The Atheist Blogger

In this post I was planning to talk about the answers that Lindsey Kirth gave to questions people asked about Mormonism. However, in light of the response the article got on Friendly Atheist (where it was published) it seems that she has pretty much deleted everything she ever wrote for the site. Hemant posted some thoughts on the the posts made by Lindsey, claiming

I think it was courageous of her to try explaining Mormonism from an insider’s perspective — knowing full well that her beliefs would be thoroughly challenged by readers. Judging from some of the comments, though, many of you didn’t want any part of that dialogue. And some of you are just plain rude.

Yes it was very courageous of her to try and explain Mormonism to a bunch of atheists, but it is really rude to point out obvious flaws in her reasoning? I’m looking back through the archived comments I have in my feedreader still, and I see only a bunch of people challenging the absurdities Lindsey was espousing. Of course, my comments only go back so far, and it is possible that I wasn’t able to cache them all. However, I would say most people were still eager to be part of the dialogue, and a few were asking more questions.

Something that didn’t help Lindsey was the amount of ex-Mormon atheists that found the thread, and who promptly dismissed her arguments that “Mormons don’t practice polygamy” or that Mormonism wasn’t originally racist. The history of Mormonism, like that of Scientology, has been revealed on the internet on many websites. The Skeptics Annotated Book of Mormon has a long list of examples of intolerance, making the argument that the Book of Mormon was simply the ravings of Joseph Smith even more clear.