Introduction

These ques­tions are designed to probe var­i­ous aspects of the LDS Church’s his­to­ry and truth-claims. The list was made for 1) inves­ti­ga­tors to ask the mis­sion­ar­ies, 2) active mem­bers to ask them­selves, or 3) those expe­ri­enc­ing a faith tran­si­tion to ask their par­ents or eccle­si­as­ti­cal lead­ers.

The major­i­ty of links pro­vid­ed are to LDS approved sources or to rel­a­tive­ly neu­tral infor­ma­tion repos­i­to­ries (such as wikipedia).

If any ques­tion con­tains incor­rect infor­ma­tion or is mis­lead­ing in any way, please con­tact me, and I will fix it.

Approaches to difficult questions

One gen­er­al way to deal with dif­fi­cult ques­tions is to sug­gest that God has been dis­pens­ing infor­ma­tion “line upon line, pre­cept upon pre­cept, here a lit­tle and there a lit­tle” (2 Nephi 28:30). On the oth­er hand, we expect to see con­sis­ten­cy in the unfold­ing of God’s hand­i­work because God “is the same yes­ter­day and today and for­ev­er” (1 Nephi 10:18), “truth is knowl­edge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come” (D&C 93:24), and his house “…is a house of order, saith the Lord God, and not a house of con­fu­sion.” (D&C 132:8).

Incon­sis­ten­cies and dif­fi­cul­ties may also be chalked up to the short­com­ings and mis­takes of men. On the one hand, the Lord (appar­ent­ly) declared, through Joseph Smith:

What I the Lord have spo­ken, I have spo­ken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heav­ens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be ful­filled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my ser­vants, it is the same.

Joseph Smith also empha­sized “there is no error in the rev­e­la­tions which I have taught.” On the oth­er hand, he remind­ed us “I nev­er told you I was per­fect” and “a prophet was a prophet only when he was act­ing as such.” With caveats in place (i.e., rev­e­la­tion from God is per­fect and all mis­takes are from men), it is triv­ial, then, to take any event, doc­trine, or teach­ing that is prob­lem­at­ic and attribute it to the fail­ures of men while attribut­ing every­thing faith-pro­mot­ing and won­der­ful to God’s divine influ­ence. This is a tremen­dous­ly pow­er­ful par­ti­tion­ing algo­rithm. Its only weak­ness may be that it is too powerful—such an algo­rithm seems capa­ble of diviniz­ing any orga­ni­za­tion or indi­vid­ual to which it may be applied.

Questions

Joseph Smith’s Polygamy

The Book of Abraham

In his trans­la­tion of the fac­sim­i­les, Joseph point­ed to spe­cif­ic char­ac­ters and gave a spe­cif­ic trans­la­tion. How­ev­er, the char­ac­ters on the fac­sim­i­les (not the vignettes, but the char­ac­ters describ­ing the vignettes) have been trans­lat­ed by both BYU and non-Mor­mon schol­ars. The Book of Abra­ham lds​.org essay con­cedes: “None of the char­ac­ters on the papyrus frag­ments men­tioned Abraham’s name or any of the events record­ed in the book of Abra­ham. Mor­mon and non-Mor­mon Egyp­tol­o­gists agree that the char­ac­ters on the frag­ments do not match the trans­la­tion giv­en in the book of Abra­ham…”

Why do the trans­la­tions of the fac­sim­i­le char­ac­ters not match up?

The Book of Mormon

Richard Bush­man, a well-known Mor­mon his­to­ri­an, recent­ly stat­ed:

… there is phras­ing everywhere–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 as an Old Tes­ta­ment …

The num­ber of sim­i­lar­i­ties with ear­ly 1800s thought is exten­sive.

Spiritual Confirmation and Priesthood Guidance

Joseph Smith and the Restoration

Adam and Eve

The Church teach­es in 8 cur­rent man­u­als that Adam lived at approx­i­mate­ly 4000 BC; Joseph Smith claimed that Adam and Eve walked out of the Gar­den of Eden into Mis­souri, USA, and mod­ern lead­ers affirm the phys­i­cal, lit­er­al real­i­ty of Adam and Eve. In addi­tion, restored LDS scrip­ture describes Adam and Eve till­ing the ground imme­di­ate­ly upon their explu­sion from the Gar­den of Eden (see Moses 4:29). Giv­en that agri­cul­ture was not invent­ed until about 10,000 years ago, it appears that all accounts of Adam and Eve from LDS prophet­ic sources place them some­where between 4,000 BCE and 10,000 BCE (in Mis­souri, USA).

How­ev­er, many data points sup­port a migra­tion out of Africa begin­ning about 70,000 years ago. Abo­rig­i­nal Aus­tralians like­ly migrat­ed to Aus­tralia about 50,000 years ago, and exten­sive evi­dence shows migra­tions into the Pacif­ic islands around 20,000 years ago. In addi­tion, all human genet­ic sequence data and infer­ences about viable pop­u­la­tion size sug­gest that there was nev­er a time when there were only two humans on earth (exam­ple 1, exam­ple 2).

In what fash­ion was Adam “the first man of all men” (Moses 1:34) and the “pri­mal par­ent of our race” (accord­ing to the 1909 First Pres­i­den­cy State­ment) respec­tive to the Aus­tralian Abo­rig­ines and Pacif­ic Islanders? Are those peo­ple descen­dants of Adam and Eve? If not, what makes Adam and Eve their “par­ent”? If Adam and Eve were lit­er­al peo­ple, what is one pos­si­ble time or place they could have lived that is also com­pat­i­ble with our under­stand­ing of the human migra­tion data? Fair­Mor­mon acknowl­edges that there was like­ly not a glob­al flood 4,400 years ago. If the Gar­den of Eden real­ly was in Mis­souri, how did Adam and Eve migrate to the Mid­dle East? If Adam nev­er actu­al­ly lived in Mis­souri, then what are we to make of Adam-ondi-Ahman?