Help Debating Mormons

[Admiral Drason]

So the long story is that when I was a little my mom and dad were going through a tough time in their marriage and my mom had my dad join the Mormon church. We went to the church and did all the goodly little Mormon things for a few years until my dads career righted itself and he proclaimed that it was all bull shit and stopped going. Shortly after my older brother and then I decided that it was much more fun to have our Sundays open and to do fun things like watch movies, drink pop, and live without fear of the giant daddy in the sky.

Fast forward to the present day and I've grown to accept that there is no god and that my dad never bought into it either. Infact out of my entire family only my mother has any faith in the Judao Christian god. Now unfortunatly my father had lost his job a few months ago due to the poor economy and is now at the whim of my mother once again. So he is humoring her by allowing the Mormon "elders" into their home and are now giving my 15 year old brother "lessons" about the church. My mom has brow beaten him into getting baptized so that he can go to heaven with her, as all the rest of her family is clearly going to burn in hell for all eternity.

Anyway last week I bring my girlfriend to my parents house and learn that its all a trap. My mom has the Mormons waiting for us so that they can teach us about how prideful we our and how if only we were to read the Book of Mormon and pray that we would learn to be good little mormons too. I was polite with them as I really wasn't prepared for an ambush and I did want to act like to much of an ass in front of my girlfriend. So after the Mormons left I started to pick apart the religion and my dad told me that he would set up a debate between the Mormon missionaries and I. I've got until Thursday night now to prep myself for the debate.

So what should I focus on in the debate? I don't know if I should just dissprove all religon or should I just break apart Mormonism by itself. Would it be more tactful to go after the Book of Mormon as a book or just go after church history to prove that Joseph Smith was just a scam artist?

[Rye]

Initially it will be tempting to stay reactionary while they dominate conversation. When you get bored of that, switch the dynamic, make the following arguments/claims and put them on the defensive.

I were you, I would start from a broad atheist/antitheist position (religion is at best unnecessary for good behaviour, and at worst actively harmful) and then point to the absence of scientific evidence for God, and its poor quality as a philosophical idea. I would compare God to a child's imaginary friend and ask them how they can distinguish their god from an imaginary one.

It is actively harmful in human society because it encourages faith in fraudulent traditions and hierarchies, it encourages unthinking tribalism, emphasises obedience over and above critical examination, and it tends to demonise people who don't bow down to its ill-gotten authority. I would use gays and slaves as examples. Slavery's fine according to the bible, so is murdering gay people, and the LDS church itself has a history of racism, even going so far as to claim non-whites weren't white because they were tainted by God. Even now, there are no non-white elders, just ask them when they expect to see a black or female prophet.

I would also outline Christianity as a terrible totalitarian system, where not even death can save you from the entity that would gladly have you tortured forever in righteous glee. John 3:16-18 outlines the notion of the thought-crime worthy of eternal torture. Thus, if god were real, any moral entity would have to oppose it.

Then I would go after Mormonism as a health risk. Want to know how? Actually, I've been itching to put this argument together here, so, without further ado:

As this pubmed article notes:

LDS men had a 31% higher incidence rate of prostate cancer than nonLDS men during the study period. Rates were consistently higher among LDS men over time; age; and stage . An age- and stage-shift was observed for both LDS and nonLDS men, although more pronounced among LDS men.

We even have on this very board someone whose prostate was going to explode, I believe, because of his LDS upbringing. How? Their retarded stance on masturbation. Scientific research shows that masturbation significantly lowers prostate cancer risk, and like anything, a bit of a workout every now and again, even when you're not married, is going to be better for your health than total abstinence.

[General Zod]

Ask them why the council of Mormon elders is composed of nothing but crusty old white men and not a single minority.

[Simon_Jester]

If you are interested in debating Mormons specifically, then you have a relatively straightforward line of attack, because they've got ancient history badly wrong. Among other things, many things purported to exist in the Americas by the Mormon-only appendix to the Bible did not, in fact, exist.

One would think that if things such as iron working, horses, and wheat had been brought to the New World by the lost tribes of Israel in the mid-Iron Age, some traces of them would have been found in the numerous archaeological digs made throughout the Americas. See here, on Wikipedia, for a starting point.

