One bad experience with a dentist doesn't make all dentists bad, right? So why did many of you decide that any further involvement with religion was bad? Does the fact that Mormonism has been shown to be false mean that belief in God is also false? How did you come to your decision?

I didn’t abandon belief in god because I rejected mormonism, I abandoned mormonism because I couldn’t accept the Judeo/Christian concept of god.

Is that all it was? Just a bad experience?

Well, if my initial exposure to a dentist was for a simple X-ray, and instead he pulled all my teeth without anesthesia, then handed me a $50,000 bill and threatened to have me arrested and sent to jail if I didn't pay, yeah that would probably turn me off of all dentists for life.

I was a Mormon only because I was born into it and heavily indoctrinated. If I hadn't been, I would've realized a lot sooner that I was naturally an atheist, that I didn't believe in anything supernatural, regardless of the name it goes by. I think I would've come to the same realization if I'd been raised in some other religion. It's not that I decided further involvement with religion was bad. For me it's just totally unnecessary and irrelevant.

When I was struggling financially, a Bishop once told me that I was worthy to go to church, but I wasn't worthy to work for the Church. It had no effect whatsoever on how I felt about the Church. I just said, "What a jerk!" and carried on. If I'd truly felt that the LDS Church held my eternal welfare in their hands, then there's no way that I would let a bad experience with a mere human stop me from getting where I wanted to go.

I initially went inactive because I was offended by the Church's stance on same-sex marriage and I didn't want to be a part of that. But I officially resigned after I'd done a lot of research. Once I realized that the Church was simply not what it purported itself to be, that's when I resigned.

But I couldn't stop there. Once I realized that the Book of Mormon was a fictional book and not scripture, it made me want to turn my attention to the Bible next. I'd developed a thirst for knowledge and didn't stop studying just because I realized that the Mormon Church wasn't "true."

I studied the history of the Bible and eventually reached the point where I realized that all religion was man-made. Every culture throughout history has had its own creation stories. It was all about trying to figure out where we came from and how we got here.

To me now, the only real truth is that we just don't know. We make discoveries and gain new knowledge all the time. But we still don't, and may never have, all of the answers we seek. But that's okay. I've learned to embrace the mystery and its fascinating. I can't imagine being locked into a specific dogma now. I'd rather study all of the fascinating new discoveries that we've recently learned and continue to learn every day.

Greyfort Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But I couldn't stop there. Once I realized that
> the Book of Mormon was a fictional book and not
> scripture, it made me want to turn my attention to
> the Bible next.

Right. Maybe bundarbingh is looking at the issue from the wrong direction. Maybe the question should be, having realized one religion is false, why stop there?

Mormonism is not "one bad experience"

It's a betrayal of trust. A betrayal of faith. A betrayal of hope.

Whether a mormon apostle, catholic pope, protestant pastor, muslim iman etc the concept is the same. A person standing before me. Telling me I need to follow their interpretation of ancient writings or I'll suffer for all eternity. In the process I need to surrender my own ideas and personal resources.

I could never follow any organised religion ever again.

The premise for your comparison is slightly flawed.

I have had some horrid dentists and some good dentists. But a dentist is an unfortunate necessity.

Organised religion is not a necessity. A means of mass control, yes. An opiate for the masses, yes. A way to seperate people from money, yes. But a life saving enity, no.

Once you develop the detective skills to see through Mormonism, it's hard to not use them in other areas of life and for other religions.

Mormonism is just more recent and easier to see how the religion arose. Christianity is no different. Making faith based claims is the hallmark of world religions and world mythology. The reason they require faith is because they have to if they want to sell the beliefs.

The Bible has more issues for me than Mormonism. See Age of Reason by Thomas Paine.

See Demon Haunted World by Sagan for criteria necessary to verify claims.

Dentists do not do things based on faith. They use scientific facts which clarify over time to diagnose, treat and provide dental care.

I agree. I didn't leave Mormonism because of "one bad experience". That's the BS line that the LDS have offered time and again - see Thomas B. Marsh and the "milk and strippings" apocryphal codswallop as an example.

The reason I left was because I applied the analytical skills I had developed in other areas of my life to the Mormon claims and found them lacking. The same skills can fruitfully be applied to any and all faiths, and none acquit themselves any better.

Tyson

Tell us why faith is good.

Faith is good if it works for you and adds, rather than detracts from your life. If we're on this board, we all got to a place where mormonism no longer worked for us. For some, any kind of faith or belief in the supernatural no longer worked.

