Truth-claim summaries and apologetics
last update: 2023-05-10

Summaries
Very short
- Five Key Facts (~ 1 page)
- Just One Page
- 50 Problems with the Mormon Church (10 minutes) | 50 more problems (~37 minutes, more moral issues)
More significant
- LDS Discussions (in-depth discussion of the gospel topics essays, “Saints:The Standard of Truth”, and many key truth-claims)
- Letter For My Wife (almost all LDS approved sources) (Fairmormon response)
- What I Wish I had Known (almost all LDS-faithful sources)
- Letter From a Doubter (well-sourced narrative style explanation)
- Mormon Primer (multiple perspectives: mainstream, critical, apologetic, and progressive)
- Examining Mormon Truth Claims (essays hosted at Mormon Stories by Mike Brown)
- Mormon Think (vast resource on LDS truth-claims.1)
- Shelf Breakers (almost all LDS approved sources)
- The Mormon Challenge (almost all LDS approved sources)
- A Letter to an Apostle (35 essays on the truth-claims)
- A Compilation of the Evidence Against the LDS Church
- Literally: Wrestling with historical curiosities in Mormonism
- An End to Cognitive Dissonance
- The CES Letter (the most famous compilation, by Jeremy Runnells)
Other
- Questions to Ask
- Significant absurdities one must believe to accept Mormonism (google doc compilation)
- Brother Jake Videos (light-hearted but accurate summaries)
Additional resources and discussion can be found at the exmormon bookshelf, mormon, mormonscholar, and exmormon subreddits.
Official LDS and Apologetic Resources
- Gospel Topics Essays (lds.org)
- Gospel Topics, Essays, and Other Resources (lds.org)
- Evidence Central
- A non-member response to some Evidence central posts (toybom - one year of the BoM)
- FairMormon (The most significant LDS apologetic resource)
- Jeff Lindsay’s LDS FAQ: Mormon Answers (prolific apologist)
- Neal A. Maxwell Institute (BYU affiliated institute for religious scholarship)
Additional apologetic discussion may be found at the latterdaysaints subreddit.
Responses to the CES Letter
The CES Letter is the most well-known compilation of problems with LDS truth-claims. Below are responses to the CES Letter. I’ve included links to responses, and Jeremy also keeps a running list of all his responses.
With counter-responses
- FairMormon Analysis of CES Letter
- A Faithful Reply to the CES Letter from a Former CES Employee (Jim Bennett, original as Stallion Cornell)
- Runnells’ response
- A pointed response to Jim Bennett (by bwv549)
- CES Reply: A Pointed Response to a Pointed Response (by Jim Bennett)
- dice1899’s CES Letter Rebuttal (Sarah Allen)
- Runnells’ response
- ImTheMarmotKing responses
- bwv549 responses
- Eye of the Beholder, Law of the Harvest: Observations on the Inevitable Consequences of the Different Investigative Approaches of Jeremy Runnells and Jeff Lindsay (Kevin Christensen)
- Johnny Stephenson’s response
- Image is Everything: Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain (a counter-response by Kevin Christensen)
- DoubleThink: The Mopologist Paradigm (a response to “Image is Everything” by Johnny Stephenson)
- Image is Everything: Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain (a counter-response by Kevin Christensen)
- Johnny Stephenson’s response
- Some Reflections On That Letter To a CES Director (Daniel Peterson)
- Jeremy Runnells and the Book of Abraham (Brian Hauglid at Rational Faiths)
- “Anti-mormon spreading misinformation” by happiness-seekers blog
Without responses by Runnells
- The CES Letter: A Closer Look (page by page analysis, videos, and written responses)
- Conflict of Justice #CES Letter Fail
- Bamboozled by the “CES Letter” (Michael Ash)
- Evidence and Criticism of LDS Truth Claims, Theology, and Practice (video series by Brett M. McDonald)
See also
Resources related to the helps and harms of the LDS Church
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The MormonThink site states that they are “neither an anti-Mormon website nor an LDS apologist website”, but the discussion and tone is over-archingly critical, lest the reader be miseld by this disclaimer. Still, it is a very useful resource. ↩