These "what stopped you from believing" threads pop up every once in a while and I find them fasciniating.

While thinking about things yesterday I finally remembered what mine was - there were a lot of things that bugged me that I put on the shelf, and it's been years since I believed, but I finally remembered what the "there's no way this can be true" thing was for me...

In the LDS church,as you know, the teaching is that those with dark skin, specifically Lamanites and Negros, are cursed for wickedness. The racism is a problem, but for me that was less of the issue than - there are two possibilities here - 1) The people who live near the equator and are exposed to more sunlight have evolved darker skin to protect themselves from sunlight while those further from the equator have developed lighter skin to ensure sufficient vitamin D production, or 2) all the cursed people just happen to live where there is more sunlight.

For some reason, with all of the different evidences that it's a bunch of hooey this was the one that finally convinced me.

So what was yours?

I, like you, had a lot of doubts up on a shelf but when I found out about what happens in the temple (both currently and in the past) it hit me like a brick wall and I thought, "Omg, there is NO way this is true! You don't need a secret handshake or passeord to get into heaven!" Then I slowly, one by one, started lookijg into each of my doubts on the shelf and as I did so, clearly saw they were all a bunch of bull and ALL of TSCC was bogus! Also, I had never even heard of the BoA stuff until after I didn't believe but that would have done it for me too. I wonder how many other TBMs have no idea about the BoA stuff?

ha, ha. I think of those of us that live up north with less sunlight, as cursed!

Over the years things piled up for me. Teachings of the Prophet JS (the book), adam god doctrine, law of adoption, blood atonement, curse of cain crap. But the things that got me started were reading "Who wrote the Bible" and it stating in ezekiel that he (ezekiel) was to put the stick of ephraim and judah together. There were probably other things in the book but I don't remember. Then I read Bart Ehrman's "Forged" and one other of his books and that sealed the deal. I was pretty sure JS was a con, so I just had to research him. What a can of worms.

Edited to add: numerous First vision stories, changed scriptures regarding godhead, and Lectures on Faith #5 did me in. Right then I knew he made it all up.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2012 03:44PM by dot.

The Book of Abraham was what really gave me pause and caused me to look closer at everything. It's an interesting journey to go through. One thing really catches your attention at a time in your life when you are willing to consider the alternative. Once that happens, you dig further and the curtain comes crashing down. Then everything seems so silly and you wonder why you didn't see it before.

I really like your description of what happens when the curtain comes down.

The very first thing that made me wonder was not a specific teaching or doctrine but rather a Bishop who was so unspired and so wrong on some things, I could not believe it. I started to wonder if a Bishop is really inspired with the keys and all of that bs as is believed. I then became a Bishop myself and realized that I was on my own and mostly used my own wisdom. I also saw that the SP was not that inspired. This started me to think about everything I had been taught and led me to explore everything I could find. Of course, then my eyes were opened.

For the record, I love these threads. The different experiences are cool to read and were really eye opening to me back in my 'just barely catching on' stage.

Count me as one of the TBMs who had nooooo idea about the BoA stuff. Also count my parents who I told it to when I told them I was leaving and they didn't have a clue. Unforch I also don't think they will look into it for themselves, but that is another story.

Because I hadn't done enough of my own study and bought into the whitewashed stuff I learned in church I didn't really have many doubts. I believed the doctrine but had issues with things I considered social/cultural issues.. the idea of ever wearing hideous garments, having kids - I atypically didn't/don't want them, the prop 8 involvement, super fast marriages based on horniess, etc. Those things disenchanted me some and made me feel like I didn't mesh with tssc in some ways but I still believed the doctrine and never saw myself leaving. I guess I had some small doubts several years back when a friend plus some other leaders I had had in my youth left and I had considered them to have been really converted to the gospel and was confused about how they could have changed their mind after seeming so into it but it didn't cause enough doubt for me to ask them questions or research things on my own.

