As most of you know, I was raised in the Mormon church. I've long since made peace with the whole thing, there were much worse ways to be raised IMO. There was a tight knit community feel to the church for me, especially in NM where I lived til age 15.
But it's founding was way past weird and shady. Joseph Smith was a good looking young guy who was commanded by God to have sex with many women. What luck! The whole Golden Plates thing is way dicey, Smith said the 'Angel Moroni' reclaimed them when they were done with the translation, which in itself was suspect. When one of the translated portions was stolen, Smith re-translated them with the Urim and Thummim, two crystal-like stones that he looked through to get the translation. Then when the stolen part was later recovered, it was substantially different from the second translation. The words "Urim and Thummim" themselves were likely
borrowed from the Jewish tradition.
I kinda feel for a lot of the people in it as they've become fond of their social support group but at its core is a bogus hodge-podge of theology cobbled together by Smith and cronies.