For me, it just made me realize that it was the social aspect of religion that I missed, not that I didn't have a belief. I found a replacement for a social outlet (yes, it was a church-UU). But that particular group really doesn't work for me any longer. It's just that there are some people there who I can't imagine not being in my life. So I keep a low-key attachment to it.

But I'm semi-retired now and something happens with age. I find myself missing other things I had in religion. So I'm kind of loosely affiliated with an Episcopalian church now. Yes, I like the people--I was surprised how progressive many of them are. But I really find peace in the liturgy and the prayers. And it's brought prayer back into my life--prayer to me being a chance to ask the universe to watch over and help my family members that I no longer have contact with. It makes it feel less helpless if I can pray for them and pray for peace and acceptance for myself.

So no one can answer your question but you. And it is a journey you are on. Your journey may take you completely away from religion or religious faith. Nothing wrong with that. You just stay the course you were on when you left mormonism--finding what works for YOU.

I was christian. I went to a christian school and we had one class on christianity per week. One day, the teacher talked about the gods that we use to worship. That blew my mind. Are you telling me there are other religions? She also said that our ancestors worshipped gods made of stone and she asked, does that make sense? Can something made of stone be a god, she asked. She claimed that those are false gods. It sounded to me that she was making fun of the religion of our ancestors. She said that the christian god is the true god.

That woke me up. I realized that I had a choice to make. I can either believe what she is telling me and perhaps end up as the millions of people before me or reject it.

I began to think about it at age 11 and at age 12, I dumped christiany. I began to wonder why my ancestors accepted christianity in the year 301. Is it possible that they just accepted on faith? Why does every culture have a different religion? The answer is that there was no answer and at one point a man began to think and ask the big questions. Who knows what the name of the first guy is who asked "what am I". History does not record it since there was probably no language long ago, there were no letters and no writing tools. A lot of history has been forgotten. Every culture ended up believing in a soul (no one wants to admit they die and disappear) and they all ended up with various gods.

Religion is a cultural thing.
Judaism is a jewish cultural thing.
Christianity is what you get when jews encounter romans and greeks. They created a part jewish, part roman, greek, egyptian babylonian religion.
Islam is the "arabised" version of judaism.

The conceit that a god needs money should be enough reason to eschew religion. That alone.

I agree God does not need the money.

donbagley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The conceit that a god needs money should be
> enough reason to eschew religion. That alone.

Right,

If a "god" needs money and needs your help getting it,

what kind of a bogus god is that?

I think your analogy is off. Instead of comparing the bad Mormon experience to a bad dentist experience, it should be compared to sticking a metal knife into a plugged in toaster. It's obvious why sticking a knife into a plugged in toaster is something not to be repeated.

When one is so severely burned by a religion they'd been told was true, they're not likely to want to repeat the experience.

I read a ridiculous blog from a TBM who made the argument that the Mormon church must be true because exmos don't join other religions after resigning. I still don't understand how it proves the Mormon church is true. If it does prove it is true it should apply to all religions. If a Catholic stops attending church and does not join another religion, is that proof that the Catholic church is true?

+heartbroken:
“I read a ridiculous blog from a TBM who made the argument that the Mormon church must be true because exmos don't join other religions after resigning.”

==Sounds like his argument is that exmos don’t join other religions bc other religions are false however, he is ignoring the part about leaving mormonism.

In general, people stick to the religion they were born in.
I have mentioned this to a mormon apologist and his response was that atheist parents raise atheist kids. He doesn’t understand that atheism is not a subject, it is not a religion, there are no holy books, rituals, etc. Atheism makes no claims. Atheism is a nothing.

Atheism does not put a person into a lockdown. It does not force you to stay an atheist while other religions, such as christianity, islam, mormonism threatens puts you into a lockdown (you with hell).
Such religions use fear to keep people in the religion.
Judaism doesn’t have hell but they do have lines in the Tanakh about killing a person that abandons judaism.

