I'm curious what were some of the initial cracks in your faith that caused you to leave the church? List as many as you like.
For me here are a few.

1. The idea that God is petty and is so concerned about every little thing i do wrong, or sins of omission, that he then will withhold "blessings"

2. The constant shaming and guilt in lessons and bishops offices, when I screwed up with the law of chastity.

3. The news that brother Joe actually was a polygamist, when we were taught he wasn't.

4. The 4 different versions of the "First Vision"

5. No real archaeological evidence to support the BOM

6. The book of Abraham and facsimile in the standard works have been proven to be false and the funerary text was of a person name Horas??



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2016 11:46PM by alaskawild.

Excellent question

The golden plates story just doesn't work

The seed pod people in my adolescent ward. They reminded me of The invasion of the body snatchers movie. By that I mean shallow, superficial, and disconnected.

Ezra Taft Benson. I developed a real dislike for this old fossil.

First cracks:

1- polygamy
2- misogyny
3- racism
4- homophobia

Those led me to do more research about the history of the church.



The following caused me to resign:

1- JS marrying other men's wives
2- Teachings from the dictator, Brigham Young
3- Current leaders' reaction to gay marriage
4- Multiple "First Vision" accounts
5- B of M anachronisms
6- Excommunicating members for questioning and/or researching
7- Spending so much $ on accumulating property
8- Requiring unquestioning obedience
9- Tithing
10- Indoctrinating children
11- Treating adults like children

Great list, most of those are the same for me

And isn't it interesting how it is ingrained in the clergy and most members, that as soon as you question or have doubts and do research, suddenly you are one of Satan's children? Or, Satan's gotten a hold of you, or, Somehow you are now an evildoer? Its so black and white.

Right on! For a church with mottos like 'We are saved no faster than we gain knowledge' and ' The glory of God is intelligence', it's strange that when someone actually DOES try to gain knowledge / intelligence, he / she is treated with suspicion. When i told my TBM brother something I had discovered, he actually told me I had strayed into Satan's territory. My question then was, how can an honest search for truth ever be seen as Satanic ?

1. BYU Religion classes--God was once a man, literal readings of the Bible, and Pearl of Great Price EGYPTIAN Mummies, WTF!!

2. Mark Hofmann forging and selling documents to church leaders who didn't have a clue as to his deception.

3. Going through the temple and ritualistically slashing my throat and disemboweling myself to scare me into not revealing any not-so-secret handshakes.

Sorry. I'm going to cheat and post more than three:

1) The church's history with racism - which explains a lot. Brigham young preaching his racist rhetoric which TSCC held on to until 1978

2) Joseph Smith's polygamy. Some of his wives being teenagers and women married to other living men.

3) Joseph Smith himself. Too many examples to name. But I'll name one of them - learning that he was actually killed for his polygamy/polyamory and destruction of property, rather than being killed as a martyr (over his religion).

4) The Book of Mormon. The mentioning of the curse of dark skin, and the whole "white and delightsome bull****.
Also 1 Nephi 13. It just sounds too perfect that Nephi saw the coming of Columbus, etc.

5) The essays. It just shows that TSCC is still hiding information from its members, trying to hold on to their perfect facade.

It blows my mind how members would accuse you of getting into anti-mormon literature when you discover these things. But how can the Journal of Discourses, Mormon Doctrine and Mormonism and the Negro be anti-mormon literature when THOSE BOOKS CAME FROM MORMONS?!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2016 06:48PM by severedpuppetstrings.

Good stuff, thanks

Lying by JS as well as other church leaders and the consequent loss of trust and resentment.

Then followed all the other issues mentioned above that destroyed any confidence in the foundational claims.

The continued refusal of the current leaders to address the issues with openness and honesty.

1. Institutional acceptance and continued peddling of patently false doctrines. They've had absolute proof for a long time that the BoA and BoM were complete fabrications.

2. Thought control that interferes with normal emotional development. It's as crazy as pressing a block of wood to your head day in and day out to make your head flat. Not only do you not need all that pain, but a flat head makes you look weird.

