For the new people here, Tal was a regular poster here from what I heard. Too, for those who don't know who he is, he sang the once popular song, " She's So High".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ElORM9O-0U

Also, his dad was in the Band "Bachman Turner Overdrive"

In any event, was readying an article he wrote about church resignations and the church being in stagnant and into decline.

Below is the article:


Tuesday, Feb 15, 2005, at 12:23 PM
Church Resignation Numbers
Posted By Tal Bachman
TAL BACHMAN - SECTION 1 -Guid- ↑
I spoke to a guy the other day who was a bishop not long ago, recognized the BOM was not historical, and then resigned.

Anyway, for what it's worth, this guy said that after speaking with certain sources and doing his own calculations, part of which were based on his own experience while bishop with resignations per annum, that he figures there has to be somewhere around 100,000 resignations a year.

Even a few months ago I heard all kinds of big numbers like this bandied about and kind of doubted them all (in true exmo skeptical fashion), but now I've really started to wonder. I know personally a lot who have left, but I thought maybe that was just me (I just heard two nights ago about ANOTHER family leaving over in Vancouver). Could it be true there are THAT many?

Even if it is half that number, when you realize that they almost certainly don't represent guys who have just drifted away as inactive, but rather people who have given their all to the church (stalwart members) who are leaving in many cases with their entire family, this seems like a really big deal. At the very least, that is a big blow to future growth in terms of would-have-been-Mormon progeny and branching generations...big, fertile oak trees plucking themselves out root and branch.

And since it seems that the evidence will only continue accumulating that the BOM is not 1600 years old and doesn't actually have anything to do with American aboriginals, and more and more people around the world are gaining access to information about that evidence, and that we have innate sense-making/truth detection faculties that often seem retrievable even after major pummeling, and since people more willingly fall "out of line" when they see others doing so in increasing numbers, you wonder if maybe this isn't just biased thinking, but maybe that it is really happening, and happening with increasing momentum.

When you also acknowledge that the "12 million members" figure seems problematic in many ways, and that activity rates may even be quite a bit lower than the 3.5 million number people tend to cite (is it really more like 2 or 2.4 or 2.8 or something?), and figure in the very low retention rates for new converts (which I think will only continue to sink for the reasons I cited above), so that whatever the number of resignations is represents an even huger percentage of active church membership lost, it makes you wonder even more.

This ex-bishop also said he has spoken with two different church sources, one of which is at the MTC, who said that the church is losing FORTY per cent of returned missionaries. And a mission is about the most intensive church-immersion process you can imagine. When you figure that the rates are very likely twice that for dudes who don't go on missions, that's another bad indication.

When I first realized 14 months ago the church couldn't be what it claimed, I had no idea that anything like this could be happening. Bias aside, does anyone know what is REALLY going on with church growth/decline?

Since stakes are formed by counting active members, how many average active members do stakes have, and how many stakes are there?

I was disappointed when he left. I have a couple of his posts archived, I should have saved more. I will look them up and post here. Found one sooner than I thought. This is when he originally posted here as RB. As an aside, his father, Randy Bachman was playing with the Guess Who prior to BTO.

this was one of his best and most eloquent;

Author: RB
Subject: What do you find at the bottom of Mormonism? I found...

...this:

Mormonism is an authoritarian tautology:

“The church is true”. (How do you know?)

“I felt special feelings”. (How do you know those special feelings meant the church is true?)

“The prophets said it did”. (How do you know they are true prophets?)

“Because the church is true”.

--------------------------------

Mormonism is a circular spiritual and mental prison of irrationality, fictions, and, ultimately, madness, run by a succession of file leaders who in the end recognize no morality beyond doing what it takes to enable the institution to survive and grow, which is to say, no morality at all. This stance has nothing to do with scriptural Christianity – or really, any religion. It is, oddly enough, right out of Machiavelli's "The Prince". And just like Machiavelli’s perfect Prince, the Church goes further – it appropriates the very postures and rhetoric of morality in order to achieve that completely amoral goal.

