Just curious, but what made some of you finally decide to leave the church? Was there something that you found out or an experience you had that made you think "There's absolutely no way this is true"?

A#1 reason-Blood Atonement

Book of Abraham

Funny you would say "the straw that broke the camel's back" Because that is what I say when I tell people my story of what happened to make me finally resign from the church. I was inactive since 2000 but the prop 8 deal is what put me over the top. I did not want anything to do with an organization that would interfere with someones Constitutional rights. This whole thing just got to me so I sent my papers in.
Been very happy since I did this.

The systemic weaponization of sex. Whether in the club or out of it, they will find a way to use your sexual energy as a weapon on you regardless...all the while using 'Pr0n' and 'teh' Gay as the Red Scare.

They are destroying what they, in their minds, are trying to save. The only happy mormon families are those who are very casual in their studies of the theology. The minute you actually pay serious attention and then start to believe it...you will come to the crossroads of reality and pretend.

BYU.

A angel with a flaming sword came and told me that the Mormon church was not true.

Ok seriously I think it was when I saw all the problems with the mormon church at the same time. For example I always heard JS was a gold digger but I put that in the back of my mind. I heard there were different versions but I just thought it was a few words that were different so never investigated it. I knew he was married to other mens wives but I heard that is was only for eternity and not time. I heard of the BofA problem but never really looked into it and just put it on the shelf. I never really looked into evolution either. However, I started to really hate church and then I started to look into these issues.

The one that got me the most was the fact that JS slept with women behind Emma's back. Most mormons do not know about it and will question the source. I always tell them it is from the church history archives and that gives them a puzzeled look.

Oh and looking at the deffinition of a cult really scared me as well because it really seemed like I was in one. Thank Gawd I am out.

when I was emotionally broke with the church - when I was just done - was several months later. DH still believed and our then 12 year old son still attended scouts. They asked all the parents to come to a meeting after church about scouts. Then, all the male leaders, dressed in suits got up and talked about THEIR plans for MY son. How they were going to make SURE my son got his Eagle rank, went on a mission, came home and married in the temple etc. No one asked ME what I wanted and much worse, no one asked my son what his plans were for HIS OWN LIFE. They just helped themselves to my child and were going to pound him into what they thought he should be. These weren't his parents, his relatives or even close family friends. I mean HOW DARE THEY!!!! I'm still mad about their outrageous presumption after all this time. I know it sounds dramatic but there really isn't a good way to convey the certainty those men had that they were going to take over my child's life and turn it to THEIR agenda.

Anyway, as soon as the meeting ended, I had to rush outside because I was literally having a panic attack and couldn't breathe. I couldn't even stand facing the church. I stood on the steps waiting for DH and son with my back to the church. And even though intellectually I'd proven the church wasn't "true" to my satisfaction, I'd say this was the breaking point. When they finally pushed me too far and I quit caring about what people thought, fitting in anyway, the possibility that the church was a good place to raise children etc. Emotionally, I was finished.

I'd have to say it was the DNA evidence against the BoM that caused me to quit going to church, but the straw that led me to resign was getting an invitation to a singles dance before my divorce was even final.

In descending order:
Prop 8
Polygamy
Polygamy in the temple
Priesthood - I don't want to belong to any group that would have me as a member.
BOM - I was skeptical even at my most TBMness
First Vision - Okay, if you say so.

Finding out who Joseph Smith really was, not what I was taught. Also finding out about the book of Abraham at the same moment. The temple changes, I had sytematically been lied to my entire life, I didn't feel closer to God in the temple (I felt the heebie jeebies), finding out that slaves were used as tithing during BY's time, the Masonic connection... It was a huge cumulation of stuff in about 48 hours of time, but I gave myself a few months to really soak it all in and decide that I was done for good.

Always and forever--the gay issue. My life experience of marrying someone gay, being set up to save them by marrying him, the fall out of what happened when he left, finally coming to terms with everything that gay and mormonism entails. I didn't know half the history. I went inactive to survive. Eventually, it just all fell apart.

I had a similar experience. I found that the church was not very supportive of divorced people. I'd been having doubts since about half way through my mission, and four years after I got home after trying to do everything correct, assuming the problem must be with me, it all just piled up, and being married to a lesbian, that I was told not to divorce because she needed to change, then being singled out after the divorce was just more than I could handle.

