Mormonism

Fourteen investigations into Latter-day Saint truth claims, tested from the movement's own scriptures, leaders, and surviving documents. This page is the front door and links to all fourteen; the summary of where they came out is still to be written.

Summary

To be written.  Each of the fourteen articles below was researched from primary sources — Joseph Smith's own dictations, the Joseph Smith Papers, the Church's Gospel Topics essays, and the surviving nineteenth-century documents — and each states the Latter-day Saint case at full strength before evaluating it.  This page will eventually say where the fourteen came out, what they cost the Latter-day Saint side, and what they cost the critics.

What Latter-day Saints believe

To be written.  A description of the religion as Latter-day Saints themselves describe it, checkable by a Latter-day Saint reader against his own sources, before anything is tested.

The articles

Belief and authority

Joseph Smith and prophetic authority

  • Did Joseph Smith Restore Christ's Church? — The First Vision cannot be disproved, but its accounts change. The priesthood restoration was claimed early, yet its named angelic ordainers appear in no document before 1835. Early Christian history contradicts the total apostasy that a restoration requires.
  • Can Joseph Smith's Prophetic Gift Be Tested? — Of 29 testable claims, six succeeded, three partly succeeded, and eleven failed. The successes were self-fulfilled or reasonable guesses, not evidence of prophecy.
  • Did Joseph Smith Translate the Book of Abraham? — The papyri are Egyptian funerary texts, and Joseph Smith's readings of their figures and characters are wrong. Catalyst revelation remains possible, but the documents show that Smith believed he was translating.

The Book of Mormon

  • How Was the Book of Mormon Produced? — Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon in about three months, usually using a seer stone in a hat while the plates were covered or absent. The pace is unusual but within documented human ability and does not establish revelation.
  • What Did the Book of Mormon Witnesses See? — The eleven witnesses were sincere and did not recant. The Three had a visionary experience; the Eight support a physical object, but their family ties and limited accounts cannot establish that it was ancient.
  • Does the Book of Mormon Read Like an Ancient Record or a Nineteenth-Century Book? — The Book of Mormon contains deliberate literary structure, but its English depends on the King James Bible and engages nineteenth-century American religious debates. Its English composition is nineteenth-century.
  • Solomon Spaulding, Sidney Rigdon, and the Book of Mormon — The surviving Spaulding manuscript is not the Book of Mormon, and no evidence links another to Rigdon. Witnesses remembered a second ancient-America story, but no transmission chain survives.
  • Is There Archaeological Evidence for the Book of Mormon? — The Arabian NHM correspondence is a real but inconclusive hit. The American claim fails across writing, metallurgy, domesticates, crops, transport, linguistics, and every other diagnostic archaeological test.
  • Do Native American Genomes Test the Book of Mormon? — Native American ancestry predates the Book of Mormon migrations and excludes the traditional hemispheric Lamanite claim. A small, geographically limited Israelite group remains genetically untestable.

History and moral claims

  • Joseph Smith, Plural Marriage, and Revelation — Joseph Smith's plural marriage required public deception, a revealed threat against Emma, and proposals to teenagers tied to salvation. It weighs against his prophetic claim.
  • Race, Priesthood, and Changing Revelation — The LDS Church barred Black members from priesthood and temple rites for 126 years under prophetic authority, though Joseph Smith ordained Black men. It ended the ban in 1978 and disavowed every rationale without calling the ban an error.
  • Persecution, Theocracy, and Violence in Early Mormonism — Latter-day Saints suffered state-sanctioned expulsion and murder, but also committed organized violence and the Mountain Meadows massacre. Brigham Young did not order that massacre, though church-state fusion helped make it possible.

Verdict

To be written.