3. Atrocious treatment of women. Like picking a bunch of beautiful flowers and wiping your ass with them.

This is a good question.

The main reasons for me to turn my back on the mighty morg started when I was a child and I had to give the bishop a dollar in tithing because I got $10 for my birthday. That pist off this little kid and it festered sorely over the years as the dollar amounts grew and grew.

The second reason I turned away started with the Ward Teaching program that later morphed into the Home Teaching program. One of my earliest recollections of Ward Teaching was when a giant fat man would come to our house every month and bring along a kid who lived up the street. This kid had a severe speech impediment and stuttered. He could barely read but the fat man would make him read a message out of the Improvement Era. I felt so sorry for this kid and asked my Dad why they made him read like that. My Dad said is was for his own good and was teaching him how to read and talk better. I knew that was a bullshit answer and it has bothered me all this time.
Then later I was forced to go Ward Teaching with a man who always made us pray before we went. I hated that too. I usually went just so I could report 100% and feel special. Everything about Home Teaching sucked.

The final straw was when my wife became crippled up after a medical procedure that went bad. She was one of the most faithful & stalwart TBMs ever. She had many many blessings that promised a full recovery, fought a long battle, and then after 6 years of suffering she died. What for? Did it teach her a lesson? or me? Nope, just senseless suffering. What kind of a kind loving Father in Heaven would do that? That's when I stopped following the prophet and crawled out of that cesspool.

1. JS' pseudepigrapha and failed prophecies.

2. The utter lack of discernment exhibited by church leaders during the Hofmann affair.

3. JS' lying about his polygamy (which he shouldn't have done if he believed that it was a divine commandment), his practice thereof without the proper authority (Fanny Alger came before the restoration of the sealing power) and his failure to follow his own rules and those in the Bible in practising it.

1. The year we taught 'history of the church' in primary - having already read up on some church history years previous... Seeing how whitewashed the church version was and then having to actually teach that to a future generation - just couldn't overcome the dissonance there.....

2. Women's issues - including taking a class at UVU where we had to read 'Women and Authority' - really blew my mind....

These 2 things lead me to questioning, doubting, and researching at a time when the Internet was exploding with new information. Feminist Mormon Housewives helped me ease out.

Big #1 Without question - The Book of Abraham papyri.

#2 The enormity of changes in Joseph Smith's History.

#3 The lies, distortions and gross misrepresentations. Had I been told the truth I would have never served a mission or attended BYU.

Mormonism is clearly a cult and offers absolutely nothing of value.

Mormon exit

1) Joseph's freemasonry (it's the first thing I ever learned about and got me started in my research)
2) Joseph's adultery
3) BOfA

Religious exit

1) The idea that gods single method for finding out if he's there and if he has a religion on the earth, is to pray about it and get a good feeling!
2) The dividing of humanity religion has caused

above all Being Lied To about Everything. Other than that:

1. Polygamy/polyandry- not just JS, but all those that followed.

2. Racism

3. Harsh treatment of LGBT--total lack of kindness or empathy. They are normal and should have all the rights of anyone else, in the church and legally.

In other words--completely unChristlike policies and behavior.

1) the Book of Mormon

2) the Bible

3) the concept of eternal judgment

Numbers 2 and 3 aren't specific to Mormonism, but I intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally abandoned all religion when I left TSCC.

1. I learned on my mission that general authorities and apostles were not really christ-like men with power of discernment, but rather foolish and corrupt business people who ran the church like a corporation and who encouraged lying for the lord and political careerist nonsense with MPs trying to impress so they could become GAs too.

2. The Book of Abraham was a complete fraud and the Church knew it.

3.The entire story behind the book of mormon was a poorly executed fraud, with no evidence from archaeology, linguistics, or DNA evidence to support the story that Middle Eastern Jews settled in the Americas and created a civilization that disappeared.

4. Mark Hoffman posing with LDS leaders and fake Book of Mormon characters. I knew Mark Hoffman and believed that he was a pathological liar; I knew if he conned SWK et al. that they had no discernment or priesthood power.

