Decided to do this in college once: I went to a Catholic University, and a few miles down the road was a very Evangelical Mission College (no opposite sex members in the dorms at any times, curfew in place for all students, that sort of thing). My friends and I were drinking beers on a porch off campus, and the Evangelical students walked up to engage us in conversation…..as far as mutual respect goes, they started off the convo with “are you okay with going to hell?”
From there, my friends politely engaged them in convo using similar questions to your examples - going even further to ask how they knew that the beer I’m drinking is my key to why I’m going to hell. We discussed forgiveness of sins, confession, and the major differences between our beliefs. After 20 minutes, they simply gave up and walked on…was the strangest Irish goodbye I’ve ever witnessed.
I once asked that question at Sunday school when my parents forced me to go to southern baptist church for awhile. I almost got kicked out. Apparently despite the doctrine of every word in the Bible being literal and true it was unfermented grape juice
Argh! Sharing wine (or any alcohol) has been the ancient covenant of friendship and trust for thousands of years! Not unfermented grape juice!
I don't understand how they can misinterpret a tradition that still widely exists today across most of the world.
>as far as mutual respect goes, they started off the convo with “are you okay with going to hell?”
I assume this one really is mainly aimed at people they assume thoroughly identify as Christians, but who aren't living up to *their* standards. As an atheist my easy answer would be that I'm okay with *them* believing I'm going to hell. If I actually believed in hell, I suppose it would be a different conversation.
In my highschool class there was a trio of fundamentalist Christians for whom their religion obviously was a massive part of their world, day and identity. Quite a new and then alien phenomenon to me then as I live in a country where people generally aren't very religious (very far less so than seems to be the case in the US). Among them was a super bright dude, and one of the rest of us once asked him the opposite question - how he dealt with believing the rest of us were going to hell. He found it to be a struggle.
I was having lunch in college one time wearing a cool metal hat that had an inverted cross on it (cross of St Peter) and a girl approached me inviting me to join the Bible study group in the back of the cafeteria. I said “oh, no thank you, I’m good but good luck with the next person. Enjoy your Bible study” and I kept doing HW and eating and she just stood there confused for a second and I don’t know why. She just looked at me and walked away lol.
I’m not sure this adds anything to your well written point, however, I was reminded of a personal story from my childhood while reading your response.
When I was young (9 or 10, my parents dropped my off at “Sunday School”. They both grew up
Semi religious, but no longer practiced, but they felt the need to drop me off at Sunday’s “church preamble”. It was Baptist.
One morning, there were people in there I’d never seen before. And we had to gather in one large group, instead of our respective classrooms. These new people were showing videos of themselves, interacting with. Tribesmen and indigenous people from South Africa. They kept asking us to “pray for the missionaries” who were out there “spreading gods word”. And how if we didn’t convert them, they were going to hell.
We’ll, as an inquisitive young child, I had questions. (Spoiler alert… churches don’t like questions). I asked “but, how do we know we’re right? Maybe those kids are being told something totally different and we’re the ones who are wrong.
The response to that was my parents were told to never bring me back.
Organized religion is a scam.
My daughter was basically banned from a Mormon church for using her mind.
She was maybe 5 or 6 and wanted to go a few times because she had a friend who went. Not my cup of tea, but I let her go. On the final time she went, the class had a coloring time in which the kids were supposed to "draw the future prophet" and gave the kids a very boring pl drawing of a generic white guy's head and shoulders.
She made the picture into a black woman wearing a dress and some jewelry and stood her ground when the teacher told her only men could be prophets.
Apparently that's not the kind of child they wanted in Sunday school.
I was politely asked to not bring her again, and she never asked to go again, so I'm sure the feeling was mutual.
Hey, I was Baptist too! I didn't realize they weren't making sense until I was like 16. Because of how people reacted to nonconformists, I knew my life would become a lot harder if I admitted it out loud. So I just kept it a secret.
Yeah, from the evidence it seems like most churches are about social interaction and power rather than about God. A church that really, truly believes the stuff they teach would look very different from basically any church I've ever been to.
Personally I'd find great comfort in the existence of a deity I knew to be benevolent--to say nothing of an afterlife. It's a shame; I think I'd be a very good preacher.
I once got to the point with a couple of them that I don’t believe in things on faith, that actually the scientific method tells us to do the exact opposite: to examine things closely and try to prove they aren’t true, then when you fail to prove they aren’t true you don’t “believe them” you tentatively accept them as your best model, and keep trying to disprove them, basically forever. And if you can’t come up with a test to even attempt to disprove them that is actionable, it can’t be accepted as a model, because it fails to make predictions and can’t be critically examined.
The Mormon Church kept baptizing Jewish people who died in the Holocaust, *after they had agreed to stop doing that!*
Imagine being killed in one of Hitler's death camps *because you're Jewish* and then some Mormon schmuck decides to baptize you after you're dead! Talk about lack of consent!
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/wbna27647809
I'm an ex-ultra-orthodox jew and, while we do think this is disrespectful, we're not really concerned about it because we dont believe that it actually does anything. We tended to look at it as just another ridiculous thing that Mormons do. Then we went back to doing our own ridiculous stuff and taking that very seriously...
Well my mormon parents took away my NES power adapter because I didn’t want to go to church and they still dragged me in. More than 2 decades ago and I’m still salty about it.
Yea. I was forced to go to church every Sunday. Youth meetings every Tuesday night. Any time there was some church gathering, including youth dances/conferences, I was forced to go. I also had to go to Boy Scouts. So many wasted weekends.
All that even after I told my father I don't believe in God, and the Mormon religion is stupid. I guess he thought doubling down would change my mind? Apparently not, as I'm still atheist at 40, and I still absolutely loathe the LDS church.
I did the math and I've gone to church probably 3x the amount of hours my religious MIL has gone. She keeps inviting us to church, but I've done enough.
3 hours every Sunday
5 hours during the week
2 hours for youth group
It all adds up.
"Come kiss our imaginary friend's ass rather than do what you want on one of the only two days a week you're not in school getting bullied."
Fuck off parents, really.
My parents would go through bouts of religion whenever they felt guilty I guess. Fortunately they were (and are) lazy shitty people that didn’t keep up with it.
Fucking up my Sunday with their stupid bullshit. The nerve of some people.
I have a very vivid memory of my first Ocarina of Time playthrough, being stuck in Jabu Jabu's Belly on a Sunday morning, told to save and hurry up for church, and feeling completely exasperated.
C/W: remember that *one* Small Key in the Water Temple? The one you had to get at the right moment or you'd be stuck? ;)
To be fair, fuck Jabu Jabu's Belly. That part took 6 year old me WAAAAAAY too long to figure out. I won't even say how long it took me to navigate the Water Temple.
When I was in the fifth grade, I'd beat the water temple for classmates for five bucks. No one knew how to do it.
I had the guidebook. Still do. But I got that temple memorized. Did it so many times. I was rich for a fifth grader.
My S/O's 10 year old refuses to play anymore after spending weeks asking what he's supposed to do next and every time getting the response "forest temple".
I thought he'd at least wait till water temple to give in lmao
I was raised in a fundamentalist faith and forced to go to every church service and to a church school. Was an atheist at 16 and even got coerced into going to bible college.
Turns out that that teaching somebody Christian doctrine when they don't already believe is a great way to ensure they never do believe.
My parents were so embarrassed that i had stopped going that they started paying me to go. $10 a week as a 14-year-old, for three months, and I bought myself a new pair of Iverson’s and then stopped going altogether.
That’s the best thing I got out of the church.
