Posted by:
The 1st FreeAtLast
(
)
Date: June 25, 2013 04:45AM
...official-yet-'faith'-troubling LD$ Church info. to pro-Mormonism info. from sources such as FAIR Mormon Wiki that make mention of topics that Latter-day Saints have not been taught in church and find disturbing ("Joseph Smith/Polygamy/Polyandry", "Fanny Alger", "Mormonism and temples/Endowment/Freemasonry", etc.) to documented historical info. in volumes such as "An Insider's View of Mormon Origins", "Early Mormonism and the Magic World View", "No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith", etc.
If you're interested, here's a post I did last month: "I suggest start w/ the July '93 Ensign article by LDS apostle R. Nelson about JS 'translating' the BoM w/ his 'seer' stone and hat (links)" - ref.
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,888649,889393#msg-889393...and more info. in another post of mine:
FamilySearch.org is the LDS Church's genealogy website. Here's the church's online record for Joseph Smith (JS) showing several, but not all of his 33 known wives:
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.2.1/99P4-SHNThe full list is at
http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/Note that JS' collection of plural wives included the spouses of 11 men as well as seven teenage girls younger than 18 and 15 single women aged 19 to 58.
The LDS Church has an online marriage record for JS and Fanny Alger, the teenage servant girl who worked in the Smith home, at
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.2.1/SP82-WTVYou also might want to try "Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling: A Cultural Biography of Mormonism's Founder" by Prof. Richard Bushman, a Mormon. From Publisher's Weekly: "How should a historian depict a man's life when that man, and his religion, remain a mystery to so many 200 years after his birth? Bushman, an emeritus professor at Columbia University and author of Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism, greatly expands on that previous work, filling in many details of the founding prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and carrying the story through to the end of Smith's life. Many continue to view Smith as an enigmatic and controversial figure. Bushman locates him in his historical and cultural context, fleshing out the many nuances of 19th-century American life that produced such a fertile ground for emerging religions. The author, a practicing Mormon, is aware that his book stands in the intersection of faith and scholarship, but does not avoid the problematic aspects of Smith's life and work, such as his practice of polygamy, his early attempts at treasure-seeking and his later political aspirations. In the end, Smith emerges as a genuine American phenomenon, a man driven by inspiration but not unaffected by his cultural context. This is a remarkable book, wonderfully readable and supported by exhaustive research. For anyone interested in the Mormon experience, it will be required reading for years to come." (ref.
http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smith-Rough-Stone-Rolling/dp/1400077532)
Crucially, you cannot force ANY Mormon to open their mind to 'faith'-shaking historical facts (there are so many!) that conflict w/ the LD$ Church's whitewash. They have to want to learn the full truth; most do not.
They'd rather continue in 'faith'-bolstering ignorance because they respect the truth less than need to mentally reinforce their Latter-day Saint belief system. It's dysfunctional and immature, but “Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head” (so said Michel de Montaigne, who was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre, and commonly thought of as the father of modern skepticism).
Good luck!