Hi,

I'm new to atheism. My first post to this board a few days ago was "Have questions. Need answers."

I've told just a few people in that church that I'm finished with the beliefs. I'm now in conversation with a pretty stubborn missionary via text message after telling them too. (Wish I hadn't bothered now, but nevermind!)

I'll post the messages as they come in. (Messages are verbatim - all our spelling and grammar errors included! The world of SMS, hey? :+) )


===
Convo beings...

Me: Y'know, I'm genuinely curious. And what puzzles me is how an entire faith system sprang up on the word of a 14 year old child.

Missionary: It did not. The answer is found in The Book of Mormon, Moroni 10:3-5. It is because of the Holy Ghost answers our prayer.

Me:Holy Ghost is a very unsatisyfing answer. Where is the evidence one exists? or that the Book of Mormon is genuine? I've never seen any.

Missionary: Yes, it does take Faith in Jesus Christ. Could you have written a book of 500 pages in 60 days? Joseph Smith did not write it, he read it useing translators.

Me: Faith. It reminds me of asking a bank for a massive faith-based loan, i.e. no collateral, personal details given verbally, and most importantly, I'll pay it back after death, with perpetual interest and untold amounts of magical bells & whistles (heaven, eternal life, worship of some man, etc etc etc). What do you think the banker would say to such terms?

Me: It's taken me a while to snap out of it and have a critical look at the whole thing.

Me: There are so many claims that make up the foundation that, when you look at them, are nothing more than the claims of some 19th Century and Bronze Age people that we're expected to believe without question or substance.

Missionary: Please write all your questions down and we will meet to talk about them. Where are these questions coming from and what caused you to start to dought? When can we meet?

Me: As I said, I'm curious about all sorts of things, not least that which has been part of my life. And these doubts and questions have bubbled in me since my early teens.

Me: I love learning and I love books too. And since looking at the other side of the argument for-and-against religion in general, I find the atheists and scientists arguments far stronger than the religious side. Overwhelmingly so.

Me: It just can't be dismissed.

Me: No one at church ever talked (out loud) about the veracity of all the claims.

Me: I'm just beginning in the study of this, but the points against religion are so compelling when I hear them that I can't class myself as LDS or Christian anymore.

Missionary: Have you Faith in Christ? Do you believe He is the Savior of the world? Do you beleive that prayers are answer?

Me: No to all 3.

Missionary: Would you like to meet with us and have the missionary lessons? they address all these doughts you have.

Me: I've seen the missionary flipchart lessons. I'm not at all new to them, unless they've been altered.

Me: I don't wish to either. It's giving me an increasing feeling of peace, freedom and joy that I've never felt in the church.

Missionary: Have you truely and humble prayed truely wanting an answer? Have you ever talked with your dad about hox you feel?

Me: No, he's too religious to listen to it. I strongly feel theism to be false.

Missionary: What are your sources? Religion can not be proven scientifly

Me: I refer you to several excellent authors:
Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Stephen Hawking, to name a few.

Missionary: These are all unbeleivers. Try reading some true beleivers books.

Me: Of course they're unbelievers. Look, most believer books will give answers skewed in their favour, without hard evidence. Whereas the unbelievers I cited (have) given their side, with substantial answers.

Missionary: Have you ever read the Bible or Book of Mormon? I mean truely read them?

Me: Not from end to end. Just lots of different verses and chapters over the years. I find it a messy, barely readable book, full of apocrypha.

Missionary: Then you have not read them to find out if they are the word of God. You have never put Moronis promise found in Moroni 10:3-5.

Missionary: Well what do you think the Bible is?

Me: Bible? Read by many, taken literally by many, used to justify wars, racism, bigotry, murder, slavery, cruelty to women and children, a tool of oppression and fear etc.

Me: It's an immoral book, and a cause of much misery, conflict, suffering and fundamentalism that continues today. The Quran is no better. A plagiarized version of the Bible.

Missionary: You are not really seeking to know the truth are you?

Me: Not in the BoM, as I no longer believe there is much, if any, substance to the book.

Missionary: Well how do you know that any of the people in the past history are real?

Me: Well for many historical figures, yes that's true, many are legends in the mists of time. And for others, records exist in all sorts of texts and accounts.

Me: King Arthur and his knights of the round table, for instance. Their lives are a thing of legend now.

Missionary: But they were real people

Missionary: Do you think a boy with forth grade ed (Smith) could have ever written the Bof M?

