It's been bothering me a lot that so many of us here have found the truth about Mormonism but we can't get through to the ones we love and care about the most.

The missionaries are frustrating to talk with because they have no concept of any other life outside Mormonism if they are BIC. Their parents, grandparents, teachers, friends, almost everyone they know are Mormon. How horrible it is to be different when you are a kid. The thought of going outside the social norms is unthinkable to most teens. They cannot even imagine you, an outsider, could possibly have their best interest in mind. This makes a lot of sense for why they shut down when you approach them with facts about Mormonism.

But then there are the older, wiser ones. Our parents, siblings and dear friends who have lived a little. They know there is a wider world with information that might expand their lives. They know you and your character. Why won't they at least open their minds a crack and listen? Give us half a chance at convincing them? I think the answer lies in the phrase that goes constantly through my mind whenever I think of TBM Mormons: "There are none so blind as they who will not see."

Blind, deaf, and dumb they are because they want to be. They don't want you rocking their world. They like the regimented way they were taught to raise their kids. Their kids have turned out to be obedient, traditional, hard working, and reliable. They succeeded as parents thanks to Mormonism. How can you argue with that? Now you want to mess with their family harmony and certainty of success. It's a trifling matter that their kids are afraid or unhappy living outside of Utah or the Morridor. It may not be great to see their gay kids suffer in this life but the next will bring them happiness for their suffering today.

Then there are the neat freaks. The ones who have to have every question answered and every duck in its appropriate row for life to function. If they aren't headed for the celestial kingdom, praying to the correct god, aligned with the right social order, and progressing along the right path, what kingdom, god, order, and path are you going to replace all this certainty with? You don't have anything better to plug into those holes you just shot into their life that makes them superior to all others on earth and protected from all harm for eternity? That cannot be right. You must be evil if you don't have a map that draws their life out into perfect harmony with promises of a happily ever after forever. Satan get thee behind them! Mormonism has such power to protect, guide, and comfort them. You are asking them to embark on a life without certainty and clearly marked roads with honeysuckle fields at the end. Get lost!

Yes, reality is a harsh replacement for fantasy. We are asking Mormons to enter a world of uncertainty, fear, and unanswered questions about life's purpose and destination. It's a lot to ask of someone who has been sheltered from life and reality for a lifetime. If you are going to ask it of them they will expect something better. What do you have to offer? Just because we prefer mental clarity, freedom, truth, and reality doesn't mean everyone does.

I watched a video of Sam Harris trying to explain the human degradations and horrors against women taught in the Quran to a Muslim woman. She refused to listen. She couldn't defend it in any other way but to point out that the Old Testament was just as bad. Yes, she was right but that doesn't make Islam any better. I could tell Sam was frustrated. This woman took every misogynist doctrine he showed her in her own religion and just ignored it or proclaimed it was misunderstood. Yet, she could not intelligently defend it.

We must not give up. Yes, deconstructing Mormonism with truth is a bitter pill to offer many Mormons. But if we don't do it, who will save the ones suffocating, stagnating, and mentally dying each day from lack of truth? The ones who just can't understand why their fantastic religion offers them no substance are waiting for the truth but don't quite know where it is.

Friends, keep up the fight. It won't be won until the last Mormon on earth at least hears the truth about their bogus religion. If even one person hears the truth you have to offer and finds their way out of the cult, think how much good you will have done.

I plan on one day simply asking my COB-employed brother: "You do realize the church is a crock, right?" and see what his reaction is. I would not use the phrase "the church isn't true."

However, since age 18 he has built his entire existence around TSCC so what's the use? What do you do with someone who comes to visit and brings a copy a book with a title something like "The Doors of Heaven: The Meaning of the Temple" to read (and study) at night?

Indoctrination goes much deeper than anyone realizes. Even when you finally see through it there are deep channels carved that will always be there. I know that is true for me.

Each of us is gifted at birth with our own set of genes like no one else and these genes are drawn from millions of combinations of millions of ancestors. Some of us have a propensity to be open to using our own reason and respecting it, and others have the propensity to stick with the "known" no matter what. Rational thought is no longer necessary under that circumstance as the latter cling to the comfortable, easy way.

Therefore, trying to reason with someone who has no need of reason is futile. They are playing a different game with a different set of rules than us. They need something much more traumatic to break the spell beyond fact and reason. I left because the spell was broken, not because of reason and that is why I believe the above to be true. My genes were my friends.

