Past and present leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints make many amazing and even miraculous claims about the founding events of the Church, which faithful believing adherents generally accept as true and veridical. However, studying the factual history and copious documentation behind those claims has led some to discover a different story than the official narrative.

Apparently these investigators were supposed to put these numerous difficult issues on a shelf, carefully curated for the afterlife.

Welcome to my shelf.

My Single Meta-Issue

The meta-issue with the Church is not any specific controversial claim, though there are hundreds of problems (below, under Resources).

Special Pleading

The meta-issue is that the only way to defend the indefensible is to use circular reasoning and emotion (I want it to be true, I need it to be true, so it must be true) such that the same reasoning could be used to defend anything. This is called special pleading. Muslims—who cannot be right for the Saints to be right—do it. Evangelical Christians—who are clearly misled by Satan—do it. And certainly those nutty FLDS practitioners—who believe and support convicted child rapist Warren Jeffs—do it.

All these misled groups with false beliefs use the same faulty reasoning, ignoring evidence against their case, to maintain belief. In fact, they all react very emotionally to anything that threatens their worldview, and even double down when presented with the kind of evidence that Warren Jeffs is a horrible human being, or the equivalent informational blow to their tradition. It causes them severe cognitive dissonance to even contemplate that dedicating their lives to the FLDS Church was all for nought because it was only built upon a sandy foundation of lies, coercion, crimes, and exploitation, followed up by duplicity and extensive whitewashing campaigns and information control in a concerted effort to make it seem like the opposite, to appear all pure and clean.

But the problem isn’t just that the FLDS rank-and-file are being taken advantage of by their leaders. The problem is that they are willing participants. They want to be told that they have all the answers. They want to be told that they are special, that there is a single plan, unlike those baddies out there in the scary wide world, who only work with partial information and are winging it most of the time. They want to feel that they have it made. Muslims. Evangelicals. FLDS.

The Original Sin: Unwillingness to Be Convinced by Evidence

The Big Problem is that perhaps all true believers of all stripes, who are unwilling to have their minds changed by facts, do the same thing! In other words, it's not a bunch of different cons, it is all one big confidence trick—to hijack people's moral responsibility and relationship with the divine, intertwine it with a new group identity, and replace the freedom of conscience at the core of their humanity with a single book, person, or organization that somehow has all the answers (though when pressed, they all don't, actually), which is to say, “The group will tell you which questions you may ask.” Remember, each of these faith traditions has expertise using reasoning and facts to knock down all the other ones, but never their own.

Therefore it is always pointless for a true believer (of any religion or ideology) with such a broken, cynical, medieval epistemology to read about and discuss any specific issues with their own faith tradition if they have already decided that their worldview must be true and no evidence will ever change their mind—they are founded on the rock of their tradition-specific redeemer. (Not just a complete waste of time, but likely to backfire. I say this from personal experience because as a believer I behaved this way many times.)

According to active believing Latter-day Saints, this entrenchment and lack of ability to be convinced by evidence is a really bad situation that prevents Muslims, Evangelicals, and FLDS from learning and accepting the truth, but is weirdly considered a virtue, to protect their own faith and their own testimony, practically bragging that they hope nothing will change their minds. If God himself came down and told you that you were being misled, you would remain unconvinced? What chance would I have, a mere mortal, at changing your mind? These same Saints who see this trait as toxic in others may never take that last step and recognize how special pleading and faulty epistemology might be holding themselves back for all the same reasons.

Not being open to the idea that you could be wrong is the recipe for remaining wrong about something forever.

The Pulpit Is No Place for Controversial Issues, Even When the Facts Have Been Admitted on the Church’s Website

A certain user on Reddit commented that:

My LDS bishop didn’t know much at all about the Gospel Topics Essays [(see below)]. I told him about them and that you couldn’t read from them word for word in a church talk. I said you[, the bishop,] would make me sit down.

He didn’t think anything called a gospel essay on the church website would be like that.

I challenged him and began to read, he said no you can’t read that in church. His face looked shocked as he saw some examples from the essays.

