Calcsam's answer is pretty much straight out of Preach My Gospel which is the missionary manual. I should clarify that it is from the section on how to be a better missionary and person rather then the section on what to present to investigators.
Actually, a lot of the posts he has made are boiling down that book into Less Wrongian terms. Which reading further down seems to be the point and why he was given the ability to post in the first place.
anticipations relating to the "supernatural" aspects of mormonisim
The restoration of the Ten Tribes from the land of the north and that Zion the New Jerusalem will be built pretty much where Kansas City MO currently stands. Also, the building of a temple on the temple mount in Jerusalem, Christ coming again. These are the scriptural ones, there might be more, unfortunately no specific time frame is given for any of that so while they are the most sure predictions unless one is living through one of those coming true they are relatively useless in evaluating claims of religions.
Here are some that are more specific and the first two do have more of a time table with which to evaluate, however they are not scripture:
In October 1916's General Conference one of the Apostles said that someone there present would see the restoration of the Ten Tribes and would read the records they had. The first part could be interpreted in a variety of ways that don't mean much at all if one is not a member of the church. The reading of the records could by itself just mean somebody present (possibly as a baby) was/will be given the special opportunity to read said records. However taken together and combined with the Biblical scriptures on the subject, and noting that said statement is still contained in official church teaching manuals, then said occurrence should occur with in the next 20 or so years (assuming there was some fairly new baby present at the meeting) or sooner (assuming some young adult or child that could understand was what was meant). There the potential problem that said Apostle was speaking from his limited understanding and did not actually receive any revelation on the subject, however given that the statement still appears in Church manuals for university students this leads me to believe that it is thought of as a revelation.
Lets see, there have been 4 presidents of the Church that have said that the New Deal programs and the continued expansion of government will lead the United States in to economic circumstances that will make the Great Depression pale in significance if not stopped and reverted. I am under the assumption that they have not been stopped or reverted as of yet.
There was some talks by general authorities about another civil war in the United States at some future point in time, this from around the time of the Civil War. I am not sure if this was coming from the section of the D&C that talks about the civil war and other wars and so was their interpretation of things (which is often and can always be wrong) or if actual prophecy was involved. No time table was given for this.
Hello fellow Less Wrongians!
Given your comments on my organizing communities series, I get the feeling that many of you are wondering why:
I'm happy to hold discussions about any of these questions or related ones. However, I haven't responded to many comments on the main series of posts because:
I wanted to created this thread as a center for questions you might have about my faith. This is not an attempt to preach -- I would be perfectly happy not having a discussion purely about religion at all. But since there seem to be many comments, well, fire away.
Some basic facts: I am a student at Stanford. I am 22. I converted to Mormonism when I was 19. I used to be atheist/agnostic. I am very much a believer, not just in it for the social perks.
Well, as it is written, AMA (= Ask Me Anything)
(Thanks Kevin for the suggestion.)
Edit: Wow, there are a lot of comments. This has been a helpful chance to clarify my thinking. I hope you have learned something useful -- perhaps using the question is 'Is there anything surprising here that he said?'.
Edit 2: Here are some answers to repeated questions. Again, this really helped me distill and clarify myself and I've enjoyed the discussion.
Why do you believe? It's a combination of
I would estimate that before this all happened, my odds ratio was about 2000:1, and now it's about 1:10. I would ballpark the odds ratios of each of the above 3 events as ~12.5:1, ~25:1, and ~62.5:1. (I was considering likelihood but didn't think in that precise of terms at the time, so any concretization is open to charges of ex post facto. And these are still ballparks.)
There are lots of arguments against Mormonism on factual and historical grounds; there are also counterarguments which I feel pretty much balance them out. (The feeling of balancing each other out was contemporaneous.)
What things could make you consider leaving the faith?
Why do you think your conversion story is disappointing to many of us?
Several possible reasons:
[1] Specifically: