The 10 most damaging critiques of Mormonism ever written

[_mentalgymnast]

Shades:I'd love to play. Count me in:

MG: Can you name a particular person, by name, who lived in the early nineteenth century who would have been the "perfect" candidate for God/Christ to restore these lost truths/authority to?

Shades: Yes: Count Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti.

MG: Please describe in detail why this individual would have been the better choice over the fourteen year old Joseph Smith. Overwhelming reasons. Such that there would be little room for doubt in your mind that this person was indeed called by God to be the "prophet of the restoration."

Shades: Certainly. This man, who during the Spring of 1820 was better known as Pope Pius VII, was the undisputed leader of the largest religious body on earth. As such, he had the ear of literally tens of millions of devout followers. Were he chosen to be the Lord's vessel to restore ancient Christianity, he already had more built-in credibility than any other single human being on the face of the globe. He was recognized as the pre-eminent "face" of Christianity by more people than any other person then living,* and thus the one person who, more than any other, had the right to alter Christian doctrine, practice, etc.

MG: Please don't answer my question with a question.

Shades: Your wish is my command.

*Even non-Christians recognized him over any other person as the "face" of Christianity.

Would there be little room for doubt in your mind that the pope was indeed called by God to be the "prophet of the restoration" without any more evidence than his word? It seems kind of unlikely that God would call the leader of a centuries old apostate Christianity to restore lost truths and authority in their fullness and purity. Wouldn't there also be some issues dealing with historical "skeletons in the closet" and such?

The Catholics have a few of those.

How many Catholics are going to willingly throw away their rosaries and give up their bi-yearly mass, for those that are happy with attending church only infrequently? How many are going to suddenly convert over to the word of wisdom? How many are going to willingly replace their rites of worship with attending the temple frequently? Etc., etc. I'm thinking that there would be a whole bunch of grass roots rebellion by the masses of the Catholic Church unless God himself appeared on the six o' clock news (unlikely, in my opinion) and confirmed most assuredly that the the apostate pope of an apostate church was now the chosen leader of the restored fullness of the the true and living church/gospel.

If the Catholics would have a rough time with it, think of how the rest of the world would respond.

To me it seems like God would want to start all over again...say with a young boy of around fourteen years of age.

You may want to consider coming up with someone else other than the pope. But that's just me.Thanks for playing!

Regards,
MG

[_Trevor]

Would there be little room for doubt in your mind that the pope was indeed called by God to be the "prophet of the restoration" without any more evidence than his word? It seems kind of unlikely that God would call the leader of centuries old apostate Christianity to restore lost truths and authority in their fullness and purity. Wouldn't there also be some issues dealing with historical "skeletons in the closet" and such?

And there we are.

Personally, I doubt that a pope would have been open to the notion of channeling new scripture to add to the Bible, but maybe that's just me.

[_huckelberry]

Trevor, you refer to a little moralizing story in the New Testament but you leave out signification pieces. The couple did not just give less than everything, they pretended to give everything in order to gain power and prestiege when in actuality the action was pretense. . I think it is a story about deceaving Christiian leaders of which history has pleanty more examples. Should I be to disappointed that in morality tales guilty people fall over dead to make a point more frequently than they do in real life ?

[_Trevor]

Trevor, you refer to a little moralizing story in the New Testament but you leave out signification pieces. The couple did not just give less than everything, they pretended to give everything in order to gain power and prestiege when in actuality the action was pretense. . I think it is a story about deceaving Christiian leaders of which history has pleanty more examples. Should I be to disappointed that in morality tales guilty people fall over dead to make a point more frequently than they do in real life ?

The significant piece to me is that "God" killed them, which could've course be euphemistic way of saying that the local church community tore them limb from limb, but whatever. I am not sure why you posted this clarification other than to show that you like the notion of God striking people dead for petty offenses.

[_Yong Xi]

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

The most damning evidence against the church is that it's predicated on the story of a 14-year-old who says he went into the forest and saw god.

Do you really have to go any farther than that? It amazes me that so many people seem to think you do.

