I'm interested in a post-Mormonism perspective on retaining beliefs in Jesus. As I simplified my perspective on how former Mormons who still believe in Jesus retained their beliefs I thought of two stories from The Bible. The first is Joseph of Egypt and the second John The Baptist.

The one, Joseph, convinced a rich and powerful person that he had supernatural skills that this person could use after of course escaping an Egyptian cougar overcome by the allure of one of God's chosen.

The other one, John, lost his head in the machinations of the rich and powerful.

So extrapolating these stories to being a former Mormon and leaving Egypt per say, in that Mormonism now has taken a Joseph and made him their pharaoh posthumously.

Does another corporate or highly organized organization claiming to be what Jesus would want you to belong to appeal to you?

Like in the Joseph story, he provided "safety" from famine that the church seems to always be pushing which turned into slavery. Joining another highly organized religion might be similar although their storehouses won't have $100 billion dollars. Jumping from Joseph into the land of Canaan just to be lorded over by Pharisees instead of pharaohs.

And then there is the John the Baptist route. I know it is an oversimplification but I can see that as a former Mormon this is more appealing. I'd rather be lost around The River Jordan eating bugs than kowtowing to people I've never met yet need to think are inspired by my God. I might lose my head but at least I wouldn't be a fatted calf for preachers of famine and legislators of The Bible rules.

I'm just curious. After you left Egypt freed from the slavery of Mormonism you still followed Jesus. But where did he lead you to? Similar hierarchies claiming to arbitrate for him or out into mists of darkness to find Jesus on your own?

"Does another corporate or highly organized organization claiming to be what Jesus would want you to belong to appeal to you?"

No. Living in Putin's Russia is no more appealing that Mormonism or any of Christianity.

You forgot the third one. Jesus wasn't even safe in his own story. Not impressive. Mormons don't understand--you really do have to throw the baby out with the bath water.

I disagree.
I think it is really unfortunate that so many ExMos buy into this myth that you have to throw out the baby (Jesus) with the bath water (Joseph’s Myth).
There are plenty of respectable scientists, like Francis Colins (Fauci’s Boss) who mapped the human genome and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, who converted to Christianity from atheism.
I like Thomas Jefferson’s attitude towards Jesus, he accepted that he existed and was a sort of a Poetic Monk, but not a miracle worker and never resurrected.
I also like Gandhi’s attitude, “I like your Christ! I just wish more ‘Christians acted like him!”
Me, personally, much bigger fan of Epicurus, Aurelius, Lao Tzu and Buddha than Jesus.

Throwing the baby out with the bath water isn't a myth. It's just a metaphor or something like that.

The myth (that which is without proof) is Jesus. If you don't believe that, please bring him by sometime for a chin wag next time he drops by your house.

Done & Done Wrote:
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> Throwing the baby out with the bath water isn't a
> myth. It's just a metaphor or something like
> that.
>
> The myth (that which is without proof) is Jesus.
> If you don't believe that, please bring him by
> sometime for a chin wag next time he drops by your
> house.

I get the metaphor, but in the metaphor, the OP was just asking about throwing out Jesus with Joseph's Myth. I don't think you need to, necessarily. I still value Christ's words, I just don't buy into the whole Virgin Birth, Savior, resurrection. I don't believe that we survive death. I think that belief detracts from enjoying this life and living it like it's the one shot you get at getting it right. LIke you don't get a 2nd chance. And, if it turns out I'm wrong and we all do get a 2nd chance, well, then, BONUS ROUND!!!!

I actually disagreed with Grant Palmer who thought he could remain a Mormon and just focus on Jesus and quit singing the praises of Joseph Smith, when he was a deeply flawed human being. Turns out he couldn't. They finally, quietly disfellowshipped him for that heresy, like the Dark Ages CULT it is.

Francis Collins has not won the Nobel Peace Prize, nor even a Nobel Prize for Medicine or Chemistry

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes/

schrodingerscat Wrote:
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> I disagree.