Exactly, how many people leave christianity and join mormonism?
Exactly, how many people leave judaism and join mormonism?
Exactly, how many people leave islam and join mormonism?
Those are the important questions if a TBM claims that the evidence is on their side.

~~~~iceman9090

We all have our own experiences and reasons why we do things. I have explained my experience many times on this board and, assuming you're new, you can look it up. BUT as many times as I've explained it, you can't understand what I went through because of the lds church.

Your feelings are your own. If you want to find another religion, go for it.

There is no way in hell I'd ever join any religion.

They pretty much did to me what Henry B. Eyeroll stated, although probably much worse.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2020 02:03PM by cl2.

I want to know what bad experience you had with Mormonism. Were you like, offended or something?

For those who were converts I think what happens is that, as part of the missionary teaching process they destroy your faith in your existing church, and replace it with the Mormon belief system.
When you eventually come to your senses and reject the Mormon church, what do you have … nothing.
In my case I have a strong faith in the existence of a God and the teachings of Jesus Christ, but have no faith in organised religion. It is a shame in many ways because it would be nice to be in a Christian community.

outin76

When I left the mormon church I became a Christian; I went back to my Protestant roots. It took nine years but I eventually lost my faith without really wanting to. I’d promised myself when I left mormonism that I’d never abandon my critical thinking skills again. So I held Christianity up to scrutiny too, once again thinking it would stand firm under that test. It didn’t for me. The bible didn’t make sense compared with science which for me seemed more verifiable. Likewise the biblical god seemed at best rather schizophrenic, if not tyrannical. I saw a great quote the other day “you have the right to abandon beliefs that no longer make sense to you”. That feels right to me. I wanted to believe but I just don’t think it’s true. I don’t reject the possibility of a god I just think it likely that world religions are created by people rather than divinely inspired. There’s also a lot I don’t agree with in the bible and can’t conceive of a loving god condemning homosexuals and a whole list of other stuff that doesn’t feel right to me.
So it was well thought out. Mormonism didn’t cause me to become an atheist. Thinking it through did.

I went through something similar. I assumed the Bible was "true" after leaving Mormonism until I took off the rose colored glasses and read it like I would any other book.

What you said reminds me of a tweet I saw the other day:

"Did you know you have to read and interpret the Bible in a special way, otherwise all the violence and genocide and rape and racism and misogyny and immoral laws just sound like, well, violence and genocide and rape and racism and misogyny and immoral laws?"
(Michael B Paulkovich Tweet)

The Bible, including Jesus' teachings, are not a moral guide since we see people who follow it interpreting what is moral in wildly diverse ways. The Bible is exactly what I would expect from people of that time trying to interpret the world. The BoM is exactly what a person like JS would come up with given the time he lived and the religious fervor at the time.

I still believe in Jesus Christ and his resurrection and his Father. I just don't believe in Religious Organization anymore. They always have a hook in them they appear shiny and cool until you bite the hook. They always beg for money God does not need money. You can not buy your way into Heaven or earn your way in. With that being said I do believe that you should try to be a good person whatever that is Love the Lord thy God with all your heart might mind and Strength and love thy neighbor as you love yourself. Amen

ODD THINKER Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I still believe in Jesus Christ and his
> resurrection and his Father. I just don't believe
> in Religious Organization anymore.

Yet the ideas of Jesus Christ, resurrection and the Father were brought to us by religious organizations. And Jesus, God and resurrection have all sorts of variations, not just among various sects, but from person to person. Everyone has a different mental picture of this stuff. Even though we might follow a shared template, we create what we believe.

You oversimplify the experience. Believers often have to oversimplify because then there is no grey area. Simple stories of Jesus. Simple beliefs. Simple gospel. Easy peesy.

Responding to this is playing into your proposal that faith is easy to discern and hard to exercise. The opposite is truer.

By applying the same critical thinking skills that I did to Mormonism. The rest is easy.

"Faith" is often just another word for "Group Think".
But hopelessness is a dark and lonely road that spirals down into the void of nothingness.
I have hope for the future of mankind.
I hope that we figure out before its too late that we're shooting ourselves in the foot by destroying our environment.
We mistakenly thought we could get away with it forever without suffering any consequences, but like Covid 19 and other global pandemics have proven, we're going to suffer consequences, it's just a matter of who will survive those consequences and how will they adapt?

While I had bad experiences in Mormonism, I left for factual reasons about the foundational claims that largely apply to all religions.

IMO Faith is a logical process based upon ones total experiences of life, and Testimony is an emotional response, to the same.

I left Mormonism because of logic. I left Christianity for the same reason. I kept a belief in higher spiritual beings because of experiences I've had. I went to a spiritual belief that spoke to me, but didn't require a hierarchy or money.

Thank you to all for sharing your story. Very interesting.

So you don’t have a story? Okay, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with Mormonism. Its language is stuck in the 19th century so most people can’t understand it. Take one example: The natural man is an enemy to God. The idea of enemies is too 19th century. I just saw a YouTube yogi explain the exact same thing in modern language. If you are driven by your compulsions, you can’t see things as they really are. Instead, your compulsions drive you. No devil was mentioned, but isn’t it the same? Many religions share practices such as fasting, chastity, gratitude, and devotion with the Mormons. They all have systems of thought behind them that could bolster the Mormon view. Some are much more sophisticated and well vetted than what you have. But since you are a cult, they will never be taught. You get cold cheese and rice with no seasoning.

The leaders can’t solve the language problem because their bylaws are set up so that nobody qualified to be a prophet ever gets the job. Their ultra conservative echo chamber culture can’t make realistic changes. It can only continue the fantasy. Not only do they want members to sustain such spiritual malfeasance, they want them to pay for it.

I’m a freak in this forum because Mormonism didn’t make me lose my faith in God. It did for a while, but I got better. I heard a saying this week: Religion is for people who are afraid of going to Hell. Spirituality is for people who’ve already been there. Most people who leave Mormonism turn to Atheism. Are you okay with a religion that does that?

