I've been watching John Dehlin's interviews on Mormon Stories. In several of them, he has asked the interviewee what piece of information they learned about the church freaked them out the most when they lost their faith.

It got me thinking about what freaked me out the most. Here's my list:

1. Joseph Smith practiced polygamy. I had no idea. We had always been taught that Joseph and Emma had this beautiful relationship, and the perfect marriage, and then I find out after 30 years of believing this, that it was quite the opposite. Along with the Smith polygamy shock, I was further shocked by the polyandry and the pedophilia.

2. The Temple Ceremony. I was always told that when you went to the temple, you would learn sacred truths about Jesus Christ and God. Then I read "Secret Ceremonies" and I was KNOCKED OVER! The ceremony is a bunch of secret handshakes and passwords, and Satan has a bigger role than any gospel character. I never went to the temple, and I mourned for years that I never went, so it really affected me when I found this out.

3. Book of Abraham, Kinderhook Plates, BOM translation. I, like many of you, was shown the pictures of Joseph TRANSLATING PLATES. Then I find out that there was a rock in a hat, and a funeral text, and a set-up to prove Joseph was not translating. It rocked my world!

I had no idea of any of this...found out most of it when I was about 35 years old. I was not BIC, but my parents joined when I was 5, so Mormonism was all I knew.

These 3 things really hit me hard...then everything else fell like dominoes.

How about you guys? What was the aspect of exposing the fraud that knocked you over?

applesauce

The misinformation I can deal with. It's the culture that creeps me out: to this day I can't believe I regularly associated (and to some extent still do) with men who are all wearing white shirts (including sometimes myself!).

This simple act of conformity hits me whenever I'm around it. Now I see a guy on the street or on the bus with a white shirt--never mind if it's a Mormon or not--and I want to retch.

Conformity is a plague that saps us of our humanity. It's like seeing an elderly lady with advanced osteoporosis trying to walk; she can't even stand up.

A white shirt is heavier and more pernicious than Sisyphus' rock. At least Sisyphus was assigned his rock from without; Mormon men CHOOSE to put on their white shirts, to be obedient submissive hollow cookie-cutter vestiges of humans, of their own volition.

What a pathetic self-denying piece of crap I was!

The temple. Absolutely. And it freaked me out when I had "faith," not after.

I got fondled (yes, literally) by the old fart doing the annointing, which put me in shock. I couldn't believe we were walking around naked with just a poncho on. The clothes were ridiculous. The rituals absurd, like something a fourth-grader making up a secret club would come up with. The death gestures (this was 1978) both absurd and scary. The wonderful "celestial room" a big letdown. I walked out of there wondering what happened to the "jesus wants me for a sunbeam" church I thought I'd grown up in. If I hadn't left for my mission a week later, I probably would have bailed on the church within a month. All the mission did was delay my exit for 2 years.

Despite going on my mission, working hard, trying to believe and obey, etc. I knew the moment I finished my own "endowment" that I wasn't going to stay. That's what did it for me. The rest, knowing about the church's lies, the complete failure of the BoA, and all the rest -- they just confirmed to me that I'd made the right choice. It was the temple nonsense that did it.

The way everybody hyped it up before I went for the first time, I kind of expected the spiritual equivalent of an orgasm.

It fell sadly short of that.

I was exhausted from an overnight bus trip from our small town in Louisiana (wouldn't you know, there is now a temple in Baton Rouge!!) to the temple in Atlanta. So I was already kind of groggy.

Then they had that tiresome film (from which I remember virtually nothing) and all the hoo-ha with the clothing. Having to switch things around from one way to another - and people fussed if you didn't get it just right.

I was bored half to death, and there wasn't anything spiritual about any of it.

But afterward, everybody looked at me with eager expectation, just waiting for me to say how SPESHUL it had been. I didn't dare let them down. I liked these people, after all. So I smiled and played nice, and felt like a hypocrite.

I went once more, just in case I had missed something, and realized that it was just as dreary as it had been the first time.

From that time on, I wondered who was telling the truth when they got all starry-eyed, talking about the temple, and who was just handing out the expected baloney.

When I got to Ricks 50 years ago I was not prepared for the 24/7 Mormonism talk a getting read for a mission talk that was pervasive. I found it very annoying.

RB

Polyandry and teenage brides was first. Then everything else. There are no good explanations for anything. All explanations are made up. The evidence is overwhelming that the church is a fraud.

Since applesauce started with a list of 3 I'll try to stick to three as well.