With what??? I didn't write anything to agree with. I'm not giving an opinion. I'm not trying to persuade anyone.

My bad, I thought he earned a Nobel prize but he just took over the Human Genome Project from a Nobel Prize Winner, then mapped the human genome.
Regardless, he is a well respected scientist who is a devout Christian, exAtheist.
I’m not either atheist or Christian, but I appreciate the words of Christ, I just don’t believe he was divine, nor do I believe we cheat death by accepting an age old myth.

Tell us what "respectable scientists" converted from Atheism to christianism.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
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> Tell us what "respectable scientists" converted
> from Atheism to christianism.

Francis Collins.
“He converted from atheism to Christianity in his twenties after seeing how radically his patients' faith transformed their experience of suffering, and after reading several works by C.S. Lewis. Some 30 years later, he stands by his convictions, positioning science not as substitute for theology, but as a subset of it.”

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/collins.html

Collins is not respectable. He is a two-faced hypocrite.

> There are plenty of respectable
> scientists, like Francis Collins
> (Fauci’s Boss) who mapped the
> human genome and was awarded the
> Nobel Peace Prize, who converted
> to Christianity from atheism.

    "...Collins was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize...", which even if it were true and Wikipedia just forgot to mention it, doesn't, in my opinion, make a scientist "respectable".

    Based on what I understood from what I read, Collins seems to admit that science and religion have a gap between them, and that to bridge that gap requires an act of faith.  Had he never seen his frozen waterfall and made his leap of faith, his service to mankind would have been just as valid and important.

    Too bad the poor bastard can't equal your spiritual conquests...

I won't take you seriously until you, like Francis Collins, do not have a Nobel Peace Prize.

    You know, it's not something over which I have the absolute, complete control I require in order to make it happen, or not happen, lest I end up jumping off the Vincent Tao Bridge.

What you say is, I admit, logosical.

The way I see the world is that we do better with freedom of belief, freedom of ideas, freedom of speech. Recently I got booted out of a fakebook group just because I had a difference of opinion about something. And didn't accept the moderators opinion as absolutely true. I think most people do this kind of thing once they get a little power. They start abusing everyone around they can. They aren't tolerant. If you say the wrong thing then people hate you. Most Americans really don't believe in liberalism, liberalism of thought, a free market place of exchange of ideas. In the stuff of Martin Luther, Tindale, and others who were burned at the stake.

This is what keeps me out of organized religion even though I'm a literally believing Christian. It's the anti liberal attitude. The anti democratic attitude. I'm too much of a libertarian to put up with the bull shit.

macaRomney Wrote:
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> They
> aren't tolerant.

Are you tolerant?


-------------------
> Most Americans really don't
> believe in liberalism. . .

Are you a liberal?


-------------------
> . . .Martin Luther. . . and others who
> were burned at the stake.

Martin Luther was burned at the stake?


-------------------------
> The anti
> democratic attitude.

You are pro-democracy? Even for people from the lesser races?


-----------------------
> I'm too much of a libertarian. . .

Even if libertarianism means letting lesser races vote and have equal access to the courts, the constitution, and government resources?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2021 08:12PM by Lot's Wife.

macaRomney Wrote:
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> This is what keeps me out of organized religion
> even though I'm a literally believing Christian.

Candle, meet bushel (basket).

"This is what keeps me out of organized religion even though I'm a literally believing Christian"

What's the difference between organized religion (Christian) and a "literally believing Christian"?

I find it interesting that there are other babies in the bath water, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, all with many hundreds of millions of adherents. Yet nobody in these frequent baby-bath water discussions ever advocates giving serious attention to any of the other babies. Nobody cares if we ignore them.

Buddhism, to pick one, seems a lot more rational than a triune god born of a virgin who was killed and resurrected to atone for our sins and the fall of a mythological Adam. I see no reason why that story should be more compelling than the story of Buddha. The only reason there are more Christians than adherents of those other religions is that Europe had better sailors than the rest of the world in the 16th century, and spread Christianity to the Americas.

