Been out a few years now, my extended family is extremely devout. Monday we were at my parents house swimming and the missionaries were there. My 14 year old daughter was talking to them and invited them to come swimming. They told her that they were not allowed to swim (even though it was p day and they were just hanging out).

She comes over to me and asked me why they were not allowed to swim. I explained that in the D&C it stated that in the last days satan had control over the water and they believed that he would harm the missionaries if they were to swim.

She was like "WTF? do grandma and grandpa believe that too"?

I explained that yes they did, but that we shouldn't judge them too harshly and try to somehow look past how weird their beliefs are.

Kind of ironic that I'm telling my kids not to judge them after all the judgments we still get from them for not being mormon anymore.

But looking back and seeing how weird the beliefs are I can't figure out how I believed that shit, the longer I'm out the stranger it all gets.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/22/2016 02:20PM by brucermalarky.

Your so right about how crazy it all looks now. Back when I was TBM I did raise a eyebrow from time to time about some wacky stuff I heard, doctrine, fast Sunday stories, or other stuff but accepted it and some how kept drinking the cool aid.
I look at it now that I'm out and am flabbergasted at my gullibility. It seems so ridicules now. It blows my mind anyone with brain waves would ever convert to tscc after hearing about the J.S. magical stone, disappearing gold plates, polygamy, marrying 14 year old's. The fairy tale and lies just goes on and on.

I was a very unsophisticated Mormon, BIC, didn't question a lot
(although I did have "concerns" during my teen years). So I'm
trying the "every member a missionary" bit and trying to tell
the story of Mormonism to a friend. I'm 20 at the time and
he's two years older than me.

So, without any real missionary training or salesmanship, I
just start telling him the story the way I always heard it at
Church. About how Moroni appears to JS and the plates and
translating them with the Urim and Thummim (this was back when
the peep-stone story was an anti-Mormon lie) etc. So he, is
looking serious and listening (he had GREAT manners) and at the
end he asks me, "where are the plates now?"

So I give him the answer that I learned, "they were taken back
into Heaven by the angel." Now I'd heard that story all my
life and never thought much about it, but now I'm suddenly
looking at how things must seem through my friend's viewpoint.
It hits me then that this whole story must seem absurd and that
it ends with a huge "the dog ate my homework" punch-line.

There's a great line from "The Truman Show." When Christof,
[great name for the character] the producer/director, is asked
why Truman hasn't figured out that his whole world is fake,
Christof answers, "We accept the reality of the world with
which we're presented. It's as simple as that."

I loved that about the Truman show. Great reference.

Baura. I had such a similar experience on my mission.

Not many Germans allowed me on the street to really tell the story of the BoM because they ran away from our street displays post haste.

One day a grad student stops by and I show him the first page of the BoM where it talks about the gold plates and witnesses.

He asks me if I really believe in angels and golden tablets and is genuinely interested in my beliefs.

So when he asks me where the golden tablets are now so he can see them, with full conviction I answer they were taken to heaven. And he gave me such a look that I realized in that moment what a farsical story I was asking him to buy into and not a shred of evidence remained.

But I buried the cog dis another 10 or so years. Still,
That moment was an eye opener.

Thx for your story and the excellent Truman movie reference too

Yep. It's so easy now to see what total nonsense it is. Things like Udork holding up his phone and saying that since it can receive texts, why can't JS's rock, just makes you want to truly roll on the floor and laugh your ass off. Not because he said it. He's just doing what he has to do to keep his power and authority position that he's become accustomed to. But it's so funny that anyone, I mean ANYONE can buy into that with a straight face. But they do.

The scene with Udork should have been copy righted and sold to SNL. I'm sure they would have loved doing a scene that hilariously funny.

There are people out there who wish Santa Claus was real.

What does it do to humans to wake up one day to the fact that people they know love them went to great lengths to make them believe a lie, a mostly pleasant lie, but nonetheless, a lie?

"Okay, this time I'm not lying! There really is a ghawd! Trust me on this one!"

That is a seriously weird belief. What about the water in the baptismal font? What about the water in a bathtub or in the shower? What about the water they drink?

But it's OK for non missionaries to frolic in the water? I guess Satan doesn't care to harm non missionaries.

And I don't believe it's true for all missionaries because I read a senior missionary blog where they stayed at a hotel and swam in the pool every day. On their mission. With their stateside kids visiting them for weeks on end. On their mission.

But this is just another example to show you and others how messed up and nonsensical Mormon "doctrine" is. Somehow Satan controls water (but not God), and only water in lakes, rivers, oceans, etc. Never mind that is the same water that comes through everyone's plumbing.

