I mean that’s TSCC’s value proposition, right? It must be worth a lot if members pay 1/10 their income. The church is all about magical thinking. If they take that away, what’s left?

The anti-intellectual stance of the church makes sense. It only works if you maintain the illusion. If you know all the tricks, it’s no longer magical. You need to be purposefully dumb. Not a hard trick to pull off for most people.

Maybe the church works because life is inherently magical. Then you run into the problem of the leadership presenting a bogus narrative instead of figuring out how their church actually works and doing something useful.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2019 08:21PM by babyloncansuckit.

mormons think of magic as faith. Whatever they don't understand they accept on faith. But in most peoples lives they can remember unexplained events occurring. Aren't we all a little magical in our thinking?

You are magical in your thinking. Me not so much. How's that Putin working out for you ?

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
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> How's that Putin working out for you ?

?

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around you. I thought if I did what they said to do, that I'd be spared. When it came to my situation, they had the wrong answers. And you can't tell someone who believes in this magical thinking, that if you only have faith, that a person you love is damned unless they become straight, it is something I couldn't handle. It sealed my fate because I could not buy into that thinking. There had to be HOPE. They stole hope from me.

I have had a lot of things happen in my life that are unexplained. I just don't worry about what the future answers are as the religious were dead wrong on the biggest question I've had in my life, why should I buy into anything they have to say now?

Magical thinking occupies much of my life!!!

I totally agree that some people's 'lives' are to a large extent 'magical'! My life is 'in my eyes' but certainly not 'to others' because they really don't know the 'details' of my life.

The problem with Magical Thinking is if you use it for REAL things in your life. You can't balance your bank account with it and it will not pull you out of real life problems. One of the worst is the Prosperity Doctrine crap. Utah is #9 on the bankruptcy list for good reason. God will NOT protect you when you are a Senior Missionary sent to places you have no business being. My Grandmother was mugged TWICE.

When Magical Thinking contradicts Common Sense I will go with Common Sense every time. Yet, I still believe in Santa :P

Maybe there’s a tendency here to equate magical thinking with stupidity. It could just be a coincidence that Mormonism is so stupid.

Magical thinking is all relative. Several years AFTER leaving the mormon church, I went to work for a large company that probably has a higher net-worth than the Mormon church does. Much of my therapy has been found from learning to function effectively in a corporate environment there. I had to quickly learn healthy ways of respecting authority while also respecting those who are in subordinate positions. Not learning these lessons quickly would have led to unemployment again. My company has a pretty healthy culture when it comes to how their employees should interact to get the work done. There is a lot of forgiveness unless it gets to the point that you're not with the program and have no intention of getting with the program. People are still treated with respect and as individuals.

Decades later and after working there the whole time and seeing how the company has grown from a small company to a big company, I look around and still see magic everywhere. There are many geniuses, doing things that only they could do and that even they took years to get good at. Then, you have lots of average people like myself, keeping things running and plugging any holes in the system that appear from time to time. There are new employees who are much like me when I started there. From the inside, I see what even to me looks like magic at times. Imagine your favorite music band, playing the most fantastic music. Then imagine that this band has thousands of members, all playing their respective instruments in harmony. Our competitors don't know how we do much of what we do. Our customers are often very impressed, and buy our products because that is where they get the best value. The mormon church is not the only one who can do impressive things. All of the mormon stories about people being healed or people seeing spirits (or much worse, "feeling the spirit") are lies and embellishments. Any large organization with good management and a healthy culture can do impressive things on a massive scale. From the outside, it looks like magic.

“All of the mormon stories about people being healed or people seeing spirits (or much worse, "feeling the spirit") are lies and embellishments.”

Not in my experience. Faith produces these effects even though the faith rests on a fabricated foundation. That it didn’t work for you is a matter of disposition. Like those geniuses at your company who rely on you to do certain mundane essential jobs that creative types just hate to do.

Mormonism has a broken management structure. They will never fix it, so they will never fix their church. If you worked for a company that’s run like the church, you’d be looking for another job.

As it happens, my company makes technology that is literally magical. Real hyperdimensional stuff. Market penetration in the US is pretty bad, but the product is legendary in Asia. There’s a huge cultural difference. Actual magic isn’t such a taboo there.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2019 12:03PM by babyloncansuckit.

The nexus of apparently unrelated events that we experience in everyday life may as well be "magic". It may be possible to study the world through pure logic but if you applied it to your everyday life and interactions with other people you would go off your head.

There are times when it will actually be in a person's best interest to continue membership even though they are no longer a believer.
Sometimes the cost of separation far exceeds the benefit derived therefrom

but if you use it in flight planning your days are numbered

For a topic that I jokingly started, this may have some real meaning. After all, isn’t it what drew us to Mormonism? What if there were a magnet for occultists? A happy gathering for pagans practicing under the guise of Christianity?

Let’s set aside the current leadership, whose dour mugs give themselves away. Mormonism is real, alchemical magic. The olive oil, the intent and belief, that whole system has real tangible value. To have it polluted the way it is, to me, is just unconscionable.

Goddess, please try another flush. Maybe this time those turds will stay down.

To clarify, Joseph made it about himself. Poverty will mess up your mind like that, if Joe Senior didn’t already. Sex magic, all of that, was all for his own gain. Plus, he got to pay it off in hot lead. Not a bad bargain. Maybe he didn’t read the fine print.

Whatever. The whole Mormon “thing”, he started. Good for him. Now where do you take it? Cuz I’m happy to show the current batch of posers how to completely revitalize their religion. But, as with all gifts with no strings attached, they must be accepted. Therein lies the rub.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2019 03:10PM by babyloncansuckit.