I was as TBM as can be however the first thing that shook my "testimony" was the similarity between the endowment ceremony and freemasonry. The next thing I struggled with was learning about polygamy's real history.

What broke the camel's back however was reading Jerald and Sandra's book, Mormonism-Shadow or Reality. I found out a WHOLE LOT OF THINGS about the truth and real history of Mormonism. It's the magnum opus of books critical of the claims and foundation of the LDS church.

My testimony wasn't just shaken, it was obliterated. Unfortunately it took me four more years of trying to fake it (for social reasons) until I just couldn't do it anymore and told everyone I no longer believed.

My first falling away after high school was purely a social "this stuff blows" type of deconversion.

I fell victim to the date-to-reactivate and got active again, put in my mission papers, got the call and then the doubting dominoes started:

1-The temple experience.
2-Some non-member friends bringing up BoM archeology.
3-Getting to the MTC, only to find that this whole thing was set up identical to a business plan (numbers, numbers, numbers).

THE FINAL STRAW:

I grew increasingly suspicious that this was a snake-oil sales scheme about 6 weeks in. Then I realized who my mission prez was and it all made sense:

http://www.drinklifein.com/leadership_team.html

It explained everything. He was the ultimate snake oil salesman. And given 3/4 of the missionaries in my mission were raised around this type of shit (Xango, Noni) they took it to be some kind of divine-providence thing. The guy was a numbers master, and one hell of an asshole. Although unconventional, this is what did it for me.

The absolute final straw was Prop 8, so in a way, I feel like I owe that proposition my life...

trying to hide them in the woods! Lots of stuff was not believable, like spiritual eye witnesses, but that story cracked me up. Literally started laughing! That was back in about 1999, I think. That was the end of over three decades of Mormonism for me!

I found out about the different "first visions" and came home 3 months into it.

How was the treatment from family, friends and such?

Blacks & PH
Prop 8
Utah-centric, backward TBM culture
Lack of transparency of church finances - what in the hell are they hiding?

Sorry, I guess there were many straws for me. I could go on all night...

Well the horrid site of my lovely wife wearing garments 24x7 sent me desperately looking for some loophole and guess what I found? However, I finally sent my resignation in on the day Prop 8 passed in California. But it was my hatred of garments that started my on the path.

I checked. No women or children allowed past the outer court even if Solomon’s temple was real. If they can’t get to the inner courts then they can’t get any temple work done and even if they could the rituals had nothing to do with today’s temple rituals.

Then BOA a 100% fraud. FARMS folks had no valid answers. I was hoping at this point that they did. They weren’t even close.

Then a real understanding of DNA via Simons book “Losing a Lost Tribe”.

The “last straw” and “last nail” was learning about Emanuel Swedenborg. The heaven/pre-existence we were taught about in the church was borrowed from Emanuel. That finished it forever.

p.s. Learning about the Aiken murders scared the bejeepers out of me. Modern horror movie material there!

therefore the church could not be true.

The story of Noah being completely debunked. I had a lot of other stuff that I was questioning but that's what pushed me over the edge. That's why I can't believe in the other great monotheisms, why should I believe anything out of the Bible?

I had been reading nothing that would be considered "anti", just historical information. Info. about the Mountain Meadows massacre, diary entries...but the straw was a book review that mentioned J.S. translating the BofM with a stone in a hat, and that J.S. was a money digger, using seer stones to find hidden treasure. In the moment after reading that review I thought, "none of what the LDS church has taught is real, and if that isn't real, its highly conceivable that whitewashed and unreal stories have been concocted about Jesus." I stopped short of becoming atheist in under 5 seconds, reserving that conclusion for a later time. That was over 9 years ago.

The LDS church claims people choose to be offended or sin, and that it happens over a period of time...because you aren't praying, reading your scriptures, attending church, etc., etc. I was praying, reading scriptures, attending church....I was teaching YW, a V.T. supervisor and visiting teacher, fulfilling my callings dutifully.

I stopped believing and became an unbeliever in seconds.

First, I finally realized the Priesthood and the Church were NOT inspired-they were just ordinary folk who wanted to think that they had celestial right and knowledge to use over others.
2nd and most important- Lack of equal rights and respect for women.
D.

And good old Hinckley's statement that it was either all true, or completely a fraud.

The BoA is not true. Therefore the church was not true.

Hmmmm.... Gosh I really have to think about this. I don't think it was any one particular thing. I think it was a series of events that led up to it. I haven't sent in my papers yet, because nobody from the church has bothered me in months. But I don't ggo at all anymore.

