Pull the kingpin, dislodge the keystone. With one simple swipe take down the whole stupid mess.

- Without the fall of Adam there is no need for a savior. There was no biblical Adam. Game over.
- Jesus taught that the end of times was to happen soon. It did not come in his lifetime as he predicted. Game over.

What do you think is the simplest, one sentence “keystone”, that once considered, allows everything to crumble?

For me it was experiencing the temple, old school.

No way is an all powerful deity involved with what goes on in there!

I think that it is funny that we rely on the witnesses of few very emotional and hysterical people that claim that Christ rose from the dead. They witnessed that Christ rose from the dead, so it must be so! And billions since this time have relied on this story as a central part of their faith. The BoM would have never come into existence without these expert witnesses that found an empty sepulcher! I believe that the body was moved and hidden intentionally in order to make believers out of unbelievers in Christ's day.

Here's my one-sentence offering: people are not unspeakably depraved.

The whole point of an LDS mission is to tell everybody who isn't Mormon that they are hopelessly spiritually lost, and that the only way to fix that is to become a Mormon. That sentiment robs 99% of Mormons from ever being able to fairly interact with their friends, neighbors and non-TBM relatives.

You are right when you say that Jesus' atonement makes sense only in the context of Adam's fall. Read "Who Wrote the new testament" by Burton Mack to get a good feel for how Paul first got converted to this idea, and then went out and made sure that every other type of Christian agreed to this teaching. There were lots of Jesus groups, and lost of Christ groups, at the time, and only a few decided that the Christ happened in order to save humanity from a fundamental inherent depravity. Paul did, and made everybody else believe the same way.

IIRC the Fall is not that big a deal in Judaism. Judaism preaches that humanity's "sins" are quite easily erased by participation in some well-spelled-out ritual acts, and by the covenants God made with Abraham/Moses/David. Note the difference here. In Judaism, where we get the notion of a divine covenant, it is God who does the covenanting, and his terms and scope are very tightly defined. In Mormonism, however, it is the individual Mormon who makes the covenants, and those promises always seem to benefit those at the top of the food chain. What a puzzle...

Most Christians assume one very big premise without thought or substantiation:

There is one true god and He only talked to a very small group of people that lived near ancient Israel and no one else (and that this method makes perfect sense.)


Even my first two listed kingpins and based on this assumption. And it’s a pretty BIG assumption.

Actually even in the Bible, God talks to Gentiles now and then.

That is assuming all modern Christians and modern Christian thought is black and white in it's thinking these days.

Black and white thinking = very mormon.

Also known as "splitting" black and white thinking can be seen in several kinds of mental illness as this type of thinking is a form of cognitive distortion.

For me it was two sentences:

"Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse..."
-Church Essay on Race and the Priesthood


And:
"...as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them."
-Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 5:21

The racism in church history is disgusting, and clearly something the church cannot avoid. It has painted the church into a corner from which the only escape is to disavow direct teachings from the "Keystone" of its religion and what it calls "the most correct book" on earth. That can only lead to one of three conclusions: the Book of Mormon is not true, the leaders of the church today are false prophets, or the whole think is bunk.

The need for a prophet. If we can all speak to God ourselves, why the need to have a go between? Without a prophet lording it over us all the time, what need is there for a church organization?

Someone in tscc once told me that if we were all righteous enough we would all be able to talk to God and Jesus face to face just like Moses and Joseph Smith. So if we are all so dang wicked, why not just throw in the towel, live life as we choose and if we get scared at the end of life we can get baptized and get forgiven. That would save a lot of priesthood callings, tithing, missionary work, toilet scrubbing, etc. etc.

I thought you were talking about opening a can of cheap beer.

None of it makes any sense and it's all pretzel logic. But if you're looking for a quick way to show a true believer that it's all bunk, you're going to be disappointed. True believers believe despite the contorted logic.