23 Solid things found within the LDS church that pushed me to non-belief

Things about the LDS church that I can no longer believe. 1/23/18

So this list is not exclusive by any means. But here are 23 things that either happened within the church, were taught by the church, or found within the church that have solidified my mind that the LDS church is in no way the lords church on the earth. The list originally came from 40 Years a Mormon, from there I gave some more context and sources.

1. That God would send an angel with a drawn sword to threaten a 37 yr old man (Joseph Smith) to threaten a 14 yr old girl (Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs) with his death if she didn't marry him, and promise heaven to her whole family if she did. 
• Zina later wrote, that within months of her marriage to Henry, “[Joseph] sent word to me by my brother, saying, ‘Tell Zina, I put it off and put it off till an angel with a drawn sword stood by me and told me if I did not establish that principle upon the earth I would lose my position and my life’”. Joseph further explained that, “the Lord had made it known to him she was to be his celestial wife.”
  Zina chose to obey this commandment and married Joseph on October 27. At the time of her marriage to Smith, she was about seven months pregnant with a child, Zebulon William Jacobs. (No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith , F. Brodie 1971, p. 465.) and (https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Joseph_Smith/Polygamy/Did_Joseph_Smith_coerce_women_to_marry_him)
• “When God commands a difficult task, He sometimes sends additional messengers to encourage His people to obey. Consistent with this pattern, Joseph told associates that an angel appeared to him three times between 1834 and 1842 and commanded him to proceed with plural marriage when he hesitated to move forward. During the third and final appearance, the angel came with a drawn sword, threatening Joseph with destruction unless he went forward and obeyed the commandment fully.” https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng&_r=1
• “An angel with a flaming sword descended from the courts of glory and, confronting the prophet, commanded him in the name of the Lord to establish the principle so long concealed from the knowledge of the Saints and of the world. That principle was the law of celestial or plural marriage!” The life of Heber C. Kimball https://archive.org/stream/lifeofheberckimb00whitrich#page/331/mode/1up/search/sword
2. That God would have his prophet (Joseph Smith) send a widower (John Walker) away from his children, and then marry his now foster daughter (Lucy Walker) and give her only 24 hours of intense pressure to decide if she wants to reject "heaven's blessings"
• Sources- http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/23-LucyWalker.htm, http://josephsmithspolygamy.org/plural-wives-overview/lucy-walker/, http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/2012/02/lucy-walker-remembering-the-forgotten-women-of-joseph-smith/,
3. That God would have his prophet (Joseph Smith) marry 11 women already married to other men.
• “Following his marriage to Louisa Beaman and before he married other single women, Joseph Smith was sealed to a number of women who were already married.” https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng https://www.familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.2.1/SP6X-Q65
4. That God would have his prophet (Joseph Smith) lie his entire life about being married to 34 women.
• “Inasmuch as this Church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again.” http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/doctrine-and-covenants-1835?dm=image-and-text&zm=zoom-inner&tm=expanded&p=259&s=undefined&sm=none
5. That God would have his prophet (Joseph Smith) marry 34 women and not tell his wife about most of them.
• “Emma approved, at least for a time, of four of Joseph Smith’s plural marriages in Nauvoo, and she accepted all four of those wives into her household. She may have approved of other marriages as well. But Emma likely did not know about all of Joseph’s sealings.” https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng
6. That God would have his gospel written in a book (Book of Mormon) that through rationally looking at the evidence makes the book look clearly like a fraud.
• No DNA evidence- https://www.genome.gov/10001772/all-about-the--human-genome-project-hgp/, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929711005490,
• Anachrinism- We have solid scientific evidence that horses, domesticated or wild, were not found prior to the Spanish conquests. Again, evidence is found for swine as well stating that there were no native species found in the Americas, and were not found until European explorers came to this area. The story is the same for sheep, nothing prior to Columbus.
• Archology- "The great and last battle, in which several hundred thousand Nephites perished was on the hill Cumorah, the same hill from which the plates were taken by Joseph Smith, the boy about whom I spoke to you the other evening." (Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, February 11, 1872, vol. 14, p. 331)
  “If any place merits archaeological attention, it is Cumorah. The very word elicits a series of empirical questions that can only be addressed through archaeology. […] When we pay attention to time and to cultural context, it becomes clear that the events described in the Book of Mormon did not occur in New York. […] In accord with these general observations about New York and Pennsylvania, we come to our principal object— the Hill Cumorah. Archaeologically speaking, it is a clean hill. No artifacts, no walls, no trenches, no arrowheads. The area immediately surrounding the hill is similarly clean. Pre- Columbian people did not settle or build here. This is not the place of Mormon’s last stand. We must look elsewhere for that hill.” (John E. Clark, Archaeology and Cumorah Questions, Journal of Mormon Studies, 2004.  http://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1412&index=15)
7. That God would have his prophet claim to translate Kinderhook plates and have it discovered a fraud.
• https://i.redd.it/cd3vtazxiynx.jpg
8. That God would have his prophet claim to translate papyri into the Book of Abraham to have it proven totally incorrect.
• “None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham’s name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham. Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham, though there is not unanimity, even among non-Mormon scholars, about the proper interpretation of the vignettes on these fragments. Scholars have identified the papyrus fragments as parts of standard funerary texts that were deposited with mummified bodies. These fragments date to between the third century B.C.E. and the first century C.E., long after Abraham lived.” https://www.lds.org/topics/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham?lang=eng