It’s not a question of whether Mormonism should kill faith. It’s a question of why it does. Would God create a faith destroying machine or is this the work of someone else?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/2020 01:55AM by bradley.

It's the devil's work.

He pulled all of their spiritual teeth. I wouldn't go back to that dentist.

It is actually possible to not have bad experiences and still lose faith. Overall my experience with Mormonism has been overwhelmingly positive. I have had many great experiences and most of the people I am close with, or who have had a great positive impact on me, I know because of my membership in the Mormon church. Sure, there were a few experiences that were less than pleasant, but nothing major. The only issue I really had with Mormonism was the fact that I never got a testimony, no matter how hard I tried.

For me, the inability to get a testimony is what got me to begin questioning the existence of a god. It was very hard for me to accept a god that would so freely grant blessings and testimonies to people after just a few prayers, but would give me nothing even after 35 years of trying. As fate would have it, an old high school friend of mine and I connected on facebook. He is a medical doctor and hard core atheist, and would often post articles and videos from folk like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. For the most part I would ignore them, but one day I was bored and actually clicked on a video with Richard Dawkins. That started me down a rabbit hole. I began to reluctantly accept the rational atheist arguments. But I held out hope that Mormonism would still be "true". But then came the Gospel Topics Essays, and that was all she wrote. In those essays, the church openly admitted that it lied to me. It lied about the first vision, the gold plates, Joseph Smith's history. The church openly disavowed teachings from the Book of Mormon (albeit disgusting teachings that should be disavowed), while still trying to maintain the Book of Mormon is the "most correct" book on earth. Essentially the Gospel Topics Essays were a blatant attempt by the church to talk out of both sides of its mouth. It was clear apologetics, and to me it made it obvious that the church could not be "true". A true church of a real god would not need all sorts of apologetics, essays, and explanations. A true church of a real god would not be founded by a well known con-man, using well known con-man tactics. A true church of a real god would not have leaders preying on young women just like all other crazy cult leaders. It became crystal clear to me why I never received a testimony in all those years, there was nothing to receive a testimony of!

My attitude towards god is "Prove It". I'm a skeptic with no desire to believe after everything I've learned about god and his doings. I believe faith to be a logical faith...belief in something based on a feeling or "the still small voice" or "burning bosom" is not enough unless it is a pretty damn convincing "burning bosom".

Religions are simply an answer to the tribal instinct in we humans; the need to belong to a group or community where the tribes have become extinct in the modern world. I think it is not the best place to find truth because they tell what the truth is and you don't have to do much critical thinking to find it. Its already been decided and dare anyone question it.

I meant to say "I believe faith to be a logical fallacy.

“Logical fallacy” is the point. It’s Santa for grown ups. Mormonism is true because you believe it. Once you start questioning the physical possibility of flying reindeer, things go south.

That can be empowering. If any belief system is true if you believe it, at least true in the sense of a mind hack, you can and should make up your own God and your own belief system. That’s what I learned from Mormonism. If God was okay with me being a TBM, he/she must be okay with me believing anything.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/2020 07:22AM by bradley.

IMO faith is the sum total of your life experiences, and testimony is an emotional response.

If you believe in a God then you have to believe he is very, very, logical, because the logic of the Universe is self evident.
So faith is the logical totality of your experiences.
It is the experiences of life which are the variables, allowing some people to believe and others not to.

outin76 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you believe in a God then you have to believe
> he is very, very, logical

This is patently false, and most of us here left the Mormon church precisely because the god we were told to believe in did NOT stand up to logical scrutiny. In my experience, neither does the god of any other religion.

I have faith in lots of things. I have faith the sun will come up tomorrow. My shower drain drains, running a red light is a poor decision. All of that faith is based on data and experience.

So, having dumped Mormonism clearly doesn't stop all faith. The OP obviously means should dumping Mormonism stop all faith in Christianity. OP nor anyone else on this thread seems to care in the least that posters here (Tevai being the possible exception:) reject the belief in multiple gods for the people of earth, yet this is a bedrock belief of Hinduism. Why do we reject that out of hand? The overwhelming answer is that we weren't born into a Hindu family, especially a Hindu family in India.

Christianity is the largest world religion, but that is a result of Europeans depopulating and colonizing the Americas. Had that not happened, Christianity might well be the third or fourth largest religion on the planet. The rest of the world would think that those Europeans going about wearing a Roman torture device on a chain around their nexks were weird. Actually they may think that anyway.

There is no objective reason why Christianity is any more believable than any other religion, yet only a very small minority of Christians switch to one of those other religions. A few go to Judaism, a few to Buddhism, hardly any to the other world religions.

So let me change the question. Is Christianity the only religion worth retaining faith in after Mormonism, and why?

+Brother Of Jerry:
“There is no objective reason why Christianity is any more believable than any other religion, yet only a very small minority of Christians switch to one of those other religions. A few go to Judaism, a few to Buddhism, hardly any to the other world religions.”

==I think the reason that people don’t go to hindium or the roman religion or greek religion or one of the others that are polytheistic is that the idea of god started out as “Well, I have certain powers and the king has even more powers and the priest has even more powers so maybe there is a person with maximum powers that has created everything.”
That is the natural pathway that a primitive man would follow.
I’m guessing that people interpreted the “forces” of nature as having a personality to them and these were converted into various gods.
I guess at some point, some guy decided to fuse their gods into 1 or 2. For example, Zoroaster fused their good gods into 1 god and all their evil gods into 1 evil god. There is evidence that jews were polytheistic. Example: Asherah is the wife of Yahweh. They fused them all into 1 god.


So, when you come from a background with 1 super god, there is little desire to go with multiple weaker gods. People want to worship power. Power maximus is what they want and not less.

There is also the problem of memory. Look at the egyptian religion. They have over 200 gods. Are you going to be able to remember each of their names and what they are up to, what they desire? Human memory is limited. Imagine a religion with 40 billion gods! Human memory is puny and faulty. We can barely remember a 7 digit phone number.