Fast forward to last fall when I still believed but hadn't actually attended the entire 3 hours of church in years, normally I just went to pay my tithing about every 6 months to a year. I was listening to my coworkers talk about conspiracy theories/secret societies and my one coworker mentions her dad is a mason and that it is extremely secretive stuff he can never reveal and he has to take it to his grave. I had heard of the masons before but never gave them a second thought or saw the similarities with my own religion's temples. So I think to myself, ha, we live in the internet age, I can totally find out what happens in the mason ceremonies. That night on google I knew my days as a mormon were over. Google gave me back more than enough to make me doubt with the links about masonic ceremonies being extremely similar to lds temple ceremonies and that being because JS ripped them off. At the time I had NO clue whatsoever happened in the endowment ceremony, I had never been, watched the big love scene or heard stories from anyone. I was horrified, it seemed so weird and cultish and the ridiculous handshakes blew me away. I suddenly felt like I knew why people called mormons a cult and wondered how the heck do so many people I know love to go to the temple and do this bs? How is my family that I feel is super normal subscribe to this freak show? That night was enough doubt to make me say there is no way I can continue to be part of this belief system and I stayed up waaay too late starting to look at all the "anti" sites I'd never dared look up before and learned about the BoA and all the rest of the obvious reasons tssc is a fraud. I kept obsessing over it in the months after that...I still kind of do but mostly I'm down to just chilling here at rfm a lot.

That was one of my first thoughts... "How can my family do all that temple razz-a-ma-tazz bs and not be weirded out?" I also consider my family smart and intelligent (and "normal" for the most part, whatever that means) so I instantly imagined all my family members doing all that sick crazy stuff... esp pre-1990... and could not for the life of me imagine how in the world they participated, esp my almost 100 yr old grandma who is seriously the sweetest, kindest, person I know! Ew... i also lost a lot of respect for a lot of them. Glad I dodged the temple bullet :-/

Please don't be so hard on family members who have done the hokey pokey in the temple.


Many good, upstanding folks have gone through the temple. Even the pre-1990 rituals.


And they remained good people before, during and after the temple ceremony.


I know that I did.


I never understood the temple rituals. And I didn't care for them.


But I compartmentalized that part of my life from other parts. We all do that with something or another in our lives, whether it is temple rituals or something else. We compartmenalize stuff when we aren't comfortable with something but we have to do it anyway.


By compartmenalizing the temple experience, along with some cognitive dissodence, good people who are told that the temple experience is holy somehow learn to deal effectively with it.


I know that I was glad that we were instructed never to talk about what went on in the temple.


I didn't even want to THINK about it, when I was outside the building.


But don't be hard on family or friends who do the hokey pokey in the temple.


You really can be an exceptional human being, and still waste some of your time on this earth doing the temple hokey pokey.

I suppose I can be a bit harsh at times about the hokey pokey but it is only out of
1. complete confusion about the people I know having what seems like another secret life they lead in there
2. complete honesty

I was really really lucky to never experience it myself, for that I am very thankful. I am a southern exmo too, in TX :)

bc Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> issue than - there are two possibilities here - 1)
> The people who live near the equator and are
> exposed to more sunlight have evolved darker skin
> to protect themselves from sunlight while those
> further from the equator have developed lighter
> skin to ensure sufficient vitamin D production, or
> 2) all the cursed people just happen to live where
> there is more sunlight.

For what it's worth, I don't have a problem with the Mormon logic here. Sure, skin color is genetic and environmentally determined, but since nonvaliance occurred without a body, there's no necessary connection. Unless I misunderstand the doctrine, we were all spirit children, more or less homogeneous before given bodies. So, right before you're born, you're sorted out, and the nonvaliant go into black bodies.

Sure, it's still rather racist. But it's not quite as logically improbable.

Except if you take it back to the original sinners. The Morg then believes places where UV radiation is highest were coincidentally places where people were evil.

Also, compare Scottish skin to Southern European. Which is cursed? Under the Australian sun, melanin is a blessing.

ozpoof Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Except if you take it back to the original
> sinners. The Morg then believes places where UV
> radiation is highest were coincidentally places
> where people were evil.
>
> Also, compare Scottish skin to Southern European.
> Which is cursed? Under the Australian sun, melanin
> is a blessing.

I don't think I understand; what is the Mormon concept of original sin? Does it mean that people related by blood in this life were connected somehow in the preexistence?

There are two concepts here.

1) There are all kinds of quotes all over the place by LDS leaders that those who were righteous in the pre-existence (as spirits living with God) were given white bodies while those who were less righteous were given dark skinned bodies.