You knew Mark Hoffmann? That's really interesting. What was he like, what made you sure he was a pathological liar, long before everyone else did?

Me, myself, and I. The rest is history.

Mine weren't really religion-related.

I was highly offended that you had to dress a certain way to be allowed to enter the church building. Is their god REALLY that petty?

I absolutely refused to let the church tell me what movies I could watch or books I could read. During an interview with the bish, I kind of slithered around his questioning at first, trying not to be confrontational. When he kept pestering, I finally said, "Apparently you can't take a hint. What I'm trying to say is that I am an adult, and NOBODY tells me what to read or watch." (He left me alone after that.)

I got tired of the incessant demands for absolute conformity. Especially when they told us we could not add "supplemental" material to the lessons. Because the lessons were so shallow, I often added outside material, to give them some substance. After getting ripped a new one for doing this, I'd had enough.

Absolutely! I had similar thoughts and issues with not being respected enough to think for myself.

1) The way women were treated as if their sole purpose was to become a baby machine. My brothers were encouraged to go to college and were given financial support, whereas I had to put myself through school and then I received negative and/or condescending comments from family members and other TBMs once I completed my advanced degree. Some family members actually look down on women who decide to go to college and put off having a family. Yuck! The treatment of women still has me fuming...

2) The demand for conformity or else. I was told I was 'required' to attend church if I were to live under my parents' roof. Ok sweet! I'm moving out! This was nearly 20 years ago. When my mom starts in on me about church (because she always does eventually) and the 'but that's the way you were raised!' guilt trip, I always remind her: yea well that was chosen for me. I don't choose that for myself.

3) The micro-managing of people's lives and being way into your business (read: no boundaries). No one can just stop attending. You get harassed, questioned, shunned.

These are the reasons I stopped attending at age 18 as soon as I could move out and support myself. I actually was having severe anxiety and chest pain while still living at home. All the crazy doctrinal bullshit I didn't even really learn of until recently because I never really attended as an adult. And once I stopped attending I didn't care. Boy have my eyes been opened lately!!

After I saw what goes on in the temple (thanks to the Internet) that did it for me.

First not getting anything out of the church service. That's why I stopped attending.

I left (pre-Internet) due to the blatant, horrible racism in the BOM.

I would still have left/stayed away for that one huge reason alone, even if the rest of it had been all roses, but since then have learned about a million other reasons to never be part of TSCC.

My top three are:
Racism
Sexism
Homophobia

Added to that- It's a culty scam and has been since the beginning. I could go on, but those cover the generalities pretty well for me.

1) A welfare programme that is clearly non existent - no suppor in time of need
2)Polyandry/polygamy
3)It was so excruciatingly boring.

1. FAIR
2. FAIR
3. FAIR

Mountain Meadows

Polygamy

Homophobia

Joey revelatin gawd wanted him to have a better house than anyone else...joey revelatin that the kirtland bank was just ducky....joey TESTING ol hebes and vilate then settling on their eighth grade daughter...a shit head by any other name...who cares what the low life says on Sunday...then the one about his calling not being physical labor...geez sounds like Winky B or warny J...for every shit head there are twenty honest folk to take advantage of...and all they wanted was to believe gawd cared

1. All the lies

2. The way the leadership absolutely refuses to take any responsibility for all the damage they cause.

I love these threads that show such a large variety of valid reasons people have for seeing TSCC for what it is. For me:

1. Finally admitting to myself that I absolutely hated everything about church participation. Honestly, I remember sitting there stunned as I tried to think of one thing that was helpful or uplifting to me from my decades of devotion. I had been the perfect mor-bot, dutifully complying with every expectation, yet all it did was make me miserable.

2. Stumbling upon the FAIR website while preparing for a talk. I felt so confused that what I had always dismissed as obvious "anti-Mormon lies" were apparently real issues that needed defending. Wait! You mean Joseph really DID practice polygamy?! Wait! There really ARE Book of Mormon DNA problems?! Wait! The temple ceremony HAS been changed several times?!

