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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025

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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.

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 at all?

Name one core theological belief of Mormons that eventually got erased out. I'm not aware of any.

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 ~2000BC for another.

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.

It seems like you’re claiming there really aren’t many differences at all.

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.