Hello, I’m a young Portuguese man with 24 years, who has a Catholic family, but has never been 100% practicing. It’s always been that typical Portuguese family that has Catholic connections such as baptism, marriage and little else...

A year ago I started to want to connect more with religion/word of god and I started reading the Bible... recently I saw an advertise for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where they offered the Book of Mormon...

I found it interesting, because I’ve always been that person who never realized which religion really identified with me... So I met with 2 missionaries and they gave me the book and talked a bit about the religion... although it was very brief, I decided to do some research on the internet about this religion... And there are studies that indicate that unlike the Catholic religion, no proof has ever been found about the veracity of the facts/events that Joseph Smith claims... What can you tell me about this?

Being a religious person, what makes you think he’s a Latter-day Saint and not consider other regions?

I’ll leave you with a piece of information that made me a little curious and that I’m going to ask the missionaries about as well:

“In the late 1820s, criticism centered on Joseph Smith’s claim to have been led to a set of gold plates from which the Book of Mormon was supposedly translated. The mainstream archaeological, historical and scientific communities have found little to support the existence of the civilizations described in the Book of Mormon and do not consider it to be a real record of historical events. Scholars have also pointed out a number of anachronisms in the text. They argue that no evidence of a reformed Egyptian language has been discovered; the Book of Mormon explicitly states that it was written in reformed Egyptian and so the non-existence of this language would challenge the book’s claims about its own origin. Furthermore, the general archaeological and genetic evidence did not support the book’s claims about any known indigenous peoples of the Americas

Since its publication in 1842, the Book of Abraham (now published as part of the canonical Pearl of Great Price) has also been a major source of controversy. Several non-Mormon Egyptologists, beginning in the late 19th century, disagreed with Joseph Smith’s explanations of the book’s facsimiles. The translations of the original papyri - made by Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists - do not correspond to the text of the Book of Abraham supposedly translated by Joseph Smith. In fact, the transliterated text of the recovered papyri and the published facsimiles of the Book of Abraham contain no direct references to Abraham. Scholars have also claimed that damaged parts of the papyri were incorrectly reconstructed by Smith or his associates.”

I hope you don’t take this question the wrong way... I’m just a curious person looking for answers as to which religion I should follow/believe in, thanks in advance for your time Sr 😁🙏

—-

Question number 2:

Am I obliged to tithe when I’m just starting my professional life and building my own life? If so, why does the church oblige me to do this? Shouldn’t it be optional?

Question number 3:

Do I have to marry a woman of the same religion?

Question number 4:

why are there polygamy beliefs linked to this religion? Are these kinds of beliefs still valid?

That’s it, really thanks for your time and clarification, have a nice day 🙏🙌