President John Taylor:
I think a full, free talk is frequently of great use; we want nothing secret nor underhanded, and I for one want no association with things that cannot be talked about and will not bear investigation.
Thanks for coming to visit. Our intention is not to convince, attack, or judge. We merely wish to help our friends and family be more informed about the aspects of church history, doctrine and policies that we ourselves wish had been shared with us years ago.
To read one of our letters (there are multiple versions) we sent to our family and friends, go here.
We highly recommend reading a summary of the main issues at this link.
We put the main bulk of our research and thoughts into the menu items above and to the side.
We also cannot recommend MormonThink enough. It is about as neutral as possible, impeccably researched, and provides arguments from both sides.
We think it’s important to note one thing in particular: a simple lack of evidence about the claims of the church would be one thing, perhaps allowing us to have faith in the absence of that evidence. But the evidence is blatantly contradictory, leaving us wondering how we could possibly be expected to believe it.
Finally, please don’t be afraid to leave comments or contact us directly. We love discussing these things with anyone, anytime, and anywhere. If we are wrong about anything, or you doubt it because we didn’t provide a source, we want to know!
Elder B. H. Roberts:
Suppose your youth receive their impressions of church history from “pictures and stories” and build their faith upon these alleged miracles [and] shall someday come face to face with the fact that their belief rests on falsehoods, what then will be the result? Will they not say that since these things are myth and our Church has permitted them to be perpetuated …might not the other fundamentals to the actual story of the Church, the things in which it had its origin, might they not all be lies and nothing but lies? … [Some say that] because one repudiates the false he stands in danger of weakening, perhaps losing the truth. I have no fear of such results. I find my own heart strengthened in the truth by getting rid of the untruth, the spectacular, the bizarre, as soon as I learn that it is based upon worthless testimony. (Defender of the Faith: The B. H. Roberts Story, p. 363)
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Our quest for truth 
Hi Mark-
I don’t remotely claim to have all the answers, and I too being an engineer agree that there are things in the early history of the church that seem sketchy, or at least are clouded with conflicting evidence/opinions. I think the odds of being able to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s in this life just won’t happen, because if you could, it would remove the need for faith from the equation, and you could make the argument that anyone that isn’t a member is crazy.
I also agree that biblical stories such as Noah seem pretty outlandish, as does eating manna from heaven, parting the red sea, being turned into to a pillar of salt, etc. But if you believe in Christ (not clear that you do any longer?) whom can cure blindness instantly, bring others back to life, and bring Himself back to life, then these other stories don’t seem impossible.
I noticed that you didn’t address patriarchal blessings in any of your posts. I have first hand experience of quite specific life events being described in these blessings, and happening. You could argue that they are self fulfilling prophecies, but many of these events are only partially within the control of the individual. The statistical chance that a stranger you met for around an hour while you were a teenager being able to accurately forecast specific life events decades down the road is unfathomably small. Meteorologists with massive supercomputers at their disposal are barely able to accurately predict the weather for the next few days, and I think it could easily be argued that a person’s life is at least within a couple orders of magnitude as complex a system.
Anyway just food for thought :)
Thanks David!
As far as Christ goes, I was surprised to learn that modern scholars believe the accounts of his life comprising the four gospels were written long after his death by people who did not even know him. So I applaud many of his teachings and think society would be better if more people followed them, but I believe there is absolutely no credible evidence that he performed miracles or even actually claimed divinity for himself. I treat him as a great philosopher.
Patriarchal blessings are an interesting one for me. I respect that some people feel they have had prophetic significance in their own lives. My personal experience, which is anecdotal just as theirs is, differs dramatically.
To me, it’s far too convenient that everything in the blessings is dictated by faithfulness. Prophetic utterances with stipulations like that are essentially unassailable.
But it gets really interesting when ex-Mormons get together and share their patriarchal blessings or when ex-Patriarchs leave the church (a very rare occurrence) and explain it from their perspective. To keep things short, no single part of my patriarchal blessing is remotely unique or unusual. When I Googled the exact phrases in mine, it became clear what it was.
My personal opinion is that they are carefully crafted fortune telling.
It’s helpful to examine your own justifications for believing and trying to fit them to other beliefs that you don’t hold. For example, if you’re willing to ignore all the uncrossed T’s and un-dotted I’s, then couldn’t you believe in anything? Where do you draw the line? Certainly you’d agree that Islam or Judaism contain a lot of uncrossed T’s, should they be justified in their beliefs as well?
