Generally, people who have applied critical thinking skills to the claims of one religion are perfectly capable of applying the same critical thinking skills to the claims of other religions, and therefore maintain the default position on the question of supernatural claims on god concepts which is atheism.
Then there are those who enjoy the positive attention they receive in a religion such as christianity which rely on fringe cults like mormonism to help make them seem less batshit crazy.
Others still are afraid of death and enjoy the idea of allowing a scapegoat (like jesus) to make sure they don't have to take responsibility for their own actions either in this life or the next.
And there are those who simply go along to get along, which in western culture pretty much amounts to "i'm a christian" being the easiest way to get people to like you.
I disagree that atheism is the default position on the question of the supernatural. If that were true, wouldn't most people be atheists? The phenomenon of religion is universal in all cultures, and it appears to be very persistent regardless of the type of culture in which it is found.
What could be the reason for this? Those who believe in the supernatural generally answer that God reveals himself to people, or that people have an innate perception of the metaphysical. Those who don't believe in the supernatural have a variety of answers which most frequently seem to center on the belief that modern cultures are more advanced than older cultures, and that religion is in the process of being superseded by science or some other relatively recent development in how we think about the universe.
I don't think either position should simply be dismissed. In my view, it's too easy to say that someone is wrong because they are stupid, crazy, or evil. There are obviously smart and sincere critical thinkers among both believers and atheists.
But I agree with you that a high proportion of ex-Mormons become atheists. I think part of this is intellectual: Ex-Mormons tend to identify all religion or metaphysics with what they experienced in Mormonism, and therefore they tend to reject it all. I suppose this is what non-Mormon believers mean when they talk about "throwing out the baby with the bathwater," though I'm not a big fan of that metaphor.
Another part of the ex-Mormon tendency toward atheism seems to be emotional. Ex-Mormons are usually angry for a variety of good reasons, and so it is easy to exercise that anger not just against the church that exploited them, but against religion in general.
There may also be an element of fear: Having felt exploited by one faith, ex-Mormons may understandably want to reject the risk of being exploited by another. They may also fear having to re-experience the pain they felt when leaving Mormonism.
That's why I thought it was sort of creepy when Gordon Hinckley said, "We say to people: you bring all the good that you have, and let us see if we can add to it." When Mormonism adds to people's spirituality, it is often like adding poison to a well.
"I think part of this is intellectual: Ex-Mormons tend to identify all religion or metaphysics with what they experienced in Mormonism, and therefore they tend to reject it all. I suppose this is what non-Mormon believers mean when they talk about "throwing out the baby with the bathwater," though I'm not a big fan of that metaphor."
That's not an intellectual response to discovering the fraud of Mormonism; that's a knee-jerk, emotional reaction.
The existence of gods is not a provable hypothesis. There is no consistent methodology by which it can be tested. The logical mind isn't interested in ideas that cannot be examined under close scrutiny, so it discards them in favor of ones that can.
Anyway, let's say there is a god. How would one know he is worshiping the right one? How would that person know there's only one? IF Jesus was the messiah, how does one know that the version he worships is the right one? Why were the Gnostics wrong, or the Ebionites, or the Marcionites, or the Docetists? How does one know Jesus was the literal son of Yahweh, instead of, say, the son of Mary and Joseph, adopted by god at his baptism? How does anyone know that there was a physical, flesh-and-blood Jesus at all?
Don't lean on the Bible for answers. The Bible doesn't stand up to scientific and literary scrutiny. Archaeology contradicts it. Word analysis reveals a great amount of haphazard cut-and-paste jobs from other sources. A critical eye reveals contradictions, both in plot and doctrine. It is hardly the inerrant word of a perfect, omniscient deity!
Perhaps the reason many ex-Mormons become atheists is because they apply the same scrutiny they did to Mormonism to other religions as well, and find them just as silly and just as false. This idea has been repeated over and over and over again on this board. For instance, Kolobian said it in the post immediately preceding your own.
I agree that the existence of the supernatural is not a provable hypothesis. In fact, I would say that it's not a hypothesis at all, by which I mean that it's not a scientific proposition.
I disagree with your statement that the logical mind is not interested in ideas that cannot be examined under close scrutiny, by which I infer you mean ideas that are testable through the use of a consistent methodology. There are many such ideas, and there is nothing illogical about being interested in them.
For example, consider the following ideas:
"That's a beautiful painting."
"I love my spouse."
"Genocide is wrong."
"I should try to be a little kinder."
None of ideas these has much to do with logic. Evolution and other scientific systems of thought may help to inform our beliefs about supernatural or metaphysical things, but I doubt that science will ever completely explain the sense of importance and intensity that most people attach to them.
This is not argumentum ad popularum. It's simply an observation of human senses and perceptions that are very widespread. It is no criticism of science to point out that not everything -- for example, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics -- can be fully explained by science.
All the things you listed (i.e., aesthetics, emotion, morality and ethics) can be examined and scrutinized, and HAVE. They continue to be studied today and will as long as mankind exists. Neuroscience and psychology, for instance, have given us remarkable insight into how our brains construct these things.
My point is this: An intellectual reason for atheism after Mormonism (which is a proposition of belief, as opposed to agnosticism, which is a knowledge proposition) is that there's no compelling evidence to lead one to believe in a deity. It is NOT intellectual to say, "If Mormonism is wrong, then there is no god." That's a false dichotomy.
he phenomenon of religion is universal in all cultures, and it appears to be very persistent regardless of the type of culture in which it is found.
What could be the reason for this?
1) Human's have evolved to think in a certain way. This way of thinking lends itself to superstition and religion. It works quite well when making life and death decisions like, my dad died after eating a mushroom that looked like that, I better not eat that mushroom. Better safe than sorry.
2) Human's have evolved to survive as a pack or a tribe closely following a charismatic leader. In prehistoric times this gave the best chance of survival and passing on the genes. Humans are wired to look to a tribe leader which plays very well into religion.
3) Humans are both curious and creative in coming up with answers. With the lack of science mythology has answered many questions in the past that science can now answer. Science is still very far away from having all the answers to everything so religion still creates those answers. Religion has a long history of slowly accepting what science proves and eventually adopting it as part of the theology (e.g. it was worthy of death merely a few hundred years ago to be a Christian who believed the earth orbited the sun instead of the earth being the center of the universe.)
Well I spent two years very active, quite happy and interested for the first year maybe but not baptised ( couldn't quite answer the I believe Joseph Smith is a prophet and his book true etc question honestly required for Baptism).
Actually thought I might be a real life zeezrom and convert.
Was very open minded and gave the church the benefit of the doubt on so called anti mormon claims until I realised the claims were actually true and the church lying and ordinary members either so uneducated as to church history and doctrine or deceived or simply outright lying.
I couldn't sit through a LDS church lesson anymore, even if I tried once I knew the real deal.
Went straight out of the door on my 'it's all over' moment and soon after that all religion followed it to the trash bin.
I can't accept any religious claim at all, just gets me mad now. Will attend any church weddings,baptisms, funerals etc but thats just for social reasons.