I have recently left the church. I was a TBM who was completely devout. I always felt like I had a close relationship with God. I haven't been able to get myself to pray for months and I don't know what I believe anymore. I feel like I'm starting from ground zero. I've been attending a bible study, but if anything it just makes me more angry-because it reminds me of being a Morbot that believed everything I was told. What are your beliefs since leaving?

The Bible is too obviously Hebrew mythology. The flood is a common motif in Middle Eastern religions because of the Tigris-Euphrates (Epic of Gilgamesh). Abraham likely never existed. Read Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible.

The Gospels of the New Testament was written 100 years after JC. Paul was the closest to him in time, and that was after he died. The authors of the Gospels adopted the names of the apostles. They were not actually Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.

The Bible was heavily edited at Nicaea, with many works thrown out for being pro-feminist or pro-gnostic.

Personally, I am a Deist. I think a creator may be likely, but I don't believe in an interventionist God. If God has a plan for us, it's not for him to meddle in our daily lives. Death is a feature, not a bug. Religion is the attempt of men to understand God, but no one knows for sure. Every religious leader today is relying on someone else's supposed encounter with God, and they manipulate that for power and money.

Having served a mission in France, I'm also shocked at how much of Existential philosophy I observed. When I finally studied Existentialism, I recognized many attitudes and thoughts that I'd picked up from the French that pave my paradigm.

I'd say this most closely describes my beliefs as well. I'd describe myself as agnostic though, with a belief that IF there is a God, He/She/It is not an interventionist. I lean towards belief, for multiple reasons, but I don't know exactly what to believe about God.

I don't believe that prayer is in vain. Even if there is no God, I think prayer can serve as a moment of pondering, reflection, expressing gratitude for things you recognize as good in your life. You can, of course, do this without addressing God as well.

Zen rocks.

Alan Watts lays it all out.

We are living in a cosmic drama and society has defined our roles int it. Once you are free of this manipulation you can write your own script and avoid the trappings of the material world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3x02dQTBjE

Agnostic tending towards atheist.

Religion and all religious texts are so obviously man made.

Same here. If you apply the same scrutiny and critical thinking that led you out of the church to the idea of God, most likely you will see it's all man made.

The hardest part about letting go of God is emotional. Remove the emotion and God disappears.

Then you can ask yourself introspective questions like, "Why do I need/want a different life? What's wrong with this one?"

I believe, like the Mark Twain quote frequently posted here, that where ever we go after this life, we won't be inconvenienced in the slightest for it.

ozpoof Wrote:
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> Agnostic tending towards atheist.
>
> Religion and all religious texts are so obviously
> man made.

Ever hear of the radical agnostic?

"I don't know--AND YOU DON'T EITHER!"

Yes, do begin from ground-zero. Study everything that you can get your hands on.

After I realized that the Book of Mormon was a work of fiction, that made me think, "Well, what about the Bible?"

So I studied the history of the Bible. I studied the history of how Satan came to be in our culture. I determined that it is all man-made. It's all about man trying to understand where he came from.

Then I turned to science. I studied Evolution, for the first time really, because Mormonism had taught me to simply dismiss it. A scientist challenged me by saying, "Anyone who doesn't believe in Evolution hasn't really studied it."

I thought, "Oh, dear. That's not good. Maybe I should look into this." I found some videos on YouTube which explained it in laymans terms. I came away going, "Well I'll be. It is real," and I was able to understand what it is and what it isn't.

If God exists, then he/she/it is probably different from what anyone has imagined. But the more I study science, the more I realized that the possibility of a god is pretty much non-existent.

It takes courage to search for the truth, but after I left Mormonism and realized that I'd been lied to for 30 years, I thought to myself, "Okay, all I want now is the truth, no matter what that truth is."

So I keep studying and I search for truth, no matter how uncomfortable that truth might be.

But when it comes to the question of whether or not there's a god, there is only one real truth. We don't know. No one does, and that's the truth.

There are many beliefs out there and some people believe something whole-heartedly, but it's not a knowledge. We just don't know.

I now don't believe, but I don't 'know,' as the Mormons so strongly like to claim.

I know it's a huge letdown but the alternative of believing in prayer would waste your life.