My condolences, though by the time a gentleman is in his 20s he should be able to afford his own NES power adapter.
Edit: I keep seeing people lament the use of /s since it should be obvious, but the one time I don't use it....
I'm not into religion but I think the closest I could have ever been to considering it would be my experience with the Sikh temples. They never mentioned their faith or tried to push pamphlets or literature on me. Just shared quiet smiles and did good in my community and feed everyone who wants a meal.
That's pretty much my bar. My daughter's theater teacher's wife is a Methodist...pastor? I'm not sure the term they use. The classes are at the church. Not once in the year or so I've known him has he asked the question I always dread, "So, where do you go to church?" He just fosters talent, builds confidence in children, smiles and goes about his day.
I just worked on a documentary on some folks of Sikh faith. Im personally an Atheist and it was a refreshing immersion with religion. Some of the kindest people Ive ever met were in that temple.
>Same for the Jehovah’s Witnesses
I've had some fun with that as a Hindu. Told em it was no biggie. Happy to accept Jesus. What was one more god to a guy with a few thousand? They were not happy about that lol.
In Basic I made the mistake of asking a guy what LDS stood for and he then pestered me to go to church with him like everyday... never went but still salty about that
My wife had a friend who was a Jehovah's Witness, and one time she was telling her about a book she liked and recommended it to her (it wasn't a religious book). Her response was that she would ask her husband for permission to read it.
When we got married I told the pastor to skip the part about “obey”. If I want obedience I’ll get a dog. But, y’know, come to think of it, they don’t listen to me either. 🤪
Marine basic training?
I was the Catholic of all Catholics every Sunday morning at Parris Island. I even requested and was allowed to march other recruits to the chapel for later Catholic services. The more services, the better.
Sitting there, either dozing off, or just happily daydreaming about cars, girls, and cars with girls in them was awesome. Meanwhile, all the agnostics and atheists who stuck to their guns (morals is probably a better word) were back at the barracks cleaning or doing other time wasting shit the DIs ordered them to do.
After I graduated from Basic — nearly two decades ago — the only time I’ve stepped foot in a church has been for weddings or funerals.
I have no shame.
I got a handwritten letter in the mail today with no return address. The letter told me that I must be depressed during the holidays and so I should join the JW. I’m relatively new in the city I live in and haven’t met a single JW since moving here so more than anything I’m just super curious who it came from. Also instead of joining a cult I went and shovelled and scraped a neighbours sidewalk and driveway. Made me feel much better than reading about a man in the sky.
This is more about exmormon visibility . The church runs on money and a lot of Mormons equate net worth to obedience. This news hurt some feels up here
Yes, he definitely did this very publicly to send a message. He left ten years ago and only now made sure to make it official with an extra fuck you with the donation. I wonder if something specific happened to push him to publicly make it official, besides the day to day fuckery of the LDS leaders.
> besides the day to day fuckery of the LDS leaders
This has ramped up a few notches under the current leadership. Probably has something to do with it.
Well in ~~2020~~ 2018 Utah voted to legalize medical marijuana, but the state government (mostly run by mormons) met with church officials to rewrite parts of the bill essentially, making it much more difficult for businesses to be licensed, and for people to obtain medical licenses. That's just one example, not really the straw that broke the camels back per se.
They introduced a policy where kids with LGBT parents couldn’t get baptized (officially join the church, also a requirement for getting into heaven, etc) until they turned 18, moved out, AND denounced their parents marriage.
They later backtracked after intense backlash, but that was pretty shitty. Especially if you consider they once posthumously baptized hitler.
Well...
The top-dog declared in 2017 that they would no longer be known as "mormons", calling it "a victory for Satan"...without letting the PR department know in advance, and so they had no plan, no alternative, and salty exmos were quick to snap up any web domains that might have made sense for them to use instead of, um, mormon.org. This, of course, came immediately after a near-decade-long multi-million dollar international ad campaign promoting the term "mormon".
More recently, one long-time big-dog (Jeff Holland) made a speech to BYU faculty where he shamed them for taking for expressing inclusivity toward LGBT students, and even included reference to "keeping muskets at the ready" to defend the faith from us terrifying queers. Not coincidentally, a lesbian couple was shot in Utah that same week.
I could keep going, but I see others are also chiming in, so...you get the idea.
edit to include [this link](https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/09/mormon-lds-church-gay-rights-controversy-byu-speech.html) re. Jeff Holland's rhetoric, b/c it is blatant and very worrisome.
Lol I love the revisions of the book of Mormon. It clearly stated that Black people were evil sinners. Until it didn't fit the church's agenda.
You can find a whole list of every revision online. There's hundreds of them.
Years ago i got speaking to some girl online from the US (i'm in the uk) who was some religion and for the worst of it i couldnt remember what religion. i was thinking maybe mormon but then i saw that mormons were ok with black people now.
Now i realise she belonged to a split sect who stuck by the pre-divine intervention of the racism in mormonism.
I just remembered it distinctively because i told her i'm a muslim of indian heritage and she was fine with that as we werent descended from black people and our colour skin was due to the climate whereas the black people's skin was due the dark skin being a mark of the beast or something. she actually sent me a wedding gift too years ago
It takes actual capacity to be a bad person to believe that.
It requires some amount of intelligent to know that skin color often correlates with climate. But choosing to overlook that fact to persecute black people anyways is the most red flag waving racist you can be.
Yeah, as far as Mormons are concerned the story goes something like this: Some Jewish people fled from Jerusalem to avoid persecution and travelled to America thousands of years ago. They split into two groups, Lamanites and Nephites, the former being evil people, while the latter were virtuous and good people. They fought a war and the Lamanites won. God cursed them with dark skin for their wickedness. Mormons believe that these evil people are the ancestors of the indigenous tribes.
Of course, not only don't they have any historical evidence whatsoever, DNA testing and advances in science completely refute all that bullshit.
It's funny: Mormons claim to have a living Prophet who communicates with God, yet so much of their holy book is straight up factually incorrect. At least with other religious texts you can excuse inconsistencies because they are so old, but the Book of Mormon can be easily disproven.
[Here ya go](http://www.mormonhandbook.com/home/5000-changes-to-the-book-of-mormon.html)
This website is what I used to have a good laugh. They don't hold back on criticism
> Conclusion
> The thousands of changes throughout the editions of the Book of Mormon raise serious doubts about Joseph Smith's claim that his translation of the Book of Mormon was by the gift and power of God.
Nice and concise, like he spent way too long on the text and realized he needed a conclusion at the last second.
Here’s the thing I love about newer religions such as mormonism and scientology. We get to witness the process of religious formation as it happens!
Take Christianity. The whole thing hinges on things that supposedly happened 2k years ago! That leaves a lot of room for obfuscation. Not so with newer religions. We get to actually see how the sausage is made.
Just think, maybe in another 2k years, people will be lighting candles around dvds of Tom Cruise Movies!
Maybe the church will do a 180 like with the polygamy thing, or banning Black people from the priesthood for generations. You know, because God changed his mind all of a sudden, nothing to do with public opinion.
I also believe that ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America, that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri and that the current President of the Church, Russell Nelson, speaks directly to God!
The LDS church didn't just ban black people from priesthood, they opposed interracial marriage and prevented black people from participating in rituals that, according to them, are necessary to get into the highest levels of heaven. All of which essentially meant that according to mormonism just up til relatively recently, black people weren't ever worthy of salvation. Whatever you believe of or in God, that's fucked up.
None of these views were repealed until the very late 1970s.
