I like this thread title when its posted once in a while.

For me, it was Polyandry on the apologetic's website. talk about a cluster. I spent 3 weeks in a tail spin. Well, now I am recovered, thank you RFM.

For me it was when I was researching the CES Letter, all of the church's official arguments were fallacies and ad hominem attacks (attacking the person instead of the issue).

Then there was the second wave of reading the NT and finding tons of gems in there that contradicted current church doctrine.

Major stuff like marriage, genealogy, faith vs works, priesthood, temple, and more... all contradicted by NT scripture.

A double whammy.

It doesn't matter if you are a believer or not, the church is wrong on both counts.

When I found out about the evergreen program. What a disgusting program. What disgusting people that administered it. If that is their inspiration, discernment. revelation, guided by the ghost I wanted nothing to do with it. Instantantly done with them.

the buried golden plates

When my sons finally told me that the Mormon leaders had been physically abusing them, and then my daughter told us, right after, that she had been molested by the bishop's hideous older son. They all had been threatened not to tell!

I left in that split-second, never to return, and took my children with me. I did not CARE if Mormonism was "The Only True Church" or not; its leaders were abusing my kids, and I wanted OUT!

It was after, that I found out about all this other garbage. For people to be as nasty as the Mormons were to us, they would have to be following liars and opportunists and perverts--and it turned out that they were.

Since it all began with Joseph Smith's bag of lies, my "last straw" was at the beginning point, when JS manipulated my ancestors into his neighborhood cult, and into polygamy. Because of this, we all had the misfortune of being "BIC" born-into-the-cult Mormons. UGH!

The BoA. When LDS Inc got the papyri back, scientists determined to a very high degree of reliability that they were 2,000 years too young to have been written by the hand of Abraham.

Yeah, I trusted my college physics textbook more that all the Mormons telling me they knew with every fiber of their being that the Mormon Church was twoooo. The math behind carbon dating is pretty straightforward and easy to understand. JS's farrago of BS about Abraham is not.

I was an investigator for nearly two years (2005-2007). Close to the end I had by then discovered all the usual issues. The only thing that kept me attending was promises made by a sister missionary (now aged 46) about meeting up after her mission etc.

However I couldn't stand it anymore. One Sunday School lesson, the issue about blacks being 'excluded' from the Temple somehow came up and some members seemed a little confused as to why they were banned in the first place.

But what got to me was that the entire time, the Sunday School teacher ( prior bishop) was continually glancing at a recently baptised black couple in the room, he was obviously nervous at the discussion.

I glanced at the black couple and they were not even paying attention, seemingly almost asleep. They had no clue what they had joined. I just said to myself what a load of BS this really is, I'm done with this, left the building, never went back.

Missionaries later gave up after several attempts at the Golden Investigator.

Mentioned tactfully the garden rock in the hat to my prior sister missionary friend (fake friend), she said it was not true and she was discussing with her bishop my questions and soon after I got a shun type order from her. And that was that.

One sincere lifelong TBM in the ward challenged me to tell her why I stopped attending. I didn't want to spoil her delusion, but she insisted that I tell her. I only started with the garden stone in hat, she replies 'it's obviously an antimormon lie and so stupid', then she nearly collapses when she reads it on lds.org after I directed her to Russel M Nelson's Treasured Testament talk.

I never got past that, she nearly passed out (and cried). It was awful to experience. I knew for certain then how she had been misled all her life.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/14/2019 07:48AM by Zeezromp.

I was never a member, so it's not a matter of the last straw that I could bear, but the first straw I would reject.

That straw was a modern prophet who had actually spoken with God and Jesus, and had in his possession physical evidence of an important part of his narrative. And when I asked, "Where are those plates now?", the response was that the angel took them back to Heaven.

Well, wasn't that convenient.

The second straw was trying to determine whether anybody but Joseph Smith had actually seen the plates. Well, no, anybody who saw them would have died on the spot.

Well, wasn't that convenient.

