You show such an ignorance for religion and the way the chiurch works it is pointless arguing with you.
A church works according to its beliefs. Its beliefs are what have been officially taught. All I'm doing is reporting what's been officially taught.
Its very obvious that you are very wrapped up in hating the church and distorting its doctrine to make a point. Essentially your entire argument collapses if you stop considering that ANYTHING ANY prophet EVER said is 100% doctrine. Which I have already stated is not really the case....the church won't come out directly and ever say they were wrong......but in practice all this bullshit you bring up has been completely rejected by the church today.
I'm not making any such claim -- I'm asserting what the Mormon church has said, that the teachings of its prophets are truth. Brigham Young TAUGHT the Doctrine of Adam-God -- he didn't conjecture about it, he didn't speculate, he didn't pass it off as an interesting possibility, he taught it.
So if the things I'm reporting here from him and Joseph Smith are "completely rejected by the church today", then they're apostates, the exact same kind of people they condemn in the polished presentation in Salt Lake City.
And if it's been determined to be wrong, then the leaders ought to say so; if they won't, they're a batch of cowardly liars.
So keep on lieing to yourself and others by insisting that "is one person claimed it at one point in time so it is doctrine"....more power to you. Its depressing that someone could be so deluded about the church that they would make me.....who hates the church with a passion that is all consuming....defend it.
The lie here is your claim.
Your only decent arguments were against 4 and 5 are the only ones not completely based on distortion. For 4 I think the arrangement is irrelevant and semantics...the doctrine itself may be more along the lines of "earning" your way into heaven more that other churches....but how many other churches REALLY believe that you can just float by doing nothing and get into heaven....the answer....not many. So how are they really that different.
Citing official teaching by one of the prophets is not "distortion", it's objective analysis. When that teaching is claimed a coming from heaven itself, there's no wiggle room: according to Joseph Smith, God told him that all the creeds of all the churches were an abomination. So in Mormon dogma (since you play fast and loose with the word "doctrine"), saying there is one God is an abomination, that Jesus Christ is His Only Son is an abomination, and so on.
And if the Mormon church is sweeping all that under the carpet, then they are admitting that Joseph Smith was a false prophet who lied when he reported that conversation with a heavenly messenger.
On 5 you have a reasonablish argument....and there and people throughout the church with that attitude. However, it is dieing out and within a generation my guess is it will be gone.
So it's not really a church with a claim to having any truth, it's a social club that changes things as they please.
Remember that Joseph Smith's claim, which is the foundation of the Mormon church, was that Christianity had completely died, there were none faithful, no truth left, and that a restoration was necessary. Neglecting the truths that were revealed to him and later prophets is apostasy, and an apostasised church is not God's church any more. And when the truth being neglected or cast aside is the very foundational one on which the church rests, you don't have a church any more at all. Objective claims like Smith's can't just be jettisoned on a whim, or because of feelings. Having objective statements of truth is why there's revelation in the first place, and the only thing to call people who brush some of it aside or hide it or let it die out is "enemies of God".
Remember Scripture are words...... doctrine are the PEOPLES and CHURCH ORGANIZATIONS interpretation of those words as they put them into practice and your portrayals of doctrine are out and out lies in that NO ONE espouses those policies and lines of thinking anymore. As I said they will never come out and SAY that they don't believe something a prophet said because that would undermine their faith as a whole (which boils down to whether the church is true or not....which is another discussion entirely) but for all intents and purposes they have been removed from "doctrine".
No, they're not lies: those were the official teachings of the church, and unless the church repents and admits they were lies, they remain the official teachings. It's irrelevant whether anyone espouses them any more -- in fact that's an outrageous claim when made about a church the very foundation of which is the assertion that God's teachings had been neglected and allowed to die out and no one espoused them any more!
And if they're not honest enough to either teach the official dogma or admit it's false, then they're just lying cowards. You can't remove something from doctrine by pretending it isn't there; it has to be removed officially.
Though it seems your definition of "doctrine" amounts to "what we feel like preaching these days". With that definition, again, what you have isn't a church, it's a social club. If the official line is to do things that way, then they've de facto admitted that either Jospeh Smith was a liar and the church is false, or that they want to treat Smith as a liar... and again, the church is false.
