I often see posters say the Book of Mormon is what made them lose their testimony and leave the church. Were you not a member very long or did you never actually read the Book of Mormon? How does someone last a member without actually reading the Book of Mormon?

I read the BofM dozens and dozens of times and even outlined every chapter, and then continued to study it all kinds of ways. Each time through it, I saw Joseph Smith and whatever work(s) he plagarized, shine through more clearly, until I couldn't stand the stupid, plagarized, made-up, trash-filled pages.

The BofM was not THE reason I stopped believing the lies. But it was ONE of many reasons I stopped believing.

kenc Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Each time through it, I saw Joseph Smith and whatever work(s)
> he (and his handlers, ep) plagarized, shine through more
> clearly, until I couldn't stand the stupid, plagarized, made-up, trash-filled pages.

Early on, if you had read the wordtree study linked here, you could have spared yourself those hours of laborious lucubrations and unmasked the made-up trash on day one.

https://wordtreefoundation.github.io/thelatewar/

That might have been difficult given that your study did not exist until a decade after Ken had left the church.

In my case, no. I avoided ever reading the book. Kinda glad now I never had a testimony to lose.

I remember the missionaries coming over one day, giving their little lesson, and then going around the room and asking each of us if we would promise to read the Book of Mormon every day.

Of course I lied and said "yes" although I knew I had no intention of doing so. (I also resented someone young enough to be my grandson giving me such a ludicrous homework assignment.)

I put the BoM up there with the temple as one of the great follies of Mormonism. By emphasizing the book so much, TSCC writes their own epitaph in my mind. They make their religion largely about something that is proven bullshit. Hence they don't take their faith seriously, which insults my intelligence.

So, yeah, as kenc says above, it wasn't the only reason but one of many--a prominent, glaring example of Mormonism's failure.

I remember the missionaries coming over one day, giving their little lesson, and then going around the room and asking each of us if we would promise to read the Book of Mormon every day.

Of course I lied and said "yes" although I knew I had no intention of doing so. (I also resented someone young enough to be my grandson giving me such a ludicrous homework assignment.)

I put the BoM up there with the temple as one of the great follies of Mormonism. By emphasizing the book so much, TSCC writes their own epitaph in my mind. They make their religion largely about something that is proven bullshit. Hence they don't take their faith seriously, which insults my intelligence.

So, yeah, as kenc says above, it wasn't the only reason but one of many--a prominent, glaring example of Mormonism's failure.

For me it was what the BoM requires of the Bible for both to be the truth. The BoM requires a high degree of literalness for the OT and nonsense of the Gospels that were never literal to begin with.

My faith in the Bible was already highly allegorical. Realizing what the BoM demanded of the Bible, that finished me.

It was explained to me by missionaries and my wife that it is the BoM that makes the Bible literal; along the lines that the BoM provides the "plain and precious truths" that were left out of the Bible...where it was accurately translated, of course.

I know, I know; it doesn't make any sense, but that was the desperate extreme they would go to when I raised the same points you did.

What I know about BoM I've mostly learned here.

My testimony of the church was already gone before I allowed myself to come to confront the issues that I had about the Book of Mormon. There were some parts of that books that I chose to ignore or justify.


A study of the part of the Book of Mormon (mainly 1 Nepi 13) where I realized that I can no longer ignore or justify the parts of that book that disturbed me about that book (mainly that section and chapter, and the racism that is in that book), and I knew that I had to leave that church.

No. The BOM had nothing to do with it. I was at a Young Women's Fireside and the Prophet at the time made the statement that young women in college should leave school if the opportunity to be a wife and mother came up. That her role as mother was infinitely more important than her education.

OMG...

I was born into the church and had no choice about becoming a Mormon. When I was a teenager, I decided I ought to get serious and try to get one of these testimony things that people were always going on and on about. I read the Book of Mormon a couple of times and discovered that praying about it did not yield an answer that it was true. This made a hidden part of me wonder if it was false, and I struggled to repress this forbidden thought for the longest time.

No. I was given I copy of the BoM when I was in my late teens. I just thought I was lacking in not being able to understand lots of it, or not finding much meaning in it. Also, most of it was boring.

I blamed myself, and was always afraid of being asked to read a verse in S.S. (about how to pronounce the names, etc.)

It was labor, but I finally got through it.

What's that?

Greetings. The BOM definitely contributed. I served a mission and remember teaching time and time again that the BOM contained the "fullness of the everlasting gospel."

The nail in the coffin, so to speak, wrt me seeing the BOM for what it really is- was when I tried to find HOW exactly the BOM contained the fullness of the gospel.

I began to think of what my typical week/month (used to be) when I was involved in the church. Activities included:

YM/YW, Boy Scouts, going to temple, home teaching, wearing garments, cleaning the church (seriously...didn't tithing used to cover that), General Conference, tithing settlement, not drinking coffee or alcohol....etc

the list goes on.

I quickly realized that NONE of these teachings or practices came to us courtesy of the BOM.

