Archive
Reason #36: Joseph Smith Joined Another Church After Saying He Was Forbidden by God
On June 15, 1828"”years after his supposed visit from God who told him that all churches on earth were corrupt -- he tried to join the Methodist Church. Even the esteemed LDS writer Hyrum L. Andrus admitted that Joseph became a Methodist, but ignores the...
Reason #35: The Gold Plates Never Existed
One LDS author, Dan Vogel in American Apocrypha:Essays on the Book of Mormon stated: "Given the fact that the three witnesses saw a vision and that the experience of the eight witnesses seems to have been similarly visionary, there is no compelling...
Reason #34: Unreliability of Book of Mormon Witnesses
Many Mormons seek solace in the thought that there were enough reliable witnesses to substantiate the Book of Mormon"'s validity and justify their own faith in it. But just how reliable were these witnesses? Mormons often claim that none of them ever denied their...
Reason #33: Who could verify Egyptian translations in 1828?
Martin Harris did indeed as Mormons claim take a copy of some of the characters Joseph Smith said he copied from the golden plates to Dr. Charles Anthon at Columbia University in New York City. But there truth and LDS fiction part paths. Harris claimed that...
Reason #32: Joseph Smith's Imaginative Abilities
Smith's wife Emma once said that she believed God dictated the Book of Mormon because her husband could hardly speak clearly nor compose a clearly-written letter. The speeches and writings we have of him contradict this assessment. In addition, others...
Reason #31: Joseph Smith's Story Is Not Unique
In 1837 an illiterate youth named James Colin Brewster said that at age ten, he, like Joseph Smith, had been in direct communication with the angel Moroni. Brewster began "translating" non-existent records that he said were the lost books of Esdras, and had published...
Reason #30: Questionable Biblical Interpretation
Why must uniquely- LDS Biblical interpretation be rejected? Because a supposedly Biblical doctrine that is based on possibly-plausible possible exceptions to other historical doctrines is not a firm enough foundation on which believers in the rest of the Bible...
Reason #29: The Mormon Gossip Circuit
Reason #29 is from guest blogger Michelle Scott (no relation) Privacy, to me, is very important. In Mormonism, there is virtually no privacy whatsoever. Hypothetically, if a Mormon member was to enter a Starbucks (strongly opposed because of their particularly...
Reason #28: Gods
So why would I want to return to a system of thought that would turn my attention toward — and ask me to emulate — entities that will be destroyed by God?
Reason #27: The “other sheep” problem
I was told when I was a Mormon that the other sheep Jesus said he would bring were the Nephites. The Book of Mormon records a supposed visit of Jesus to the Nephites, apparently about a year after His resurrection in Israel. Two things to notice about...
Reason #26: Geography
Much has been made about how Joseph Smith just used or adapted Bible names to create the names in the Book of Mormon. But recently I came across this fascinating map -- in which the place names in the Book of Mormon are compared to the place names of Joseph...
Reason #25: A different Jesus
Most of the arguments asserting that the Jesus of Mormonism is not the Biblical Jesus have to do with where His past diverges from the Biblical record -- a Mormon "prehistory" that is finite, beginning with his "birth" to one of God the Father's wives and a battle in...