The evolution of greed

How is the LDS (Mormon) church "greedy" when the church leaders aren't even paid? —Alissa

Many people accuse the LDS church of being greedy, but the leaders aren't paid so how can this be?

First of all it's not all about getting paid. Anyone who's in charge of a budget is in a position to make decisions about how it gets allocated. Money is power, and the LDS church asks for a whole lot of money from its adherents.

But don't kid yourself, there are lots of church leaders who do get paid, just not on the local level. General authorities are paid, and mission presidents are paid. And the church employs a ton of people. I doubt the leaders are paid a lot, but then I guess we wouldn't know that, would we? Your church isn't comfortable opening its books like most other churches.

Anyway, the real answer to your question is more complicated than any of this, and I'm sure you're not really interested in hearing it. Ultimately the LDS church is greedy because it works. Because operating this way has allowed it to survive when other churches have failed. It asks everything from believers because it can, and because human nature is such that the more you voluntarily give to something the more blind you become to its flaws. Your church is greedy for the same reason a giraffe's neck is long. Ponder that one.

Joseph Smith, executive producer

What were the main issues Joseph Smith struggled with in the beginning of the mormon religion? —Wizard G

mainly that and also what do Mormons call people who don't follow their faith? i can't remember but it would be useful to know, thanks!

Gentiles maybe? That's a Book of Mormon term really. Mormons used to use it more; now you'd only hear people referred to as Gentiles if someone's joking around.

I'm not sure what you're looking for in terms of Joseph Smith's "issues." In his younger years Joseph Smith strikes me as a person who wanted out. He wanted to find his place in his own family, wanted financial freedom for his parents, wanted to be trusted and thought well of, probably a lot like most others. But he was also ambitious and apparently not held back by fear or self-doubt. And he had ideas.

Sometimes I wonder what sort of life Joseph Smith might have led were he born into the world today instead of being stuck in a little farming community with little hope of social mobility. Maybe he'd have been drawn to the clergy still, but oddly enough I've never seen Joseph Smith as a particularly religious man. I think it was just the train that happened to pass through town. No, when I try to picture a modern Joseph Smith, I somehow always see him as an actor or a performer of some kind. Makes you wonder how different the world would be today if young Joseph had had other opportunities to apply his talents.

All in a day's labor

What is the average number of converts Mormon Missionaries get on their mission? —HomoErectus

I was a Mormon missionary in Korea in 1992–1994. I and my various companions had one convert baptism in the time I was there. It was a guy who was dating a member and wanted to marry her. I had a Korean companion at the time, and he sort of flew through the six discussions we used to do before baptism. I worried that the guy wasn't ready for baptism, but he passed his interview. I wonder if my Korean companion is still participating in the Mormon church. Seems like he was sending most of his monthly stipend money home through the post office. I seriously doubt the guy we baptized considers himself Mormon today.

Mr. Holland's Onus

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It's been a week now since LDS General Conference came and went. As luck would have it I heard only one talk, on the radio as we were returning from California. Turns out it was the one that seems to have created the most buzz among Mormons and non-Mormons alike. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland spoke about his views on the Book of Mormon. You can read his talk here: http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-1117-28,00.html although you may want to watch or listen instead to get a sense for how animated and emphatic he was in the delivery.

It was the sort of thing that felt like it ought to be responded to, but I just haven't had the energy before now. Fortunately many others have, though. So for any Mormon readers out there who were wowed by Elder Holland's performance and wonder how any ex-Mormon could not be impressed, here is a sampling of what ex-Mormons and outsiders have had to say about it.

Holland - Insulting those who leave
Jeffrey R. Holland Just Lost His Mind
An LDS Gem: Elder Holland's Opus
General Conference impressions

I don't know Jeffrey Holland. He seems like a genuine and thoughtful man, and he's certainly an articulate and engaging speaker. I think as much as any current LDS leader he has attempted to understand folks like me who have studied Mormonism and choose not to be a part of it. At least he does a good job of addressing the opposing view in many of the questions he answered for the PBS special The Mormons. You can read his interview here: http://www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/holland.html.

And that leaves me quite ambivalent in my feelings about this talk. Does he actually believe the things he's saying? Of course he must, and so I'm inclined to forgive a little evangelical zeal. But the talk is laden with unsupported claims and unsupported accusations and criticisms. Mr. Holland knows there is enough uncertainty about the veracity of some of his assertions to drive a Mack truck through, but you'd never get that from this talk. He's playing to the home crowd here, but I wonder if he gave any forethought to the impact on part-member families or member/non-member relations in general.