And so, Mormon file leaders appear to recognize divine authority, but recognize in the end only their own authority. They claim they are governed by the personally communicated dictates of the Eternal Creator of the Universe. After forgetting to forewarn Heber J. Grant about the looming worldwide depression, the danger of the rising Nazi party, and the cataclysmic war soon to follow - after forgetting to include "boil water" in the list of health instructions given to Joseph Smith - after forgetting to forewarn Gordon B. Hinckley about Sept. 11, or that Mark Hoffmann was a fraud - after forgetting to forewarn any sitting "prophet" about anything of importance soon to come, did that Eternal Creator really take time to tell the "prophet" that it was of eternal spiritual importance, that all three billion women on earth stop wearing two earrings in the same ear?

Since Mormonism is fundamentally amoral, nothing is too sacred to sacrifice for survival. And it doesn’t even need to go that far. There is nothing even too sacred to inhibit the current president from changing it just because - just to leave his own male mark on the thing however he likes, just like a dog who, smelling the many other dogs who have come before, feels compelled to leave his own mark on the hydrant. Just because.

How else to explain this? There has, almost literally, been NO Mormon doctrine the Mormon church has not changed, or revised out of existence in the last 175 years. This even includes the identity of Jesus Christ (for the first six years, he was the trinitarian incarnation of God, not a separate being). The doctrine of tithing has changed, the meaning of the Word of Wisdom has changed, the endowment ceremonies (supposedly eternal ordinances necessary for entering heaven) have changed, what constitutes "scripture" has changed, the true identity of God has changed, the prohibition on birth control has changed, the criteria for determining "doctrine" has changed, the identification of the Native Americans as Lamanites has changed, the doctrine of the Trinity/Godhead has changed, the temple garment has changed, the racial restrictions on holding the priesthood have changed, the doctrine that God once was a man has changed, the doctrine about man being the head of the home has changed, the doctrines about the pre-existence have changed, the definition of "adultery" has changed (Joseph, for example, had a different view than Gordon B. Hinckley), the obligation of members to obey the laws of the land has changed, the requirements for attending the temple have changed, the Book of Mormon's text has changed, the canonical status of the Lectures on Faith has changed, the teaching that blacks weren't valiant in the pre-existence has changed, the doctrine regarding whether Mormons worship Christ has changed, the claims made for the Book of Abraham have changed, the doctrines regarding the extent of Lehite settlement have changed, the teachings about family size have changed, the doctrine governing certain sexual acts has changed, the doctrine regarding God's ideal marital arrangement has changed (despite it still being in the D&C), the doctrine specifying that arrangement as necessary to exaltation has changed - everything, literally, has changed, and often, more than once, except for the only doctrine all the prophets have ever agreed on: total obedience of everyone else, to them. It's the only constant. It is another version of the authoritarian tautology:

“God spoke to me, and said you should obey me” (But how can I trust you?)

“Because I am a prophet” (But how do I know you are a prophet?)

“Because God spoke to me, and said you should obey me”.

-----------------------------------------

Despite claims from members that this virus's obvious mutability is in fact evidence that all the church's claims are true, as this demonstrates "continuing revelation", I assert that it is not possible for any being outside the mindcrushing psychological state required for "believing Mormonism" to believe this, since one of the church's claims is also that "doctrines don't change" because "the gospel is eternal" (or has that changed too, now?).

To believe two things to be true, which both cannot be true, is of course Orwell's doublethink - a sine qua non of Mormon membership. And in fact, it is not too much to say that with the fall of the Soviet Empire, the Mormon church is the most spectacular remaining bastion of pure Orwellianism on earth.