Probably the difference is the possibility of there being scantily-clad young women in the water.

"That is a seriously weird belief. What about the water in the baptismal font? What about the water in a bathtub or in the shower? What about the water they drink?"

Oh, it gets *infinitely* crazier than those examples. What about all those 19th-century missionaries who sailed across the Atlantic and converted those tens of thousands of Europeans over the decades? Boy, Satan missed a golden opportunity to drown most of the early apostles and other leaders, along with their emigrating converts.

No kidding! Satan must be stupid or a lazy ruler of the waters.

Or maybe he underestimated the gullibility of man.

I call your attention to the little white missionary hand book.... The missionary can take a public or commercial water vessel like unto a ferry, but not a private boat or water craft. I'm paraphrasing there. Therefore, satan does not have power over a public boat. That's how all those apostholes made it back, yea even with their polygamous brides some of them.

I been trying to figure this out too, how unreal the church was while I was in it an the garbage things taught both written and the verbal propaganda perpetuated by the members in priesthood or relief society.

I recently found out about the issue of the Ensign last year printing the picture and story of the peep stone. One of my TBM brothers and I got in to a debate like 2 years ago about the Urim and Thummim versus the glass looking and then I presented the rock-in-the-hat facts from the 1993 Ensign quoting David Whitmer.

Fast forward to current time, I sent a text to my brother mentioning that I recently read the Ensign last Fall 2015 that talks about the peep stone. He still didn't connect the dots! Unreal!

I have been researching and I found a great explanation on how cognitive dissonance works and how organizations use this BITE technique to brainwash. See the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmeSmlHyDRU

There's a rational reason for this doctrine. Joseph was a lousy swimmer so he was always leery of traveling by small boat. An excuse to not go out on the water was easier than admitting he was afraid of the water.

"There's a rational reason for this doctrine. Joseph was a lousy swimmer so he was always leery of traveling by small boat."

Sorta. Smith & Co. were canoeing down the Missouri River when they almost capsized. The early Mormon Ezra Booth, wrote details of the incident in an 1831 letter:

>No accident, however, befel them, until Joseph, in the afternoon of the third day, assumed the direction of affairs on board that canoe, which, with other matters of difference, together with Oliver's curse, increased the irritation of the crew, who, in time of danger, refused to exert their physical powers, in consequence of which they ran foul of a sawyer, and were in danger of upsetting . This was sufficient to flutter the timid spirit of the Prophet and his scribe, who had accompanied him on board of that canoe, and like the sea-tossed mariner, when threatened with a watery grave, they unanimously desired to set their feet once more upon something more firm than a liquid surface; therefore, by the persuasion of Joseph, we landed before sunset, to pass the night upon the bank of the river.


>Oliver's denunciation was brought into view; his conduct and equipage were compared to "a fop of a sportsman;" he and Joseph were represented as highly imperious and quite dictatorial; and Joseph and Sidney were reprimanded for their excessive cowardice.


>The next morning Joseph manifested an aversion to risk his person any more upon the rough and angry current of the Missouri, and, in fact, upon any other river; and he again had recourse to his usual method, of freeing himself from the embarrassments of a former commandment, by obtaining another in opposition to it. A new commandment was issued, in which a great curse was pronounced against the waters: navigating them was to be attended with extreme danger; and all the saints, in general, were prohibited in journeying upon them, to the promised land."

Smith exaggerated that incident into "seeing the Destroyer riding upon the waters," and he concocted a revelation about it.

I couldn't go swimming on Sunday for the firs 17 years of my life because Joseph Smith had a phobia in blamed on Stan. Damn! I wish I would have had that tidbit of info when I was a teenager. I would have cleaned the clocks of more than one crazy mormon.

"I couldn't go swimming on Sunday for the firs 17 years of my life because Joseph Smith had a phobia in blamed on Stan."

While a missionary I didn't swim because of the "Satan controls the waters" nonsense, but I never took it seriously any other time. My family and most of our Mormon friends had no problem with swimming. In fact, two different times, our ward rented swimming pools for Pioneer Day outings. The only negative comments I heard were not about swimming, but from females who worried about how they looked in swimsuits. I told them that nobody was forcing them to wear a swimsuit, and that if they didn't want to, they could play volleyball or help cook hot dogs etc.

I went skinny dipping on my mission in a fjord in Norway... That was over 40 years ago... I also baptized someone in a Norwegian fjord... Go figure.

"Kind of ironic that I'm telling my kids not to judge them .."