I am one of those people who think Buddhism merits a good deal of attention.

First some speculative quibbles with your history. In the late centuries BCE and stretching several centuries into the Common Era, Buddhism in India was probably the biggest religion in the world. It then declined to a minority status in its homeland but remained by far the most important faith in East and Southeast Asia until it was suppressed after the Communist Revolution in China in 1949. At that time there were about 600 million Chinese, which was about 1/4 of the global total, as well as additional hundreds of millions elsewhere in the region. So it could be that Buddhism was the more populous faith as late as the middle of the 20th century. In other words, European expansion was not as important a factor as events within the much larger Buddhist populations.

Doctrinally, the great thing about Buddha is that you don't have to believe in him. As an early manuscript says, if you meet him on the road--meaning that he becomes your focus--you must kill him and move on. Theology must not interfere with praxis. In Buddhist doctrine there is no bathwater and there is no baby.

Gotta think …..



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2021 01:27AM by kathleen.

I found that the story of Christ and any answers it gives makes less sense without Mormonism. A lot of Christians accept the Trinity belief, which nobody can definitively explain. Just God and Christ are the same person in some way. Yet why is the sacrifice necessary? Why the blood magic? If he's God, both before dying on the cross and after, was it really a sacrifice, or just performance art? WHAT did he sacrifice, exactly? He died to appease himself and his own law?

And what part of someone taking the fall for stuff you do is good or uplifting? I'm being saved but someone else is essentially taking the punishment for my crimes. And if I accept that, I am saying that it is right for that happen, that I am a good person for allowing that. The twisty part comes in where I have to accept this morally bankrupt position because 1. It's God. He's fine! He didn't actually die! He lives! 2. He died to correct his own law that he made, which feels manipulative and like extortion. I owe him now, even if the rules were his in the first place and 3. I couldn't do any of this without his help. So what is earth, then? What is it about? Is it for humans or is it for God? Because if his standards are too high for me to succeed without this "gift" then what is the point? Is it obedience? So, it is extortion, then? "Look what I did for you, you couldn't do it on your own, so, you better follow me, or else you'll fail". Why would I follow this God? Even if he could be proven real, how is this an ideal for my life and my purpose?

Other Christians don't believe in a premortal existence, the council in heaven that decided WHY we are here. And they don't have a goal other than "get to Heaven" which confuses me, because if God knows everything before it happens, why the earth stuff? Why not just create the friends you want to have IN heaven already? Other Christians appeal to mystery, their obedience and faith even more blind than Mormons, because God appears to have contraditory or dubious motives for the creation of earth and mankind and they're just going to trust that he has their ultimate best interest in mind because he came down once and told people they should love one another and care for the poor. At least Mormons have made up a story to explain SOME of it and appeal to a sense of purpose.

It is by God's will that everything happens, yeah? So, he deliberately creates people who are going to choose to go to Hell. Other Christians have a twisted view of morality and the afterlife. There's Heaven and there's Hell. In some Christian religions, unbaptized babies go to Hell, are punished for eternity because God demands everyone get sprinkled with water. In some Christian denominations, if you've never heard of Christ, you're going to Hell. Sucks to be you. And if you are a lifelong murderer, a cheat, a liar, a thief, but you are "born again" in Christ, all is forgiven and you're going to Heaven. The requirements for getting into Heaven don't make sense with the sacrifice of Christ in other denominations. Mormons make it hard on themselves by requiring works for salvation but at least it makes some kind of sense that merit and morality is required in order to get the big end game reward. Other Christians are all confused, allowing genuinely awful people who are predatory and toxic to save themselves by accepting Christ and yet punishing good, wholesome people because they were too proud to bow to Christ. It's twisted and wrong.