I still believe in god and Jesus. I realize there are reasons why people don't. I've played around with aitheism as a teen, and I was constantly depressed. I hated it. I'm really much happier choosing to believe that God and Jesus are real.

HOWEVER, god and Jesus being real does not mean the LDS church is true. The ideas of god were around long before LDS or JS were. And I really can't stand how there is just no middle ground wiht these peaole-- you are either LDS, or you're an atheist who never believed in god inthe first place. UGH!! That's just a ploy to guilt people into staying in the church.

I guess what made me think that LDS was NOT the best way to have a relationship with God was--

1-- Its history
2-- The whole "eternal family" nonsense. It is soooooooo MEAN to make people believe that if they don't get their entire family and all their extentions converted, you won't all be together in heaven. Putting that kind of guilt and worry on people's heads is just sick. And all in the name of hoarding more members and tithe. Screw that. 99% of my family is either inactive, or not a member. That's just a messed up belief.
3-- The mason-like temple ceremonies (never been through one, but read all about them and it freaks me out).
4-- Reading all bout JS's wives.
5-- Being told by the church that the reason they practiced polygamy over 100 years ago, was because all the men were getting killed off in persecution, so the wives had nowhere to go... Then finding out that in that particular time and those locations, the men actually OUTNUMBERED the women, so there really was no excuse for polygamy. And yet the church allowed it, making cheap excuses for it later.

I was baptized when I was 17, I did not have the permission of my family and yet I still got baptized. A lot of things did not make sense to me after I was baptized. Some of what was taught in sunday school and in priesthood. The one thing that got me to say no way was when I was asked again and again to lie to my dad and go perform baptisms for the dead at the temple. Obviously something is not right when they preach honesty and trust and all the other good stuff, but they ask you to lie to help them fill their agenda.

It was the money and the two faced-ness


I tend to ignore what people/organisations say and look what they do.

The Church says we should love our neighbours and help the poor and the needy. What the Church does is pay lip service to this and instead build shopping malls.

The Church says we should treat people equally and with love. In stead the Church discriminates and is an activist against people who don't fit the model.

The Church says people should tell the truth. The Church hides truths and is disingenuous in it's official responses.

No "broken back," just two main realizations.

The first came on my mission when I saw the way the supposedly divinely chosen and directed leaders actually functioned. It was like seeing the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.

With that change in perspective, the illusion started to come apart. How much of the church is fake? Is any of it real?

That led to the second realization. Oh, I don't actually believe in any type of supernatural realm. I've been an atheist all my life but it was suppressed by the system I grew up in. No wonder it hadn't been working for me. No wonder I was so unhappy. Duh.

All my life I had the answer to how Native American's got on the American Continent. When DNA showed they didn't come from the Middle East it shocked me. I really believed the Book of Mormon was true. I read everything I could about DNA and the BoM.

I was shocked as I sat there thinking that Joseph Smith pulled off this great fraud and I had finally figured it out. I was sick inside but a weight was lifted off my shoulders at the same time because now everything finally made sense.

BoA never set right with me, and I always had questions about the true nature of JS and BY and I had lots of serious doubts but I always tried to endure to the end..

I think what sealed the deal and finally allowed me to be 100% certain it was all a fraud were the kinderhook plates.

In my original answer, I mentions BoA and Blood Atonement- those were more like proofs that the church was not true.

A couple of "last straw" moments for us-

My wifes last straw moment-
It was Mountain Meadows with Bishops and Stake Presidents killing kids that were the same ages as her Primary class. She was done, then and there. She made me take her teaching materials back 'cuz she wouldn't set foot there ever again.

My Last Straw-
A few months later while I was still partially active and mostly attending because of my calling, the Bishop invited our son to ScoutCamp. Whgen he returned, he told us about lots of interviews and that we were running around like chickens with our heads cut off going to other churches. About a week later he told us that the Bishop had said that he could still be strong and steadfast even if his parents were not.

I went to the church, locked my Temple Recommend, keys and a letter resigning my calling on the bishops desk and never went back.


Since then, there have been no real last straws, just a lot of confirming event that show us that when we left the church we did indeed Choose The Right.

1. Idiot and power abusing bishops.

2. Paul Dunn's lying ass.

3. Too many demands and never a thanks.

4. Book of Abraham was icing on the cake.