I am curious if you became an atheist/agnostic because the Mormon church was so far off the deep end that you took the extreme opposite approach after leaving. I mean no disrespect whatsoever. I'm just wondering what brought you to your current beliefs?

Same critical thinking skills applied to every major religion leaves them debunked and in the category of "man made."

At which point agno made mo sense, yo.

Raptor Jesus Wrote:
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> Same critical thinking skills applied to every
> major religion leaves them debunked and in the
> category of "man made."
>
> At which point agno made mo sense, yo.


So true. As a TBM my argument was "You think it's possible for a 700 year old man to load two of every animal onto a huge ship he built, but it's impossible for God to appear to a 14 year old boy and reveal new scripture?

Once the TBM argument crumbles I'm left with the impossibility of their argument. Leads me to believe that there is no more definite truth in what they believe than in what the Mormon's believe. Same stuff, different millennium.

Is there a God? I'd like to think so, but I don't think he's what has been described by any religion. I have no proof one way or the other, so I'm going to be a good person and not worry too much about it. It's incredibly liberating with this more rational point of view. I don't have to live under the scrutiny of any church.

Coming from a CofE background, we were already well aware that a load of this stuff is just made up shite..... genesis? allegory... Noah's ark? allegory... walls of jericho? allegory.

The scorched earth policy/doctrine of LDSinc against all other religions and churches creates a process by which if the LDS church is not true, then none others will be.

Agnosticism is a result of escaping the thorough brainwashing we receive.

The moment I left Mormonism the religion stopped making decisions for me. If you allowed the brainwashing to continue to affect you, I'm sad for that. Not all of us allowed that though.

Once I stepped out of TSCC and looked in, I realized what a sham it was and then applied the same process to all other religions and realized they are all one in the same. "We are right, you are wrong..." And they all have the same test, "burning in the boosom..." Eat a good curry, you get the same results.

What everyone else has said. Every religion tries to use emotions as proof, saying that they are from God. However, when you realize emotions are just emotions, and look at religion critically, either Mormonism, or any other sect, you realize that it is all bunk. Mormonism is an easy first target, but like everyone else pointed out, Christianity in general does not stand up well against critical thinking.

Start with Genesis; the creation, the fall, the flood, and the tower of Babel, are all full of holes. Then you look further into the later books, you see more holes. It's one thing to believe in miracles, it's another to believe in Miracles whose every happening would have left such a visible thumb print that is remarkably and universally absent.

Then you look at the history of Christ in general, and learn that every pagan culture, and in many cases, every major town, had their own version of the Christ myth, with their own character. Then you realize that most of these are hundreds of years older, and in a few cases thousands of years, and you realize even that is no longer any good.

It's both a painful and a liberating realization. It hurts, because it forces you to look at your own mortality, and realize that you, and everyone you love, will someday have an eternal end, that no magical being can save you from. It's also liberating, because you realize that your soul, though flawed with mortality, is yours and yours alone, and that you are not answerable to any magical beings or their rules.

Parts of the reasoning process that led me to reject Mormonism also had implications for broader Christianity. Regardless of whether you think Mormonism is Christian or not, there are some shared ideas, texts, and history. I wasn't about to ignore that-- it seemed intellectually dishonest to apply a more lenient standard of reason in order to maintain beliefs that seemed more appealing. If I was able to overlook those kinds of issues and tolerate the requisite cognitive dissonance, I'd probably still be a Mormon.

When I stopped wanting to believe in mormonism, I was agnostic for a month or two. Like "maybe there's a god but it's not the mormon god". A few months later I was completely purified of all such thoughts and had become a complete atheist.

Studying history and listening to pretty much everything The Teaching Company puts out got me on the right track for some critical thinking on religion and being human in general. I'd softened myself with all of that for about a year and one day googled about tithing. You know, how much, net or gross etc. The first link that caught my eye on google was something on exmormon.org. That archived thread about how you're actually supposed to pay 10% of the profit you made after covering all expenses for the year.

