Because I Feel The Need To Clear The Air On My Take On The Beliefs of Mormons

 Recently, I had a little incident where I offended a devout Mormon by throwing shade on the Book of Mormon as a fanfic that does not withstand the light of scrutiny. Out of respect for the party in question, whom I apologized to for being unduly rude, I shall not name names nor discuss exactly where it happened or the circumstances. However, because this is my personal blog, I shall set forth my views on Mormonism, with no evasion or sugarcoating, just to clarify my beliefs. If any devout Mormon wishes to offer a rebuttal, I shall accept that maturely and welcome it. 

The only caveat I ask is that the rebuttal give evidence for its views from secondary sources to back up the TANGIBLE claims made by Mormon doctrine (such as geological facts and historical events that should be provable by historical evidence of some kind or backed up by a secondary source). The reason I make this distinction is that Christians and Jews can easily meet this test with their holy books and beliefs, and secular historians of all shades can confirm to varying degrees facts of a non-faith-based nature such as persons, places, and historical events mentioned in the Old and New Testaments that involved other civilizations and peoples who confirmably existed in the historical record. Matters of faith I will not dispute except where I can prove via the Bible (which Mormons claim albeit filtered through their own interpretation via their own deuterocanonical additions) there are clear contradictions.

That all said, let me be absolutely clear. Those who subscribe to Mormon beliefs I have no issue with as people. I know Mormons who are nice people who I respect as human beings with intelligence, conscience, and the free will to choose their own beliefs. However, I have come to the conclusion, frankly, their beliefs do not have any foundation in logical consistency, the tangible evidence cited by their doctrine cannot be falsified (the historical process of confirming or denying its authenticity), and that while they may believe to some extent in actual matters they have common ground with Christians over, that Mormon doctrine is fundamentally a false doctrine that wears the title Christianity as a skinsuit, a cult with well-intentioned people who have been deceived for the most part, and just because their beliefs may be sincere and long-held, it is at its core false teachings that I cannot respect as having any moral value on equal standing with mainline Christian doctrine as considered basically acceptable to most Protestants or Catholics.

First off, let me start off by saying I revere the study of history, and since Mormon belief posits as a foundation of its core concepts an extensive retcon of actual real-world history to retroactively make it line up with both doctrine and history otherwise canon to the Bible and real-world secular history, then I believe if it cannot be made to square with either, then it's fundamental beliefs must be lies.

1. First off let us examine core Mormon doctrine. I shall refer to this site for the basic arguments and my take on them.

A. Mormon doctrine essentially repudiates everything after the death of the original apostles of Christ as illegitimate. While Jesus did say that Peter would be the rock he would build his church, that did not mean Peter nor any other apostle was any more special than any other mortal for determining the continuation of the Holy Word or the spread of its message. Mormon doctrine essentially claims until Joseph Smith came along, humanity was stumbling in the wilderness with a flawed, perverted version of the actual beliefs in God until Joseph Smith and his successors had the perfected version restored.

Frankly, this is not a new argument. Islam also claims to be the perfected version of the revelations of God, given by the Prophet Muhammad, and that Jews and Christians had an imperfect version of the actual truth.

Mormons (though of late they have come to not want to be called this anymore due to negative historical associations they wish to distance themselves from) are frankly making a gigantic ask here, basically saying past the life of the original apostles' everything between then up until the 19th century was a perverted, twisted version of the truth, essentially recycling the same argument as Muslims, just in the 1800s instead of in the 600s of the AD calendar. As they make an extraordinary claim, this requires extraordinary evidence, which I can prove, citing the very Bible they claim to adhere to, does not match up with their take on things.

B. The Mormon view of the Bible is that is it not inerrant nor complete. Again, this is an argument many like Muslims and many splinter cults from the early church like Montantism made to "retcon" the Bible and add newer content down the line without the messy problem of repudiating the old.

However, this presents the first logical problem. If Christianity was a flawed, perverted shell of itself after the original apostles of Christ died, and the first canonization of the scriptures which even they largely accept was done by the Council of Nicaea a few hundred years after those original apostles passed (and later translated to English in the first form they accept as the KJV version), then how can they accept the current Bible as considered canonical by most Protestant denominations (with Mormons defaulting to the KJV version as a base) a remotely accurate basis for their deuterocanon? If they suspect anything after the original apostles died, and the canonization of scripture was not done by anyone they considered proper Christians, then their core premise that the Bible is not inerrant nor complete means one of two things. Either they need it to be true because it's the only way their retcons can be justified, or they are being inconsistent and giving the canonization of the Bible some degree of legitimacy, which undermines the core of their argument they cannot trust anything after the death of the original apostles. I respectfully contend their arguments don't wash.

