Ex-Mormons/Fundamentalist Christians in the House

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The second book  I have is an early version of The Changing World of Mormonism.  It doesn't really add anything to the second one, and is much harder to use.  I think the Moody Bible Press people realized there was hot poop in the first version and hammered it into the far more useful and coherent second version.

Did you ever notice the Mormon explanation of the trinity is spectacularly confusing ??

Not that the Catholics and Protestants have a clear take on it either, but the Mormon version is just fucked; internally inconsistent and befuddled.  

Joseph Smith's first vision is also a SPECTACULAR fuck up since he approved several versions, mutually inconsistent with each other, for publication at different times, and also dictated a different version (or three) and then wrote IN HIS OWN HAND another version.

Believe it or not, but as you know, Mormons are REQUIRED to believe Joseph Smiths first vision to be Mormons, but the version handwritten by Joseph himself wasn't discovered before they made the requirement, so believing that  version can get you excommunicated.

I'd almost think, if Joseph Smith were alive today and said his handwritten version was the right one, he'd be excommunicated too.  It would just be easier to do that than to admit they fucked that part up.

BTW, do you know the year the first vision occurred ??

It turns out Joseph gave so many different ones (and apparently he never coughed up a year when if it did happen it did, based on other things he said were happening at the time) that no one actually knows, for sure what year it did happen.  Joseph was terrible, just effing terrible at remembering all his lies, there being just so fucking many of them, it was just impossible.

I'll have to look into getting that book. Yes, I remember reading into the first visions and thinking "what in the world! they're all fundamentally different to one another so which one is the one that is supposed to dictate true mormon theology?! The idea on the Trinity and monotheism is paramount!"

Mormonism and the entire movement is quite interesting as a whole. I'll never forget the time I saw persons from the re-organized church in Nauvoo, IL and thinking to myself "that looks exactly like 'us' but yet it isn't 'us'." It's a weird feeling and looking up all the other sects and viewing the photos available, they have a similar "vibe" and feel that the mainstream LDS sect of my past has. Just, I guess, Brigham Young found more luck in establishing something more devisive and efficient as far as religious entities go.