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Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Becoming Gods/Index: Difference between revisions
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|sublink1=Response to claim: 154 - Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother "through some kind of sexual union" clothed each of us with a spirit body | |||
|sublink2=Response to claim: 156, 394 n. 28-31 - The belief in a "Heavenly Mother" is not supported by scripture and was simply added by Joseph Smith | |||
|sublink3=Response to claim: 157 - According to Brigham Young, our spirit body was created via a sexual union of Heavenly Father and Mother | |||
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Revision as of 07:37, 13 December 2014
Index to claims made in Becoming Gods: A Closer Look at 21st-Century Mormonism
A FAIR Analysis of: Becoming Gods: A Closer Look at 21st-Century Mormonism A work by author: Richard Abanes
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This is an index of claims made in this work with links to corresponding responses within the FairMormon Answers Wiki. An effort has been made to provide the author's original sources where possible.
Sub-articles
Preface
Summary: Claims made in Preface: "Can't We All Just Get Along?"- Chapter 1—
Brief Summary: Claims made in "Chapter 1: God's Latter-Day Prophet" (Click here for full article)
- Response to claim: 24 - Joseph's family survived by "money digging"
- Response to claim: 24 - Joseph was adept at "occult ritual"
- Response to claim: 24 - Joseph's neighbors thought that he was "an imposter, hypocrite and liar"
- Response to claim: 26 - During the First Vision, Joseph was told that "all Christian creeds" were an abomination and that "all Christian teachers" were corrupt
- Response to claim: 26 - Many Mormons believe that "their salvation, to a limited degree, rests upon Smith"
- Response to claim: 26 - Bruce R. McConkie said that "we must turn to Joseph Smith to gain salvation"
- Response to claim: 26 - Dallin Oaks said that "I have built my life on the testimony and mission of the Prophet Joseph Smith."
- Response to claim: 27 - Joseph Smith was "harsh and violent"
- Response to claim: 28 - Joseph Smith may have been a "pious fraud," who believed that he had been called of God while perpetrating fraud
- Response to claim: 28 - Polygamy was practiced in secret and denied publicly
- Response to claim: 28 - Heber C. Kimball predicted that the world would someday see Joseph Smith as "a god"
- Response to claim: 28 - Brigham Young applied 1 John 4:3 to Joseph Smith
- Response to claim: 29 - LDS claim that Joseph Smith "told but one" First Vision
- Response to claim: 30 - The 1832 account of the First Vision states that Joseph was in his "sixteenth year," and that he "probably meant when he was 16 years old
- Response to claim: 30 - The 1832 account does not mention two personages
- Response to claim: 30 - The 1832 account does not mention that "all the churches in Joseph's day were false"
- Response to claim: 31 - Joseph claimed that he learned about the errors in Christendom through personal Bible study several years before the First Vision
- Response to claim: 31 - Orson Pratt said that the two personages "declared themselves to be angels"
- Response to claim: 31 - Church historian Andrew Jenson said that "The angel again forbade Joseph to join any of these churches"
- Response to claim: 31 - Joseph dictated the 1838 account of the First Vision to counter the leadership crisis in Kirtland
- Response to claim: 34 - "Not a single piece" of literature published in the 1830's mentions a visit by the Father and the Son
- Response to claim: 34 - Joseph's mother said that the First Vision was of an angel
- Response to claim: 34 - Joseph privately began reworking the story of seeing an angel into a vision of Christ
- Response to claim: 34 - Without "Mormonism's so-called" Melchizedek Priesthood, no man can see God and live
- Response to claim: 34 - Nobody knows "when or how" the Joseph received the Melchizedek Priesthood
- Response to claim: 34 - Joseph "had to backdate" the First Vision to 1820 in response to a leadership crisis
- Response to claim: 35 - The First Vision originally stated that the personages were angels
- Response to claim: 35 - There was no 1820 revival in Palmyra that converted "great multitudes" of people
- Response to claim: 35, 342n78, 348n130 - Joseph Smith is claimed to have joined other churches after having been told that churches were wrong
- Response to claim: 35, 342n79-80 - Newspapers reported in 1829 that Joseph Smith had a dream in 1827 about a spirit visiting him three times in one night
- Response to claim: 35-36, 343n83 - Joseph Smiths First Vision may have been a dream of a "bloody ghost dressed as a Spaniard
- Response to claim: 36, 343n85 - Joseph Smith was an "occultist"
- Response to claim: 36 - Early Mormons believed in "witchcraft"
- Response to claim: 36 - Joseph's mother talked about "magic circles" and the "faculty of Abrac"
- Response to claim: 37, 344n93 - Joseph's family had a "magick dagger" that was owned by Hyrum Smith
- Response to claim: 37, 344n94 - Joseph's family had "three magick parchments." One of these was owned by Hyrum Smith
- Response to claim: 37, 344n95 - Joseph had a "Jupiter talisman" with him the day he died
- Response to claim: 38 - "Researchers of Mormonism" now believe that Joseph was influenced by "Jewish kabbalism"
- Response to claim: 38 - Joseph considered the date April 6th to have "astrological significance"
- Response to claim: 38-39, 346 n. 104-109 - Joseph was arrested in 1826 for being a "disorderly person and an imposter"
- Response to claim: 39 - No "statements of repentance by Smith" for money digging have ever been found
- Response to claim: 40, 348n123 - Gordon B. Hinckley cited false documentation to support the story of an 1820 revival
- Response to claim: 42, 349n126 - There is no evidence that Joseph Smith was "persecuted" for telling the story of his vision between 1820 and 1824
- Response to claim: 42, 43 (sidebar) - Contradictions in the stories of Paul's vision were "long ago resolved by scholars analyzing the Greek texts"
- Response to claim: 42 - Brodie's idea that the First Vision may have been "the elaboration of some half-remembered dream stimulated by the early revival excitement" is a satisfactory way to "explain things"
- Response to claim: 44 - Brodie's idea that the First Vision may have been "created some time after 1830 when the need arose for a magnificent tradition to cancel out the stories of his fortune-telling and money-digging" "further weakens" Mormon claims
- Response to claim: 45, 351 n. 144 - Joseph "continued practicing magick, divination, astrology, and soothsaying long after the LDS Church was founded in 1830"
- Response to claim: 46 - Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball were given divining rods by Joseph Smith
- Response to claim: 46 - Joseph received a revelation praising Oliver's gift of using his divining talents
- Response to claim: 48 - Joseph "never stopped being" an occultist
- Response to claim: 49 - The activities of Joseph's family may have been "satanic"
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