But your kids will remember that YOU took the high ground - totally worth it!

That is a great thought: Satan rules the waters.

Water: the most important ingredient in...you know...BAPTISM.

I'm sure TBM's would say it only means rivers and other "wild water" and that the Holy Ghost sanctifies any water where a baptism takes place, you know, like in all those LDS movies where people get dunked in the shallows and then there's a big meaningful bro-hug.

But why does god give Lucifer a pass on possibly drowning his faithful servants when he lets beer drinkin' schlubs loll around safely in their inner tubes on the Kern River?

The list of crazy things I used to take for granted goes on and on, and they all seem so stupid now.

Cain was bigfoot
The Book of Mormon was a literal history of the native americans
dark skinned people were cursed because they sat the fence in the war in heaven
the temple wasn't at all weird, just sacred
you needed to learn handshakes to get into heaven

I go go on forever, and the longer you are out the stranger and stranger it seems.

My first semester at Ricks College, I brought up the bigfoot issue in my BoM class that I had learned from my roommates the night before. Everyone in class laughed (at me or the subject, I do not know) The next class, the teacher brought in the diary, it was something like one of the leaders was riding a horse and cain came up to him walking upright and was at same head height as the guy on the horse. Apparently, he gave him the ole'"get the hence" arm to the square trick. Everyone in the class was silent.

Why did I not THINK!!!??? After that semester, I put my mission papers in. DOH!

My crazy things list:

- "Mormon" literally meant 'more good'. Oh my!
- I owed God big time because Adam & Eve ate a damn fruit
- Take the sacrament bread with your right hand to show righteousness
- Joe Smite commanding his minions in the D&C to turn over money to him for safe keeping lest God smite them. How convenient.
- Yeah, those BOM wars weren't highly suspect.
- The First Vision: why wasn't everyone marveling at it?
- Can't wear anything but white shirt and tie on Sundays. Why?
- Neanderthals and other proto-humans devolved because of sin never mind that this was hundreds of thousands of years before Adam and Eve
- Moroni got the gold plates back. Sh-yeah, right.
- Early morning seminary
- Polygamy
- Can we just agree that The United Order was communism in sheep's clothing?

Growing up we were told we can't swim on Sundays because Satan controls the waters. Not just missionaries, but all members weren't supposed to swim on Sundays in any body of water. What a crock.

What is so stupid about magic rocks, underwear with superpowers, handshakes that get you into heaven, an angel with a flaming sword telling a man in his 30s to have sex with a 14 year old and God being a human-looking alien on the planet Kolob?

Yes! The longer I'm out the more obviously ridiculous it all is. Why did I fall for it so easily? Oh, well, I was twelve at the time. I guess that's why I think there should be a law prohibiting children from being made members of any religion before,at least, age 18. I know that even by age 14 I had enough sense that I doubt I would have joined. It would be helpful if they taught a required class in schools giving a true historical picture of the more major religions. Not a religious indoctrination, but rather a historical overview so kids could see some of the truly deplorable things that have been done in the name of religion.

The longer I'm out the stupider it is.

Where is this at in the D&C? Wife didn't believe me when I told her about it. She even asked people at church and they denied it.

D&C 61.. Particularly 5-19

Also
"in the beginning the lord blessed the waters and cursed the land, but in these last days this was reversed, the land to be blessed and the waters to be cursed..." JFS

"Where is this at in the D&C? Wife didn't believe me when I told her about it. She even asked people at church and they denied it."

It's hard to believe that any active, adult Mormon isn't familiar with this. I was aware of it as early at age 19 while a missionary.

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/61?lang=eng

I was invited to dinner at a Mormon's house about three months ago.

Some of my former churchmates were there, a few Mormons I'd never met, and one nevermo.

I was listening to them talk about their temple callings, church callings, Mormon weddings they'd gone to, who's dating/marrying whom, the new bishop in the mid-singles ward, and I thought...

WAS THIS REALLY MY LIFE?

Did I really sound this lame?

If I did, I don't anymore.

I spent the evening talking to the nevermo. She clearly felt SO awkward until I talked to her.

So you can imagine how stupid it all seemed to me, as a nevermo, when I first moved to Utah and was determined to learn something about the Mormons, before being stand-offish.

I also wanted to learn about the church so that I would know how to react/respond to anyone who saw us as 'potential converts'. My first introduction to the history of JS and the BoM was from reading Fawn Brodie's "No Man Knows my History". I was surprised to find it in the library of a smaller Utah town but so glad I did and read it :)