3. Recognizing I was embarrassed to be associated with TSCC because of its involvement with California's Prop 8.

4. Reading "By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus" sealed the deal. I had been duped. At least by that point I'd been doubting everything so much that I was able to laugh over how absurd it all was.

A slightly different version of the topic: What were my top three questions that made me leave?

1. What if I hadn't been born a Mormon?

2. Why can't I get a testimony?

3. Do I really believe this stuff?

My top reasons:

1. Racism

2. Sexism-especially the idea that women are only good as baby factories.

3. Homophobia-if I hadn't resigned when I did, I would have done so over their push for Prop H8.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2016 02:08PM by adoylelb.

Failure of the spirit
conflict with science
stupidity of sin and atonement doctrine

When I graduated from college and moved away, I gradually found that the Mormon lifestyle did not inspire me or make me happy. The more I thought about things, and I thought about it a lot, the more I realized that I just disagreed with basic things, like the need to pray, the need to praise God, the idea of a loving God etc. It was much later that I learned some of the very unpleasant truths about the LDS church. I find LDS history to be very interesting and, well, shocking.

Two words. Fanny Alger. I had a 16-year-old daughter at the time. My "testimony" took an immediate 180 degree paradigm shift. I never looked back.

In the space of about half an hour, I went from worshipping a man to wanting to wring his neck. My protective maternal instincts encompassed a young woman trying to make a living and survive in a household with a malicious predator. I still hate thinking about it. My cognitive dissonance, a spiritual leader who was victimizing instead of sheltering an innocent, made it impossible for me to hang onto any shred of faith in this psychopath.

I had been a stake auxiliary leader for a decade. I had been all in. Suddenly, I was completely out...body, mind and spirit.

Unindoctrinated Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Two words. Fanny Alger. I had a 16-year-old
> daughter at the time. My "testimony" took an
> immediate 180 degree paradigm shift. I never
> looked back.
>
> In the space of about half an hour, I went from
> worshipping a man to wanting to wring his neck. My
> protective maternal instincts encompassed a young
> woman trying to make a living and survive in a
> household with a malicious predator. I still hate
> thinking about it. My cognitive dissonance, a
> spiritual leader who was victimizing instead of
> sheltering an innocent, made it impossible for me
> to hang onto any shred of faith in this
> psychopath.
>
> I had been a stake auxiliary leader for a decade.
> I had been all in. Suddenly, I was completely
> out...body, mind and spirit.

Very well said, Unindoctrinated. No amount of "hand-wringing" by the TBM crowd can explain away the pedophilia and sexual deviancy of Ol' Joe. Why can't they see this? Why can't the TBMs recognize the obvious: that Joey was a skirt-chasing megalomaniac who capitalized on the weak-minded and vulnerable? Why can't the TBMs understand that all this took place during a time when the people around him all believed in a magical worldview where people believed to speak to and hear from "God" on a daily basis and that they all had magical powers to see buried treasure, etc.? I just don't get it, folks. I don't understand. How can the cognitive dissonance, even that which is this ingrained, prevail in light of the truth?

...and the Truth shall set you free.

edzachery Wrote:
> ...No amount of
> "hand-wringing" by the TBM crowd can explain away
> the pedophilia and sexual deviancy of Ol' Joe.
> Why can't they see this? Why can't the TBMs
> recognize the obvious: that Joey was a
> skirt-chasing megalomaniac who capitalized on the
> weak-minded and vulnerable? Why can't the TBMs
> understand that all this took place during a time
> when the people around him all believed in a
> magical worldview where people believed to speak
> to and hear from "God" on a daily basis and that
> they all had magical powers to see buried
> treasure, etc.?

TBMs don't see these things because they don't want to see them. It's just that simple.

1) I was REALLY offended by the Sunday School President.
2) I REALLY WANTED to sin.
3) I was REALLY lazy and had a hard time making the 9 AM church start time.

LOL. Finally, someone brave enough to tell the truth;)

Mom, Dad, and whichever asshole comes next.

