What would you say?

1. It's a fraud.
2. It's boring.
3. It made me feel ashamed for no good reason.
4. It's a complete waste of time.
5. It's a drain on my finances.
6. It's tiresome.
7. It's not possible to come up with 10 reasons.

I think listing 10 reasons falls under "protesting too much." Not caring means it's not worth that much effort, no?

1. It's an anti-intellectual, abusive, & fraudulent cult.
2. It's racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-ethnic, & anti-adult.
3. The cult hides their finances, & abuses the members financially.
4. It abuses members into abandoning their families in different ways - with regard to temple weddings especially.
5. It gaslights members, saying one thing one year, & then saying another thing another year - changing of "doctrine" & such.
6. It doesn't actually marry people - it just makes them pledge themselves to the cult in their fake "marriage ceremony".
7. It lies over & over & over again.
8. It lies about being non-partisan, but funds political campaigns against movements it doesn't approve of.
9. Milk before Meat - bait & switch of doctrine for kids, teens, & converts.
10. There is no room for any sort of criticism like in regular mainstream churches.

Wow. You did better than I did.

:)

There is only one reason that I need to know which really matters. That would be:

1. IT ISN'T TRUE.

2. But because it isn't true, I'm just wasting my money by giving it to a fraud. They don't spend it to help the world. The money goes towards their real estate holdings - the building and upkeep of them.

3. It's an organization which taught me honesty and integrity, but it practices neither of those things. Lying for the Lord is alive and well within the Mormon Church.

4. It taught me that agency is sacred and yet it gets itself involved in the politics of fighting against other peoples civil rights - women, blacks, gays and lesbians, etc. I don't want my name associated with that in any way.

5. It preys upon the vulnerable, to draw them in. They have no boundaries.

6. It's so very restricting.

7. They keep their members in with fear and threats of eternal sorrow, if not all of their rules are followed.

8. They destroy self-esteem by telling people that they can be perfect and put pressure on them to achieve this impossible goal. No matter how hard you run on that hamster wheel, you will never feel that you're good enough.

9. They also rule by constantly creating guilt. No one is harder on Mormons than other Mormons. They spy on each other, judge one another. If a person's life isn't perfect, it's their own fault. They must be guilty of something. It's never the Church's fault if a blessing doesn't come true. The blame is always put on the person who didn't receive the blessing.

10. They take and they take and they take some more, while giving nothing in return. They want your time. They want your money. All they have to give is the threat that you won't get to be with God again unless you give them all of those things.

That's just evil.

They are extortionist's

They take your:

Your time
Your Mind
Your Money
Your relationships
Your education
Your family
Your hope
Your sexlife
Your afterlife
And most important
They take your Freedom

I don't have 10 reasons, but I have a rambling few paragraphs of why I couldn't care less of its so-called importance after leaving the church over 25 years ago:

I am completely free to ask whatever questions I wish of any kind, of any importance, without fear of feeling I’m supposed to think, act or feel a certain way, by anyone. That includes not only religious, but cultural and social paradigms as well.

It’s my life, and I’ll decide where my questions will lead me, how I personally feel about them, and how comfortable I am – or not – with the answers. If there are a lack or partial insufficiency of answers, I alone will decide where that will lead me.

For me, so much of life is living with an evolving understanding, which involves increasing humility. Which I really hate.

I choose to live by trying to love those around me to the best of my ability, without demands that they ‘believe’ what I’m drawn to, and to find/receive/recognize reciprocal love whenever and wherever I can, however different that looks to me. It's not kumbaya: there's misunderstanding, competing interests, irritation, anger, even a blind white out of incomprehension and being certain that I'm missing where someone else is coming from (and hindsight often proves me right). But I continue, and do the best I can.

It’s a balancing act. My relatively moderate crisis can coincide with another’s utter devastation that feels insurmountable to them: who am I to judge that their crisis is comparatively less than mine, given all relevant information? Their seriously annoying irritation that they take with a doleful acceptance might in my world seem like something that cannot possibly be survived. Consequently, their apparent expressed encouragement to rise above "it" might seem suspect to me, as if they "don't really care". God, we do it all the time.

Perspective is everything, and the ability to at least try to put ourselves into another’s world is both rare and costly. And a hell of a lot of work, requiring we get to know each other really well. It requires that we become vulnerable, expose our soft underbelly. That's anathema to most of us.

Essentially, the church is meaningless to me for so long now because it utterly ignores what I consider to be the deepest parts of what it means to be human: to share, to show deep compassion, to love, to help and to be kind to one another when the vicissitudes of life deals all of us mortal blows that are in no way fair, explainable or justifiable. And to try to keep listening to one another through it all.

1. Your friends aren't real friends
2. Your time is spent on busy work, not productively
3. Their definition of service is so messed up it's hard to accomplish anything important.
4. They don't really teach my kids the morals I want them to have.
5. I don't trust them to do my thinking for me.
6. I don't like who I am around them
7. The only tangible benefit is a social group to belong to and why belong to a social group that isn't loyal or trustworthy?
8. They take more than they give.
9. Much of their advice has failed me in the past so I don't trust them in the future.
10. They lie.

They've lied to 7 generations of my family. They continue to lie.
That's the only reason I need.

This is really beautiful writing/thinking Frogdogs. I especially heard, "mortal blows that are in no way fair, explainable or justifiable". So many Mormons are completely crippled when it comes to these situations. They throw out a few "Families can be together forever" platitudes or "everything happens for a reason" or "God is testing you." or ...sheesh I have to stop.