Back to you, Dieter

Dear Dieter,

Two years ago I started this blog because you recycled a mind-numbingly stupid slogan about how we needed to be aggressively critical towards our doubts instead of towards our faith. It's a slogan that suggests we should engage in self-censorship by turning a blind eye to unfavorable information. You suggest that ignorance is better than honesty. The fact is it's not.

In one of your talks earlier this month, you repackage the story of Daniel ("and other young students in Israel") in Babylon like it's the story of a young, enthusiastic Mormon headed off to a liberal university where he must resist the peer pressure to adopt the philosophies of man. "But Daniel believed. Daniel did not doubt." It's a clever move. It's also a very misleading juxtaposition. To suggest that today's higher education systems throughout the world are comparable to the vicious theocracy of King Nebuchadnezzar in which nonconformists are burned alive is, in a word, bizarre. Seriously, the Babylonian "team of scholars" (the Bible says "magicians and astrologers") has nothing to do with thousands upon thousands of highly trained researchers across the world who endlessly critique each other's work. Daniel, the Israelite captive carried off to be indoctrinated probably has more in common with young LDS missionaries than college students being pressured to binge drink with their fraternities and sororities.

Just think about it. I am, Dieter, and I think your analogy sucks. How much easier would it have been for Daniel to simply go along with the ways of Babylon? I don't know. I imagine he would have faced some pressure from his fellow Isrealites in captivity and I can't imagine how attractive the Babylonian belief system would have been, if at all. Please don't think that replacing one's belief system is easy. When a belief system is not yours, you're mostly likely going to think it's obviously ridiculous. He could have set aside the restrictive code of conduct God had given the children of Israel. He could have feasted on the rich foods provided by the king and indulged in the worldly pleasures of the natural man. Think of all the vile bacon he could have been eating! He would have avoided ridicule. I didn't see where in the book of Daniel it mentions ridicule. Can I get a verse on that?

He would have been popular. WTF? He was the prince of the eunuch's favorite and one of Nebuchadnezzar's top four councilors.

He would have fit in. Poor kid. At least the totalitarian king loved him. :S

His path might have been much less complicated. Had he just drank the Kool-aid, er... wine...

As silly as your talk is up to this point, it's outdone in the next section where you blame it all on Satan and shame people who are skeptical or have doubts.

Satan, our adversary, wants us to fail. Satan is an early Christian invention, not an actual spirit being. He spreads lies as part of his effort to destroy our belief. What lies? That Joseph Smith had a history of making shit up to get money out of people starting from his early teens? That he plagiarized and falsified rather than actually translate? That he cheated on his wife many, many times and tried to exonerate himself with a fabricated revelation? He slyly suggests that the doubter, the skeptic, the cynic is sophisticated and intelligent, while those who have faith in God and His miracles are naive, blind, or brainwashed. No, that's not Satan, that's logic. Satan will advocate that it is cool to doubt spiritual gifts and the teachings of true prophets. No one's doubting because it's "cool", you asshole! People doubt because they see various inconsistencies in the theory of spiritual gifts and the teachings of those claiming to be prophets. Most of us don't go hunting for them; they arise naturally throughout the years of indoctrination. Right now you sound like the type of person who would claim fossils were put on earth by Satan to deceive us.

And now for the token quote from this train wreck of a prophetic message - the part where you call doubters ignoble, unimpressive, lazy, morally weak, disloyal and cowardly.

Brethren, let me be clear: there is nothing noble or impressive about being cynical. Skepticism is easy—anyone can do it. It is the faithful life that requires moral strength, dedication, and courage. Those who hold fast to faith are far more impressive than those who give in to doubt when mysterious questions or concerns arise.

Who the fuck do you think you're fooling? First off, don't conflated cynicism for skepticism. Now let me show you the other side:
  
Following your family, your friends and your community in their beliefs is easy. It's great having everyone around you be in constant agreement because they think like you do. It's very hard when you don't share the beliefs of your community and you live your life as an outsider. Your kids might even have a hard time finding friends whose parents will let them come over to play. But it is the sincere life of inquiry and careful judgement that requires moral strength, dedication and courage! Those who hold fast to integrity of thought and open-mindedness are far more impressive than those who allow their family or the geographical location in which they were born to provide a prepared set of default answers to questions or concerns about your worldview.

You end your talk with the horrible idea that we simply choose to believe because somehow that will make all the absurdities of the LDS history and doctrine magically disappear. You're asking us to shut off our brains, to stop thinking. Most people can't do this. Most people will struggle silently with cognitive dissonance, will wear out their knees praying for answers, will hate themselves for not understanding and not getting any divine enlightenment. Others will have the courage and good sense to accept the reality of life on earth and walk away from the Church.

