Criticism of Mormonism/Websites/Critical websites initially claiming to be run by active or believing Church members

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Critical websites initially presenting themselves as being run by active or believing Church members

Summary: These articles respond to websites that initially presented themselves as being run by active or believing Church members. The authors of these sites wrote as if they were simply believing members who were interested in researching the "truth" about Mormonism. Over time, it has become apparent that these sites are run by ex-Mormons who are hostile to the Church.

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• A FairMormon Analysis of claims made on the critical website MormonThink.com

FutureMissionary.com

Summary: The website futuremissionary.com is designed to shake the faith of prospective missionaries by blindsiding them with troubling issues related to Church history. The site's anonymous authors claim to be returned missionaries. At the time that the site first went "live," the authors initially wrote as though they were "believing" members who naively accepted controversial statements and ideas without question. Eventually, over time, they finally admitted in their "Who are We?" section of the website that they are ex-Mormons. The most prominent and detailed page on the website is "A Letter to a CES Director: Why I Lost My Testimony." The authors claim that such blatant materials will help to prepare missionaries for questions and challenges they will face. In reality, the letter and other material on the site only introduce attacks on the church without discussing crucial context and explanations that would help readers fully understand the material. The approach and tone of the FutureMissionary site resembles that of MormonThink.com before MormonThink became openly antagonistic toward the Church in late 2012.

A FairMormon Analysis of claims made on the critical website MormonThink.com

Summary: The web site MormonThink.com originally claimed to be operated by active members of the Church with an interest in objectively presenting the "truth" about Mormonism. They authors have since abandoned the pretense that any of them are "active" in the Church. The founding webmaster was, by his own admission, pretending to be semi-active in order to destroy members' and missionaries' testimonies from within the social structure of the Church. The site pretends to be "balanced" by presenting information and links to apologetic sites, however, the conclusions reached by the site consistently reflect negatively on the Church's truth claims. The site also sometimes contains a large amount of Temple content.

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• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "Translation of the Book of Mormon"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "Book of Mormon Problems"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "The Lost 116 Pages of the Book of Mormon"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "Could Joseph Smith have written the Book of Mormon?"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "The Witnesses"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "Moroni's Visitation"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "The First Vision"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "The Book of Abraham"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "The Kinderhook Plates"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "Joseph's Translation of the Bible"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "Running with Gold Plates"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "Polygamy"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "Blacks and the Priesthood"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "The Greek Psalter Incident"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "Conflicts with Science"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "Tithing"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "The Temple"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "Lying for the Lord"
• Response to claims made on MormonThink page "Doctrine & Covenants"