There are two glaring issues members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints fail to acknowledge:

VISIONS/DREAMS – In embracing the message of the church, we are compelled to accept Joseph Smith Jr.’s word about the most critical and essential elements of the divine beginnings of the church, since all of these things were experienced by him ONLY. We are 100% dependent on the truthfulness of his word.

However, the rest of the world views visions and/or dreams as being interesting, yet mostly less important than experiences in the waking hours. They are the complex chemistries of our unconscious (or semi-conscious) state triggering our sleeping brain into dreamland. Can they be spiritual? Yes. Can they be life-changing? Yes. SHOULD they be life-changing? That is where the gray area lies. Personally, I can’t think of a single valid reason for accepting a dream as being more than a dream, much less being the basis for a worldwide religion, which is still offering no evidence, or apologies, to those they’ve converted.

WITNESSES – If you have the true gospel, if the Book of Mormon is the word of God, if the First Vision and subsequent visits by angels were actually divine, there would be NO reason for witnesses, or at the very least they would be unnecessary. Unbiased, educated, non-familial witnesses would have been helpful, but that is not what Joseph chose to give the world.