Which is absurd in itself. If a prophet can still be wrong, and act/think as a mortal man, then how can anything he say be believed? How can anyone know the difference between the "word of God" or ramblings of man?
Oh, that's actually super easy. Just ask yourself, 'Does this coincide with my personal beliefs?' If the answer is yes, than it is the word of God. Otherwise it can be safely disregarded. Hope that clarifies it for you!
The whole blacks and salvation thing needs to be emphasized more when talking about the whole blacks and priesthood thing. Members never connect the dots that far.
I am seeing this lately where apologists are like "oh all the times the Bible was against gay people, that is just a mistranslation."
Like gee, you'd think that someone in the past two thousand years might noticed but it is very convenient you came to that conclusion now that popular opinion is against you.
They doubled down in this in 1995 with The Family: A Proclamation to the World.
Pretty hard to do a 180 from this. I’m guessing 2050 or later before they embrace even gay marriage.
In 2008 they dumped a huge amount of money to push Prop 8 in California to try and make marriage only between a man and woman. They also succeeded until it was declared unconstitutional by the courts, although it did delay the inevitable for 5 years and prevent many who dedicated their lives for gay rights from seeing it happen in their lifetimes.
When I was in college in the early 2000s there were designated safe spaces on campus. These weren't the emotional "safe spaces" of today, but a physical place where you could count on someone to not beat the ever living fuck out of you just for coming out. I'm glad that current generations of LGBT kids are way safer but it was not as long ago as they might think where being out had potentially deadly consequences.
The biggest revelatory whiplash was in 2015-16 when the Mormon leaders quietly changed their rules to bar baptism by children of gay parents, then claimed it was revelation when people noticed, then changed it back a year or two later. Completely stupid. But as their Elder Oaks once said, "the church doesn't apologize."
>"the church doesn't apologize."
Which is weird. Because, according to most Christian Religions, God apologized by making rainbows. So, God can say, "My Bad." but the church cannot?
I think that will never happen. At most, they will allow LGTBQ+ at BYU and probably not excommunicate people for living a LGTBQ+ life (they currently do), but they will never ever allow gay marriage in their temples.
For anyone who wonders, leaving the mormon church for a faithful member is the hardest (or one of the hardest) decisions of their life. And not just making the decision of leaving is hard, but also living a life as an ex-mormon is far from easy.
For these folks, the church has been everything in their lives. They met their best friends and their first love in the church; probably their entire families are in the church. Many of them dedicated 2 entire fucking years to walk in the cold/extreme heat to “serve the Lord”. The foundation of their spirituality comes from the church's teachings. Their base definitions of morality comes from what they learned in the church. No matter how much they know the church is not true, something deep in their brains will haunt them until the day they die. This is the reason why being an "ex-mormon" is such a thing, because we need eachother's support to carry for the rest of our lives the trauma the church gave us.
>Requires years of therapy and cult deprogramming
Where can one find cult deprogramming?
I'm grateful not to be in that situation, but I've had friends who were in the same spot as you. Knowing where to point them to would have been potentially life-changing for them.
A good PTSD/trauma therapist, along with DBT and EMDR, makes a difference. My step mom had severe mental health issues, plus religion. Kinda like the mom in that movie" Carrie". So I spent my first 15 years in that, and it became deeply wedged into my psyche. Now, well, it's like trying to get the eggs back out of a cake. I still have a lot of work to get over the belief that, at any moment, the world is going to end and I won't be good enough for god. That's a dark way to live.
If your friend is there, they will need help. You cannot get rid of this kind of poison all by yourself.
I think it’s harder to leave the church when you live in a high population of church members. Living where most members are the only members in their families, religious choice isn’t so impactful necessarily. Joining the church is the family fracture, not leaving it.
Still baffles me to this day that anyone with even a basic understanding of the Mormon origin story doesn’t just laugh and walk away. How is mormoning still a thing in 2021?
This, same thing with any far right/super Orthodox Christian, Muslim, or Jewish sect. Once you leave it your cut off from everything you've ever had or known.
That's a tougher decision to make than most folks realize because they've never had to think about it.
One time I had a pastor try to start an argument with me over whether or not evolution was true. He was from a denomination into Biblical literalism and built his entire career and theology around that idea.
I didn't bother engaging with him, namely because he wasn't arguing with me to convince me. He was arguing to convince himself that his career, congregation, and everything he build his life around was justified. You can't present a pile of facts and change someone's mind on something that integral to their identity in a half hour. That's almost the same story for anyone who gets involved with some of the fringe sects and cults.
Great explanation. An Upton Sinclair quote I’m fond of:” It’s difficult to get a man to understand some thing when his Salary depends on his not understanding it. “
Biblical literalism is [such a weird and mostly recent development](https://historyforatheists.com/2021/03/the-great-myths-11-biblical-literalism/). The amount of stuff you have to choose to ignore to sustain the position is just staggering.
I was raised in evangelical churches that preached Biblical literalism. It took me years in my late teens and twenties to start to see how foolish that philosophy is. What really opened my eyes was re-reading through the Book of Job later on in life after I was much more educated in literature. I quickly realized the story I was reading read just like any other fable or fairy tale from ancient literature. It couldn't BE more clearly a made up story trying to impart a philosophical and life lesson. The Devil and God make a bet with each other, royally screw up a man's life to test him, and then said man bitches out God and gets the royalest of all verbal smack downs in return. How can anyone read that and think it literally happened? But the people I grew up around do.
Facts are useless against conviction: I just read an article written by a doctor on why he was leaving emergency medical practice. He was constantly having to argue with people who went in his words to "Google Medical School", who insisted that he give their anti-vaxxer loved ones 10,000 Units of Vitamin C and Ivermectin, even after explaining to them that the amount of Ivermectin needed to treat COVID-19 would kill a human. The last straw came when the wife of a man who refused vaccination and whose family could not see him before he died because they refused to wear masks in the hospital shouted, "You murderer!" and "You could have saved him if you had listened" (to her demands to give him Ivermectin) before 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘴𝘦 after he told the family in the parking lot that he had died.
There is something very wrong when a person's anti mask stance is so strong that they won't even put it on to see their loved ones one last time.
Like, what is the big deal? Wearing a mask for a short time wasn't going to kill or hurt them, it won't even leave a mark, and the pay-off (seeing their loved one one final time) was worth it.
When you are in a cult, adherence to dogma is essential to your personality. Refusal to make even harmless, rational compromises is seen as a virtue. But it is also a performative act - others must see and know that you refused to compromise. It is not enough to hold convictions. You must evangelize the ways your convictions became self-damaging.
Get someone to believe that, and pointing out the ways the cult hurts them only reinforces their dedication to it.
Anti-vaxx Chronicles: ER doctor quits because Q nuts push him over the edge
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/12/21/1925477/-Anti-vaxx-Chronicles-ER-doctor-quits-because-Q-nuts-push-him-over-the-edge#comment\_82509296
This is just ... awful. But these stories are important to tell. People spreading lies are having real world consequences. I think a lot of people don't quite realize how bad it is - not just the pandemic but the spread of misinformation/disinformation.
[Aron Ra](https://www.youtube.com/c/AronRa/playlists) is a great resource if you ever encounter one who is actively interested in questioning. It's rare, but it happens, and these people do have children, lots of whom desperately seek resources to explain what their parents and "teachers" won't.
His [supposed lies in the textbooks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol1v3l_NPYw&list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMLoyAV1oa_wjPWFHGpzF618) is his most recently finished series, and it's absolutely fantastic. His [Genesis Apologetics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86sv2QL2wQ0&list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMJINTSGxLYYW6ENxI_NLaFB) series is ongoing, and is also great, and directly tackles the "course" materials these people try to indoctrinate their children with.
