[This is a small selection of quotes about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from the main section Mormons & LDS]
Mark Twain - The New York Times - Bill Maher - kolobian - Richard Dawkins - Christopher Hitchens - Steve Benson - SpongeBob SquareGarments - Jeffrey Dodo Holland - Gordon B Hinckley - Peggy Fletcher Stack - Richard Ostling - Harold B Lee - Rodger I Anderson - Isaac Hale - Brigham Young - Jim Whitefield - Sam Harris - lightfingerlouie - Infymus - Ezra Taft Benson - Joseph Fielding Smith - Skeptical - Mary Ann Benson - Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought - Reed Smoot Hearings - Oliver B Huntington - Boyd K Packer - D Michael Quinn - Ken Burns - Stray Mutt - Mark E Peterson - Boyd K Packer - esias
I went to the theatre last night, and had a good opportunity to study the character of the Mormons. There was about two thousand people assembled, and I must say they were the worst looking crowd in every way I saw. It was a fair sample of the population, and it confirms my previous opinion that they are ‘the scum of the Earth’. Mark Twain, letter to Wisconsin State Journal
And this is Mormonism! These are the people who are eternally talking of Gentile persecution! Yes, they have been persecuted, as debauchees and felons usually are, but never on account of their religion. They have ever been a bubbling and seething cauldron of pollution, and can no more be tolerated in the bosom of civilized society, than gangs of counterfeiters and thieves. The New York Times, article 19th July 1853, ‘The Mormonites’
To be a Mormon is to believe some really crazy stuff ... You kind of have to up the ante ... The idea that Christianity is American I think is an amazing entitlement. Bill Maher, Religulous
Religion, cult, there’s no real definition of which is which. It’s more like ‘if the shoe fits’. I personally define a ‘cult’ as any religion with fewer followers than Snooki has on Twitter. Also, Mormonism is secretive, and that’s another trait I associate with cults. Catholics own their crazy. It’s right on the table. Mormons are more like Fight Club. Bill Maher
I think kolobianism is an absolutely amazing business model. It’s a tax-exempt pyramid scheme masquerading as a religion that rakes in billions in revenue and has no financial accountability whatsoever. When it succeeds it is by the grace of an exalted man living in the star system Kolob. When it falters it is due to the lack of obedience/compliance of its membership to the corporate charter. There are a handful of white men getting rich off tithing revenue whose names we will never know because everyone is focused on the 15 sock-puppets at the top who can’t even change their own diapers, let alone make sound business decisions. kolobian, board post 31st October 2012, ‘What Do You Really Think of Mormonism?’
The Mormon religion is so obviously fake, founded by a transparent charlatan in the nineteenth century, Joseph Smith. Nothing could be more obvious than that that man was a fake and a charlatan and a liar. Professor Richard Dawkins, lecture ‘I’m An Atheist But ...’
One of the most egregious groups operating on American soil. Christopher Hitchens, Slate 17th October 2011
In March 1826 a court in Bainbridge, New York, convicted a twenty-one-year-old man of being ‘a disorderly person and an impostor’. That ought to have been all we ever heard of Joseph Smith, who at trial admitted to defrauding citizens by organizing mad gold-digging expeditions and also to claiming to possess dark or ‘necromantic’ powers. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great p161
This story raises some very absorbing questions, concerning what happens when a plain racket turns into a serious religion before our eyes. ibid. p165
Smith obviously seems like a mere cynic, in that he was never happier than when using his ‘revelation’ to claim supreme authority, or to justify the idea that the flock should make over their property to him, or to sleep with every available woman. ibid. pp165-166
It does, however, have two indelible stains. The first is the sheer obviousness and crudity of its ‘revelations’, which were opportunistically improvised by Smith and later by his successors as they went along. And the second is its revoltingly crude racism. ibid. p166
The retrospective baptism of the dead seems harmless enough to me, but the American Jewish Committee became incensed when it was discovered that the Mormons had acquired the records of the Nazi ‘final solution’, and were industriously baptizing what for once could truly be called a ‘lost tribe’: the murdered Jews of Europe. For all its touching inefficacy, this seemed in poor taste. ibid. p168
The Mormon Church is, at its heart, sick and dysfunctional, manipulatively using phobias and fantasies to pursue power and to effectuate ‘unrighteous dominion’ over the lives and resources of both individuals and governments. There are nice and sincere (albeit gullible) people within the ranks of Mormon believers but the institution of the Mormon Church itself is rotten to the core. Steve Benson, board post 13th June 2012, ‘Why the Mormon Church is an Institution in a State of Moral Decay and General Decline’
I consider Mormonism to be a non-Christian cult that is deeply deceitful, historically dishonest, chauvinistically controlling, absolutely authoritarian, pathologically anti-individual, patronizingly anti-woman, viciously anti-Gay, homophobically anti–Lesbian, racistly anti-Black, obnoxiously pro-White and inherently anti-American in its lack of tolerance and respect for pluralism, diversity and self-expression.