Too many extraordinary claims without even the most mundane evidence to support them.

GregS Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Too many extraordinary claims without even the
> most mundane evidence to support them.

I like that.

For me it was too many things to recount being reared (and rear ended) by Mormons.

But there was a last straw. Finding out Joseph Smith was a sexual opportunist with my own ancestor (Zina Huntington) and his "church" is the reason I'm even alive (she left her husband for Brigham and he "begat" my line of descendance) coupled with my own sexual victimization by people in "the church" was just. too. much.

Before and after we got married, but especially dealing with church leadership before we got married.

That the revealed modern scripture confirmed the craziest most falsifiable parts of the Bible as literal. Those problematic bits weren't the incorrectly translated ones.

The summer of 1978, when electrodes were attached to my body and I was shown gay and straight porn, and guess when the current was cranked up to change me into a righteous TBM. After two and a half months of that, I turned my back and didn't return. No confusion or hesitancy on my part.

That is the worst. Best reason ever to get the hell out.

Spinto, I've heard other stories like yours, over the years, but yours was heart-rending. I can't imagine trying to deny being myself. One of my closest friends, going back to college days, is a gay guy. I should have been more wary of the church's issues with gays all along.

I was more of a social convert at the time I joined, emotionally wounded and needy. The ward I joined initially was a warm and friendly place to heal. But the ward I moved into from there (a different State) was much more rigid and had a definite caste system. I didn't feel nearly as welcome as I had, before.

That's when I found my way here, and found my way out.

OMG. I am so sorry. Glad you are out and glad you are here.

me to donate to CA prop 8.

He said that the stake president asked him to quietly approach all of high priests in our ward. This was during a time when the church said that it was not doing that.

It made me evaluate my support for same sex marriage, too. I discovered that I could no longer "stand with the brethren" on a number of issues.

The "Miracle of Forgiveness." I finally saw SWK for the sick and twisted little man he was.

1999

Where was the 2nd Coming?

I was already angry that the church didn't care about me or my house that burned. I expected to be burned alive for not accepting my fate.

Little by little, I realized that I continued to do well without the church. Eventually, I stopped caring if members saw me all over town and the church ladened guilt disappeared.

After a lifetime of hearing it hyped up in hushed, reverent tones...and then finally going through it only to find out it's a bunch of goofy costumes, handshakes and pretentious mumbo-jumbo (combined with totally out-of-place bloody secrecy oaths when I went through), it was hard to ever go back to being a complacent believer. If something as big as the temple turned out to be a big pile of fraudulent nonsense, it seemed like I couldn't take any of the hype in any aspect of the Church seriously.

But that wasn't the LAST straw. It just set me on the course of collecting more straws.

The last straw was when I was a YBU and was sitting through yet another boring priesthood meeting, where the leader was droning on and on and on about home teaching stats, busywork projects, etc. I was wondering to myself why I felt so spiritually dead in church meetings when, just the day before, I had felt spiritually alive and inspired when hiking by myself high up in the mountains. Then an epiphany hit me. It was like a still, small voice that said to me: "You know, everything that bothers you about the Church will make 100% perfect sense if you just give yourself permission to look at it from the perspective of it NOT BEING true." And it did make 100% perfect sense. And that was the last day that I attended church regularly. Everything I've learned since then has only corroborated and supported the view that the church is not now and never has been what it claimed to be.

Hi Five on the spiritually dead feeling in the meetings.

Just before I finally realized the church was a fraud, I surprised myself by leaving Sunday School at the beginning. I was just a little late. I stood at the back and looked around as the Bishop droned on and on in the Mormon voice I just couldn't do it another second. It felt so awful to be there. And I still considered I had a testimony but I just left and deep down I knew I was done. The only salvation I needed was to be saved from the Mormon church.

When after I lost my testimony completely but hadn't told anyone but my wife, I had a visit from a member of the bishopric to tell me the bishop was inspired to extend a call to me as a ward missionary.

