This is a very short sum­ma­ry of what I view as the 5 most impor­tant facts in under­stand­ing alter­na­tive mod­els for LDS truth claims. To the best of my knowl­edge, every point made in this doc­u­ment is accept­ed as fac­tu­al by both LDS and non-LDS schol­ars (please cor­rect me if I am mis­tak­en and I will alter the doc­u­ment).

1. The 3rd facsimile is incorrectly translated

Joseph Smith mis-trans­lat­ed the char­ac­ters above the heads of the fig­ures in the third fac­sim­i­le.

Joseph refers to Egypt­ian char­ac­ters in spe­cif­ic loca­tions on fac­sim­i­le 3 and he gives a trans­la­tion. This trans­la­tion does not match the trans­la­tion made by BYU schol­ars. The Book of Abra­ham lds​.org essay gen­er­al­ly admits “the char­ac­ters on the frag­ments do not match the trans­la­tion giv­en in the book of Abra­ham.”

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2. The Book of Mormon is packed with 19th century ideas

In a recent inter­view, the well-known Mor­mon his­to­ri­an Richard Bush­man stat­ed:

… there is phras­ing every­where [in the Book of Mor­mon], long phras­es, that if you google them you will find them in 19th cen­tu­ry writ­ings. The the­ol­o­gy of the Book of Mor­mon is very much 19th cen­tu­ry the­ol­o­gy, and it reads like a 19th cen­tu­ry under­stand­ing of the Hebrew Bible …

By any mea­sure the Book of Mor­mon con­tains an immense num­ber of ideas, phras­es, and the­ol­o­gy com­mon to the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. Here are two exam­ples of many:

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See Book of Mor­mon par­al­lels to 1800s thought

3. Spiritual confirmations are common to members of many religions

Mem­bers inter­pret spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences as a con­fir­ma­tion that their faith is true. But these con­fir­ma­tions are com­mon to mem­bers of many faiths (e.g., Judaism, Catholi­cism, Sev­enth Day Adven­tist, Sci­en­tol­ogy, Islam, and Divine Truth), many of which hold cen­tral tenets that flat­ly con­tra­dict core LDS doc­trines.

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4. LDS leaders taught that the Priesthood/Temple ban was divine

A 1949 First Pres­i­den­cy state­ment declared:

The atti­tude of the Church with ref­er­ence to Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a mat­ter of the dec­la­ra­tion of a pol­i­cy but of direct com­mand­ment from the Lord…

And a 1969 First Pres­i­den­cy let­ter stat­ed:

Our liv­ing prophet, Pres­i­dent David O. McK­ay, has said, “The seem­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion by the Church toward the Negro is not some­thing which orig­i­nat­ed with man; but goes back into the begin­ning with God…Revelation assures us that this plan ante­dates man’s mor­tal exis­tence, extend­ing back to man’s pre­ex­is­tent state.”

The Lowry Nel­son let­ters and the Stew­art Udall let­ters demon­strate the unwa­ver­ing con­fi­dence Church lead­ers of that time had in the divin­i­ty of the Black Priesthood/Temple ban and the doc­trines and teach­ings sup­port­ing it as well as the man­ner in which dis­sent may be treat­ed in the Church.

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5. Joseph Smith’s polygamy is ethically problematic

Near­ly all LDS schol­ars acknowl­edge that Joseph Smith was mar­ried to at least 33 wives, 11 of whom were already legal­ly mar­ried to oth­er men. The man­ner in which Joseph Smith prac­ticed and spoke about polygamy was decep­tive and at least some of his pro­pos­als would like­ly be viewed as involv­ing undue influ­ence accord­ing to mod­ern eth­i­cal stan­dards.

In a recent inter­view, the most faith­ful LDS apol­o­gists on polygamy recount­ed the feel­ings of review­ers of their recent book on the top­ic: “At the end of the book [the book review­er] didn’t get a warm fuzzy feel­ing and that’s not real­ly some­thing we think we can deliv­er with this top­ic.”

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More Complete Analyses

See Prob­lem Sum­maries: resources dis­cussing LDS-truth claims