My list/summary of why the church can't be true... (29 and growing)

[Reuben]

It's really sad though in hindsight to think I was OK with this before, and just saying "I didn't know any better" doesn't help because I should have been a critical thinker and I should have been wiling to ask questions of a church I so readily gave my time, loyalty, and money to.

You were hacked, and then programmed to believe that not believing in Mormonism would lead to a fate worse than death. Not thinking critically about Mormonism became a matter of survival.

But you did it anyway.

Yeah, it took a while. So what?

[IT_Veteran]

In the process of working on my page to try and cover the LDS essays and other problems with the church, I wanted to compile a list of reasons (something of a summary of the entire page) as to why the church can't be true.

Originally I was thinking it would be a top ten type thing, but it ended up being 25. A bit long so i might need to find a way to format it so it's not as daunting.

Anyway - if you're bored and want to check it out, you can find it at https://ldsdiscussion.wixsite.com/mysite/summary

The 15 points made now are:
1. The Book of Abraham
2. King James Errors and Deutero-Isaiah
3. The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible Plagiarism
4. Polygamy and Polyamory
5. Book of Mormon Translation - Church Narrative vs. Church History
6. DNA and the Changing Lamanites
7. Anachronisms
8. Significant Changes to Key Revelations
9. The Retrofitted Priesthood Restoration
10. Ban on Blacks from the Priesthood and All Temple Ordinances
11. Role of Women - Lack of Priesthood, Treatment During Polygamy, Etc
12. Treatment of the LGBT Community
13. Complete Lack of Discernment by Prophets and Church Leaders
14. The Transfiguration of Brigham Young and Other Faith Promoting Stories
15. Brigham Young
16. Lack of Proof for Joseph Smith's Prophetic Abilities or the Book of Mormon
17. The Lost 116 Pages
18. No Advancement in the Book of Mormon Culture
19. Joseph Smith and the Convenience of Revelations
20. The Everchanging LDS Apologists
21. Joseph Smith 'Mixtape' Theory (in progress)
22. Church History of Hiding/Suppressing Evidence
23. Lack of Modern Day Revelation
24. Spiritual Witnesses/Where Will You Go?
25. Joseph Smith

Anyway... if you make it through let me know - I tried to be semi-brief on the topics but looking at them all at once ends up being fairly long. I also need to format it cleaner so the start of the page allows readers to jump around to the different #s.. but it's a start!

I haven’t had the chance yet to visit the site or read them through. I saw on Reddit though that you’re still planning on having it hosted somewhere else. I have an unlimited hosting plan with name.com already, I’d be happy to host it there if you’re interested.

[FiveFingerMnemonic]

It's really sad though in hindsight to think I was OK with this before, and just saying "I didn't know any better" doesn't help because I should have been a critical thinker and I should have been wiling to ask questions of a church I so readily gave my time, loyalty, and money to.

You were hacked, and then programmed to believe that not believing in Mormonism would lead to a fate worse than death. Not thinking critically about Mormonism became a matter of survival.

But you did it anyway.

Yeah, it took a while. So what?

I like this code or program analogy. From primary and earlier parents and classes encode imagery into our subconcious mind like unto the intersect in the spy show "Chuck". Whenever a match occurs, in pavlonian style, it triggers the reward centers (proven by the recent brain scan experiments to RMs). Spiritual tingly feelings occur, furthering the conditioning. Cycle repeats. Furthermore, correllation has made church history so boring whether intentionally or by accident, that we are further conditioned not to peek any further than surface info.

Somewhere in time, some of us become aware of this process or get shaken enough via social dissatisfaction or cognitive dissonance, that the programming loop falls apart and the code breaks.

This is my report

[jfro18]

I haven’t had the chance yet to visit the site or read them through. I saw on Reddit though that you’re still planning on having it hosted somewhere else. I have an unlimited hosting plan with name.com already, I’d be happy to host it there if you’re interested.

That might work - I'll let you know if I can figure out if I can get Wix to go to a different hosting setup w/o having to reformat it all.

