very FIRST thing that got you to question the church or to stop going? For me it was curiosity. I thought, "why does the church tell us to stay away from anti-mormon literature and what exactly is it?"

It was all downhill for me after that (or should I say uphill). The church really emphasizes and I believe, brainwashes, its members to think that inactives or non-believers were offended and that's why they stopped going to church. I wonder how much of that claim is really accurate.

So I ask you guys: what was it for you? What was it that got the ball rolling for you?

My first wake-up call was the masturbation thing.

When I began to figure out that the books of Genesis, Moses and Abraham did not mesh well with science. As I read more and learned more I found out they don't mesh with science AT ALL! It took five long years of research but in the end I had to submit a letter of resignation. I've been out for 11+ years and no regrets. I continue to read about astronomy, cosmology, evolution, neuroscience and an eclectic mix of other stuff.

For me it was learning about the conflicting versions of the first vision.

I can still remember the feeling I had when I realized that JS likely made it all up.

I felt lighter than air that day, since I realized that I wasn't such a bad guy after all.

and stair-stepping of callings. The better I did at something, the more crap they kept giving me to do. I like to do well at whatever I am doing. I don't like being half-ass. Yet I saw a lot of brethren being half-ass. I knew the church was just a good social organization that tried to follow Jesus--no more true than any other church. So I lost patience pretty quick with the rat race, busywork quality of it all.

The first problem I had was when I was in elementary school and I heard of the ban on blacks holding the priesthood. I had been raised as a Kennedy/Johnson liberal and that just didn't sit well with me.I also had problems with women being expected to obey their husbands. Not me. I don't think so.

Reading the various versions of the First Vision. It hit me that if God and Christ appeared to me, I sure as hell wouldn't confuse how many of them there was, who they were and when it happened.

Bonus, the earliest version was in written by Smith himself. No scribe could have screwed up that one.

It was clear as day to me after reading and comparing the details of the various versions that this guy was lying thru his teeth about the entire experience.

Then I learned the rest of the real history and poof - a year later, I wasn't LDS anymore!

I left after several years in early 80s, pre-internet and was a young convert:

Blacks and Phood [What? I wasn't told any of this]

ERA and TSCCs response [Don't get me started]

Primary teacher and Sacrament [Where is Jesus?? Are we Christian or Smithians?? Profit this, Profit that. Hello??]

Temple baptisms and endowment [WTF did I join??]

No time, no energy, no independent thought, invisible, lonely, exhausted.

That pretty much covers it. THANK GOD I was raised Protestant and had a REAL Biblical background.

FREAKIN CULT. All you lurkers out there, THINK-THINK-THINK for yourselves. You are being brainwashed and deceived by a corporation that just wants your money, time, labor, children, brain, body, retirement, and life.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2011 04:49PM by FreeRose.

It was prop 8 that shook me. I couldn't just keep going 'cause "it was a good way to raise kids." Really?! Teaching my boys to hate? I knew at that point, I had to make a choice and I took it very seriously. My little guys' eternal salvation was at stake. It was not a quick process. I met with the bishop the end of 2009 and haven't been back.

It was then that I really started to research and the more I learned, the more confident I was in my decision.

WHAT A RELIEF that it was all a big lie. Yes, I was angry and all that too, but mostly I was just overwhelmed with peace. I didn't have to believe all that crap anymore.

The truth really can set you free.

I actually stopped going before I started questioning. After about 2 years of not going to church, paying my tithing or even THINKING about spirituality and god, then I started to question. I've been fine without god for 2 years, why do I even believe this stuff anyway?
And since then It has been a huge mental awakening and researching festival to see the Church, religion and god for what it really is: a laughably absurd vehicle of fear.

I grew up in a mostly mormon family. My parents were semi-active. My father always taught me to always question and analize things before believing to much. As I grew older I seen so much discrimnation and us versis them attitude. I felt that was not a "religion" was about.