Reading that thread, about an hour later I was telling my wife we're not full tithe payers any more. I was already questioning people at church about how they can say they KNOW when every other religion says the same thing and how the same people who know often end up with pregnancies out of wedlock and so on. So that thread on tithing was like a kick to a wall that only needed a gentle wind to collapse. I lost that "I want to believe" attitude and the next sunday I resigned from my callings and haven't been to the church outside of weddings and such since. The next year I resigned officially, as did my wife.

what they said ^^^^^^^

The Old Testament battles where the Israelites were fighting under the guidance of their God made me realise that it was no different from the Romans who thought they had favour with their Gods in war as did every other nation fighting for land/survival etc.

Human Ancestral History is very barbaric, just clashing in constant battles.

When the Israelites were eventually taken captive in Babylon they wrote down their scriptures/history (around this time I think) and tried to rationalise why they had lost the favour of their God and concluded it was from disobedience. A kind of back writing their history to suit the dire circumstance?

I think the Romans rationalised the same if battles didn't go in their favour (not enough appeasing of or obedience to their Gods etc).

The other big problem is Noahs Flood. I've watched countless Geology documentaries and not one of them speaks of a global flood in earth history. The biblical story is likely some catastrophic localised disaster like a Tsunami that no one understood why it happened and just rationalised it was some God punishing them for disobedience etc. I think the biblical one has it's origins in Babylon known as The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Mormonism was initially a wonderful experience when I knew nothing except for what I was experiencing in church and learning until I googled.

Having no religious faith is somewhat painful but I can't see any way back in to believe in the bible's claims anymore or any kind of religious text.

It's partly the LDS Church's fault. They taught me that all other churches, besides theirs, were abominations. That meant that if I ever left the Church, there really was nowhere else to go. That mindset is still there, subconsciously, even once you discover that the LDS Church is a big fat fraud.

I'm embarrassed now when I realize that I used to think of the LDS Church as the University of churches, with other churches being kindergarten, on up to high school, which to me was the Catholic Church, as it's the mother church of all the Protestant break-aways.

Protestant churches to me were always the same thing as the Catholic Church. They just broke away from it. So, if I ever left the Mormon Church, I felt the only place for me to go would be the mother church. But I finally went there for a funeral this past January, and there's no way it's for me. That never would have worked out

Anyway, the other thing is that the LDS Church taught us that they were the one and only true way to God. When you discover that it's a fraud, that is a huge shock to the system. If THEY could be wrong, then what about everyone else?

You've now developed critical thinking skills. So you stop and think, "Well, hey. What about the Bible? If the Book of Mormon is a fraud, then what about the Bible?" So I next turned my attentions there.

I set up to study, study, study. I read everything, from the history of the Bible, to even the history of the Devil. I learned that things like Noah's Flood could never have happened. Then other stories in the Bible turned out not to be real as well, such as Jerusalem being a tiny village at the time that King David was supposed to be ruling over a huge kingdom.

There are talking snakes, pigs running over cliffs, water turning into wine, burning bushes which don't really burn, a man walking on water, virgin births, etc.

Then one day, someone posted the words, "Anyone who doesn't believe in Evolution, hasn't studied it." I thought, "Oh, dear! I'd better study it then." I'd simply dismissed it, because I'd been told it wasn't real. So, I studied it, and much to my amazement discovered that it's not even a theory anymore. It's real. DNA alone proves it absolutely. I couldn't dismiss it anymore.

I began to catch up on scientific knowledge that I'd missed out on over the years and realized that it's a fascinating study. I'm just a knowledge magnet now. I can't get enough of discovering the fascinating bits of information to be found out there now. I no longer have anyone saying, "You shouldn't be reading that. Stay away from that knowledge." I can study anything I want to and I love it. There's a big, fascinating world out here - outside of the box of Mormonism and even religion itself. I can't be contained in a specific set of beliefs anymore.