For me straws were being pulled in a manner of months.

I probably noted this many of times, but it started by a fateful conversation as I was visiting another ward. An elderly lady that was giving me a ride home was telling me about the church's history and how black people were unable to receive the priesthood, but what a beautiful day in 1978 when the "ban" was lifted, and how everyone wept and rejoiced.
I had no knowledge of the ban, as I was born in 1982, and was baptized in 2004. I did not have internet back then to do research on TSCC. Plus it looked so good on the surface, and there was the (false) promises that my life would get better once I was in.
Boy, was I naive!
Anyway, the immediate question that popped into my head was if "heavenly father" loved his children without conditions, then why would he keep something such as the preisthood and temple blessings from them just because of their skin colour? I would do research and what I found shocked and broke me. That's when I found out about Brigham Young's racist rhetoric, and then came across books such as "Mormon Doctrine" "Journal of Discourses," "Mormonism and the Negro" and the "Way to Perfection." I knew that if I read those books, there would be no turning back. After learning these things, I guess it shouldn't surprise me. Being an African-American, I do experience racism quite often, but the majority of racism that I had experienced was in that church.


Another straw that was pulled was polygamy. I'd learn a little bit about it in YSA institute, but nothing really in depth. I was told things like, "Well, there were a lot of widows and not a lot of single men, so the married men married the widows to make sure they were taken care of." there's that theory, but two fourteen-year-told girls were married off to Joseph Smith. What "taking care of" did those girls need? I was a huge turn off to learn that TSCC lied about polygamy, and tried to hide their racist history to make themselves look perfect.

The final straw was a lesson taught in single adult FHE. My (former) home teacher, and single adult representative at the time, decided at the last minute to change his lesson to a lesson on 1 Nephi 13. I tried not to get uncomfortable and tried to convince myself that there may be a reason why he wanted to teach from that particular chapter, maybe I had been misunderstanding it for a long time. Turns out, I wasn't. That chapter had some racism (and I would then learn down the line that "pure and delightsome" was changed from "white and delightsome"). And I had a hard time believing that the mormon god had hand-picked Christopher Columbus to "discover" America (when it was actually the Caribbean he "discovered" or rather, stumbled upon). What's done is done, and many of us are all here in this country, but did the mormon god condone the rape of young Indigenous girls, and to have those girls as young as ten being sold off as sex slaves? (I shit you not, it's in his journals. Look it up if you don't believe me.) And yet, we have an LDS book by Clark Hinckley (any relation to Gordon B. Hinckley, I don't know) celebrating this asshole. Yes, the formation of America has an ugly history, and we may have come a long way (with quite a ways to go), but I had a hard time believing that the mormon god was okay with things as such taking place. My shelf would break after that.

And after that, I would learn more about the skeletons that TSCC has in their closet.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2019 10:49AM by severedpuppetstrings.

I would say the BOA was probably the last straw for me. When I figured out it was a provable lie I realized the rest of the religion was a fraud as well. I resigned a few months later.

eternal1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I would say the BOA was probably the last straw
> for me. When I figured out it was a provable lie
> I realized the rest of the religion was a fraud as
> well. I resigned a few months later.

What's funny is when you look at the canopic jars in the pictures in the PoGP, ole Joe calls them one thing in one picture and something completely different in another. Self-contradiction right there for the whole world to see!

Yep. When you read the translations, it says some of the meanings were to be had in the temple. I was such a TBM I actually believed that and when I finally went through the temple, I asked about it and the temple guy told me they don't have that information and I was just supposed to pray about it. After having just been through the freaky chanting prayer circle stuff it was a big let down to hear that. lol

I had lunch with a long time client who happens to be Exmo and whose family is still "Gung Ho Mormon Joe." She left about 35 years ago before the internet and said she left because of the hypocrisy. She didn't elaborate and we went onto another subject, but since it ties into this thread I thought I'd add it.

