For me it was the entire book of Genisis, a man doing a push up without a head, Joseph not being allowed to show his gold plates, and Earth being the most wicked of all of God's creations.
The disappearing gold plates always bugged me. I remember hearing them talk about it in Junior Sunday School. It left me feeling frustrated and annoyed. I never got over that feeling.
My mom's mostly-inactive (and smoking/coffee/beer drinking) dad and somewhat active mom, my favorite grandparents, were into astronomy. They had cool telescopes, and used to bring them when they'd come visit us in SoCal. They got me into astronomy.
During one visit, I was out in the yard with grandpa, and he was showing me some galaxies in his 8" telescope. He said something about them being "millions of light years away." I was only 12, but I remember thinking, "the church says the universe is 6,000 years old, but here are these galaxies whose light takes millions of years to reach us...the church is wrong."
goodlyexmormon Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Interesting how you choose science over the church > at a young age. Most would just bear their > testimony about how the church is twooo.
At the time, I didn't really think of it as choosing science over the church.
While TSCC has always taught that the earth/universe is 6,000 years old, it was never really a "big deal." In the sense of, "You can't believe anything else" sort of "big deal" anyway. I'd heard it, I knew it was referred to in the D&C, but nobody ever asked about it in a worthiness interview or anything.
So even at 12, it was clear to me that the church was wrong on that issue, but I didn't think, "Oh, since they're wrong on that, they could be wrong on other things, too!" I just sort of filed it away.
Of course, later on, when I learned how much MORE science showed church claims false (BoM archeology, BoA translation, etc. etc. etc.), I remembered looking through telescopes with grandpa, and him saying a young earth was bullshit. Honestly, though, that wasn't until I'd already decided that evidence and the scientific method were better ways to learn "truth" than the D&C was :)
The best thing that can happen to a mormon raised child is having a grandparent that isn't afraid to use the word "bullshit" when it comes to mormon teachings.
For whatever reason, this seems to stick in their minds long after grandparents have moved onto the next phase.
I can't wait for my TBM grandkids to get old enough to start asking questions about mormonism so I can say "bullshit"!
I stand all amazed that I never learned about the Nauvoo Expositor. I mean I heard about it a tiny bit but I never read it or learned its history. To me THAT is crazy. To grow up believing so much in JS and never really knowing why he was killed.
When I was 10 my mom and I were talking about the golden plates on the way home from church. I recall asking her where they were(I thought it was cool and wanted to see them)she seemed to kind of stumble in her answer and then she told me that they were taken back to heaven or something along those lines. At 10 years old I remember thinking how dumb it all sounded. You fooled me with Santa for years mom! But this story just sounded fishy.
The revelation that the LDS in Utah would trek back to Missouri. And now with that 5 billion dollar mall for Jesus in Salt Lake, does anyone think that's going to happen?
I believed almost everything I was taught and didn't question much. I trusted my parents, leaders, and apostles and prophets. Poygamy sounded horrible and i did my best to ignore it. But black people being less valient, less worthy, that I balked at and got into arguments with my parents about it. When the essay came out disavowing it, my shelf cracked and is breaking. I was more inspired than the prophets! Polygamy essays broke the shelf too. How could i be so stupid, I thought to myself.
It's all pretty nonsensical, but the first thing I ever remember hitting me in terms of double-talk was when some official weighed n with the idea that "eternal punishment" or "eternaan l damnation" wasn't "eternal" as in "forever" but was referenced as "eternal" consequence because it was levied by the "eternal father." It's not that I necessarily believe in forever damnation or any other kind of damnation, but saying that there is such a thing and then qualifying what it means or meant seemed pretty stupid. After that, many things seemed stupid to me.
I was born in '84, so I learned of the priesthood ban for blacks only after the fact, but it pretty much blew me away as obviously a reflection of prevailing racist attitudes and therefore pretty stupid even when I was a kid.
I'm not quite sure how I even jumped thrugh the hoops to make it onto a mission.
Fast Sunday...and the endless blubbering by TBM's bearing their testimonies and "testotoramonies". The most embarrassing display of emotions I've ever witnessed. I'm a pretty fearless public speaker but to get up in front of a bunch of Mormons and say THAT shit???!!! Not fucking likely...
Ron Burr
ps: oh, and rules...stupid fucking MORG rules that defy logic. Hate them.
siflbiscuit Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Discernment and what "temple worthy" apparently > meant. > > My stepmother beat the shit out of me, my father > beat the shit out of my stepbrother. Neither ever > were lacking a temple recommend.
How terrible. I can see how that would create cognitive dissonance at the very least. Did they each not know that their children were being beaten as they were beating the other one's children, or did they just not care ?
Didn't care. Well, as far as my stepbrother anyway. In fact, my stepmother would instigate stuff all the time hoping to get us in trouble. My dad spanked me once, and I probably deserved it, even tho I'm against spanking myself. But she would constantly find reasons to get me in trouble with him.
As for whether he knew she was beating me, I don't know if he knew or ignored it. The only time she did anything in front of him was when she grabbed me by the hair and threw me to the floor because I told my baby brother to clean up a mess he made. Her and my dad got into a fight over her doing that to me, but by the end of it he was telling me to apologize to her for making her angry enough to do it. So I'm thinking he just ignored it.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2015 02:12AM by siflbiscuit.
I remember my 9th grade seminary teacher explaining how Noah's ark got from the garden of eden vicinity in Missouri to the Middle East. His idea was that since the earth was in it's early Pangea like state that the distance would not have been as great.