And so, that is my personal journey. I realized that the God of the Bible would break every rule of Physics that we currently understand. Some would say, "Why throw out the baby with the bathwater?" But what if you drain the water and discover that there was never any baby in the water in the first place?

That's where I am now. It's taking a bit of time to be comfortable with the word 'atheist.' It's something I never wanted to be, to be honest with you.

But I now love truth, more than I need to believe in something just because it's comfortable doing so. I can't call something a belief, unless it comes with at least some credible evidence to back up that belief.

...that I realized I was an atheist -- and always had been. When I was a kid I had a hard time believing in a supernatural realm, but everyone around me kept talking about God and angels and spirits and all that, so I figured I just didn't get it, that there was something wrong with me. I got the stuff about being a good person. That made sense. The rest of it, though? Okay, if you guys say so. But when I finally admitted to myself I just didn't believe in any form of deity, there was no point being a Mormon or Christian or anything else.

I realized that today's religious beliefs are the current iteration of previous beliefs that have their origins since humans first came around.

Consider "our" starting point... a belief of God and Jesus. The assumption that a person is atheist/agnostic is frequently perceived that a person doesn't believe in those two Gods -- the Gods of our time and place. But why start there? What about all the other Gods that humans have imagined for the last 250,000 years?

So, it's not so much why I chose to not believe in God or Jesus, but why I chose to not believe in any of them.

For me it's Anthropology, Biology, Environmental Science, Mythology, Comparative World Religions. The religion of my time, place, and birth -- Christianity and its subset mormonism -- are simply the creation myths du jour.

"Am I to believe in every absurdity? If not, then why believe in this particular one?"

Once you start to look at the stories and beliefs with a critical eye you find that the Bible is just and unbelievable as the Book of Mormon.

Bro. of Jared crossed the ocean in submarines....not believable
Moses stuffed a billion animals on a wooden Costa Concordia....not believable

Living in the belly of a whale,
Walking on water,
snakes & apples,
rising from the dead......fiction, fiction, fiction & fiction.

I became Agnostic at 15 while being unwillingly active in TSSC. I couldn't stand listening to the BS that was slung at me every day. The Cog-Dis was killing my intellect.

When I finally said " I don't know what I believe, but it ain't this sh!t", it was as if the clouds parted, and I felt the warmth of the sun for the first time.

It was another 12 yrs before I became a full-blown Atheist. As a 15 yr old, if I knew 10% of what I know now, I'd have run away and joined the circus.

Again, broadly like everybody else has said. Once you realise why the BoM couldn't possibly be true, using the same logic to tear apart the Bible is the next step. And whilst it is possible to believe in a non-literal interpretation of the Bible, you have to be illogically selective if you are not also to interpret Jesus himself "non-literally", leaving only a man and some God Myths. A little more research and even the man might not have existed.

Ultimately, you are left with ZERO evidence for the existence of any God, and to choose to believe in one anyway leaves just as many questions as we had when leaving Mormonism. Yes, you can choose to believe in God and in Christianity (though why not Islam or Judaism?) but only if you a prepared to live your life according to medieval rules and diktats, mostly irrelevent to today, or else find a nice "modern" church that bares little or no resemblance to the teachings in the Bible, and hence is probably "wrong".

The problem I've always seen is that atheists in many cases I've dealt with tie a belief in God to some sort of religion. I see no evidence for God, but I also don't see any evidence that there's not a God.

As far as I can tell it's just as likely there is some sort of creator than there is not a creator. I don't know either way, and I'm not too worried about it. God is certainly not showing up to a NY state kid who wants to bang 14 year olds.

jameswilmons Wrote:
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> The problem I've always seen is that atheists in
> many cases I've dealt with tie a belief in God to
> some sort of religion. I see no evidence for God,
> but I also don't see any evidence that there's not
> a God.

well, generally a belief in a god goes hand-in-hand with religion.

......but, I take your point.... we dont understand how creation happened, so lets say it was an intelligent being that created it all (and lets ignore the myriad of paradoxes that 'explanation' creates)

It's the ultimate 'god of the gaps' argument



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2012 12:08PM by EssexExMo.