Indeed, there are no artifacts of pre-Columbian vintage to show any sign that the advanced civilizations the Mormons describe ever existed. We've managed to find evidence for even such minor activity as the Viking expeditions to Vinland c. 1000 AD. How could we have missed evidence of large-scale civilizations such as the Nephites, Jaredites, and Lamanites? We're talking about cultures with populations in the hundreds of thousands or millions, on the same scale as ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, or Egypt; how then have they left no uncontroversial evidence of their existence?
______

Moreover, DNA studies show no sign of common ancestry between the Native American peoples and the children of Israel, of the lost tribes or otherwise. Unless of course we go back into distant prehistory, which is far before the scope of the history of human settlement in the New World according to the Mormons.
______

If you have a copy of the relevant religious texts, you might want to bookmark the references to pseudo-Biblical passages that strongly imply archaeological relics someone could actually find, such as major battles, the construction of cities, and the use of technology far above what the Native Americans had at the time of Columbus.

[Hawkwings]

You could go even further with the showmanship aspect of the debate, and show up with a bunch of relevant books checked out from the library, and a sheet of notes with your arguments and the relevant support material noted in bibliographic form.\

Anyways, if you do this you'd better win and completely crush them. The best possible outcome for you is them saying something like "Well obviously we can't convince you through our arguments, so I'll go home and pray for God to enlighten you."

Partially related: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q5gS2uAOSU

[Hawkwings]

edit: I personally would advise not doing this debate, but since you already agreed to it...

You can't really win, but you can sure lose.

[Aaron]

I would simply not go and tell your mom something to the effect of "I will no longer visit until you agree to stop these shenanigans".

[Guardsman Bass]

The easiest thing would be, as was said, to simply put your foot down and tell your mother you have no interest in joining the LDS Church (again), and that if she tries something like that again that you won't be visiting for a while. Even assuming you crush the missionaries in a debate, they'll probably fall back on asking you to pray for a testimony, and your mom will get pissed at you (I tried arguing the validity of the LDS Church with my heavily LDS mom, and it got pretty unpleasant).

This has some pretty good critiques, but basically ask the missionaries-

A)Where is all the archaeological evidence for not one, but two large ancient civilizations in the Americas with use of iron, horses, etc (the Lamanite-Nephites, who were supposedly kicking around from 580 BC to 350-ish AD, and the Jaredite civilization, which was apparently "after the Tower of Babel" to slightly before the Nephites showed up)? Both were also literate, so why has nothing been found from them in any type of language written in either Hebraic or "Reformed Egyptian" (whatever that is) - not a single scroll, tablet of plates (other than the ones Smith claimed to have found, and which he later gave back, with the only witnesses being eight founding members of the Church), or the like?

B)Why are the "restorations" to the Bible Smith claimed to have made (basically, the "Joseph Smith Translation") unique to that Bible? When they stacked it up against the translations of bits from the Old Testament that they found in the Dead Sea Scrolls (particularly Isaiah), they found that Smith's changes were entirely unique to his version, even though his version was supposed to be accurate to what it was at the time, and fixing the parts that Christianity was supposed to have lost after the Twelve Apostles.

C)Ask them about the Pearl of Great Price (in particular, get them to show you the picture it has attached). Then point out that they found the copy Smith had used back in the 1970s, and when translated, found out it was pretty much just your typical Egyptian burial scroll.

D)Ask them why Smith's translation of the Book of Mormon (which he claimed to have done in the 1820s) came in the form of King James Version verse from the late 16th century/early 17th century. Is God fond of Middle English? Or did Smith speak into in "bible-sounding" language to make it seem authentic?

E)If they ask you if you think he just made it up, bring up the "sacred falsehood" hypothesis. That's the perception I get from reading biographies like Dan Vogel's The Making of a Prophet - that Smith had a set of religious ideas that he espoused, and he created the Book of Mormon as a vehicle for that, borrowing from local folklore around the mysterious burial mounds as well as Ethan Smith's (no relation) View of the Hebrews (which is probably why he initially hoped to sell the book, and had one of his followers sell his farm to print a bunch of copies).