1. Joseph Smith and Polygamy: I knew that he was a polygamist, and I even knew that some of the girls were what we would consider underage. The biographies of Joseph Smith's plural wives in the book "In Sacred Loneliness" disclosed the methods Joseph Smith used started to reveal the true character of this man. It seemed he operated consistently, as the women described a very similar approach in the way he propositioned them. It also revealed a big theological problem. The idea that Joseph Smith could guarantee salvation to a woman and her whole family just for agreeing to "marry" him was shocking. It not only revealed that Joseph Smith was willing to use his position as a spiritual leader for personal favors, but also cast doubt on the "plan of salvation." How could merely having a relative marry the "prophet" guarantee your salvation--regardless of your relationship to God, good works, and by the way this is a deal others don't get--WTF? And I was totally unfamiliar with polyandry, which was also freak out worthy.

2. The breadth and depth of Joseph Smith's translation problems. There seemed to be no end in historical, textual, and scientific problems with the claims laid out in the Book of Mormon. From carrying forward the King James Bible translation errors to the DNA of Native Americans tracking most closely to East Asians from 10-15 thousand years ago--consistent with evidence supporting migration via a Bearing Straight land bridge. Then you add on leading Egyptologists, like Robert Ritner, tearing apart the apologetics supporting the Book of Abraham; the Kinderhook plates, and the Greek psalter.

3. How the leaders of the LDS Church use gradual shifts in doctrine, policy, and rhetoric to move away from controversial teachings. This took a little longer to realize, but it really did freak me out. Rather than admit that they did something wrong, they appeared just to deemphasize certain things.

I began to ask myself, why should I put my back side on the line to defend their positions on race, gay rights, feminism, or anything controversial when they'll just back away from it over time anyway. Why make a sacrifice for what a prophet is saying today, when new truth comes along as a fad that fades kind of like "New Coke." Why not just approach everything starting from what I think, and try to evaluate the views of others and adjust accordingly.

Going with the definition of freaking out meaning scare me shiteless, I'm going with when I first saw what evil the cult can do when they mobilize. This happened to myself and husband with a child. Both husband and I were no longer active for all purposes except we kept the cult guessing as my husband's job depending on this. We knew this ruse was not AT ALL to their liking, so how I look at things, when the cult saw the chance to make us, in their twisted logic, look questionable, they took it by interfering in a family matter THAT WAS NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS.

It was a freakin' nightmare, wish we had sued their asses off. They are interfering ARROGANT, EVIL BASTARDS.

So sorry. Can you tell us more?

For these reasons I refused to get baptized. My parents were well aware of my extremely obstinate personality and let me refuse. (I still had to go to church for a few years after that.)

1. The oxen in the "pond room." I had read about the Minotaur in his labyrinth. I had heard about worshiping the golden calf. When I saw those huge oxen I almost threw up. I just looked at a picture of them and had the same sort of reaction.

2. The people in charge of the primary. One after the next, they were mentally ill.

Surprising stuff that was hidden or white washed: Kinderhook Plates, sealing of men to men, the direct relationship of the Masons to the temple rituals, the lack of evidence of any ancient records, the plagiarization by Joseph Smith Jr of everything he wrote, his outrageous bogus claims, and on and on.

The Book of Abraham and Pearl of Great Price, which I didn't read until my early twenties, were such obvious frauds that I immediately told my parents my concerns. Their response was to bear their testimonies. I had known the church was a fraud for years, but their actions were disturbing and manikin-like.

It was like a bad drug trip with reality peeled back to reveal an inner emptiness.

...blood atonement. It doesn't get much worse than learning that the founder of a Christian church had a squad of hit men, who would knock off whomever the prophet ordered them to.

And some of the victims of blood atonement were so brainwashed that they voluntarily submitted to their punishment, with the hope of attaining the celestial kingdom.

In hindsight, I would say all of it.

But it's a slow lulling you into complacency if you go every single week.

When I finally stopped going, I was freaked out that I had participated in any of it, well, most of it - without questioning it earlier.

Those uneasy feelings dissipate if you go frequently and do everything they ask - that's what they count on by pushing for isolationism from non Mormon socializing, which is how cults succeed.

This doesn't mean there aren't some nice/decent people in Mormonism - there are. But the org itself is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay toooooooooooo Big Brother-ish. And obviously fradulent in terms of its doctrine and many of its practices.

If I had to choose one thing, I guess it would be the Book of Abraham.

I was taught by the missionaries from around 1974 through 1976, when I was finally baptised.

The Church presented The Book of Abraham to me as scripture. But what they didn't tell me was that the papyrus which shows it all to be fiction had actually been found, proving that Joseph Smith made it all up.