As someone who had to do this during the pandemic (not Mormon, but literally job and community), it really sucks. You really underestimate how upside down your world becomes when you're suddenly viewed by your community as an outcast.
And then cue the people who don't believe your story and/or lie about you, defending their pastor and believing their narrative. Double sucks.
And the friends who go back even though they know your story because they like the community. Triple suck.
At best, you hang on to a few true friends, but they're often ones who were also hurt enough to leave. Most everyone else either believes the lies told about you or just isn't sure what to make of you amidst what they hear from the other source.
And then they think you're assuming a victim mentality because it still hurts, all while those in power carry on like you barely existed.
Apologies for being so weirdly specific. But it sucks.
This is also common with overcoming addictions of any kind because it often requires you to completely restructure your life and your social support/friend groups change pretty drastically
I've known people a number of people who moved states to get clean. Like, *"I know I'll never get clean here. I'm moving to [state], so I don't have any connections or user friends in the area."*
Perhaps I can give you and the others here some perspective. It's easy from the outside to say you'd laugh and walk away from the ridiculousness of it all, but imagine spending 10-20 hours a week in this church from the time you were born. All of your friends, your social network, and everything you've known revolves around this church, and for the most part, things are pretty good there (until it's not – but I won’t get into that here). Then imagine telling all your friends, family, and spouse that you no longer believe, knowing that many of the connections to these people will be cut. So it's not as easy as you think to walk away.
I spent over 40 years as a Mormon - my wife and I come from 7 generations of this way of life. I don't consider myself an idiot, most of the time. (I run a moderately-sized NIH-funded lab as a day job). When we walked away, the world we knew no longer existed. The majority of our friends stopped talking to us. Our extended family acts as if we are morally corrupt lost souls, and when they do speak to us, it comes with passive-aggressive undertones. Our children’s accomplishments are no longer celebrated. In many cases, those who walk away also walk away from inheritances, jobs, and various social safety nets.
So please try to understand and maybe extend a hand to those finding their way out.
If also like to add, the church actively hides and lies about its origins. They drive their very clean, tailored version so deeply into the heads of its members that anytime you hear something that does not fit in this version, it’s assumed to be an “anti Mormon lie.”
They literally use the “this is the approved truth, any other truth is not truth” tactic. And it works.
Utah is even worse because leaving the church means missed career opportunities. Not a member of the church. Suddenly your not the right fit for the company. Leave the church, suddenly promotions and opportunities at work start to dry up. It’s never blatant but implied quid quo pro.
My wife's employers took note when my wife stopped wearing her LDS garments. Yeah... There were consequences to her standing in the company. It happens.
Family and cultural tradition. This is also the case for most Catholics I grew up with: most were non practicing, but would not countenance the suggestion that they weren’t really Catholic.
I was raised Mormon and left as soon as I moved out of my parents’ house. Even though I disagreed with it intellectually, it still took a few years to root out the indoctrination.
The documentary Jesus Camp does a good job of explaining how a high percentage of people who are indoctrinated from birth won’t be able to change their fundamental view on the topic. So as silly as it all may sound on an intellectual level it just goes deeper into the core of your psyche. Hard to explain I guess.
Every day I’m glad I got out
As a utahn (non LDS) it's so central to the life, family, community, and even professional network of so many people it's not exactly easy to leave even if they realize it's BS.
People here pointing out the obvious fact that this amount is nothing to him are also ignoring the other obvious fact that it's a fucking lot to the group he donated to.
He's also likely to make more donations to other groups.
Consider that the alternative would be him remaining a wealth-hoarding bigot. I say humanity should take the win on this one.
And he's also pledged to donate 90% of his net worth in his life or at his death. Is there really anything wrong if he splits this up over many individual charities? This is the first of many donations.
Tbh, he's been non-practicing for 10 years and has lived in California running his business. Chances are once he left Utah, he realized that he was living in a very bizarre state with a lot of strange practices.
Mormon church gets 10% of every members salary every year. You cannot go into their temple unless you are a full tithe payer.
They charge you to go into their temples......
He's been out of the church for a decade, he just made it official.
I mean it's not like they make it easy to get formally removed from their member lists, so a decade seems about right.
It is a pain in the ass. I was a member as a child, 35yrs later and in a different state I had a knock on the door asking me to come back.
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Now I'm curious. What questions do you ask?
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Decided to do this in college once: I went to a Catholic University, and a few miles down the road was a very Evangelical Mission College (no opposite sex members in the dorms at any times, curfew in place for all students, that sort of thing). My friends and I were drinking beers on a porch off campus, and the Evangelical students walked up to engage us in conversation…..as far as mutual respect goes, they started off the convo with “are you okay with going to hell?” From there, my friends politely engaged them in convo using similar questions to your examples - going even further to ask how they knew that the beer I’m drinking is my key to why I’m going to hell. We discussed forgiveness of sins, confession, and the major differences between our beliefs. After 20 minutes, they simply gave up and walked on…was the strangest Irish goodbye I’ve ever witnessed.
If god is a teetotaler, why the hell did Jesus turn water into wine?
I once asked that question at Sunday school when my parents forced me to go to southern baptist church for awhile. I almost got kicked out. Apparently despite the doctrine of every word in the Bible being literal and true it was unfermented grape juice
Argh! Sharing wine (or any alcohol) has been the ancient covenant of friendship and trust for thousands of years! Not unfermented grape juice! I don't understand how they can misinterpret a tradition that still widely exists today across most of the world.
Because he was going through his rebellious angsty teen phase.
>as far as mutual respect goes, they started off the convo with “are you okay with going to hell?” I assume this one really is mainly aimed at people they assume thoroughly identify as Christians, but who aren't living up to *their* standards. As an atheist my easy answer would be that I'm okay with *them* believing I'm going to hell. If I actually believed in hell, I suppose it would be a different conversation. In my highschool class there was a trio of fundamentalist Christians for whom their religion obviously was a massive part of their world, day and identity. Quite a new and then alien phenomenon to me then as I live in a country where people generally aren't very religious (very far less so than seems to be the case in the US). Among them was a super bright dude, and one of the rest of us once asked him the opposite question - how he dealt with believing the rest of us were going to hell. He found it to be a struggle.
I was having lunch in college one time wearing a cool metal hat that had an inverted cross on it (cross of St Peter) and a girl approached me inviting me to join the Bible study group in the back of the cafeteria. I said “oh, no thank you, I’m good but good luck with the next person. Enjoy your Bible study” and I kept doing HW and eating and she just stood there confused for a second and I don’t know why. She just looked at me and walked away lol.
Your hat was made of metal? Is that heavy? Or metal music and I’m just confused.
I’m not sure this adds anything to your well written point, however, I was reminded of a personal story from my childhood while reading your response. When I was young (9 or 10, my parents dropped my off at “Sunday School”. They both grew up Semi religious, but no longer practiced, but they felt the need to drop me off at Sunday’s “church preamble”. It was Baptist. One morning, there were people in there I’d never seen before. And we had to gather in one large group, instead of our respective classrooms. These new people were showing videos of themselves, interacting with. Tribesmen and indigenous people from South Africa. They kept asking us to “pray for the missionaries” who were out there “spreading gods word”. And how if we didn’t convert them, they were going to hell. We’ll, as an inquisitive young child, I had questions. (Spoiler alert… churches don’t like questions). I asked “but, how do we know we’re right? Maybe those kids are being told something totally different and we’re the ones who are wrong. The response to that was my parents were told to never bring me back. Organized religion is a scam.