[Guardsman Bass]

If you have a copy of the relevant religious texts, you might want to bookmark the references to pseudo-Biblical passages that strongly imply archaeological relics someone could actually find, such as major battles, the construction of cities, and the use of technology far above what the Native Americans had at the time of Columbus.

Definitely. Ask them, for example, why it has apparently been so difficult to locate archaeological evidence for the Battle of Cumorah. The Book of Mormon describes it as a massive battle in which something like 200,000 Nephite warriors, an untold number of Nephite civilians, and an untold number of Lamanites perished. Why is there no record, either in any native American oral tradition or in terms of archaeological findings of such a massive battle?

[Simon_Jester]

D)Ask them why Smith's translation of the Book of Mormon (which he claimed to have done in the 1820s) came in the form of King James Version verse from the late 16th century/early 17th century. Is God fond of Middle English? Or did Smith speak into in "bible-sounding" language to make it seem authentic?

I like your other points quite well, but this one seems a bit dishonest.

If Smith was translating a document, he had no particular reason to use 1820s vernacular rather than the 1600-vintage English of the KJV. At the time, that kind of English was the accepted language of Biblical texts in the English-speaking world. It was also much less obsolete than it is now: two centuries old instead of four. More of its conventions were still present in the 'proper' English of the day than are present now.

[compare to the preservation of archaic forms of other languages in holy books, including Latin and Sanskrit]

So Smith had no specific reason not to use KJV-style English to translate a foreign text into English, and reasons of tradition to do so. It strikes me as unreasonable to suppose that his choice can prove that he was making things up.

If Smith were alive today and did the same thing, you'd have a better argument. Today, there is a thriving custom of translating the Bible into vernacular 21st century English, and the 'traditional' role of Shakespeare-era English has faded because the language is no longer easily comprehensible to modern ears. But in 1820? I don't see why Smith's choice would have been at all suspicious.

[Patrick Degan]

You're going to get yourself lost in trivia debating the validity of the ancient cities mythology and biblical vernacular. Forget all that and go right for the jugluar —that the entire Mormon creed is based on material Smith claims to have translated but for which no actual source documents exist, that there are no witnesses to his visitations from the angels, no actual golden plates, no valid translational basis for "reformed Egyptian", the fact that the alleged original translations of the golden plates (the ones he got by peering at a stone inside his hat) were lost and he produces another set supposedly identical to the first which nobody had seen except the friend who conveniently lost them in the first place, and therefore nothing to support Smith's story other than his own word. Which means that he simply made shit up, just like the Elders would make shit up to justify whatever doctrine they imposed on their followers. Whenever doctrine became politically inconvenient, they'd suddenly announce another "revelation" to alter it: such as when the Elders suddenly discovered plural marriage to be invalid so they could get Utah admitted as a state in the Union. Under those terms, Mormonism has about as much validity and support to its foundations as Scientology.

[Admiral Drason]

I have avoided the house as much as I can but I still have a little brother at home that I still want to spend time with. I think what pisses me off the most about my mother becoming LDS again is how she only finds it when it suits her. When my dad was making a six figure salary she didn't even look back at that religion. She trivially waisted money and lived a very unmormon life style. But now that my dad lost his job due to him pissing off the wrong people in a bad economic climate then it must be gods work. She sits around accusing all of my siblings of being "evil liberals" because we voted for a black president, because we have premarital sex, becasue I work a union job, ect. She has never volunteered or helped out in the community, and yet weilds such moral superiority.

She had my eldest brother and I baptized when we were young which means I have to go and contact the church so that they can remove me from their rosters as they still count me as a church member even though I was baptized when I was eight years old. When my little brother told my eldest brother and I that he was going to be baptized into the Mormon church to apease her, I just blew it. So really the debate is more for my little brother, so that he can see how the mormons react to actual opposition as he is afraid of upsetting our mother since he still has to live with her for at least another three years.