Dieter, you should be ashamed of yourself. Your talk will hurt thousands of people who are struggling to make Mormonism work somehow. My only consolation is that the only reason you gave this talk in the first place is because so many people are leaving the Church. You're desperate. You can't defend the Church with facts, so you attack the people who have seen the facts. How cowardly of you.

When You Don't Like the Temple - My response

Rumors about people leaving the church because they didn't like the temple abound in Mormonism. I heard that it was freaky or weird, then I took out my endowment for myself. I didn't see the freaky. I did see a little weird. But my problem was I didn't see much of the divine or inspirational. It's nice to know that others have had the same problem. It's nice to be able to talk about our temple experiences without fear of committing some kind of sin.

What follows are the thoughts of a couple who has struggled and then found faith somehow, and my thoughts on those thoughts. I applaud their willingness to breach the issue, but that's about all. The original post can be found here.

When You Don't Like The Temple

My husband was asked to speak this month on the temple, and so he and I worked on this talk together. I wanted to put it on the blog in case it is helpful to anyone else in this situation.

 So to start, I want to share a very personal experience. I hope it's about seeing a spirit apparition in the temple...

When my wife and I were engaged, I had the opportunity to take her through the temple for the first time, a moment I had looked forward to since going through myself. Sounds like you were probably smitten with the experience for some reason. I wasn't. When she came into the celestial room where I and all her family were waiting, she started crying. And it took everyone back a little, because it didn’t look like a happy cry. That's horrible. I feel for her already.

As it turned out, she had not enjoyed her temple experience. I wonder what the statistics are on people not having a good first time in there... In fact, unbeknownst to me at the time, that night she stayed up until 4:00 in the morning crying and wondering if she should tell me that she no longer wanted to be married in the temple because of how it had made her feel. I certainly wanted nothing to do with the temple after a while as well, but for me it took more than one lackluster experience. I was devoted! Did you really use "unbeknownst" in your talk? Wow. Anyway, let's see how she felt after going through the temple...

Well, she decided to push through her doubts and confusion, and get married in the temple. Wait, you didn't say how she felt, you didn't bother mentioning what her doubts were or why she was confused. This feels like a major jump in your story. Why didn't you give us something here? The importance of the temple was something she had believed in her whole life, and she didn’t think she should so drastically change her mind after this first disappointing experience. Hold up. Let's set this story straight. She has spent her whole life being taught that the temple was important and decided it was better that she be disappointed rather than disappoint her whole family, friends, ward and fiancé.

So we got married in the temple, and it was a happy occasion. Probably because she didn't have to go through the same sexist bullshit that she had to endure during the endowment. The next time we went to the temple together, however, I got the whole story. I hope we get it too... Her feelings were all shocking to me. I think there are a lot of folks like you in the Church who are shocked to hear that the temple didn't come off too well on someone (most of them are probably men, like you). I had never struggled with the temple and I had always thought of temple as the happiest place on earth! But not because that's what you were told your entire life that it was. :S Initially I was not as understanding as I should have been. I am not proud of it, but I was probably a little combative and so the conversations usually ended with both of us in frustration. At least you'll admit it now. But over the last 6 years of conversations, I have come to better understand her experience and have learned of, and sometimes felt, the uncertainty and pain that aspects of the temple bring to her and others in the church. It's taken six years of conversing about this?! Hey, at least you've gotten somewhere.

I don’t share this story to strike fear into the hearts of youth and people getting ready to go to the temple. It is not something to be feared. I totally agree. Kids, be fearless in the temple. Don't let concerns of divine acceptance prevent you from thinking for yourself and doing what you feel is best for you. Temples are built as monuments to God and we take incredible steps toward him and learn many things about him when we attend the temple. The steps you take involve learning Masonic handshakes and saying while wearing Freemason-inspired clothing. I personally don't see Feemasonry as the pathway to God. I also don't recall what you learn of God other than his special Hebrew name, Elohim.

I do share this story for three reasons.  

• One, because I want to dispel the belief that having a hard time with the temple is always associated with not being personally worthy or not having enough faith. AMEN! My wife was and is amazing, and her doctrinal knowledge and active participation in the church were some of the main reasons I was attracted to her.  
• Second, I want people to know, unlike me at the time, that there are those who have a hard time with the temple so that we can be prepared to demonstrate compassion and love when we hear of such experiences. So God puts these doubters into our path to test us? God's a nut.
• Finally, I would like to present to you a few of the things Liz and I have learned as we’ve worked through this experience together. Oh, please do! I've never felt very inspired or educated in the temple. I would love to know what you've learned. In fact, you will hear a lot of “we” in this talk. We counseled together a lot in preparation for this, so these words and this experience truly are “ours.” Team work! There's no "I" in "marria-" Oh! Never mind.

