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The Mormons' Challenge

Orphia Nay

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Orphia Nay
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Some young mormons just knocked on my son's door, trying to spread the word.

My son and his housemates are atheists. They scoffed at the mormons' beliefs and told them they are atheists.

The mormons proposed a challenge - they gave my son the Book of Mormon and told him to read it, and the mormons will come back next Sunday and each side will give their best reasons as to why they are right and the others are wrong.

My son asked me for help in finding the best counter-arguments to Mormonism, and the best reasons to be atheist.

Can you help with the counter-arguments? I'm not well-versed in Mormonism.
 
I was once challenged by doorstep Mormons to read the whole of their book, which they assured me would convert me. I'm a fairly speedy reader, and it seemed like one of those books one ought to read at least once (and probably only once), so I did. It didn't work.

That was twenty-odd years ago, but what sticks in my mind as counter-arguments include the presence of horses in their history of the americas, before the horse was introduced and with no fossil record to back them up. The whole thing reads like someone deliberately writing another bible - I would have thought that families of John Smith's time and ilk would only have had one book, the Bible, and thus JS would have been very familiar with its style and able to write in that vein.

I don't know how far you'd want to go down the rabbit hole of comparing their book with the 'word of god' in the original, and highlighting the contradictions, but I'd imagine that would at best leave you at a stalemate of conflicting claims as to which is more 'real' and 'reliable' (when we know the answer is 'neither').

Oh, two other nuggets. God told them not to drink tea or coffee, but didn't have the foresight to mention Coke, which they typically guzzle by the bucketload, and God said it was OK to have more than one wife and then changed his mind.
 
I wouldn't tell them that Mormonism is "wrong". I would tell them that I found a devotion to empirical results to be more reliable, for my own needs. Appeals to scripture and authority are certainly not going to change that for me.

But, as long as they remain nice people, they can follow their books as much as they please.

I would tell them that I would respect their faith as long as they respect my lack of it.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Some young mormons just knocked on my son's door, trying to spread the word.

My son and his housemates are atheists. They scoffed at the mormons' beliefs and told them they are atheists.

The mormons proposed a challenge - they gave my son the Book of Mormon and told him to read it, and the mormons will come back next Sunday and each side will give their best reasons as to why they are right and the others are wrong.

My son asked me for help in finding the best counter-arguments to Mormonism, and the best reasons to be atheist.

Can you help with the counter-arguments? I'm not well-versed in Mormonism.
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If you can stand to wade through it, the "LDS" Thread has ploughed this ground: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=250332

Not that the Missionaries will admit to any points raised, but the invented-out-of -whole-cloth "history" of the BoM is problematic.

The BoM contains reference to horse culture; wheeled vehicles; domesticated cattle husbandry; farming of domesticated barley, and of steel technology. No archaeological evidence for any of these has been discovered. I predict that the Missionaries will use the typical LDS counters claiming that "horse" meant "tapir" (or deer), "barley" was some unknown grain mistaken for domestic barley, etc.

Another piece of LDS invention is the Book of Abraham, a papyrus fragment that Joseph Smith "translated": According to JS, it is Abraham's autograph of the time he spent in Egypt. The artifact was actually a common burial object; the text is a common Egyptian funerary text.

Another poiint to bring up is the way institutionalized LDS mores have "developed", including pervasive racism and misogyny.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Some young mormons just knocked on my son's door, trying to spread the word.

My son and his housemates are atheists. They scoffed at the mormons' beliefs and told them they are atheists.

The mormons proposed a challenge - they gave my son the Book of Mormon and told him to read it, and the mormons will come back next Sunday and each side will give their best reasons as to why they are right and the others are wrong.

My son asked me for help in finding the best counter-arguments to Mormonism, and the best reasons to be atheist.

Can you help with the counter-arguments? I'm not well-versed in Mormonism.
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TAKE THE CHALLENGE!

I dare you :D It made my life much better knowing them, and I am still not giving them any money.
 
Orphia Nay said:
The mormons proposed a challenge - they gave my son the Book of Mormon and told him to read it, and the mormons will come back next Sunday and each side will give their best reasons as to why they are right and the others are wrong.
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:boggled: There are people who are daft enough to accept that challenge.
 
Lord Emsworth said:
:boggled: There are people who are daft enough to accept that challenge.
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If you enjoy that kind of discussion, and a lot of the folks who end up in this section of the forums evidently do, why not take them up?

ETA: I'd be going after their revised American history claims that Slowvehicle has mentioned.
 
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The Book of Mormon is "Chloroform in print", according to Mark Twain. Why waste time with something so inane? Listen to some good jazz.;)
 
Sideroxylon said:
If you enjoy that kind of discussion, and a lot of the folks who end up in this section of the forums evidently do, why not take them up?
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Because it is kind of uneven. You get to do all the work, and they ... do nothing.

You could at least ask for an hourly wage. :D
 
kblood said:
TAKE THE CHALLENGE!

I dare you :D It made my life much better knowing them, and I am still not giving them any money.
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Only if you have enough beer to quench that burning bosom.
 
Lord Emsworth said:
Because it is kind of uneven. You get to do all the work, and they ... do nothing.

You could at least ask for an hourly wage. :D
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Exactly.
We're on this earth only once and every day you waste is a day you lose, so do something more useful or fun!
 
Thanks, all, for the good suggestions.

Kid Nay had a thought that he would challenge the mormons to read "The God Delusion".

I think he's enjoying this, which is why he accepted the challenge. :) The mormons are the same age as he and his friends - twenty. He doesn't like to see fresh young minds clinging to the dusty myths of religion.
 
