Old friend on Facebook says she's teaching Sunday (relief society or Sunday school can't remember). She asks what some of the hard questions are that LDS people are asked so she can address them. Then she says something like "real questions please, no bashing".

Part of me wants to stay out of it (not sure she knows I've left). Part of me wants to lay a bunch of s#it out there. What would you ask?

1978/Priesthood for non-whites and prop 8/22 have already been brought up...and justified. Ugh.

Chances are, anything of real substance she will consider "bashing." Anything that members cannot give some half assed answer too off the top of their tongue is inspired by satan or just inaccurate mormon literature. Frankly, if I were you, and you wanted to retain a relationship with this person, I would tell her you are not the person to ask. If you do not really care, then let her have it all, no point in sugar coating it. She wants it easy so she doesn't have to challenge herself or anyone else.

Also, if she can justify those two things, she can justify anything. She is not really looking for anything to shake her belief.....

I am a gay and was mormon for 18 years. If your friend talked to me about prop 8, i could hit a home run and she would be talking in circles, and then falling back on "faith" and her testimony, because she would not be able to give me a valid answer.

Pretty much the answer to both (but from other people, not her) was "because God said so. We don't have to understand more that that even if it doesn't make sense."

Exactly, every time she loses an argument she will resort to that. It is impossible to debate something that is not real. It is a state of mind of her own.

I would tell her that she cannot really ask for "tough questions" regarding the LDS church if she is going to base her answers off of faith and because God said so. It is a pointless catch 22, because it will lead right back where it started. In other words, her lesson will be rather pointless in relief society, because it will prepare no one for tough questions.

It is like me saying alcohol is bad for you and I wont drink it. Then someone asking me to prove it, and all I can come up with is because mommy told me so.

Right. I'm tempted to say that if that is the answer, why bother with the conversation in the first place.

Or saying coffee and tea are bad. But science shows us they're both good or, at worst, indifferent. The only proof they have that they're bad is God says not to drink them.

Who needs proof or explanation when you have God?

It seems like the next logical question is, "Why do you think God said so?"

And it will always reduce down to the TBM bearing their testimony of the prophet Joseph Smith, because everything always leads back to that.

Personally, I would stay out of it if you want to preserve the friendship. But if you insist, I would go with the Book of Abraham.

There is a new choice on FB - used to say: HIDE now it says; I don't want to see this.
Click it!
GONE!

If you don't want to see stuff on your FB - click it OFF.
It might show up again when you go back to the page. Has happened to me. So I don't know how permanent it is.

In other words: either preserve and respect the relationship, or dump it.
Your choice.

What do they need all of the money for?

And why is the central corporation so secretive about all the money? I bet she has no clue about how much of her tithing, etc. is drained from her neighborhood and sucked into the black hole of the SLC morg.

1) These questions are "hard" because our personal discernment tells us the church is wrong (or has done something wrong). Don't I have the gift of the Holy Ghost to keep me from being led astray?

2) Don't I have free agency? Doesn't the simple adages "The Church is perfect" and "follow the prophet" rob me of free agency? Wasn't that Satan's plan?

3) Is there a path to the CK that doesn't require "buying" admission? (Paying 10% for life. Law of consecration.)

4) Was the new world actually "reserved" for Lehi and his descendants? Or were there people here already? Where is Zarahemla?



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 08/17/2013 06:15PM by crom.

I like this. They are hard questions because they cause cognitive dissonance (and rightly so!).

Difficult Questions for Mormons

http://www.bible.ca/mor-questions.htm

I would quote 2 Ne. 2:13, and ask her to explain why it is exactly that God depends on evil in order to exist? Or even argue grace vs. works. Especially tithing. Ask how it is acceptable that Mormons LITERALLY have to pay their way into heaven. OR you could go simple and modern and ask about the City Creek Center and why the church spent more money on a shopping mall than they have spent on humanitarian aid in the past 25 years combined.

Here is the relevant fact sheet for that, straight from the horse's mouth. The number you are looking for is at the bottom right corner. And remember that the church spent at least $1.5 Billion on CCC. (Even though the 'official' church humanitarian aid number is probably significantly and inaccurately inflated, it still illustrates how the church misuses its money.)

http://www.lds.org/bc/content/shared/content/english/pdf/welfare/2011-welfare-services-fact-sheet.pdf

Also, just for comparison sake you can throw in this. U.S. Catholic Charities USA is ranked #5 on Forbes' top 100 US Charities, and it spent over $3.8 billion on charitable services in the 2012 fiscal year. This particular charity is devoted to addressing poverty in just the U.S., so really the Morg is just a speck of dust on the radar when it comes to humanitarian aid, even when they inflate their numbers by including 25 years worth of aid across the entire planet.

What's more is Catholic Charities USA actually release their financials and are even independently audited!! Now I'm not even Catholic and I would gladly throw 10% of my income at these guys over the Morg any day.

http://www.forbes.com/companies/catholic-charities-usa/

Keep it current.

Question 1: Why does the church state in the prelude to Official Declaration 2 in the 2013 version of the scriptures that we do not know why blacks did not receive the priesthood when there are multiple prophets who spoke concerning the fact they did not have the priesthood was that they were decedents of Cain and were not worthy because of their an ancestors sin?

Question 2: Why, in the 2013 version of the scriptures have they changed the explanation of where the Book of Abraham came from to say it was inspired writing after he received some scrolls instead of a direct translation of the scrolls that Joseph Smith claimed?

Followed by: Why do women attend this misogynistic church anyway?

(Oh, and a bunch of claims that Elohim doesn't hate women is just silly. D&C 132 alone is proof that deity hates women.)

Right??!!