I cring everytime i hear about the church or the mormons but i still have a great relationship with God. I have never had the expirences while being mormon. I had the oppourtunity to see some healings, speak in tongues, and anytime i run on hard times i can pray and the prayers are answered. Has anyone else expirenced the big difference of being outside of that cult.

I wish i didn't learn to hate god as a mormon. But I did! I didn't know any better. He would come in handy I think now, when I need something bigger than myself. ( I never thought that there may not be an after life until I left the church and knew I would never go back to any other. THis made me sad for quite a while) I think christians as a whole are good people with the right idea on how to live a good life but anytime ANYONE gets too extreme, they and their group are just asking for trouble. It bugs me way less to see christians do their thing then a mormon.

I have just recently learned how to ask more pertinent questions and apply logic and a degree of skepticism in my life and am very happy to be learning these tools after 1/2 my life has been wasted being told how to act and what to believe.

My life is better! BUt, I'm happy for people that can actually still believe in a loving god after mormonism.

I never had a relationship with God until I told Him I was willing to leave the Mormon church if I could have a personal relationship with Him. I'm reluctant to even share this here, but here goes. I had a personal witness of the Holy Ghost that lasted for 40 days and 40 nights after I surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ and gave Him everything. At that point, I felt that it wasn't about belonging to a church, but belonging to God. I don't think a person can have a relationship with Christ until they're willing to surrender everything. It was at that point when I had this happen.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2013 05:00PM by StoneInHat.

StoneInHat Wrote:
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> I never had a relationship with God until I told
> Him I was willing to leave the Mormon church if I
> could have a personal relationship with Him.

When I was strongly religious, I came eventually to discern after a lot of thought and many different experiences that God is everywhere, not dependent on which church you belong to. That is why I couldn't accept people saying that this or that or the other group isn't Christian due to arbitrary parameters. Like, my BAC friends said not to join Mormonism because God isn't there (paraphrase). I eventually came to believe what you said here:

>I felt that it wasn't about belonging to a church, but belonging to God.

However, I do get what the BACs and others mean when they try and define the way we should believe and worship. I'm just outside all the boxes now.

For me personally, all the positive answers I felt I received as a result of prayer throughout my life became null and void once I discovered the church was a fraud. It's become clear to me that no matter how strong the emotions or spiritual experiences can be, our own emotions and thoughts can mislead us.

Faith healings can occur in any religion or any religious authority, christian or not. These can often be chalked up as placebo, explainable by medical science or just left as mysteries.

I've come to realize that if god does exist, he's a lousy communicator. Telling every single person in every different religion that their religion happens to be the right one. The Bible is a joke, conflicting and impossible stories everywhere. If god does exist, he sure as hell doesn't want us to know about it. In my opinion anyway.

What I find hard to understand is once people learn to use their critical thinking skills to uncover the truth about Mormonism, some end up believing in another brand of magic (i.e. speaking in tongues etc...) Maybe the speaking in tongues I saw was fake, but I think it's all fake. Most of us are turned off to traditional belief systems because all of them have a form of manipulation built in and I for one am tired of being manipulated. Basically, they all kind of tell you that you need supernatural help to be "clean/saved" or whatever. I call bullshit. It doesn't add up. Not even a little.

I didn't give up on god because of the Mormon church, I gave up on the Mormon church because I gave up on god.

No. I didn't give up on God BECAUSE of the Mormon church, per se. However, my experience in leaving the Morg was very important leading up to me no longer believing in God.

Figuring out Mormonism was false led me to critically examine some of my other beliefs, such as my belief in God and the Bible. Using the same critical thinking that had led me out of Mormonism, I quickly realized that the Bible could not be literally true. It contains silly myths like Adam and Eve, Noah's Arc, and the story of Moses.

But that's all ok. I could still believe it was a good book even if parts of it were "allegory." However, the more I examined it, the more I came to realize that "The Good Book" is not really a very good book. In fact, its really quite horrible a lot of the time. Why would I want to worship a god who, not just tolerated, not just commanded, but actually supposedly took an active hand in supporting murder, rape, pillaging, and genocide?

