I am new here so forgive me if this topic has recently come up (topics do tend to recycle themselves on any forum given enough time). What was your Lightbulb moment - the moment you *KNEW* the "one true church" was false?

This would be the key part of your de-conversion story. Not necessarily the first event that caused you to doubt, but the one that tipped the balance.

I was thinking about this the other day, and for me it has to be the Book of Abraham. When I learned that the source still existed in a museum, and that Joseph Smith's "translation" was 100% wrong - not a single shred of truth - and this was the view of every single expert who was qualified to make a judgement - I couldn't go back. My mind knew, I knew, that the church was not true.

My tipping point was when my friend's daughter got married. She called me one day and told me that every time something went wrong with the wedding plans, her daughter would say, "The church is still true, so why does it matter."

I couldn't get that out of my head. I thought about it for days and days. I hadn't been active mormon since my husband told me he was cheating some 10 years or more before that.

And then I wrote in an old journal--IT MATTERED TO ME. I believed them. I trusted them. I married someone gay based on their advice and my life was a giant disaster.

place where testimonies come to die.

it's always in my 5 minute description of Kolobianism to nevermos. And it always gets a laugh.

hahahahaha. kolobianism...love it

for me was when Hinckley did that interview with King and Mike Wallace.

"are you a prophet?"
"I am sustained as such.."

"Can you become Gods?"
"I don't know that we teach that, I am familiar with the concept, as God is man may become...etc."

I am probably misquoting, however, if you are a TRUE prophet, why not be bold like Moses in the OT, or the 12 apostles in the NT? Why all this waffling.

"because of his audience. Milk before meat." is the apologist response.

Certainly didn't stop the guys in the bible or the book of mormon where the audience was coming from.

I was bothered by doctrines and people almost my entire life in the church. The lightbulb moment for me was being in an Elder's quorum presidency and watching the President blatantly lie about home teaching numbers. I remember thinking "why put up with this BS." That was two years ago, and the last time I stepped foot in a church.

I've shared mine before, too. :)

My lightbulb moment was when the thought suddenly occurred to me: "I'm a good person."

That was all it took. After a decade of self-loathing, I realized I was a good person. There was no reason for me to feel so damn guilty just because I didn't "have a testimony". In fact, why was I trying so hard to believe something that I didn't think was true? That was the first time I admitted to myself that I didn't think it was true, and therefore had no reason to try to gain a testimony of it, and I was done.

All the crazy history and lies and stuff only confirmed that moment when I found out about them later.

The genetic evidence was conclusive for me. Resigned the next year.

Simon Southerton's book 'Losing A Lost Tribe, Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon church was an eye opener for me.

For me it was more like a dimmer switch slowly being turned on. It took five years for the light to be fully illuminated. It wasn't like a flash of eureka moment - more like a slow burn into a raging inferno. I used that inferno to burn my bridges and scorch the Mormon earth behind me.

When I realized that Mormon salvation is impossible.

When I finally had the courage to get in touch with my deepest feelings about all of it and educated myself.

This theme of "lightbulb moment" or "crashing into the sky moment" comes up a lot, but it's an important topic. We bore our testimonies that WE KNEW the church was true, over and over and over. So even though the topic has come up many times before, it bears repeating, over and over and over.

I was surfing the internet in search of....something. I looked at the Druids to see what they believed, something else came up, don't ask me what, that lead me to a website about ecclesiastical abuse in the Mormon church. This lead me to info on the September Six, which lead me to a webpage about the Book of Abraham. By the time I read the truth about the alleged "translation," I was effectively out. The next day, I happened upon RFM.

Thank you, Al Gore, for inventing the internet. ;o)

Your last line got me laughing there WCG.

Blacks and Phood
Being invisible in a cultish, clickish weird "church"
Horrifying temple crap
Exhaustion

I accidently found an 'ex-mormon' site while googling for something and i read on it that dna evidence proves the NA Natives came from asia. So the bom is fake. Since it is the 'keystone'/ capstone to the religion the whole thing came tumbling down.

30+ years in the church. -Costly in time and money and effort.
15 min. of internet reading- priceless

karin, that is amazing....now if we could just get all Mormons to read the internet, like my convert daughter.

I stumbled upon rfm and clicked on the link " thinking of joining Mormonism?" and when I got to the list of beliefs the missionaries dont tell you, and read about Kolob, I knew.The Internet truly is a threat to the church. Maybe that's why at GC today they told all the youngins to stop facebooking and start doing family history!

One day I realized that the members I knew were no different as a group, bad or good, than the non-members I knew. How valid could the church's claim to exceptional authority or knowledge be when it has no evidence of exceptional outcomes? The BoM, the Temple, the priesthood, etc. etc. and what is there to show for it all? It is just another church with members who have the same ups and downs as members of any other church. I could get that anywhere without the emotional or intellectual trickery that Mormonism requires.

When I think about it; my light bulb moment came when I saw my parents putting the church before family and us kids. I thought it was totally amazing than my strong willed mom and dad who never would surrender their authority to anyone including the government would just roll over for the church. I must have been kindergarten age when I first noticed it. It always bothered me and deep down inside I said I would never be that way.

