I set out not only to find the information which Syble asked of me but I also set out to prove that Ardith was wrong. I read the Book of Mormon seven times from cover to cover. I read the Bible four times cover to cover, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, the History of the Church by B. H. Roberts many times, still hunting. Many other books too numerous to mention. Soon a pattern began to show through. Women were second rate members of the human race, belonging to men, controlled by men, of little use even to themselves without a man. I loved my daughter the same as my sons. What kind of a God was it who disliked his daughters so intensely as to make them second class citizens in his family? And that rational inquiry was not a way of life but heresy. Proof was of no value. God must be accepted without proof. Something was putridly wrong in that philosophy.
The process of my investigation took place over a period of many years. I lived my life, full and useful and enjoyable as I studied. On the surface Greene was indulgent of my investigation, not apparently concerned with what I was hunting. I don't even remember discussing it much with him.
In the summer of 1958 I decided to enter Utah State University, not to find answers to the many questions I had, but to get an education as a teacher and speech pathologist. I broadened. I remember sitting in biology classes and trembling as I heard and read about the biological world and about evolution. In geology I thrilled to the story the rocks told of the early beginnings of this world and mankind. I learned about the scientific method of establishing facts. I took many psychology courses and learned about the many vagaries of human behavior.
Then I took a psychology class from James Tjedski. He said, "How do you establish what is true? You take a premise, gather all the knowledge that you can on one side of the premise and all the knowledge you can get against it. Then you put that knowledge on a scale. If the scale tips significantly to one side or the other that side of the premise is probably true, but not absolutely. Perhaps tomorrow you may find evidence to shift the weight to the other side. There is a challenge to you to be honest with yourself, don't be so in love with one side of the question that you ignore all the evidence against it. All you can say for sure is 'With what I know today this seems to be true.'"
Sometimes I went home from his class trembling with the experience of learning something I had never known existed. I felt as if I were breaking out of a chrysalis in which I had been confined one painful step at a time. As you can plainly see, Tjedski didn't last long at Utah State University.
As my intellect broadened, I fought a deep sense of guilt that I was looking into secret places that were forbidden me. I could feel the chains breaking which had been confining me, holding me back from new things which should have been given to me freely. I couldn't blame my parents nor my teachers. They had been imprisoned in the same chains which held me.
Common sense kept whispering in my mind's ear. "If a particular religion is to govern a person's life, as it had governed mine, then that religion should not be above debate." But Church doctrine made debate a nasty word. "Lean not unto thine own understanding." "Do as church authorities tell you." "Believe without a sign." "Kill reason." "Belief comes first and knowledge comes afterward." These were ideas so firmly established within my being it was like extracting a tooth to discard any of them. But when evidence kept staring me in the face I had to admit I would only be a fool to continue to believe the old things in the old ways. "Indeed, Ardith, there were a lot of things in heaven and earth than were ever dreamed of in my philosophy."
It would take volumes, and many volumes have been written, to itemize all the reasons which proved that Joseph Smith lied when he said the Book of Mormon was translated from golden plates laid up by the power of God to come forth at the last days. It took the reading of many books both pro and con on Mormonism.
To my despair my investigation imposed upon my intellect several irrefutable facts:
1. Joseph Smith didn't get around to telling of the remarkable first vision until 18 years after it was supposed to have happened, and then when he did tell it there appeared three or four different versions until even modern historian are suspecting the authenticity of any of the stories.
2. There is little consistency in the stories he told about the golden plates. At one time he said he received the plates and they remained in his possession until he was commanded to return them. But he didn't show them to the three witnesses who saw them, an angel did, and they saw them with their mind's eye. Another time when people were afraid the plates had been stolen he reassured them that an angel had them. A statement made by Oliver Cowdery when he said in his history of the church, "You would have thought Joseph and I were bereft of our senses if you would have seen us translating the plates with the plates nowhere in sight." Joseph ostensibly looked in his hat and read the translation from the Urim and Thummin inside his hat. The Anthon transcript was a hoax all around. No man could say that Smith's translation of the Egyptian figures which Martin Harris took to the language specialist Anthon was a correct translation of those figures when the Egyptian language had not been broken until 1838. Smith translated the Pearl of Great Price from an Egyptian papyrus which modern scholars have found to be just prayers for the dead which was often buried with the mummies.
3. He copied into the Book of Mormon at least 25,000 words directly from the King James Version of the Bible, with only an occasional change of a 'wherefore' or 'it came to pass'. the King James version was the final product of four or five translation from the Greek, the Latin and the Hebrew plus 1600 years of cultural change, many of those changes yet to happen and the transporting of early books of the Bible across an ocean onto another continent which already had a civilization sophisticated enough to have a perfect calendar and yet comes up matching the King James version perfectly. Did Joseph Smith actually translate those 25,000 words from golden plates dug up on a hill in New York state, or did he just copy it from the King James version of the Bible? Oh come on now, how gullible does a person have to be?
The Book of Mormon is so full of things that couldn't possibly have happened like the use of chariots in war when there is no evidence that the American people ever used the wheel except as a toy. There are numerous other things I won't take the space to mention here. Most genuine scholars don't even want to be bothered about trying to disprove the Book of Mormon. It would be almost as egregious as spending time to prove that Jack and Jill realy did go up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Actually the Book of Mormon is its own greatest witness of its fraudulent origin.
4. Smith lied and he admitted he lied, many times excusing himself that God had told him to keep certain matters secret from even his own people. He lied to his own people about the early practice of polygamy, that infamous practice which exploited Mormon women and he advised his brethren to lie also. He lied publicly to his people when he had already taken several women as spiritual wives. He lied when he said the temple ceremony came from God when it was an obvious steal from the Masons.
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