All The Reasons We Won't Return to Mormonism
Reason #57: The Nature of LDS Missionary Lessons
When I began missionary service for the Church in 1962, I was given a "plan for teaching the Gospel" to use in converting others to the Church. This plan was usually referred to as "the discussions" and contained teaching instructions and a carefully...
Reason #56: The modern LDS leaders' lack of foreknowledge
Some years earlier, the war in Vietnam had been gaining momentum and arousing greater domestic opposition. As consternation grew in the Church membership over this issue, especially among the many families with young men being conscripted into the war, Hugh Brown,...
Reason #55: Group Pressure in Mormonism
An LDS doctrine that had always strongly appealed to me was free agency: that God respects our right to choose, and that it is our ethic to likewise respect unconstrained choice for all people. That notion was badly shaken when I was first "endowed"...
Reason #54: The LDS Depreciation of Bible Translation
Second Nephi 29:3 mocks the trust of the Bible believer by having him say mindlessly, "A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible," with the Lord responding by calling such a man a "fool" (v. 6). Actually, says the Book of Mormon,...
Reason #53: The warfare in the Book of Mormon
The Book of Mormon raises questions when we examine its accounts of warfare. Where is evidence of the great mounds of weapons, the steel-smelting operations necessary for their production, and the warfare technologies described in this book? LDS...
Reason #52: LDS Sources Enlist Unwilling “Advocates”
When I was a Mormon, I and other people told prospective Mormons that the Smithsonian Institute believed and supported Book of Mormon archaeology. Of course that venerable organization did no such thing, and became so deluged with requests that they routinely...