So the Bible's not for me. Even if that god were real, he's not a being worthy of my worship, more like my loathing.

But the problem is even more fundamental than that. Because the Bible was really the only evidence that I was holding on to that supported my belief in a god. Without that, what is left? Theism really has no evidence supporting their hypothesis outside of their thousands of years old book. The fact is, they have made what Carl Sagan would call an extraordinary claim, and they have failed to provide the extraordinary evidence that would be necessary to cause a rational person to believe that claim. So I reject their claim. I do not believe in God.

So in the end, it was my journey out of Mormonism that got the ball rolling that eventually led to me becoming an atheist. But my atheism has nothing to do with Mormonism.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2013 08:29PM by nickname.

No. I don't believe in Joseph Smith or Thomas Monson, but I do believe there is a Creator of this amazing universe in which we live.

Which God? There have been so many.

But to answer the question, I didn't give up on God because there is nothing to give up on.

I have never seen the slightest shred of evidence for any god, anywhere, any time, so I just don't even think about it except as a source of entertainment when the religiosos make hysterically outlandish claims. And, I am perfectly capable of finding my own car keys.

God. Don't know. Don't care. It makes me tired. Pass the remote.

I thought I was going to hell for a good bit, and got accustomed to it.

If God wants something from me, he can come and tell me himself.

I gave up on the Mormon church once I found God.

On my way out I found it was a fraud, but how much of modern life isn't a fraud? If we threw out out all institutions that were basically horse crap, we'd have very few left.

For me, it was actually my belief in the restoration of the gospel that allowed me to choose to believe in god. Now that I know that the restoration is a myth, I have no reason to believe in or not believe in god.
But from now on, if god wants me to know something, he or she or it has to tell me personally. Now that I know better, I refuse to accept the words of a prophet or a book or a believer as the word of god. They are just the words of men.

I am going through a period of deep mourning over the loss of my faith - brought into sharper focus when my tbm family has tbm activities - like a family funeral this weekend.

I keep thinking that I'll find an acceptable substitute religion, so I keep looking around and around. Nothing seems to do.

What I am coming to a realization of is that the certainty that I once thought I had is a myth.

Living with uncertainty is NOT comfortable.

Is your post meant to sound condescending? Because it does. If we don't have a belief in god then we're quitters?

Your post has a false premise--that there is a god.

No, I didn't give up on God because of the Mormon Church. Giving up on the Mormon Church was simply my first step towards no longer being a religious person in any way.

It all began with a love of studying everything I could get my hands on, whereas before, all I read were Mormon Church-approved literature.

I have not found any need to place any belief in any of the thousands of God-Myths-deities that have been believed by faith throughout the history of mankind.

I'm OK with using my own reason, judgment,common sense, doing my own research, critical thinking, etc. I find it much more productive than praying to a deity.

It's a matter of what works and what does not. I have many years of experience with relying on faith in a deity and savior. Changing my mind has been much more reliable and rewarding.
But that's just me!

I didn't lose anything. I just changed where I place my faith and trust.

Mormonism, for most of us, was an extreme of required conformance-compliance & silly rules, all done to placate a creator that was dis-attached from us 'his children'.

Speaking only for myself.... I couldn't understand the (old-testament) Supreme Being who was vengeful & violent ... over trivial matters, a 'Supreme' micro-manager.
For me, that hasn't changed.

I worship now with the (Seattle) Mennonites; we haven't broken out into Kum bi ah yet... but haven't crossed it out either.

Today, for me at least, 'God' is mostly about the Golden Rule, parable of Good Samaritan, etc. If I can't be kind & honest, what possibly c/would the point be?

Finding out that God is greater than the anthropomorphized version I learned in tscc was the largest force in getting out.

The only reason I believe in a higher power, supreme being is

that when I was younger I had seen and felt a beautiful woman

naked and thought this ain't no accident..

On the religion stuff he's like a dead beat dad, not around when

needed.