Plus I can't post it officially until I tell my wife and give her a chance to either read it or tell me she doesn't want to. I told her a while back I was working on something to go over church issues and organize my thoughts, but I feel like I should at least give her the chance to read it before I put it up for everyone. It's like the D&C 132 consent rule, so I think I'm covered no matter what.

[IT_Veteran]

Lol, no problem. What app is Wix using on the backend? If you can get it, I’m pretty sure name.com can import it. If you decide to move forward, I’ll see if I can get you a cPanel login for just the domain you’re using.

[EternityIsNow]

What about the church's history of covering up the activities of sexual predators in leadership positions? Maybe discuss with item 22 but I think the current event situation goes beyond history. The church has been paying off victims and covering up crimes of local and general leadership for a long time. The act of covering up puts members at risk. Members who are being socially manipulated and groomed to be sexually exploited and controlled. The church also uses guilt about having a sex drive to control the members. The church is obsessed with sex. On the one hand using a sex drive against members, to keep them always guilty and always repenting and always needing church authority, and on the other hand protecting sexual predators who are insiders to the church leadership structure. The churches willingness to protect itself at the expense of members reveals a very dark heart.

[jfro18]

What about the church's history of covering up the activities of sexual predators in leadership positions? Maybe discuss with item 22 but I think the current event situation goes beyond history. The church has been paying off victims and covering up crimes of local and general leadership for a long time. The act of covering up puts members at risk. Members who are being socially manipulated and groomed to be sexually exploited and controlled. The church also uses guilt about having a sex drive to control the members. The church is obsessed with sex. On the one hand using a sex drive against members, to keep them always guilty and always repenting and always needing church authority, and on the other hand protecting sexual predators who are insiders to the church leadership structure. The churches willingness to protect itself at the expense of members reveals a very dark heart.

I had that in the discernment area. I want to push this more, but I think that being too direct about the church covering up sexual abusers might turn people off.

To be fair the only people who are going to read this are those who already have questions, so maybe they would be open for accusations like that, but I am really trying to find a way to be blunt about these subjects while also trying to avoid making claims that can't be backed up. We only have so many details to work with on the settlements, so I am nervous about turning people off by going too strongly there.

We'll see - I need to get more feedback on these pages to see if I can make it more effective with topics/issues.

[Arcturus]

I think this could be helpful to add to your cite. Along the lines of Hagoth's "Origins of Mormon Doctrine" post. Behrens (2006). Influence of Dartmouth on Mormon theology.

Edit: Could be added to section 21 on your summary page. IMO, the possibility of Hyrum and Joseph "borrowing" theology from the speculation at Dartmouth could be more damning than the similarities to Swedenborgism. There's some extremely specific theological points posited by Prof John Smith that appears to be more than coincidence. Furthermore, the fact that Spaulding himself studied at Moor's academy (possibly overlapped with Hyrum there?) gives a little more credence to the theory of *some* of Spaulding's work being plagiarized in the BofM.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43200240?c ... b_contents

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qyTCSU ... oJid0/view

[jfro18]

I think this could be helpful to add to your cite. Along the lines of Hagoth's "Origins of Mormon Doctrine" post. Behrens (2006). Influence of Dartmouth on Mormon theology.

Edit: Could be added to section 21 on your summary page. IMO, the possibility of Hyrum and Joseph "borrowing" theology from the speculation at Dartmouth could be more damning than the similarities to Swedenborgism. There's some extremely specific theological points posited by Prof John Smith that appears to be more than coincidence. Furthermore, the fact that Spaulding himself studied at Moor's academy (possibly overlapped with Hyrum there?) gives a little more credence to the theory of *some* of Spaulding's work being plagiarized in the BofM.

Yeah that absolutely has to be on there. I need to get the font sized up a bit and a cleaner look and then try to beef up the content a lot.

Thanks for the links - that might even need it's own page at some point to really highlight the similarities and then try to connect the dots. I know a lot of apologists love to jump on that as wishful thinking/conspiracy theories, but if they're gonna claim there are missing Abraham scrolls to prove JS isnt'a fraud, I'm allowed to point out all of the areas JS was pulling doctrine from.

[jfro18]

I'm going to get this officially hooked up to the domain this week - just need to find the courage to tell my wife it's going up so she's not blindsided at some point if she ever comes across it.