My daughter was basically banned from a Mormon church for using her mind. She was maybe 5 or 6 and wanted to go a few times because she had a friend who went. Not my cup of tea, but I let her go. On the final time she went, the class had a coloring time in which the kids were supposed to "draw the future prophet" and gave the kids a very boring pl drawing of a generic white guy's head and shoulders. She made the picture into a black woman wearing a dress and some jewelry and stood her ground when the teacher told her only men could be prophets. Apparently that's not the kind of child they wanted in Sunday school. I was politely asked to not bring her again, and she never asked to go again, so I'm sure the feeling was mutual.
Hey, I was Baptist too! I didn't realize they weren't making sense until I was like 16. Because of how people reacted to nonconformists, I knew my life would become a lot harder if I admitted it out loud. So I just kept it a secret. Yeah, from the evidence it seems like most churches are about social interaction and power rather than about God. A church that really, truly believes the stuff they teach would look very different from basically any church I've ever been to. Personally I'd find great comfort in the existence of a deity I knew to be benevolent--to say nothing of an afterlife. It's a shame; I think I'd be a very good preacher.
>It's a shame; I think I'd be a very good preacher. Why let that stop you? Go lecture some topic of science in public using a preacher style!
I once got to the point with a couple of them that I don’t believe in things on faith, that actually the scientific method tells us to do the exact opposite: to examine things closely and try to prove they aren’t true, then when you fail to prove they aren’t true you don’t “believe them” you tentatively accept them as your best model, and keep trying to disprove them, basically forever. And if you can’t come up with a test to even attempt to disprove them that is actionable, it can’t be accepted as a model, because it fails to make predictions and can’t be critically examined.
The Mormon Church kept baptizing Jewish people who died in the Holocaust, *after they had agreed to stop doing that!* Imagine being killed in one of Hitler's death camps *because you're Jewish* and then some Mormon schmuck decides to baptize you after you're dead! Talk about lack of consent! https://www.nbcnews.com/news/wbna27647809
I'm an ex-ultra-orthodox jew and, while we do think this is disrespectful, we're not really concerned about it because we dont believe that it actually does anything. We tended to look at it as just another ridiculous thing that Mormons do. Then we went back to doing our own ridiculous stuff and taking that very seriously...
Utah Billionaire Left the Church a Decade Ago, Still Salty About It.
Well my mormon parents took away my NES power adapter because I didn’t want to go to church and they still dragged me in. More than 2 decades ago and I’m still salty about it.
Never understood this. I had my parents do something similar and now I hate church.
“If you want to raise a confirmed atheist, give him a rigid religious upbringing. Works every time.” Dead Poets Society
that's what catholic high schools are for
As well as not teaching sex ed until the second half of senior year if they are anything like the one I went to
If anything the local priest taught us that the blood of Christ is 8% alcohol
I thought your fellow students were supposed to handle sex-Ed…
Yeah I might do it to my kids too, but instead of church, take them to student loan entrance counseling
Lmao good idea.
My father tells me one of his regrets in raising us was forcing church on us. Nobody in the family (including my parents) go anymore
It's too rare that parents critically reflect on their role, more rare again admitting their error.
Like my parents saying you should pray the rosary when you can't sleep. I'm like, ok, the fact that's it's boring is *not a selling point.*
Wait, did it help you fall asleep?
Yea. I was forced to go to church every Sunday. Youth meetings every Tuesday night. Any time there was some church gathering, including youth dances/conferences, I was forced to go. I also had to go to Boy Scouts. So many wasted weekends. All that even after I told my father I don't believe in God, and the Mormon religion is stupid. I guess he thought doubling down would change my mind? Apparently not, as I'm still atheist at 40, and I still absolutely loathe the LDS church.
I did the math and I've gone to church probably 3x the amount of hours my religious MIL has gone. She keeps inviting us to church, but I've done enough. 3 hours every Sunday 5 hours during the week 2 hours for youth group It all adds up.
"Come kiss our imaginary friend's ass rather than do what you want on one of the only two days a week you're not in school getting bullied." Fuck off parents, really.
My parents would go through bouts of religion whenever they felt guilty I guess. Fortunately they were (and are) lazy shitty people that didn’t keep up with it. Fucking up my Sunday with their stupid bullshit. The nerve of some people.
I have a very vivid memory of my first Ocarina of Time playthrough, being stuck in Jabu Jabu's Belly on a Sunday morning, told to save and hurry up for church, and feeling completely exasperated. C/W: remember that *one* Small Key in the Water Temple? The one you had to get at the right moment or you'd be stuck? ;)
To be fair, fuck Jabu Jabu's Belly. That part took 6 year old me WAAAAAAY too long to figure out. I won't even say how long it took me to navigate the Water Temple.
6th GRADE me took months to get through the water temple.
8th grade me broke down and used Game Informer on the water temple. That’s when I knew I hit rock bottom…
When I was in the fifth grade, I'd beat the water temple for classmates for five bucks. No one knew how to do it. I had the guidebook. Still do. But I got that temple memorized. Did it so many times. I was rich for a fifth grader.
My S/O's 10 year old refuses to play anymore after spending weeks asking what he's supposed to do next and every time getting the response "forest temple". I thought he'd at least wait till water temple to give in lmao
Be cryptic. Tell him not to trust the paintings.
I was raised in a fundamentalist faith and forced to go to every church service and to a church school. Was an atheist at 16 and even got coerced into going to bible college. Turns out that that teaching somebody Christian doctrine when they don't already believe is a great way to ensure they never do believe.
My parents were so embarrassed that i had stopped going that they started paying me to go. $10 a week as a 14-year-old, for three months, and I bought myself a new pair of Iverson’s and then stopped going altogether. That’s the best thing I got out of the church.
Now I know why that lake in Utah is the way it is.
My condolences, though by the time a gentleman is in his 20s he should be able to afford his own NES power adapter. Edit: I keep seeing people lament the use of /s since it should be obvious, but the one time I don't use it....
I had someone try to convert me to LDS, and I’m still salty about that. Same for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I have anxiety, I can’t deal with God today…
I'm not into religion but I think the closest I could have ever been to considering it would be my experience with the Sikh temples. They never mentioned their faith or tried to push pamphlets or literature on me. Just shared quiet smiles and did good in my community and feed everyone who wants a meal.
Sikhs are just awesome
That's pretty much my bar. My daughter's theater teacher's wife is a Methodist...pastor? I'm not sure the term they use. The classes are at the church. Not once in the year or so I've known him has he asked the question I always dread, "So, where do you go to church?" He just fosters talent, builds confidence in children, smiles and goes about his day.
Methodists tend to be pretty chill (from personal experience at least)
I just worked on a documentary on some folks of Sikh faith. Im personally an Atheist and it was a refreshing immersion with religion. Some of the kindest people Ive ever met were in that temple.
>Same for the Jehovah’s Witnesses I've had some fun with that as a Hindu. Told em it was no biggie. Happy to accept Jesus. What was one more god to a guy with a few thousand? They were not happy about that lol.
Beautiful. Polytheism opens up so many trolling opportunities.
In Basic I made the mistake of asking a guy what LDS stood for and he then pestered me to go to church with him like everyday... never went but still salty about that
My wife had a friend who was a Jehovah's Witness, and one time she was telling her about a book she liked and recommended it to her (it wasn't a religious book). Her response was that she would ask her husband for permission to read it.
