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edit: I want to be clear that I enjoy this type of back and forth, but only if you do. I'm not trying to demean anybody here, I just enjoy this type of sparring. I still think the people who jumped on the "mormons are not Christian" thing immediately after (now 4) people were killed are bad people. If you want to keep arguing because you also think it's fun, then all good, but please don't take any of this as me wanting to attack you, or other mormons. If you want to know my feelings: I consider you guys brothers, and think that a lot of what the mormon church has done from a strategic and organizational perspective is impressive and something I wish my own church would take notes on, but I also think that the book of mormon is very obviously a hoax from a creative young man in 1800s upstate New York. From talking to mormons, I see a lot of overlap in the implementation of Christian philosophy, especially the emphasis on the importance of doing good work, with my own, Catholic beliefs. I think that's good. Okay I hope I've been reassuring enough that I don't mean any of this in bad spirit, just because I enjoy the game:
It seems like you’re claiming there really aren’t many differences.
Then why the need for the entire project? And if so many core theological beliefs of Mormons just eventually get erased out, as the “god was once a man” did in 1997 or so, then what is the point of any of it?
By the way, I think this is a good thing. Mormon beliefs like black people lesser-than (or in some cases outright demons), everybody getting their own planet, Kolob, polygamy, etc. are all things which I think are wrong, and all thinks which the Mormon leaders have later discovered that they think are wrong too.
They also seem like things a teenager in the 1800s in upstate New York would make up as part of a fantasy universe.
As far as the literal truth of the Book of Mormon: there’s obviously a ton of problems here. Horses not existing in pre Colombian America, for instance. Jews not sailing from the Levant to North America in ~600BC for another.
You're getting most of your details wrong. "God was once a man" was never a "core theological belief" nor arguably an LDS belief at all. Nobody ever taught we get our own planet. We don't believe Jews sailed to North America around 2000 BC, we believe Israelites sailed there on at least two separate occasions around 600 BC, another unrelated group of people (not Israelites) thousands of years earlier, and probably other groups besides.
What's so objectionable about Kolob, given that God has a body? You bring it up as an example of a thing you think is wrong, but it looks to me more like an example of a thing you think is weird.
Name one core theological belief of Mormons that eventually got erased out. I'm not aware of any.
We can go through the laundry list of apologetics. It would be a long debate and I'd be reticent to do it with someone much better-informed and more intellectually honest than you have been. Suffice to say that the archeological consensus on this is not nearly as definitive as you'd think, and the details we have been able to verify (those that take place in known locations in the Middle East) have proven surprisingly accurate.
The doctrinal differences are real and significant, but the church wasn't restored to bring back doctrine; it was restored to bring back priesthood authority and organization. This would still have been necessary even if there were no fundamental disagreements about things like the Nicene Creed or infant baptism.
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