Just branching off of "the shelf" post, I was curious about everybody. What were the first major things that threatened to break your shelf?

I was always bothered by the polygamy and blacks and the priesthood thing, but everyone knows about that, and it didn't seems as big a deal (which, looking back on it, makes no logical sense).

For me the first real issue that threatened the strength of my shelf was when I took a New Testament class at BYU-I (which is also where I found a strong disdain for all religion professors). We started off the class talking about Mary praying to God while He revealed to her that she would be the mother of Jesus. He then proceeded to proclaim matter-of-factly how God then came down and had god sex with Mary, which is how Jesus was able to be both man and god. I was horrified! But I managed to stay for another 4 years before calling it quits.

(I hated religion professors from then on because I noticed how they would flaunt their "shelf" around saying, "I have more faith than all of you because I'm able to ignore the most vial of things and still believe!")

That the plan of salvation is really just a pyramid scheme and nothing more..

You name it, it was on there. Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, all the stupid stories in the book of mormon, the fact that the church was wealthy, and had a bunch of real estate and farmland that no one really talked about. Polygamy, blacks, etc, God sounding like an a$$hole in the D&C...

I was aware very early on (around 14) that I believed in Mormonism because I had been raised in Mormonism. If I had been raised Jewish, Catholic, Baptist, Muslim, etc. I would believe that.

I began asking how someone could "really know" and nobody could ever answer me to my satisfaction because their explanation was how everyone in their respective religions had also come to "know". But, instead of deciding it was all made up, I decided something must be wrong with me for my lack of faith. So I just tried not to think about my doubts. Then came the history starting with Fanny Alger and I had a moment of, "I knew it wasn't true. Their the messed up ones, not me."

Temple work was something I never felt right about.....dont get me wrong, I tried to go every month. But it seemed like a secret combination to me... I always doubted as to whether or not it was really necessary for salvation. According to the BoM and the Bible, it just didn't make sense. I was playing with the idea of going once a week. (I REALLY wanted to please God....and boy wouldn't everyone see how spirichul I was!.....barf) so I began fasting and praying for my own little verification that temple work was legit. Soon after I stumbled on to some info about the Book of Abraham. Things came crashing down soon after.

To many doctrinal issues to even address and then Prop. 8 came on the scene (I live in California). I slammed the door to my ward chapel and said, "Enough is enough, I am free now."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2013 04:45PM by george.

First off, I'd like to know how good god-sex is. Must be divine, right? Just asking.

Anyway, I had read--and I don't know where or why or when--that there was a huge discrepancy between the Book of Commandments (forerunner to D&C) and the D&C itself. Apparently, once Smith began to claim that he and Cowdery had received the priesthood from heavenly messengers, he had to go back and reverse-engineer the D&C to make it so. He even changed some dates around in order to make it jibe. I hadn't really thought much about just how bad, shaky, or dodgy everything else in the church was. I just knew that there was stuff--something, somewhere--wrong with the church. This was 2007.

While researching this, I came across exmormon.org, and began to read and read and read, then discovered mormonc*rtain.com (forbidden to list this site here, on accounta the fact that they like to cut and paste stuff from here), and that led me to Bob McCue, to Simon Southerton, and beyond. I did a lot of reading and researching. I was living in Africa, and had no Internet access unless I came into work, so I'd come in to my office on Saturdays and Sundays under the pretext that I had to see if my equipment was running correctly or if there had been official cables to look at, etc. I could not quit reading the ex-Mo sites. What affected me the most was history. I love and respect history. History happened. I have a deep distaste for people mucking with stories and changing them, therefore when I discovered the extent to which Mormons have revised and obfuscated their history, I was exceedingly angry. My "shelf" collapsed at that point in a giant pile of dust and splinters. In short order, I decided I that my only resolution for the problem was to resign; I resigned once I got back to the states and settled into my new assignment.

Funny thing is, one guy's shelf is not necessarily even on another guy's radar. I mean, I have people in my family who are totally unconcerned about the church lying about its history. In fact, some are quite sympathetic with the church when it comes to a "need" to lie, and they couch it in terms of needing to protect the church. I guess everyone has a different kind of shelf, or none at all. DW just slides her doubts backward and they fall off into some ravine never to bother her again.

It is very interesting how people internalize incongruities. I had plenty of things on my shelf from the moment I started investigating the church when I was 12. Someone asked our YW leader at the time about dinosaurs and how it related back to the Plan of Salvation. She replied with her belief that Satan put the dinosaur bones in the Earth to test our faith... Even at 12 I could detect such utter BS. But, for some reason, I stayed.

I know there will be many people that disagree with me when I say this, but I really think that at 12 years old I needed the church. I needed to feel like part of a family. And I learned a great deal about many great things. But I think once I realized that emotionally/spiritually/whatever it was, I no longer needed the church for comfort and security, then I started waking up intellectually. My brain told me the logical reasons why I needed to move on.

I think people won't have that "Ah-Hah" moment until they no longer need the church (or the church is a positive hindrance).
That's why no matter what you tell a TBM, they WILL NOT believe anything no matter how much evidence you have--because deep down they still need the security of the one true gospel of Christ. And there's nothing wrong with that. It seems stupid and can be painful, but we just have to let everyone live their own journey. Sermon over.

I learned about multiple versions of the First Vision. Sounded suspicious to me. But I managed to cram that somewhere in my memory and literally forgot about it for 10+ years.

Also, every time he wanted something, JS got revelation, and God always agreed with him. How convenient. Yeah, that seemed kind of sketchy. I forgot about that, too.

When I first glanced at the subject line, I read it as "What's in Your Wallet?" Oy vey.

I was a science nerd in HS, and grew up in a city full to the brim with fairly recent immigrants to the US, so I had lots of exposure to European languages. It was clear that they were all, including the Slavic languages, closely related. Native American languages should be showing obvious Hebrew roots. Why was that not the case? Plus the other inconsistencies in the BoM bothered me. I put them on the shelf.

Then the BOA papyri were returned to LDS Inc, and I figured, finally, some hard evidence. This will prove JS was a prophet. It was hard evidence alright. The shelf took a serious hit, and collapsed completely about 3 years later. It took that long to admit to myself that this was going to totally and profoundly rearrange my life, but that I had no real choice.

Priesthood (blacks and women), polygamy and the temple were all on my shelf.

Mine was a pile of sand. I could read D&C and then look and see what was taught and what "changed". Too many changes for it to be right.

I read a book written by a non-Mormon that detailed many of the troubling aspects of Mormon history that I had never heard of before.

Then it was going through the endowment and realizing it was possibly ripped off from the Masonic ceremony,

Learning the dirty details of polygamy.

What really buried my testimony was reading Jerald & Sandra Tanner's book Mormonism-Shadow or Reality. I held up pretty strong until then. After reading it I finally said to myself, "I don't think the church is true."

Yrral

Eom

Ylruc

Hahahahahahahaha!!!!

Human suffering of millions of innocent children. Lack of modern day prophecy. Judgmentalism. Sexism.

For me I guess it was the temple, it was my wedding day when I was endowed and it was all too much to take in, but it all felt ,strange,. I was sort of wierded out. When my brother told me a few years later when he went that he was also weirded and kept thinking of the masons, I understood totally.

Then when my husband started using his priesthood to control me, I was really taken aback. He kept insistig he had priesthood rights to order me around and criticise me, but I didn;t buy it and was told I was stubborn. But the church,s teachings seemed to back him up.

Then when my marriage finally broke up and the actions of tscc were SO out of line with what I had been told should happen, I had had ENOUGH and down came the shelf and fluhist with it!!!