There were so many things BUT the catalyst was definitely the Book of Abraham. It was just indefensible on every front and the fact that the church wouldn't just acknowledge that it was not a translation struck me as immature.

Add to that the fact that, when my parents tried to steer me back into the fold with a couple of books on the subject by some random PHD talking heads from BYU, their arguments were so flimsy and easily destroyed that after I wrote a response to my dad demolishing EVERY ONE of their arguments, I actually (for a time) lost respect for the title of PHD in general.

in b 4 ~ PHD = "Piled Higher and Deeper" ~

First straw: never got the "burning bosom" praying about the BoM as a teenager. Or ever.

Second straw: one day people with one drop of "black" blood were evil, the next day they weren't. At 18 I realized how stupid that was.

Third straw: a mission. Goof-off liars making up numbers promoted to high-ranking positions. No "discernment" from the MP. No point to what we were doing. Two wasted years.

Fourth straw: read JoD on my mission. Realized all the "prophetic" declarations of "truth" that had been abandoned. Realized how entirely lacking in evidence the entire BoM was. Realized they were just making this shit up as they went along.

Last straw: back from a mission. Largely inactive. Bishop calls me in the one Sunday I go in, and calls me to teach teens in Sunday School. Realize I don't want to lie to kids and put them on the same path I took. That was it. I said no, walked out, and never returned.

:)

So many last straws. Here's one of my contenders for last.

Asked my bishopric home teacher:


Question: Why can women only marry once in the temple?

Answer: Because women are the lesser vessel.


Vessel?
Lesser?

(That's his wife was up on the roof repairing the air conditioner while he was standing in the shade watching her.)

I would give anything to have seen the look on your face when he called you a "lesser vessel," kathleen. I keep laughing at that. Please forgive me. "Lesser vessel" has become an earworm for me for some reason. OMG Hahah ha.

First Straw: Went to temple to be sealed to spouse. Asked "What about former spouse that I was sealed to?" Was told, "Don't worry about that." Basically was told, that will just kind of go away.
Last big straw: Reading book, The Ninteenth Wife.
Last little straws: reading a lot more books after that one.

There were so many straws, but the last one for me was reading about the whole truth of what really happened at the Mountain Meadows Massacre and then visiting the actual sites and seeing the markers with all of the names of the dead. That convinced me it was time to resign.

Having marital problems and the wife wouldn't go to counseling, but insisted we go see the bishop. What he said was so stupid I thought there was no way this came from god.

Extreme boredom. It gave me too much time for my mind to wander.

Intellectually, Micheal Cole's interview about the B of M on Mormon Stories. Absolutely no scientific evidence of the B of M.

The real last straw was when my wife eventually joined me in saying F-you to LDS Inc. That was my real freedom day. No more church, tithing or pretending.

when I found out that LD$ had paid 2 million dollar to SLOC (Salt lake olympics) which was used to fund the 2002 bid bribery scandal, then Gordon BS HinckLIEy told Larry King live that MORmON polygamy was NOT doctrinal. Tell that to Brigham Young, Gordon !!!

For me I was pretty convinced by Fairs arguments for a solid 5 years. But then it was time for my child to be baptized, and I had a strong emotional response that I desperately didn't want that for him. Instead of praying away these thoughts I considered deeply why I felt that way. I concluded that I really didn't believe, and I didn't want my children in.

Ironically this was the first step to the destruction of my family and my children are now in Utah, surrounded by TBM family, and more in then ever before.

I choked on and broke that bloody straw when I saw that the old Freemasonic club had inserted their crap into temple Mormon ritual.

I immediately disliked the request in there that I should slash me throat rather than blab their stupid "secrets."

Outta here, mates!

The funniest thing about it is that there are/were no real secrets. The handshakes? The penalties? The temple movie? The costumes?

Not really secret. Not anything of value to anyone.

"Pssst! Hey you! Wanna get some secret Mormon temple handshakes? I'll sell 'em to you at fifty bucks per handshake. Buy three and I'll throw in the five points for free!"