It's not like humans evolved together and you are attracted to women to perpetuate the species.

ozpoof Wrote:
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> It's not like humans evolved together and you are
> attracted to women to perpetuate the species.

Hey man...don't
C*ck block my memories......

Realized that if there is a God, it's non-interventionist, and doesn't give two craps what happens here.

I think it's a little short sighted and offensive when people claim divine intervention in their life to give them a witness of God's presence, when there are starving kids in Sudan having their eyes pecked out by vultures while still alive.

Also, if anything confirms the humanity of the God experience it's speaking in tongues. The reasons given for this show the powerlessness of the god they believe in, and make people behave more like they were possessed by demons.

If you still believe in God, you need to imagine if an all powerful being would be attending a faith healing and babble talk fest in the first world (god never heals amputees- notice that?) while allowing millions of children to starve to death. I think such a god isn't worth worship.

Good question. When I learned of the perceived problems of the LDS church, my beliefs came crashing down. I petitioned to God through many prayers to give me some guidance where I should go. That didn't work and that led me to realize that I know nothing. Nothing is real anymore. The veil has been lifted and I see nothing. However, I made some conscious choices. I am a man of logic. Nothing came out of nothing. Something created this world and us. Who that is, I don't know. But I decided to believe in a "grand architect" whether you call him or her God/Goddess or something that is not even human. Anything is possible. My prayers has not been answered so I don't know. My belief in God is the only thing I have decided to believe, thus calling myself an agnostic. I truly hoped for a life beyond this life. I also believe in goodness and humanity so I sought it all I could. Just live your life to the fullest, understand life the way you can see it, how you make sense of it, and be happy.

Cheers,

K

No God

Personally, I have seen inexpiable things, both good and bad, happen to both good and bad people, both TBMs and not. I'm pretty sure they are simply due to forces of nature/science that we do not yet understand. But as a scientist, I always leave the door open to the fact I may be wrong.

Can there be a god? Sure. If one exists, I lean towards thinking he does not intervene in the large-scale events of humanity, if he intervenes at all. Maybe we are just an experiment for his amusement (have you heard about MIT people theorizing our universe could be just a simulation?). Maybe he just doesn't exist at all. I for one can't be sure either way.

Have I given up on God because of the morg? Yep.

I quit believing in god first, then I quit the Mormon church.

Have you ever noticed that the so-called "proof of god's existence" events are always ambiguous? If a sick child is given a blessing and then recovers from the illness, the religious believers who gave the blessing credit god for the recovery. Of course if the child dies, the believers say that god wanted the child in heaven. They create a win-win situation for their god-belief.

Let's take a simple test case where the result cannot be ambiguous. Put a coin on the table in front of you with tails up. Then ask god to "please turn the coin over so that heads is up." Now sit and watch the coin.

Did it flip over instantly? No, well give it five minutes. Did the coin flip over? No, let's try an hour. What??? The coin is still tails up?

I guarantee that you can watch the coin for months, years, decades -- and it will NEVER flip over. What is so difficult about flipping a coin? Surely HE/SHE/IT could do that simple favor to prove to believers that HE/SHE/IT exists.

But no, that will never happen. I have run the coin experiment for several decades and the coin stays tails up. I have 100% confidence that I will go to my grave with the coin still showing tails up.

So why should I waste my time with god? The answer is that I don't. If god can't flip a coin then there is no need to ask for anything more substantial in life. Either god doesn't exist or else HE/SHE/IT chooses to ignore humans. I vote for the former -- god does not exist.

God is such a cheapskate

I gave up on Christianity because of Mormonism.

Ditto.

No, I still believe in God.

yes .

No, I stopped believing in god because he is a self contradictory, non sensical, Santa claus-esque fairy tale. Not to mention that he is merely a replacement for the loss of the illusion of parental omnipotence/omniscience.


Oh, you don't like people posting condescending things about your belief system? Well maybe you should refrain from posting things like that. I get tired of the self righteous religious bigots. It's like a bunch of children at the playground making fun of the kids that don't believe in the Easter bunny.