2) There is scripture in the D&C that for some sins, especially against the church, that that person's children will be punished for 4 or so generations.

Both ridiculous concepts.

I avoided studying the BofA issues because I didn't need anything else weighing me down as I tried to stay active for my family's sake. Having a gay son, the prop 8 crapola was too much for me. At some point, I started studying the BofA issues and it wasn't long before I ended church participation. Been about two and a half years now.

Just yesterday, I was comparing JS's Egyptian numbering system to the real system. What a joke. It was like a 12 year old making up a bunch of crap for his six year old brother and his friends. "Wow, your brother sure is smart."
No wonder the church kept the Kirtland Egyptian papers hidden for so long.

The sad thing about my conversion is that I came across both the dark skin (and the 1978 priesthood change) and the Book of Abraham issues when I was going through the discussions with the missionaries, but pretty much accepted the first explanation I was given on both of them. My falling away from TSSC was almost entirely social due to not fitting in with the YSA group. It wasn't until a couple of years after I left when I went to a Richard Dawkins presentation in Berkeley that I really started to think about whether I believed in God at all, and from that point read up on a bunch of stuff about both the Mormons and JWs that had bothered me prior.

Holy crap, now on reviewing it, how the hell did I ever accept any explanation for the Book of Abraham? That's like if someone gave Joseph Smith their grocery list in German and he "translated" it into another book!

I left in pre-internet days, and BRM's book "Mormon Doctrine" did it for me. I had just started university, and needed to confirm the situation with evolution, speciation, and common descent. BRM IIRC basically said there was no compatibility at all. I realised that Joseph Smith had basically taken a load of hokum creation myths from the bible (Babel, Flood, Eden etc), but then canonised them as actual historical occurrences. When I slammed shut the book, I closed the Mormon chapter of my life.

I grew up with TBM parents, never had a testimony, and I felt like the worst person in the world for it. Until I started researching, thinking that something would prove to me that it was all true. I guess the thing that really made me know that there was no way that Joseph was a true prophet (meaning the church could not be true) was reading the writings of some of his wives. I just couldn't believe that there was any way possible that our perfect God would have someone as his mouthpiece that was so sly and deceitful. That was really pretty much what did it. After that I discovered that that was just the tip of iceburg on exactly how much deceit there truly was.

Interesting thread might be "Joseph Smith's translation of the Book of Abraham is like...."

in a General Sense:

the (other thread) "Exactness" that leaders demand/require of the rank-and-file, vis-a-vis the Slippery, ambiguous ways that church policies - practices are observed.

There just doesn't appear to be much of any connection, now at least.

I got out at an early age. Don't think I ever "believed" in the religious aspect. I had read all the required mormon books and lessons,,I just never understood the blind and negitive leadership. Glad I got out and away when I did.

The first time I talked to the missionaries they told me that the Mormon church is the only true church restored by Jesus himself and, did I know that there is a prophet living today?

I knew right then and there that our 'discussion' wasn't going to be intellectually stimulating. :oP

There were things that I struggled with and I had to keep putting up on the shelf. First it was the similarity between the endowment and the masonic ceremony. Then it was the dirty details of polygamy. Other things piled up but I was still too stubborn to give up on Mormonism. I held out hope that the church was still true until I read Mormonism: Shadow or Reality by Jerald & Sandra Tanner. It was the nail in the coffin for me and obliterated whatever testimony I had left.

bc Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So what was yours?

I felt "The Spirit" tons growing up. I even prayed in a grove of trees on a family trip to fix the overheated car and I thought that did the trick. I used to believe that God told me to marry my wife.

I was suckered into all the corny nonsense but I never believed core doctrine.

I never ever could believe God had a body. I never ever could believe Jesus and God were "one in mind." I never ever could believe that dead people existed and that there was an afterlife.

Life seemed to me as a child something that plants, humans and animals had and lost. I never bought into a spectral post-life existence. It just seemed like a fairytale. It still does.

I supressed these non-beliefs for a long time. There were times when I would look at Timpanogas and feel in my heart a yearning for something higher, better and good. I fooled myself into believing it was in the MTC.

But ultimately, I can't sustain beliefs in things that don't seem obvious to me. If it is inteligible it can be believed because it can be somewhat understood.

I like philosophy because it is by design speculatory. It is more authentic metaphysics in my opinion.