A)Where is all the archaeological evidence for not one, but two large ancient civilizations in the Americas with use of iron, horses, etc (the Lamanite-Nephites, who were supposedly kicking around from 580 BC to 350-ish AD, and the Jaredite civilization, which was apparently "after the Tower of Babel" to slightly before the Nephites showed up)? Both were also literate, so why has nothing been found from them in any type of language written in either Hebraic or "Reformed Egyptian" (whatever that is) - not a single scroll, tablet of plates (other than the ones Smith claimed to have found, and which he later gave back, with the only witnesses being eight founding members of the Church), or the like?

I like this side of the debate because I have taken several archaeology course's in college and have a solid background in prehistoric North America.

D)Ask them why Smith's translation of the Book of Mormon (which he claimed to have done in the 1820s) came in the form of King James Version verse from the late 16th century/early 17th century. Is God fond of Middle English? Or did Smith speak into in "bible-sounding" language to make it seem authentic?

I'm woundering if I should just start out the debate talking about another cult and then cross over into Joseph Smith and his cult of misfits.

[Guardsman Bass]

D)Ask them why Smith's translation of the Book of Mormon (which he claimed to have done in the 1820s) came in the form of King James Version verse from the late 16th century/early 17th century. Is God fond of Middle English? Or did Smith speak into in "bible-sounding" language to make it seem authentic?

I like your other points quite well, but this one seems a bit dishonest.

If Smith was translating a document, he had no particular reason to use 1820s vernacular rather than the 1600-vintage English of the KJV. At the time, that kind of English was the accepted language of Biblical texts in the English-speaking world. It was also much less obsolete than it is now: two centuries old instead of four. More of its conventions were still present in the 'proper' English of the day than are present now.

I'll concede that point, although I should point out that I came with it originally because of the method Smith claimed to have used when translating (he would put his head into a hat, then dictate it bit-by-bit to Oliver Cowdery, meaning that either he was seeing the translated words in old english, then dictating it, or translating them into old english as soon as he saw them).

Of course, that doesn't really explain why Smith used that type of language in the Doctrine and Covenants, which weren't supposed to be ancient biblicalesque words, but there.

[Guardsman Bass]

You're going to get yourself lost in trivia debating the validity of the ancient cities mythology and biblical vernacular. Forget all that and go right for the jugluar —that the entire Mormon creed is based on material Smith claims to have translated but for which no actual source documents exist, that there are no witnesses to his visitations from the angels, no actual golden plates, no valid translational basis for "reformed Egyptian", the fact that the alleged original translations of the golden plates (the ones he got by peering at a stone inside his hat) were lost and he produces another set supposedly identical to the first which nobody had seen except the friend who conveniently lost them in the first place, and therefore nothing to support Smith's story other than his own word. Which means that he simply made shit up, just like the Elders would make shit up to justify whatever doctrine they imposed on their followers. Whenever doctrine became politically inconvenient, they'd suddenly announce another "revelation" to alter it: such as when the Elders suddenly discovered plural marriage to be invalid so they could get Utah admitted as a state in the Union. Under those terms, Mormonism has about as much validity and support to its foundations as Scientology.

That's probably the best he can aim for, although they'll probably fall back on bearing their testimony and telling him to pray for answers (that's what both my mom and the bishop in the ward I attended did).

Personally, I think the 1978 Revelation allowing black men to hold the priesthood would serve better, seeing as it conveniently came right after the Civil Rights movement had hid full stride, when calls for the boycott of the BYU sports teams were being made, and when the LDS Church was looking to expand into Brazil and was facing the problem of determining percentage of african ancestry (and, if the rumors are right, they were under possible threat of losing their tax exemption). They usually just don't have an answer other than "that's when God said so" (which makes one wonder why God didn't ask them to do it before they started taking flack for it).

[Simon_Jester]

I like this side of the debate because I have taken several archaeology course's in college and have a solid background in prehistoric North America.

You're right, though this line of argument has the peril Patrick described: you can easily get bogged down in details. Of course, if you know the details and have a prepared reference library to hand, then bogging you down in details of prehistoric North America may work to your advantage, IF you know more of the facts than they know of their BS.

If nothing else, I suggest that you be prepared to use this as a position, and very prepared to pounce on them if they let the conversation go there. This is an area where the Mormon religion makes falsifiable predictions about what we ought to find in terms of North American archaeology... and we haven't found what they think we ought to find.