Mormonism does a good job of eliminating the possibilities of other religions by its attempts to appeal to logical storytelling which Christianity doesn't have, no matter what version you look at. Not to mention the fact that if you're using the Bible at all, you're actually following a God that is in truth demonic, evil, possibly even covertly orchestrating evil to be perpetrated among its followers, while putting up a facade of righteousness and purity. So, once you get to "Mormonism is a scam, a whole bag of lies right from the birth of Joseph Smith" there is nothing left afterwards.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2021 08:15AM by blackcoatsdaughter.

in another religion. I actually still have the attitude when I see signs for church meetings anywhere. There is baptist church 1-1/2 blocks from my house in little tiny Hyrum, Utah, and next to it is a Catholic church, and I'm not being racist when I say it is attended by only Hispanics. I'm not sure I understand that. Why is there a separate building for only Hispanics? We do have a lot of Hispanics in Hyrum. Then there is Jehovah's Witness church in Nibley, a few miles from my house. I find this really interesting given you couldn't find a more mormon area than Hyrum, Utah!

But when I was living in Longmonth, CO, with my boyfriend, I'd see a lot of churches and they'd have signs posting when meetings started and I always thoughT, "WHY would anyone be a part of organized religion."

I don't know that I even believe in God, let alone Jesus. I remember seeing a sign at the baptist church about God just after my parents died and I thought, "I know my parents. I don't know God." I don't pray. I tend to talk to my parents all the time. My beliefs change EVERY DAY. All depends on what I'm going through. All I do know is that I know my parents, so they are who I ask things of. I tend to believe in an afterlife, but I don't think about what it might be like as I just don't know. That's just a personal thing.

Religion has left a bitter taste in my mouth. I especially DO NOT like posts on fb about Jesus or God. I skip them all. I have a lot of religious friends on fb, but many are no longer mormon. I'm really enjoying the GC posts????? NOT! My daughter has posted about it. At least she's close by right now, though haven't been able to see her much. Only at a distance as I'm no longer ill, but my son is. Ex is better. His boyfriend NEVER got sick and he spent plenty of time with the ex over the past few weeks. Glad that is behind me. Now I have a dog with pancreatitis. Having fun with that??????? Both dogs were sick before I got sick. I'm pretty much worn out by all this illness.

cl2, I think that I'm about where you are at. I am so post-Christian that I'm finding it difficult to understand the impulse towards religion any more. I work to be tolerant of those who still believe and practice their faiths. But I just feel so removed from it all. My most common thought is, "You're still doing that? Why? What can you possibly be getting out of it?" I guess they get comfort and community.

Like you, I don't pray per se, but ask my (deceased) parents for help instead. I'm going to ask people I know before I ask some amorphous god. If they can help, great, and if not, no harm done.

You mentioned the Hispanics at the Catholic Church. The immigrants coming up from Mexico, Central and South America tend to keep their faith. They are likely injecting new life into the U.S. Catholic church. Many English-speaking Catholic congregations will offer Spanish-language services as well.

There are definitely low- and medium-demand Christian choices for those exmos who still wish to practice Christianity. But I understand why exmos feel so burned out from religion. My mother considered herself a Christian for her entire life, but spent about half of it away from church. She just prayed on her own, and read things on her own. I think a lot of people do this.

There are lots of great metaphors and life lessons in the Bible that have value. Love your neighbor, turn the other cheek etc. There are also a lot of funny ones: talking donkey, giants in land, 900 year old men, tight like unto a dish submarines etc.

I wish I could be saved by Jesus and go to Heaven when I die, but the uncertainty, cost and requirements to believe stupid shit in this life is way too high. As far as Jesus and dogma, I'm totally out for any religion. It's all made up BS and religion has caused untold suffering (if you ain't one of us we are gonna kill you - Taliban etc)

I don't think anybody needs religion to be good. It's part of your DNA to be good.

squirrely Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> tight like unto a dish submarines
> etc.

That is the book of Mormon.

squirrely Wrote:

> I don't think anybody needs religion to be good.
> It's part of your DNA to be good.

This is exactly what I think.

Soft Machine Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> squirrely Wrote:
>
> > I don't think anybody needs religion to be good.
>
> > It's part of your DNA to be good.
>
> This is exactly what I think.