Missionary: Try humble reading the BofM from cover to cover truely seeking to KN0W if it is TRUE. WE HAVE AND TESTIFY IT IS

Me: Testifying doesn't add truth value.

Missionary: What does?

Missionary: It is plan that satan has come into your life are truely going to let gim win?

Missionary: Must say good night. Talk more tomorrow. Good night

Me: Ni night!

Missionary: You have not seen any evedence because you did not want too

Me: I think religious and non-religious sides define evidence very differently.

====
Convo ends.



Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2012 09:24PM by procyon.

Looking forward to hearing the conversation!

I'm interested too.

Same here!!

Blood slightly boiling from the futility of talking to those people.

Sadly, that's one of the first lessons exmos learn. Talking reason to mormons is useless.

Yes, it's truly frustrating. If you read the BoM and don't come away a full-blown TBM then you did something wrong. The fault is always placed on you, never the church or its doctrines.

Welcome to the board, procyon.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2012 08:12PM by Strykary.

I'll share this gem of wisdom from my BF again: "If you're yelling at an idiot, make sure he/she is not doing the same thing."

These people who make up their own facts cannot be reasoned with and it is futile to do so. Aside from honing your debating/critical thinking skills, it tends to be a waste of time as most are woefully unprepared and will almost always fall back on ad hominem attacks (i.e. Have you been looking at porn?) and testimony bearing.

You gotta love the 60 days to write the Book of Mormon argument. It was 7 years by my count.

"Missionary: Yes, it does take Faith in Jesus Christ. Could you have written a book of 500 pages in 60 days?"

First of all - yes. Yes I could. That's only 8.3 pages per day. I've written upwards of 35 pages in a single day (granted, a word processor is faster than writing by hand, but JS had scribes).

Second - If you assume that it only took 60 days, then you're assuming that JS told the truth about how it was translated. Which defeats the whole point.

[Sorry, meant to add this [moved] reply to the bottom of the page, where it is now. Dunno what I'm clicking on on these boards sometimes! :) ]



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2012 08:24PM by procyon.

Others on RfM have previously noted...


Joseph Smith had over three times the formal education of a well-known contemporary of his--Abraham Lincoln.  Joseph Smith's father had worked as a school teacher.  Joseph Smith's brother was on the local school board.  Joseph Smith's mother, in her biographical sketches, emphasizes that they did not neglect the education of their children.  Certainly, Joseph Smith had access to Ethan Smith's 1823 book, "View of the Hebrews," which argued that the Native Americans were descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

Hans Christian Anderson stopped attending school at 14. Jane Austen quit school at 11. Charlie Chaplin dropped out of elementary school. So did Charles Dickens. Walt Disney was a high school dropout, as was William Faulkner.

I don't think Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon on his own. But even if he had, it wouldn't be that unbelievable. After all, compared to the works for those listed above, it isn't exactly literature.

---
Quote from politicaljunkie:

"After all, compared to the works for those listed above, it isn't exactly literature."
---



Yes exactly, that's part of what I thought. And also that anyone could write a 500 page book in 60 days if it's full of drivel and plagiarized text. So just saying they wrote it in 60 days isn't saying much at all, and ignoring those factors.

Verses I've seen in the Book of Mormon are almost identical to ones from the Bible.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2012 08:36PM by procyon.

Yeah. They're too quick to bring their Satan into it. Mistaking that for doubts, criticism, questions and new ideas. It's a truly lazy way out of an argument.

It's like pounding your head against a wall. The least that Morgbots can learn to do is to say, "ok, well it's quite clear that you believe differently about this than I do. I wish you well, and hope you find peace in your life. If you change your mind, we're always here to help."

Well from texts messages of the previous days, their words suggested they were thinking like that - until I voiced some of my real thoughts on the whole thing tonight. I did expect something like this though.
But as I've heard others say, you'll never convince them of anything.

Pity too, as it was a nice friendship.
I didn't take my decisions lightly either. I've left a lot of people I thought of as friends behind. I'm starting again. I've jumped into the cold but refreshing waters of a new world.

I'm not sure whether it's a good idea to leave my name on the books or go through having it removed. Part of me thinks, nah, leave it, just forget about the whole flippin place. The new atheist side of me says, yes! No to theism, and not in my name anymore!

When I awoke, as it felt, and found myself in an atheistic worldview, I didn't immediately resign even though I had stopped attending. A divorce ensued with my then-spouse. Couple of years later a few months before marrying the woman who is the love of my life, a post on this forum made me realize something that made resigning almost an imperative.