They knew this and yet they didn't tell me about it and still presented it as scripture. I'm sure the missionaries didn't even know about it either.

I'm still angry about that. It could have changed everything and I wouldn't have wasted 30 years in that awful organization.

when still a minor and attending, the thing that freaked me out the most - not polygamy, nor the early saints being superstitious, not even the danites and their revenge - was ET (phone home) Benson being installed as 'prophet' and his big selling point was the fact he used to work in the US government.

I was only becoming aware of world politics and this was around about the time of the Oliver North/CIA/Gaddafi stuff and the way the media were going - the behind the scenes US government was corrupt and behaving sneakily in world affairs. One week everyone suspects the US government of subterfuge, the history of the church taught the government was not to be trusted, then the next week people are bearing tesimony of what a great thing this is to have a prophet who had been part of US government.

As a young 13 year old this made no sense to me at all. How can everyone appear to change their mind overnight? This situation demonstrated how fickle the church and membership was, rather than unchanging like the lord is supposed to be, according to the 'mistranslated' bible. I was a pain in the arse rebel in no time after that.

The temple was a real let down. Not only is it a freak show, it is the purest form of cultism I know of. So I did what your not supposed to do, I started serious investigating other claims and the house of cards started to come down faster then a imploding building.

Mandatory attendance at church.

A long time ago if you missed a Sunday; it was no biggie. A few people might say "We missed you last week."

However, the invasion of privacy and lack of social boundaries drives members to act like the Hitler's SS or the KGB. I remember missing two weeks in a row (started working and was ill for the other). One day, I was enjoying my hobby of outdoor photography and I had parked on the side of the road to walk across the road to take a picture of a barn. A car passed by and honked. I ignored it as lots of people honk just to be funny. The car skidded abruptly and made a U-turn. I heard it accelerating towards me and began to feel nervous as it was an isolated spot. I suffered a small anxiety attack not knowing why the car was returning.

The car pulls up and lowers the window. I see that it's Brother Persnickety. He growls "Why haven't you been attending church?"

So I tell him that I got a job and then I ask him if he's the new bishop.

And he becomes annoyed (no sense of humor) and says "Well the bishop is very concerned that you're missing church on Sundays. He wants to meet with you ASAP."

I tell him "Fine. He's free to call me whenever he wants to on this thing called a telephone." (Yes I'm a smartass when spoken down to :)

And the guy makes a "hmph" sound while driving away.

Not missing this cult one bit!

I have to say first and foremost how they handle gays. I was introduced to their insane gay policies in 1983. These policies changed my life in drastic ways. THIS is the reason I left. I was able to put everything else on a shelf. They put me through hell over my gay boyfriend/husband. After 33 years, they still think it is my fault that he is not straight. I just wasn't righteous enough.

The temple. Oh my hell. I had to go through it. I had to see for myself and not on video. Biggest disappointment of my life. Lucy is my God-given name. I've never been entirely sure about my own name, but my parents did a much better job than God did. I made it back 4 or 5 times under duress. That is probably why my ex is still gay as I didn't go to the temple.

Polyandry shocked me. But Kolob. Somehow I forgot about that. I'm sure because it freaked me out.

Definately it was having sex with Jesus.

About 10 years into my temple marriage (in which all forms of intimacy and sex was limited), I hear from my wife how she's always been weirded out when we had sex, because "Jesus is always with us and always watching us. And it makes me uncomfortable knowing that he's here in the bedroom with us watching what we do."

Okaaaaaay.... so for the last 10 years, unbeknownst to me, whenever I was having sex with my wife it was actually a celestial menage a trois with Jesus.

I'd like to express my thanks to the MC and its effective brainwashing techniques employed upon all helpless babies BIC- it sure worked on my wife!

that might explain why some people complain mormon spouses are a bit frigid and repressed.

the temple ceremony; being molested, having my life threatened, being given a stupid secret handshake. That after the build up of expecting some kind of rapturous spiritual experience. I wish I had a do over on that one. I would sit through the entire thing so I could say that I heard and experienced ALL of it. Afterward, in the parking lot, I would throw those god damn temple garments into the face of my male MORmON parent's face, and say "what was that insane BS !!!! There is no way that I am going on a mission to sell that idiotic CRAP !!! "

I got out of the Church before going on a mission or through the temple.

Doing the Hosanna Shout with my family during the broadcast of the Nauvoo temple dedication was one I remember being distinctly shocked about. Despite my upbringing and conditioning, I couldn't fathom why my family would participate in such a thing without batting an eye, without acknowledging the weirdness and absurdity of it. It was alien and surreal.