C. Mormon concepts about the nature of man I find entirely incompatible with Christianity, let me cite the description from the above-linked website, and then I shall present my analysis. (original in italics, my commentary in regular font)

According to Mormon theology, men and women are the spirit sons and daughters of God. We lived in a premortal spirit existence before birth. In this first estate we grew and developed in preparation for the second estate. In this second estate we walk by faith. A veil of forgetfulness has been placed over our minds so we don’t remember what we did and who we used to be in our premortal existence. Our purpose in this life is to grow and mature in a physical body to prepare us for our final eternal state.


Mormons do not believe in human depravity. We are not implicated in Adam’s fall. We are basically good in our eternal nature, but prone to error in our mortal nature. The human is a being in conflict, but also a being with infinite potential.

For starters, the first sentence I won't split hairs over. The next two sentences I do not see proof in the Bible for and frankly, I won't argue too much YET. The fourth sentence is where the first major contradiction crops up.

Mormon doctrine argues our premortal existence was essentially blanked out so we live our lives without a conscious remembrance of it, rendering it superfluous. This does not mesh with how the Bible says it was appointed unto man only once to live and die, and how upon reaching the age of accountability will our actions for or against God be weighted against us.

The Mormon concept of a premortal existence we are not aware of has seen use in another form in the beliefs of Scientology, which has a variant on the concept being memories of a past life. Again, if this premortal state is effectively irrelevant to how we are judged in the eyes of God, then its mention is effectively without a point. The entire concept falls apart on this basic logic error.

The last sentence after this part I won't split hairs over, but the next paragraph is full of contradictions.

The essential concept of salvation is that humanity CANNOT save itself. By the fall of Adam, man became marked as unregenerate without the intercessions of God to save us from our own inquiry. Mormons accept the basic backstory of the Garden of Eden and the events of its resulting aftermath, yet essentially reject the key result of Adam's action reflecting on humanity. If we take this logic at face value, humanity has nothing to prove, atone for, or have to accept we are flawed beings in need of outside intervention.

Mormons essentially argue that the Garden of Eden was a failure of the direct participants in those events and affected no one else. This, despite God in the very same event making clear Adam and Eve's fall from grace, would place the curse of their sin on their descendants having to endure suffering and being denied eternal life free from toil and hardship such as was enjoyed in the Garden.

If the Garden of Eden is just a burden on the direct participants alone, then that means Mormons argue God lied about the curse of sin having a knock-on effect on the descendants of the first man and woman. In short, their argument we are without innate depravity does not make sense.

The rest is even more confusing. If we have an eternal nature that cannot be flawed while our mortal side can be flawed, they are effectively arguing for two entities in the same flesh, one of a mortal nature, and one of a divine, coexisting in the same mortal shell. Given they basically deny the innate sinfulness of man, this two-party entity in a mortal shell thus cannot be flawed by human weakness or evil, and thus renders any need to atone for sin irrelevant by their own doctrinal standards. The very last sentence is rather vague and also contradicts their own argument, saying we are in conflict with ourselves (which makes no sense if we cannot have our souls err and thus our mortal aspect is irrelevant to our immortal aspect) while also possessing infinite potential.

D. I shall again cite the above-linked website, then present my analysis:

In Mormon thought, God has a physical body. According to Doctrine and Covenants, “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also;” but “The Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit.”

We already run into a contradiction of massive proportions here. God is supposed to be an omnipotent being, by His own admission, outside the limits of mortality. God's entire premise of supremacy of over all creation rests on this premise. If God is confined to a mortal shell of any sort, that makes the being the Mormons worship NOT the same God Christians worship. Jesus, as God's Son, adopted a mortal shell but had a spirit untainted by the seed of Adam. Mormons thus argue the same discredited heresy of Arianism, which rejected the concept Christ ever had a mortal form of any sort, given their take on the Garden of Eden. About the only thing they agree on Christians with is the Holy Spirit's form.


Whether God the Father is self-existent is unclear. There was a long procession of gods and fathers leading up to our Heavenly Father. Brigham Young once remarked, “How many Gods there are, I do not know. But there never was a time when there were not Gods and worlds.” What is clearer is that the Mormon God is not a higher order or a different species than man. God is a man with a body of flesh and bones like us.

Again, Mormons are at direct cross-purposes with the Bible. The very first line of the Bible said God created the heavens and the earth and before that the corporeal universe as we know it did not exist until He said so. This is rendered an absurdity under Mormon doctrine. Further, God made clear multiple times humanity was NEVER at any level equal or approximate to Him. If God is as they say, he is NOT an omnipotent being without mortal limits, and thus I contend they do not worship the same God as Christians.


Mormons do not believe in the Trinity. They affirm the unity of three personages, but the unity is a relational unity in purpose and mind, not a unity of essence. The three separate beings of the Godhead are three distinct Gods.