That is my own armchair analysis anyway. Very frustrating to watch my own family ignore all reason and fact.

BTW, I forgot to say how much I enjoyed your well thought out post, pooped. Important topic for many of us.

Your post is excellent,pooped. I keep hoping that someday, our oldest daughter and son-in-law will finally see through it all, but I doubt it. Our daughter could possibly someday, but I think our son-in-law will die being TBM. One evening, we were all having dinner together and the grandkids were watching Disney Channel. Our oldest grandchild was 6 at the time. There was a puppet that was on, and she asked our other son-in-law, "that's not real is it? Somebody's just inside of it, huh?" Our other son-in-law told her that she was right, and it was just fake. Her dad, immediately got upset and told her that no, that really is real, not pretend! I think he feels like that about the church because his whole life and self-worth is wrapped around the church.

That's freaky.

I say again:
Trying to deal rationally with a closed mind is like trying to blow open a bank vault with a firecracker

More concise. Thanks. I missed it the past times you may have said it.

My parents did listen. My mother was the one who I was most surprised about as she was the MORMON in the household, while my dad was so-so. When my dad was talking to me about going back, my mom blurted out, "You can be spiritual and not be any religion." I know my dad felt that my life was going better when I was mormon than it was at the time as my life was an utter disaster. But he didn't know the whole story and never did.

BUT they listened and my dad started telling me his issues with the lds church. His family was more what I'd call cultural mormons. It was their ancestry. His parents didn't go to church because of some issues that happened. My other grandparents didn't go as they were deaf.

But, yes, my parents listened. For one, I was their most devout child and they watched my life fall apart BECAUSE I listened to the leaders. And that had a HUGE impact on them.

For an organization that holds up truth as the end all be all of life, they only want what fits into an imagined paradigm. I mean, if all of it was true and your whole life was built around it, wouldn't you want to learn the real history. Rather, some base their whole belief on simplistic stories told in Sunday School.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2017 10:53PM by Gd.

I was just actually watching a video about this. Its all about brainwashing and programming. No matter what evidence is presented it wont reach the left side of the brain which has been programmed since childhood and then an exclamation mark with a mission. Deprogramming everything in the left side of the brain is one of the hardest things i have been told. Even i struggle with it, part of my mind still holds all the teachings of the church as i once saw as fact because i was so young at the time. Like the whole getting sealed and have to serve a mission, its still programmed in me to serve a mission and i am 34 for christs sake.

Do you recall the story of the great and spacious building and its occupants mocking the folks on the path to the tree holding the iron rod in the BOM? Do they see themselves on the path and us ex-mos stuck in the building? Brainwashing is a serious obstacle to seeing right from wrong, truth from error and good vs. evil. And that discernment is a promise in the temple washing room. Fear is a major motivater. Keep sharing your truth with your family and in time, they may see your point of view. Or they may see it now and don't care. Status quo works for them.

I definitely felt like i was in a stagnant and spacious building in the church literally. I felt like i was on a brainless road of repitition to nowhere. But getting your real mind back is a hard road.

I was with you until the end. I get your point, that it may take time and effort to convince our loved ones about the man behind the curtain. There may even be good reasons they've refused to listen, and sure, it hurts when they, even knowing our character, refuse to hear us out.

But...

Pooped Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...
>
> Friends, keep up the fight. It won't be won until
> the last Mormon on earth at least hears the truth
> about their bogus religion. If even one person
> hears the truth you have to offer and finds their
> way out of the cult, think how much good you will
> have done.


I have conflicted feelings about this. Sure, it would be great to show my family and friends they're being deceived and the could walk away from it all. But you know, one of the I hated most about being a missionary was "proselytizing", and the ending of your post sounds awfully similar to zone-conference pep-talks.

So, for me personally, I'm waiting to see if any of my friends or family ask me about why I don't believe anymore. Until then, I'll mostly keep my mouth shut.

Yes, I admit I drew heavily upon Mormon speak in that plea. It was a bit tongue in cheek. I, also, would probably never dump all the deceptions of Mormonism on my friends and family in one giant outburst. But listening to Christopher Hitchens has made me feel quite a bit more daring. It is pointless to heatedly argue with someone firmly set on his opinion. But I do enjoy injecting little droplets of truth here and there in hopes that natural erosion will wear away at their thoughts. Many toss out what I've said as lies but the more daring will do their research and find that I've spoken the truth. In one case, a friend's son was listening into our conversation and it had an effect on the son's thinking but not the father's. You never know who is listening.