There's a very easy way to accept and "win" the challenge in Mormonism without having to do very much at all.

The Mormon outline for the plan of salvation places everyone who dies in heaven by default, and builds a heaven that is multi-layered, while Hell is only really detailed as a single layer of concept (think of Dante's Inferno flipped upside down).
As long as you're not someone like "Hitler" (and some LDS even debate this), you don't just jump straight to hell.

Here's an image map to the LDS plan of salvation:
http://www.scripturecompanion.com/Downloads/Plan_of_Salvation_color.jpg

Notice how many lines go towards good stuff, and how only really one line goes to bad stuff (notice that even the first round of "bad stuff" even has a route out to "good stuff").
Then take note that all lines off of Earth start heading toward the good stuff (by a 2/3rds majority).

That's because the LDS position is that you have more than this Earthly chance.

So, the atheist position to LDS really can validly be:
"I'm good. I'll just wait for the afterlife to see God's world and make my decision then." ;)

The only real solid reason to be LDS, aside from wanting to be LDS, as an imperative is if someone wants to attempt to be up in the third celestial kingdom.
If you don't care about that, and just want a decent afterlife party, then you don't have to lift a finger really.

Heck, they can even baptize you after you die just in case you didn't do that before kicking the bucket; just in case you decide to try for an upper floor office in heaven instead of the mailroom gig.

BTW: all of this is because of that starting point of premortal existence and that veil.
LDS holds that we all started out in heaven and knew God fully, and that we all picked our parents and our lives with their sufferings and rejoices.
The veil makes everyone forget everything they knew before being born mortally, and the mortal existence is needed to gain perspective (I'm really paraphrasing a lot of information here) which aids in getting a better seat in Heaven later (really important if you want to help other worlds by being their gods, but no one is supposed to hope or want that; just supposed to be accepting of it if tasked with the responsibility of being a world caretaker: "god")...

So...yep.
Unlike a lot of other religions, LDS is very easy to accept without accepting it.
You can actually, and validly, state that you chose this life before the veil and that you are supposed to be an atheist in this life before going back to heaven where you were too loyal to god to properly judge morality accurately and with the right empathy.
 
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Ask them about the source of the book. Ask them to explain about the golden plates, the translation using two stones. Where are these sacred plates and these magical stones? Why should we believe this fantastic fantasy when Santa Claus is more believable? Ask them how it is rational to believe the revisionist history Joseph Smith tells that contradicts all known history of the Western Hemisphere. Ask why any rational person should put any stock in a crook and delusional idiot like that, and why they waste their time with such ludicrous matters when they could be learning a useful trade or furthering their education that will help themselves and mankind...

Or you could just tell them to get lost.
 
Ask them why numerous church officials failed to receive a personal revelation that the Salamander Letter and other documents created by Mark Hoffman were forgeries, whereas some apostate anti-Mormons were aware that the letter, at least, was forged. In addition, why didn't the Mormon victims or church officials received revelations that Hoffman would later go on to send bombs to church members, killing two of them?

Why did God give Joseph Smith a revelation that prohibited the consumption of hot drinks and allow it to be written in the Word of Wisdom/Doctrine of Covenants, when the practice of boiling water might have saved the lives of many of the Saints who died of cholera on their way to Utah? Why did God fail to give personal revelations to the Saints on the trail that boiling and cooling their water before drinking it would prevent disease? (The answer is, the general medical belief at the time among non-Mormons and Mormons alike was that hot drinks were damaging to the stomach and digestion, so Smith passed this erroneous information on to his followers, believing that it would be good for their health).

Why does Utah, the home state of Mormonism, have the highest rate of antidepressant use of any state in the Union, being twice the rate of California and three times the rate of New York or New Jersey? Furthermore, why does Utah, where 70% of the population is Mormon, rank 7th in the use of narcotic painkillers like codeine and morphine-based drugs? A 2008 study showed that 20% of Utah residents had been prescribed an opioid pain reliever within the last 12 months. Why did the overdose rate jump 600% between 1999 and 2007? Why do people from Utah, 70% of whom are Mormon, use so dang many prescription drugs?

These are a few of the questions for which I'd like to hear genuine answers. These questions are unlikely to be true "gotcha" moments as they're dealt with in Mormon apologetics quite extensively. The worst that's liable to happen is the missionaries will come back next week with a canned answer from FAIR's website. However, there's a very small chance that it will raise questions in these young men's minds.
 
Lord Emsworth said:
Because it is kind of uneven. You get to do all the work, and they ... do nothing.

You could at least ask for an hourly wage. :D
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You should at least get to give them a book in return to read, such as Hitchens's God is not Great - the chapter on Mormonism at least.

Failing that, the one thing that I have found gets religious people scurrying from my doorstep double quick is the Koran which I use to impress on religious types about my broadmindedness.

In fact, when they come back Orph, your son should say he's converted (although be sure to use the word "reverted") to Islam. Just for the laffs.;)
 
jiggeryqua said:
I was once challenged by doorstep Mormons to read the whole of their book, which they assured me would convert me. I'm a fairly speedy reader, and it seemed like one of those books one ought to read at least once (and probably only once), so I did. It didn't work.

That was twenty-odd years ago, but what sticks in my mind as counter-arguments include the presence of horses in their history of the americas, before the horse was introduced and with no fossil record to back them up. The whole thing reads like someone deliberately writing another bible - I would have thought that families of John Smith's time and ilk would only have had one book, the Bible, and thus JS would have been very familiar with its style and able to write in that vein.

[...]
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Who?
 
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