1. Regarding the so-called corruption of the text that happened during the lifetimes of the New Testament writers, where is your evidence for this aside from the claim of Joseph Smith? Oh, right, he doesn't need evidence because of his alleged divine revelation. That is contrary to the Apostle Paul who said not only did the NT writers have revelation, but evidence as well. He appealed to the 500 living witnesses to Jesus still alive at the time of his writings.
2. If Joseph Smith was inspired, why has there been almost 4000 changes to the original 1830 version of the Book of Mormon? Why not use the same version he used? Isn't that the inspired version?
http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/3913intro.htm(And please don't respond with the canard that this is from an anti-Mormon site; he put up the original 1830 version on the webpage so the reader can see from him or herself.)
3. Why is the Book of Abraham, which Smith said he translated from ancient Egyptian, so different from the translations given by Egyptologists who specialize in the ancient Egyptian language and have access to the same Egyptian papyrus that Smith used? If he was divinely inspired shouldn't his translation be accurate? Instead the evidence shows that Smith just made up his translation using the King James Bible as one of his sources. Not only that, but the papyrus, because of the words in it, dates over 1500 years after he claimed it was from. It's like saying a Chilton's auto repair manual was really from the time when the last Roman emperor was deposed. Once we open up and look at the manual and see that it talks about things that didn't exist in the year 476 then we know it's not from then.
http://www.utlm.org/other/robertritnerpapyriarticle.pdf(There are also anachronisms and historical inaccuracies in the Book of Mormon:
http://rediscoveringthebible.com/ArcherMormonAnachronisms.pdf )
4. As for Jewish Hebrew scholars and their translations, while we may disagree with their theology they are still experts in understanding Hebrew. If I asked someone to translate an Italian document on the Mafia for me, am I going to ask him what his religion is? So yes, I expect Hebrew scholars who are experts in the Hebrew language to have a better understanding of Hebrew than the untrained Joseph Smith.
5. Deification (theosis). I've seen Mormons make this claim that John Calvin and the Eastern Orthodox Church talks about deification in the same sense that the LDS does. They didn't and don't. This is the fallacy of equivocation, where there is a bait and switch with word meanings. Christians have always been encouraged to act in God-like manner, meaning to show love, kindness, patience, justice, etc. It does not mean taking up attributes of God's nature like omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc. Neither Calvin nor the Orthodox churches believed that believers can actually become gods. That is simply a distortion of what they believe.
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Theosis6. Copy and Paste regarding Polytheism: First, polytheism is not merely the worship of many gods, it is a belief that many gods truly exist. In ancient Greek and Roman religions, not all of their deities were worshiped yet they are still considered polytheist religions. So henotheism is a subset of polytheism. Since Mormons believe that they can literally be deified, exalted to godhood with the ability to create and populate a planet, that is clearly polytheism. Historically Mormonism taught that Adam, the first man, became God the Father, although he had a separate creator (therefore at least two gods). For the members on each given planet it is henotheism, but in the overall scheme of things it is polytheistic. Mormon theology also runs into a problem of infinite regress, but that's a separate issue.
As for me, I came to knowledge of truth a long time ago; the difference in my case is belief and evidence, not a blind faith in spite of the evidence.
