Everyone seems to have their own fact that was just too much and you needed to leave. What was that for you?

I am gay!

I left because everything the church said about gays is a lie. They make homosexuality out to be such a big deal, but then they have no idea what they are talking about.

And in all the years since I found out my ex is gay (31 or 32), nothing has changed. They still are as clueless as ever.

This is EXACTLY the reason I lost belief in the lds church. All the history is just icing on the cake.

The fact I was sliding into a pit of self-loathing.

I didn't "fact" my way out of the church. I was just terribly unhappy being a Mormon, even though I was a pretty good one. And I was starting to realize I didn't actually believe in it, that I was probably an atheist. That's why I was so unhappy. My inner atheist was at war with my outer Mormon.

When I decided to leave the church, I didn't care whether it was the real deal or not. I just couldn't do it any longer. If there were eternal consequences, so be it, I thought. But once I was out of the LDS noise machine for a while, presto, it was obvious, in the big picture, it had all been baloney. Individual facts weren't that important to me. They were just further evidence it was a scam.

I questioned the authority of the CULT and hence got kicked out. HIP HIP HURRAY!!!

They are like little kids making a club. If you walk out of their clubhouse, their rules and power plays are meaningless. They only matter if you want to stay in the club.

My eternal companion (BYU sweetie) was getting more and more physically violent and emotionally brutal on me. I decided to seek help from my trusted counselors.

A TBM licensed therapist told me I was being punished for masturbating.

My bishop noticed that we had been married four years and had no children. His solution was for us to make another tithe payer. We would have succeeded were it not for the abortion. (The pregnancy was accidental; we ignored the bishop's wisdom.)

Somehow the realization that my b.i.c. religion had no relevance whatsoever to my actual life challenges seemed to grease the skids for my relatively low stress exit from the Only Troo Cult. When we moved from Colorado to Oregon in 1980, I transitioned cold turkey from fully active to fully inactive. I never attended ... not even once, and never met my bishop. Within three years I requested my name to be deleted from the records. I did not attend the Love Court to which I was invited via Certified Mail.

My eternal companion (convert at age 16 after her father died) had lost interest in Church attendance before we moved. She was a total outsider with no babies to discuss with her peer sister/mommies.

It was actually after my exit that I studied 'the rest of the story' and internalized the never ending BS cartoon the Church promotes as its origin, luminary founder, scriptures and history. Reading 'No Man Knows My History' was my first exposure to most of the BS. I ingested lots of Tanner publications as well.

Still took me ten years to extract myself from my eternal marriage from hell, and I nearly died before I finally escaped.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2015 03:08AM by beyondashadow.

From the Mormon church's "Old Testament Seminary Teacher Manual" (2014):

"Elder Bruce R. McConkie of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles explained that there was no death on earth prior to the Fall of Adam and Eve:

“'Mortality and procreation and death all had their beginnings with the Fall. …' (“Christ and the Creation,” Ensign, June 1982, 9)"

https://www.lds.org/manual/old-testament-seminary-teacher-manual/introduction-to-the-book-of-genesis/lesson-10-moses-4-genesis-3?lang=eng


That claim was long ago dashed to pieces by many different scientific and historical disciplines.

Finding out that The Book of Abraham was a fraud

Aw, mom! Ya beat me to it!

Yes, the BoA was my straw too. My absolute tiny itty bitty straw was the use of "...written by his own hand upon papyrus". If that sentence did not exist, I might have been able to swallow it.

Then I read the Joseph smith diaries and read repeatedly "worked on the translation.....translated.....commenced translating......continued the translation" never once, not once did he say "received by revelation" or any such term.

The History of the Church needs to be changed from:

I, with William W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery, as scribes,
commenced the translation of some of the characters or
hieroglyphics, and much to our joy found that one of the rolls
contained the writings of Abraham; another the writings of
Joseph of Egypt

to

I, with William W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery, as scribes,
commenced the translation of some of the characters or
hieroglyphics, and much to our joy found that both of the
rolls contained pagan Egyptian religious writings which could
serve to inspire me to receive the lost writings of Abraham by
revelation.