In reality, it took many years to finally live up to that flash of reality and actually do something about it.

You just have to be willing to burn all bridges to get out of the cult and unless you are willing to do that, they usually rope you back into it. I just realized anyone who wanted me back into the church was never a real friend and so they were disposable.

I was on formal probation, and trying to work my way back into good standing with the church. One day, after a year and a half of doing everything on the church's checklist, the bishop told me in one of our monthly meetings that my goal should be to get my temple recommend back. A lot of unspoken thoughts hit me. In no particular order:
-I never enjoyed going through the temple. I always thought it was weird and had nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus, who I still believed in at the time.
-I realized that a temple recommend was nothing more than a tangible measure of a person's commitment to the organization, and not necessarily of one's personal worthiness.
-I was giving my money and time to an organization that didn't care about my desire to be a better person, but only cared about my commitment to the collective.
-Somewhere in there was "I'm on formal probation. How the hell do I get a temple recommend when I'm on formal probation?" It just didn't make sense, until I processed the afore-mentioned thoughts.
Then I realized I had too many doubts about the Book of Mormon to really dedicate the rest of my life to the church. There were too many other things that also never made any sense. So i took everything that bothered me over the years, took it off the shelf and started researching it. When I realized everything was made up, everything fell into place, and I stopped going to church altogether soon after that.

book of abraham
kinderhook plates
polyandry

...in that order

Well, two days before I guess. On a Sunday morning I was awakened by my grandmother banging on the door and telling me that grandpa had fallen, the next door neighbors were with him, but she (grandma) had to get to church to play for the choir!

Um, your husband of 63 years has had a stroke or something, and you have to get to CHURCH?! That was 8 years ago this Thanksgiving, and I still didn't resign until 01.21.11

I moved to Reno this past May, and didn't even remember that today was GC. How nice.

There is nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, more important than fulfilling a church calling. And yes, the "playing for the choir" has been told me hundreds of times instead of doing something else.

Hey, we live in the same town. I was out drinking last night and the girl pouring my drinks was an Ex-mo. We were doing temple handshakes across the bar and giggling a lot.

It was the night of April 2, 2010. I was reading the autobiography "Stolen Innocence" by Elissa Wall about her experiences in the FLDS. Reading her account of how she was abused by the 'Priesthood' I realized that the FLDS is a window of how the church used to be. The thought entered my mind, "The church is not true". All of a sudden all my doubts over the years made sense. There was no need to struggle with guilt over unbelief. It was all man made! It took me four months after that to get the courage to send in my resignation letter, but literally in the course of one night I went from believer to born-again atheist.

I had doubts and misgivings for several years, knew of most of the historical problems, chafed from the nonsense put out by Salt Lake, but a profound moment of enlightenment occurred as I thumbed through a textbook on corporate public relations at our local junior college.

I read a comment that at first glance the "feel good" commercials by major corporations don't make sense in regard to selling their products to the public; however, they are not actually aimed at the public. They are aimed out their own employees to create a public image that the employees will see and know is public and feel pressure to conform to.

Suddenly, MormonAds made sense from a whole different perspective. The church wasn't just manipulating the general public; the ads were aimed at the members of the church. The members would see the images and expectations projected by the public ads and feel pressure to act accordingly. For some reason, it was the last straw. My last bit of trust in the church was broken.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2011 06:22AM by robertb.

You are right on the MorgMoney with this one! I agree completely. Advertising is PR for the members!

"I read a comment that at first glance the "feel good" commercials by major corporations don't make sense in regard to selling their products to the public; however, they are not actually aimed at the public. They are aimed out their own employees to create a public image that the employees will see and know is public and feel pressure to conform to."

Yes, it is difficult to pinpoint a specific lightbulb moment. I was BIC, but I questioned the mumbo-jumbo (which is what I called it) all my life.

The last straw was when my children broke down and told me about the abuse they had been suffering at the hands of the adult Mormon leaders. My kids had been threatened not to tell. On the heels of my anger and shock, came the realization: "This is not God's work!" I told the children that they never had to go there again. I was eager to separate me and my children from Mormon bondage--especially my brief temple marriage to a wife-beater, which still existed in the Mormon records. Also, according to Mormon records, my children, born several years later to my second husband, were listed as the property of the wife-beater, for eternity.

"How to get a temple divorce" was my question. I kept getting different answers from different Mormons, so I came onto RFM, to see if they could tell me the rules--and I found out a lot more than that. I didn't stop reading for two weeks. Yes, the Book of Abraham was the sharpest knife of all. The answer to my question was to resign, along with my kids, which I did, with the help and support of RFM.

Some great stories here, thanks. Really demonstrates the fact there are so many varied ways one can conclude TSCC is not true. Just about every part of it's history or doctrine is potentially a deal breaker when one discovers it's truth.

Although the Mark Hofmann/Gordon B. Hinckley events shook me up, it wasn't until 1993 that the lightbulb went on and i knew it was all a crock. Two huge things happened that year that convinced me that the modern church was not what it claimed to be.