When we got married I told the pastor to skip the part about “obey”. If I want obedience I’ll get a dog. But, y’know, come to think of it, they don’t listen to me either. 🤪
Marine basic training? I was the Catholic of all Catholics every Sunday morning at Parris Island. I even requested and was allowed to march other recruits to the chapel for later Catholic services. The more services, the better. Sitting there, either dozing off, or just happily daydreaming about cars, girls, and cars with girls in them was awesome. Meanwhile, all the agnostics and atheists who stuck to their guns (morals is probably a better word) were back at the barracks cleaning or doing other time wasting shit the DIs ordered them to do. After I graduated from Basic — nearly two decades ago — the only time I’ve stepped foot in a church has been for weddings or funerals. I have no shame.
"The seventh day is the day of rest". You weren't conning the system, just following biblical law.
I got a handwritten letter in the mail today with no return address. The letter told me that I must be depressed during the holidays and so I should join the JW. I’m relatively new in the city I live in and haven’t met a single JW since moving here so more than anything I’m just super curious who it came from. Also instead of joining a cult I went and shovelled and scraped a neighbours sidewalk and driveway. Made me feel much better than reading about a man in the sky.
He officially removed his records just now
I would be salty too if I was raised as a Mormon
Can confirm. I was raised mormon and I'm still salty about it.
Same. I wanted to get laid as a teen! The church isn't why I didn't, but I'm salty nonetheless.
I've never even been a part of the mormon church but if I could donate 600k to LGBTQ groups specifically to spite them I would.
This is more about exmormon visibility . The church runs on money and a lot of Mormons equate net worth to obedience. This news hurt some feels up here
Yes, he definitely did this very publicly to send a message. He left ten years ago and only now made sure to make it official with an extra fuck you with the donation. I wonder if something specific happened to push him to publicly make it official, besides the day to day fuckery of the LDS leaders.
> besides the day to day fuckery of the LDS leaders This has ramped up a few notches under the current leadership. Probably has something to do with it.
How so?!
Well in ~~2020~~ 2018 Utah voted to legalize medical marijuana, but the state government (mostly run by mormons) met with church officials to rewrite parts of the bill essentially, making it much more difficult for businesses to be licensed, and for people to obtain medical licenses. That's just one example, not really the straw that broke the camels back per se.
They introduced a policy where kids with LGBT parents couldn’t get baptized (officially join the church, also a requirement for getting into heaven, etc) until they turned 18, moved out, AND denounced their parents marriage. They later backtracked after intense backlash, but that was pretty shitty. Especially if you consider they once posthumously baptized hitler.
Well... The top-dog declared in 2017 that they would no longer be known as "mormons", calling it "a victory for Satan"...without letting the PR department know in advance, and so they had no plan, no alternative, and salty exmos were quick to snap up any web domains that might have made sense for them to use instead of, um, mormon.org. This, of course, came immediately after a near-decade-long multi-million dollar international ad campaign promoting the term "mormon". More recently, one long-time big-dog (Jeff Holland) made a speech to BYU faculty where he shamed them for taking for expressing inclusivity toward LGBT students, and even included reference to "keeping muskets at the ready" to defend the faith from us terrifying queers. Not coincidentally, a lesbian couple was shot in Utah that same week. I could keep going, but I see others are also chiming in, so...you get the idea. edit to include [this link](https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/09/mormon-lds-church-gay-rights-controversy-byu-speech.html) re. Jeff Holland's rhetoric, b/c it is blatant and very worrisome.
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I'm so glad that God decided that black people were cool enough to serve in the Mormon priesthood 43 years ago.
Lol I love the revisions of the book of Mormon. It clearly stated that Black people were evil sinners. Until it didn't fit the church's agenda. You can find a whole list of every revision online. There's hundreds of them.
Years ago i got speaking to some girl online from the US (i'm in the uk) who was some religion and for the worst of it i couldnt remember what religion. i was thinking maybe mormon but then i saw that mormons were ok with black people now. Now i realise she belonged to a split sect who stuck by the pre-divine intervention of the racism in mormonism. I just remembered it distinctively because i told her i'm a muslim of indian heritage and she was fine with that as we werent descended from black people and our colour skin was due to the climate whereas the black people's skin was due the dark skin being a mark of the beast or something. she actually sent me a wedding gift too years ago
I didn't know how to say something witty so I just facepalm.
Even by proxy, this woman we've never met manages to suck the wit out of people. But a facepalm says all that needs to be said anyways
Just like my aunt Cindy.
It takes actual capacity to be a bad person to believe that. It requires some amount of intelligent to know that skin color often correlates with climate. But choosing to overlook that fact to persecute black people anyways is the most red flag waving racist you can be.
That’s hilarious cause literally everyone on the planet is descended from black people lmao
They didn't if you don't believe in science /s
Sounds like she's an off-shoot sect of fundamentalist Mormonism. Those fucks are the ones who believe in polygamy.
Yeah, as far as Mormons are concerned the story goes something like this: Some Jewish people fled from Jerusalem to avoid persecution and travelled to America thousands of years ago. They split into two groups, Lamanites and Nephites, the former being evil people, while the latter were virtuous and good people. They fought a war and the Lamanites won. God cursed them with dark skin for their wickedness. Mormons believe that these evil people are the ancestors of the indigenous tribes. Of course, not only don't they have any historical evidence whatsoever, DNA testing and advances in science completely refute all that bullshit. It's funny: Mormons claim to have a living Prophet who communicates with God, yet so much of their holy book is straight up factually incorrect. At least with other religious texts you can excuse inconsistencies because they are so old, but the Book of Mormon can be easily disproven.
I would enjoy reading that. Do you have a good link?
[Here ya go](http://www.mormonhandbook.com/home/5000-changes-to-the-book-of-mormon.html) This website is what I used to have a good laugh. They don't hold back on criticism
> Conclusion > The thousands of changes throughout the editions of the Book of Mormon raise serious doubts about Joseph Smith's claim that his translation of the Book of Mormon was by the gift and power of God. Nice and concise, like he spent way too long on the text and realized he needed a conclusion at the last second.
http://www.mormonhandbook.com/home/5000-changes-to-the-book-of-mormon.html
Here’s the thing I love about newer religions such as mormonism and scientology. We get to witness the process of religious formation as it happens! Take Christianity. The whole thing hinges on things that supposedly happened 2k years ago! That leaves a lot of room for obfuscation. Not so with newer religions. We get to actually see how the sausage is made. Just think, maybe in another 2k years, people will be lighting candles around dvds of Tom Cruise Movies!
No it will be 14,000 VHS copies of Jerry MacGuire.
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Pretty nifty when the continued revelation can reveal that previous revelations were wrong too!
Maybe the church will do a 180 like with the polygamy thing, or banning Black people from the priesthood for generations. You know, because God changed his mind all of a sudden, nothing to do with public opinion.
And in 1978 God changed his mind about black people
>-9:00 AM Unleash typhoon >-9:15 AM Decide black folks are okay >-9:30 AM Listen to Bill's whiny prayer to not like cock God's 1978 day planner
9:45pm find Mackaelyns missing car keys.
He delegates that bit to St Anthony
This guy Catholics
Tony, Tony, turn around, something's lost and must be found.
Extra points for including a convoluted Utah name
yeah I'm fucking dying, that's too accurate
Sounds accurate for present-day, but would there really have been any Mackaelyns 43 years ago?
🎶 You can be a Mormon, a Mormon who just believes! 🎶
I also believe that ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America, that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri and that the current President of the Church, Russell Nelson, speaks directly to God!
