Good article on Salon that touches on why believers believe...regardless if it is empirically false: Because believing (for example in Mormonism) is meaningful. They simply like the effects of faith and being a believer.

This is a real eye-opener for me because I've wrongly assumed to this point that truth matters. It doesn't. Ding ding ding. For me, this really explains TBMs...they resist the truth because they prefer their delusion. And they know it's a delusion! That's what kills me.

Faith is its own virtue to many...it matters not if it's totally misplaced. That blows me away...I struggle to wrap my mind around it. When I learned the truth, there was no way I could keep pretending. No way. I left immediately.

I wrongly assumed truth is what matters most to religious people.

From the article:

"It’s perfectly rational to reject faith as a matter of principle. Many people (myself included) find no practical advantage in believing things without evidence. But what about those who do? If a belief is held because of its effects, not its truth content, why should its falsity matter to the believer? Of course, most religious people consider their beliefs true in some sense, but that’s to be expected: the consolation derived from a belief is greater if its illusory origins are concealed. The point is that such beliefs aren’t held because they’re true as such; they’re accepted on faith because they’re meaningful."

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/09/new_atheisms_fatal_arrogance_the_glaring_intellectual_laziness_of_bill_maher_richard_dawkins/

because (it appears) that we, the population in general, will always have a contingent of people that is...... uh..... um ..... how can this be stated in simple terms? here goes: more stupid than less stupid, or less rational than more rational, because humans are biologically wired for believing in religion, "because ( so ironically) we are evolved apes, not fallen angels.

This is a great presentation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iMmvu9eMrg

I am going to concede that even if MORmONISM is completely eliminated that something else just about as stupid will continue as an irrational adult homo sapien emotional pacifier / religion in its place ....However that does not mean I can not feel gratification from pushing the particular type of stupid known as MORmONISM closer to oblivion, because IF certain people are entitled to believe in MORmONISM, then I am certainly entitled to feel gratified when there is less of it.

I hate to say it, but I think you are right smirk. Magical thinking won't go away just because some of us think truth is more valuable. The value is in the eye of the beholder is what I'm slowly coming to realize.

In my naivete, I thought everyone valued truth above all. Strange isn't it?

Personally, I think if you use your belief in God or your certainty there is no God to feel superior to people, to call those who disagree with you stupid, to presume you are better/more intelligent than a large segment of the population your so-called rational thought has turned into it's own sort of magical thinking. Because that's all religious types do - use what they perceive as reality to make themselves feel better about their lives and feel they have some sort of superiority. When atheists stoop to their level it's really no better.

I think the only way to win is if people can just believe whatever they want without using it as a weapon to hurt others - especially those who disagree. That's why Mormonism is such a toxic belief system - because they find nothing wrong with bullying, labeling and arrogantly dismissing those who disagree. Mormons are subtly taught to do all those things and should be stopped.

Trouble is, Mormonism has contended since its beginning that it is not just a matter of faith, it is a matter of "knowledge."

Mormons are taught to state categorically that they "KNOW this church is true," that they "KNOW Joseph Smith was a prophet," that they "KNOW the Book of Mormon is a true record."

I hope at some point that catches up to them. They shift-shape into declaring the BoM metaphorical, and they may say "We meant the whole thing was faith all along" (and I think there are good signs they're already doing all that), but maybe they will suffer a "knowledge crisis" along the way. I hope so.

Yep, that is what set them apart on the theology map and it worked well for 150 plus years. Until Stan devised a mass communication tool to instantly spread anti-Mormon lies to the world. He's a mofo.

Edited to add: And LDS Inc is the shapeshifting master of all religions IMO. Right now, they are keeping the oldtimer literal crowd fed the old time "knowledge" lines, while feeding the younger believers with "it's merely guidelines" doctrine.

The COB is all about finding a space for every face right now, and will do and say anything to keep the tithes flowing long-term.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/11/2015 01:56PM by iflewover.

left4good Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Trouble is, Mormonism has contended since its
> beginning that it is not just a matter of faith,
> it is a matter of "knowledge."

You are correct about that!

And I want to thank you for mentioning that major foundational component of MORmONISM. * KNOWLEDGE * based testimonies of the truthfulness of the MORmON gospel obtained by spiritual confirmation; THAT was the MORmON way, that was the MORmON background that I came from. BUT it did change. That MAJOR change came with Gordon BS Hinckley, and it was a major departure from *Knowledge* based LDS testimonies.

Apparently Hinckley thought that a faith based church would be more inclusive than a "knowledge" based church, being more inclusive would help to make "THE" church bigger. Growing "THE" business was "THE" thing that Hinckley was all about. A Faith based gospel would also be more permissive for big time changes that Hinckley wanted to make MORmONISM more palatable to the general public from a marketing standpoint. Every major/ foundational aspect of MORmON doctUrine was considered from a marketing standpoint. Look at what happened. Priest hood ban for blacks -gone! Polygamy -disavowed ! Temple ceremony - big time edits / retool (No more mock throat slashing).