We've already established their own doctrine makes a hash of the very content of the Bible, and this part is even more absurd. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are a triune entity in Christian thought, but Mormons declare them all separate beings with a shared vision, which is logically absurd on its face. The Holy Spirit is supposed to be what leads men to God, the Son made clear he only spoke in the name of his Father, and the Father (God) is why the other two exist. They are three separate entities yes, but of the same being incarnate in three forms that share the same inherent essence according to the scriptures of which I am aware. Again, Mormons are recycling Arianism's discredited canards despite the logical errors they present.

E. Their views on Christ first, then my analysis:

Mormons believe Jesus is Redeemer, God, and Savior. He is endless and eternal, the only begotten son of the Father. Through Jesus, the Heavenly Father has provided a way for people to be like him and to live with him forever.

So far, so good.


But this familiar language does not mean the same thing to Mormons as it does to Christians. Jesus was born of the Father just like all spirit children. God is his Father in the same way he is Father to all. Whatever immortality or Godhood Jesus possesses, they are inherited attributes and powers. He does not share the same eternal nature as the Father. Jesus may be divine, but his is a derivative divinity. Mormon theology teaches, in the words of Joseph Smith, that Jesus Christ is “God the Second, the Redeemer.”

Again, Mormons recycle the canards of Arianism. Arianism just could not accept how a sinless spirit could coexist in a temporary mortal shell, so they claimed his mortal form was also divine because such a concept they could not resolve in their own minds, hence denial of his being born in a mortal form. The fact this makes his death in said mortal form an inherent absurdity is obvious and makes for a logical error they cannot resolve.

Jesus made quite clear he had to die in his mortal form to redeem us, made it clear multiple times in the Gospels and it played out exactly as he said God intended. By Mormon theology, this was just an elaborate live-action roleplay exercise devoid of any actual meaning, making Jesus a liar and God one by proxy by their own logic.

F. Now to cover their view on atonement, then my analysis:

Mormons believe Jesus died for sins and rose again from the dead. The atonement is the central event in history and essential to their theology. And yet, Mormons do not have a precise doctrine of the atonement. They do not emphasize Christ as a wrath-bearing substitute, but emphasize simply that Christ somehow mysteriously remits our sins through his suffering.

I am already flabbergasted. If they accept everything up until the original apostles passed away, they should KNOW this is absurd. Christ died in his mortal shell on the cross to be the perfect sacrifice for all sin that no mortal could otherwise offer because their spirit was tainted by original sin. According to Mormon concepts already established, Jesus just suffers pain, and that somehow cleanses humanity of the burden of sin without elaboration. Even in the Books of the Law, God made clear no mortal sacrifice could ever truly wash away sin without his sanction of the sacrifice being worthy of doing so and even then it would not be permanent if one sinned again. Jesus' death on the cross, as Christ was also God, would have thus been the only logical sacrifice that would be eternally acceptable.


While the atonement itself is not overly defined, the way in which the atonement is made efficacious is much more carefully delineated. Salvation is available because of the atoning blood of Christ, but this salvation is only received upon four conditions: faith, repentance, baptism, and enduring to the end by keeping the commandments of God (which include various Mormon rituals).

In this, they do not agree with Catholics or Protestants AT ALL. In Catholic and Protestant traditions, only God's grace through faith is the only sure guarantee of salvation. No good work will ever save someone on the basis of the work alone, no ritual will ever make one ceremonially clean before God entirely on its own, and if one dies hoping these will help without faith in the promises of God, then one is LOST. Protestants and Catholics have a lot of disputes over the proper sacraments and their meaning, but if either were denied any and all sacraments, such as the thief on the cross who was still saved through faith ALONE, they could still be saved by divine grace,

Mormons are just recycling "you must do certain procedures and rituals" in just another form for another generation to be deceived. Worse, by making the exact nature of atonement not dependent on the eternal sacrifice of Christ for our sin, yet not establishing clearly what IS the proper sacrifice to make up for it while saying certain rituals are absolutely required, they do not walk the same road any Protestant or Catholic does on their way to salvation. Again, I emphasize in this regard Mormon doctrine is irrationally vague whereas Protestants and Catholics have a far more specific concept based on prior logic for how it works.


Finally, it should be noted Mormon theology stresses the suffering in the garden rather than the suffering on the cross. Atonement may have been completed on Golgotha, but it was made efficacious in Gethsemane.

This seriously confuses me. How does Jesus being scared and nervous like anyone would be of death and pain do anything? Jesus still died on the Cross for us, which even they will concede, even if they reject the end result as following the same logic of standard Christian doctrine. Since they reject the core point of Christ's sacrifice despite claiming as canon all that was in existence until the passing of the original apostles, who themselves backed up the Protestant and Catholic view Christ's sacrifice was essential, this is illogical on every level.