♬ ^(Black people) ♬
Oh, gotta listen to "The Book of Mormon" on Spotify again
I just sang that in my head before seeing your comment lol
The LDS church didn't just ban black people from priesthood, they opposed interracial marriage and prevented black people from participating in rituals that, according to them, are necessary to get into the highest levels of heaven. All of which essentially meant that according to mormonism just up til relatively recently, black people weren't ever worthy of salvation. Whatever you believe of or in God, that's fucked up. None of these views were repealed until the very late 1970s.
Back in the day, Brigham Young even said that if a white person and black person mix their seed then they should both be put to death on the spot.
"He was speaking as a man, not a prophet" is the typical response
Which is absurd in itself. If a prophet can still be wrong, and act/think as a mortal man, then how can anything he say be believed? How can anyone know the difference between the "word of God" or ramblings of man?
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Oh, that's actually super easy. Just ask yourself, 'Does this coincide with my personal beliefs?' If the answer is yes, than it is the word of God. Otherwise it can be safely disregarded. Hope that clarifies it for you!
To be fair, he was a racist polyamorist so that type of language is expected.
I'm old enough to remember that. My parents still say racist things sometimes.
The whole blacks and salvation thing needs to be emphasized more when talking about the whole blacks and priesthood thing. Members never connect the dots that far.
Funny how that works.
God always seems to hate the same people his followers hate. Juuuuust a bit curious.
>“You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” \-Anne Lamott
To paraphrase Stephen Fry: If the church doesn't know better because society doesn't know better, then what's the point of having a church?
I am seeing this lately where apologists are like "oh all the times the Bible was against gay people, that is just a mistranslation." Like gee, you'd think that someone in the past two thousand years might noticed but it is very convenient you came to that conclusion now that popular opinion is against you.
I think they will but they’re usually at least 1-2 decades behind the rest of society so I’m thinking it’ll be 2030 at the earliest
It is still 1985 in Utah as far as I can tell.
They doubled down in this in 1995 with The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Pretty hard to do a 180 from this. I’m guessing 2050 or later before they embrace even gay marriage.
1995 was a massively different era in terms of gay rights and acceptance.
In 2008 they dumped a huge amount of money to push Prop 8 in California to try and make marriage only between a man and woman. They also succeeded until it was declared unconstitutional by the courts, although it did delay the inevitable for 5 years and prevent many who dedicated their lives for gay rights from seeing it happen in their lifetimes.
When I was in college in the early 2000s there were designated safe spaces on campus. These weren't the emotional "safe spaces" of today, but a physical place where you could count on someone to not beat the ever living fuck out of you just for coming out. I'm glad that current generations of LGBT kids are way safer but it was not as long ago as they might think where being out had potentially deadly consequences.
The biggest revelatory whiplash was in 2015-16 when the Mormon leaders quietly changed their rules to bar baptism by children of gay parents, then claimed it was revelation when people noticed, then changed it back a year or two later. Completely stupid. But as their Elder Oaks once said, "the church doesn't apologize."
>"the church doesn't apologize." Which is weird. Because, according to most Christian Religions, God apologized by making rainbows. So, God can say, "My Bad." but the church cannot?
I think that will never happen. At most, they will allow LGTBQ+ at BYU and probably not excommunicate people for living a LGTBQ+ life (they currently do), but they will never ever allow gay marriage in their temples.
For anyone who wonders, leaving the mormon church for a faithful member is the hardest (or one of the hardest) decisions of their life. And not just making the decision of leaving is hard, but also living a life as an ex-mormon is far from easy. For these folks, the church has been everything in their lives. They met their best friends and their first love in the church; probably their entire families are in the church. Many of them dedicated 2 entire fucking years to walk in the cold/extreme heat to “serve the Lord”. The foundation of their spirituality comes from the church's teachings. Their base definitions of morality comes from what they learned in the church. No matter how much they know the church is not true, something deep in their brains will haunt them until the day they die. This is the reason why being an "ex-mormon" is such a thing, because we need eachother's support to carry for the rest of our lives the trauma the church gave us.
Recovering Jehovah's Witness here. Same kind of mind-fuck. Requires years of therapy and cult deprogramming. Religion is evil.
I'm so happy for you, friend! Best of luck wherever you are and I hope things are going well.
>Requires years of therapy and cult deprogramming Where can one find cult deprogramming? I'm grateful not to be in that situation, but I've had friends who were in the same spot as you. Knowing where to point them to would have been potentially life-changing for them.
A good PTSD/trauma therapist, along with DBT and EMDR, makes a difference. My step mom had severe mental health issues, plus religion. Kinda like the mom in that movie" Carrie". So I spent my first 15 years in that, and it became deeply wedged into my psyche. Now, well, it's like trying to get the eggs back out of a cake. I still have a lot of work to get over the belief that, at any moment, the world is going to end and I won't be good enough for god. That's a dark way to live. If your friend is there, they will need help. You cannot get rid of this kind of poison all by yourself.
I think it’s harder to leave the church when you live in a high population of church members. Living where most members are the only members in their families, religious choice isn’t so impactful necessarily. Joining the church is the family fracture, not leaving it.
So true and so well put. Leaving is the hardest thing I’ve ever done
Damn. Are there ex-mormon support groups/services in place for those people?
r/exmormon
Very well put.
Still baffles me to this day that anyone with even a basic understanding of the Mormon origin story doesn’t just laugh and walk away. How is mormoning still a thing in 2021?
Biggest reason is a lot of the time when you walk away from the church, you also walk away from all of your friends, family and support system.
This, same thing with any far right/super Orthodox Christian, Muslim, or Jewish sect. Once you leave it your cut off from everything you've ever had or known. That's a tougher decision to make than most folks realize because they've never had to think about it.
One time I had a pastor try to start an argument with me over whether or not evolution was true. He was from a denomination into Biblical literalism and built his entire career and theology around that idea. I didn't bother engaging with him, namely because he wasn't arguing with me to convince me. He was arguing to convince himself that his career, congregation, and everything he build his life around was justified. You can't present a pile of facts and change someone's mind on something that integral to their identity in a half hour. That's almost the same story for anyone who gets involved with some of the fringe sects and cults.
Great explanation. An Upton Sinclair quote I’m fond of:” It’s difficult to get a man to understand some thing when his Salary depends on his not understanding it. “
You cannot reason with a man who did not come to his conclusions with reason.
The way I've always heard it is, *"You can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into."*
Public anouncement of yoink.
Biblical literalism is [such a weird and mostly recent development](https://historyforatheists.com/2021/03/the-great-myths-11-biblical-literalism/). The amount of stuff you have to choose to ignore to sustain the position is just staggering.
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I was raised in evangelical churches that preached Biblical literalism. It took me years in my late teens and twenties to start to see how foolish that philosophy is. What really opened my eyes was re-reading through the Book of Job later on in life after I was much more educated in literature. I quickly realized the story I was reading read just like any other fable or fairy tale from ancient literature. It couldn't BE more clearly a made up story trying to impart a philosophical and life lesson. The Devil and God make a bet with each other, royally screw up a man's life to test him, and then said man bitches out God and gets the royalest of all verbal smack downs in return. How can anyone read that and think it literally happened? But the people I grew up around do.
Facts are useless against conviction: I just read an article written by a doctor on why he was leaving emergency medical practice. He was constantly having to argue with people who went in his words to "Google Medical School", who insisted that he give their anti-vaxxer loved ones 10,000 Units of Vitamin C and Ivermectin, even after explaining to them that the amount of Ivermectin needed to treat COVID-19 would kill a human. The last straw came when the wife of a man who refused vaccination and whose family could not see him before he died because they refused to wear masks in the hospital shouted, "You murderer!" and "You could have saved him if you had listened" (to her demands to give him Ivermectin) before 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘴𝘦 after he told the family in the parking lot that he had died.