I know what you mean. I don't know what I believe any more. I have no desire to go to another church and I don't want to listen to any "religious" jargon. TSCC really messes you up and your brain up.

it doesn't matter.

The Bible, even when I was TBM, always seemed to be chock-full of troubling little tidbits. Like the Israelites (God's chosen) committing genocide. Or in the New Testament, the lack of internal consistency. Jesus in some places states "yoke is easy and my burden is light;" in others, he tells people to take up the sword and follow him.

One thing the lds church has right is that the Bible can't be right, because it leads people in so many different directions. I thought of it like an instruction manual -- give me and ten other guys a set of ikea furniture and the assembly guide and usually what we make will all come out the same. However, do the same with the bible, and everyone will come to totally separate conclusions.

So, I no longer believe 'in the bible.' I don't believe in the Urantia book, the Koran, or anything else either. People who intellectually make their way out of the LDS church and into christianity baffle me.

It's "take up your cross and follow me" rather than "sword". Quite a bit of difference there.

I like what a contemporary rabbi says about the Torah, the first five book of the OT. He says the Torah can be taken on multiple levels. One one it's stories that children and the simplest of people can know. On another level it's instruction, on another it's mystical (the Kabbalah), and on another it's esoteric. The Christian landscape currently is populated with literalists, and of course one of the huge problems with the BOM and any JS "translation" or "revelation" is these are to be taken exactly literally in every aspect. But the best, most "faith inspiring" parts of the BOM aren't the history of Christ and the Jews in The New World but the passages JS and Cowdery plagerized directly from the NT and put into the mouths of fictional characters. It's impossible to say, really, whether Smith's original intention was to deliberately mislead people, simply to found a new church or to fill in the blanks and tie up loose ends in the Bible.

It's interesting to me that science is the compelling reason given so often on this forum for not believing in God, and the contradictory messages in the Bible are reason to lump it in the same category as the BoA and BOM. In the mean time, we all wait for a unified field theory.

It's almost as if "the one true church"'s last gotcha is 'if you don't believe in us, you won't believe in anything.' It's the last means by which tscc still controls you. I hope you'll take it back. If you're in a Bible study class or hearing messages that tell you what to believe instead of encouraging you to grow in your relationship with God, find a different church.

When asked about the difference in teachings from one rabbinical school to another, a Hasidic rabbi said it isn't that this school or that hasthe only correct way to face the Torah; there are 144,000 faces to the Torah, one for each Jew present when Moses came down from the mountain. Yeah. If you're still holding on to the KJV, let me suggest reading the Bible in a modern English translation, most of which are more accurate than the KJV.

"If you're in a Bible study class or hearing messages that tell you what to believe instead of encouraging you to grow in your relationship with God, find a different church."

Or another way to say it is, "If your friend tells you to 'grow your relationship with God', find a different friend."

Friends don't let friends date invisible Gods (or girlfriends).

I explored other churches in my youth.

I've read multiple translations of the bible. The god described in the bible is not one I'm interested in worshiping.

I know some people find the ceremonies and rituals of religion to be fulfilling, but simply put, I find the substance of most religion to be trite and unhelpful. Having said that, I think the Buddhists are on to something with their emphasis on being able to control your thoughts and live mindfully, I just haven't found that kind of practical advice from the western religions.

As with others, I'm not really believing anything anymore, after seeing how many were fooled by the lies of JS.

That said, I like this quote attributed to Marcus Aurelius:

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”

I know that the bible exists and I do not have the power to stop it from being a steaming pile of shit.

Pagan/agnostic but open to all new ideas.

The bible is a collection of myths, legends, political philosophy, and psychonautical ramblings. The latter are probably the closest to cosmic truths.

After the LDS experience, you're left to explain the miracles you witnessed while LDS in a different context or to pretend they never happened.

I would chalk it up to the power of the hive mind. There's some kind of power in the universe, a power of goodness that's not explainable except through myth.

That depends on the miracle. Many become coincidence once viewed critically, others become faith healing (placebo effect), others delusion. If there was a large body of credible, verified miracles, the world would have moved en masse to whichever sect was displaying them.

The Bible? What a joke. The only things that have been rewritten more times and bastardized more times than the Bible are the original screenplays for Ishtar, Waterworld, and Battle Field Earth.