Mormonism thrives on the human's natural attraction to certainty on humanity’s most profound questions; it thrives on the human's natural tendency to self-doubt; it thrives on the human's innate instinct to pack membership, especially in an elite pack; it thrives on the human's desire for immortality; it thrives on the human's instinct for falling in line behind an Alpha to work toward a common goal; it thrives on the human's instinct for aesceticism and altruism; it thrives on the human's ability to fear; it thrives on our intimations of a Higher Realm; etc. In short, it seeks to answer every innate human need. It is no wonder it has been attractive to so many.

But how were we to know the true cost of having these needs fulfilled? How could we have known that that cost ultimately was, the total obliteration of self?

For this is what Mormonism means in the end: the individual is obliterated. An ideology claiming to be the only way through which an individual may experience the full flower of blossomed potential, all along is the very force actively prohibiting the realization of that potential. One’s unique thoughts and dreams and goals and hopes and fears and talents only matter inasmuch as they feed the virus that is Mormon ideology, facilitating its further survival and growth. Beyond that, they do not exist. Indeed, they can not be permitted to exist.

Even worse (and needless to say), the entire justification for this obliteration is a lie. Joseph Smith was smart, driven, and talented. But Joseph Smith did not have, in reality, a personal interview with God and Jesus; did not actually find gold plates in a hole in a nearby hill; did not translate the Book of Abraham, the Book of Mormon, the Bible, the Kinderhook Plates, or pass on the dictations of Jesus of Nazareth; was not ordained by Peter, James, John, or John the Baptist; did not have an angel appear over his head commanding him to marry already married women lest he be killed; did not have an angel physically appear in his room, or see Moses or Elijah; he was not a prophet in the way he claimed. He knew he was not, but did not come clean – not even when people died for the religion he started. It was in fact he who initiated Mormonism’s amoral pursuit of survival and growth, “just because”.

And so, the sad fact is, Joseph did not tell the truth. He lied.

This means that the obliteration of our selves is only the first part of the story of any member. The second part is, the reconstruction of our selves so as to embody Lie. Yes, we become Lie. We smile, but are not happy. We serve in callings, but are not spiritually fulfilled. We say we “know”, but do not know. We say we are growing spiritually, but our minds and spirits are closed to anything that does not fit inside the currently sanctioned dogmas of the church, and we do not really grow at all.

Inside, we feel hollow, and feel guilty about it. We castigate ourselves for our weaknesses, almost sometimes loathe ourselves, but then tell ourselves how glad we are to know “I am a child of God” and have a sense of self-esteem. We tell ourselves we do not judge, but are then continually comparing our own performance to that of every other member we see. We tell ourselves truth can come from all places, but then disdain anyone’s opinion that doesn’t agree with an official church position. When they change that position, we believe the new one, and feel grateful the church remains constant in a world of shifting winds. We puzzle over doctrines that don’t make sense in secret, but then publicly testify that “we are so grateful for a perfect Saviour and his perfect gospel”.

We lie – to God, to our spouses and children, to our friends and relatives, and to ourselves. And what is most sinister is, we are consenting. We are the builders of our new self, Lie. We do the heavy lifting of self-obliteration, and then try to force ourselves into a brand new ill-suited mould not of our own creation, ignoring every dim thought that crosses the backs of our minds, every spiritual intimation that something, somewere is wrong. After all, we “know” those thoughts and intimations can only be from Satan. Satan is everywhere. We should be very afraid.

Satan is doubt, and questioning, and wondering. And Satan is dangerous. And if we can’t think without once in a while questioning, there is only one solution: begin the process of stopping ourselves from rationally examining the church. Through prayer and extreme mental effort over months and years, this can be achieved; once it is, the possibility of dangerous thoughts and feelings and impressions we sense is very remote. After all, those parts of us had to be sacrificed - killed for the institution to survive and grow.

Our fear of falling from this ideal, though precarious, mental state, induces us to restrict what we watch, what we hear, what we read, what we speak. At the same time, we feel content knowing that the Holy Spirit is the strongest indicator of truth there is (so that we really should have nothing to fear in contemplating everything, always); but we don't notice any inconsistency.