An 8th grade science class taught me about the Scientific Method (SM). From there I reasoned that since supernatural magic cannot be examined using the SM, then magic should be rejected and not believed. If you reject magic then you reject religion, and that is what caused me to be an atheist at age 14.

By acknowledging that it is possible that some sort of creator exists does not automatically lead to religion. Religion is the worship of that creator. If a creator does exist, who is to say it wants us to worship it?

All I was saying is that there is no more evidence for than there is against the existence of some sort of God/creator. Again, I'm not particularly worried about its existence, but when Atheists argue against the existence of God they often point to flaws and obvious fallacies in the Bible or other religions. The Bible doesn't mean a thing to me.

jameswilmons Wrote:
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> By acknowledging that it is possible that some
> sort of creator exists does not automatically lead
> to religion.

And it pisses off the creationists when I say that if there is a deity out there, it doesn't necessarily need to be anything like they or anyone else imagines.

I love doing that! It always blows their mind. So many only want to believe what they've been spoon fed their whole lives.

I have a friend who SLOWLY is starting to break through the spoon fed doctrine (non-Mormon) of her life. She can't seem to break through completely. She can finally accept that organized religions are generally self serving, but she maintains a literal interpretation of the Bible. We've had the Adam and Eve and Noah's Arc argument a few times.

I can't blame her. It took me long enough to break the Morg programming.

It took a about 10 years after leaving before i realized I was an atheist. I converted to Goddess centered paganism right before I officially left. I realize now that it was to balance all those years of patriarchal domination.

I started my journey to atheism after I nearly died back in '04. I started to realize that there was no god, demon, angels watching over me. *I* had to save myself and make my life better. Thinking god would do it is a childish notion. I admitted to myself 3 years ago that I was probably an atheist and started admitting it to friends and family.

I'm consider myself a soft atheist; I'm fairly certain there is no god, least of all the Xtian version. If there were a god(s), I doubt it's like anything people describe as a god.

If you're curious at all, any religion, with the possible exception of Buddhism, just doesn't work.
People who believe are going by the feelings they get from having an order of life to follow, an antisthetic to the fear of death.
I try to live life, to just be here now.

Why don't you tell me about reincarnation.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
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> Why don't you tell me about reincarnation.
I don't have any evidence for it, Buddhists practice non-violence, respect for all things, etc.

by a supernatural being is not extreme? I consider atheism the default position. I never felt a connection to, the presence of or a need to turn to a gawd, and was not indoctrinated by my parents, but my culture believed in xstianity. I could see the flaws in other churches, and when I reasoned away my last "evidences" for TSCC I went straight from a sincere LD$ member in good standing to atheist. I agree with what others said, the same things that disprove one, disprove them all. Also there are many evidences against the existence of a supernatural being besides logic, history, etc. Science illustrates how the probability for such a being is extremely low. Also, we are learning how the brain produces "spiritual" experiences.

My grandpa with the pink car told me when I was really little that there's no god, and I suspected he might be right. It's pretty obvious, even to a kid ... or I should say it was to me. I mean c'mon: Setting aside the magic sky daddy, do you really think there are all these billions of souls, a few hundred thousand of which fly in and out of bodies every day? How's that supposed to work? What's the mechanism?

Mormonism didn't stick with me ... well, except for the guilt and basic naivete, which I could have gotten anywhere.

If you ask me, all religions are pretty far off the deep end. :)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2012 01:48PM by munchybotaz.

I stopped believing in the mormon church around the age of 30. That means that, because of my faith, I:

* Stayed away from people in school that I saw as a bad influence
* Only applied to BYU because anything else would be a bad influence
* Wasted 4 years of time getting an "education" at BYU
* Spent 2 years of my life trying to convert people in another country to my faith
* Married quickly and did not spend the time needed to get to know what I was getting myself into
* Gave tens of thousands of dollars to a large corporation without knowing what they were going to do with it
* Judged others and didn't get to know those that didn't fit my faith

Why would I ever trust "faith" again?