I also find it interesting that you make an appeal to faith, and then later claim that your patriarchal blessing is essentially irrefutable. The difference between patriarchal blessings and meteorologists is that meteorologists try not to use vaguely worded generalizations to predict the weather. Their predictions are not generally open to interpretation. People have similar testimonies of mediums and fortune-tellers.
Faith is not a pathway to truth. Faith is an excuse for clinging to unjustified beliefs.
I can understand your POV, there some some that I have read that are quite generic and very open to interpretation. To some extent I think you may have selection bias, in that those that contain extremely specific details and do turn out to be true in individual’s lives are probably kept pretty close and personal and not shared, whereas those that either do not turn out, or are very generic and/or from an individual that leaves the church are more likely to end up in the open.
Right, I think there very well may be selection bias. But since I am completely unaware of anything remarkable or prophetic happening from one, it has absolutely no bearing on my personal belief.
I do think as well though that there is a significant amount of confirmation bias in many cases. Do you remember Monson’s talk in the last Oct GC about the five-dollar bill he accidentally left in his pants when he sent them off to be washed? He prayed and when he got the laundry back and found the bill still in the pocket, he “knew” that God had answered his prayer.
Frankly, I find that rather ridiculous. And because of confirmation bias, he probably would have ignored or forgotten it if the bill hadn’t been in there, instead of “knowing” that God *hadn’t* answered his prayers.
I think there are likely similar occurrences with patriarchal blessings. If some part of it doesn’t come true, it’s ignored or written off as a lack of faithfulness. But if anything comes true, even indirectly, it’s viewed as a miracle of some sort. People are naturally inclined to ignore evidence that contradicts their beliefs and focus on evidence that confirms them.
This is a pretty darn good video about that and how to determine truth.
I’m certain there is confirmation bias, no disagreement there. But the question is, does something really have to be correct 100% of the time to be worth believing in? Science is anything but that, there are a huge number of things we just don’t understand, but I think we both feel it is worth believing in, helps our lives, and we expect in the future we will better understand it.
That’s a great question and I think we both agree that it doesn’t need to be 100% correct to be worth believing in. But the fact of the matter is, the church is either true or it is not.
If it is true, there can still be significant mistakes, missteps, misunderstood prophecies, etc.
If it is false, there can still be some things that come true or perhaps even seem like revelation.
But analyzing it as a whole as objectively as I could, I felt there was not only a lack of compelling evidence that it was true, but also a mountain of evidence that it was not true. Once I decided that it wasn’t true, the question was, “Is it worth it to keep participating and gain some benefits from the principles and morals taught?”
In the end, I decided that it wasn’t. I happen to know quite a few people who don’t believe in the veracity of the church but choose to stay anyways. I fully respect them, but it wasn’t for me.
I can respect your decision, everyone has to find what works for them, and live with the results, whatever they may be.
Out of curiosity, I assume you also don’t believe in an ‘afterlife’ of any sort? I find that any time I even entertain the possibility that ‘this is it’, or that if I die I cease to exist, that it is extremely depressing. If you’ve given up the hope of something like that, doesn’t it make you feel very different toward your own (and family member’s) mortality and fragility of life?
Your blog seems well thought out. I’m pretty much on board with your findings, except I do believe in Jesus Christ’s divinity, man… but I think you and everybody who writes blogs like this needs to remind people that the LDS Church is still, for the most part, a really good church, and a legitimate religion, and a valid path to God.
is a blog that lists reasons for someone to stay LDS even though they may no longer believe that the Church is everything it claims to be. It’s a place for questioning Mormons to go when traditional Mormon apologetics aren’t working. I thought the readers of this blog might like to know about it.
It’s rather obvious that you’re just blog spamming, so I removed those references.
I’m fine with people believing in Christ still. For myself, turning the critical eye to Mormonism led to the same process about Christianity and I came up with the same result: it’s an invention of human beings and has no evidence for its supernatural and far-fetched claims.
I also disagree, for the record, on the LDS church being a mostly good thing. It fights social progress for equality. It keeps women subservient in the home and workplace. It tells families to pay tithing before feeding their families, tithing amounts that are completely unnecessary to a $40 billion corporation. It detracts from scientific literacy and critical thought. It divides families when there are differences in sexual orientation or beliefs. I could go on.
I have read some of this blog about mormonism, I wonder why is the only church in the list, do you have some about other churches and religions?
We were raised Mormon and spent almost 30 years in it, so it’s the religion we are most experienced with and did the most researching regarding. Sorry!