9. That God would allow his prophets to teach racism and white supremacy as part of his gospel for 130 years.
• “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol.10, p.110)
• “The attitude of the Church with reference to Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church from the days of its organization, to the effect that Negroes may become members of the Church but that they are not entitled to the priesthood at the present time… The position of the Church regarding the Negro may be understood when another doctrine of the church is kept in mind, namely, that the conduct of spirits in the pre-mortal existence has some determining effect upon the conditions and circumstances under which these spirits take on mortality.” (George Albert Smith, statement by the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on the Negro Question, August 17, 1949)
• “The seeming discrimination by the Church toward the Negro is not something which originated with man; but goes back into the beginning with God… Revelation assures us that this plan antedates man's mortal existence, extending back to man's preexistent state. (Pres. David O. McKay, Hugh B. Brown, N. Eldon Tanner. Letter of the First Presidency Clarifies Church’s Position on the Negro – Dec. 15, 1969. Printed in The Improvement Era, Feb. 1970, p.70-71)
10. That God would have his prophet teach blood-atonement as official true doctrine only to have later prophets declare it as false doctrine.
• “Joseph Smith taught that there were certain sins so grievous that man may commit, that they will place the transgressors beyond the power of the atonement of Christ. If these offenses are committed, then the blood of Christ will not cleanse them from their sins even though they repent. Therefore their only hope is to have their blood shed to atone, as far as possible, in their behalf. This is scriptural doctrine, and is taught in all the standard works of the Church.” (President Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 1954, vol. 1, pp. 135-136)
• “These are my views, and the Lord knows that I believe in the principles of sanctification; and when I am guilty of seducing any man's wife, or any woman in God's world, I say, sever my head from my body.” (Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, vol.7, p.20)
11. That God would have his prophet teach Adam-God as official true doctrine only to have later prophets declare it as false doctrine.
• “Brigham Young's speculations on Adam-God continued to be the center of no small controversy among church members.” https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V13N02_9.pdf
12. That secret handshakes are required to get into heaven.
• Temple
13. That secret code words are required to get into heaven.
• Temple
14. That a loving God would threaten us in the sacred temple with gory threats of violence. Slitting our throats, ripping out our tongue, slicing open our bowels, and our breasts be torn open if we told anyone the secret words or handshakes.
• Previously in the temple ceremony before 1990- Found here. And here.
15. That we will have less freedom in heaven than we have on earth to be with the ones we love.
• Family in lesser degrees will not be able to come up to higher degrees
16. That God would want us to trust elusive feelings that contradict our clear rational thinking, feelings that tell nearly all people to believe different things as his truth.
• The process of gaining a spiritual witness does not seem very effective, efficient or consistent. Your entire life view, world view, your very outlook on life, the afterlife, the creation of life, is based on your spiritual confirmations from God about the teachings of your religion. However, these same feelings, same spiritual promptings, same religious manifestations are being "given" or experienced by billions of people all over the world and being interpreted by them to gain a strong testimony in their own religions. People have very strong testimonies of their faith but it is entirely opposed to my faith. Both cannot be true; but both people have the same feeling (burning in the bosom, wave of peace and joy, a surety born by the spirit, answers to direct prayer, etc.)
17. That God would erase all archaeological evidence of the one civilization that preserved his truth.
• Covered above, link again- publications.mi.byu.edu
18. That God would have his prophets teach for 100+ years the ancestry of the American Indians to have it be proven false by DNA science.
• “As I look into your faces, I think of Father Lehi, whose sons and daughters you are. I think he must be shedding tears today, tears of love and gratitude.... This is but the beginning of the work in Peru.” (Gordon B. Hinckley, God’s Holy Work in Peru, Ensign, February 1997, p.73).
• “We also bare testimony that the Indians of North and South America are a remnant of the tribes of Israel; as is now made manifest by the discovery and revelation of their ancient oracles and records.” (Proclamation of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, April 1845)
• “A comparison of Native Americans, Siberians and Asians reveals that the same mtDNA lineages in all groups share mutations in the control region that are specific to the haplogroups. The simplest explanation is that the control region mutations arose in Asia in the founding mtDNA lineages and were carried to the New World by the ancestral Native Americans.” (Theodore G. Schurr, Mitochondrial DNA and the Peopling of the New World, American Scientist -The Scientific Research Society, May-June 2000)
19. That a loving God would leave his children alone without any guidance for 1800 years.
•  Dark ages
20. That Jesus would kill all the men, women, and children of the Canaanites and Amalekites, and every man woman and child in the cities of Zarahemla, Moroni, Moronihah, Gilgal, Onihah, Mocum, Jeruselem, Gadiandi, Gadiomnah, Jacob, Gimgimmno, Jacobugath, Laman, Josh, Gad, and Kishkumen.
• 3 Nephi 9
• As well as all the killing in the Old Testament. 1 Sam 15, Joshua 6,
21. That God would kill children if their parents didn't put blood on the doorway.
• Exodus 12:22
22. That God would curse a people and their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and beyond with "dark skin" so that they were "loathsome"
• 1 Nephi 12:23, Mormon 5:15
23. That God would create people (homosexuals) who should not have any romantic or sexual fulfillment in life. 
• Interview With Elder Dallin H. Oaks,
  Mormon and Gay - An Official Church Website