The fact that faith is unjustifiable.

Reading "Rough Stone Rolling" did it for me. Once I learned what a piece of crap JS was, I watched Mormonleaks and found out what a piece of crap the BoM was then I read the BoA and that sealed the deal.

"If you could hie to Kolob in the twinkling of an eye..."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2015 04:24AM by brothernotofjared.

Being female.

The doctrine never sounded logical, reasonable, feasible, sustainable...

BoM was written by a juvenile sexist.

Polygamy, church origins, creepy criminal founders...

Baptisms/dead dunking gave me the creeps/knew I would never enter a temple again.

About "family" yet divided families constantly.

During my first absence (8 yrs) from the Morg i became a devout catholic. When I went back for mostly social reasons i found the vast majority of their theology to be like something out of a comic book. It took all I had in me to keep the garrbage being constantly spoonfed all the members every meeting to not run for the hills.


The biggest 2 facts were the mention of how the gates of hell will never prevail over the church (thus no great apostacy) and the fact that No matter how much I tried, i couldnt make myself believe in the book of mormon as i once did. Even with the daily reading requirement dropping from 30 minutes a day to only 5, it was still the most boring book in the world.

I have a project in mind to take the darn thing and condense it (hehe abridge) by:

1. Removing every version and incidence of the words " and it came to pass"
2. Replacing every repeated story from within its own pages with an inserted reference to that part of the book it comes from (not including the first retellings by the characters of bible stories/events)
3. Taking out all the fanncy shmancy verbage joe smith threw in from time to time to make the story seem scriptural (parts untouched by step 1.).
4. Taking out the 2nd person archaic pronouns and word forms (untouched by step 3.). and change them into modern english.

I think when all is said and done the result will probably be less than 100 pages long and will read like the fairy tale and biblical plagarism it is.(And it will also show what an abrdgement it never was.)

Well that's enough ranting for now. (hehe)

The French Book of Mormon removes "and it came to pass" and replaces it with an *. It makes it a lot more compact.

The fact that broke everything for me was that the church required an essentially modern literal Noah with a global flood. It couldn't just be metaphor.

Faith has never worked for me. I couldn't achieve a "testimony" no matter how hard I tried to do everything I was told, and I always felt very uncomfortable "believing" in all these fantastic events and characters just because someone else said it was true or because they were written in an ancient book. I never "felt the spirit" or received any kind of witness or revelation. All I felt were my own emotions, which I recognized and knew well.

I base my life and my beliefs on experience and empirical evidence; religion lacks both. It was either live as a hypocrite or leave, and I've lied to people long enough.

The notion that it was always my fault when the promises didn't materialize. Eventually I got tired of it and started to try to make sense of it all.

After decades of persecution in the church for not being perfect enough, the final straw was Joseph Smith's real life style, and delusional and greedy practices. I was beyond shocked when the essay on him was published because I realized that as hard as I worked, suffered,sacrificed, and devoted my life, time, money, and egnergy, it is all a lie.

I can remember sitting in primary listening to someone tell the stories about Joe Smith getting angelic visits and thinking it sounded like a lie. But I persisted for the first 30 or so years of my life in trying to believe because my parents, friends and other leaders insisted that a testimony in the church was the most important thing, by far, in life. Like others have said, I couldn't ever seem to feel what everyone around me seemed to feel. It confused me that the almighty of the universe would be so ambiguous in his communication methods, especially regarding something so critical as my eternal salvation. The priesthood didn't make any sense either, with its horrible track record for actually working. My dad was a big blessing giver, but aspirin and bed rest worked much better for me when I was sick. So much for the power of God. But I kept trying to believe, through a mission, a temple marriage, through callings, until so many little things built up and I couldn't believe anymore. Even then, I continued to go to church for many years to support my wife and because I thought it was a good thing for the kids. But once you stop trying to believe, the bad thing about the belief system, the misogyny, the blind obedience and thought control, the racism, the sexual repression, etc. become much more apparent. I was increasingly uncomfortable attending and participating, and did so less frequently, but still considered the belief in the church a matter of faith. Then I discovered that the Book of Abraham was an indisputable fraud and realized that it wasn't faith, but deceit that kept people believing, and I could be no part of that. I haven't been since.

