Back to the beginning: I published TMD Volume 5 in February of 2012, almost exactly six years after first discovering the truth behind the Mormon Church. As I look back to when my journey started, with the unwanted and completely accidental discovery of polyandry, I realise that it has been one continuous devastating journey of discovery that just never seemed to end. I wondered where the lies and deception would stop – and they didn’t.
Mormonism turned out to be one big (and thoroughly provable) lie. Writing has been my personal therapy and it has been an intense time, coming to terms with the truth and adjusting to an evidence-based world view – which common sense and reason alone suggest should be everyone’s aim to begin with. Any religious ideas should be adapted to fit known science and any new evidence that becomes available. You cannot reject scientific evidence in favour of known fiction. If new evidence conflicts with old belief then evidence wins; the belief is wrong as it is based on faith in something that someone else claims is true without any evidence to substantiate it.
I had Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door (yet again) the other day. The guy insisted my scientific view was based on the words of men whereas he accepted the word of God. The reality is actually just the opposite. I only accept properly validated, peer reviewed, tested and accepted scientific evidence rather than anyone’s words or opinion – and even then, I will readily alter my perspective based on new evidence and understanding – whereas, unless a god has personally appeared to him and addressed him and he has witnesses and evidence to prove it, he meant he accepts the words of men who wrote centuries ago, sitting around campfires in the desert making up stories, many of which were derived from earlier pagan ideas. Where they conflict with science – he rejects the science – he confirmed that they still do not accept evolution as a proven fact. They still erroneously believe such scientific ‘theory’ remains hypothesis rather than proven beyond dispute. They simply do not understand the scientific meanings attached to ‘theory’. I am not sure how they apply that to the theory of gravity but I suggested they should ‘float away’ (as per Tim Minchin). I pointed out that even the Pope accepts evolution as a fact but JW’s don’t seem to like the Pope very much. There is absolutely no viable evidence that any so-called scripture was ever given by any god to humans – and that applies to more religions than just Christianity and Judaism. It also seems very odd that Christians hijacked Jewish scripture and manipulated it to fit their new and radical ideas. It is also a fact that if a god does exist and did give what became the Old Testament to humans, he is an absolutely horrid god. Richard Dawkins summed it up well when he said:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion p. 31).
When I published TMD Volume 1, volumes two and three were already somewhat written and in the Preface to the first volume I said the following:
“My full-time research began, lasting over three devastating, soul destroying years, which only faithful members, who have made similar discoveries about the lies within Mormonism, can fully appreciate. The depths of despair that are encountered by such discoveries are hard to imagine or explain. Day after day the nightmare continued and the heartbreak was relentless. Not only does the Mormon Church hide the truth concerning polygamy, but as it turns out, almost everything else has been completely fabricated or falsified to suit the Mormon fairy tale. The overall picture the Church presents is entirely false.”
At the time, I had no idea that the past would continue to haunt me and that a further three years would be required in order to accomplish the task of more fully exposing the hoax behind the Mormon Church. Six years, five books and one booklet later, perhaps I have finally got the fact that we were all so cruelly deceived out of my system. I do hope so as anguish is not a pleasant companion. However, I have to admit that Volume 5 was written not so much as therapy but as a project I felt might help others as I had a good grasp of what is taught today compared with the historical facts – and the Doctrine and Covenants had always bothered me. It just didn’t sit right and a great deal of mental manipulation was required in order to accept it as from the Lord. Thus writing about it was, for once, more enjoyed than endured – something which has been a comfort to me.
I went on in the Preface to Volume 1 to describe my conclusions at that time. Several years later, that initial position hasn’t changed; rather it has been reinforced and verified over an over again. This is from TMD Vol. 1 Preface:
Joseph Smith perpetrated what was arguably the biggest hoax of the nineteenth century.
“Smith is a proven fraud. He was convicted for being a con artist. He lied about visions, revelations, scriptures, gold plates and his ability to translate them. His Book of Mormon was a work of fiction, full of plagiarism and impossibilities. He included extinct animals and left out the ones that did exist. He included crops not available in the era, leaving out ones that were the staple diet of Native Americans, not to mention the impossible use of the wheel and of chariots which needed horses to pull them. Smith had no idea that horses went extinct long before the time of his story, so he included them in his book. He spoke of, yet to be invented, glass windows, steel, money and technology.
His Book of Abraham was a work of pure fiction; the papyri he claimed to translate, now conclusively proven to be Egyptian funerary text written about 50 BCE – 50 CE. Smith claimed it was actually penned by Abraham in his own handwriting, some two thousand years earlier – a physically impossible feat.
Smith wrote an associated Egyptian alphabet and grammar which was suppressed for one-hundred-and-thirty years. Since it became available, that too has proved to be complete and utter nonsense. The Church accepts that but attempts to excuse it.
Smith’s revelations were entirely his own ideas, many verifiable aspects remaining unfulfilled. They were often altered, deleted or added to at will, long after the supposed revelations were given. He was a womaniser, a cheat and a liar. He founded and then almost immediately abandoned an illegal bank, defrauding people of their money and property. He put everything in his wife’s name, securing wealth and property and later he deliberately tried to renege on his financial responsibilities by filing a fraudulent bankruptcy. He organised paramilitary groups and incited people to riot and murder. For much of his short adult life, he was in effect, an outlaw – with a price on his head.
He secretly and illegally practiced polygamy and also polyandry, mostly kept hidden from his first wife Emma. He encouraged selected others to do likewise, and excommunicated anyone who copied him without his explicit permission or who correctly accused him of practicing it. He constantly lied about having plural wives to the general public and members alike, to the very end, in public speaking and in newsprint. Even worse, he lied in false scripture, first published as Section 101 in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. It claimed monogamy the standard rather than polygamy and remained in place until 1876.
Finally killed in a shootout whilst in prison awaiting trial for treason, when Smith himself shot and wounded three men, Smith’s overall character was the modern equivalent of Dawkins’ description of the God of the Old Testament. The two go very well together.
If Smith’s God turns out to be real and if Smith was called, all he did being sanctioned of or commanded by this God, then the Mormon Church can keep them both. They are more akin to the Christian idea of Satan than of a supreme being who loves his creations and his supposed faithful prophet. I want nothing to do with either of them. It is absolutely certain no such God as Smith’s exists. Smith was nothing more than an opportunist, a con artist and an impostor.”
Jim Whitefield 