Reddit reviews Deconstructing Mormonism: An Analysis and Assessment of the Mormon Faith

Read the book review by Kerry Shirts. He is (or was) an apologist. It seems like this book hit him really hard

I think the short story of how he ended up not being a TBM/apologist is that back in 2012 he read the book "Deconstructing Mormonism: An Analysis and Assessment of the Mormon Faith". Here is his Amazon review:

How on Earth Do I Possibly Deal With This?!

>I have been a Mormon Apologist on the Internet now for over 15 years. There is NOTHING I cannot take apart, refute, and show to be fallacious, wrong, incorrect, warped, weird, and wrong headed, .......until now. (See? That's one of the problems of Mormon apologetics, not to mention Christian apologetics, we get puffed up thinking we can refute anything, which just is not even factually true). What is it about this book that has so eviscerated Mormonism, and in turn ALL Western Christians faiths? A few words first. For one thing, this is simply not an easy book to read. It is serious. There is no other way to describe this. Now that being said, I believe Thomas Riskas is right to sincerely admonish readers to just make it through the first chapters as they lay the ground work for the rest of the book. This is important. By laying the ground work, you see the unrelenting and impeccable logic of his thoughts, analysis, and discussions along with the answers. I had to read and re-read quite a few of those first pages in the first few chapters over more than once. It is worth it for no other reason than to actually "get it" with the sheer force of the power of his arguments he develops in later chapters.





FYI, he's regularly posting as "Philo Sofee" at the Mormon Discussions forum:

http://mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=1

Here are some of his recent threads:

OK I'm Going to be Honest, I am Miffed!

>Okay so in the process of researching for my book on the book of Abraham that I am currently going to write, I have been rereading all of the LDS apologetic. This last weekend I read well over 500 pages of dozens of articles by several LDS apologists and several chapters in several of Hugh Nibley books on the Book of Abraham. I read chapter one in his book "The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri." And it completely stumped me.

Kerry Muhlestein, LDS Egyptologist, Just WRONG About Papyri

>Kerry Muhlestein, an LDS Egyptologist, who wants so badly to fill the shoes of John Gee and Hugh Nibley continues to misunderstand and misconstrue some basic ideas and logic of the papyri that Joseph Smith had.

This is just SO MESSED UP!!!

>Richard Bushman, one of the better LDS historians, (come on, at least he TRIED to be a little more objective in “Rough Stone Rolling”) wrote a nifty little essay back in 1997, “The Rhetoric of Revelation Ancient and Modern Models,” published by FARMS, that caught my eye during my research into my forth coming book on the Book of Abraham.

Kerry Shirts (aka The Backyard Professor) left apologetics 2 years ago. This was his departure.

It seems that he has also left the church, but I honestly haven't heard much about him in the last couple of years.

If you're serious about wanting an in-depth logical breakdown of the church, you could try Tom Riskas' Deconstructing Mormonism. This is not light reading. Read the reviews.

I'm only 37 pages in, but so far it's definitely my cup of tea.

Deconstructing Mormonism is a good, though somewhat technically dense, read that points out the philosophical absurdity of Mormonism.

I don't have time to watch the video, but if the book he is talking about is Deconstructing Mormonism, it's the one he previously talked about being the one that broke his faith last year.

It's a good book, but it's not light reading. You can see his review there on the Amazon page (his name is Kerry Shirts).

Thank you for the referral. I will be sure to read it. One thing I found interesting with the one very critical review of that book on Amazon. It referenced Deconstructing Mormonism Has anyone read this one?