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I am a non-believer. Commonly called an Atheist, I like to shrug the title, feeling it an unnecessary sticker the religious put on my forehead. I do not approach this place lightly, being a former member of the LDS church myself, and do not intend to offend. I joined this guild because I often have questions and don't have people that I can really ask in my community for answers, even though I live in southern Utah.
In this thread, I will ask many questions that will be provocative, not to provoke, but to come to a better understanding of my religious friends and neighbors. Some of these questions will come from my studies, some will come from my frustrations. Some of them may be worded in a way that is unpleasant, but I will do my best to refrain from curse-words, even though I know gaia has a word-filter in place for those who wish to use it.

I await your answers.

Original post:
I was raised LDS and around the time I was 18 really started LEARNING about the beliefs and teachings of the religion. One thing I never caught until recently was a glaring contradiction between the Articles of Faith and the Book of Mormon (specifically 2 Nephi chapter 2). Let me be clear that I a nonbeliever, I just want questions answered sometimes. I took up this question with the ED and mostly got non-responses.

The second Article of Faith states: We believe that man will be punished for his own sins and not for Adam's transgressions.
However, 2 Nephi 2:21 goes on to state: And the days of the children of men were prolonged, according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh; wherefore, their state became a state of probation, and their time was lengthened, according to the commandments which the Lord God gave unto the children of men. For he gave commandment that all men must repent; for he showed unto all men that they were lost, because of the transgression of their parents.

These two things are incredibly contradictory, and it doesn't make sense to me that the LDS church would have such a blaring contradiction. The JST in the bible clears of a lot of contradictions if you believe he was correct, but then this pops up. I don't know how far back the Articles of Faith go, but I never thought the church would make a central teaching that is directly contradictory to something said in the Book of Mormon.

On another reading it would seem that way. ninja Now I guess I'll slink back off into the night. Curses I'm tired.

usually if your trying to find a problem with things your mind comes up with one, or being tired among other things lol.

Yeah, I kind of picked up on that. It makes a bit more sense now how that could be meant to say that. Though, I went to an institute class last week and was frustrated to find that the teacher was merely acting. She seemed to have rehearsed this "lesson" before, and when a contradicting viewpoint was expressed she spoke quickly and covered it up. I try to learn about religions and typically try to be nice when I'm in places like an institute class or an LDS internet forum because I'm already intruding on their classes and discussions, being a jerk isn't going to help anything on either side.

Onto the meat of my post: I've decided that rather than cluttering up your forum with a bunch of questioning threads, I'll simply post them all here. That way I get in my questions, get feedback, get in more questions, all without making this the "Answer Tona's LDS questions" Guild.

Anyways, I must ask, why is it that institute teachers can teach blatant falsehoods and get away with it? I don't mean that religion is blatantly false, even though that's my belief, to cite the example from institute class, We were speaking about how science deals with hard facts but is cold to emotional things. A girl spoke of how science cannot prove that she has love for people (which to my understanding the chemical composition in your brain [Neuroscience] CAN conclusively prove) but it can prove that it is hot or cold. She then said that hot and cold are not personally subjective things, all the while the teacher in full agreement.
I (believing they may have just been mistaken) chimed in that, indeed, hot and cold are USUALLY personally relative. One from Alaska typically has a miserable time in the 120 degree Southern Utah sun, while the desert rat that I am, was freezing cold at 20 degrees. You can get people from different regions to go to the same place, meet in the middle, and likely one will be very cold while the other complains about the heat.
When I pointed these things out, the lesson continued, as if I'd never said a word, the teacher praising this girl on her incorrect words.
Do people not understand these concepts? Why is it that so many religious people are so ignorant of simple sciences, even those attending college?

Well, my problem wasn't so much with the teacher agreeing that hot and cold aren't relative, as much as when I said it (only person talking and loud enough that everyone could hear me) only my best friend and his girlfriend noted that I'd even spoken. It was as if they were intentionally ignoring anything that differed from their set viewpoint. This girl confirmed what they believed, they listened and agreed. I offered a correction and they all blew it off.

Myself, I'm not content with sticking with the basics. Religions offer a view on the nature of the universe, much of which has been corrected. Another big problem I've found is that the church claims itself to be completely true and it's doctrines pretty much infallible, but they change. They've changed over the years and I'm sure they'll change in years to come.

The way I see it, you have to learn all the super-deep things to be able to have really learned about the nature of a god and it's role in the universe.
One such thing being the doctrine that the line of gods never ends going back into eternity. If the line of gods needs no starting point, no kick off, then why must the earth and humanity have a kick off?

On that unanimous vote, do you really think it has to be so? I honestly doubt that if I voted nay on something in sacrament meeting such as the Proclamation of the Family, that it would actually have an affect on the outcome of it. My bishop would talk to me, try to convince me to see it his way, and if I persisted, (because I fully support gay marriage and gays in general) somehow it would be my bad and the thing would proceed as planned. Even still, having a churchwide vote doesn't mean it's true. For hundreds of years people believed that the sun orbited the flat earth. Everyone was in agreement on this, but they were wrong.
On the subject of gays, I'm sure that a few years before the blacks getting the priesthood, people would've said the same thing about them.

As for the big dissertations thing: I try to phrase my problems as questions, though it doesn't always work. Personally, I delight in seeing a wall of text when I come back here. I'm sorry if you don't like writing them late at night.