I first became of this MAJOR shift in MORmONISM when I got to the mission field. My dumb ass Mission Pres was a MORmON insider who was running for G.A. He worked for LDS Inc and he had a totally big time MORmON name ( of a former profit) and heritage.
Almost immediately, he started blabbering about having faith.
Just as revealing, he NEVER got around to addressing the issue of having a full on MORmON style *knowledge* based testimony.
At the time, I thought "what is wrong with this ding a ling ?" Looking back it is very apparent to me that as this guy was a MORmON insider who was running for GA, he was very much in tune with what the obvious de facto and future LD$ Inc Pres = Hinckley was doing, and in turn emulating that course of action in order to Kiss ASS on Hinckley. So in true Hinckley fashion my MP constantly blabbered off about faith, and completely omitted the old MORmON convention of spiritual confirmation.


The other thing that MORmONISM did / does is claim to be the superlative advocate of truth. SO there is Hinckley, who can supposedly speak directly to the creator of the Universe - MORmON Jesus about the affairs of running "THE" church, and Hinckley hires a Jewish PR consulting firm. MORmONISM totally plays its loser hand when it does stuff like that.

I always class it as a 'need to believe' in something, whether it's God or mystical happenings etc.

Life can be scary without the rose tinted glasses and what if there is no point to our existence. I have no wish to tamper with whatever someone holds onto regardless of facts or evidence that the church is not true.

For me, I preferred the band-aid approach. Just rip it off and deal with whatever is there. I'd rather know the truth than be lied too. Now I live without any faith and it actually feels better for me to know I am in complete charge of my life.

My husband is TBM and I think hour has invested too much to admit it might not be true. He can perform some amazing mental gymnastics and he's a smart man.

Oh well, we have to agree to disagree. But it's an eye opener to realise common sense is not a factor.

The need to believe is exactly what is eye opening to me. I didn't know it was so powerful because I have zero need to believe having been brought up irreligious.

I'm firmly in the "we are born irreligious" camp. Even as a TBM I knew if I were born in Calcutta, I'd most likely be a Hindu; Riyadh, a Muslim, etc.

My lottery ticket said SE Idaho. I converted at age 19 due to lifelong friends and great families who lived good, small town, farming lives. Their example converted me, not the BOM.

In an age of realism, some people need some form of idealism to experience a full life. Mormonism is one of those forms, but when it crashes it's like a train wreck.

TSCC is built out of nothing. It's an all-consuming extremism that steers time and resources into an ever-growing mountain of nothing. How is this different from slavery? In idealism, the believer makes himself/herself the slave serving an ideal (illusory) master. No wonder Mormons work so hard to maintain the illusion. It's either that or a train wreck.

It's bullshit. It's harmful to most people. But does it work? In Zen, nothingness is the key to enlightenment. Mormonism turns that on its head like a mathematical inverse. 1/x as x approaches zero is infinity. This is how extremism works as a form of idealism. Unfortunately, they play a dangerous game. Lies can't last forever, so a crash is inevitable.

left4good beat me to it: Mormonism has always been about concrete facts....JS saw God and JC "in the flesh"...the Gold Plates are a REAL history of real people...witnesses saw and handled the plates...Native Americans are ancient Jews...revelations are direct communications from God/Jesus...the BoA is from papyri written by Abraham...

100 years later there are a few apologists still trying to prove the "historical facts", but the SLC church is getting squishier and squishier on almost all of that, and are sliding toward a strange combination of doubling down on taking doctrine "on faith" and simply saying: "But it makes you a better person/family."

One of the supports of Magical Thinking is that someone eventually wins the lottery. It's so much more pleasant to buy your ticket with that thought in mind rather than thinking about how many people did NOT win the lottery.

Is there anything more certain than 'house odds'? And yet Macao continues to grow and Vegas is doing what it can. Nobody sits down at a blackjack table determined to lose all his money.

And what about marriage as a comment on Magical Thinking? Especially the way mormons go about it!!

To some people, the world is inherently magical. Facts threaten their magic. The church's great problem is that it's losing its magic due to the proliferation of facts. It won't be getting that magic back.

Magical thinking isn't necessarily a bad thing. But the psychologically harmful methods used to maintain it are bad.

It seems this discussion is confusing faith for brainwashing.

Mormons are brainwashed, not simply clinging to the stagnant decaying religion because of some mystique or faith.

They're indoctrinated to believe it is the only true church, and Joe Smith a prophet, and all the other nonsense that is spoon fed to its laymembers.

It isn't faith that keeps them in it. Because faith can't exist in a vacuum.

It's dogma, brainwashing, and indoctrination that keeps Mormons Mormons.

People don't need to be brainwashed to have faith. You do however, need to be brainwashed to believe and accept the phony baloney of Mormonism.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/11/2015 09:03PM by amyjomeg.

amyjomeg wrote: People don't need to be brainwashed to have faith.