I'll concede that point, although I should point out that I came with it originally because of the method Smith claimed to have used when translating (he would put his head into a hat, then dictate it bit-by-bit to Oliver Cowdery, meaning that either he was seeing the translated words in old english, then dictating it, or translating them into old english as soon as he saw them).

Again, Shakespearean English isn't Old English (that's what Beowulf was written in), or even Middle English (what the Canterbury Tales were written in). It's the earliest form of "New English." Except for a few slang terms, most of the words are the same as in modern English, and the pronunciation conventions aren't very different. The main differences are all in the grammatical structure. In 1820, it wasn't nearly as dated or weird as it seems now. More people understood it than do today, too.

So given that Smith was trying to put together religious texts, even if he was in fact divinely inspired, his choice of moderately archaic language makes sense.

[Darth Wong]

To be honest, arguing about the specifics of their claims is an exercise in futility. They will go round and round in circles and continually treat facts and beliefs interchangeably.

It seems better to simply short-circuit this entire process and just keep hammering them with "what independently verifiable scientific evidence do you have for this belief" every time they say anything. It works for all of the Mormon pseudo-historical bullshit, it works for Smith's bullshit tablets, it works for religion in general. The most they can possibly do is assail the notion that you should be demanding such evidence, or horrendously mutilate the concept of what constitutes scientific evidence: both approaches are easily attacked in turn. The former is simply a tacit admission that they have no objective reason whatsoever to believe in their nonsense, and the second is simple ignorance, which is easily attacked by pointing out what scientific evidence actually is, while burying them in snark about their ignorance of such a basic concept.

Who cares exactly what bullshit claims Smith used to back up his statements? Who cares whether he said he had tablets or he said he had scriptures or he said God spoke to him in the outhouse one night? Who cares how or why the evidence for his imaginary ancient Iowa Atlanteans disappeard, or whether it existed in the first place? It ALL falls under the same category of "stuff for which there is zero independently verifiable scientific evidence", ie- on the same level as the notion that Jedi Knights are real and you can't disprove it because they live so far away.

[Darth Wong]

This reminds me of the two approaches to arguing with Bible thumpers. You can either allow the argument to drift into the actual content of the Bible, in which case you might do well but you'd better know your Bible, or you can just short-circuit the whole charade by simply cutting them off with "Not valid evidence" every time they start to quote it or cite anything from it.

[Solauren]

First, you might want to lay down some rules for the debate before it begins. I recommend reading over the general debate guidelines on this website. Make them sign a document to agree to follow those guidelines. They might back out right then and there. After all, if you can't use the bible to prove the bible, what proof is their? (Make sure you indicate you consider the Old & New Testaments, as well as the Book of Mormon all volumes of the same larger book for this).

Also make sure to include stuff in it like 'they will not mention praying for me or any member of my family', and nothing about what they themselves have done. You want hard evidence.

Darth Wong once said how he or his wife asked a bunch of mormon missionaries how they were supposed to be open and equal with all gods children, regardless of race and gender, and all the elders in the church or old white men. That might be something to ask them about.


Ask them a few questions about Mr. Smith Jr (the founder)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith,_Jr

Bring up his treasure hunting days (a sign he wanted money), his use of Seer Stones. An activity he was paid for. His financial problems before 'finding the golden plates', lack of evidence of there existence and so forth. Compare him to to L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.

Basically, before you even begin taking apart the religion, go after the founder a bit. They might not be prepared for this, and it could catch them off guard and royally fustrate them.

As for dealing with your mother;
How old is your brother? What's the legal age for him moving out? If it's 16, tell your mother to back the hell off or else he's got a place to stay in a few months away from her bullshit.

Also, if you're feeling vendictive, compare her use of the church to the actions and patterns of a drug addict (going back when times are tough), and the Religious leaders as drug pushers.

Too bad you only have a few days. There are so many avenues to approach this from.

[sketerpot]

First, you might want to lay down some rules for the debate before it begins. I recommend reading over the general debate guidelines on this website. Make them sign a document to agree to follow those guidelines. They might back out right then and there. After all, if you can't use the bible to prove the bible, what proof is their? (Make sure you indicate you consider the Old & New Testaments, as well as the Book of Mormon all volumes of the same larger book for this).