I left the cult before I even knew about all the facts.

1. I began with disagreeing with Mormonism as a child--I could not understand racism. The Mormons around me were prejudiced, and I thought they were just being mean and cruel--but I couldn't believe in a church that taught that God Himself wouldn't allow black-skinned people to have the priesthood and the blessings of the temple. When the Mormons suddenly, in the face of the racial wars, allowed Blacks to have the priesthood, I knew that they should never have been excluded in the first place. My own parents backed away at that time, and resigned from their callings.

2. The temple. I went when the blood oaths were used, and when men pledged to obey the church, but the women (on the other side of the room!) pledged to obey their husbands. I felt the presence of evil.

3. After trying for decades to get a temple divorce from my temple ex, who beat me for many months, and almost killed me, three "Holy Men" knocked on my door. It was the stake presidency. They told me to stop trying to get a temple divorce. They said not only I, but all of my children (fathered by my second husband) belonged to the assailant, as his possessions, for eternity. The three men told me that this was the only way I could have any eternal connection with my children in the hereafter.

Like "unindoctrinated" describes,

"Suddenly, I was completely out...body, mind and spirit."

I said, "I have a personal testimony of God, and no one is going to tell me that God wants me and my children to be in the hands of a criminal who almost killed me."

It was AFTER we left, that I began asking questions, and getting answers on RFM, including how to resign from the cult.

Before that, I didn't know it was possible to resign. I thought the only way out was to be excommunicated.

First: My world was rocked when I learned JS married other men's wives.

Second: I lived in Utah and found out all the crazy stuff Utah, or BIC, Mormons believed, did, thought, and taught. As a convert far from the Morridor I'd never heard, let alone watched, people talk about some of the crazy teachings converts are generally shielded from.

Third: Heard the prophet of the Lord lie his pants off live on national TV. That was the last straw for me.

Book of Abraham
Book of Abraham
Book of Abraham


"No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious."
George Bernard Shaw

ALL of the above!!! God I hate tscc!!!!

Unanswered prayers, especially about the truth of the B of M

Lack of testimony, despite my sincere efforts to get one

Finally realizing that basic promises had not been fulfilled and that maybe I should start asking some questions

Finding out the church wasn't true took time for me. It didn't happen all at once.

It's hard for me to narrow down only three things, because there was so many things we were taught that were true that were later found out to be untrue.

For me when the shelf collapsed it all fell away.

I know the church isn't what it professes to be.

I no longer believe Joseph Smith to be a true prophet of God.

I do not believe the men presiding over the church are in any better authority to rule from Salt Lake City over millions of people than the early founders were.

I do believe the church is a huge corporation, and a house of cards built on investments funded by tithes and donations. It could probably run by itself without any membership at all if it just existed on its holdings, which is why its business enterprises are so vital to its existence.

Maybe it only needs the church membership to make believe its reason to exist, because its sole purpose seems to be generating vast amounts of money to keep the empire going.

Pre mission 1969-1988 - The use of public shaming for breaking rules that were obviously made up (kissing with tongue, coffee, even Coke for Christ's sake.)
Mission 1988-1990 - The obsession with statistics, high pressure sales tactics, knowing that the leaders weren't inspired (I was AP for 8 months)
Post mission 1990-1999 - Multiple versions of the First Vision. I mean, that was our lead story to investigators. Our anchor. It was the alpha and the omega when you think about it. And it was a hodge podge, enhanced version that didn't happen.

I took my Gs off the fall of 99. I have since learned that very little about what my family was taught in the 70s to get us to join was true. Thankfully, we're all out now.

1. I didn't care about the cult.
2. I hated all the rules.
3. I needed to shut down the asshole HP who was pestering me to come back to the cult after my dad died.

RB

1. It's the only true church, yet most people are not Mormon. If its so great and obviously right why don't people see it. Since I believed God loves everyone equally this bugged me a lot.