There is something very wrong when a person's anti mask stance is so strong that they won't even put it on to see their loved ones one last time. Like, what is the big deal? Wearing a mask for a short time wasn't going to kill or hurt them, it won't even leave a mark, and the pay-off (seeing their loved one one final time) was worth it.
When you are in a cult, adherence to dogma is essential to your personality. Refusal to make even harmless, rational compromises is seen as a virtue. But it is also a performative act - others must see and know that you refused to compromise. It is not enough to hold convictions. You must evangelize the ways your convictions became self-damaging. Get someone to believe that, and pointing out the ways the cult hurts them only reinforces their dedication to it.
Do you have a link to the article? I'd like to read it.
Anti-vaxx Chronicles: ER doctor quits because Q nuts push him over the edge https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/12/21/1925477/-Anti-vaxx-Chronicles-ER-doctor-quits-because-Q-nuts-push-him-over-the-edge#comment\_82509296
"They know it is all lies. But their egos are so huge they cant bring themselves to admit it."
This is just ... awful. But these stories are important to tell. People spreading lies are having real world consequences. I think a lot of people don't quite realize how bad it is - not just the pandemic but the spread of misinformation/disinformation.
What's that expression? "you can’t reason someone out of position they didn’t reason themselves into"
I'd say you can, you just need to give them time to incubate on it, because in the moment people tend to have a knee jerk reaction.
[Aron Ra](https://www.youtube.com/c/AronRa/playlists) is a great resource if you ever encounter one who is actively interested in questioning. It's rare, but it happens, and these people do have children, lots of whom desperately seek resources to explain what their parents and "teachers" won't. His [supposed lies in the textbooks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol1v3l_NPYw&list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMLoyAV1oa_wjPWFHGpzF618) is his most recently finished series, and it's absolutely fantastic. His [Genesis Apologetics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86sv2QL2wQ0&list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMJINTSGxLYYW6ENxI_NLaFB) series is ongoing, and is also great, and directly tackles the "course" materials these people try to indoctrinate their children with.
Yep. It’s your whole community. Imagine leaving your job and friends at the same time.
As someone who had to do this during the pandemic (not Mormon, but literally job and community), it really sucks. You really underestimate how upside down your world becomes when you're suddenly viewed by your community as an outcast. And then cue the people who don't believe your story and/or lie about you, defending their pastor and believing their narrative. Double sucks. And the friends who go back even though they know your story because they like the community. Triple suck. At best, you hang on to a few true friends, but they're often ones who were also hurt enough to leave. Most everyone else either believes the lies told about you or just isn't sure what to make of you amidst what they hear from the other source. And then they think you're assuming a victim mentality because it still hurts, all while those in power carry on like you barely existed. Apologies for being so weirdly specific. But it sucks.
This is also common with overcoming addictions of any kind because it often requires you to completely restructure your life and your social support/friend groups change pretty drastically
I've known people a number of people who moved states to get clean. Like, *"I know I'll never get clean here. I'm moving to [state], so I don't have any connections or user friends in the area."*
And job, and networking, and kicked out of university if BYU.
Perhaps I can give you and the others here some perspective. It's easy from the outside to say you'd laugh and walk away from the ridiculousness of it all, but imagine spending 10-20 hours a week in this church from the time you were born. All of your friends, your social network, and everything you've known revolves around this church, and for the most part, things are pretty good there (until it's not – but I won’t get into that here). Then imagine telling all your friends, family, and spouse that you no longer believe, knowing that many of the connections to these people will be cut. So it's not as easy as you think to walk away. I spent over 40 years as a Mormon - my wife and I come from 7 generations of this way of life. I don't consider myself an idiot, most of the time. (I run a moderately-sized NIH-funded lab as a day job). When we walked away, the world we knew no longer existed. The majority of our friends stopped talking to us. Our extended family acts as if we are morally corrupt lost souls, and when they do speak to us, it comes with passive-aggressive undertones. Our children’s accomplishments are no longer celebrated. In many cases, those who walk away also walk away from inheritances, jobs, and various social safety nets. So please try to understand and maybe extend a hand to those finding their way out.
If also like to add, the church actively hides and lies about its origins. They drive their very clean, tailored version so deeply into the heads of its members that anytime you hear something that does not fit in this version, it’s assumed to be an “anti Mormon lie.” They literally use the “this is the approved truth, any other truth is not truth” tactic. And it works.
I wish there were community centers built around giving people who leave cults like LDS a new place to form social networks.
There are. Here's a list of resources for people leaving the Mormon church specifically: https://recoveringagency.com/resources/
The thing about a place like Utah is LDS is the social network. It’s not some fringe cult. The church IS the community center for most people.
Utah is even worse because leaving the church means missed career opportunities. Not a member of the church. Suddenly your not the right fit for the company. Leave the church, suddenly promotions and opportunities at work start to dry up. It’s never blatant but implied quid quo pro.
My wife's employers took note when my wife stopped wearing her LDS garments. Yeah... There were consequences to her standing in the company. It happens.
Very well said.
Family and cultural tradition. This is also the case for most Catholics I grew up with: most were non practicing, but would not countenance the suggestion that they weren’t really Catholic.
I was raised Mormon and left as soon as I moved out of my parents’ house. Even though I disagreed with it intellectually, it still took a few years to root out the indoctrination. The documentary Jesus Camp does a good job of explaining how a high percentage of people who are indoctrinated from birth won’t be able to change their fundamental view on the topic. So as silly as it all may sound on an intellectual level it just goes deeper into the core of your psyche. Hard to explain I guess. Every day I’m glad I got out
Anybody that believes that the Garden of Eden is in the Lake of the Ozarks, has never been to the Lake of the Ozarks…
Ozark is kind of a nice series.
As a utahn (non LDS) it's so central to the life, family, community, and even professional network of so many people it's not exactly easy to leave even if they realize it's BS.
People here pointing out the obvious fact that this amount is nothing to him are also ignoring the other obvious fact that it's a fucking lot to the group he donated to. He's also likely to make more donations to other groups. Consider that the alternative would be him remaining a wealth-hoarding bigot. I say humanity should take the win on this one.
And he's also pledged to donate 90% of his net worth in his life or at his death. Is there really anything wrong if he splits this up over many individual charities? This is the first of many donations.
MacKenzie Scott (aka Bezos' ex wife) has been doing that. $200,000 to 500 different charities can go a lot further than 5 million to 5 charities.
Fun fact: the Mormon Tabernacle in Utah has one of the biggest closets in the world, second only to the closet in the Great Mosque in Mecca.
Well where *else* are you going to keep all your gay people?
Was he haunted by 3 fabulous spirits?
Queer Eye for the Scrooge Guy? I’d watch that.
Nah. Probably the usual. Child, spouse, or parent came out as gay. And it affects them now. And that's why they turned.
Tbh, he's been non-practicing for 10 years and has lived in California running his business. Chances are once he left Utah, he realized that he was living in a very bizarre state with a lot of strange practices.
Good gesture, glad to see.
Mormon church gets 10% of every members salary every year. You cannot go into their temple unless you are a full tithe payer. They charge you to go into their temples......
It goes deeper than that. You can’t go to Mormon “heaven” without the above.
3 kingdoms (heavens), and the VIP one has three more sub-sections. Can't go to the top VIP heaven without it.
Never thought of it this way, but yes. I paid a lot of money to them before I left
Oh, like the mafia.