That makes you look like you're trying to defeat them with lawyering in lieu of argument. But by all means make it clear to them that you don't consider the Bible or Book of Mormon to be evidence of anything beyond the obvious fact that someone wrote a myth down in a book.

Look, Admiral Drason, you don't have time to bone up on the Book of Mormon and and Bible and attack their weak spots (FOR MASSIVE DAMAGE!). You've got to stick to the basics with as much tenacity as you can muster: what is their evidence? Let me say that again in boldface: what is their evidence? Here's where it gets fun, because there are a few typical types of responses to this:

1. It says so in the Bible! Or the BoM, or the Koran, or Astonishing X-Men issue #3! Response: all that proves is that somebody wrote it down. You can go on the offensive here by asking why they don't believe in the impending apocalypse of Ragnarok, as written about in the Eddas. Or pick your favorite myth; I'm fond of the god-covered-in-vaginas myth from the Ramayana.

2. Mormon archaeologists have said so-and-such! Response: if we're appealing to authority, you've got a lot more archaeologists who say those guys are just a few religiously motivated crackpots. Since you have a background in North American archaeology it should be particularly fun to hammer them on this.

3. If you believe this stuff in your heart and pray, you'll get all the evidence you need! Response: if God wants to reveal Himself, then surely He can do it to someone who doesn't already believe. It's remarkably convenient that when people of other religions do this, other gods reveal themselves. And personal revelation is worthless evidence to anybody else.

4. You need God to be a good person, or some such bullshit. This is a total red herring, since it has nothing to do with evidence. It's easy to refute, too.

Keep the conversation focused on evidence, and do not get sidetracked into Biblical specifics. Since the Bible/BoM isn't evidence of its own validity, there's no reason to discuss it until you have some cause to believe that it's not just a load of silly old myths.

Rye has some good ideas if you want to go on the offensive, which is generally a good idea since it flusters the hell out of religious people to see their beliefs attacked. The archaeology angle is especially good if you can pull it off.

Stay calm, stay firm, don't let them control the conversation, and be mildly snarky to throw them off balance. You can win!

[Knife]

So the long story is that when I was a little my mom and dad were going through a tough time in their marriage and my mom had my dad join the Mormon church. We went to the church and did all the goodly little Mormon things for a few years until my dads career righted itself and he proclaimed that it was all bull shit and stopped going. Shortly after my older brother and then I decided that it was much more fun to have our Sundays open and to do fun things like watch movies, drink pop, and live without fear of the giant daddy in the sky.

You can say that of any religion.

Fast forward to the present day and I've grown to accept that there is no god and that my dad never bought into it either. Infact out of my entire family only my mother has any faith in the Judao Christian god. Now unfortunatly my father had lost his job a few months ago due to the poor economy and is now at the whim of my mother once again. So he is humoring her by allowing the Mormon "elders" into their home and are now giving my 15 year old brother "lessons" about the church. My mom has brow beaten him into getting baptized so that he can go to heaven with her, as all the rest of her family is clearly going to burn in hell for all eternity.

RED FLAG. Nuff said.

Anyway last week I bring my girlfriend to my parents house and learn that its all a trap. My mom has the Mormons waiting for us so that they can teach us about how prideful we our and how if only we were to read the Book of Mormon and pray that we would learn to be good little mormons too. I was polite with them as I really wasn't prepared for an ambush and I did want to act like to much of an ass in front of my girlfriend. So after the Mormons left I started to pick apart the religion and my dad told me that he would set up a debate between the Mormon missionaries and I. I've got until Thursday night now to prep myself for the debate.

Having been raised behind the Zion Curtain; I'll say this: Mormon religion may be run by rich old white men, but it is sustained by middle class white women who make their husbands fore go football for church for good sex. Power of the Moon indeed.

So what should I focus on in the debate? I don't know if I should just disprove all religion or should I just break apart Mormonism by itself. Would it be more tactful to go after the Book of Mormon as a book or just go after church history to prove that Joseph Smith was just a scam artist?