For me it was the realization that in my actions, I was already an Atheist.
When I am sick I go to a Doctor and use medicine to heal my body. If God answered prayers and healed people, Medicine (and all the other sciences) could not have developed. It was through being honest with myself that I realized that magic has been disproved by science.

If you had any real respect for us you wouldn't assume that our being agnostic or atheist is some sort of reaction to the extremity of Mormonism. Rather, you would assume we thought through our decision and made a rational choice.

The reality is, Mormonism isn't very extreme. All of the Christian beliefs are just as irrational as Mormon beliefs. In fact, the majority of Mormon and Christian beliefs are identical. The process that led most of us to believe that underwear couldn't possibly be magical is the exact same process that led most of us to believe that Christianity couldn't possibly be true, that virgins couldn't possibly give birth and that your idea of a loving God father couldn't possibly be real.

If you were a critical thinker, you would have gone the same route. Instead, you kept on with an irrational belief. I'll begrudge you the freedom to believe what you want without a single comment from me the moment you stop thinking that Mormonism is more irrational and extreme than your own religion.

Edit: After reading a lot of the responses in here, I am fairly surprised that Mormonism itself, not critical thinking, pushed people into Atheism. It looks like there are people who are still held by some of the old doctrine Mormonism used to push on people. This is kind of sad. If I were in their position, I would work on recovery and then evaluate all of the other churches or religion in general. If Mormonism is still making decisions for them, they probably aren't seeing things in a realistic light anyways. They might find out later that they still enjoy believing in God.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2012 01:37PM by snb.

Human beings have been creating God Myths throughout their history on this earth.

They all follow a similar pattern.
Some have one deity, many have a few to hundreds of deities, and some have a savior. They are grouped generally by: race/heritage/tribe/etc. They are perpetuated by belief by faith. It's ancient.

Then add the unique trappings: sacred writings from a general leader/s,a creation story,special rules/commandments/teachings,(many that are universal), special music, special sacred rituals,special clothing-attire, pageantry, and on and on. They create the family/social//support system of the group/tribe/unit. They are found throughout history and in almost every place humans have inhabited.
Mormonism is only one of hundreds.

I decided I didn't believe in the claims of the LDS Church. Came to that conclusion through study and research of the primary, documented, historical records kept by the LDS Church.

Research showed that the claims of other religions didn't have anything to add, or any greater appeal to me either.

So I asked myself an important question:
Did I need to believe in a deity and/savior? I didn't need a religion aka God Myth to guide my life either.
I decided it was not necessary.

I soon realized I could place my faith and belief in what was verifiable. I didn't need "subjective truths" as found in religious claims and teachings, and their sacred writings, nor were their metaphysical, supernatural, visionary claims acceptable as verifiable truths to place my faith in.

I could accept universal "truths" from the teachings of many of the religions as useful in my life.
Teachings about such subjects as: love, forgiveness, gratitude, joy, peace of mind, etc. are very useful.

It's a misconception and a lack of understanding to assume that changing my mind about a belief in Mormonism was some kind of negative choice. It is not. It's a positive choice. It's one that is based on logical thinking, rational thought, and factual evidence, or the lack of it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2012 02:05PM by SusieQ#1.

So, Flaxenlocks, you have heard the how's and why's of us; do you mind if I ask where you are on the religious spectrum?
Have you also turned a critical eye on the claims of religion to see what actually stands up?
No matter where you are, I would recommend watching/listening to a few episodes of The Atheist Experience, esp one with Matt Dillahunty (sp?).
Just google the above and go to the link for the shows archives.
It will help you really understand a lot about where atheists are comming from, esp those that used to be very devout. (Matt was studying to be a preacher before he became an atheist).
Then there is the show, Mr. Deity on YouTube. It is hilarious and the main guy is and exmo atheist.