or that Joseph's Myth had any more than one wife.
I had a pair of missionaries come to my door and try and sell me Joseph's Myth. I told them that I served a mission just like them and that I knew far more about Joseph's Myth than they ever wanted to know, which is why I'm no longer a Mormon.
They asked me why I quit. I told them that was a really long story, but that basically I couldn't get honest answers out of my Mormon leaders.
The smug one (obviously a senior comp trying to impress Jr by dropping some knowledge on an apostate) told me he could answer ANY of my questions.
I said, "Honestly?"
He assured me he most definitely could so I asked him, "How many wives did Joseph Smith have?"
His response was hillarious, "What does that matter?"
I said, "Wait, you just told me you could answer my questions honestly and instead you ask me why it matters? Well, I still want an answer but I'll tell you why it matters. You're out here trying to sell me Joseph's Myth. If you're honest you shouldn't omit important facts about him that might have a bearing upon people's decision to accept what you're saying as true and valid. Had I know everything I know now about Joseph's Myth I never would have served a mission and gone around lying to people about him. Now just answer the question."
They admitted they didn't know. I said, "Didn't you just tell me that you could honestly answer all of my questions? You can't even answer the first, most simple question I have about the founder of your church. You just proved my point. Mormons can't give honest answers about their faith. How long have you been out selling Joseph's Myth? Almost two years? And in that time you never bothered learning about his real life. If you're the expert on Joseph's Myth tell me how many wives he had. It's all a matter of public record. It's all on familysearch.org. Just tell me."
"We don't know."
"You don't want to know, do you? You just want to remain ignorant."
One of them wagered a guess, 10?
Wrong! 34. Now bonus question. How many of them were married to other men at the time he married them?
Huh? What? We didn't come here to get into a contentious argument. We gotta go.
Wait a minute. Didn't you just get done telling me you could answer my questions honestly? You have not answered a single question honestly. You're proving my point, that Mormons cannot honestly answer honest questions about their faith if their lives depended upon it. You're too chicken because you know deep down that you're lying.
I could see them getting pissed so I let them off the hook by saying, "Look. I don't blame you for lying. I was in your shoes and little did I know at the time I was selling a big fat lie. But at some point you're going to find out. Hopefully that point is before I found out, after I was married in the temple and had 4 kids. Someday you're probably going to have kids and I hope you don't tell them the same lie your parents told you without thinking about it and that you're now telling me. When you get home do your own independent research into the wives of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. You'll quickly discover that I was being honest and you were lying on your mission.
Compare what you discover with D&C 132, which condemns marrying other men's wives as adultery and then ask yourself how you can in good conscience, lie to your own children, knowing what you now know. Then I reminded them that they were obligated by their own 11th Article of Faith to respect my right to follow the dictates of my conscience, which is what I was doing. Then I bade them a good night.

That information is just not very useful.

That's kind of like selling a house to someone and failing to disclose that there are MAJOR structural faults with the foundation of the house.
Once the new owners move in they discover the cracks in the foundation and sue your ass for fraud.
No judge is going to say, "Well, the seller of the house really was under no obligation to disclose the fact that the foundation had major structural failures. That information just isn't very useful."
What he's going to say and what any jury would say is, "Guilty!"
They're guilty of not disclosing the fact that Joseph Smith had 34 wives, 11 of whom were teenagers and another 11 of whom were married to other men. That's not only a sin of ommission, it's a sin of commission, since they continue to misrepresent Joseph and Emma's relationship as "a marriage based upon the gospel of Jesus Christ, an example to all." direct quote from Josephsmith.net.
Seems to me that the last guy to follow that example was Warren Jeffs, who's in prison on multiple child rape charges, which is far less than what Joseph's Myth or Brigham Young was guilty of. They're much closer to Warren Jeffs than Jesus Christ.

order66 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That information is just not very useful.

Best laugh of the day so far!

I haven't visited this site in forever and I'm so glad I did, just for reading this!
I would have loved to be a part of this convo.

You'll have your chance the next time a pair of Mormon missionaries knock on your door. I love it when any door to door religion salesmen knock on my door. Little do they know what I have in store for them, a sh!tload of CogDis to deal with. haha

Like my heroine, Ayaan Hirsi Ali said, "I cause CogDis, which will either drive them insane or drive them sane. That's all I can do."

That was very well done and they will likely remember what you told them. Will they act on it and do more research some time in their lives?? Who knows

It is amazing (and so disappointing) that most TBM's will never listen to facts that are not part of the "storyline" and that, in anyway, challenge the Mormon version of history.

Just like you, I was in that same situation as those missionaries. I was so brainwashed that I would not listen to anyone that preached "false" doctrine, according to the Cult.

"I was so brainwashed that I would not listen to anyone that preached "false" doctrine, according to the Cult."

