My conclusions are the result of years of study and inquiry into mormonism, distilled into a short paragraph. Short does not mean incorrect. Other students of mormonism and similar cults have all arrived at the same conclusions. Catholicism and the truths that it teaches have two thousand years of evidence for it’s beliefs. mormonism has the testimony of a few dubious witnesses and the written evidence of “scriptures” of dubious provenence, most of which are the result of either plagiarism or outright fantasy. No proof exists for the BOM, which contains no provable facts and whose “plates” of origin have conviently disappeared. The burden of proof is not upon me, it is upon those who propose that mormonism is true. That you, who seem to be a fairly intelligent person, have pinned your hopes on such a flimsy construction, is a tribute to the cleverness of the deception. The Catholic Church has no need practice the obfuscation and semantic gymnastics practiced by mormonism, the truth alone is sufficient.
Hosemonkey, with all due respect, your conclusions may be the result of 'years of study and inquiry into Mormonism," but your sources are pretty much all anti-Mormon; that’s fairly obvious by the claims you make about what we ‘really’ believe.
When making claims about what LDS doctrine actually is, if your claim is different from that of any LDS, then the burden of proof is not only on you—it is impossible. Why?
Because when a True Believer of any religious system says 'this is what we believe," that’s authoritative and trumps all things. You are a Catholic…if you say “I believe this or that, and here’s what the cathechism/Pope/scripture/Holy Tradition says about it,” then it doesn’t matter the tiniest bit what anybody else says, or how they choose to interpret what THEY think the catechism/Pope/scripture/Holy Tradition says. What you say goes, every time, for explaining Catholic doctrine to non-Catholics. Certainly no non-Catholic has a right to argue with you about what your beliefs actually ARE.
The problem here is that the reverse is also true, and you are having some difficulty with the concept that Mormons (like Pahoran, Parker and even me) understand what LDS doctrine actually is, and, well…what we say goes. We ARE the proof of what Mormons believe–at least as to what WE, as Mormons, believe, just as you are the proof of what you, an individual Catholic, believes.
You want to argue our beliefs? Fine----but first get out of that battle field of strawmen you are so fond of and talk to us about what our beliefs actually are.
…and, y’know, you might want to figure that we really do know what our beliefs actually are, better than you do. Shoot, even Murdock, whose beliefs run to the edge, is quite aware that his beliefs are not ‘mainstream Mormon,’ even though many of you gleefully claim that they are.
Just a thought.
