Criticisms against the Mormon Church are many, and now, largely because of the Internet, a huge number of historical Mormon documents of all kinds, many of them surpressed by the Church over many years, have come under public scrutiny. I first started to become aware of inconsistencies between official Church doctrines and history and historical documentation through the reading of Fawn W. Brodie's book No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, which I read after my mission to Austria. Years later, in 1983 to be exact, I read Jerald and Sandra Tanner's The Changing World of Mormonism, a condensation and revision of their larger work Mormonism: Shadow or Reality, which signaled the final death knell to my belief in Mormonism. During this span of years, between Brodie and the Tanners, important aspects of Mormon belief and history were considered one by one (The Book of Abraham, Mormon temples and the Masonic connection, The Kinderhook plates, The rise of polygamy and the wife taking of Joseph Smith and later leaders of the Church, and many others); and each one of them ended up being exposed as nothing more than a sham perpetrated by charismatic humans to grab power and wealth, using religion to entice and dupe more and more followers. Though countless books have been written about the many sham aspects of Mormonism, some of them very biased, but others very well researched and scholarly written, I am going to offer you only three areas for your consideration. The Book of Mormon and the First Vision are the two basic building blocks of the Mormon religion, and showing the falsehood of those two will cause the religion to crumble in the mind of anyone that approaches the study of the religion with an objective and open mind. The last link deals with what missionaries tell their investigators, and what they do not tell them, some of which they are not even knowledgeable about themselves. As you will see in two of the links, I am using the research and writings of a Richard Packham, a former Mormon, whom I introduce a bit within the third link. I also use information from the Tanner site in the second link. I would highly recommend visiting both sites for further information regarding Mormonism. You will find the links within each topic below.

The Book of Mormon
The First Vision of Joseph Smith
What Missionaries Don't Tell Investigators

I find the information in the above links very compelling and conclusive that the Mormon Church is false. However, realizing that many other churches also have unusual doctrines and beliefs, yet, like the Mormon Church, are not without some good qualities that help their followers and the communities in which they have presence, the only thing I seriously hold against the Mormon Church, and other churches with the same attitude, is its insistence that it alone possesses the authority to speak and act in the name of God, and believe and teach that all other religions are without authority, and therefore false. Though there seems to be a general public relations effort to indicate mainstreaming of the Mormon religion, underneath that surface spin is the ongoing and incessant belief that reaching the "highest level" of heaven requires passage through the Mormon portals, either before, or after death. Giving up the "we're better than you" stance would mean invalidating the "work" they do in their temples, which would greatly endanger and reduce their financial base, and with it their power and self- proclaimed importance.

Beyond the links above, in April 1997 I spent many hours writing my history through the sole perspective of growing up in, and over almost my whole lifetime, slowly coming completely out of Mormonism. The writing is rather long and sometimes riddled with personal emotion, but I offer it to you now if you wish to read it.

Go back to the home page, or go on to Why I Left The Mormon Church written in 1997.