Send kids out when they're 19-21 and subject them to every kind of opposition to their naive beliefs, which they have to reconcile or go insane. I remember one time on my mission I was a senior companion and we walked into an ambush with a couple of VERY well prepared Evangelical Christians, who had all their arguments lined up and the evidence to prove Joseph's Myth was bogus. That sucked. I left there really demoralized. Man I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. I had no defense. I had no answers. I went home and told my companion I needed to be alone. I went out in this meadow by our flat where I knew I could be alone and I prayed to God for some answers. I sat there afterwards in silence, which was deafening. Finally I opened my eyes and looked around for some kind of a sign that I wasn't doing all of this for nothing. I was surrounded by tall grass. I pulled up one of the blades of grass with seeds growing on it and thought about how miraculous it was, that there was all of this information contained in each seed to make a plant that photosynthesizes light and produces matter, food, energy that we can use. I attributed that genius to God and figured that was my answer. God is a genius who understand all of this and just because my understanding was insufficient, if I relied upon his genius, then eventually I would understand too, which was enough to inspire me to keep going. Keep presenting my message as though nothing had happened that day. I chose to just flush it like yesterday's meal, useless sh!t.
I chose to reconcile my doubts with hope, which worked temporarily, at least enough to get me through my mission, so I could get home and marry a hot Mormon wife and start pumping out Mormon spawn, which was my main motivation in life at that point. Then it hit me 20 years later, when I had kids to answer to, that Joseph's Myth was bogus. That's a pretty tough realization if you're married to a woman with whom you've had 4 kids and she's not interested in changing. Those kinds of social implications are what keeps a whole lot of us from facing reality. And that's why the brainwashing works so well.
By the time Mormons get home from their missions, they've been thoroughly brainwashed and wouldn't touch a drop of alcohol or screw a woman unless they were married, which after 2 years of sexual depravation, is their highest priority in life.
Works like a charm. Until they decide to do their own independent research in the middle of the night on the internet, when nobody's watching.

A simple answer...

"In those days the men were getting killed off by the mobs and there was a surplus of women. Well, the women could not own property and so the men married them so they could. The vast majority of marriages were in name only."

I'm surpised the elders didn't try that one on you.

Monson and his henchmen in the 15 KNOW that the above is an absolute LIE and yet they continue to let the membership believe such stories.

Keep up the good work exposing the lies of the Mormon Church. Smith's sick, perverted life will one day be known by all.

According to the US Census, there was never a time when women outnumbered men in Utah.
God says right in D&C 132 what the purpose of plural marriage was, to procreate. There is no other purpose. So to say that those marriages were in name only is a lie, especially given the fact that Brigham Young fathered children with other men's wives, like Zina Huntinton Jacobs Smith Young.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zina_D._H._Young#Marriages_and_children
Which is impossible to reconcile with "The Law of the Priesthood" which condemns their behavior as adultery, punishable by divine destruction.

Mormons love to play the shell game. Just try to keep up with their hand tricks to distract you from the facts of the matter. Don't play that game. You control the discussion by asking simple questions and don't let them off the hook with cliches instead of real answers.
Demand REAL, HONEST answers first, before you to listen to a word they have to say. When they avoid the answer, point out that they're avoiding the answer, then ask it again and again until they answer.

maybe the facts of Joe's marriages was 'read into the record' in some obscure talk a long,long time ago; (like the rock-in-hat); that way, Mormons could tell themselves that 'it was there all the time', but wasn't thought important...

HOWEVER, that would put Hincksters stmnt 'when our people came west, it was practiced on a limited basis' into question.

No Easy Out there, 'eh?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2012 03:10PM by guynoirprivateeye.

That is the classic apologist (Dan Peterson) strategy,"You are just now figuring this out? Ive known about that forever. Its not the church's fault you were so uninformed."
Really? Even though the church still maintains on josephsmith.org that "Joseph and Emma Smith based there marriage upon the gospel of Jesus Christ, an example to all." direct quote
Where did Jesus Christ's gospel does it say to go and have sex with other men's wives, even if you already made a sacred vow before God to be faithful to your wife and not screw around with other women?
That sounds like the perverted gospel of Warren Jeffs, not Jesus.

Great post, josephsmyth.
"We can answer any question" (using Mormon answers, of course)
Joseph Smith's wives? --- What does that matter?
Smith's arrest records? --- What does that matter?
Lost Book of Abraham fraud? --- What does that matter?
Book of Mormon DNA proof? --- What does that matter?
Kinderhook plates fraud? --- What does that matter?
Masonic temple rituals? --- What does that matter?

"See, we told you we could answer any question."

The last couple of missionaries I ever got at the door had seen my record in the Area Book and thought they would come and see me.

They asked what is it that stopped me attending etc.

I just told them flat out about Smith, his Polygamy and marrying teen housemaids, coercing 14 year olds and asking for and marrying other mens wives. They first thought I must be misunderstanding the nature of 'sealings' perhaps but after I convinced them I was certain of the facts, one responded that maybe God must have commanded it then.

This whole issue continually bothered me from when I came across it. I remember when once the Ward historical expert came along with missionaries and I was challenging them on Smith's behaviour with other mens wives etc and he suddenly spoke out and said 'What, where did you get that from'? I started to realise then that something was not right about the whole thing. Incidentally one of those missionaries has since written to me and told me of his unbelief, though still attending for family unity sake etc.

My favourite moment ever has to be the two missionaries I caught out with the hat and rock!

I asked them to explain how Smith translated the Book of Mormon? They gave a wonderful lengthy response about the Urim and Thummim, the Breastplate etc I responded that sounds great, now do you want to know how he 'really' did it?

They looked puzzled. I said he put a rock in a hat and his face inside and claimed words appeared on the rock.

They said what Antimormon sites are you looking at? I said LDS ones! lol I got them to read from that famous Russel Nelson Talk "A Treasured Testament" for themselves and they were blown away! Absolutely stunned by it! They were just laughing. One of them even said 'You are the man'! lol I actually felt quite liberated and vindicated that my concerns were real enough by then.

They didn't meet the deadline to get back to their flat for 10.30pm either, they were with me still laughing about it. After that episode they didn't really challenge anything else I told them but instead asked what I had got for them this week!

It was brilliant, no more pressuring me with officially missionary quota stuff after that.

Sounds about right. I had pretty much the same experience with a TBM friend. I surprised her with the same fact and I asked her if she really wanted to know. She said no. Really though, Mormons are ignorant by choice.