Yeah, you kind of do need to be brainwashed to believe in what you know ain't so. (Apologies to Samuel Clemens)

I love Samuel Clemens quotes. He lived his life with his eyes wide open lol.

That brainwashing really starts from the day the children are born.

When they get up as toddlers to recite their testimonies drilled to them by their parents, they sound like miniature robots of their elders - since they all parrot each other on fast and testimony Sundays.

It's really shocking to see what passes muster for faith. As long as they can recite the "I know the [fill in the blanks] is true; blah blah blah, and almost always without fail "I know Joe Smith was a prophet of God, blah blah blah," but nearly always they leave out anything about the Messiah Jesus Christ, except maybe as an afterthought.

There's no magic in the recitations. What is striking is how programmed they are to regurgitating those lines over and over and over again. Why they don't see they're programming themselves is a mystery to me. Yet at one time when I was TBM, I didn't recognize it either. It took leaving the church to see it more objectively. Crazy religion that it is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/11/2015 09:10PM by amyjomeg.

This is the way is see it

Mormonism can bring spirituality into members lives. 3 hours every Sunday of being placed in an environment of worship. Mormons think that means they have the only true church.

IMO, any church that had 3 hours of worship every Sunday plus all the other meetings like youth conferences and Super Saturdays...

Mormonism is built on Christianity, but it is flawed Christianity, or tangent Christianity. The indoctrination of Mormonism cause Mormons to believe for emotional or spiritual reasons so they close their minds to logic and fact. They have been indoctrinated to place feelings over facts.

However, at some point or for some reason, maybe a divorce or conflict with a leader or member, or some internet curiosity may cause them to step out of the box of feelings trump facts, and with the advent of the internet, research is instantaneous.

A biggie as far as stepping out of the box is watching peers, tbms that leave never to return. In the past, those that went inactive were perceived to leave so they can sin. And were generally not the tbms but fringe members. Now tbms are leaving, and other members must be noticing. These are leadership types.

The internet is here to stay. A tbm that leaves also has an impact on their children, if their children are young enough. If their children are older rm types, it probably has little effect on their children.

Mormons get such an ego boost from mood altering by going to church and showing how "righteous" they are, it is a very hard emotion to want to lose. That's why I believe that there are 2 types of Mormons, those that feel special, and those who hat feel superior. Those that feel superior will tend to stay more so than those that only feel special.

Mormonism attracts the rm, temple married, fast track leadership types. Leadership is very enticing to certain types of especially men, and their wives that may be codependent on the admiration that leadership brings in the male centered cult.

So, to wrap it up, something needs to happen for a Mormon to embrace logic and fact over feelings. And there are many things in Mormonism that shames and punishes Mormons, and maybe enough is enough and theyau step out of the box of blind obedience.

Homo Sapiens sapiens is a herd animal, like sheep, cattle, wolves, lions, prairie dogs, etc.

We are not loners, like tigers. Although there are some outliers...

If you want a truly thorough explanation of belief, try Freud's "Future of an Illusion." His work "Moses and Monotheism" is also very illuminating.

Great thread, great thoughts here.

I need only think of my father and my sister-in-law. They are as different as night and day in many respects, but both of them share that absolute need to believe.

Dad is a Vietnam vet. He is a smart man and he is not ignorant of many of the problems and inconsistencies that plague Mormonism. If it were true that people leave the church in order to sin, he would have left years ago. He's been able to sin just fine as a member in full fellowship. But yet he believes. I don't understand it. I probably never will. He has never held any presiding callings in the cult. I wonder if he believes partly because of his age. He is in his 70s and maybe he's too far gone to admit to himself that it's all a fraud. Maybe he's trying to get good with God before the end. I wonder how much his war years drove that need to believe in something. I wonder how much those years changed him and what he would have been like if I had known him as an 18 year old.

My sister-in-law is a Glenn Beck loving relief society president housewife who has lived in happy valley and never worked outside of the home a single day in her adult life. She went to BYU, snagged a business major as a freshman, and then had 5 kids. She absolutely fits all of the stereotypes. Sheltered and highly opinionated. TBM to the core. She is much easier to understand than my dad. Being Mormon is her identity. It is who she is. To admit that Mormonism is a fraud would be absolutely devastating to her entire self identity. I sincerely believe that if the profit himself got up in General Conference and confessed that it wasn't true, she would come up with some excuse (he's old and confused, Satan led him astray, etc.) to continue to believe. I don't think there is anything that could possibly cause her to change.

There are a million other stories like theirs. It makes me realize that Mormonism will endure well beyond my lifetime because of people like them.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/12/2015 04:48AM by Strength in the Loins.

I fully believe a solid 50 percent of the hardcore deluded would absolutely throw the profit out the window if he got up and laid the whole scheme out in detail in GC. Just as your SIL would.

That is one thing I am truly thankful for: No part of the church (HP Group Leader, Branch Pres, 1st Counselor in Bishopric, EQ Prez, YML, Ward Mission Leader, and a few others I'm forgetting) was ever a part of my identity. It was very easy for me to shed.