But, no, I don't see it as my duty to de-convert all the Mormon indoctrinated. It's a nice thought but most unlikely to ever happen. Sorry if it sounded like I was trying to recruit you.

See my thread on co-dependency and the cult for a view on why they won't leave the cult.

One's world view is instinctive first. The next step of the brain is to look for ANY supporting reason (not fact) to stick with the instinctive view.

So if a person is happy or satisfied or familial tied or most any other connection to a world view, your facts don't matter.

You can't have a discussion of religion until the person is in a state where their instinctive and supporting reason are already disrupted to some degree.

Faith is not reasoned or empiric. We are not particularly reason oriented. It takes effort to make reason your method and path. Until they have a reason to put forth that effort, there is no point to the discussion.

Putting a person into that disrupted state is usually a hostile act. Better to let the person experience a disruption on their own and be a friend they can turn to at that point.

I can't say I agree with your idea that my world view as a child was instinctive. I had no particular idea about religion or fantasy until it was taught to me. In fact, it was taught to me so badly that I used to, as a small child, turn to religious programs on T.V. that pretended to be academic instruction on the Bible. They confused me no end. When my parents chose a church, I went along with the teachings there simply because I trusted my parents to not lead me astray. I was still confused and asked rather well thought out questions for a child and got useless answers that left me just as confused. When Mormonism came along I, once again, figured that these people had no reason to steer me wrong because I had nothing of use to them. I had no money to pay tithing and had nothing to offer them. They did, however, dumb down the Bible enough that I felt as if, for the first time, I understood something about religion. But when I caught Mormonism in its lies, and they themselves could not deny the lies, it wasn't difficult to let it go.

From your viewpoint I must have been a very unusual child/person to have seen through the illusion and accept reasoned thought. I don't think I was/am. But I do think that the earlier in a child's life parents present fantasy as reality the more difficult it is for that child to recognize reality and use reason. The longer a person trusts in the delusion they have been taught the harder they are to convince the delusion is actually false. And it is quite possible that some people are more susceptible to delusion than others. There are also many who can compartmentalize their thinking and many who have no ability to do it at all.

My parents were lax in creating a religious delusion extremely early in me. But I disagree that my world view was instinctual. I did fall into the trap of trusting my parents completely but that is merely bonding and training and not, as you presume, instinctual. In fact, I think most children, left to their own devices, will look for rational answers to life questions first. I saw this daily as an elementary school teacher.

You're born with the first draft. You're also on an impressionable teachable state and thats where nurture comes in so you do have nature and nurture. Steven Pinker Jonathan Haidt talk about these kinds of things, how the mind develops and behaves.

The most crushing thing for me is when I think I see the mind of a mormon loved one opening and questioning, and then quickly doubling down.

Ugh. Hope can be a good thing but it can also be a killer.

It is horrible when this cycle happens repeatedly.

It does happen a lot even with all i have learned about the truth i still question myself and i have been away a year now. They program you so well from birth it is nuts.

When my kids were little, our pediatrician happened to be into raising bilingual kids. One tip he gave me is that any exposure/instruction they can get before age 12, the better because that is the age where the connections in the brain that learn language begin to shut down. If you expose them to another language, any other language, those pathways will stay open and learning any second or third language will be easier for them than for a child who only hears their native tongue. The actual ability to learn languages is preserved.

Later I read that a similar thing happens in the brain with it's ability to process rational, analytical thought. If you are never taught to think critically about something and analyze ideas from different angles, you literally lose your ability to do so. Not entirely but it is much harder for you to make your brain work in that direction, than someone who is exposed to critical thought.

So why do some people, even some TBMs, have the ability to look at the church objectively and rationally? Maybe they were taught young to look at both side of an issue or maybe they were trained in school to analyze or maybe they just were unusually brainy to begin with. But when we are trying to reason with Mormons, especially some raised with very TBM backgrounds, we need to take into account that their brain may actually not work that way. Their ability to reason may be damaged by years of being trained to shut down their rational brain in favor of what makes them feel good.

