Mormon Bandwagon

13 chapters Leaving the Church Eric Nelson

A series

Leaving the Church

by Eric Nelson · 13 chapters · about 175 min

A com­pi­la­tion of the evi­dence against the LDS Church.

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Contents

  1. 1 Leaving the Church Introduction I hope those of you who read this document do not get the wrong idea: I am not leaving the Church out of anger, sin, or laziness. I… 9 min read
  2. 2 Book of Abraham 1. Back­ground Per­haps the most prob­lem­at­ic issue under­min­ing the Church is the Book of Abra­ham. In July of 1835, a trav­el­ing show­man named Michael Chan­dler brought an exhib­it… 21 min read
  3. 3 Kinderhook Plates 1. Back­ground: On April 16, 1843, Robert Wiley began dig­ging a deep shaft in the mid­dle of an Indi­an mound locat­ed just out­side of Kinder­hook, Illi­nois. The Quin­cy… 6 min read
  4. 4 Book of Mormon Translation 1. Book of Mor­mon Trans­lat­ed with a Peep Stone: Con­trary to gen­er­al Church teach­ings, Joseph Smith did not use the gold plates in trans­lat­ing the Book of Mor­mon.… 9 min read
  5. 5 Book of Mormon 1. DNA Evi­dence Dis­proves BOM Claims: DNA analy­sis under­mines the premise of the Book of Mor­mon. Specif­i­cal­ly, DNA evi­dence estab­lish­es that Native Amer­i­can Indi­ans orig­i­nate from Asia and… 29 min read
  6. 6 First Vision “Our whole strength rests on the valid­i­ty of that [First] vision. It either occurred or it did not occur. If it did not, then this work is a… 14 min read
  7. 7 Priesthood Restoration 1. Overview: Like the First Vision sto­ry, Joseph Smith wait­ed many years before claim­ing to have received the priest­hood from John the Bap­tist and Peter, James, and John.… 7 min read
  8. 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… 25 min read
  9. 9 Book of Mormon Witnesses 1. Overview: The tes­ti­mo­ny of the three and eight wit­ness­es to the gold plates is often con­sid­ered a key com­po­nent of the Book of Mormon’s cred­i­bil­i­ty. How­ev­er, the… 23 min read
  10. 10 Prophets 1. Overview: Church mem­bers are taught that the prophet speaks for the Lord and will nev­er lead the church astray (even when they are wrong). Pres­i­dent Heber J.… 11 min read
  11. 11 Temples & Freemasonry 1. Intro­duc­tion: Out of respect to believ­ing mem­bers, I will not lay out all of my con­cerns with the LDS tem­ple cer­e­mo­ny. How­ev­er, there are cer­tain aspects of the… 4 min read
  12. 12 Miscellaneous Concerns There are many aspects of Mor­mon the­ol­o­gy that can be sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly dis­proven. More­over, some LDS teach­ings lack plau­si­bil­i­ty while oth­ers are sim­ply bizarre. The fol­low­ing are sev­er­al examples.… 6 min read
  13. 13 Testimony, Truth, and the Holy Ghost 1. Back­ground: Despite my doubts and con­cerns about var­i­ous aspects of LDS doc­trine and his­to­ry, I remained in the Church for sev­er­al years due to the spir­i­tu­al and… 11 min read