Somebody's probably said this before, but maybe there's so many people leaving the church from their internal numbers, they want a surge in converts to cover them until they can figure out a way to get the yearly growth rate up again (the real one, not the one they report). Past a certain percentage for believability, they can't fudge the numbers anymore. I just think it's sad, where for thes
Forum: Recovery Board

Spud Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Anything you tell the bishop will be repeated at > least twice in two different meetings. I have > typed (read:copy & pasted) letters for ward > members inviting them to come get excommunicated > where the details of the individual's 'offenses' > were told to me- despite the fact that I could >
Forum: Recovery Board

"I think that is quite tame compared to the public shaming and humiliation given to young men who are honest, rather than the young masturbators passing the sacrament." Yeah, good point that's bad... I never realized how much peer pressure fear and intimidation factors like that are part of the church until I left it. The church all looked so nice and above board, until the on
Forum: Recovery Board

I was far away from home studying for a bachelor's degree. I didn't want to go home for Thanksgiving, and mentioned during an interview with a bishop that I didn't have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving. I assumed my confidentiality would be respected. Instead, a few days later I got two random girls who showed up asking if I wanted to go to their place for Thanksgiving. I was SO humiliated! This b
Forum: Recovery Board

Shaking down members for money and free labor is what cults do, mostly. As a member, I wondered why the church was spending so much money making pretty doctrine books for members to read and giving them out for free at church. It's because they care more about making sure the members are propagandized and continue to donate time and money, than about giving that money to humanitarian causes. They
Forum: Recovery Board

I was just doing some quick calculations on how much missionaries cost the church for year, compared to estimated church income, to see how reasonable it is not that missionaries have to pay for their own mission. Let's assume that missionaries cost between $300-600 each a month. They usually share apartments, so on average that should give them a small apartment and 20-40$ a week in food.
Forum: Recovery Board

When I looked up temple ceremonies and found a long and bloody history connected to secret oaths, throat slitting, and blood atonement, I was really freaked out and spent months studying the information in many sleepless nights. After about 6 months of this I wanted to talk about the church history with my (LDS) family and have them take a mature attitude. Another LDS person was willing to talk t
Forum: Recovery Board

When I was still a member, someone told me a story about Mr. Gordon Hinckley and how he was at an event and Hinckley looked frustrated and a little torked off that he couldn't get a little cheese package open at some kind of buffet table to make his meal with, and the person said they realized then that even the prophet is human. Another time, someone who is an active member told me how they
Forum: Recovery Board

I might have read this somewhere, but I think the idea for men to go at 19 and women at 21 is so that boyfriends and girlfriends don't both enter the temple at the same age, go WTF and say we're out of here together! They want it to sink into the boy missionary before he courts the girl and persuades her to go through with it to get married. The maturity excuse makes no sense since girls are just
Forum: Recovery Board

I can't believe I never deeply considered WHY missionaries can't have contact with family members on missions. There's no good reason for it at all! They act like you're going to taint the missionary with your presence or phone call as a family member. THE MISSIONARY IS NOT CHURCH PROPERTY!!! That missionary is a member of the family and belongs to the family if he belongs to anyone! Even t
Forum: Recovery Board

I would love it if the truth about Brigham Young became well known about what a criminal he was, and they took down that statue of him in front of the administration building and renamed the school. How about William Law University? That would be great not to have to put BY in BYU anymore on any resume.
Forum: Recovery Board

I remember one year there was a small scandal about the athletes not following the honor code, and somebody drew a cartoon about how the athletes are allowed to walk away from BYU's Maesar "circle of honor" without consequence. One part of it if I remember right was that the athletes had tattoos or something and in the LDS press photos published in newspapers with them playing, they h
Forum: Recovery Board

I actually don't remember them giving any reasons all the time I was growing up in the LDS church. Like many things, it was just the rules. It's a control mechanism on both the families and the missionaries. It keeps the missionaries feeling isolated and dependent on the church for everything they need (including urgent medical care or to get them out of an unsafe area). Also, it's harder to
Forum: Recovery Board

I was blown away by this: "He said that each new member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles is given one million dollars to take care of any financial obligations they have. This money gift allows them to fully focus on the ministry. He said that the overriding consideration of who is chosen is whether they are “church broke,” meaning, will they do whatever they are told. He said t
Forum: Recovery Board

Three Meetings with a LDS General Authority, 2012- 2013 http://mormonthink.com/grant9.htm I'm not sure if this story has been brought up already, but I think it should be on permanent archive.
Forum: Recovery Board

That sounds very inappropriate, and they probably implied he had to do it or leave the university. It's a little bit like my friend who was feeling like the church/BYU was dictating what medical treatment to get for his Lyme's disease. I am not against moral standards or people's right to have them, but I don't like unfair manipulative tactics, or not respecting the fact that 18+ year olds ar
Forum: Recovery Board

"This is about 9/11. The "powers that be" have put out the ban on any discussion in the media or public marketplace of alternative theories about 9/11. And BYU is always quick to lick the can of the "powers that be"." Right. Interestingly, Bush visited church leaders a few months before disciplinary action was taken against Jones, and for some reason Cheney deci
Forum: Recovery Board

n/t
Forum: Recovery Board

Thermite behaves differently depending on whether the incendiary's energy is directed at a single point or whether it is allowed to splay all over the place. An imprecise experiment done by Mythbusters from your video proves nothing. Check this out for the opinions of several scientists on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW6mJOqRDI4&t=90m0s Jones research was perfectly valid, but
Forum: Recovery Board

I resigned from the LDS church because I looked up the LDS temple ceremonies and wording of promises. I felt that God's church should respect free will, and to throw people into such strange ceremonies where they were expected to say yes (often before a high pressure wedding or mission) with no time to think over in advance whether they wanted to participate in these ceremonies, was immoral. Peop
Forum: Recovery Board

When I recently looked at my journal from my college experience at BYU, it is clear I really believed in the church. I thought BYU was special because it was the Church's college, God's university, with especially moral people I could trust more than in other colleges that are non-LDS. I would wait hours at the Marriott Center to be in the front seats when apostles were going to be speaking there
Forum: Recovery Board