So I'll leave the textual criticism to the authors linked above, and just say this. Mr. Holland, in defending the indefensible and abusing the trust so many have in you, you've made the world I live in a worse place. There is by no means a general consensus among informed people that Joseph and Hyrum knew they were about to be killed, that the Book of Mormon is "teeming with literary and Semitic complexity," that other authorship theories have failed, nor that I or anyone else has had to crawl around your stupid book to come to the conclusion that Joseph Smith was not trustworthy, and that the truth claims your church makes are ridiculous and impossible to reconcile with what we know about the world today.

You came much closer to the truth with your answer in the PBS interview when asked about the Book of Mormon: "The Book of Mormon," you said, "is a matter of faith." End of story. The onus is on you to show why this book deserves consideration in spite of the mountain of contradictory evidence and the echoing dearth of positive evidence for its claims. Pointing to millions of adherents doesn't work. Lots of faiths have their millions. Pointing to Joseph and Hyrum finding comfort in the book doesn't work. David Koresh and Jim Jones were equally convinced of their various causes. All I see in your words here is desperate name-calling and an adamant refusal to reconsider cherished beliefs. The faithful will love you for it, but meanwhile their worldview is pushed ever further away from an ability to understand and have meaningful relationships with people outside the tribe.

Faithful due diligence

What mormon statememts, found on the internet, are not true? —Jess *For Jesus*

I am considering join the church, and I am doing a final "review" before i go to baptism, and alothoug I feel it is right, some of the stuff on the internet scares me. So, can people tell me what is on the internet about mormons that is not true like beliefs,practices etc. And if possible please provide reference.

Jess, it might help if you break down the "information" online into categories. Not all Mormons are afraid of investigating things online, but it's common (as you've seen here) for people to say you should avoid online sources or only go to lds.org or whatever. And basically that's good advice, for the category that's foremost in Mormons' minds. What they care about—all they care about in many cases—is the doctrine. Mormons are interested in current Mormon beliefs and culture. They're interested in things like gaining a testimony, changing behaviors, being involved with callings and temple attendence, that sort of thing. The internet is not going to help you here.

So if that's all your "review" is about, I'd say you're already on your way to being a Mormon. But there are other categories of information that relate to Mormonism, even if most Mormons today don't care about them or aren't aware of them. Unfortunately for most of its existence the church has largely been able to tell its own story to its members, without the burden of scholarly review. And after decades of telling and retelling by the home team, you can imagine that what the typical Mormon understands today about Mormon origins and history can vary dramatically from the view of outsiders.

There's also a third area of study that comes to mind here, and that is the relationship between what is commonly taught in LDS churches about the world you live in versus what the rest of the world believes through scientific study. This is where things get messy for the LDS church in my opinion. Of course you could say the same about religions in general. There's literally zero chance, for instance, that the earth was washed clean in a worldwide flood four thousand years ago. That didn't happen. For that matter Adam and Eve didn't start the human race six thousand years ago either. And dead people don't revive on command, and you can't make wine from water, and so on. So really if there's a difference here between the LDS faith and any others it's a matter of degrees only. However, the LDS church's origins are recent, and it makes many testable claims, like Joseph translating Egyptian or ancient Hebrews populating the Americas. Certainly that kind of info can be found, with sources, all over the internet.

But again, if you're just talking LDS doctrine, don't waste your time with evangelical Christians who want to disparage Mormonism online because it contradicts their own view of the Bible or whatever. Those people never subject their own beliefs to the same scrutiny. If they did, we'd call them ex–evangelical Christians.

I know my church is true

What are good questions too ask mormon people? —shelia c

my bestfriend is talking to the missonaries and she needs good question too ask them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously? I take it your friend would like to challenge their beliefs, but it's probably no use. If she wants to Bible bash with them it'll go nowhere. Mormon doctrine is no less sensible than any other church's, and in some ways it's probably more internally consistent. The worst you could say about Mormon doctrine is that it's unorthodox compared to mainstream Christianity. So what?

Of course your friend could ask for evidence for the church's claims, or point out any number of ways the church's view of the world is at odds with modern science. But this won't faze the missionaries either. It's the difference between God's perfect knowledge and man's limited knowledge. Or it's anti-Mormon lies trying to keep you from the truth.

If I were in your friend's shoes and wanted to get these missionaries really talking rather than presenting what they're trained to say, I'd focus on how they came to believe in their church versus all the other possible "truths." They'll explain how they "gained a testimony" through scripture reading and prayer, but that's probably where it ends. What other Christian churches did they study and pray about? How did the feeling compare when they studied Scientology and prayed about it? How about when they studied the Koran and prayed about that? Did answers come more readily when they prayed to Zeus or Thor?

Even if they just want to talk Mormonism, how did they decide to go with the Brighamites and not the FLDS church? Did they pray about both? If you can get them really thinking about their epistemology and the obvious fact that their current faith is mostly an accident of birth just like most other people's on earth, then at least you've opened their eyes. Don't expect to see any overnight changes in their beliefs though. That only happens on its own time, maybe years later, and maybe never.