So, I went on lds.org one evening and did an online chat forum with a full-time missionary. I asked what the BOM was. The mission responded is contained the "fullness of the everlasting gospel."

I asked what that included. The missionary could NOT provide an intelligible response to the question. I kept asking for more clarification and eventually the missionary had to bail.

If the BOM is the cornerstone of the LDS church, what new gospel principles and/or ordinances came to the earth courtesy of the BOM?

None

I read the BoM a couple of times when I was a member, including two semesters of BoM classes from Cleon Skousen. I've tried to think back on what my perceptions of it were at the time, but I can't ever remember being particularly moved or interested by anything I read in it. The best I can come up with was that I felt OBLIGATED to read it and I basically searched for inspiring passages to underline that I could come back to. Most of the ones I underlined were very judgey passages telling what you should and should not do. Other passages I have NO idea why I underlined them. I've never checked, but it would be interesting to see if the passages I thought were the nicest turned out to be those plagiarized from the Bible.

Interestingly, now I find the most inspirational story to be that of Korihor, the "anti-Christ", who actually just sounds like a man who uses reason. I liked almost everything he taught, like around Alma 30:23-25. I would guess that Joseph Smith just gathered up a bunch of quotes he'd heard people say against religion, or his religion, and applied them ALL to his character of Korihor. It's funny that Joseph Smith made such a POINT of saying that there was no law against his beliefs, but he sure seemed to relish seeing Korihor get his comeuppance.

But NO, it wasn't the BoM that made me lose my testimony. Actually, I think I sort of believed in the LDS religion, but I never really HAD any feelings for it, and it just took me a LONG time to stop trying to FORCE myself to have feelings for it and to stop feeling guilty for the feelings I didn't have. I finally realized the things I believed in and did not believe in, and realized that the LDS church believed very differently from how I believed.

Now that I can read the BoM with an open mind, however, I now find that it serves to confirm how differently I believe from what the LDS church "teaches" and I can now understand why I was not moved by it.

Around age 20 I realized that I didn't "really" have a
"testimony." So I did what I'd tried and failed at over the
years--read the BOM cover to cover and pray about it.

That was no small feat for someone with ADD, but I did it. That
experience was one of the first big hits my fledgling
"testimony" took. As I was reading it the thought popped into
my mind, "Joseph Smith made this up."

It was another 10 years before I allowed myself to realize that
the problem wasn't with me, it was with the Church.

I recently started reading the BOM again. This time through I
am amazed at all the stuff I missed the first time that screams
"FAKE!"

The BoA was the final straw, but the BoM was close on its heels. Had the BoA papyri not been found and returned to LDS Inc, I suspect the BoM would have been the final straw for me.

The BoA carbon dating to 2,000 years too young to have been written "by the hand of Abraham" did it. I had just finished a university level physics sequence, and frankly I trusted my physics book more than I trusted "the prophet". Also, the actual translation of the papyri by modern linguists had nothing whatsoever to do with the fairy tale JS had concocted.

The BoM story totally fails to correspond to the scientific knowledge we have of the origins of the American First Nations. It fails linguistically, culturally (example, no 7 day week among First Nations), horticulturally (BoM mentions foods not found in Americas until Columbus, fails to mention staple foods that were here), mathematically (First Nations did not use a decimal numbering system, Iraelites and BoM narrative did), genetically.....

There is just no way the BoM narrative could have happened and left no evidence whatsoever, and the existence of plenty of contrary evidence in the archeological record.

And then there was that whole "the dog ate my homework" story JS concocted about the missing 116 pages that Martin Harris' wife hid or destroyed. South Park had that exactly right. "You mean Mormons know this story, and they still believe the BoM?"

Agree with Brother of Jerry's words:

<There is just no way the BoM narrative could have happened and left no evidence whatsoever, and the existence of plenty of contrary evidence in the archeological record.

And then there was that whole "the dog ate my homework" story JS concocted about the missing 116 pages that Martin Harris' wife hid or destroyed. South Park had that exactly right. "You mean Mormons know this story, and they still believe the BoM?">

The BoM only played a part in my exodus out of the MormonCult. Faun Brodie's book, "No Man Know My History" was the main hammer that pounded the nail in the coffin but there were many other contributing factors.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2017 06:03PM by presleynfactsrock.

I lost my testimony partially from reading The Book of Mormon. I would get to Moroni's promise and really pray. I never had the answer it was true.

It's what caused me to never have one... that and Mormonism, and Mormons. I never liked the cult, and always thought Mormons were uptight, backbiting and oxy-morons.

I wouldn't say it's THE reason, but it certainly was one of the major reasons I left mormonism. I grew up mormon, and a such we read the BoM as a family a couple of times. And for some reason it never occurred to me as a child to regard it as actual history. It was just boring old stories to me. When in my teens I started to realize that I was supposed to actually believe in the outlandish tales of BoM it became a problem for my faith since I never could make myself believe in the thing. In a sense I guess I never had a testimony in the first place because of the BoM.

