I never realized how truly batsh*t crazy it all is until I saw the look on my nevermo roommates face as I mentioned terms such as "baptisms for the dead, garments, Kolob, Court of Love, temple names,Word of Wisdom, seer stones,etc while trying to explain things to her. What the actual f*ck. It really IS as crazy as it sounds!! She didn't even believe me when I mentioned half of that...it all seems so normal to me having grown up with it...but to someone who has never known mormons or been to Utah- it must REALLY sound insane.

:)

That is so funny. My SIL left the church a while ago. Anyway, she works at a new office where everyone is Mormon. When she came out of a meeting, they were asking her what her favorite ice cream is. She about died laughing because she forgot that Mormons just love their ice cream. You can't have a drink so I guess it's the next best thing. Hahahaha!

Oh come on, it's not that strange. Of course there's the underwear thing, polygamy, tried to set up their own country in Utah. Oh yeah, the whole seer stones thing, baptizing the dead, the temple rituals. Oh yeah, and the sealing to multiple women even in modern times, and the blacks and the priesthood thing, and the bit about the Nephites and Lamanites. Oh yeah, and the......

Funny. :-)

Yup. Explain Mormonism to nevermos and watch the jaws drop. We should follow the missionaries around and tell the investigators the *real* story.

I think it would be rather embarrassing to explain Mormonism to someone who knew I used to be a Mormon. I can just imagine them thinking, "You really used to believe this??"

If I have to tell someone, I just say that I was "raised Mormon." This lets them assume it was something I was taught as a kid but I never really accepted. Rather than the embarrassing truth, that for years I bought the whole load of BS hook, line, and sinker. Ugh.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/04/2013 07:55PM by nickname.

My favorite thing to try and explain is the garments. Magic underwear that is a symbol of the power of God, that covers so much skin, that must be worn day and night, underwear the bishop has the right to ask women if they are wearing, that Mormons truly believe will protect them from harm ... Seriously, most nevermos can't even fathom the concept. It never occurred to those nevermos to consider what Mormons might have on underneath their unfashionable clothing so it comes as a real shock.

I was explaining the BofM to a friend once and she summed it up this way: "Wait, so basically it's Bible fanfiction that got out of hand?"

Fanfiction has a habit of getting out of hand. For example, fifty shades of gray is rumored to have started off as erotic Twilight Fan Fiction, but then the names were changed, and vampire references dropped for the book.

I always like watching peoples' faces when I tell them about the prayer circle in the temple. I think I enjoy it so much because it was one of the things that weirded me out the most in the endowment. The whole praying around an altar and raising your hands up in the air and repeating yourself 3 times, etc etc.

It can be an unusual experience talking to my Mormon relatives out in Utah. My brother called last night, and he was going on and on about the Mormon church like it's his favorite rock group. It was like talking to someone from another planet.

Telling non-mormons about garmies, dead dunking, the three nephites and polygamy helps us realize how crazy this church is and how wonderful it is to have a non-brainwashed perspective.

I'm a never-mo with a heavily catholic family. I was explaining some of this mormon stuff to one of my catholic sisters, and we were laughing hysterically about the temple costumes and Kolub.

Then I got her talking about rituals for turning wafers into human flesh, Saint Blaise day, marking one's forehead with ashes, etc., her eyes got very wide and all the sudden she stopped laughing so hard.

lol! That's too funny...I was raised mormon but I went to a Catholic school for 11 years...I always HATED Ash Wednesday...I was like, get this sh*t off my forehead!!!

In Italy tons of cathedrals have decorations using human skeletons.
If you ask the people why they have a wall made out of skulls in their church, they just say, "Because it's church." As though obviously that's just where skulls go.

But then if you take it out of context, and say, So does the priest have a skull wall in his bedroom?
--"No, that'd be creepy."
So why isn't it creepy at church?

It's fun to watch their mind explode. They've never even thought about it.

It's harder to get mormons to have that same shock moment, because of the number of bizarre things in their religion. It's changes god, in their minds, to a bizarre being who does weird crap we just can't always understand and have to take on faith.

Ex-Catholic here. Laughing about Mormonism is what started me on my path out of Catholicism. I realized the doctrine was just as ridiculous when I started looking at it from an outsiders POV.

On that subject - I really like this quote from Ken Daniels, Why I Believed (he was an evangelical Christian):

I, like many evangelicals, was eager to examine critically the origins and history of Mormonism, and rightly so. But it was not enough to apply the scalpel of critique to others; I had to apply it to myself. And it would not do to apply the scalpel in a token or mediocre fashion; I had to apply it as mercilessly as I expected non-Christians to apply it to themselves. I will go further: given the near-universality and effectiveness of the ABBOD principle for making us prisoners of our beliefs, I had to be willing to subject my views to a stronger dose of skepticism than the skepticism I tended to apply to other points of view, or I could never hope to compensate for the illegitimate tendency to give my own worldview the benefit of the doubt. I reflected on the extent to which Muslims must apply the scalpel in order to see the error of their ways and leave their faith; that is how assiduously I had to apply the scalpel to my beliefs, my scriptures, my Jesus, the miracles of my religious tradition, my answered prayers, my favorite apologetic proofs, and my god.

If I was unwilling to subject my beliefs to this kind of criticism while expecting Muslims in Niger to take this yoke upon themselves, I had to admit to myself I was operating under a double standard. There were two possible ways out of this bind: (a) abandon any expectation or desire for Muslims or anyone else to convert to my faith, or (b) accept the need to investigate my worldview critically and mercilessly. For a short time I adopted option (a), embracing a form of liberal, universalist Christianity. I later came to think I might be kidding myself; what assurance did I have that liberal Christianity had any basis in reality? If it wasn't true, how could I know? It was only then that realized I could not escape alternative (b).

Surely an impartial Martian observer would be struck by the nearly universal applicability of the ABBOD principle in generating conformity of belief across generations of believers belonging to communities of faith. Surely these humans cannot be impartial, or there would not be such a tendency for belief to be clustered geographically and culturally. I can only conclude that we as humans are inherently susceptible to the suggestions of our culture and that we are in most cases virtually powerless—yes, powerless—to recognize this susceptibility in ourselves, but we are more than eager to identify it in others.

Yeah. Intellectually I knew the church was a cult after I left, but I didn't realize how blatantly obvious it was until I shared an office with a nevermo who kept asking me to explain obscure doctrines.

With so many red flags, it's amazing how long I remained duped.

OK I get it if their garments aren't spotless enough from the blood and sins of this generation and thus they want to burn those garments. But as long as the garments are presentable then IMO the exmos should NOT get rid of their garments. How else will they really be able to get a good laugh from their nevermo friends who won't actually believe the silly tales we tell them about the holy undies unless they can touch and feel the sacred marks themselves?

...quickly shows how nutty it is. That's why TBMs get upset when we put LDS beliefs in ordinary words instead of their oh-so-precious-and-holy phraseology. "No! It's not magic underwear! They're sacred garments of the Holy Priesthood that protect us from evil and harm."