The thing I as a jack-Mormon have always found contemptible about people bagging on Mormonism is how little critical thinking or self-awareness they have. (I know this is a bait thread, but I feel like rambling anyways.) There are certain aspects of the religion that are quite ugly or implausible, mostly pertaining to the Book of Mormon itself, and changes in doctrine under political pressure. But that's often not what I see Christians whip themselves into frothing rage over. They mock doctrines like eternal progression, Jesus (possibly) having a wife, and what not as being inherently absurd. There's no argument as to why it's inherently absurd. They often won't do the same thing to other polytheist religions, or other religions with different notions of the afterlife. They'll bang on about polytheism while worshipping a polytheistic Trinity that Muslims and, in my personal experience, Buddhist find goofy as hell. Or, for C*tholics, saints.
Random example: the Garden of Eden being in Missouri. It's clearly so absurd. Clearly the Garden of Eden would OBVIOUSLY be in FUCKING IRAQ/IRAN. See what I mean? It's arbitrary. Missouri, Iraq, Japan, Nigeria, the fucking Moon, who cares.
What I'm getting at is that people brought up in a culture tend to believe their own stupid shit is so sensible and self-evident on no basis other than that their culture - the one they happened to be born into - practices that. What's remarkable is that much of the stuff they fixate on (like baptism for the dead, temple garments, and MUH STONE IN A HAT) all comes straight out of the Bible and ancient Christian practice. The same kind of people that get in a huff about it are the same kind of people that get in a huff when they learn there's wheels with eyes flying around in Heaven.
There's likewise a great deal of undeserved smugness that comes from being an old religion. It doesn't seem to ever occur to these people that things like Judaism and Christianity were once as young as anything else. Of course, it'd just be
so obvious that your own faith would be different, since it's
own origin story claims it was the original religion that was around forever and just happened to be corrupted at points. (Kind of like Mormonism claims, funny enough.) But because of that we have very different sets of information on different prophets. Muhammad is a historical figure, well-attested to, but it's mostly his own people's records that survived. And they naturally portray him very well, but because their own values are so alien to ours, he still comes across as a malignant psychopath, and you can read between the lines. I suspect, for example, that Muhammad was extremely neurotic (muh handwashing), insecure and resentful of his wife for being more successful than him. Joseph Smith is very well-documented, recorded by many friends and enemies, so we've got a pretty damning portrait of him ready to go. Jesus is a legendary figure. I personally believe he was real and, for lack of any other evidence against it, I take the Bible's depiction of his character at face value. But you understand what I mean? Jesus could have, for all we know, been the Jim Jones of Judea swindling, raping and murdering his way through the congregation, and we only see the hagiography of him because his followers were the only people writing up large amounts of text about what was Messiah #12283232 in his day. I think in some ways that belief in Jesus being a good man is as much something you take on faith as belief in him being a legitimate prophet (like Islam) or a son of god (like Christianity).
The worst bunch I've seen for bagging on Mormons has tended to be Catholics. Evangelicals are usually just ignorant, ignorant of everything outside themselves and their limited experience, which unfortunately is a trait that's common to them in general, even though I do consider them the best branch of Christianity overall. But Catholics seem to have more genuine spite and I suspect it comes from the discomfort of the idea of another "our Church is the ONE TRUE CHURCH" muscling in on their own conceited self-image.
Yarmulkes are still cooler than holy underwear though definitely.
I've argued with folks about this before. On one hand, it's consistent with other religions to have some piece of clothing you have to wear as a sign of identity. It's certainly better than cutting the tip of your peepee off. But on the other hand, the whole point of those other religions (turban for Sikhs, yarmulkes for Jews) is that the article is one everyone can see, so it's kind of meaningless if it's underwear, concealed by nature.
As it happens, the temple garment is one of many things that appears in the Bible.
Personally, my big issues with Mormonism being true are:
1) It makes use of the same idea of abrogation as Islam, which is a cheap cop-out for when the prophet starts contradicting himself.
2) From what I've read it definitely seems that Smith was a known swindler. There's things in accounts of him that point to him having
knowingly deceived neighbors on many occasions. I don't give a shit about his treasure hunting and what not, that kind of magical belief was actually very common in Nineteenth Century America. But it's if someone behaves as though they don't believe in their own stuff that it shoots their credibility.
3) Likewise, everything about his sexual escapades.
4) The Book of Mormon story contradicts everything we know about American Indians. Some of them try to walk back the claims to allow it to just be a small, local conflict, but that's like people that try to read evolution into Genesis.
5) Everything to do with their history with the Blacks.
My big issues with it as a lifestyle or culture thing:
1) I've come to dislike Big Church on principle. They're vehicles for massive corruption (fueled by their self-given monopoly and huge size) and they tend to deny people the ability to worship in ways that match how they experience spirituality. There's a reason the Protestant world took off and the Catholic and Orthodox world lagged behind.
2) They're goddamn Yankees, Sw*des and Br*ts. When I realized that Mormonism is a de facto Yankee ethnoreligion I started to realize how little applicability it had to my world.
3) Their anti-addiction stance is good, but they've turned what began as advice into a code of Jewish-like arbitrary restrictions that are unnecessarily onerous. For example, it used to be hot beverages they banned, then they extended that to sweet tea even though it's cold, and despite that they allow caffeinated chocolate. It's retarded and I am not the kind of person who can abide retarded rules.
4) I prefer the ecstatic mysticism of Pentecostal worship. Mormons have a different way of doing things but it doesn't resonate with me.
5) Not everyone is meant to be married or have children, and their religion places an emphasis on quick, reckless marriage to the detriment of such people.
What I like:
1) Their community values. They're busy worker bees that are excellently organized (that's the Yankee in them) while also being highly self-reliant and valuing individual rights (that's the West in them).
2) They glorify family life and put it at the core of their whole worldview. Unlike Catholics, that demonize sex but glorify pregnancy, Mormons recognize the glory in both and see it as a sort of part of the structure of the world as a whole.
3) They believe in emergency preparedness as a religious doctrine and heavily subsidize preparation (food from Home Storage Centers) for everyone, non-members included.
4) As part of #2, they make genealogy a major part of their religion. There's no ancestor worship like Confucianism but it is as close as an Abrahamic faith comes to it.
5) The whole combination of eternal progression and plan of salvation is beautiful. There are flaws in it - things that don't hold up when you think about it, explanations that are really just transparently papering over holes in Christianity, but in general there is a logic to it that is deeply beautiful to me. Mormonism's view of human life and its fate is the only take on it that I've heard that seems to give genuine meaning and consolation to life. Its interpretation of God is the only version I've ever had any actual feeling of love for.
6) Mormonism recognizes the existence of the immortal soul in animals.
If there was a version of Mormonism that completely shitcanned the Book of Mormon itself, obligatory Word of Wisdom and dropped the top-down unified church structure I'd convert in a heartbeat even if I didn't believe in any of it.
