that the rea­son we don’t have the gold plates is because Joseph Smith, Jr would have been hunt­ed to an… 1 min read
  16. 16 Conclusion to Why I No Longer Believe I’ve focused most­ly on the Book of Mor­mon, since I accept that it is the key­stone of the reli­gion, just as Joseph Smith, Jr stat­ed. The Book of… 2 min read