Feelings are great. I'm sure they can inform people of lots of things in an intuition sense. But taking the Unknown and possibly Unknowable as "Truth" seems a receipt for problems...

The first thing that made me begin to doubt TSCC is when I began to notice that the church never seemed to give back to the needy or others in the greater community unless there was a TV camera around.


I live in the mission field -- southeast US. Right in the middle of the Bible Belt.


I know that other churches have more resources in this area than TSCC, but TSCC never did anything for anybody unless it was beneficial to TSCC, or they were trying to recruit another tithe payer.


We are a very poor area. Other churches offered the needy food banks, or housing help, or recycled clothing, or help paying for utilities, or offered hot meals once a week or something for the needy.


And they offered whatever it was that that church offered to ANYBODY. You didn't have to be a current tithe payer, or otherwise be declared "worthy."


What did our so-called church do for the needy? Well, IF you were a full tithe payer and a member, you MIGHT get a bit of help from the fast offering fund.


If you weren't a member of the church, then you got the phone number of one of the churches that provides help to needy regardless of church affiliation or tithing status.


And I asked myself if that was really how Jesus would respond to needs within my community, if he were at the helm?


I didn't like the answer.


That is where my doubt began.

I fully realise I am exposing my dark, dirty past as a crackmonkey conspiracy theorist, doomsday prepper fanatic. But I am in recovery now, so don't judge :)

There were a ton of things along this journey: mark Hoffman, era, Emma smith Mormon enigma, the blacks in the priesthood, etc.
But the thing that showed me out the door was an incredibly long thread, (on a site-that-shall-not-be-named, too embarassing..), about stargates, science behind string theory, time travel and ancient myths.
Yes, I am a geek.

So anyway, I was discussing some stuff about Joseph smith, the golden plates, and the urim and thummim.
Don't ask..
Some comments made by other posters really struck a nerve, so I strolled on over to the FAIR site.
HOLY CRAP!!

I learned more on the fair site than I had in 40 years as a cultmember.
Like the peepstone in the hat, the black magic shiz, the wives of Joseph smith,
on and on.
I stayed up for 36 hours straight.
I just couldn't stop reading and vomiting and reading some more.

Then I found Mormonthink.
And Mormon stories.
And postmormon.
And then my beloved rfm.

I think it probably took less than 15 minutes of unfettered access to the true history of the church, for me to be totally and irrevocably done.

Seriously, those tools at FAIR are escorting thousands upon thousands out the door.

Karma is a bitch

For me, I had doubts as a kid but my family was there to make sure I was not stupid and that I walked the line and held to the iron rod. Even my dad who never really followed it but thought I had to because he wanted to make sure I wouldn't spend my money on hot cars and girls.

I did the perfect mormon life living in it 40 years and serving a mission and all that good sh_t.

One day, I was really pist at a guy running a website designed to defraud Joseph Smith. Through email, me and this guy dualed it out about every topic and I cut him to shreds.

However, he one day told me that Joseph wasnt a martyr because he shot at the crowd etc... I faked a response and said he died as a pigeon trapped in a cage. He totally called me out on that one.

At the same time, I was researching blacks and the history of the church on FAIR in an attempt to convert my bro in law. By accident, I ran into the subject headings section and I clicked on Polygamy. This link lead me to POLYANDRY. Holy Moly Doughnuts!!! I spent several weeks just in shock. Beyond that, I researched the hell out of whatever I could find including exmormonscholarslytestify.com and mormonthink.com and rfm etc...

Its amazing that its over a year now since I gave it up, but damn, I am so pist. The nerve of them hypocritical lying sons a mutha f_king b_ches!

If I ever get anywhere near a big office of authority I am shutting down the state of UTAH!!!! "And hell is coming with me" wyatt earp, tombstone.

Russell M. Nelson's Ensign article saying that God's love is conditional. It felt so wrong that there was no way a church that espoused that could be true.

ETA: regarding what was said above about not judging people who went to the temple and still believed, I have a hard time understanding how members of my family can believe what Nelson said. I wonder how they justify it, or if they are ignoring it, or are pretending he never said it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2012 11:55PM by jbstyle.