So the meta-issue is simple: the Church has published essays that if read over the pulpit will get my mic cut off, get me escorted by the bishop, get me persona non grata status. That’s it. That’s all we need to know. We don’t even need to talk about the individual issues themselves. If another organization did this, believing Latter-day Saints would rightly understand the obvious irony and precarious nature of the situation and criticize it as toxic.

The Double Standard of Truth Has Been Erected

The Orwellian double standard of leaders being able to use the Gospel Topics Essays to claim that there is nothing hidden and that the leaders are always transparent is belied by the fact that if a rank-and-file member tries to bring up at Church any of the specific controversial and scandalous issues finally begrudgingly admitted in the Church’s same essays—quoting only the Church's own website, BYU website, and Church-owned JosephSmithPapers.org sources—such a member would be punished by local leadership, asked to stop making the Church look bad. If they don’t self-censor, they could face the threat of a Church discipline hearing and the spiritual violence of having their saving ordinances nullified, their covenants torn up by excommunication, for stating true facts as admitted for a dozen years on the Church’s website. That kind of panicky, violent reaction to factual information is a massive, toxic problem. It is a giant red flag. If other groups do it, the Saints see it for what it is: fear, coercion. But at home, well, we have the truth, so don’t you dare fricking cross us. <cutting one’s own throat with one’s own thumb emoji> It boggles the mind.

So, if anyone out there ever wonders if or when I would return to church, there is no need to get into the hundreds of details (below). I can just tell them, why would I want to belong to an organization that goes on and on about the truth (hymns, testimony bearing) but clearly their testimonies can’t bear the truth as expressed on their organization’s own website? What is the response to that by the faithful? “Only an anti-Mormon would want to educate members of the church from their own official materials.” Only someone who confuses emotion for reason, and proactively wants to remain indoctrinated, would say such a stupid thing. Why do we have to be cagey with publicly available information?

The truth is, we don't. The mainstream Saints can clearly see the situation where Warren Jeffs and his crony leaders, under the guise of righteousness, have been willingly handed such massive power by entrapped members who want to be reassured that the threatening world is the problem and not this little coercive, fearful group of which they are a dutiful supporter. But if every single FLDS woke up and saw the situation as it is, they would realize that Jeffs has no power over them. FLDS leaders all grabbed that power illegitimately through fear-mongering, abuse and coercion.

Hidden Things Shall All Be Revealed

Latter-day Saints would probably agree that individual FLDS rank-and-file (or even defecting leaders) should be allowed to share the awful facts about Warren Jeffs without dangerous, life-destroying threats from that group—banishment and being cut off from family—without having their lives torn apart. How is that situation different from my own situation?

I have had to live the last two decades like maybe I’m the problem, or let my true believing family sweet-talk themselves that I couldn’t have had a legitimate reason to walk away. I have had to knowingly hold back instead of standing up and correcting them. I have had to live in fear of reprisal from Warren Jeffs, so to speak (but the equivalent in mainstream LDS circles). I still operate that way because much of my family and extended family and beloved childhood friends and their families are in. I love them; I don’t want to throw their lives and relationships and marriages into a tailspin by burdening them with undeniable facts. It sucks to feel attacked for your beliefs whether or not you are aware of all the facts—or rather, it feels like being attacked when someone dumps facts on you that were systematically witheld from you for years if not decades.

But I, Jared, didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t make any provably false nineteenth-century claims in the first place. I didn’t rewrite published revelations after the fact. I didn’t back-date any supposed miraculous occurrences. I didn't make any of those truth claims false in the twenty-first century. If pointing out the problems with truth claims somehow makes the claims false, they must have been false in the first place. In that sense no Latter-day Saints would be opposed to reciting the moral atrocities of convicted child rapist Warren Jeffs, because he is already a false prophet with a heart blacker than coal. All his claims are already false. Pointing it out doesn't change anything.

