Or are Latter Day Saints not just stupid, but astonishingly stupid?

I mean, I have trouble believing my eyes.

> Or are Latter-day Saints not just
> stupid, but astonishingly stupid?

Only on Sundays . . .?

One of the last Mormon meetings I attended, a 'priesthood leader' told me not to worry about troublesome church history or other facts. The important thing is to just believe.

I live in Tennessee - heart of the Bible belt. The gym I go to plays Christian music 24/7. I put on headphones and listen to podcasts while exercising normally. The music is simply bad. Today I did not wear the headset. One of the tunes repeated this phrase over and over - 'just believe'. A form of mind conditioning I guess. I will be back to wearing my headphones in the future.

Is it just me?

Or are Latter Day Saints not just stupid, but astonishingly stupid?

I mean, I have trouble believing my eyes.

COMMENT: Yes, it is just you! LDSs, as a group, are not stupid, much less astonishingly so.

Now, in order to counter the above (and support this post), you need to convince me, and hopefully others here, that LDSs are cognitively deficient in some way. It is not enough to identify "stupid" beliefs that you think they might have. You have to be able to explain how such beliefs were arrived at by logically faulty and cognitively deficient means.

In the vast majority of cases, LDS beliefs are not "logically" suspect, and display no cognitive impairment. In other words, they are not logically inconsistent, and there is no apparent "screw loose."

The question thus becomes whether, and to what extent, their views are consistent with the "evidence" *in conjunction with their stated values." In this case, "evidence" includes their subjective experience of the world, and "values" includes the degree in which they require evidence to confirm or disconfirm such values. So, theoretically, you can make a general list of LDS values, such as:

1. Meaning of life;
2. Immortality
3. Meaningful social relationships
4. Moral authority
Etc.

and then ask whether LDS's belief system--however evidentially weak, supports such values. In other words, their evidentiary standard might be deemed less because the value support tradeoff is for them greater.

Now, admittedly, sometimes this calculus conflicts with what we would identify as 'objective reality.' But that is not a problem of stupidity, but at most a question of personal priorities. That is why my own TBM sister, who is very smart, told me once that Mormonism "Is just who I am."

So, 'stupid' is not the right word to use when disparaging Mormons generally. This is why we recognize that they can be 'smart' in every other way outside of their religious faith. Personally, my frustration with Mormons (and other religious folks) is social and political; that is, when their beliefs take on dogmatic metaphysical commitments that infringe upon the rights of others and are manifested in the political process through oppressive, and objectively unsupportable, laws.

I think it's all in perspective. Remember the blind men trying to describe an elephant? One who felt only the tail said the elephant was long and not very big. The second who only felt a leg said the elephant was quite tall. The third who only felt an ear said the elephant was thin.

If you only see a part of something, your assessment will be different than someone else. This isn't being stupid, it's more like not being fully informed.

Mormons tend to not be fully informed because they can only know what they are told they know by the leaders who know more but keep that knowledge to themselves.

What is stupid is believing that the leaders are the only ones telling the truth and refusing to even look at anything else.

I think clueless. They are so cult programmed they don't stop to think. They just do whatever they are told without question,

They could have intelligence but it is not used.

When you are raised within the framework of a religion, you believe a lot and you internalize even more. It can take a long time to disentangle yourself assuming that you can make it that far.

It's more a rhetorical question. Maybe what you refuse to believe is more important. If believing in something that doesn't serve you is against your self interest, why do you do it? Because you think the opposite.

So maybe I was suggesting that self interest is stupid, which isn't the case. Or maybe it is, but it's not nice to admit. Mormon doctrine is framed by self interest. It may be one of the most selfish religions because of all the sticks and carrots.

Mormons embrace their abusive cult because they want something or they fear something, with that something being a made-up bogeyman. If I may be so blunt, isn't that at least a little stupid?

With the veneer of civilization wearing thin these days, I wonder if we ever really left the jungle.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/13/2024 09:17PM by bradley.

I sat through way too many meetings. The so called planning of church activities was futile. It took me decades to wake up, but it became painfully obvious that the church really didn't want thinking people to lead.

I shared this about Scouting. They wanted the actual young boys "to take the lead". This was done at the scoutmaster's home on a different evening than was normally set aside from scouting. So here we had blank paper calendar templates where we had to fill in the actual dates for each month. After squabbling among ourselves about "no duh" facts like how days are in ____ and whether this was leap year, we were expected to have one overnight camp out and two day hikes planned for each month. In the end, everything that had been planned was thrown out.

Why? Because the adults had their own calendar already planned. Brother Drip worked on these Saturdays. There was a youth activity scheduled on that date. The bishop had already planned youth temple trips on these dates.

It was so stupid to ask us kids to make plans if the church had already planned everything for members anyways.

I sat through other meetings or "think tanks" to solve ward problems only to be told that are solutions were not doable or would need further church leadership approval. Why bother?

that got me out. Nothing made sense about it anymore when I actually went to them and trusted them to give me good advice. They haven't got a clue about most things I believe.

I think that some people just hang on as it is something they need? I don't believe for a minute that my daughter BELIEVES it. She gets something from it--part of it being the social aspect. She loves the attention she gets from the people in this ward because (from my perspective) this ward really liked us and they have been so thrilled that one of us went back. My "husband" is too TBM acting, sweet. Most of the people in the ward can't help themselves about being overly nice to him. And here we are???

My daughter doesn't like Utah. I just realized and I already knew it, she is going to save her family SOMEHOW. I think that came from being in this family and going through the trauma she did when he left us. My kids couldn't believe he would leave as they were all close. And then he up and disappeared basically. So she has something she needs to fix. That is a huge draw.