Of course, thanks to Mr. Martin and earth science class, that explanation struck me as total BS. The rate of continental drift would have to have been so fast that humanity would have died out from not being able to stand up straight. And yeah, the seminary teacher was way off base on the timetable.
Some of the spiritual manifestations that people in various wards said they had in the temple, or elsewhere, struck me as difficult to believe.
When I saw that movie about Joseph and Emma, and it mentioned in passing something about his other wives. My mind: "Wives??? What wives?? Thought there was just one wife???". Crazy I had to learn it from a church approved movie instead of the 3 hours of church I attended every week for 17.5 years...... Along with there not being any evidence for most of the basic tenets....
First wrong notion for me came at 5. The Sunbeam teacher (or whatever we were at that age) said that the devil had been trying to sway me if I preferred a cool soothing sensation when something moved me, rather than the burning of the bosom. Not long after I began to feel resentment at the fact that I would never hold the priesthood because I was a girl. In fact, all the calling for submissiveness of women to men irked me right from the beginning.
Then later came Polygamy. Polygamy. Polygamy. The first I heard of it was (before my baptism) at FHE when my father taught us that someday there might be a calling from the prophet to reinstate the ordinace of polygamy, and that he would have to take another wife. He then finished the thought with the statement that we, his children, would have to be ok with it. I distinctly remember first feeling horrified, and then furious at the prospect of having another insane mother to obey.
My entire baptism for the dead experience was a huge pile of BS that made me feel sick to my stomach for days afterwards. Two of the girls in my ward that went got out of the actual dunking because they were menstruating, or "unclean" as they explained it to us on the spot, as we sat huddled in our little wet white jumpsuits. Right at the time we were all just starting to go through puberty. Disgusting!!
"Only ex-mormons go to outer darkness. It's because they had the chance to live the one true gospel and they threw it away." Thanks Dad. The fact that non mormon murderers and rapists and the like would get to go to a "nicer" kingdom drove me nuts and terrified me at the same time, since I already didn't want to be a mormon anymore at 12 after my dead dunk.
"Sex is a sin equal only next to murder...Messing around with taking life away, or bringing it into this world without covenant can earn you eternal damnation." Wow, mother. Leave it to you to ruin every sexual experience I would have up until I was almost 30.
These are just a few examples. I've had what I would call a "glass ceiling over Hell" for most of my life resulting from the indoctrination I fought as a child. Fortunately, I became emancipated from my parents to escape the abuse of my mother, and was mostly on my own from 16 on.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2015 04:53PM by g0rgone.
Well, I was in the LDS church only from 5th grade through college, but during that time I swallowed every single lame explanation provided by the church hook, line and sinker!
The first thing I remember thinking was unacceptible was the total lack of explanation when Blacks FINALLY got full rights in the church.
PI (perverted interviews) ID (Invisible "gold" Dishes) The BOMB (Book Of Mormon Bible) 'Facrament' (fake-sacrament) TMC - too much church (the Mormon Church)...
Basically genesis, especially the flood story. "The atonement" never made sense to me and the pretentious language of the BoM always bothered me. In fact I never believed in the BoM, but it wasn't much of a stumbling block for my faith because before my teens they were just boring pretentious stories that I didn't care about. The realization that I was actually supposed to literally believe in the BoM was one of the key moments leading me towards apostasy. As a teen I tried to believe in the BoM but I just never could persuade myself as it just seemed more and more obvious that they were made up.
One other thing that I early on got sceptical about was the priesthood power. I was about 7-8 years old and for some reason I was going away to visit my nonmormon grandparents. But before I left I felt a bit sick so I asked my dad for a blessing. And I remember clearly how I was determined to put the supposed power of the priesthood to the test here. At first the sick feelings stopped and I felt reassured and went on the trip, an hour later I threw up all over in my grandpas car. It forever left me kinda sceptical towards the utility of blessings.
I'm sorry to say that I bought into all of it. But looking back, there were a lot of red flags that I should have noticed. But when your parents, friends, and many other "respectable" people that you associate with all buy into it, you tend to buy into it as well.
The first real big hit to my so-called testimony came out in the mission field. I quickly realized that all of that talk about the stone being cut from the mountains without any hands and gathering of Israel stuff was complete horse shit. I was really nothing more than a door-to-door salesman. The missionaries that baptized the most were the best salesmen. It had nothing to do with worthiness. The was zero correlation between masturbation and baptisms. And I learned that all of those numbers showing such impressive church growth were a total sham. The only real growth that happens in the church comes from breeding new little mormons.
But, idiot that I am, I stayed with the program for another 18 years after the mission. But I am happy to say that I finally saw the light before any of my kids got married in the temple or went on missions. We all came out together. :)
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2015 04:51AM by Strength in the Loins.
Nothing about religion ever felt real to me. Even when I was very young and my parents went to church. (my parents are Lutheran) I could never understand why. Why did everyone around me seem happy and want to be there? As I got older and went to different churches with friends (Baptist, Methodist) I still felt nothing. I was baptized at 18 into TSCC. (because I was dating a mormon) I would sit there in sacrament meeting not caring about the words being said and not feeling what the people around me were feeling about God and Jesus. And that basically sums up what religion is to me, absolutely nothing. I guess I ultimately went to a church to fit in. It was an "everybody else is doing it" kind of thing.