Sunday, 28 July 2024

Mormonism on Christianity

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I don’t want to overstate the conclusions of this piece. I do not have a horse in this race--I don’t think that the claims of either Mormoni...
Thursday, 2 November 2023

The Book of Mormon: Things that make you go hmmmm.

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Book of Mormon: Things that make you go hmmm… In this essay, I don’t intend to provide any hard hitting scientific, historical, philosophica...
2 comments:
Monday, 17 July 2023

A Book of Mormon Thought Experiment

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 Considering that :...the Prophet Joseph Smith said: “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth,...
Tuesday, 18 October 2022

Through Tinted Spectacles

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  In the 1939 classic film “The Wizard of Oz,” Dorothy visits The Emerald City, so named because virtually the entirety of the city is, in f...
Thursday, 5 May 2022

The LDS mission as a form of Hazing

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I have another article in Sunstone Magazine.  The LDS Proselytizing Mission as Hazing. It is an edited version of a previous blog post by th...
Saturday, 5 March 2022

The Sealed Portion of the Book of Mormon and the Pure Adamic Language

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1.       The Sealed Portion of the Book of Mormon and the Pure Adamic Language LDS scripture maintains that Adam and Eve had a language th...
Wednesday, 5 January 2022

The Ridiculous Car Purchase Analogy.

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  There is an analogy, often employed by defenders of the Latter-day Saint faith, when trying to divert attention away from critics of the f...
Tuesday, 28 December 2021

You don't need salvation. Part 1: Spiritual Ransomware

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What follows stands alone as an essay At some point there will be a part 2. But for now. enjoy part 1. [Inuit [i] ]: 'If I did not know ...
Monday, 26 April 2021

That time my five-year-old brother was told Satan is out to get him…

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  That time my five-year-old brother was told Satan is out to get him… When my little brother was in his earliest years (less than five) he...
Monday, 7 September 2020

LDS sexual impropriety and the externalization of the locus of moral control

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  Revised July 5th 2021 It started simply enough… My daughter had recently returned from a vacation, visiting her boyfriend who was studying...
3 comments:
Thursday, 28 May 2020

Nephi’s Alleged “Courage”

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Nephi’s Alleged “Courage”  I would like to start by suggesting that if a voice in your head tells you to kill somebody, you ought to igno...
3 comments:
Sunday, 19 April 2020

The Curious Date of the Nephite Apostasy

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In what might be quite the coincidence, the apostasy amongst the people of the Book of Mormon (BoM), specifically the Nephite people, happ...
Friday, 8 November 2019

LDS Epistemology in Bullet Points

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1. T he definition of "Knowledge" is believing without doubt. - Ether 3:19 2.  You have to WANT to believe in the proposition/...
Thursday, 3 October 2019

Dear Elder Oaks

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Dear Elder Oaks, You seem to be operating under the misapprehension that you think that you believe that “The…meaning of ‘gender…’ as us...
Saturday, 17 August 2019

On the Non-Infinity of the LDS Conception of God

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The “relatively infinite” God of Latter Day Saint (LDS) theology is incommensurate [i] with the infinite God of classical theism (CT)....
Saturday, 20 April 2019

Sin Does Not Exist (in Sunstone)

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I have an article, Sin Does Not Exist  in Sunstone Magazine (188). It is a version of  Zeus’s Thunderbolt, Euthyphro’s Dilemma, and the Eli...
2 comments:
Thursday, 11 April 2019

Leave it Alone? No. Just No.

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The perennial refrain of the faithful LDS when confronted with criticism from those disenfranchised from the Church: You can leave the Ch...
2 comments:
Thursday, 21 March 2019

Put Paid to the Lie: Equal Treatment of LDS LGB's

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(Rather than accept the terminology widely accepted by gay persons themselves, the LDS Church typically uses its own term to describe LG...
2 comments:
Sunday, 10 March 2019

"Speaking as a man" is not a good defense

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When a General Authority of the LDS Church is discovered to have taught something that in retrospect turns out to be nonsense, one possibl...
Sunday, 25 November 2018

The Unexamined Faith. Chapter One.

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I am gradually trying to put together a book that is (i) a critique of the foundational claims of Mormonism, and (ii) an attempt to make a...
Saturday, 8 September 2018

The Church of Milquetoast

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Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Mormonism knows that the LDS Church claims to be led by direct revelation by the good Lord H...
Saturday, 25 August 2018

Alma's Theory of Knowledge

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Once the decision was made to serve the mission, I took my preparation terribly seriously. I completed 4 years of seminary, read the Bible...
2 comments:
Thursday, 2 August 2018

Zeus’s Thunderbolt, Euthyphro’s Dilemma, and the Eliminative Reduction of Sin

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Sin is to morality as Zeus’s thunderbolt is to weather. [i] That is, Zeus’s thunderbolts do not exist and therefore contrib...
Tuesday, 13 February 2018

Snowblind

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Some years ago, the kids and I were returning from a Def Leppard concert in a nearby city. It was late at night and the kids were fast asle...
Wednesday, 13 December 2017

The LDS Proselytizing Mission as Hazing

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Presumably, we have all heard the notion that one of the primary purposes (if not the primary purpose) of the LDS proselytizing mission,...
2 comments:
Thursday, 19 October 2017

Abinadi: The Homer Simpson of the Book of Mormon

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Let me set the scene for you. Poor Homer, looking for a way to boost his self-esteem, wanders into an adult education facility and gets...
1 comment:
Wednesday, 27 September 2017

The Dunning-Kruger Effect and Missionary Age

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“the trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt" --Bertrand Russell While wat...
Monday, 11 September 2017

What does the statement "The (LDS) Church is true" even mean...?

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“The Church is true” is a statement I learned to make as a child; I learned to repeat the phrase mechanically before I had the cognitive whe...
1 comment:
Tuesday, 29 August 2017

An LDS “Epistemology” of Apostasy

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  Our faithful LDS friends and family have tremendous difficulty accepting that there can be any legitimate reason for leaving the Church. I...
3 comments:
Wednesday, 23 August 2017

Satan: MVP of the Plan of Salvation

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The gathered righteous erupt into a reverent silence as the good Lord Himself, even Jesus Christ, takes the podium, shuffles his notes, ta...
Tuesday, 25 July 2017

CTR Rings: The Embodiment of a Misguided Categorical Imperative

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CTR Rings: The Embodiment of a Misguided Categorical Imperative In this piece I intend to critique the LDS concept of CTR (Choose the Righ...