One final caveat, if this is surprising to you, like it was to me, that some people have a hard time with the temple, I would ask that you stay with me! STAY WITH HIM! You never know if someday it might be you, or if there is someone that the Lord wants you to hear this message for, so that you can give them the kind of love and support that the Lord would give them. That's right, YOU MIGHT NOT LIKE THE TEMPLE when you go through for the first time! God might have inspired this talk for you so when you meet someone who didn't have a good experience you'll be prepared for that nutty test thing alluded to earlier.

With that said, I want to share a quote from a conference address by President Monson in 2010 where he said, “I think there is no place in the world where I feel closer to the Lord than in one of His holy temples. He thinks? Is Tommy doubting? As we go to the holy house, as we remember the covenants we make therein, we will be able to bear every trial and overcome each temptation. That's an easy promise, isn't it? It almost sounds too good to be true... The temple provides purpose for our lives. If you're life had no purpose without the temple, I can't help but feel bad for you. It brings peace to our souls” But not all of our souls for some reason. Probably because of Satan. Or maybe God if he's using us to test each other again.

I want to testify that this is what a dedicated house of the Lord, the temple, is for. We should use the building as a place to build our relationship with God, in addition to making sacred temple covenants!  We need to remember that! I'm pretty sure we don't need temples to build our relationship with God (should he even exisit). Jesus was pretty quiet about the whole temple thing and preferred instead to focus on baptism and loving God through loving our neighbors. It should be the place where we ponder and seek counsel from God on the purpose of our life. Not by our bed as we pray, or sitting meetings in church, or when we're having a difficult interaction with family and coworkers, or when we're out in nature? It should be the place where we learn the temporal nature of this life, learn how to overcome trials, gain insight from the Lord, and learn about the eternal possibilities that lie ahead, both from what is being said and done, and also from prayer and contemplation there. And what happens when the temple does almost none of those things in any significant way for us? Is it OK to move on with life and find something else more reliable?

However, as I’ve already mentioned, to some their trial is the temple, because it does not inherently bring them peace. That puts one's testimony in a very tricky situation. So what are you to do if that is your situation? Exactly! Now there are a lot of things you probably could do, but as I said, I want to share some of the things Liz and I did:

First, we never stopped going to the temple. I did. But it took me a while to reach that point. Eventually you've got to call the spade a spade. Liz had been taught that she would never have a testimony of the temple if she wasn’t going to the temple, so even though she didn’t feel comfortable initially, she continued to go, genuinely trying to find ways to like it and to feel spiritually filled. And eventually she got used to it, I guess.

In the beginning, she decided that if nothing else, it was peaceful to sit in a place that represented heaven, and that could be a sacred experience for her even if everything else that was said or done didn’t bring her peace. Really? Nothing else that was said or done brought her peace? I can't believe she put up with the temple for so long! The funny thing for me is that the Celestial Room is one of the things that didn't bring me peace. I was an awkward hotel lobby. I tried meditating and praying in there and just couldn't get anything. As she continued to go, she was able to add things to her list that she both enjoyed and had a testimony of. So she just got used to it all with time. Not a great testimony sell.

She continues to do that today. I'd love to see the list of things she still doesn't like. That would definitely give us something to talk about. So if you don’t like a part or several parts of the temple, or don’t understand them, don’t let that ruin the whole temple experience for you. Why not? Would you eat a bowl of ice cream with cockroaches mixed in? Would you just focus on the parts you like as you dutifully eat it? Cling to the things you do enjoy, the things that do bring you peace, and let those things bring you back to the temple as you continue to expand your knowledge. Knowledge of what? I don't think you're using knowledge the way the rest of the English-speaking world would understand it.

Second, we continued to ask questions and seek answers in the temple. What questions did you ask? Who did you ask? What were the answers? What questions do you still have? Isn't it a little strange that after going through the temple endowment regularly for six years you still have questions about things? Elder Nelson in 2010 said “The temple endowment was given by revelation. Thus, it is best understood by revelation, vigorously sought with a pure heart.” You mean you don't ask anyone except Our Imaginary Friend who is Heaven? Have you ever asked other people if they've received the same answers through revelation? I'm guessing no.

