Here beastie explains how it was her 'fault' not to have known more about Mormonism earlier, rather than it being due to LDS Inc's whitewashing of its history:
Funny, when I was a two-year, full-time missionary in the late 70's, early 80's, and while we had two versions of the discussions, there was no mention of polygamy--and annotated instructions were to get the investigator back on track of just the topics presented in the discussions if the investigator brought up another topic. My companions were good at it, and headed off any conversation about polygamy as something that was socially needed in Utah in the 19th Century to build up a society there, but has long since been abandoned. While it did pipe down the questions, there frequently was a puzzled look yet remaining on the face of the investigator.The way I heard about it when yet a TBM, in Sunday School and Priesthood Meeting and only then when raised as an off-manual topic, was that (a) JSJr received the revelation that the Saints were to engage in polygamy, (b) he told his wife, Emma, who vociferously objected (I use the commas as a parenthetical there because even with what I know today, I yet consider Emma to be the only wife of JSJr), (c) JSJr refrained from engaging in polygamy out of respect for Emma's wishes, (d) Emma was 'bad' for not accepting JSJr engaging in polygamy as god had commanded him, and (e) BY married all those widows in Utah to care for them and their fatherless children. #(c) was repeated not only in my home ward in a neighboring state, but also at a BYU ward in which the bishop, a BYU religion professor, was in attendance during one such occasion and did not 'correct' this misnomer.

I also distinctly remember the lessons from the manuals on Church history described polygamy as something that BY set up after the migration to Utah.I have a hard time believing that beastie has a comprehension problem or that she comes from stock that has a genetic problem with comprehension.Ahh, the quintessential experience on MAD by those that would dare to mention that their Church experience did not include, from before baptism, knowing all about JSJr's peccadilloes.Boy, wouldn't it have been much easier in the Missionary Home/MTC to have only had to tell investigators that to appropriately investigate the Mormon Church would have been to direct them to the microfiche collections in libraries in Utah. Not having to memorize ver batim those lengthy discussions that made no mention of such would have been much easier, and then I would not have unwittingly been an instrument of deception to the investigators that listened to me.beastie, the apologist condemns us ex-Mo's each for not having studied out in our own minds everything ever written about Mormonism, and then prayed about it to get those stupors so we could dismiss the lies and get those bosom burning moments for what was true.

I wonder if to this day, anyone has prayed about JSJr's promiscuity and had his or her bosom burn with confirmation.

Of course, every topic I have learned anything about in my life began with grasping the basics and then moving on. I suppose it was my fault my 4th grade grammar school teacher mentioned Thomas Jefferson but nothing about Sally Hemings. Of course, my teacher didn't know either, but those rascals that were involved in the process of what primary source information would not appear in my grade school history books, they were trying to instill a misconception in me just as certainly as LDS Inc was doing.

My point here though is prompted by beastie's parenthetical:

Yeah, how come it did not occur to beastie? Or to me when I heard the care-for-widows-and-orphans excuse?

Seems like beastie at those points in time, and me too at those points in my own Mormon odyssey, were accepting that explanation without looking further on our own, doing the Book of Mormon thing discussed in Alma 32:27-43. Specifically, letting the "desire work" in us until we can "give place" to the gospel, not resisting it so that it would grow like a planted seed, so that it
would swell within our breasts, we would realize that it is good, that our souls would be enlarged, our understandings enlightened--that we would find it 'delicious'. Through our repeating that the 'seed' is good, our faith would be strengthened, our minds expand with greater powers of discernment.

By accepting the facile explanation of caring for the widows and orphans, we nourishing our faith, as Alma exhorted us to do, with great care, diligence, patience and looking forward to it to 'bring forth fruit' (everlasting life), fearing that if we did not so nourish it by accepting such an explanation, our 'ground would be barren' and the seed not grow.

As BKP has admonished just over a year ago, 'let it alone'.

Yet at the Great and Spacious Echo Chamber that was once appropriately acronymed MAD, one that mentions that he relied on the 'milk before the meat' is ridiculed for not having instantly learned every unsavory nook and cranny of Mormon history while investigating Mormonism or for having accepted what Mormon leaders repeatedly and consistently shoveled to those of us BIC as we grew up (rather than having at, say, 7 and 1/2 years of age insisted our parents take us to Salt Lake City to the Church Library there so that we could have spent at least 6 months before turning 8 and being baptized, learning about all of JSJr's dirty laundry).

Why, as beastie asks, did it not occur to those of us that had this experience that caring for widows and orphans could have been done without the necessity of BY making those widows his 'wives'?

Could it be that it did not occur to us, and we thus did not dig deeper then, because we were trying to give that seed of desire the test that Alma said required us to hope for the seed to be good, to be true, and to nourish it, we had to avoid naysayers?

The whole "it's your fault if you didn't know" b***s*** is one of the mopologist tactics that makes me extremely angry. It's pretty easy to do "due diligence" these days by looking on the Internet, and there is evidence that the church is losing investigators and potential converts because they are doing this. But for someone who joined the church before the Internet there was no way to do the research unless you went to Utah and looked at microfilm but then you'd have to know you weren't being told the whole truth and you'd have to know what you were looking for.