Our goal becomes essentially, though we are not conscious of its true nature, to come to think, breathe, feel, speak – BE - every lie told in an ideological maze built entirely of lies, without noticing, ever. It is a war against every faculty of thought and spiritual discernment God has given us. To win, then, is to cease to be truly human. It is to cease living altogether as the miraculous creation God made. We laugh at those True Believers that now have entirely lost their capacity for reason; and yet, we once were rushing headlong toward the exact state, and were doing so willingly. We could, regardless of how much we would like to disbelieve it, be them.

And so, in the name of life, the “gospel” saps life. In the name of living forever, it seems to make us prematurely old. In the name of self-fulfillment, it thwarts self-fulfillment. In the name of truth, it lies. In the name of love, it demonizes those who walk away from it. In the name of families, it takes men and women away from families to serve the institution, and helps break up families when one member won’t pledge total allegiance to the institution above everything else.

In the name of immortality, it stifles and twists our own sojourn through mortality. In the name of giving, it asks endlessly for more and more sacrifice from members. In the name of morality, it retreats from every moral position that might inhibit its growth. In the name of revelation, it erases revelation. In the name of peace, it creates unfathomable stress for its members. In the name of fearlessness, it preys on and exaggerates fear. In the name of boldness, its spokesmen play word games and use evasive language. In the name of humble Christian service, it creates thousands of miniature authoritarian leaders, whose only boundaries are those set by the authoritarian leader above him. In the name of the individual, it destroys the individual. In the name of black, it is white. In the name of yes, it says no.

It is everything and nothing and its opposite, all in the service of its only core nature: an authoritarian tautology, which is why:

In the name of God, it eliminates God, and replaces him with a man at the top of a pyramid. Thus, it is not only amoral, but agnostic. In the name of God, it functions as if God did not exist.

And so, my declamation against Mormonism is not in the name of libertinism or immorality or antinomianism at all. It is in the name of the very Being that Mormonism lays claim to, but that it profanes in every way imaginable.

I want God. I seek him. I want that eternal peace and joy and love and truth, and I suppose, that is why I feel those things now more than ever. Mormonism is incompatible with this.

That's what I found at the bottom of Mormonism.

RB



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2011 05:59PM by foundoubt.

He has a good talk recorded at the exmormon conference site. He spoke there in 2005. http://www.exmormonfoundation.org/audio2005.html.

---
Just read foundoubt's repost of "RB's" laying out Mormonism as an authoritarian tautology. It's one of the best things I've ever read on how terrible the price is that the church exacts from us. Reminds of Bob McCue at his best (which he generally is!), but RB uses the rhetoric of listing to great advantage. He just piles on the church's lies until the reader is just saying, How could anyone read this and still have one ounce of faith in the church? RB has a clear idea of the basic problems--loss of individuality, circular logic of totalitarian rule, basis of church ("just because"), pyramid of power. Scary really. No wonder people in Illinois and Missouri wanted Joseph Smith dead. They knew instinctively that this was not just a new protestant sect--this was something sinister and wrong.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2011 06:55PM by derrida.

It lists number of stakes and congregations in 1999 vs 2009.

Congregations have been going up at under 1% per year. Considering that many of those congregations were created in new subdivisions (remember when we used to build new subdivisions!) so were filled with move-in members, not converts, real growth is almost certainly less than 1%. I personally think it is in the -1% to -2% range.

We will have some hard data on BIC Alberta Mormons when the Canadian census figures come out in mid 2012. They ask respondents to self-identify their religious affiliation. We will be able to compare that to LDS Inc's figures.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,116366,116366#msg-116366

Thanks Brother Of Jerry, I will read your post. So you are a paisano of Tal's it appears? Eh?

he and his wife Denise (Tal's stepmom) have a radio show about 60s music called Vinyl Tap. It is on Saturday evenings, and you can listen to it over the internet at
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/

It is on from 7 to 9 pm in whatever timezone you choose. For those of us of a certain age, it is a fun show.