Your choice, of course, but I have found going after the fundamentals is more productive. Write Mormonism on a sheet of paper and it looks good. Go after the details and most rational Mormons will agree with you. Most religion is an appeal to tradition, after all. Prove the 'tradition' wrong and you win.

[Superboy]

I really doubt that these people will treat the conversation like an actual debate. They're going to be looking at it simply as a chance to spread the word. Most of their "arguments" will probably just be telling you about the religion and how great it is. They'll likely try to convince you that you need to believe out of "faith", which conveniently side steps any need for evidence.

My parents are religious and I've been in this situation many times. Don't go in expecting these guys to try to debate you honestly, they'll bypass the debate as much as possible to keep telling you about the religion.

I think you're best bet is to start the conversaton off with a simple question: "What reason is there to believe in your religion instead of any others?". You can then simply shoot down whatever idiotic reasons they try to give you. They'll keep trying to sidestep, so keep asking what reasons they can give you that would convince you it's the truth. I find this is more useful than asking for evidence. It's the same basic tactic, but using the word "evidence" always seems to bring religious people back to "faith". Asking for it in a more simple way works better with these simple people. It's also lead to more satisfying conclusions in my experiences, as after easily shooting down what ever reasons they give you, you can make them admit that there's no reason to be a mormon. If they won't admit it, ask again what reason there is and keep shooting them down.

[Knife]

I really doubt that these people will treat the conversation like an actual debate. They're going to be looking at it simply as a chance to spread the word. Most of their "arguments" will probably just be telling you about the religion and how great it is. They'll likely try to convince you that you need to believe out of "faith", which conveniently side steps any need for evidence.

Indeed. For all of their efforts; most of Mormonism is self inflicted. They get more converts from children then actual kids.

My parents are religious and I've been in this situation many times. Don't go in expecting these guys to try to debate you honestly, they'll bypass the debate as much as possible to keep telling you about the religion. [/ quote]

duh.

I think you're best bet is to start the conversaton off with a simple question: "What reason is there to believe in your religion instead of any others?".

Meh. plays into their hands actually. Better to question why they are right as a whole to begin with.

You can then simply shoot down whatever idiotic reasons they try to give you. They'll keep trying to sidestep, so keep asking what reasons they can give you that would convince you it's the truth. I find this is more useful than asking for evidence. It's the same basic tactic, but using the word "evidence" always seems to bring religious people back to "faith". Asking for it in a more simple way works better with these simple people. It's also lead to more satisfying conclusions in my experiences, as after easily shooting down what ever reasons they give you, you can make them admit that there's no reason to be a mormon. If they won't admit it, ask again what reason there is and keep shooting them down.

disagree. Make them question their own beliefs is better. Remember, these are kids the Mormons have snet out. Easy to sell on their beliefs, easy to question them. Why examin yours if you can make them question theirs.

[Superboy]

True enough. I suppose a better tactic would be to ask "why do you believe the book of mormon is true?"

[Vendetta]

Some handy facts:

Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon religion, was convicted of fraud in 1826, between his first alleged vision and the first publication of the Book of Mormon.

During the "translation" process of the Book of Mormon, the first 116 pages of the "translated" manuscript were stolen by the wife of Smith's neighbour and first dupe. Smith was challenged to reproduce the content of those pages, a trivial act if he were, indeed, translating. He could not do so, and claimed that he was vouchsafed six new, smaller tablets to replace the scripture sullied by the unbeliever.

Linguistic analysis of the Book of Mormon shows great similarity to other manuscripts originally authored by Joseph Smith, especially in the placement of the words "and" "for", or "but" at the beginning of sentences, a perculiar quirk of Smith's writing which should not be present if he were translating another work.

[Straha]

I've done this with Missionaries. They have a fatal flaw: They're very well coached in getting you to join the church but horribly out of place defending the theological implications of the Church. It's a structural flaw in the LDS church that goes all the way up and down the church, but here's the main things you can hit them on:

A. The LDS church isn't Christian. An accepted maxim of the Church is that "As Man is now, God once was. As God is now, Man may be." The direct meaning of this is that men can become gods (they have a special phrase for the process which I can't remember), and it's even spelled out as such in the Book of Moses. Now the problem with this for them is twofold:

1. If Jesus is the son of god, and accepting the message of Jesus is necessary to achieve godhood, then how did God do it? If Jesus isn't necessary to achieve transcendence, then not only are they emphatically not Christians (a name the church clings to like a drowning man to a life preserver) but the entire message of the Church, the Book of Mormon, and the bible is wrong.

