Introduction to Examining Church Claims

The Church was orga­nized in Man­ches­ter, New York, on April 6, 1830. The orig­i­nal name used on that date was actu­al­ly the “Church of Christ.” This was changed in 1834 to “The Church of the Lat­ter Day Saints,” and then changed again in 1838 to “The Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter Day Saints” (see…

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Factual Claims

The Church makes many spe­cif­ic claims about mat­ters of his­to­ry (both its own, and that of oth­er peo­ples), the migra­tion of peo­ple from one con­ti­nent to anoth­er, the trans­la­tion of ancient doc­u­ments, etc. These are per­fect­ly legit­i­mate sub­jects to be exam­ined using the tools and log­ic of Sci­ence. I do rec­og­nize that some claims the…

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Epistemological Considerations

(or how do we know what we think we know) I am by no means a Philoso­pher, but I think it is cru­cial to address this top­ic here. It can get quite com­pli­cat­ed, and peo­ple have spent life­times, writ­ten dis­ser­ta­tions and count­less books on this sub­ject. But basi­cal­ly, what is need­ed is a reli­able method to…

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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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Examination Summary

My intent here was to approach the Church’s claims about itself, its his­to­ry, and its mis­sion, from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, rather than rely­ing on a sin­gle dimen­sion. The con­clu­sion seems inescapable: the Church is not what it claims to be, and the claims that it makes are demon­stra­bly false. And while there is a wonderful…

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Final Thoughts — Potential Harm

Sev­er­al years back, I was dis­cussing some of these mat­ters with one of my daugh­ters, and she posed this ques­tion to me: Let’s just say you’re right, and that the Church’s claims aren’t true. What is the harm in stay­ing in it, and being involved with it? We’re hap­py, we’re liv­ing good lives. What is…

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About The Author

On a per­son­al lev­el, my life has been an ongo­ing search for the Truth. It has been the pri­ma­ry moti­va­tion­al force in my life, along with my love for my fam­i­ly. That search led me into the Church many years ago, and ulti­mate­ly it led me out. My heart is the same; my desire to…

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