~~~~iceman9090

Coming to your senses, facing reality head on, trusting yourself. That is what should stop faith AKA Wishin'Hopin'Prayin'. Even Dusty Springfield got it. You gotta do something.

When I believed in the church thirty years ago, I was also self employed. I did many different things at that time, most of which were successful enough to pay the bills and to afford the luxuries and time off that I believed I deserved at the time. Somehow, I was able to have an idea and just go out and create what I saw in my mind, in to the real world. What ever I built, it felt real long before it actually happened, even if it was only an idea in my mind before it existed in thenreal world. I wasn't tied to an employer other than to myself.

When I lost my faith and resigned from the mormon church, that all disappeared along with my faith. I lost almost everything that mattered to me. But I got to keep what mattered most to me, my integrity. I went bankrupt, went back to college, got a job, and have been tied to ordinary employment ever since.

There is something positive to be had along with faith, as long as your faith is not mis-directed. I feel like somehow those gifts that I once had may come back to me some day, along with perhaps, the ability to exercise those same talents that I once had again, along with some greater wisdom the next time around, and hopefully with more meaning for my life than they had previously. Until then, I report to work each day and have hope that some understanding will come in to my life at some point, to provide more meaning to those times in my life that were difficult. Life was a lot more fun when I was getting most of what I wanted/expected from it and it looked like only time stood between me and potentially great accomplishments.

If nothing changes now, I've been able to get what matters matters most in life to me so far. Without some kind of faith, I don't know if that would have been possible. It would be really nice to get out of what feels like a cage that has put a lock on some of my talents for the past thirty years and that somehow appears to be tied to faith. If it never happens, it'll be okay. There is an reason for everything. I enjoy my job too and am fortunate to have that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/2020 12:02PM by azsteve.