That was back when I was a little kid. I thought they were like fairytales. But I believed the adults and kept plugging along for a couple of more decades, picking up other things that made me go, "Huh?"

early morning seminary

MORmON battalion

MORmON temple ceremony

full time MORmON mission

LDS Inc funding of 2002 olympic bid scandal

Gordon BS Hinckley lies on national TV Larry King Live Sep 8 1998


done, out, over

Finding out Joseph Smith lied about the first vision. Finding out the current head honchos are also lying.

For me, the very first thing would be that I never had a spiritual confirmation or answer to prayer...and that has been the theme that underlies the whole journey. Next, it was witnessing various behaviors and general ineptitude of men who were supposedly "called of God." I guess I just questioned everything and never had satisfactory answers. Oh, and the suicidal thoughts...that's gotta figure in there somewhere too.

That of course led to the fact that there's no inspiration in it anywhere... and that it's just another man-made organization.

It started when I was 10 and was toid about eternal polygamy. I didn't like the sound of that. I was never satisfied with that 'you'll understand when you get there' crap. As i got older i realized i didn't want to go to the temple, then later that the ck would kinda suck. I also got tired about hearing about the bom. I was out when I no longer lived with my family.

No wait...I actually left because I was offended and wanted to sin. I was also following a guy named Stan at the time.

I think the very first thing which made me question it was 9/11. It made me stop to think about how anyone of any faith could bear testimony of the truth of their own religion, with tears in their eyes and with as much sincerity as any Mormon could.

There were people out there who were so sure of their faith that they were willing to die and to kill for it.

It suddenly felt extremely arrogant to claim to have the one and only truth. And here we were, in this one small, rather insignificant church, claiming to be the only people on earth, .002 percent of the population, who had the truth.

I felt a little embarrassed as that realization hit.

I really need some answers to a personal crisis. Why am i NOT getting any answers?

Why does god want me to be a dumbass follower with no thots at all? Wouldn't that be hell in heaven for HIM as he'd have to go around to all us telling us what to do for all eternity, since thinking on our own was burned out of us. That's GOT to be wrong. That CANT be the first law of heaven.

Why is church full of 'fluff'n'stuff? Nothing there for anyone going thru a real crisis- any worse than losing your job.

Why do they seal dead people together in the temple without finding out whether they even WANTED to stay together any longer? Maybe they were happy they weren't together. Who am i to 'fix' a problem that may not even be a problem?

Why is it that i look at the older members and i wouldn't want to be like them? If decades in the church haven't made these people almost godlike, then what was the church for? Since it proclaims to be god's church, it should know how to encourage people to be wonderful people, as it gets its instructions directly from god himself. Not seeing the results of this in members i knew had been in the church for 30+ years as adults.

These are questions i had while still a church-going member, transitioning from the front row of the class, to a back row heckler ( in my mind, anyway). It took 10 years for that stuff to muck around in my head before i left.

Bottom line: I was offended.

No, I never really cared for church but still had to go until I left the house and got married. I wasn't sure if it was BS or not at that point. People just always seemed fake to me growing up in TSCC though.

I was 25 when my dad showed me the DNA vs BoM documentary. From there, I started looking into church history a bit more. I told my TBM mom about DNA vs. BoM and she just said, "So what does that prove?"

A friend asked me whether or not there was anything good in Mormonism that couldn't be found somewhere else.

I couldn't find ONE goddamn thing. There was nothing unique about my "true" religion.

Besides that, I couldn't find anything good in Mormonism that didn't carry a price, like guilt, that couldn't be found elsewhere.

About two seconds after I realized this about Mormonism, I realized that it was true about every other religion that I had ever looked at as well.

This is how I became the well adjusted man I am today.

It was my Grandpa when I was about 12. He told me that there never was and never will be a church of God. Grandpa told me the Church of God is the nature around as.
The true classroom of god is nature.
He told me always to check what people say compare what they do. And there was plenty to watch.