I'm gay. After years of believing I chose to be so, trying to be straight, hating myself, believing I was evil and next to a murderer, fasting to the point my doctor asked me if I was on speed or had an eating disorder, cutting and scratching off freckles from my arms, praying all the time under my breath, I came to realize...

THE OLD FARTS IN CHARGE OF THIS CULT ARE CLUELESS, UNINSPIRED, KNOW NOTHING ABOUT EVERYTHING, AND ARE DANGEROUS.

What an instant relief.

FOr me, it was the multiple versions of the first vision. I can still remember the feeling I had of RELIEF that since the vision was in doubt, so was the church, and therefore so was my guilt for being inadequate (in my case, gay).

I don't think I could narrow it down to any one thing. I had many "WTF" moments that I ignored. I knew all about the polyandry, blood atonement, and several other things that I just excused away with "we don't know why god would require that". The first time something actually freaked me out enough that I had a panic attack happened the night my husband became a Freemason. It was no mystery to me what happened in the initiation ceremony. My brother and my BIL were already masons. They had a chat with DH about what was going to take place and they were nice enough to have the chat in front of me. They didn't go into lots of detail, but enough was said that I knew what was going to happen. I remember my BIL saying, "It's a lot like the endowment." This conversation took place days before DH's ceremony, but for some reason it didn't sink in until days later. While DH was getting initiated, I was at my mother's and I was busy making a blanket for my new baby, and all the while, I'm thinking about what's going on in that Masonic temple. I was freaking out on the inside, but I couldn't tell her that. Once DH came to pick me up, I lost it in the car, full tears and raised voice of "How can I still believe this?!" The cog dis kicked in and I convinced myself that JS just got truth wherever he could find it, even if it was from a bunch of freemasons who were supposed to have the original temple rituals from Solomon's temple. (No kidding, someone actually told me this BS and I wanted to believe them even when I could find no history to support it.)

There were other "ah ha" moments within those few months after my baby was born, but it wouldn't be until we had another child and moved into a new ward that DH and I threw up our hands and started looking at this website and read One Nation Under Gods. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Lack of Lamanite DNA was what finally killed it for me. I was shaken by that discovery, but it wasn't my first doubt.

My first doubts came from having a full blooded American Indian friend at church, and realizing that for the first month that I knew her, I thought she was Chinese. I explained this away, by deciding there must have been other people in the Americas and that the Lamanites mixed with them, and the Nephites misinterpreted this as a curse. Discovering that DNA proved there was absolutely no Jewish DNA came as a hard blow.

In 1955 when I was age 14, a Sunday School class that I attended had the theme that "God always answers sincere prayers." I was already doubting the validity of prayer.

But I decided to put that SS lesson to a test so I did some sincere praying for two weeks. And I got absolutely no answer from god. I might as well have been talking to the wall.

The church teaches about god answering J.Smith's prayers in the Sacred Grove. Why wasn't I as worthy as J.Smith?

I concluded that I had been right -- god does not answer prayers. My logical mind went to work and I decided that either god does not exist (the most likely answer) or that god doesn't choose to hear my prayers. In either case praying was a waste of time.

After a bit more thinking and pondering of the situation I decided that god doesn't exist. So I became an atheist at age 14. Without a belief in god, the CoJCoLDS comes tumbling down.

Of course at age 14 I was still living with my TBM parents. I fully understood that no good would come from telling my parents that I had become an atheist, so I kept quiet. I started ducking out of church meetings early whenever I could.

My father was the Stake Clerk and so he was never around our ward house on Sundays. My mother had to deal with my three younger sisters, and the youngest was only a year old. So my mother didn't have time to keep track of me.

I started attending the University of Utah at age 17. I was taking classes that were very challenging so I needed to study a lot. I quit attending church meetings and used the time to study my college class work. That was the end of my association with the Mormon church.

My parents accepted the situation very graciously. I was a "good kid" and did not cause them any problems. I think that they correctly understood that they could not force me to go to church. We never discussed the religious issue. They did not pressure me to attend meetings and I was a responsible person in all other facets of life. As I have gotten older I now fully appreciate that my parents were really kind and loving and they treated me very well.

* book of abraham fiasco
* polyandry
* DNA evidence against the claim that native americans are hebrew
* lack of archaeological, linguistic, and historical evidence for the book of mormon.


in that order. almost 1 week after the other one by one the facts emerged.