Richard David Yannopoulos-Ruquist,
The little I read about other religions together with the lack of good role models in other religions convinced me that the LDS doctrine was superior to all others when the LDS official views were moderated by alternative views of select LDS theologians. In other words, whenever a "backward" idea was promoted officially by the LDS church there was often a more "advanced" view available from some thoughtful LDS writer. Because of these "reasonable" answers to my doubts I remained a believer longer than I would have in another environment.
You'd expect a modern religion (the LDS church was founded in 1830) to have religious doctrine more in line with modern philosophies and science than older religions that haven't changed significantly.
Contrary to your suggestion, I don't think the claimed "backward" status of LDS doctrine adequately explains my attitude about religion. I'm convinced that I would have become an atheist years earlier in virtually any other religion. For example, I doubt that the Muslims would have kept me as a believer for very long.
Now I see that religious dogma, LDS or otherwise, is all without experimental support. Religious thinkers appear to be well-meaning people thinking and teaching about what the universe should be like if it matched their worldview. I prefer the science way of looking at how the universe is, not telling it how it should be.
This is not a forum to debate which religious doctrine is superior (LDS or Muslim dogma for example). If anything we should argue whether any religious dogma can compete with scientific knowledge. The debate is between God (of any religion) versus science. If you think your religion can compete with science, that's what we should argue about.
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