If you agree about Jeffs, then how do you support the mainstream Woodruffite Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when they use the same tactics on me, to keep me from sharing the equivalent information about their own faith tradition? Special pleading, again—that’s how. Jared, you should stand boldly for truth, you should stand with integrity; do what is right, let the consequence follow. Unless it feels disloyal, in that case, keep that difficult material hidden so as not to rock the boat. Why do ye teach this people all these facts, to interrupt their rejoicings? Our special group gets a special exception because we are so good and so right and so true. Leave us alone. This harsh double standard is heartbreaking to those who have left, and it should be heartbreaking to those who remain. Special pleading is special poison.

In that spirit:

1. Gospel Topics Essays

On the Official Church Website

Start with the Church’s own Gospel Topics Essays on their website, carefully hidden among a sea of innocuous essays about non-controversial topics.

2. Resources

Or, The Hundreds of Detailed Issues with Church History Truth Claims, Which Are Pointless to Read About and Discuss if You Have Already Decided That the Church is True and No Evidence Will Ever Change Your Mind

WARNING: This is a very deep rabbit hole and is not for those who want to come out with their belief intact.

List of Websites, Documents, and Books

Many have taken in hand to organize numerous questions and historical issues in agonizing detail, and addressed the sometimes inadequate responses of the apologists. Here are a few links to some of these resources.

These resources are carefully researched and reference Church sources or even favorable sources when possible (for example, Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling or JosephSmithPapers.org for example).

WARNING: Do not read these resources if you are easily offended by the objective presentation of facts or if you cannot handle a difference of opinion. It may cause you significant cognitive dissonance.

You probably will not emerge victorious, especially if you go in overconfident. Why do you think there are so many of these resources created by people who thought the same thing (“I love Church history, I know my stuff, my testimony is strong”) and came out the other side needing to create their own resources just to keep track of all of their questions, and all of their historical research, as they began contemplating their relationship with the Church?

Inescapable Conclusion

Taken in total, I think the deep dives listed here under Resources make a compelling case that there are only two possible answers to all the issues. Either:

1. This one specific church over here could still be true, because I so badly need it to be true (special pleading, see section above), and I repeat to myself and others that I know it is true, without providing any satisfying answers to the many substantive questions that show that it is probably not; OR
2. All churches make foundational truth claims using the same broken epistemology, relying on blind faith in ... whatever! anything! (Allah, Jesus, Elohim, Jehovah, Brahman, Zeus, Cthulhu, Xenu, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, angels, prophets, messengers, books) to bolster their very-likely-entirely man-made beliefs, which fall apart upon any kind of reasoned analysis.

If you want to make the case to me that faith (or belief not based solely on facts, evidence and reason) has any value whatsoever, first you have to make the case that faith cannot be abused by all other groups to come to incorrect conclusions, so I can be assured that faith is not being used by your specific group to do the same. (And you must do this without changing the game and appealing to facts and evidence about your group. Once you pull in facts and evidence, you are forced to deal with the hundreds of issues listed above under Resources. Maybe don’t pull on that thread.)

FAQ

Is the Author Being Disingenuous?

By linking to difficult resources and then saying, Don’t read them?

Disingenuous is sending a nineteen-year-old (now eighteen) out into the world with three or four years of seminary and yet they don’t even know what they have really signed up for. Disingenuous is a missionary asking for a prospective member to commit to giving up ten percent of their income for life without disclosing where that money goes, or how financially powerful the organization already is, or the fact that lay leadership stops at the Stake President level, and that higher leaders are actually paid for running the organization. Disingenuous is asking an eight-year-old to make an eternal choice to be baptized and join the rolls of an organization, an organization that can only be exited with the help of a notary public. Disengenuous is telling young men (17-18 years old) that they have already made the decision to serve a mission (or two or three) a decade ago at baptism and not to pray about how to spend two years in their prime. Disingenuous is asking for adult members to make sacred covenants before they have heard what those covenants entail, despite supposedly having a course of instruction to prepare people for the experience.

One publicly available account of what covenants are made states that we are

“… to devote both talent and material means to the spread of truth and the uplifting of the race; to maintain devotion to the cause of truth …”

— James E. Talmage

Yet if I strive to maintain devotion to the cause of truth by posting a single page with links providing information to people to allow them to make a decision with fully informed consent, and that makes me disingenuous, then what is the word for a large organization with a million times my resources systematically manipulating millions of people with half-truths and incomplete information, over a period of decades and centuries, all in the supposed name of truth? What is it called when Warren Jeffs uses the same tactics to accomplish the same thing?