I have 29 reasons now - looking to add a 30th just to make it even. The "summary" is at https://ldsdiscussion.wixsite.com/mysite/summary

If anyone has any suggestions or if anyone has any thoughts of the list and what is wrong, what could be expanded on, etc let me know.

Now I'm just trying to format all the pages to look a little nicer with fonts/spacing and then I'll work on graphics/style as it goes. I'm sure it won't matter but I'm hoping maybe a few people are helped by it down the road.

The LDS annotated essays from Hagoth are just so damning so I really hope those make an impact on anyone who takes the time to read them.

Thanks everyone!

[sunstoned]

kinderhook plates and the Greek Psalter.

[hiding in plain sight]

Great list and great discussion. This should be a keeper for all NOMs.

As for me, I am now just sticking with two issues, if any mormons actually care to have a conversation.

1) The Book of Mormon isn't true.
2) See number 1.

And I don't even go into anachronisms, plagiarisms, fake histories, etc.

I just stay with that its key doctrines about the plan of salvation can't be true, if what is taught in D&C 76 and SS every week are true as well. They both can't be true.

Great list.

[FiveFingerMnemonic]

Great list and great discussion. This should be a keeper for all NOMs.

As for me, I am now just sticking with two issues, if any mormons actually care to have a conversation.

1) The Book of Mormon isn't true.
2) See number 1.

And I don't even go into anachronisms, plagiarisms, fake histories, etc.

I just stay with that its key doctrines about the plan of salvation can't be true, if what is taught in D&C 76 and SS every week are true as well. They both can't be true.

Great list.

I like this approach because it is simple and exactly the same as what the church uses for proselyting. IE "If the BOM is true, JS was a prophet, and if he was a prophet, the COJCOLDS is true." So saying the BOM is false just throws that concept for a loop in the mind of believers. Also, not every issue triggers dissonance for every member the same, so leaving the reasons and details vague allows an individual space to customize their own triggers.

[jfro18]

Great list and great discussion. This should be a keeper for all NOMs.

As for me, I am now just sticking with two issues, if any mormons actually care to have a conversation.

1) The Book of Mormon isn't true.
2) See number 1.

And I don't even go into anachronisms, plagiarisms, fake histories, etc.

I just stay with that its key doctrines about the plan of salvation can't be true, if what is taught in D&C 76 and SS every week are true as well. They both can't be true.

Great list.

You're right - in the end it boils down to the Book of Mormon just not being true, which is because Joseph was a fraud, etc, etc.

I have limited experience in talking to TBMs about my specific doubts, but in the few that I have (family, missionaries, and one other TBM), they immediately go to the "how could you think that after believing in it?"

So then it goes to "Well I found out about Joseph Smith's issues with the truth which made me look into things like Deutero-Isaiah being in the BoM which is impossible, or how he used King James errors, anachronisms that couldn't be in there, etc."

Or put another way - no one that is TBM will ever accept that the BoM is not true without a shock to the system. So this list is designed to say "Here are 30 pieces of the puzzle, and here are why the apologetics just do not work for those issues. Put together, there is no way this can hold up to any level of truth."

In the end it probably won't change many (if any) minds, but it's been a good way to process the info for me as well as try to find a way to integrate apologetic answers to these issues so that people don't just go to FAIR and say "Oh he was lying about that," when in fact FAIR is the one doing the deflection/gaslighting/whatever.

[hiding in plain sight]

Or put another way - no one that is TBM will ever accept that the BoM is not true without a shock to the system. So this list is designed to say "Here are 30 pieces of the puzzle, and here are why the apologetics just do not work for those issues. Put together, there is no way this can hold up to any level of truth."

In the end it probably won't change many (if any) minds, but it's been a good way to process the info for me as well as try to find a way to integrate apologetic answers to these issues so that people don't just go to FAIR and say "Oh he was lying about that," when in fact FAIR is the one doing the deflection/gaslighting/whatever.

Totally agreed.

Every single one of us who has woken up has had some trigger or another. The list is a great one with some very powerful opportunities to challenges someones reality and hopefully get them thinking.

Nicely done.