What ridiculous fantasy world do Mormons live in that they think those goofy handshakes and costumes are of any value to anyone?

Most likely, Joseph Smith and Briggy were trying to create their own secret society centered around having multiple sex partners ("spiritual wives") and thought that they could borrow the secret-society techniques of Freemasonry.

But when the swinger's club went public under Brigham Young, the whole "secrecy" thing, including the handshakes and penalties, became pointless and superfluous. And yet...here we are in the year 2019 and Mormons are still going through the motions and participating in a bizarre make-believe exercise in which somehow the handshakes are the key to getting into a good spot in heaven. Stupidity is too mild an adjective for it.

Good point Wally.

When was the last time or ever hear about someone dying that said.

"Hey I am going to die soon. Quick, get me a Mormon so I can learn their handshakes so I can get into heaven."

The whole handshake, bakers hat, veil, and passwords thing is proof positive that man makes up their own Gods to suit their own purposes.

Imagine a God who has created universes and beings and given life and taken it everywhere accross the cosmos, and yet, in order to get into his CK you have be part of this grade school style charade--lined up in yards of white with your special apron tied on going over and over your lines in your head so you can do it all perfectly so you can get past Joseph and his velvet rope at "The Veil" while all those other fools are looking for the storied Pearly Gates.

"Let's see, was that health in bone . . . navel in the marrow? No, sinews. That's it! . . . and where do I put my knee again? Oh geez. Hey Thelma, you gotta go over this with me one more time. We're almost there."

when the bishop inteviewed me for re-baptism, after totally keeping all the commandments, he recieved revelation that I was to be not only rejected baptism but also rejected or banned from attending church.I must admitt I realized later both the bishop and I were in competition as having filthy rags of self rightousness, but the power trip for the bishop was stronger than mine....7 years later after much enjoying breaking the word of wisdom, I rocked up to church and strangely was accepted because I was humble even tho had a drink the night before. I knew then that the church was all about stability and submissive service to leaders. I told the bishop who was now stake president god forbid, to stick it where the sun dont shine and walked out. I then studied church history and was shocked by the reality of crap, lies and fabrications. what a fraud the church was....cheers everyone.....

Wow. Amazing story.

A couple of things,but probably the missionary program and how they’re treated. Most of them are sent to craphole places, working them to the bone, then criticizing them ,to make them feel “ worthless “ if you sick and want to leave, you’re not “ faithful “. A lot of missionaries who come from money,get better , pristine assignments.Women being sent to 3rd world countries.

I investigated in 2012. I think I investigated for two months and was baptized which was a surprise even for me because I was and am back to being devoutly Catholic. I only stayed about a year. The reasons why is worth another discussion on another day. I think what was the final straw for me was when after resigning and considering coming back I was told by the missionaries that my attendance to ALL my meetings needed to improve. At the time, I was just going through my divorce from my very abusive ex, raising my kids on my own, and dealing with a teething toddler who couldn’t sleep. Mind you, I was discerning both faiths and doing a lot of research at this time to make sure I had made the right choice. I missed my friends and felt really empty so yeah, I got sucked back in for a while. I couldn’t sit through the meetings happily, sacrament meeting made me want to go back to mass. I often would attend sacrament meeting and then skip off to mass at my home parish five minutes down the road. I told the missionaries I had to drop off my child to my ex which wasn’t a complete lie. However, that was really an excuse for me to get away and go to mass before he picked him up. One day during our discussions when I was told my attendance wasn’t up to par. I flat out said I had some things to discern and figure out because if mass wasn’t ever a struggle for me to attend and I’ve never missed mass except when I’m so sick I cannot go, clearly my soul has a testimony of the truthfulness of the mass and maybe that’s my sign I am not meant to be LDS. When they left I thought seriously, like what the hell am I even doing?! Whatever faith you practice should give you peace and attending the LDS church didn’t, which is why I was sneaking off all the time. Plus, in the Catholic church, mass is the only obligation, other church meetings are a choice which I agree with. Even catechism can be done in the home if you choose but I am happily a CCD teacher again as we speak at my parish. That was the final straw for me, that literally everything Catholic came so easily to me and being LDS was a struggle not to mention all the things I simply could not agree with no matter how much they tried to explain things away or how many friends I have who I love and adore who are still members and still love and adore me. Also, the whole repentance bid, the fact that for me to ever rejoin the church I’d have to wait a year and “prove my worthiness” before I could be a member again. Even if I showed contrition and confessed. Like, in the Catholic faith literally all it takes to come back to the “fold” is the sacrament of confession and you get absolved and move forward. I thought to myself, repentance shouldn’t be such a drawn out process. Repentance is supposed to set you free. I never attended again after that.