I clicked the link and now I'm listening to the show. Having grown up during the 60s, I feel warm fuzzies when I hear this music. It must be "twoo"!

I last heard they had separated--don't know the final outcome. BUT I loved reading his story.

Gordon B. Hinckley's War Against The Atonement: What
have I gotten wrong?
Date: Jun 09 14:36
Author: Tal Bachman

Quick question.

Mormon theology casts the atonement of Jesus Christ as
"necessary", in that it satisfies pre-existing,
eternal, and unabrogable cosmic laws of justice which
must be satisfied. Mercy has not robbed justice, but
satisfied its demands, etc.

Those eternal, unabrogable laws stipulate that man is
a being with the opportunity for eternal progression,
who may so progress through obedience to those laws.

"Adam fell, that man may be". There was no other way
for humans to progress other than taking on a physical
body. This could only happen as a result of a fall.
"This is the way father got his knowledge", says Eve
in the endowment ceremony, etc.

Jesus asks in the Garden if there is another way
whereby he can save man from consignment to eternal
torment as punishment for his sins; God says no. There
is no other way other than through the shedding of
"innocent blood", Jesus's own. It must needs be an
"eternal" and "infinite" sacrifice, etc.

God became God because he obeyed all those laws which
lead to Godhood, including a sojourn on an earth,
according to Joseph Smith and subsequent church
presidents (presumably he was redeemed by some other
saviour or something...). He remains God because he
continues to obey those laws. There was no other way
(as the endowment ceremony and church teaching nearly
from the beginning makes clear) for him to achieve all
this. Mortality is a sine qua non of acquiring a
perfected (resurrected) body, eternally progressing,
and the ultimately receiving "all that the father
hath", being "joint heirs with Jesus Christ".

If you go back and read Gordon B. Hinckley's talks for
the last, say, ten plus years, he doesn't mention that
"as man is, God once was", that I remember. What's
more, is that on at least two occasions now, he has
denied that this is official church doctrine. And
while he mentioned in GC that he had sometimes been
misquoted, he has - very significantly, in my opinion
- NEVER retracted or clarified these statements, ever.
They have been allowed to stand by him.

My question is:

Since the endowment ceremony, eternal progression, and
the atonement all link fastly together in Mormon
theology, and can't be separated from each other
without blowing the whole thing up, doesn't GBH's
assertion that God wasn't necessarily ever a man,
tantamount to saying that the eternal laws which
Mormon theology claims govern the whole plan of
salvation - getting a body, redemption, resurrection,
etc. - aren't (we now say) "eternal laws" at all,
which is in turn tantamount to saying that Jesus
didn't really "need" to suffer and die at all (and
that perhaps God just kind of wanted that way for some
totally inexplicable reason which had nothing to do
with "law")?

How can one unabrogable law suddenly be portrayed as
being very much abrogable by Gordon B. Hinckley,
without him saying in effect that they are ALL
abrogable? They are all interlinked foundational
pillars forming the substructure of Mormon theology -
take one away, and the whole thing collapses.

And doesn't this mean that by the standards of Mormon
theology, Gordon B. Hinckley (though I'm sure he
hasn't thought of it this way) has actually struck a
devastating blow against the whole Mormon doctrine of
the atonement?

What have I gotten wrong here?

T.

Tal



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/2011 08:09PM by foundoubt.

Me, Runtu, and Tal used to always be posting parodies of stuff.

does anyone know why Tal Bachman doesn't post here any longer? Did he just decide it was time to move on? Maybe his wife forbids him- mine rolls her eyes whenever she sees me on this site. She can't understand why I can't just let it go.

I always appreciated his depth of reasoning. I wish he would continue to kick in some ideas from time to time.