On another thread, Tonto Schwartz made the observation:

"Maybe I underestimate, but when the reason or reasons a person wants to believe go away watch how fast the belief vanishes. I've never met a Mormon who says he or she doesn't want to believe, but just knows its true."

I thought this idea deserved it's own thread because it's what I've always maintained - once the reason I wanted to believe was gone, the belief went racing out the door behind it. I think for a TBM's belief to really crack, they have to lose their reason to want the church to be true. Like DH said when I was first questioning "you need to want to believe - if you don't want to believe, you'll find all kinds of reasons to not believe." But unfortunately for TBMs, they have a reason to want to believe and the exact opposite happens. They will make up anything they need to in their minds to justify their beliefs. You can ask "If I found irrefutable proof the church wasn't true, would you want to know?" And a surprising number of Mormons would reply "No." They don't want to know what is true because their reason for believing is more compelling than their need to know what is and isn't real.

I think it is the alien rectal probing behind it all...

No, actually most of it relates to fear of losing ones family. Period. Being with ones family forever is a powerful mind-fuck.

Probably one of the things that made it easier for me to leave.
My family of origin was a group of people I don't want to have dinner with, let alone spend eternity.

I'm sick to death of their big holy righteous act. I know things about every one of them that would destroy their phony personas if I was the type to let the cat out of the bag.

wwfsmd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think it is the alien rectal probing behind it
> all...
>
> No, actually most of it relates to fear of losing
> ones family. Period. Being with ones family
> forever is a powerful mind-fuck.

I think that sums it up nicely. It is hugely powerful.

Also, as for the question of "wwfsmd", he'd ask for an order of garlic knots and some alfredo sauce.

It shouldn't be that powerful. You can create a whole new family up there. Maybe even a better one.

For me it was like a love affair with someone who is mysterious and attractive. But then you find out they have really big flaws you can't ignore or live with so you fall out of love and break up.

What made me want to believe is complicated, but can ultimately be summed up as: loyalty to momma.

What made that desire to believe go away is simpler: loyalty to self.

If only all could give up that loyalty to a parent and be their own person. You are grown ups and should have free will to choose all things on your own terms.

I'm not sure that I ever "believed" anything that was
uniquely Mormon. I just wanted it to mean something --
to have some use in the world -- to lead somewhere.

It's my ethnicity, so I do not suppose that I can ever fully
escape it. My seven generations of Mormon ancestors -- the
thousands of relatives in Idaho, Utah and Iowa. There's
no way to make all of that disappear.

But -- what made me give up on the hope that something decent
and useful could ever come out of that heritage? I guess
even that slender dream was crushed when Mormon bigotry
was turned full force upon my Jewish wife.

Joseph Smith was a monster and he created a monstrosity.

UD

That's a tough one. I don't remember a point where I wanted to believe. I guess I just wanted to believe because my eternity was all mapped out for me. I thought that the Mormon Church had an answer for everything, while other churches just called those questions 'mysteries of God.'

But I didn't realize that I had been lied to. That made the difference. I never got to a point where I lost a desire to believe.

I still wanted it to be true. But faced with the real truth, when the lies were exposed, I had no choice but to cease to believe.

I guess the closest I came to not wanting to believe would be what got me searching out the truth in the first place, which was Prop 8. For the first time in my life, I was embarrassed to be Mormon. I just didn't want to be associated with that kind of bigotry, which ran so much against my nature.

I grew up in a family where there wasn't much feeling of family. My dad was a highly successful lawyer in CA and worked 12 hours a day, except on weekends when he worked 4-8 hours a day. My mom and dad didn't get along. I was an only child for years until my little sister came along. I had no extended family living nearby. I LOVED the Mormon idea of a big, happy, close extended family. I thought if I did everything right, I'd get that. I did everything the way the Mormons instructed and I ended up miserable. Once I realized Mormons did NOT have the key to happy families, Mormonism became useless to me and when I googled into the truth about the first vision, I was ready to hear it. The funny thing is that my family is much closer and happier now that I've ditched the church than it ever was when everyone was whipped to become the perfect, cover-of-the-Ensign family. And we aren't spending all our time and money at church but on being together. It's much better this way.

I wanted to believe because it looked like a great way to have a normal, happy life and a close, loving family. (I'm a convert, btw). I wanted to learn to be a domestic goddess -- quilting, canning, bread-baking, crafts, the whole enchilada. Plus, I'm Native American on my dad's side, so I thought the whole Lamanite thing was pretty cool (the mishies left out the part that I was supposed to become white and delightsome as I got more righteous).

Exactly none of it worked out well.

I became very disillusioned long before I found evidence of all the church history whitewashing and lying, not to mention the crazy doctrines. My exit was helped along by crappy treatment from the members -- even after I married in the temple and cranked out a bunch of babies. Then when ex-DH left, the members treated me even worse.