Admittedly, revelation on the temple is hard to come by. That's quite a reveal! Are you sure you're doing it right? If so, why would your loving heavenly father be so stingy with his answers? It takes a lot of work, a lot of study, and even then you don’t know if you have the right answer. That's because you can't check your answers with anyone. The brethren like to keep us seeking answers in the temple endlessly and paying a full tithe in order to do so. But I can testify that while having questions initially brought me and Liz a lot of awkward conversations, frustration, and pain, it also eventually brought, and continues to bring, answers and faith that I’m not sure would have come if we hadn’t had the question in the first place. Are you insinuating that people who don't struggle with the temple are in the end weaker than those who do? I'm still dying to know what questions your wife had.

I can also testify that while we have sought to understand parts of the temple that were stumbling blocks to Liz, and thus to me, we have  a much deeper understanding of the things taught in the temple and in the church than we did before we asked the hard questions. Wait! How do you know you have a deeper understanding of anything at all? You just got through telling us that you don't ask other human beings your questions and you don't get many revelations from the Big Guy. So what scale are you using to measure your understanding?

Let me emphasize, we do not understand everything in the temple. Bring your questions to me and I'll do what I can to straighten you out on the details. Sometimes parts still cause pain and confusion. Like what? Let's talk. I'm curious to know why you keep subjecting yourself to this thing that causes you pain and confusion. But we are hopeful that answers will continue to come. All we have is hope. In essence, continued attendance is our faith in action. That's true. We have a solid testimony in the 9^th article of faith which states: "We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God." Good for you. I have no faith in that. Here's an idea why I don't.

One of my favorite religious and secular authors is Clayton Christensen. In his book “The Power of Everyday Missionaries” he says, “There is not a footnote at the end of the 9^th article of faith to say that we know all things about any gospel principles. We have more to learn!” and so it is with the temple. We shouldn’t expect to have all the answers, because it's in our doctrine that we don’t. What answers are you talking about? What questions are we answering? You make this sound so difficult and yet we don't know what your difficulty is.

The idea that He will yet reveal many great and important truths is a central part of our doctrine. So you go to the temple regularly and participate in activities you don't like or understand because you hope that one day it will all make sense to you? THIS IS NOT HEALTHY. GET OUT.

Liz and I have become intimately acquainted with the pain and patience required to learn the gospel “line upon line, and precept upon precept.” Jesus never said it would be easy, right? But we have grown immensely in our understanding of revelation because of it. You understand that it doesn't really come very often and that it's hard to understand if it did come. Thanks for being honest, but it sounds like you're being conned.

Third, we actively pondered on and studied the symbols in the temple.

Again from, Elder Nelson “The temple ordinances are so imbued with symbolic meaning as to provide a lifetime of productive contemplation and learning.” This bullshit about symbols really gets my goat. You can stare at a wall of symbols all you want but without proper guidance and training you're not going to get very far. Even in the case of highly trained people making a breaking through in some previously unknown set of symbols, they always share their finds and see if others agree with the predicted meanings. Symbols are about communication and don't mean anything without an interlocutor. So let's back up a bit to the creation of the symbols. Who made the symbols? Why do the makers of temple symbols not share the meaning of these symbols with the rest of us? Are we to believe that God inspires these symbols without explaining them to the people who present them to us? Did God reveal the words and gestures of the temple to Joseph Smith and then say "figure it out, buddy!"? Did he guide the hands of his movie directors and not give them the reasons behind the moments of genius he bestowed upon them?

Given the amount of symbolism, Liz and I have made a habit of focusing on one or two things each time we go and then ponder and study them. Like what? What are examples of temple symbols you've focused on? Which ones have you figured out and what do they mean? Don't leave us hanging. Are you worried we won't agree or are you worried God will get mad at you for taking temple on the internet? This practice has kept the temple both current and more meaningful. Meaningful only to the extent that you make up what it means. It has helped us not become complacent in our learning or understanding of the temple ceremony. Except you don't know if you're learning or just pretending to. As a result, we’ve found answers and explanations, and we’ve also found more questions. But you won't share. That's very dickish. It seems we are never out of questions, but those questions are no longer as frustrating because we have learned to live in peace with questions and learned to enjoy the process of looking for answers. You've resigned yourself to the futility of it all. Congratulations. :S

Fourth, we had faith that the blessings of the temple would hold true even if it was hard to go. What blessings are we talking about again? We have been promised that we will be given extra spiritual strength and help with mortal problems when we attend the temple, and we trust that that will be true even if attending sometimes feels spiritually draining in the moment. "Spiritual strength" to deal with "moral problems"? What are you talking about? Give us an example.