Put another way, I regard Mormonism to be a clannish, backward religion, founded by a notorious charlatan named Joseph Smith who bedded other men’s wives, who slept with under-aged girls, who mistreated and abused his own spouse, who squinted at so-called ‘peep stones’ inside of his hat pretending to translate supposed ‘ancient scripture’, who invented these alleged ‘scriptures’ out of the thin air of his own imagination (with the help of his co-conspiring friends), who never saw or talked to God or Jesus floating in the trees behind his house, who never communed with angels, who never dug up any golden plates, who was found guilty of fraud in a New York court for making false treasure-finding claims, whose ‘sacred’ temple endowment was nothing more than a clunky, amateurish rip-off of secret Masonic rites and who died in a hail of bullets from fellow Masons after being unmasked as a party to a patently unconstitutional effort to shut down a newspaper which had dared publish accounts of his philanderous, adulterous, polygamous behavior and the lies which he told his followers as he denied it all.
Given my views on these matters, I would sincerely appreciate it if, in the future, you would cease and desist from any and all efforts to bring me back into the Mormon fold. Steve Benson, letter to family members Holly and Karl
In 1784 a man by the name of Emanuel Swedenborg wrote about his visions of the afterlife. His teachings were remarkably similar to what Joseph Smith later claimed to receive as revelation. For example, Swedenborg taught: ‘There are three heavens’, described as ‘entirely distinct from each other’. He called the highest heaven ‘the Celestial Kingdom’, and stated that the inhabitants of the three heavens corresponded to the ‘sun, moon and stars’. This directly parallels Joseph’s vision on the degrees of glory as recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 76.
By Joseph Smith’s own statements, he was familiar with Swedenborg’s writings ...
‘There are three heavens: the celestial, the spiritual, and the natural. Those of a lower heaven are unable to see those in a higher heaven. Furthermore, the celestial heaven has three divisions’ ... (Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell ch5)
‘Swedenborg witnessed a marriage ceremony in heaven, in which the husband wore priesthood robes like those of Aaron while the wife was arrayed as a queen. Also, marriage between man and woman is necessary to inherit the highest heaven’. (Conjugal Love @20 & 54 & 155) ...
‘After dying, people enter a world of spirits that is nearly identical to this one. Afterward, they inherit a degree of glory based on how they lived while incarnate’. (Heaven and Hell pp421-422) ...
‘The church established by Christ died spiritually due to apostasy and false doctrines. The Lord’s church would be re-established and again act as a link with heaven’. (Last Judgement @33 & True Christian Religion @647) ...
‘One of the great errors of Christianity is justification by faith alone. People will be judged for their actions as well’. (True Christian Religion @340 & Heaven and Hell @427) Steve Benson, board post 23rd July 2013, ‘Reaction in Scandinavia to Joseph Smith’s Plagiarisms: Sweden’s Bored’
Joseph [Smith] of course translated the Book of Mormon from Reformed Egyptian and he also translated the Book of Abraham from Egyptian papyri so he apparently knew Egyptian well enough to translate it and Professor Caswall wanted to see what he thought about this ancient Greek manuscript.
Joseph examined the ancient document and replied that it was a Dictionary of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Professor Caswall of course knew Joseph was wrong as this was a known Greek Psalter and definitely not Egyptian.
Professor Caswall then informed the Prophet that it was but a plain Greek Psalter. Joseph then left the scene. Professor Caswall told this incident to Mormon apostle Dr William Richards who said, ‘Sometimes Mr Smith speaks as mere man. If he gave a wrong opinion respecting the book, he spoke as a mere man.’ SpongeBob SquareGarments, board post 12th October 2008, ‘Joseph Smith’s Translation of a Greek Manuscript’