I don’t think most religious organizations ever really cared about Truth, meaning: facts, reason, evidence, open discussion, peer-review, documentary history, academic rigor, unlimited study, admissable courtroom testimony, parsimony (Occam’s Razor), avoiding conjecture, avoiding special-pleading-shaped loopholes. It has only ever been about loyalty and devotion and propaganda. Lots of groups go on and on about Truth and how much of it they have (all of it!), but they can’t all contradict one another and all still have The Truth. The endless talk about Truth is just a smokescreen. They just co-opt the word so that they don’t have to spend quite so much time saying what they really mean: Power, Obedience, Loyalty, Submission, Devotion, Commitment, Volunteer Hours, Damage Control, Apologetics, Good PR, Towing the Party-Line, Not Rocking the Boat, Maintaining the Vibe. In practice, the truth can always be bent to serve the real goal: 100% conformance. This is what “truth” gets you when you are not open to discussion based on the merits. If you think this is an exaggeration then I invite you to read through all the Resources listed on this page in great detail, and then contact me and tell me when all of these quiet parts will ever be said out loud over the pulpit in every ecclesiastical unit. The points have already been mostly conceded on the Church’s website. It’s kind of not really open for debate any more!

Isn’t This Just a Gish Gallop or an Attempt to Overwhelm with a Barrage of Information?

No.

1. This is not a time-limited debate. If you have made it this far, you have all the time in the world to search for better official answers to these questions. The Church asks us for a lifetime of dedication and it is not unreasonable for an honest investigator to spend the weeks or months or years doing the research these questions justify, a small amount compared with the decades (generations) they have likely spent serving in the Church.
2. A Gish Gallop resorts to asking flimsy questions that have been answered adequately numerous times before. Instead, these are valid, meaty questions with confusing apologetic answers. (That apologists have attempted to answer these questions and the Church acknowledges these problems in the Gospel Topics Essays does show that they are not “outright anti-Mormon lies.”)
3. Many of these resources are careful to correct inaccuracies and some even go to lengths to present apologetic arguments. Please contact the authors and supply them if you have better facts or better arguments.

Is a Shelf Just a Place Your Mind Makes?

Doesn’t that make the term “shelf” just another word for special pleading?

Can’t any faith tradition just use this approach as a way to implement thought-stopping? Muslims? FLDS?

Believers, apologists and post-Mormons alike use the metaphor of a mental shelf to place difficult issues or unanswered questions relating to Church history or past doctrines, in the hope that an answer might show up at some point in the future.

But how much weight should we expect the shelf to bear before it comes crashing down? At some level, could it not be considered a relief when this finally occurs? Wouldn’t it release us from the burden of having to invoke convoluted explanations to excuse problematic doctrines or behaviors of past or present leaders?

But Don’t We Have All the Answers? (Asterisk)

Isn’t it convenient (for a powerful organization) that we are expected to keep our imponderables to ourselves, until our dying day, at which point all will hopefully be made right? What if this is not the case and there are no better answers at that point? What about those still living and their legitimate concerns?

What about Muslims? Imams tell their adherents the same things to perpetuate Satan’s hold on them.

What about Evangelical Christians? I’m sure many honest believers have asked their pastor serious questions and been told to trust that even if the pastor doesn’t have a good answer that God probably does—you just won’t know until you die and find out! 🤷

What about convicted child rapist Warren Jeffs? Can't he use the same approach (keep your doubts to yourself, “keep sweet, pray and obey,” and you will get answers in the next life) to achieve the same end, namely complete control of his followers’ lives? How is this at all valid and not predatory when one group does it, but not every other group?

Again, special pleading is special poison.

Does Faith Really Justify Belief in Anything?

Yes. Step 1: someone tells you to believe something unbelievable. Step 2: you believe it, not based on any kind of robust, independently verifiable, straightforward, strong evidence, but as an act of faith—rather, merely the desire to believe, powerful positive feelings. Step 3: there is no step 3.