No one has ever given me a good reason yet to believe in anything but evolution and to think that we are lucky as hell to even exist. Evolution is the Miracle, not the worlds myriad gods.

All religion is based on HEARSAY, and nothing else.

The Bible was invented around 600 BCE as an attempt to preserve Hebrew identity during the invasions. Don't believe in anything you read from the Bible that takes place earlier than that, and don't take it too seriously either, since it was specifically written for a culture far different from our own. The New Testament was invented by Hebrews in the later part of the first century ACE for completely different reasons and was adopted by a western culture much more similar to our own than the ancient Hebrew one, making it significantly more applicable to us, but it too is severely outdated, and suffers from many of the same mythological problems.

If you want something to believe in, believe in people and believe in science.

IMHO, the BoM doesn't come close to teaching the lessons - even with the questions of authenticity - of the KJ Bible.

Mormons, unfortunately (?) are beyond considering the concepts of this thread, they 'just don't want to know' anything M/L than what their leaders tell them.

I considered myself agnostic until I put my beliefs as agnostic on fb and I didn't like the definition that they associated with it on there--so I consider myself a nonbeliever in anything.

It was a Christian preaching on RfM who destroyed my belief in the bible.

I've always considered my beliefs a very personal thing--and I also have learned not to worry about any of it as I don't really KNOW anything.

good point, cl; Mormons have done their best to establish what to others are personal, private thoughts (beliefs) as GroupThink.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2013 12:11PM by guynoirprivateeye.

The bible is a collection of ancient legends re-written to enlighten a more modern society. That is ancient judaism and modern christainity

I kind of admire the Bible a little, but it's all so much Shiz. Might as well be reading the Quran.

I've never read it. What I know comes second hand. I never put much stock in what's in it, or not. I always figured that being honest and treating ones fellow humans with respect trumps whatever is in some book I don't care about.

Ron Burr

Personally I'm atheist, but my personal philosophy is that if your belief system - or lack thereof - works for you, makes you happy, and helps you be the best version of yourself, then kudos (so long as you never use your belief system to justify causing harm or permitting harm to others).

Over the course of several months after I left TSCC, I went through a transition from deist to agnostic to atheist. Basically, I came to my conclusions because I realized I was looking for reasons to justify a belief, and not reasons to have that belief in the first place. I was starting from the premise that there WAS a god, and trying to find something that fit that mold. But then I changed the way I looked at it, and asked myself if there as any reason to believe in a god. I have yet to find one.

I find religion to be scary since leaving the morg but as for the Bible I think I like what it says. I don't think a lot is applicable to our day and age and I don't like that many books were left out because a group of MEN decided it should be that way. I don't like any of the churches I've visited but still feel a spiritualness deep inside me that finds a Creator when I am surrounded by nature. I consider myself to be Christian but don't think I could ever swallow the dogma preached from some pulpit in some building. I long to be a part of a group but not a church. Maybe a group which could study the Bible without putting a spin on it. Then maybe I could really decide what I believe. It's amazing how I can be out of tscc for many years and yet still be wandering in search of a spiritual home. I know I can't tolerate the lies in religions I've investigated. Thanks to the morg I have a built in bull$hit detector.

Anthony Flew, lifelong atheist, became a believer in God because of DNA.

This is a really good article.

http://www.existence-of-god.com/flew-abandons-atheism.html

What changed Flew’s mind?

Although Flew now believes that the case for the existence of God is powerful, he continues to reject outright the ontological, cosmological, and moral arguments for God’s existence.



For Flew, it is the argument from design that shows that the existence of God is probable. He has been impressed by recent scientific developments that suggest that the universe is the product of intelligent design. “It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design,” explains Flew

Looks like first of all, he was past 80, and there are arguments that his opinion changed with a change in his mental capacity. That, and I'd wager that for some people, getting closer to death makes atheism less appealing.

As for DNA as his basis, a quick read of his wikipedia profile would indicate that his concern comes down to the idea that there's no explanation for where the DNA of the first reproducing creatures came from. Who birthed the first born organism?

That's pretty much where you would expect the Adam myth would come from: men are born, so who gave birth to the first man? I guess God must have done it.

He went back far enough to find an unexplained thing, and defaulted to deity.