G. The final part is going to cover their view of salvation, followed by my commentary, and be warned, this part is far longer and will require a lot of commentary:

The goal of Mormon salvation is not about escaping wrath as much as it is about maximizing our growth and ensuring our happiness. Salvation is finding our way back to God the Father and recalling our forgotten first estate as his premortal spirit children.

I'm already stunned. Freedom from the penalty of the taint of sin on the human soul caused by Man's fall at the Garden, that's actual Christian doctrine. Mormons are using the same logic of Scientology that we have a past life we need to reconcile with our current one.


Mormon theology teaches that we cannot receive an eternal reward by our own unaided efforts. In some respects, salvation is based on what we have earned, but what we earn is by grace. How this plays out in Mormon life may differ from person to person, but they stress that the gift of the Holy Ghost is conditional upon continued obedience. Mormons must keep the First Principles and Ordinances, which consist of the Ten Commandments, tithing, chastity, and the “Word of Wisdom” which prohibits tobacco, coffee, tea, alcohol, and illegal narcotics.

More I'm stunned by. In Acts, which took place as Peter was STILL ALIVE (remember, Mormons accept everything up until the original apostles died), God struck down the ceremonial and ritual prohibitions that separated Jew and Gentile, and the early church while Peter was still alive concurred on this. If Mormons are actual Christians, fine, make your own personal rules for what you consider permissible, but your personal dietary restrictions are NOT canonical to actual scripture. Further, while I commend the following of the Commandments and chastity, and tithing when done by a genuinely giving spirit who does not believe salvation can be earned by doing so, the very last part is Mormon-specific and has no basis in Scripture.


Temples are also important in Mormon doctrine and practice. Couples must be married in a Mormon temple to have an eternal marriage, and every Mormon must be baptized in one of their 135 (and counting) authorized Temples. Because of the importance of baptism in the Temple, baptisms for the dead are extremely common. Mormons keep detailed genealogical records so that their ancestors can be properly baptized. By one estimate more than 100 million deceased persons have been baptized by proxy baptism in Mormon temples. Those who received this baptism are free in the afterlife to reject or accept what has been done on their behalf.

I cannot facepalm hard enough. Jesus made the point the dead are beyond saving, they had their chance to accept God's grace while alive, as recounted in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Ergo, this concept is heretical and absurd.

Speaking for myself, and let me make clear this is speculation on my part, but the Mormon aversion to the concept of being denied the kingdom of Heaven strikes me as fear they can be denied Grace, hence all the dodges around the idea of the need for an eternal sacrifice and that even the dead who died without Grace can be redeemed. Frankly, the fear of dying unredeemed is understandable, but when you have to make up something not supported by scripture to give yourself an "out" to avoid this, then that tells me you don't like the fact Grace is something you can die without. 


Death in Mormon thinking is seen as another beginning, complete with opportunities to respond to postmortem preaching in the world to come. We will live in the spirit world, and at some point our spirit and body will be reunited forever.

We have entered the realm of outright heresy. Our mortal bodies mean NOTHING. Humanity was made from the dust of the earth, our mortal shells, like this world, are temporal, they will pass away and in the end they will be replaced by something eternal. Mormon concepts and Christianity entirely part company on this point.


There are four divisions in the afterlife. The Lake of Fire is reserved for the Devil, his demons, and those who commit the unpardonable sin. The Telestial Kingdom is where the wicked go. It is a place of suffering but not like the Lake of Fire. Most people go to the Telestial Kingdom where they are offered salvation again. The lukewarm-not quite good, not quite evil-go to the Terrestrial Kingdom when they die. This Kingdom is located on a distant planet in the universe. The Celestial Kingdom is for the righteous. Here God’s people live forever in God’s presence. We will live as gods and live with our spouses and continue to procreate. This is the aim and the end of Mormon salvation.

Mormon concepts of the afterlife is just Catholicism with extra steps that make sure no one can truly die without a chance at Grace. By their own concepts, they have spit on the words of Jesus, who said we not marry or be given to marriage, but will be like the angels in Heaven. They also assume that they can rise to level of godhood, another heresy that assumes we are in any way equal to God.

I may write future posts on this topic to further share my issues with Mormonism and why it cannot claim to fall under the umbrella of Christianity by any definition that would be even broadly conformant to that known to Protestants or Catholics. In the meantime, now that I have finished, this should hopefully express with good reason and civil words my reasons why I consider Mormon doctrine heretical, unworthy of being called Christian, and why I believe those who are sincere believers in it have been deceived and that they should turn away for the sake of true repentance and salvation.