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What made you look into the facts behind the LDS narrative? Were you looking at something you heard was troubling a doubting member or apostate, so you could help them deal with it and return to believing? Did an apostate direct you to take those first looks? Did you always harbor some doubts? Was it just general curiosity that led you to look?

Trauma didn't make me look. I had already looked. It just helped me see.

The harder I tried to be the best at church, the worse I would feel. Eventually it stopped adding up.

I almost never missed a Sunday at church. Then, due to pressure of work, I had to miss church for a couple of months.

To my great surprise, I found that I was OK missing church, and wondered why.

First I had a peek at the Bereans - they used to picket the Cumorah Pageant - but go no clue from them.

Next stop was the website run by Richard Packham. I was in a state of shock for months, as I read and re-read Richard's writings, and the topics that his essays prompted my to research.

It was all downhill from there.

My initial move into doubt and then disbelief for LDS truth claims was based upon the church approved materials not the historical problems or antimormon information. The largest problem was reading the Book of Mormon. It generated a variety of doubts that I struggled with. Benson's mad politics encouraged doubt. The negro priesthood bad encouraged doubt. I had a young seminary and priesthood teacher who started full of bright ideas and life and got sucked into right wing obsessions and turned into what I thought was an unthinking machine. I feared what had been done to him.

It was the Book of Mormon which caused unbelief for me. Years later out of curiosity I read more history. Some things shocked me a bit. "No man knows my History" put together a picture seriously challenging the idealized Joseph Smith. That and some details from the Tanners reinforced my previous assessment that Mormon belief was desire to believe not actual substance.
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Perhaps I could add that at age 12 or so I discovered at the Public Library a few classic anti-mormon books, Bennet's and Howe's. I read them and was much shocked. With some reflection at that age I was able to think that those pictures seemed so exaggerated that they could not be trusted. Years later when reading Fawn Brodie's book I was at first surprised to find those sources taken seriously. I have looked further enough to see that there are reasons for that.

I had already been bothered by the introduction to the Book of Abraham, which struck me as entirely implausible when I actually paid attention as a missionary. I was also bothered by the lack of real Mormon theology in the Book of Mormon. But I dug in further when I first learned of Deutero-Isaiah reading Karen Armstrong's History of God.

Stuff didn't make sense. Reading D&C seemed like a coverup for Joseph Smith messing up. It's the kind of reasoning I used when I messed up on high school or at home.

I remember thinking about the diffusion of Lehi's seed into the america's and thinking none of this makes sense. Once I started to lean towards that, then the magic boats with magic rocks began to sound really stupid. The Laban story sounded like something a 13 year old boy would write when imagining a heroic scene. It was like a Conan movie but with holes throughout. Pretty much the entire narrative became so silly. Everything unraveled from there...

I was TBM all the way until the essays came out. Too busy to look I suppose.

After reading 3 of the essays, I knew it was all over. Took me 4 years to fully internalize it, but the impulse hit right away. Too obvious that there was a cover up of damning and disqualifying actions.

Stocks wrote:I was TBM all the way until the essays came out. Too busy to look I suppose.

After reading 3 of the essays, I knew it was all over. Took me 4 years to fully internalize it, but the impulse hit right away. Too obvious that there was a cover up of damning and disqualifying actions.

Welcome to the board Stocks. Not unexpected but still interesting to hear of a case of that. Curious though, what prompted you to read the essays? From what I understand they aren't known about to the average member.

True story, I was as they say, blissfully unaware of the essays until August 2015. My brother mentioned them and said “bro there is some weird stuff from church history that the church admitted”. Well I had a look. The rest is history.