If you have read this far, even without reading about any specific historical or factual issues in detail, then now hopefully you know that using faith (not backed up by facts and evidence, simply a desire to believe) to justify your pet belief (such and such Church is true, such and such man speaks for God) opens the door to justifying all other beliefs. Including calling a man a prophet who is actually a convicted child rapist, sexual predator, and sex trafficker (as well as financial fraudster): Warren Jeffs (in addition to his predecessors). But you are better than that, and have integrity, right? You would never support a self-proclaimed holy man, who set up a system to get himself and each of his cronies illegally “married” to underage girls, as well as dozens of helpless women, each? You would stand up for truth, if it meant protecting children and women from sexual exploitation, right? You wouldn’t care who was offended, or the cost to your own life. Such a man as Warren Jeffs must be stopped, relegated to infamy; the facts must be made known; it is a matter of integrity; and, it becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor, right?

Why Does Reading This One Page Make Me Feel Attacked?

If the unbelievers are right, do I have to instantly give up everything I value? What about the things that have made me a truly better person?

You are right: the light you have is real. I cannot speak for others, but for myself, I have spent a few decades trying to learn to untangle my own values and my own identity. But it can be done. The idea that all the light you already have will automatically diminish when you go seeking more light—is a lie taught to control you. I know my loved ones who read this will probably have a knee-jerk reaction that someone could only leave a Church for dark reasons, or whatever repeated outright awful narrative they have been fed about dissenters (lies from their leaders about motivation for leaving an organization). The narrative is very black and white. “If you leave you are dark-hearted. The organization = Good. Staying = good. Leaving = bad. The Definition of Good = Staying. Worst Possible Evil (outer darkness) = Leaving. And you can only stay for good reasons because that means you are good, even if you are not good, or even if staying means burying your reservations (you know you have had some) and putting problematic issues on a shelf, instead of acting, or asking, or agitating.” This conflating of identity and values, as some sort of easy shortcut, leads to smallness of spirit and should be condemned wherever we see it.

It tells us a lot about an organization that narrates their disagreements in such bad faith, that the organization must preserve this central identity narrative at all costs. However, they overplay their hand and show their extreme weakness; they project the true inadequacy of their position. FLDS do this and we see it as threatening desparation, as a vengeful below-the-belt tactic (threat of taking away economic livelihood because of a theocratic economic system, actual dependency, cult-style—truly awful). Evangelical mothers lament their sons and daughters leaving the fold and assume their lives will only go one way—down. Jesus even sadly encouraged this black-and-white thinking (“I came not to send peace but a sword, to set mother against son and father against daughter.” “Those who are not for us are against us.”) Jewish rabbis speak about the same reasons that the Saints’ leaders mention—about why the wayward have gone “off the derech” (the path): they are weak, they never believed, they wanted to sin and be worldly, they were seduced by the dark side. Rabbis, like LDS bishops, have to sit down to counsel and console heartbroken mothers and fathers of wayward children. Muslims sometimes encode this prohibition against heresy into violent laws or carry it out as actual executions, showing how awful this can really get, and how violent a supposed “religion of peace” can be, even in the face of minor disagreements.

Some of my loved ones have come a long way and shown by their actions how to love unconditionally, in spite of their leaders’ awful teachings of the opposite, about how when you leave the path, God’s love is conditional. These same true believing Saints may say they believe President Nelson when he says this, but their actions show that they can love unconditionally in the face of a God who supposedly cannot. The believers who show this kind of ecumenical spirit reveal how they have internalized the best teachings of Jesus in the gospels. Because religion has not been all bad for them (or for myself) they understandably wonder why I would reject identity with the organization that brought so much good into their lives and my life. They answer is simple. The Church does not have a monopoly on goodness, kindness, beauty, or truth, although they go to great lengths to make their adherents believe they do. They didn’t put this there, inside you, you did. I did. We did. You are good, and beautiful, and kind, and true. I am. We are. That is actually one of the very, very worst things about religion, when they teach that some book, person, or organization owns your connection to the divine, and worse, that any good that you brought about was always because of them, or because of God, and not because of you, or not because of natural cause-and-effect reasons. (Goofy example: if you grew up never drinking or smoking for religious reasons, they act like there is some sort of rule that once you leave the path, you can never simply choose to continue to avoid drinking or smoking and continue to get the same benefits. Mind explodes.)