A bad experience didn't stop me from having all faith, I stopped practicing mormonism because after 30 years or doing it, it wasn't working for me. I felt worse from going to church than if I didn't go.

It's like the lesson all toddlers must learn, which is finding the right kind of foods to eat, somethings are better to avoid than to ingest. Don't stick everything in your mouth.

There is no such thing as magic. We were taught in the LDS church that all of us can or could be magicians. None of the mainstream churches taught this. However, they taught that there was magic. In realizing that the magic taught in the church was false, part of that realization was built around the truth of any magic.

Dentists are actual people with facts about how they perform their procedures.

What you are asking is why people go to fact-based thinking instead of faith-based thinking. Most atheists were never Mormon. They simply don't use mythology as factual ways to explain the unknown.

Most people, even those with "faith" in some religion, are total atheists with respect to all other religions, except for their own tribal specialty.

They don't care in the least if you don't adopt one of those outside religions, and in fact rather a lot of the religious in Christian nations would view with great alarm if you adopt Islam, even though it is a first cousin of Christianity. They find Buddhists less alarming, just odd. They don't know enough about Hindus to even have an opinion.

But they are often anxious to point out all the advantages of adopting their particular tribal god.


As has been said here many times, atheists just disbelieve in one more god than theists. (technically only true of monotheist believers, but that is the local audience here)

If I were going to pull one out of a hat, I'd go with Yemanja, an African deity popular in Brazil. Ganesha is kind of cute too, with his four arms, pot belly and elephant trunk.

Jehovah just looks like a character from one of the less creative and more ponderous episodes of Star Trek.

ONE? Who the hell had ONE bad experience with the cult?

TopperToppington (it is a hot day. best drink Iced Tea)

I didn't feel the need to proverbially throw the baby out with the bathwater. Others have no use for religion or faith after their experiences with Mormonism. Each person may and should decide for himself or herself.

Why do you assume a cavity?

Even though i had turned away from all religion for a few years i have recently started reading the new testament without any religion connection at all. I have been curious as to what the real christ would do right now as both a virus and authority has been unleashed against the people at the same time.

As a person was killed by boot to the throat by an authority figure recently as i figured would eventually happen i have to admit i felt that one because i know what that feels like even though my body did not die at the time. I'd take a virus any day over authority intimidation and physical brutality.

+Adam the empath:
"I have been curious as to what the real christ would do right now as both a virus and authority has been unleashed against the people at the same time."

==I think there is a difference between what is in the new testament and reality. If there was a christ, he would be claiming to be the messiah trying to save the jews from their roman overlords. He doesn't know anything about the microscopic world. He think diseases are caused by demons. I'll let you reach the part about transferring demons from people and transferring them to pigs and the pigs run off a cliff and die.

He has no interest in you. His focus would be his people, the jewish people.

~~~~iceman9090

Mormonism never was faith to begin with. It was spiritual interference. It has always stood in the way of people connecting with the divine.

Starting with Joseph Smith and every prophet/con man since then, the story has always been the same. They stand on the train in their suit and tie acting like they are selling you the tickets and verifying that you purchased them (the most important thing!) when in reality the train will get to the same place on life's journey with or without their help.

Some of the passengers who have gotten wise to this can only hope the real conductor of this trip will make the rounds and discover this con man before he hightails it off the train with all the passengers' money.

I believe in the gospel the bible, just not the Mormon one. NO I'm not a bible thumper, I maybe go to church 3 times a year. I also don't say "god bless you", I'm just my cussing self full of integrity. I'm trustworthy. I guess I break a few stereo types.

I'm 45 and my parents made me attend my entire life, I even attended in my lower 30's maybe once a month just to please mom. but I made promise at 3 years old never to get too deep in. I just did it to show love to my parents. Never married, never got the underwear, never a mission, NON UTAH, I lived in texas

Take things on a case by case basis. It would be stupid to go off and join the JWs, but becoming yet another angry atheist isn't the answer either. Those people haven't found closure.

No more than a bad marriage should put you off ever loving anyone again. It can teach you things, make you cautious, teach you about relationships but it shouldn't destroy your ability to love. Believing an abusive spouse's lies and thinking all relationships are not better than your abuser provided means they win. They have taken something from you and you let them. An abusive church is the same way. If you let them turn you off from ever believing in anything again, they win. The truth is, you deserve better and they make you believe there is no better, there is only abuse. Then they win because mentally, you are their slave and you will never find happiness, just as they intended all along - to keep you under their thumb.