Based on how I’m feeling at the moment, I would like to share with Mormons (and with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Nelson…) three truths that I’ve learned since I began studying church history, doctrine, and culture, as well as science, philosophy, and religion:

1. There is no good evidence that anyone or anything exists yet that places specific thoughts or feelings in your mind or body other than you. Everyone should educate themselves on the latest and best science on the human brain, because we all have one and we are all nothing without it, so shouldn’t we understand it and take care of it well? As far as we know at this time, your thoughts and feelings are yours and yours alone, and they are a function of your body (especially your brain), which is a function of your DNA and your environment. This means that Satan has no way to tempt you and God has no way to inspire you, other than by acting on their own in objective reality. The correct answer to the age-old Mormon question “How do I know if it’s my own thoughts or The Holy Ghost?” is that it’s all you and it’s always all you. Personally I think this means that either God and Satan do not exist or that they do not exist in the form traditionally taught by The Church.
2. There is no good reason for the gold plates to be withheld from the world. I think the two most popular explanations I’ve come across for why the rest of the world beyond the eleven witnesses cannot see Joseph Smith’s gold plates are these: that God wanted to protect The Book of Mormon from the kind of translation errors and worldly interference that are found in The Bible, and that God wants to test our faith. Neither of these explanations works in any kind of objectively true way. Even if the plates had ended up safe in a museum (which God could surely bring about, couldn’t he?), Joseph Smith still would have had first crack at a full translation, and if his translation was correct it would ultimately win out in the kind of world and culture we’ve lived in since 1830, thereby supporting and confirming his true prophetic calling from God. Also, if the plates were confirmed as an authentic historical artifact and were available for anyone to inspect in a museum, faith and conversion would increase, but faith would still be required to believe and know that the supernatural and miraculous events described on the plates were objectively real and actually occured. Knowing that the text of The Bible is authentically ancient has never removed the burden of faith from the believer as far as I know, and neither would it with The Book of Mormon. In other words, knowing with scientific proof that the ancient inhabitants of MesoAmerica actually recorded on gold plates that they had supernatural and miraculous experiences is different from whether they actually had those experiences that they claimed to have – faith is required either way, so God has no good reason that I know of to withold the plates from the world. However well-intentioned, withholding evidence like this is a classic technique of the magician and con artist. If Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life,” then shouldn’t we agree and remember that the truth does not withhold evidence of itself? Never trust that you have all of the truth from someone who won’t let you look at all of the evidence.
3. Although he is all-knowing, God never says or does anything in the scriptures to indicate that he has any special knowledge or insight into why his children do what they do. The only reason he ever seems to give for their misbehavior is that they’ve misbehaved, they’ve sinned, they’ve chosen wrong because they’ve rejected the good and embraced the evil. Modern science and human experience tells us that in reality there can be a great variety of reasons that people do what they do, reasons over which they have little or no control, and that identifying and trying to work with those reasons seems to help bring about a rate of positive change that surely is as good and likely much better than simply commanding people to repent.