This faith was built on knowledge that throughout the scriptures, the Lord consistently has his prophet’s build temples. So they must be a place where He wants us to be. Actually, there are only about three temples in all of the Bible and a good many more prophets than that. One of the biblical temples - the during Jesus' time - had been totally redone by a non-prophet. Not only that, those temples were all drastically different from the secret Masonic thing the LDS Church has going on today. I think the only reason you're conflating current LDS practices with ancient Israelite practices is because the LDS Church tells you it makes sense to. You're also conveniently ignoring all the temple building traditions that the LDS Church excludes. Are Buddhist temples a sign of divine guidance? In fact, in the Old Testament, Ezekiel is shown a detailed vision of the temple. He sees a temple sitting in the desert, and out of the temple is running a huge river of water. The water main must have been busted...

In Ezekiel chapter 47 verse 7-9, an angel shows him that there were “very many trees on the one side and on the other.” And then he was shown that the waters ran through the desert into the sea, where the waters of the sea were then healed. The angel concludes by saying “every thing shall live whither the river cometh.” Zeke was totally trippin'!

I love these scriptures, because it does indeed feel like the world is a spiritual desert sometimes. Because the Church constantly teaches that the world is barren and depraved and miserable. But we’re told that the temple will give healing water to those living in the desert, “and everything shall live whither the river cometh.” Sure, but what about all the "very many trees" on either side of the temple? It sounds like they had their own water and were probably part of an amazing ecosystem independent of the temple's broken water main.

We know, that despite questions, we need access to the spiritual water that can keep us and our family alive in the deserts of our lives. "Deserts of our lives"? I thought the world was a desert. Aren't we all living in a spiritual desert all the time? We have faith that if we continue to go to the temple, we will be given the water we need. Kids, if this "we'll die without the temple" routine sounds dramatic to you, let me assure you that it is. It's also bullshit. Billions of people live happy, beautiful, moral lives without the LDS temple.

Lastly, when I decided that I would be focusing my talk on our personal experience with the temple, by coincidence (which I don’t typically believe in) I saw on Facebook that a close friend of ours had just given a talk in her ward on this exact same topic! Everything happens for a reason, doesn't it?! :S I asked if I could get a copy of it and I would like to share an excerpt that I think sums up the message I wanted to send today:

She says: “The temple should be a place of peace, but unfortunately the temple is a very painful place for some members of the church. Maybe because it's not all it's cracked up to be. The temple should be a place free from sin. But it's totally not because those men assigned to filter out the sinners have no true filtering capabilities. It probably is in the brief moment between when it’s dedicated and when the first person walks into it. I doubt it though when I consider how much the Church spent on it verses how much good that money could have done for the poor and destitute. The temple, like our homes, should be a place that binds families together, both through ordinances and the closeness that comes from worshiping together. It should bind families, but it doesn't always. So many times it becomes a place of division and family feuds. However, differences in belief, poor use of agency, or misuse of the temple can actually damage families or pull them apart. AMEN. My point is that the temple is not a magical building immune from the frailties of our telestial existence. So true. The temple feels just as worldly as the rest of this "telestial" world. The temple is a building that we built and that WE dedicate to God. Yes, built and dedicated to the god that we build for ourselves and dedicated ourselves to. Dedicate means devotion and work. The dedication of a temple is a beginning, not the end.” I hope the temples end up as public buildings dedicated to housing the homeless and feeding the hungry.

To echo her words, we often discuss the temple as the climax of our church membership, but in truth, the temple is another beginning which takes work and devotion! It's another pointless Mormon boulder we have to keep rolling to the top of the hill only to have it roll back down again. There are many such boulders God wants us to push up hills. Seriously, baptisms for the dead is an insane endeavor considering how few accurate records have been kept for the world's population; temple sealings are an utter mess and even the top leadership admits that we'll just have to wait until the afterlife to see how God will sort it all out. I can only imagine why a loving intelligent god would makes us go through with this silliness.

 “Get everyone to the temple and the spirit of the temple in every heart and home” is our stake motto by revelation. You know it was a revelation how? Your stake presidency said so and it felt great when you prayed about it? What if your stake president had picked about any other sentence from a general authority's General Conference address? In the temple we make promises with God that have eternal significance with incredible blessings for us as we are faithful! I tried to identify those promised blessings not too long ago. I didn't see much in them worth fretting about. However, when we attend the temple, we need to understand that the temple is not perfect, as our friend says, but it is a truly amazing blessing given to us to grow closer to the Living God and learn to be more like him. What's not perfect about it? Let's identify some problems and get them resolved. We have to own our temple experience and use it for its designed purpose. Yes, as with essentially everything, it's only what we make it to be. While some aspects of the temple may cause some pain, do not discard all of the blessings that come from temple attendance. Tell us what the pain is and what the blessings are and let's do a cost benefits analysis.