1. A letter from the first presidency in the Ensign adopting the KJV of the bible as the official english translation for Mor(m)ons. The reasons stated in the letter were so stupid IMHO that I knew the current crop of leaders knew very little about the bible, translations, etc. How could God's representatives here on earth be so out of touch with regard to the bible? I was a mere member and knew more than they did. They were just men, nothing special.

2. The September Six fiasco. This exposed them to me as arrogant, lying, power-obsessed, anti-intellectual old coots.

After these two events it was just a matter of time before I would start to study more in depth and stumble across the Book of Abraham, changes in the revelations between the Book of Commandments and Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph marrying other men's wives, etc. But it all started for me in 1993.

Interestingly, it was hearing about the September Six - only a couple of months ago - that led me to my discoveries on the BoA.

And it was an entirely non-religious conversation that brought up the September Six.

Id been married 28 years. Last fall, my first girl kiss sent me into an emotional, spiritual tailspin that resulted in my anti-testimony. It took about two months of hell, before I KNEW I was okay and the church was dead wrong.

I entertained the idea that "what if the church is just man-made like all the others."

The pieces fell into place like hitting the "solve" button on a computer game.

It took me many years to figure this all out--it was a gradual process. For many years, I have been bothered by gossip by "leaders", by lies and made-up home teaching numbers, by the "club" effect, by the lack of focus on Jesus Christ in meetings, by the lack of honesty about church history and facts (white-washing), by the cult like behavior within the church, by the fact that I could never feel the spirit in the temple, by conflicts between doctrine and scientific evidence (bom, wow, etc.), by uninspired church leaders, by things said by brigham young, by js behaviors, by behaviors of local leaders, by boa, and the list goes on and on and on.

There were so many lightbulb moments in the last few years, but the great awakening for me came when I realized how all my best decisions have been made when I listened to my heart and not when I acted out of the desire to do what the church would expect me to do. When I thought about how the Mormon God gives his choicest blessings and inspiration to such a minuscule fraction of his children. Why would any loving Father design a plan for his children to get through this life and back to him, and only give it to less than one tenth of one percent of them in this life where they could actually need such guidance. A total failure of a loving parent. Then I decided that if any God really loved his children,and they were actually his offspring, he would provide that inner guiding voice to all of his children. Maybe God is in all of us, if he's there at all.
But religion and especially Mormonism greatest fear is that you will find your own inner voice and realize you are good and have what you need within you. That is the greatest threat to their control over you. So this is my new mantra. "Follow your heart and your own inner voice. There is goodness and wisdom there. And maybe that's where God really is."

This was American Fork (in Utah Valley) in the mid-80s. The school was (still is probably) overwhelmingly Mormon. Including most of the teachers.

Including my biology teacher. However, without using the word "evolution", he used genetic variation and geography to explain the difference in skin color, hair, etc...I connected the dots and the curse of cain business was blessedly wiped out for me.

Later the same year, he was explaining the Beringian migration and the peopling of the Americas. I connected the dots again, and *POOF* the Nephites and Lamanites were gone.

At that point, I was desperately trying to be inactive, but was also the ward activation project. These things just cemented my resolve to ditch Mormonism.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2011 02:21PM by elee.

I had to know for sure before I raised my daughters in it. I was BIC, raised in Utah County, and active all through my childhood and teen years. I started dating my nevermo boyfriend (now husband) and fell into inactivity. I had been uneasy with many teachings throughout my life but did my best to ignore the doubts.

Anyway, a few years ago one of my daughters was coming up on baptism age and I was getting pressured by my family. I decided I needed to know once and for all before I committed my own kids to it (my husband was fine with it either way).

I told that whispering devil in my ear (you know, the one they tell us is what's leading us to doubt and read "anti" stuff) to shut up for a few hours, and that if the church was really true I wouldn't find anything to contradict what I'd been taught. So I got online and researched. And researched. I came across RfM and was amazed at how much I had in common with so many other people. My research went on for a few days and within a month I'd sent in my resignation. I knew without a doubt that everything I'd been force fed my entire life was a lie, and I and my family are so much happier for it.

I don't know if there was a single one, but there were several moments that caused me to question the church.

I think I finally decided to pack it in after I read "No Man Knows My History". I wasn't sure if everything Brodie wrote was correct, but it made a lot more sense than the jumbled JS hagiographies taught in Sunday School. I thought that if a fraction of what she alleged against him was correct, then he was no man of God. I also got the distinct impression that while Brodie thought he was a fraud, she was actually impressed by his intelligence, drive and creativity.

I wish I had a light bulb moment. It was actually a series of things I learned while studying my way out of the church. Every little piece of information slowly chipped away my Mo testimony until I had none left.

I do give credit to Jerald & Sandra Tanner for their massive amount of research which I consider pivotal in my journey out of Mormonism. Their book Mormonism-Shadow or Reality is truly a testimony killer.

I was sitting in a park at lunch reading Orwell's 1984. The paralells to how the LDS church operates were striking. That was one of the light bulb moments where I realized that I needed to stop attending the LDS Church for good. The intellectual lightbulbs had gone off over a year before, but at that moment it was clear what I needed to do at the very core of my self.