Tell that to any woman and plenty of others living in near Dark-Ages Middle East components of civilization where maybe a nearly perfect "Jesus Vacuum" is maintained.

Josephs Myth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Soft Machine Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > squirrely Wrote:
> >
> > > I don't think anybody needs religion to be
> good.
> >
> > > It's part of your DNA to be good.
> >
> > This is exactly what I think.
>
>
> Tell that to any woman and plenty of others living
> in near Dark-Ages Middle East components of
> civilization where maybe a nearly perfect "Jesus
> Vacuum" is maintained.

I think we already had morals before we had religion.
Every society has morals. Even animals have morals. Survival of the fittest, natural selection, favors those individuals who follow the rules and play the game within the rules.

Once again your religion of scientocity gets a Grog in the blender thing going. Survival of the fittest is most definitely nothing moral which requires human cognition and community to even exist as a workable concept.


Evolution myths: 'Survival of the fittest' justifies 'everyone for themselves'
LIFE 16 April 2008
By Michael Le Page

"The “fittest” can be the most loving and selfless, not the most aggressive and violent. In any case, what happens in nature does not justify people behaving in the same way

The phrase “survival of the fittest“, which was coined not by Darwin but by the philosopher Herbert Spencer, is widely misunderstood.

For starters, there is a lot more to evolution by natural selection than just the survival of the fittest. There must also be a population of replicating entities and variations between them that affect fitness – variation that must be heritable. By itself, survival of the fittest is a dead end. Business people are especially guilty of confusing survival of the fittest with evolution.

What’s more, although the phrase conjures up an image of a violent struggle for survival, in reality the word “fittest” seldom means the strongest or the most aggressive. On the contrary, it can mean anything from the best camouflaged or the most fecund to the cleverest or the most cooperative. Forget Rambo, think Einstein or Gandhi.

What we see in the wild is not every animal for itself. Cooperation is an incredibly successful survival strategy. Indeed it has been the basis of all the most dramatic steps in the history of life. Complex cells evolved from cooperating simple cells. Multicellular organisms are made up of cooperating complex cells. Superorganisms such as bee or ant colonies consist of cooperating individuals."

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13671-evolution-myths-survival-of-the-fittest-justifies-everyone-for-themselves/#ixzz78MVdGrUN

I like the golden rule. I still try and follow it.

Where I am coming from is this, I'm not living under FGS (fearguiltshame) anymore, no-way no-how nobody gets to see the wizard! The OZ of Mormon doesn't need to show me their mellowish picked bodes. Their all nuts and big big news report, they're not the only one's.

Now, if I'm not going to live under fear guilt or shame any longer what is left?
That's right, all that is left is want!

Maybe think of it this way, I don't know of any climbers mounting the summit of Everest with a bayonet poking them in the back.

I'm not your definition of Christian but trust me, I am forevermore following Jesus, following love instead of the trappings of law and I do encourage you to truly finish growing up.

Why do you need to follow anyone in order to love others and do what is right? If you can pick and choose what parts of Christ's story you like and wish to exemplify, why is he needed at all? You must have some idea of a personal definition and standard that you're measuring him by if you can pick and choose the parts like that. Why not just go all the way, have some trust for yourself and your ability to make decisions for yourself, rather than needing to be led anywhere by anyone?

The true sign of maturity in my view is putting away delusions and beliefs that don't reflect reality, and only believing in true things, rather than making up stories that make me "feel good."

Growing up would be not allowing myself to believe in absurdities anymore, so that people will never again have the ability to manipulate me and control my life.

I am convinced that Z.Sitchen's translation of Enki has true value.
For me it is the most logical explaination of human beings as we know them
THEREFORE
The Jesus resurection legend, in my mind, Is not credible nor believeable.
I keep membership only for what small social benefit is still available.

Jesus "died" in my heart simultaneously with Mormonism. I was holding on to metaphor at the end of my faith but LDS is just too scripturally literalist for that to work for long.