When my abusive ex (abusive to me AND the children) was allowed to treat us horrible and still remain in that "church" even with a calling of scoutmaster no less. I finally came out of denial. That had no discernment, no power, and no common sense. So... you can bully, injure, and neglect your wife and children, but you're ok as long as you don't drink coffee.
By the way he treated scouts badly and they hated him, yet their parents still let them attend, go on campouts with this ogre. So, a gay person cannot be a scout leader, but a sociopath can. Yeah... that makes sense.

Well, first I thought of polygamy---but I learned about that when I was 8 and still continued.

Then, it was how women were treated, but I suffered that in my teenage years with all the emphasis on scouting and nothing for the girls. But still I continued.

Then I thought it was the lying---I/e "High Priests, go boycott the downtown SLC theater (which one was it?) but don't tell anyone." "Women, crowd the ERA groups, but don't tell them you are a mormon." "Everyone, donate to the anti-gay rights stuff, but don't tell mention your religion."

Then the "Negro and the Priesthood." But I was in college at the time trying to defend the church's stand. And I still continued...

Two Gulf Wars later, when the church was still strongly supporting killing and war, I still continued....

So, yes, I guess it was the Book of Abraham revelations and the DNA evidences that really knocked me off the crazy train.

When i discovered the different versions of the first vision, then saw the book of commandments compared to the D and C and how much had been added and deleted and changed! Thanks Mormonism shadow or reality!

I have never really "bought in", but I played the game until my daughter started having panic attacks in church. That is when I realized the damage I was doing to my children.

When I found out about Evergreen. I am sure it was totally sanctioned by their Christ.

I tremble to ask... What is Evergreen?

I was asked during sacrament times which led to a complete invasion of my neighborhood's privacy. The ward knocked on every door looking for Brother TheFat. Also, my family was frequently harassed by the ward for not following my example and joining.

1966 - Jerald Tanner's book "Changes in Joseph Smith's History " which lists thousand of changes. I wondered if Mormonism is true, why the need to lie about it?

1967 - Fawn Brodie's "No Man Knows My History" What an eye opener and her cited sources checked out!

1968 - The Book of Abraham papyri. It was clear that Joseph Smith could no more read Hieroglyphics (with or without god's help) than I could.

I was fully inactive and out of Utah by 1971 and have never looked back nor been sorry I left.

I was given a full set of "Journal of Discourses" when leaving on my mission -- the idea by the giver being that reading them would increase my faith and devotion to the cult.

Instead, reading them showed me clearly that the church lied about its history, covered up its actions, and denied what it had once taught as "doctrine."

When I asked questions about the issues I found, I was invariably told to either shut up and obey, to pray until my doubts went away, or to stop thinking. Those by bishops, stake presidents, high priests, and even a general authority. And the final kicker, from the same general authority: faith is more important than facts.

That did it for me. Out I went. The event that invoked my cathartic ditching of the church was being called, shortly after my mission, to be a teacher of teenagers...I somehow found the courage to not go along, and not lie to kids, and to leave.

I left because I came to the conclusion that Mormons were heartless, and weird, that belonged to a heartless and weird cult.

I stopped believing because of the Book of Abraham.

Fanny - I had a 16-year-old daughter at the time.

The Elder's Quorum president stalking my wife. We had to threaten a restraining order to get him to stop. Of course once we did that we became the wards love bomb project.

the fact that it was total made up, bullshit.

One single fact: Joseph Smith Jr . The core was rotten. His claims are all bogus.
That's all I needed! Not a prophet, no revelations, no translations.
Bingo. Done!
It hit my funny bone and I had a good laugh! (Then I realized that he just did what most do to create a new religion!)
God Myths at it's best!