2. Science and religion - this lead to questioning not only the flood, Adam and Eve etc., but also Book of Mo, Book of Abe etc.. the dominoes fell hard with the CES letter

3. In church it always bugged me when there were endless lessons on obedience, honor etc., and not much about being patient etc... and developing virtues. There was also a glaring lack of virtue on the part of some leaders and a lot of BS. Members of the only true church that have gone all their lives were the same or worse than everyone else. Why didn't the gospel work??

1) Many attempts to pray about the BoM with no spiritual confirmation that it was true.

2) The realization that TSCC is most definitely NOT growing to fill the earth. It's stagnant and is still insignificant in the world.

These first realizations are what allowed me to start thinking critically about the church. These realizations were followed by study on the BoA. I was pretty sure it was all BS at that point. This was followed by the CES letter and many hours of research on church history, the BoM, reading RSR, the JoD, early church papers, etc... I was shocked. Reading a bunch of lame excuses and BS from FAIR really sealed the deal.

1. Profound, unthinking bigotry, against so many groups of people, so eagerly held on to when ordered to do so by religious leaders. With such awful reasoning to support it.
2. Book of Mormon --- so terribly poorly written, so terribly filled with cliches from the time that it was written, so terribly lacking in things that should have been noted in a history of the pre-Columbian Americas, and so terribly obviously the work of a known con-artist.
3. What? Wine is evil? But Jesus drank wine. And all of his disciples. And everyone else in that culture.

And then the Book of Abraham; and blaming victims; and clearly false prophecies; and everything about Brigham Young and his horrible ideas; and the end of polygamy, and of denying priesthood to those of African heritage, when those things were so obviously the result of external political pressure; and the mindless, knee-jerk assumption that anyone who questioned any of the above was deceived by Stan; and so many other things that made me wonder how anyone could possibly cling to this sad, oppressive, hate-filled belief system.

1. Dependence on needing FAITH which is code for getting people to accept smoke and mirrors.

2. Whitewashed history. The real history shows the church was a cult in the making- just like other religions before it.

3. Education. Once you read other books, you can't help but recognize how laughable the BoM is by comparison. You recognize mythology. You recognize standards for evidence. If you are unwilling to compartmentalize the church and you hold it to the same scrutiny you give everything else, it falls apart.

1) I hated the culture that it created. I got sick of judgmental condescending people everywhere. Constant remarks of how people knew that they were more righteous because of how they were more rich and had nice clothes etc. The "lord" had blessed them with money and financial gain.
I got sick of people that knew better than me because they were given self appointed stewardship over me.

2) The book of Abraham. The only defense was that translation didn't mean translation.

3) The complete lack of discernment of leaders that should know things from god. These men that were supposed to have a constant connection to god and Jesus. But god didn't tell them that racism was wrong till 1978. That was years after they were supposedly asking him to change the doctrine. If it was so wrong why didn't he tell JS or BY? I saw the same problem with the treatment of gays unfolding.
The same thing with local leaders. A complete and utter lack of discernment. They had no idea when I was telling the truth or lying.
When I found out about the Mark Hofmann forgeries it only cemented the idea that the leaders didn't have any connection to god.
I am going to include giving blessings was a complete let down. I was waiting for god to give me words to say. I waited and waited, nothing came. I had to make it up every time I gave a blessing.

For me, it was the single understanding of just how uninspired everything about the mission system was, In my particular mission, from the callings themselves to the lower level leadership, to the MP himself, it all spoke of chaos. An all-knowing God could not have been directing anything happening in that mission. To me, that indicated that no all-knowing God was likely to be directing any segment of Jesus' so-called church.

Infallibility of the pope/prophet/current CEO

TITHING
TITHING
TITHING

Polygamy got me to start questioning
How people treated my family got me to stop attending
Reading the temple ceremonies online is what finally made me resign.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2016 11:08PM by blindersoff.

1. Institutionalized Racism
2. Intitutionalized abuse, victim blaming, protecting pedophiles. Deceipt. Good men lying to my face to protect the good name of the church.
3. The prophet falling conspicuously silent on 9-11