The post was from a neverMo girlfriend/fiancee of an LDS guy who was catching heat from the guy's parents for not being Mormon. And the thought struck me that if I were active and all that, the church would look down upon my new relationship, frown upon it, think what a shame...but hopefully my wife would be converted in the future. And that thought infuriated me. So I resigned as an inconsequential, in reality, but permanent and personally meaningful withdrawal of that last tiny bit of consent represented by my name on their rolls.

Hi Way Out,

yes, I want to remove my consent too. But I don't want to have to meet anyone from the church or ward to try and be talked out of it, which would just be a waste of my time and theirs.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2012 10:11PM by procyon.

Notice how the missionary attacked your character. This wasn't a discussion about "truth" it was an attack on you personally:

"Missionary: You are not really seeking to know the truth are you?"

Yep you aren't really sincere, you don't care about truth.

"Missionary: You have not seen any evedence because you did not want too"

See, that's not about the Book of Mormon that's about YOU. You are biased and insincere, according to this missionary. That is an attack on YOU, on your character, not evidence about the Book of Mormon.

Do NOT let them get away with that. When they make these snide remarks about your character call them on it. Stop the discussion and point out that they just insulted you personally.

Hi baura.

I did call them on it. And would you Adam & Eve it? They apologised. "Sorry we did not mean to insult you in any way. You are free to believe what you choose to. Your message took us completely by surprise. We enjoy your friendship. Please keep us a part of your life?" etc.

As a favorite author of mine said: Progress of a sort.

Funny thing about reading BoM.... Kikuchi promised us that if we read it 13 times on our mission, we would never go inactive or fall away from the church.. I wonder why 13? Strange number to pick for avoiding apostasy.

Sounds like a secret combination to me...

That was interesting to see, but remains no more compelling than all the usual arguments UNcondensed. We can just read & process the silliness faster now. LOL!

How dare you let Satanosaurus clutch your black unbelieving heart?

You don't want the "truth." You want facts and evidence.

Disgusting.

Why can't you just have faith?

Why do you have to be asking so many questions?

Why can't you read the Book of Mormon "for real" instead of just for pretend?

That's my problem! I was reading it for pretend all those years! Great post, Raptor Jesus.

Ha, yep, good summary.

hilarious

That was so painful to read. It was like 2 people talking using different languages.

"Missionary: Try humble reading the BofM from cover to cover truely seeking to KN0W if it is TRUE. WE HAVE AND TESTIFY IT IS"

[in Louis CK's voice] "AHHHHHH!"

Then, on the 14th and 15th, as if nothing had happened, came the messages (abridged):

"Greetings ... have a great day. Text you in the morn,"

followed on the 15th by "Good day ... This is truely great time and season to be a live. Have a wonderful day, love ..."

It's not the first time they've sent that type of message, keep saying it's great to be alive today, and to've been GIVEN this sunny day (emphasis added). Today, for me anyway, was no better than a few days ago when they said that. Constant gratitude to the Great Sky Fairy.

I haven't responded to any of these subsequent messages, because it feels like I'm talking to a schizophrenic when talking to people this devout. And I can't tell or trust whether their messages, which are now friendly, loving and overjoyed again, are sincere.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2012 08:08PM by procyon.

From "On This Day in Mormon History:"

Apr 12, 1828 - With Martin Harris as scribe Joseph Smith begins translating the Book of Mormon. A curtain divides them to prevent Martin from seeing the plates. Two months later they have completed 116 pages which Martin takes home to show his wife and promptly loses them.

That's 116 pages in two months. Comes out to about 2 pages per day. This allowed Joseph to polish his "style," to get his "voice." Later when he "translated" with Cowdery he was experienced at it.


April 7, 1829 - Joseph Smith begins translation of the Book of Mormon with recently arrived Oliver Cowdery as his scribe.

July 1, 1829 - Joseph Smith, with Oliver Cowdery as his scribe, completes the translation of the Book of Mormon at the home of David Whitmer's father in Fayette, New York.

From April 7 to July 1 is 85 days, not 60 days. 530 pages divided by 85 days is a bit under 6 and 1/4 pages per day. Hardly a record.

Anthony Burgess wrote "A Clockwork Orange" in three weeks.

Mickey Spillane wrote "I the Jury" in 9 days. It sold 5 million copies.

In 1845 Alexander Dumas made a bet that he could write the first volume of "Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge" in just three days. He did it with six hours to spare.

And none of the three mentioned above had a scribe working for them. They did it all by themselves.

Interesting!