You get lied to and the truth is withheld from you, but it's your fault. What a bunch of assholes.

The mopes remind me of those guys at Enron who were caught on an audio recording laughing in derision at the little old ladies they were screwing over with their energy trading schemes. The apologists are essentially arguing that if you are duped by a scam, it's your own fault for not doing enough diligence to uncover the fraud.

This.

Interestingly, one of the common tactics for defense attorneys arguing to a jury in hopes it will not find his or her client guilty of operating a Ponzi scheme is that the accused could not have perpetrated his or her crime if not for the greed of the Ponzi victims, if not for their reliance on the accused's statements without having done his or her (victim's) own due diligence investigation before 'investing' with the accused.

The SEC requires full disclosure through an 'offering circular' (aka prospectus) before money for investment may be properly accepted. Wonder why the government does not regulate religions, requiring full disclosure, before they can accept 'donations' and 'tithes' by those hoping to buy a stairway to heaven?

Most assuredly.

The reason we are exmos is that we weren't lazy. We did our homework and came to the correct conclusions. If we were still blissfully ignorant of the truth behind Mormonism, we could be called lazy. But we're not. Most Mormons are unaware of the truth, but they're not lazy. They just trust what their leaders tell them.

The ones I worry about are those who know the truth and yet come up with all kinds of b***s*** to rationalize lies and evil just so they can maintain their testimony of Mormonism.

You did your homework huh? Yeah, right.

Mormonism is based on a personal witness and testimony of God and that God told you to be Mormon. You don't have to do much homework to have it dawn on you that people claiming to see God, Angels, and having Gold Plates land in their lap sure sounds like BS without experiencing that for yourself.

Take a pix of god next time he appears to you, Tobin. Then post it so we can see it.

You didn't grow up in the church, did you?

One thing no one can answer me is why God would make his true church look exactly like an obvious scam. Does he have a sick sense of humor like that song says?

You'll just claim I photoshopped it. Talk to him youself and don't waste my time. If any of this stuff is true, you should be very capable of doing that.

What religious claims don't sound like a hoax and a fraud?

I've yet to see a case of anti Mormonism which didn't suffer from Fortigurn's Lazy Research. You know, no proof, missing details, third hand accounts, yellow journalism, failure to note valid alternative explanations, ad hominem and other logical fallacies, desire to sin etc.

Okay, so according to you all religious claims sound like a hoax and a fraud. Mormonism like rest of them 'sounds like a fraud', but inspite of that God requires us to pray fervently to find out if it is true.
Your God sounds like a basket case.

Haven't you all wondered whether the lives of Chapel Mormons are made peaceful simply by taking the watercourse way. Floating down stream without struggling against the current takes many burdens away.

It must seem presumptuous of me to believe in a God that can actually answer us and tell us what to believe instead of believing in a God that doesn't speak with us at all. I think people that believe in a God that doesn't exist and can't speak with us is more along the lines of being a basket case and a pretty worthless belief.

Absolutely.

In retrospect, I have often wondered how it came to be that I believed in, and joined, the LDS church. After all, to be brutally frank, its claims are quite unbelievable.

I was at a point in my life where I was foundering. I had lost my focus and had no idea what to do with my life. I was in college, and couldn't even figure out what I wanted to major in. I needed, and wanted, guidance and direction. I wanted answers. I'd also been struggling with belief in God - I couldn't figure out if I believed or not. My older sister seemed to have direction and purpose in her life, after joining the LDS church. Obviously, I wanted it to be true.

The author of the Book of Mormon did have insight into human nature. Once we want something to be true, or hope it is true, we begin to engage in motivated reasoning, something like confirmation bias. We pay attention to and exaggerate anything that could conceivably confirm the "truth", while minimizing, or outright not seeing, anything that could contradict the truth claims.

Here's another example. I had prayed about the Book of Mormon and had a strong numinous experience that I interpreted to mean the Book of Mormon is "true". Yet, the next night, I prayed about Joseph Smith being a prophet and felt nothing. Zero. Zip. I immediately knew this was a problem. I immediately knew the Book of Mormon could be "true" without Joseph Smith being a true prophet. For example, maybe someone else wrote the book. Or maybe he did, but wasn't "called" to be a prophet in general and overreached. So when I expressed my concern to the missionaries and my sister, all they told me was "but if the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith MUST be a true prophet". And, just like that, I ignored my previous common sense.

I wanted it to be true, and so it was.

Why do you seem so certain that if God did talk to us, he would tell us to be Mormon? You say he told you that, but among the historical accounts of people claiming God spoke to them, very few of them said anything about Mormonism or its specific claims. From what I can tell, if God exists and speaks to humans, he must just get a kick out out of seeing us all bicker and fight over the completely contradictory things he tells to different people (and sometimes to the same person).

My point is IF you are Mormon, you should have a witness that God told you to be Mormon. There isn't much homework you need to do for that. Either that happens for you or it doesn't. If it doesn't, I certainly wouldn't be Mormon - that's stupid and you are just fooling yourself with absolutely no proof that any of it is true. Now, if God tells you to do something else, that is perfectly fine with me too. That is of little importance to me, so long as you are talking with God and doing what you believe God wants you to do.

OK. Fair enough.