The abuse of my <5 y.o. niece, who was raped by a Mormon Penis Holder, who was protected from any consequences whatsoever, to this day, by my Nazi TBM sister, because he was a Mormon and her daughter, my Niece, was just a silly little girl.
The cover up.
The lies, told to protect the Mormon abusers, out of an expressed interest in "protecting the good name of the church" which is far above protecting innocent children in a CULT that brainwashes kids into singing the praises of a gd rapist.
How is singing the praises of Joseph's Myth less immoral than Fundy MORmONS singing the praises of a rapist like Warren Jeffs?

My disaffection was very gradual. I was unhappy at church for a long long time before I left. Everyone was always talking about this mystical thing called "feeling the spirit." I never once felt the Holy Ghost. Not in my whole life of growing up in the church.

It took me ages to realize that it was their problem not mine. I was not defective or evil or anything. Some people are just not built that way and do not "feel the spirit." Some people do not have their brains and nerves and hormones set up that way. And it is not supernatural or anything. There isn't actually a Holy Ghost. Some people just have a strong emotional response and attribute it to a supernatural cause.

Never once feeling "the spirit" testify of the truthfulness of anything church related. I wanted to feel it. I tried for decades to get a sure testimony. I prayed, paid tithing, actively filled my callings, went to the temple, read scriptures. I worked hard at the church for nearly 25 years. But never once did I get any sort of a confirmation.

Things started to crack when I sat and listened to the testimony of a recent convert. She stated she received a confirmation from the Holy Ghost after just a few days of reading the BOM. My first thought was "what the hell God? I have been trying for decades and get nothing, and this chick works at it for a few days and you're giving her a confirmation?!"

I started questioning a lot of things over the next few years. I remember the Prop 8 stuff, but did not really look into it much until a few years later. My belief in a God also started to waiver. But I still tried my best to make the church work for me, and tried doing the right things (according to the church) with my kids.

One day I read the church essay on 'Race and the Priesthood', and read how the church now disavows "theories" about dark skin being a curse or punishment from God. By pure chance the very next day I was reading the BOM with my kids as part of their seminary assignment. As fate would have it, 2 Nephi 5 was part of the reading assignment. Then we read verse 21. The floodgates opened. The church was disavowing theories that dark skin was a curse from God. But there, right in the "most correct book on earth", the "keystone of our religion", was the scripture stating "...wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them." Wait...what? So the church was telling me that the BOM contained false teachings?! That was the very moment my shelf collapsed. I sat there in a haze on the couch for the next few minutes while my kids continued reading.

I had a few days off the following week. The kids were at school and my wife works full-time, so I had some time to myself. I found the CES letter, I found Mormon Stories, I found this site. As I began reading more and more, the more everything made sense. The entire history of the church makes perfect sense once you realize that it was all made up by Joseph Smith, and that none of it is true. You can come up with all sorts of long winded and reality stretching explanations to try and defend all the intricacies of church history. But the single most simple and most plausible explanation for the entire thing, all the contradiction, changes in doctrine, etc., is that Joseph Smith was a con-man and that all the church leaders since have just been perpetuating the con for their own benefit.

I have been a lot more at peace with things once I came to that realization.