In conclusion I want to share  a few thoughts from our general officers of the church:

First, Elder Bednar in this most recent conference said, “Within the sound of my voice are individuals who have received the ordinances of the temple and for various reasons have not returned to the house of the Lord in quite some time. My reason is that it didn't make me feel closer to God in any way shape or form. Then I found out more about how Joseph Smith came up with the whole charade. There was no way I was going back. I didn't miss it anyway. Please repent, prepare, and do whatever needs to be done so you can again worship in the temple and more fully remember and honor your sacred covenants.” There is no honor and no sanctity in the temple. And nothing to repent of.

I want to bear my testimony that it is worth going back, even if it requires a lot of soul searching and stretching of your mind, and maybe even actively overlooking parts that you do not like. I'm sure God's thrilled with us when we sit in his sacred theater and ignore all the stuff we don't like. :S It is worth going back and experiencing how the temple can draw you closer to Jesus Christ. Been there multiple times and tried that over and over. It didn't work.

Second, you may be tempted to think that if you don’t currently have a strong testimony of the temple, than you must not belong in this church. Kids, the Church wants you no matter what as long as you pay your tithing in full. But Sister Chieko Okazaki, a past general relief society presidency member, spoke to members who had felt like outsiders in the church when she said:

"If you experience the pain of exclusion at church from someone who is frightened at your difference, please don't leave [or] become inactive. The Church likes differences? Since when? Joseph Smith was avid about excommunicating people he had differences with. Things haven't changes too much since then. You may think you are voting with your feet, that you are making a statement by leaving. You are! The faster you walk away the sooner the Church will change for you.  [Some may] see your diversity as a problem to be fixed, as a flaw to be corrected or erased. Usually that someone is your bishop or neighbor who wishes he were the bishop. If you are gone, they don't have to deal with you anymore. Actually, you don't have to deal with them anymore! I want you to know that your diversity is a more valuable statement." Yes, stay and piss people in your ward off by making comments during lessons that will drive them all nuts. It'll be fun to be the target of their frustration. :S

Do not allow the fact that some people don’t find pain in the temple make you think that it is you who is broken. It's not you, it's the temple, believe me! We all have our trials of faith and for some it is having faith in the temple and being obedient by attending until understanding or new revelation come. You'll likely die before that happens. That is not something that disqualifies you from being a valuable member of this church. Your value in the Church rests entirely upon your regular tithing payments. And for those who may not struggle with the temple, we should be constantly reflecting on how we can be those ward members that are there to support others, even if we may not have had their same doubts. Empathizing with others? Sounds pretty awesome. We need to value diversity and the new insight and revelation diversity brings to us as a whole. Amen.

Liz and I have grown together in the temple, not because we felt it was perfect, but because of the way we dedicated our worship while we were there. Couples projects are the shit! We believe in the blessings of attending the temple, and I hope that if for whatever reason you have also struggled with attending the temple, that you will trust that it is worth going back. Sorry, you haven't sold me on the going back thing at all. I totally disagree with the idea of sitting and fuming over all the bullshit in the temple with the hope that one day my prayers of understanding will magically be partially answered. The way I see it, your god is about as generous of a teacher as someone who gives a toddler a Rubik's cube for a couple of hours and shows up every ten or fifteen minutes to show what the next move should be. Or worse, your god is the kind of sadist to give his torture victims enough false hope to keep them going despite the total absurdity of his torture chamber. Some people get off on that sort of thing, I don't. From where I stand the LDS temple is a sunken ship. I can't see any reason to climb back aboard.

Greg Trimble's 11 Book of Mormon evidences

If you have Mormon friends on social media, chances are you've been presented with links to some pretty interesting Mormon logic. One post I've recently seen from a popular blog makes the case for The Book of Mormon in 11 poorly thought out proofs. The proofs are stated as questions and are the typical examples offered by general authorities of why The Book of Mormon is true which means they're the kinds of things you can say in church meetings to make yourself feel important and everyone else feel comfortable, but predictably they are not very convincing.

Here are the eleven questions that will prove the authenticity of The Book of Mormon and my brief responses.

1. Could an uneducated boy come up with 531 pages of ancient scripture on his own that was historically accurate and prophetic in nature?