2. What makes Jesus special? If our sins can be absolved in other ways, then Jesus' sacrifice doesn't matter, and isn't special. So why should we commemorate it? You can hit a second point here too: According to LDS theology, we're all sons of God/Heavenly Father. So, why focus on Jesus when there are so many other sons of god who suffer and act like saints for the rest of humanity?

B. The church is centrally focused on the Abrhamic and Melchizedek priesthoods, and the church preaches openly that everyone receives revelation from the Holy Spirit and that we should follow these revelations, especially when given to priesthood holders. But the Church also preaches that you have to listen to your seniors in the Church hierarchy, and that their revelations are always correct and no one will receive a revelation contradicting a superior's. You can start attacking them here by asking who are they to deny god the right to reveal information to whoever he damn well pleases, whatever his/her gender, religious status or placement in the hierarchy of the church? Then you can start going after, for instance, the revelation on race in the Church, and how after over a centuries worth of revelations saying that Blacks would not be allowed into the Church (a practice started by Brigham Young, I should add, and directly contradictory to some of the things Smith did) they are now welcome due to a contradictory revelation. Depending on how they defend themselves there are any numbers of paths you can go down, but here are some key points you can hit:

1. If higherups sometimes mis-interpret things as revelations, then who are we to say that Joseph Smith, or Brigham Young, or Thomas Monson aren't receiving bad revelations now?

2. Considering that numerous things that Joseph Smith did were based on revelation and are categorically disproven by modern scholarship (like the Book of Abraham, or the Book of Moses) why should we take his word on what the Book of Mormon says? Considering he translated it through revelation, and we have no way of fact checking him, why should we believe this translation if we know he got revelations wrong in the past? Especially considering the lack of any archaeological evidence for what took place in the Book of Mormon.

3. They will whip out the book of Moroni Chapter 10. Mormons do this all the time. In any circumstance. It's message is, essentially, "Read the book. Pray on it. And god will tell you it's true." It's their escape hatch. Because if you pray on it and god comes to you to say it's true DING! they've got you. If god doesn't come you simply didn't open your heart to him. Be prepared for this and there are a number of ways around this. My personal favorite is:

"I've read the Book of Mormon, but it doesn't seem to agree with the Mormon Church." And ask for where the hierarchy of the Church/the priesthoods/plural marriage/the Temple/Baptism for the Dead/Patriarchal Blessings/insert Mormon peculiarity here is included in the book. If you hit on Plural Marriage you can actually make the point that the Book of Mormon expressly condemns Polygamy as unholy and sinful (I think it's in one of the first two Nephis. If you really want to look it up, do it. Otherwise stay the hell away.) This unsettles them because once you've divorced the Book of Mormon from the Mormon Church they've lost their backdoor escape hatch and they have to debate on the merits, and not on subjective feelings. And a debate on the Merits is a debate they'll lose.

Good luck.

EDIT:

Two things I should quickly add:

1. Superboy is right on that the Mormons will not treat this like a debate, or a special conversation. They are heavily heavily coached on how to act as missionaries and cannot treat conversations with you in any other way (to the point where, for instance, I completely flummoxed them when I invited a pair to come play Settlers of Catan with friends, and they had to contact their higher ups to get guidance on how to respond.) They will try to guide the conversation to friendly ground on converting you (which doesn't involve discussing doctrine of the Church heavily), but as long as you keep the conversation on the Church itself and its doctrine/belief you'll have the upper hand. It's counter-intuitive, I know but believe me the Church is both genius and self-delusional for this approach.

2. The missionaries tend to be nice people at heart, and if you can get to them underneath the name tag you can often make a lot of progress. Be kind, friendly, polite and joke with them if you can. Once you crack their missionary training they become a lot more reasonable and understanding.