LDS Discussions — Done the Right Way

NEW: For those looking for our response to the Overview Project at ldsdiscussions.com, we have created an Overview Response landing page that addresses all 39 of their topic overviews with evidence-based, scholarly refutations drawn from the best available apologetic literature.

Thank you for visiting LDS Discussions — Done the Right Way. Our goal is to explore the various topics of Mormonism from a historical perspective using mostly LDS and peer-reviewed sources — the same sources ldsdiscussions.com uses, and the substantial body of scholarship they omit. The material on this site has been written by members of the LDS church who have studied these issues deeply and found that the evidence, properly examined, supports the faith. Every claim is cited. Every citation is real. We engage their strongest arguments and answer them with the best available scholarship from FAIR Latter-day Saints, the Interpreter Foundation, BYU Studies, the Maxwell Institute, and the broader world of Latter-day Saint academic research.

We have gone through and taken the official LDS Gospel Topics Essay on Book of Mormon Translation, the Essay on DNA and the Book of Mormon, the Essay on the Book of Abraham, the Essay on Race and the Priesthood, the Essay on First Vision Accounts, and the Essays on Polygamy and provided scholarly responses to ldsdiscussions.com’s annotations of those essays. While ldsdiscussions.com argues that the Church is not being truthful, a careful reading of those same essays — alongside the broader scholarly literature they do not cite — tells a very different story.

In response to ldsdiscussions.com’s chapter-by-chapter review of the LDS Church’s Saints: The Standard of Truth, we have completed our own examination — reviewing whether their historical claims hold up under scrutiny from primary sources and peer-reviewed scholarship. Read our Saints: The Standard of Truth? response.

We have also launched a Blog section with shorter responses to current Church topics, General Conference addresses, institutional statements, and historical issues — including responses to the specific blog posts at ldsdiscussions.com.

Latest Responses

A Final Response to the Final Summary on Mormonism and What Now? — ldsdiscussions.com’s closing argument claims the evidence “without any doubt” shows the Church is not what it claims. We demonstrate that this certainty inflation misrepresents the evidential situation, ignores the strongest apologetic responses, and applies an unfalsifiable standard to only one side of the question.

If Joseph Smith Got It Right, Then Who Got It Wrong? — We respond to the claim that LDS truth claims require rejecting modern science. We show that the LDS framework is not in conflict with genuine scientific findings, and that ldsdiscussions.com systematically overstates the certainty of contested scholarly positions.

Overview of Apologetics within Mormonism — Response — A response to ldsdiscussions.com’s characterization of LDS apologetics as inherently deceptive. We document the academic credentials and institutional legitimacy of FAIR, the Maxwell Institute, the Interpreter Foundation, and BYU Studies, and turn the “cherry-picking” charge back on the critics.

The Transfiguration of Brigham Young — Van Wagoner’s social contagion theory cannot explain 129 independent testimonies from witnesses as geographically dispersed as Idaho to Tahiti. We document the early accounts, including Wilford Woodruff’s own 1845 letter supporting the event — which ldsdiscussions.com never cites despite citing his journal against it.

Revelation Overview, Part 4: Personal Revelation — ldsdiscussions.com’s critique of LDS personal revelation relies on a scientistic epistemology it never defends. We respond with Plantinga’s properly basic belief framework, Calvin’s testimonium internum, and Moroni 7’s own three-criteria discernment filter — which the site omits entirely.

Revelation Overview, Part 3: After Joseph Smith — We respond to the claim that post-Joseph revelation has been “watered down.” McConkie’s post-1978 reversal testimony — from the apostle with the strongest prior against that change — is the most compelling evidence of a genuine prophetic experience that ldsdiscussions.com cannot explain away.

Overview of How the Church Handles Doubt — Uchtdorf’s October 2013 General Conference address “Come, Join with Us” — the most prominent official treatment of doubt in modern Church history — is entirely absent from ldsdiscussions.com’s suppression narrative. We document the Church’s increasing transparency and the Gospel Topics Essays as evidence against the concealment thesis.

Revelation Overview, Part 1: Backdating Prophecy — Eight independent manuscript copies of the Civil War prophecy exist, including an 1857 newspaper that ridiculed it as unfulfilled — followed by Fort Sumter in 1861. We document the full evidential record that ldsdiscussions.com ignores.

Overview of Spiritual Witnesses and Testimonies — We respond to the cognitive bias catalogue with William Alston’s Perceiving God and Plantinga’s Reformed epistemology. Cross-religious divergence in spiritual experience no more invalidates LDS testimony than conflicting perceptions invalidate sight — and the same critique, applied consistently, would invalidate the author’s own confident disbelief.

Overview of the Temple Endowment and Masonry — Eddington’s 2025 Interpreter quantitative analysis found only 9.7–17% conceptual overlap between the endowment and Masonic ritual — and the endowment shares more vocabulary with the Pearl of Great Price (18.4%) than with Masonic texts (10.8%). We document the ancient origins that predate Masonry by millennia.

We will be posting new responses as we go. If you have a specific ldsdiscussions.com argument you would like addressed, use the navigation above to find the corresponding response, or contact us.