Humor me for a moment. Let's ask a hypothetical question. Assume for a moment that there was a need/purpose for a restoration of lost truths/authority of Christianity because there had been an apostasy from the original church/gospel of Christ. Here's the question. Can you name a particular person, by name, who lived in the early nineteenth century who would have been the "perfect" candidate for God/Christ to restore these lost truths/authority to? Please describe in detail why this individual would have been the better choice over the fourteen year old Joseph Smith. Overwhelming reasons. Such that there would be little room for doubt in your mind that this person was indeed called by God to be the "prophet of the restoration".

I'm open to an alternative "prophet of the restoration"...convince me.

Please don't answer my question with a question. If you don't want to play because of an unwillingness to work with this assumption, then...well, OK.

Regards,
MG

I'll just stick with Joseph Smith. It is a perfect indictment of God.

[_Gazelam]

Lets dismiss the easy one first:

9) Franklin S. Spalding's 1912 Joseph Smith, Jr., as a Translator. Reverend Spalding got eight famous Egyptologists to absolutely blast Joseph Smith's interpretations of the Book of Abraham facsimiles. The contempt that bled through every page of these eminent men's statements provoked years of debate in the pages of the Deseret Evening News. During this debate the Egyptologists also predicted -- by determining which of the prophet's restorations were incorrect-- precisely where the lacunae in Facsimile 1 would turn out to be when the papyri were rediscovered years later.

This was a joke. Nibley shredded this in his talk On the Pearl of Great Price

Its available on itunes and is great to listen to as opposed to reading through it. Look for it under LDS voices listed as "Critical Opinion of the Pearl of Great Price".

[empirious]

Joseph Smith is a perfect choice. God needed somebody with the following qualifications:


He had to live in upstate NY near Cumorah where the Golden Plates lay hidden deep in a mountainside

He had to have experience with peepstones so he would know how to operate the urim and thummim which he didn't use

He had to be willing to take on dozens of additional wives and keep it a secret

He had to be in Illinois when Michael Chandler brought his mummies to Chicago

He had to be in Missouri to discover the Garden of Eden and the altar of Adam

He had to be uneducated, for had he been educated, he would not have participated

He and his father had to have the name of Joseph to fulfill prophecy in the Book of Mormon and JST Bible. That right there eliminates
99.9999999999999999999999999999999999% of the world's population unless God could accept Jose as an acceptable form of Joseph.



The way I see it, Joseph Smith was the only logical choice. MG is correct.

[_Trevor]

That does it. I'm going back to church. ;-)

Joseph Smith is a perfect choice. God needed somebody with the following qualifications:


He had to live in upstate NY near Cumorah where the Golden Plates lay hidden deep in a mountainside

He had to have experience with peepstones so he would know how to operate the urim and thummim which he didn't use

He had to be willing to take on dozens of additional wives and keep it a secret

He had to be in Illinois when Michael Chandler brought his mummies to Chicago

He had to be in Missouri to discover the altar of Adam

He had to be uneducated, for had he been educated, he would not have participated

He and his father had to have the name of Joseph to fulfill prophecy in the Book of Mormon and JST Bible. That right there eliminates
99.9999999999999999999999999999999999% of the world's population unless God could accept Jose as an acceptable form of Joseph.



The way I see it, Joseph Smith was the only logical choice. MG is correct.

[_CaliforniaKid]

This was a joke. Nibley shredded this in his talk On the Pearl of Great Price

Actually, the Egyptologists were largely vindicated (over against Nibley) when the papyri were rediscovered. I think they could certainly be criticized for the sheer negativity of their remarks, but it was a different age, and we should be careful not to judge them by present standards of political correctness.

[_huckelberry]

Why did I post a comment about the Ananias affair? Probably a bit of morbid curiousity whether the inference that the local chuch tore them limb from limb was actually intended. I suppose different folks project different stuff but that is a pretty bizarre projection. don't ask me to prove it didn't happen. I am sure in your uiniverse it just must have.

Have you considered a theory that Ananias and Sapphira were Jesus actual parents? might be worth considering.
No I do not think God kills for petty reasons