The difference between saying that just because people thought the world was flat for so many years, and the church not allowing homosexual sealings, is that the people who were saying that the world was flat had never been around it. They didn't have the right technology, the knowledge that they needed until finally someone had the gusto to go out there and try to prove that it was not flat, but round.
Unlike the people whose world was flat, we have knowledge. We know that the world is round. We know that it is at an angle, and that the angle causes seasons. We also know that it actually goes around the sun, rather than the other way around, and we even know how fast it goes. We know that we are not the only planet orbiting around this star, and that there are trillions of other stars in our galaxy that could have the same type of planet that can grow life for us.
I'd like to think that religion, specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a lot like this knowledge.
Before explaining myself. I need some background. My mother is a legal Mexican immigrant from Mexico City who came to California to learn when she was only eighteen. She later gained legal citizenship and moved to Utah with my dad, my two brothers, and myself, when I was around three. So, just like you, I have lived in Utah my entire life. Throughout my life, I have never been like the other girls. My parents were very strict on how I would behave toward my peers, my superiors, and the stranger on the street. By the time I got into elementary school, I hated how the other girls acted. You know how elementary was, and when I switched school after third grade, I decided that I was not going to be like them, even going to the childish end of refusing to wear pink. This was when I met my first real “Best Friend”. We’ll call her Karlie. Unlike most of the other girls in the class, she was not a member of the Church, and was almost shunned by the stupid minds of some people’s children. We were pretty much inseparable until junior high school. By the time I was in eighth grade, I had noticed that my mother wasn’t as sweet and non-judgemental as I thought she was. She would skitter off to the other side of the aisle if someone who was, in the most polite terms that I can use, considered gothic started coming from the other end. At this point in my life, I decided to end her judgement in the simplest way possible. I wore black. Only black. Black shirt with jeans. Black skirt with a black shirt for Sunday. Black pajamas. “Normal” people stopped talking to me. Some “mormon” friends that I had acquired became afraid of how I looked. So, I turned to the only people who would talk to me, Karlie, and her friends, who, by these “normal” people, were called druggies. And they were. But I didn’t care. I hated those people who had forsaken me more than I hated anyone, and turned my hate into a mask, but, unlike so many teenagers before me, I didn’t necessarily blame the church. I blamed the people. Because it was the people, not the pure, beautiful teachings of the church that had decided that I wasn’t someone worthy of their attention. My next “Best friend” in this group was a girl we will call Ally. She wasn’t a member either, and was introduced to me by Karlie, but when ninth grade came around, Karlie and the other druggies decided that Ally and I were too “good” to be a part of their group, so we weren’t. We got really in to a bunch of different Anime, things like Fruits Basket, Fullmetal Alchemist, and a lot of others that are still my favorites today, and as with most other things, we tended to stay away from the norm, like Naruto and Bleach, because we didn’t want to be like them.
As a sophomore, I became good friends with another “Mormon” just like me, and things were definitely looking up((We’ll call her Ashley)). I still hated the “preps”, mostly with jealousy for their clothes, and their families, and because I would never be the same as them. And then, when my junior year started, one of these people in this group that I hated got into a car accident, and died. I didn’t really know him very well, but a few of my friends did. And I realized. He’d never really done anything to me.
Since then, I’ve tried not to hate, or judge. It hasn’t been easy, especially since after that, the group that I had met through Ashley, who were all “Mormons” had decided that I was a monster ((in their own words)) because of the mask of apathy that I had put on earlier in my life. Deciding that this was not what I wanted, I went back to another “Gothic/anime-esque” group of seniors that were mostly atheistic. This was very different from the other group, as they were much less in to drugs, and instead they were more addicted to Anime. I just feel like noting, that this was basically four girls, and one guy. At first, Girl number two was dating the guy, but then decided that she liked girls, and started to date girl number one, until the guy decided he wanted to marry girl number two, and they got back together, left the group, and broke up three months after they graduated. During my senior year I went back to before eighth grade and started wearing ‘anything that fit’, and since the group I was with the year before had all graduated, I spent most of my senior year just studying, and completely out of any loop, which in the end has turned out to be more of a blessing than a curse.
Since then, I have graduated highschool, and I am looking forward to going to BYU on a full-ride ((sans books)) scholarship.
((That turned out a lot longer than it should have. . . ))
I would just like to point out that even though I was betrayed multiple times by people of my own faith, I never once doubted the faith it’s self. I have realized that it’s not the people I go to church for, it’s the religion.
Now, I feel like I can adequately address your question.
The church did in fact have a stance against black people getting the priesthood, which was incited in 1849. Before this, however, there are accounts of at least three black men holding the priesthood. During the period when they couldn’t receive the priesthood, they were however allowed to join the church, and were never lied to about what they could, or couldn’t do about it. There could be many reasons for this ban, even ranging from issues with slavery.
However. The church has not ever allowed a homosexual couple to be married within the confines of the temple. This is a hard topic to write on, and since you already know the “Family proclamation”, you know that the stance of the church is only to marry Men to Women. It is not because the church hates homosexuals. Men and Women have a sacred responsibility to bear and raise children. The main problem with homosexuality is that it cannot produce children naturally.
One of my favorite quotes on the subject was given by President Gordon B. Hinkley,
"People inquire about our position on those who consider themselves so-called gays and lesbians. My response is that we love them as sons and daughters of God. They may have certain inclinations which are powerful and which may be difficult to control. Most people have inclinations of one kind or another at various times. If they do not act upon these inclinations, then they can go forward as do all other members of the Church. If they violate the law of chastity and the moral standards of the Church, then they are subject to the discipline of the Church, just as others are" (Gordon B. Hinckley, Ensign, Nov. 1998, 71).
My favorite is the last sentence, so go ahead and read it again.
Just like many other things, it is not a sin unless you act on it. Just like the married man who sees a beautiful woman on the street and thinks, “Wow, she’s hot” isn’t shamed unless he acts on it, so is the sin of homosexuality. Thank you very much if you have read this, and I hope you have a great day.