Answer: Yes, absolutely. Please open your copy of the book to essentially any page that isn't copied almost verbatim from the King James Bible (that might be harder than it sounds). Now tell me how many verses you have to read before you find one that sounds like an uneducated young man (calling someone in his early 20s a "boy" is condescending and inaccurate) er-ing and um-ing a dictation from his head. Not many. Joseph Smith loaded his book so full of place keepers, redundancies, filler and slip ups that I'm amazed when I make it through a single verse without feeling the need to edit.

Keep in mind that this is how it reads even after the Church's editing of all the more egregious frontier farmer speech.

2. Would it be possible for that boy to understand and include ancient Hebrew literary writing styles such as idioms and Chiasmus, some of which weren’t even discovered until long after Joseph Smith was gone ?

Answer: Easily. He read the Bible a lot. He, like every other human being who reads, would absorb and reproduce the style of what he reads to some degree. As for chiasmus, it's an extremely common organizational tool that certainly appears in Jewish literature but is not in any way limited to it. I made a chiasmus on accident once, others are more carefully thought out. You can find chiasmus in children's literature as easily as you find it in adult literature from all over the world, European literature included. This just came to mind, maybe Jews wrote it:

(A) Hickory dickory dock! 
(B)/(C) The mouse went up the clock.
(C) The clock struck one,
(B) The mouse ran down.
(A) Hickory dickory dock!

And quit insisting Joseph was a "boy" when he wrote The Book of Mormon; he was a married man.

3. How would Joseph Smith have been able to know so much about the Middle East, especially the Arabian Peninsula where Lehi and his family traveled? The book includes findings in that region that no one had discovered yet.

Answer: The "knowledge" about the Middle East found in the Book of Mormon could have been derived from having been shown a map. What do you think has been discovered there after the printing of The Book of Mormon that was included in the text? The "NHM" alter? Come on, give us what you've got. Everything apologists have thrown out there has been debunked.

4. How could Joseph Smith come up with roughly 200 new names in the Book of Mormon and then have them turn out to be Semitic in nature?

Answer: He read the Bible a lot. He reused many of those names, modifying them as he saw fit. It wouldn't be hard to throw in a few more made up names that look similar to what's found in the Bible.

5. If you think Joseph Smith couldn’t have written this book, then where did it come from? If one says the devil put him up to it…then why would Satan want to publish another testament of Jesus Christ and a book that does nothing but promote righteousness. Jesus said that a house divided against itself would fall.

Answer: Only a moron would say the devil wrote or inspired the writing of The Book of Mormon. It's origins are clearly early 19th century publications and popular thought.

6. Who were the “other sheep” that would hear Jesus’s voice in John 10:16?

Answer: The "Gentiles", in other words, the non-Jews.

7. Why are there volumes of books written by non-LDS authors stating that Christ came and visited the America’s a couple thousand years ago just like it says in 3rd Nephi? (See Example “He Walked The America’s”) How would Joseph Smith have known this when at the time no one even considered it?

Answer: No one has a monopoly on stupidity, ethnocentrism and wishful thinking. The one book you linked us to is very revealing about yourself as a thinker.

8. If we have the stick of Judah (record of the Jews or the Bible), then where is the stick of Joseph that is referenced in Ezekiel 37:15-20? The Book of Mormon is the only explanation for this scripture. Lehi was a descendant of Joseph. Think Joseph Smith could have gotten that right by sheer chance?

Answer: This is a misinterpretation of the Bible.

9. How could there be so many witnesses of the Book of Mormon and the plates and not one of them deny their testimony even when some of them became bitter toward Joseph Smith? With so many people involved…a hoax of this magnitude could never go uncovered.
 
Answer: People do and say all sorts of things for friendship, family and their reputation. Historian Dan Vogel has some presented some important information for you to consider.

10. How could the Book of Mormon never contradict itself while being an extremely complex book? After all these years…someone would have found something…but no.

Answer: The Book of Mormon is relatively straight forward in its narrative. It basically just tells the same story over and over again. The repetition is numbing, not profound. Despite the simplicity of the repeated narrative, contradictions and errors have in fact been found (you just have to be brave enough to read something other than LDS apologetic literature). It also contradicts known archealogy, natural history, and the history of religious and political thought; it contradicts other Mormon scripture; it contradicts current LDS beliefs (e.g. temporary suffering in hell vs. eternal suffering and the nature of the Godhead).

Even though The Book of Mormon isn't horribly riddled with internal contradictions, why does that somehow make it true? Many authors manage to avoid totally screwing up their stories, does that mean their books are true? Absolutely not.