Went to war, Iraq 2003, certain that faith testimony and priesthood would allow me to persevere through whatever might come. Saw and experienced things that kicked the shit out of that theory. After that questioning what I had believed my whole life came more easily. Like others here, finding emperical, documented answers to questionable mormon claims compelled against accepting them as true.

was that it seemed to me inexplicable why God made women intelligent. Without the priesthood or being held responsible for their own behavior, why were any women smart? The only answer was that it was a more perfect sacrifice when smart women became LDS and sacrificed their intellectual abilities to serve God as babymakers.

That did not set well and I put it aside, or on the "shelf" as I've heard some call it.

Then I was deeply offended when attendees of the Clarkston Martin Harris pageant spit on my young children when they tried to hadn out flyers for our family business. They thought the kids were passing out anti-Mormon literature. I shook with anger and thought there was definitely something wrong with people who, after an inspiring presentation like that, had no problem doing something so unChristlike.

Then I read the New Testament pretending I had never heard of Jesus before and discovered that the Bible contradicted the Book of Mormon. When I pointed it out to my bishop he explained it by saying that LDS have a more recent prophet (than Jesus), so we "go" with the most recent information.

That did it.

Anagrammy

The first thing I remember that got me to thinking was when I was REALLY YOUNG and realized that there were a few billion people in the world but only a few million mormons and most were white and living in the mountain states.

I remember thinking that it made no sense that there was only one true church and such a small percentage of the earth were members. And not only that, a lot of the mormons I knew in my ward were pretty flakey. How could they be more valiant than other people? Made no sense. And how was it I happened to be born in the only true church?

Why were there hardly any Chinese who were Mormon? What was so bad about them? What about people in India? No mormons there.

The whole thing just didn't add up. I couldn't get my mind around God being racist and arbitrary I guess.

I was a convert at 15 in 1979. Grew up in Miami Beach in the 70s surrounded at the time by Holocaust survivors living out their retirement years on the beach. I assumed the one true church was going to be all about a spiritual community that fought against all forms of injustices. A church founded by God to heal the world. It was extremely disturbing from the beginning when I began to hear about how some people were more important to God than others. Some more worthy of protection, help, family blessings, etc.

It struck me as so strange listening to those first general conferences hearing general authorities talk about their service in the military during World War II. No one mentioned the Holocaust. No one mentioned the injustices or atrocities in the world. The reason military service was mentioned was to talk about prayer and God's protection. And Paul Dunn talking about his heroics during the war. It seemed so strange these testimonies that there's a God "because he saved me." Nothing about how the gospel of Christ required that we stand up against injustice and unnecessary wars. Nothing about remembering that people suffer so much in the world.

But like many others who stayed too long, there were things about the church I thought I needed at the time. So the cognitive dissonance became my constant companion--kind of like the Holy Ghost.

Seriously...I was explaining to my TBM mother over the weekend why I started doubting as a child. She always believed that I lost my faith at BYU, but I explained to her that I never understood why an abusive jerk like my brother was allowed to have all the fancy trappings of the priesthood but my sisters and I were not? It didn't make sense to a 5 year old. Later on, I started to question "Why are black people held accountable for Cain's sins, but white people aren't for Adams?"
I put these things on the shelf, along with polygamy until I felt safe enough to question these things outloud. I stopped going to church about 2 months into BYU and resigned 10 years ago.
I'm still learning revolting history and doctrine.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2011 09:13PM by Itzpapalotl.

For me it was the churches stance on mental illness and its deemed disqualificaion on missionary service

1 semester at BYU did it for me. Even if the church was true I didn't want to be one of those people. I saw people from my home town who were acting out a role. Pretending to be people they weren't.

After a while I realized that nearly everybody there was an actor. Myself included. I didn't like that.

I read, The Mormon Murders", WOW! a real eye opener, I started doupting everything after that, free at last.

Very First: When I heard (on NPR) that Juanita Brooks had died...I started looking into what info (MMM) she had developed, published.


Then/Next: My interactons with ChurchCo taught me, Repeatedly that: They don't stand behind their own claims (especially about Honesty) Honesty<>ChurchCo. that was IT; (local) leaders Insulted me / my wanting Facts - the Truth to be the standard in church (OF ALL PLACES!)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2011 12:55AM by guynoirprivateeye.