What is the reason or reasons for your loss of faith?
In what I wrote above, I made several references to what I called a “mountain of unrefuted evidence” which led me to conclude that Joseph Smith was a con man and to conclude that the church leaders who followed him are little if any better. I only went into specifics for a small fraction of the pieces which make up that mountain of evidence, but I did list some links to websites which a person could look up in order research things in depth for themselves. I’ll repeat those links again here, in case someone is just skimming through this admittely long writeup, rather than reading it all from start to end.
- cesletter.org
- mormonthink.com
- mormonstories.com
- letterformywife.com
- mormonleaks.org
- wivesofjosephsmith.orgThere are a great many more. The links I've given above contain links to other websites and they reference books and magazine articles which you could spend years reading.
In order to make it easy for you (the reader) to see the church’s attempts to refute this evidence and see why I say the church fails miserably in those attempts, I’ll give a few links here. I think all the church does is try to blow smoke, muddy the water, and then fall back on their catch-all claim that "prayer is the only way to know truth"... but you should of course judge that for yourself. (As with the other links, these are good as of July 2024. They might change in the future.)
Regarding the problems surrounding the Book of Mormon...
churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/…Regarding the problems surrounding the Book of Abraham...
churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/…Regarding the problems surrounding polygamy...
churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/…When you open these links on the church’s website, you’ll see a list on the left side of the page (at least as of July, 2024) that will take you to the church's responses for many other issues besides just the three I’ve given above.
doug