Do Better

Any LDS members that use the phrase "you can leave the church, but you can't leave it alone"... Please realize you are using the same playbook that JWs use to try to discount former members that become critics.

@NewsMormon Yeah, that $50B estimate is way too high. I have a full response in the other branch of this post. And btw, you're the one that restarted this "quibbling", so don't blame that on me. x.com/DoBetter_/stat…

I said that I believe the Mormon Church was gaining in total valuation at a rate of about $50 billion per year, specifically last year, which was a really good year for the market. ChatGPT says that this is well within the range of what we can expect and that the total wealth gained per year might even be higher. This financial game seems to be your little pet project. But since no one has the real answer here, it’s a really lame endeavor. What we have here are best guesses and estimations, and yet you spent your time “correcting” people based upon nothing but your own TOTALLY unqualified opinion from a website that you read. This is how you help people “do better”? How about you just count me out in the future for your quibbling semantic crap? cheers!

I Interviewed Mormons Outside a YSA Conference… This Got WILD 😳 I went straight to the source—outside a Young Single Adult devotional at the LDS Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City—and asked attendees what really went down inside. From pressure to have kids… to dodging tough questions about finances… to shocking comments about prophets, tithing, and church messaging—these street interviews did NOT disappoint. This first-person series captures raw, unfiltered reactions from young Latter-day Saints as they leave one of the church’s biggest events. 🎤 Topics covered: Marriage & “have more babies” culture Prophet appearances (or lack thereof) SEC scandal & financial transparency Tithing & church spending priorities LGBTQ rhetoric Doubt, control, and information filtering Whether you’re current, former, or just curious about Mormonism, this gives you a glimpse into the next generation of the faith. 👇 Drop your thoughts in the comments—what surprised you most? #Mormon #LDS #ExMormon #SaltLakeCity #StreetInterviews #Religion

@NewsMormon @Ricardo89952433 and so their returns are already included in whatever % return you assume. The WMR report estimated that the value of their investment portfolio went up from ~$206B to ~$231B in 2025, for a total increase of ~$25B. Your $50B estimate just seems way too high. I trust the WMR more.

@NewsMormon @Ricardo89952433 and very little is added to the investment fund. And no, you would not add returns from commercial ventures on top because the value of those ventures is included in the ~$200B figure you used for the value of their investments, ...

@LDSPioneer @JS9511606021086 Do you know that you can share a link to any Grok conversation so you can share the whole thing? Nobody outside LDS apologetics takes Roper's work seriously. It's mostly shifting goal posts, parallelomania, & squinting hard to claim things as "confirmed". x.com/i/grok/share/3…

I don’t think you really understand how AI works 😆 but sure, here are the highlights of the output (it’s way too long for one tweet, plus you can just ask it yourself). What Grok likes: The approach is empirical and quantitative in tracking criticism resolution over time, rather than anecdotal. By dividing into historical periods and updating Clark et al.’s 2005 baseline, it demonstrates measurable progress (e.g., from mostly unconfirmed in Joseph Smith’s era to majority confirmed/trending today). This mirrors approaches in biblical archaeology (e.g., Kenneth Kitchen’s work on absence of evidence vs. evidence of absence for certain biblical elements). • It properly distinguishes “no longer an obvious anachronism” (compatibility) from “proven true.” Many items move from “impossible” (under 19th/early 20th-century knowledge) to “attested or plausible somewhere in ancient Americas in or near the right timeframe.” • It highlights accelerating progress post-1960s, coinciding with the “Maya boom,” glyph decipherment, and modern remote sensing—precisely when more precise data should have exposed a modern hoax if one existed. The issues Grok has with it: 1. Subjectivity and Lack of Transparency in Scoring the ~205 Items 2. Horses (and Similarly Elephants) 3. Overemphasis on Resolved Objections Without Balancing New or Persistent Challenges 4. Papers like those referenced (e.g., high probability of fit with Mesoamerica) come from LDS-affiliated scholarship (Interpreter Foundation) 5. Minor Framing Issues Now, this research has been out for 7 years. Go find someone who has debunked it or write your own paper. I’ll be here 😁

Something else I think is interesting about the Book of Mormon is that Lehi left Jerusalem around 600 BC. If Joseph Smith made it up, how did he know the date around the time Jerusalem was sacked by the Babylonians? Was it common knowledge in 1830 the dating of biblical events?

@mormontheories @abby_palmer1 I'll side with you there. I may disagree with your takes, but they're not often the run of the mill Sunday school canned answers.

@abby_palmer1 @DoBetter_ Mine or DoBetter’s? I’d say my response is pretty fresh, organic… I’m a free range Mormon 😉

@DoBetter_ 😂 Good response… But think about—if it had just been a boring, literal translation of Mesoamerican history, it definitely wouldn’t have taken off like it did. I believe God made it christianized so the people of that generation (see D&C 5) would embrace it.

@therealstandage All of that was obviously just JS putting caricatures in the BoM to preempt critics and anyone opposing him. Other cults have persecution complexes as well and villanize any critics.

@DoBetter_ as he went forth amongst them behold, he was run upon and trodden down, even until he was dead & thus we see the end of him who perverteth the ways of the Lord; and thus we see that the devil will not support his children at the last day, but doth speedily drag them down to hell

Translation: I presuppose the BoM is true and demand that you do as well. You may not demand evidence. If you question it, you are the problem. --- Sigh...Muslims could use the same exact arguments for the Koran.

@Bearded_Lion2 So you disagree with Rasband's talk? Since he taught without any caveats or specifying it as his opinion, does that make all his teachings unreliable?

@DoBetter_ The book of jubilees clears this notion up. It was divided by the three sons of Noah. Not a continental divide like many believe. To accentuate this point when Christ returns there will be an earthquake like never experienced by man. Or in other words the land was divided longago

How many LDS/Mormons are willing to defend the stance that the continents didn't divide until the Biblical flood? If you don't, how can you trust anything "apostles" say when they are so flippant about spouting such nonsense without making it clear it's their opinion?

@mormontheories The title page Mormon 8:34–35 2 Nephi 25:17–18 Mormon 7:8–9

Take from it what you will. The original D&C 5 (before it was altered) explains it pretty well—future generations would have the lost 116 pages, but the first generation of BOM readers would only have the BOM and the testimony of 3 witnesses… Where in the BOM does it say it was written for our time?

@therealstandage Do you realize you're employing the common cult technique of blaming anyone that chooses to leave the cult. JWs do the same thing. x.com/pimitopomo/sta…

@DoBetter_ Convinced over 5 decades. Not including the pre mortal life. You quit on your 2nd estate. As an ex Mormon, that’s all on you. Gave it up for 30 pieces of silver. Good luck

@mormontheories ... Under that framework, God could have had Mormon write exactly what he wanted, so that a literal translation would be embraced by the modern world.

@mormontheories Meh... That seems like basically begging the question. Just making up reasons why something that doesn't make sense, supposedly does make sense. The BoM says it was written for our time. ...

@blakejones19999 Saying the was a world wide flood during human history and the continents weren't separated before that, is absolutely anti-science.

@DoBetter_ There’s literally nothing in there that states an “anti-science” view beyond what may have been quoted from scripture. Please go outside

It's amazing to me that it's 2026 and an LDS apostle (Rasband) is apparently doubling down on a literal belief in the following: -Adam & Eve as first humans, that lived in Missouri -World wide flood -Continents not separating until the time of the flood ...

@blakejones19999 Yeah, because you saying "touch grass" is such great discourse. 🙄

@DoBetter_ *exmo discourse