Can I Really Take the Light I Have Been Given with Me, If I Leave?

Yes. Some institutions have a financial incentive in making you believe the opposite. But think about a college degree. You are not hounded for graduating and told that you cannot take that light and knowledge with you—rather, you are expected to move on. Someone is not ex-Caltech when they finish a degree and leave, they are post-Caltech. Similarly, I would never consider myself ex-Mormon, I am merely post-Mormon. If my ancestors on both sides are mostly Mormon, what would that even mean if I were ex-Mormon? It would be like claiming to be ex-Caucasian; it couldn’t be done. Furthermore, perhaps any organization that can only make you a better person in a way that you cannot take with you should be considered highly suspect. They should not want you or need you to be dependent on them. They should want you to progress on your spiritual journey.

If Islam teaches that the beauty in their own tradition cannot be found elsewhere, or cannot be continually valued, when a Muslim leaves or “strays,” this is a mistaken belief. (Not all those who wander are lost.) When FLDS believe that the world has nothing to offer that isn't better or safer in the fold, they stay in a toxic, dangerous, illegal, and immoral system, endangering future generations, but calling it good. When Evangelicals assume no one else in any other tradition (perhaps Eastern thought, or God forbid those scary secular thinkers) has ideas of any spiritual or ethical value whatsoever, they miss out on learning and growing. If the teachings of Jesus have moral value, shouldn’t they have universal moral value (or at least, broadly applicable moral value), and can’t we learn from those lessons, and keep those lessons with us, even as secular people? In other words, if Jesus’ teachings are true, wouldn’t these teachings be true for Buddhists or atheists as well?

Can I Relinquish My Supernatural Beliefs and Still Be a Good Person?

There is no greater threat to a group than to see someone leave, and thrive. It goes against the narrative. Talk about blasphemy! The FLDS would have you believe that this is not possible. Muslims and Evangelicals will worry about your disbelieving soul if you are going to be condemned to an eternity of hellfire. Lesser glory in a future world is a serious thing. It would be a shame not to see your family again, in the eternities, right? Well I say if we really cannot use reason and empathy to build a better world without all first accepting the same unevidenced beliefs, then those groups really are right: we really are condemned to hell and stuck in a quagmire only God could ever fix. But remember, these groups will all be the first to tell you: that these different belief systems cannot all be right. Which means you get the chance to make the world a better place and bear your own testimony of kindness, beauty, and truth through a life well-lived. You can show that perhaps none of them are 100% right. Perhaps your life can still have value and you can still lift others, all without worrying about the next life. Perhaps that’s a higher law.

Conclusion: Be the Best You You Can Be

Whenever religion feels kind of like a con, this is how they do it: they take something away from you that you already have, and sell it back to you, and tell you that you cannot get it anywhere else. When you see this, Caveat emptor. These are the very worst kind of lies. Here is the actual truth: You are already free. You are already good. You are already kind. You are already beautiful. You are already truly human, you already know how to distinguish the truth. You are not perfect, and you never will be. But you don’t have to be. The beauty of being human is to see our own flaws and the flaws of others, yet to love ourselves and love each other knowing all that, not to be overcome and give up—instead to continue to strive to know better, and to do better, and thus to be better, to hold on to the good we do have, and not let anyone take it away, or darken our light. We don’t need to be afraid “to gather all the good and true principles” wherever we find them (JS Jr.), and we don't need to cower or bend the knee to people who circumscribe our knowledge, or stunt our growth, or try to own our flourishing, or take credit for our goodness, or tell us that their one true path is the only path. How would they know? They are not us. How could there be One True Path^TM, for Billions of Completely Different People? That makes absolutely no sense when you think about it for more than ten seconds.

I wish you well on your journey. Know that you are not alone.

Feel free to believe, if you feel you can make it work and if it helps you be the best person you can be. If not, then at least be the best unbeliever you can be.