11. How do I feel while I read the Book of Mormon? Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t trust your feelings. We are spiritual beings, and if we can’t trust our feelings, then what do we have? Over and over again in the Old and New Testament we’re told that we can trust that “still small voice” to guide us in our decisions. (1 Kings 19:12) I can write evidence after evidence to back up the Book of Mormon but each of those evidences I found were only secondary to the whispering of the Spirit I felt that day before I began waxing up my surf board.

Answer: Epistemology is a tricky thing. You're insisting that emotions are all we have. That's an unfortunate move on your part because we have a lot more than that: we have other senses to work with and we have logic. But if you're going to insist on feelings let's look at your feelings. Let's say you wake up from a dream about your wife cheating on you and you feel hurt and angry. You can't look at her the same for weeks. Did she really cheat on you? Are your feelings reliable? And what about others' feelings? Why do you seem so willing to disregard anyone's feelings and impressions that don't align with your own? What makes you think yours are the only true ones when members of essentially every other religion will use the same evidence as proof of their religion being true?

P.S. I wrote this blog immediately after reading the questions. The answers were too easy. I then went back to the blog to read the comments and saw that several people had written their responses as well. Several were similar to my own but I definitely encourage others to read through them.

Graven images

 As a missionary I loved accusing Catholics of worshiping idols. It made me feel so superior. Hadn't they read the Bible, or God's sake? It's very clear:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 

I think that means no statues of birds, or calves, or fish, or Satan, or prophets, or God, etc. Let's keep reading:

Yes.

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

I find it odd that God would feel so insecure about statues of stuff. Keep in mind he's not saying he feels self-conscious about how big a sculptor might make his nose or how small of a penis an artist might give him - he seriously just can't stand people using statues of any kind in worship. It doesn't seem to matter if the statue is nothing more than a vehicle to get people focused on God and his works. GOD FORBIDS ALL STATUES. 

Of course.

God's so touchy about this shit that he's totally willing to accuse users of statues of hating him and threatening their children. Yes, I know, he sounds like a asshole, but what I really want to point out here is that Mormons love their religious statues. 

Oh, that'd be perfect for the living room!

I reached a point where I had to doubt LDS adherence to Number Two of the Big Ten. That really sucked because it made criticizing Catholics so much harder.

 

Oh, my! Satan has such a strong hold on the World!

The First Vision

The LDS Church lays all its chips on Joseph Smith's 1820 theophany. When telling the story of the Church we begin with the story of a young teenage boy who was struggling to find the truth but then found the answer through an earnest prayer. That prayer parted the heavens and brought down God - Heavenly Father, The Eternal Father, Elohim - from his celestial throne with his Choicest of Children, Jesus the Anointed, The Creator, The Savior of the World, The Judge, The Father.

Theophanies aren't all that unusual and they're not always as pleasant as Joseph's was. My concern here is that it might not have ever happened in the first place.

Why would I doubt the reality of the First Vision? Mainly because

1. Joseph was not persecuted between the age of 14 and 17 for having seen God. No family member or anyone close to Joseph mentions persecution during these years and neither does Joseph until a decade later or more.

2. Family, friends and followers all attributed Joseph's prophetic call to his vision of Moroni at the age of 17 (1823).

3. The extant accounts of the First Vision begin in 1832. This seems to be the year Joseph invented his theophany. He begins by saying he was 16 but pushes his age back gradually until he says he was 14.

4. Age is not the only detail Joseph plays around with when recounting his First Vision. He can't keep straight who even showed up and spoke with him. Basically Joseph wanted everyone to believe he had a vision but he wasn't sure when, was unsure for years who appeared and wasn't sure what was communicated.

5. In the now official version of the story we understand that God told Joseph not to join any churches because "all creeds were an abomination" in the sight of God. So why did Joseph try to join the Methodists in 1828?

The whole story stinks. But the LDS Church will tell you it all harmonizes beautifully.

I don't know. I really don't see it.

The Color Purple

I read Alice Walker's The Color Purple when I was in high school. I had heard praises for the book from somewhere and so when I ran across it on a teacher's shelf I asked to borrow it. I was disgusted by it from the first page to the last, but I couldn't put it down.

Why was I so utterly disgusted by it? I was scandalized by the sex and horrified by the domestic violence. But most of all I was furious about how it spoke of God and religion. I found it blasphemous and I couldn't stand it.

So why was I so enthralled and read in two days? The narrative and writing style were recognizably compelling. And so were the arguments against God and male privilege.

The Color Purple made me recognize some of my doubts (which is why the Church doesn't recommend such reading) - doubts I buried as best I could, even though I knew deep down that I agreed with so much of what the author was saying.