Like brefots said,it wasn't the main reason for me,either but looking back,it was subconsciously put on a shelf. The whole book is one big contradiction.I'm sure super righteous Nephi was remembering "thou shalt not kill" as he lovingly lopped off Laban's head. Likewise, when Ammon brings in the basket of severed arms to the king and said, see what a good boy am I?! And yet, Mosiah 4:13-15 talks about not hurting each other, living peacefully, and not letting your kids fight with each other. Using the French word,adieu was a puzzle too.

I agree, valkyriequeen. I think the use of "adieu" was just a little too arrogant/cocky by JS, et.al. I guess gawd was feeling saucy that day and decided to wind it up with a French word. What an effing joke. Meh...

Totally gained and lost my testimony through the Book of Mormon.

I was 19 when I "gained a testimony" of the book. But, all my TBM years I didn't admit holes in my "testimony".

The 1st hole was that I had not read it yet when I first believed it was true. I had a testimony of the cover. Actually I think I simply fell for all the hyperbole about it in LDS culture, and I remembered Primary stories from it.

The second hole was when I did read it (I completed it the first time ON a mission), I brushed off implausibilities in it. For example I brushed off the implausible route the Lehites took to America...from the southern coast of Arabia. And, I brushed off the implausible claim in Ether that the Jaredites travelled "where never man had been".

Then I applied stereotypical LDS self-apologetics and adopted the rote "answers" about WTFs in the book, and for 18 years I read the whole book about annually. I was a chapter-a-day Ezra Taft Benson the-church-is-condemned-for-slighting-the-BoM zealot.

Then finally the third hole was the moral and ethical implausibilities in the book (that I am chagrinned I didn't see for many years). This turned out to be the deal-breaker. The book is racist, sexist, and genocidal. Oh and anti-Semitic. It's religiously bigoted. The book is practically, and I think literally, an early-1800s Congregationalist minister's wet dream (yes a plug for Spalding and Rigdon).

The grain that tipped the scale for me, at a certain moment, ie it was a specific time, date, and place that my belief in it collapsed...was its use of the word "whore".

I felt like the book unfairly caricatured whores. It may as well say bitch or slut. Excuse me God, you shouldn't use foul language in front of children.

Amos90 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...was its
> use of the word "whore".
>
> I felt like the book unfairly caricatured whores.

So the BoM gave whores a bad name? :)

No. I have read it cover to cover countless times and years of studying it and teaching from it in church callings. I clung to it through years of doubts over other reasons not directly involving the Book of Mormon. But once I realized and accepted that the Book of Mormon wasn't real, everything came to an end and I left the church.

While Mormons obsess over so-called "anti-Mormon" publications, they lose sight of the fact that the Book of Mormon is their worst impediment, and is the most powerful anti-Mormon tool in anyone's bag.

It didn't make me lose my testimony. I read it, many times, as a duty. I felt good about doing my duty. I believed it was true.

The essays made me lose my testimony. That led to me researching more about the B of M, then I knew it was all made up.

I tried reading it, but I never felt it was true, even when I prayed about it. When I first realized what those Jaredite "barges" were, I had a hard time not laughing at the absurdity of it. One of the major reasons I didn't last long is that I was raised to question everything, so when I started doing research into the claims made by that book, I was out. The scientific evidence was too overwhelming for me to believe any of what the church claimed to be true.

I read the Book of Mormon many times, cover-to-cover and spent many hours studying it along with the other books of the "standard works." Yes, the Book of Mormon was a significant contributor to my loss of testimony. There are many problems with the Book of Mormon including:


- It is very poorly written. The characters are one-dimensional and paper thin. Real people have more depth and a good fiction author will make them more realistic. The overly simplistic, black-and-white nature of the characters are an indication that it is fiction written by an inexperienced or poor author.

- The plot line repeats itself, which is indicative of a bad author borrowing from within his own book. Joe plagiarized others and he plagiarized himself within the already thin Book of Mormon.

- Inexplicably rapid growth rate among the Nephites and Lamanites.

- Wars happening within a few years of arriving in the Americas when there would have been only a few hundred people at most.

- A handful of inexperienced people building a temple like Solomons

- Two different city populations slipping away in the night. One after getting the guards drunk and the other after god causes the guards to fall into a deep sleep. Implausible, sophomoric stories.

That was what bothered me before my shelf started to really crack. Then all the other problems came crashing onto the scene:

The Native American ancestry debacle, language issues, Jaredite barge implausibilities, Nephi and small inexperienced family building an ocean going sailboat, steel, flora and fauna anachronisms.

The Bible also contributed to the collapse of my testimony with the problems such as creationism, global flood, god's finger writing on rocks, magic performed by Moses in Egypt (rods into snakes, plagues, parting of the Red Sea, etc).

People trying to get me to restore my faith have invariably encouraged me to spend more time reading the Book of Mormon when that is actually the crux of the problem.