The big thing that made me not want to believe any more: finding out there was no Hebrew DNA in any Native American tribes, listening to apologists' lame excuses, and then watching TSCC distance itself from the 150-year-running claim that NA's are descendants of Lehi (while never admitting they were wrong).

sistersalamander Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I wanted to believe because it looked like a great
> way to have a normal, happy life and a close,
> loving family. (I'm a convert, btw). I wanted to
> learn to be a domestic goddess -- quilting,
> canning, bread-baking, crafts, the whole
> enchilada.

Ditto.

I wanted like CA girl said, the big, happy, close knit extended family and a "right" way to bring up kids. When I was treated like crap for infertility and realized there were just as many screwed up kids in the morg as the ones I was teaching at work, any lingering hope of believing crashed.

It is such a beautiful idea really.... Do what god wants and you will become a goddess. You will have your family. There is an answer to every single one of gods mysteries.

But when those answers made me feel afraid and depressed, then I wanted out and it was easy to stop believing when I could look at it from a logical, outsiders pov

Nurture provided the desire. Nature prevailed.

But by the age of 8 3/4 I knew it was not only all false, but I believed that God, Jesus, & the Holy Spirit didn't exist either. I didn't have the guts to talk to anyone about my disbelief until I was in my late 20s. I became inactive right before I turned 25 because I couldn't take it anymore the way the cult was becoming more politically active.

I guess I'm different than most people. I always WANTED to believe, but stopped believing after viewing the evidence against it. My strong desire to believe was still there, but I JUST COULDN'T FOOL MYSELF. The evidence against it was too strong. It was a BLATANTLY man-made religion.

I remember as a kid I WANTED Santa to be real, but it simply was too obvious that it was really my parents.

I never wanted to believe it.

I was told as a vulnerable impressionable infant that I needed MORmONISM for my own well being. Its not really possible for a person at that stage of life to disagree with their superiors.

Parental preferences invade and permeate infant minds to a nearly inconceivable extent. In MORmONISM, religious indoctrination actually becomes mind rape!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFqUVb1plbM

I was expected to tell the truth. I was expected to stand up for what was right.
I was always taught to own up to my own foibles, to accept responsibility for my actions, and to correct my mistakes.
With this back ground, it was impossible to not notice that LDS Inc leaders never really take responsibility for anything.
I also notice that they LIE incessantly in their attempts to justify the FOUL MORmON church. that was enough to make me want to leave MORmONISM.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2013 02:30AM by lucky.

Loved the idea of modern day prophets and apostles, who just happened to be in direct contact with Jesus Christ...WOW!!! Didn't David O McKay fit the part perfectly?

Learning that it was all a lie:

First Vision-myth
BOM-fiction
BOA-slam dunk fiction
Temple-plagiarized Masonry

Adios Dios

I desperately wanted to believe not only in the church, but in the basic doctrines of Christianity. I wanted an older brother who loved me and would do anything to protect me. I wanted to feel certain that there was life after death, and that such a life included eternal growth and happiness. Learning that the D&C was a hodgepodge of contradiction on basic topics, and that the hodgepodge had been swept under the rug by the church, killed that belief.

After I finally found information that proved the church to be a total fraud, I grieved like I had lost a loved one. But I had to recognize the fraud, and acknowledge the sense of loss, in order to keep my integrity.

I wanted to believe it because I thought I couldn't be happy without a testimony. I was a miserable person for a very long time, and I didn't have a strong testimony of the church. Those two things went hand in hand.

Once I realized that not believing was an option, I let go. It's kind of hard to explain, because it's such an obvious thing. But it really didn't click that I could simply NOT believe. The instant I realized I could, I knew that it was all a lie.

damned. BUT forever family. I didn't want to lose my family. I did it all right and I lost my family anyway. So--leave the LDS church and guess what, even your gay ex can be your family.

No jumping through hoops to live in the CK as one wife of thousands or millions and no wearing those ugly robes and aprons. It really freaked me out that the CK might be like the temple.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2013 01:23PM by cl2.

I wanted to believe because of eternal families.

My TBM thinks that the reason I don't want to believe is because I had a very bad mission experience. She thinks that if I can prove mormonism wrong, then things will be better.

I don't know if she is right, but I know the evidence stands against the church.

Other than that, I don't think I ever WANTED to believe. I just had a provisional belief. Everyone around me believed, so I went along.

Mormonism certainly didn't fulfill any of my existential longings. Its answers weren't to my questions. And the juju didn't work. If I were to create my own religion, it wouldn't be anything like Mormonism.

What made the desire go away? Mormonism was making me miserable.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2013 01:37PM by Stray Mutt.