It has been stated on this board that the first question one should ask before starting a discussion with a Mormon is "If the church isn't true, would you want to know?" The answer you get to that question could tell you what you need to know before embarking on a fruitless dialogue.

but you can't make him drink". Regarding indoctrinated folks, You can lead a person/mormon to knowledge, but you can't make them think!

I think that one of the most damaging things about Mormonism is the failure to realize that people can deeply understand the Mormon faith, reject it, and still be good people. It is falsely ascribed to the loss of "the spirit." Apostates are viewed with fear, as though they are contagious.

I wish that TBMS could realize that Mormonism is but one choice on the buffet of religious options. One choice, with many other attractive options.

The challenge, it seems to me, is getting TBM's to actually LOOK at the evidence, or to look at ENOUGH evidence.

I think most Mormon shelves would crash if they actually LOOKED at the evidence against the church but most refuse to do so. Some are truly brainwashed into thinking that they should NOT EVEN LOOK at "anti-Mormon" information. The rest seem to desire to remain in a state of ignorance because they are too scared to look at information that might hurt their deep rooted feelings towards the religion. Kind of like not wanting to know if Grandpa looks at Playboy. Even if it's true, I don't want to know anyway.

As one with voracious curiosity, telling me to NOT LOOK is about the worst thing someone can say if that's what they really want. I have a hard time with people who willingly choose ignorance out of fear. If reading something that is false will fool me that easily than my truth is weak indeed.

Interesting concept coming from someone on this board!

They will not listen because they are 'not interested' in finding out their whole world view is 'wrong'!

Maybe it is somewhat apples and oranges but many on this board have been told there is a God, the divine can help them in their lives, how God-type things can be experienced and known, the truth about reincarnation, the truth about aliens, etc. but guess what ----- very few 'care'!

>>>Maybe it is somewhat apples and oranges but many on this board have been told there is a God, the divine can help them in their lives, how God-type things can be experienced and known, the truth about reincarnation, the truth about aliens, etc. but guess what ----- very few 'care'>>>>>


WOW!!! Do you even READ what people write here???

Many, if not most, of those who post here have spent the greater part of their lives abused by the false claims about God and the divine. They prayed their guts out because fools like you pretended to know God and the mind and will of God. And you have the gaul to accuse them of being uninterested and not caring?? Some gave entire lives to caring and reaped pain and suffering for their efforts.

It's not apples and oranges. It's apples and ROCKS if you think there is any comparison. Reading the documented facts about the history, motives, actions, and crimes of the Mormon church compare in no way to the fabricated lunacy you seem to think passes as fact when you babble about ways to know the divine. Most here have tried all the ways you suggest. What did they get in return? Nothing but sheer agony.

We will have to agree to 'disagree' on this one!

They 'prayed their guts out' ----- drama King or Queen??? I cannot relate to that in any way, shape or form!!!!!

There are many ways of 'finding out' what I have been saying is 'valid' or not. But, who really ever tries what I suggest?

The only feedback I ever got was on a 'past life' meditation, where 2 or 3 people responding had successful experiences. Whether they believed what they got is questionable but they tried! However, how many had access to that post and didn't even try??? There were over 20 posters and who knows how many views on that thread!

I was a Mormon in leadership roles for many years and 'have a good idea' how many 'Mormons/saints' tried to find God and get a relationship with anyone divine!! Answer: Few had any relationship at all!!! TBMs 'routine prayers' would have driven any God over the edge.

It is now and was then 'all lip service' in the church and here.

God is not hiding, God is available but few have the 'faith' or persistence to ask a question and wait for the answer and take a 'bold stand'.

I have no problem with anyone saying I asked if there was a God, 10 days in a row(example), and got no answer. I told God I would quit looking for Him if I got no answer after x straight days, and left my religion, etc..

Did anyone out there really take an example stand like that? Put something on the line and I 'believe' you will get a response or was never meant to 'know' in this incarnation, however, I question God or anyone else would limit your progress in 'knowledge'.

Good luck!

Because many are not 'awake' you need to ask for something 'obvious' as far as an answer. A dream, vision, documentation, etc. then notice the 'unusual' in your life.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/2017 07:44PM by spiritist.

I think that the next time I have to deal with this, I'll have the CES letter ready, and commit to re-baptism if they can only answer all the questions.