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Forum: Recovery Board

Here are some ideas for a T-shirt: In big, bold letters: "I know the Church is false!" A picture of Joseph Smith, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin, with the words "First Counselor" and "Second Counselor" underneath the two dictators. A picture of Emma Smith in a bikini and Joseph Smith in a speedo. A picture of Lucifer along with the words, "You can
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Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, all have no middle names. Joseph F. Smith used one to differentiate himself from Joseph Smith, and the practice continued until the present day.
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Boy Scouts does not have anything to do with the Book of Mormon, any other scripture, or any of the commandments. No GA said, "Get involved in Boy Scouts or be damned!" Mormons have enough commandments to live up to. They don't need to be guilt tripped into the Boy Scout program.
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If you believe in something, if you believe there is a strong purpose to your life, you will live longer. Mormons have a strong belief system, a very strong purpose to life. There is meaning to their lives--do Church work, missionary work, etc. When life gets tough they turn to their beliefs. When the world makes no sense, they turn inward and gain strength from their religion. Mormonism is
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I don't know the answer to this, because I haven't gone to church since 1995. The question is: how big is "masturbation" in the Church? Was it a passing fad that has disappeared, or is it as strong as ever today? Is masturbation one of those "basic gospel principles" that are considered central to Mormonism generation after generation, or is it just due to B.K. Packer, and
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watched people testify in court on youtube that Prozac caused their loved ones to commit suicide. It scares me, and it scares me that my loved ones have tried to influence me to take antidepressants. They think I might need them. I am currently not financially successful, while my parents and siblings are, so my parents tend to think if something is wrong it is with me rather than with their M
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Many Mormons are on Prozac. I know that Prozac gets rid of anxiety, but does it get rid of anxiety so completely that its Mormon users no longer care whether or not the Church is true? Does anybody know? I have felt "pressure" to take Prozac and other antidepressants. It is almost as if people look at these drugs as more than just medicine. "Prozac pushers" seem to be t
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Human beings are gullible. I think that the inclination to believe nonsense is built into the human psyche. The most common type of human is the type that readily believes in whatever religious ideas are dominant at the moment. So, even though Mormonism is not true, it is "true" in one sense: it is true that believers are acting in accord with their true nature as gullible human bei
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One thing that used to appeal to me about Mormonism, before I found out it was not true, was the fact that it was open to anybody. Anybody had the capacity to keep the commandments. It did not exclude anybody. However, the marriage commandment does not live up to this ideal. A Mormon mission can be done. Anybody who really, really wants to can probably serve a mission. He/she needs to sac
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"CULT" is very negative and I have no problem with people who use it to express their frustrations with Mormonism. We all have free speech. However, I just want to look at the word more closely. I personally believe that no religions are "true". Why don't people call all religions "cults"? Why not call the Catholic Church a "cult" or the Baptist chur
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The Gospels were written many, many years after Jesus supposedly lived. Nobody knows who actually wrote them. A true testament must be reliable; it must include eyewitness accounts that can be verified. The Bible cannot produce verifiable eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus, of the Crucifixion, of the the Resurrection, or of Jesus' teachings. The absence of historical reference to Jesus
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On m*rmoncurtain.com, the section about Holland is very interesting. After being ordained an apostle, he supposedly sank into a very deep depression. The person relating the story thought that Holland was in a state of cognitive dissonance because deep down he didn't really believe in Mormonism. He appears to have conquered some of that depression, but in his 2009 October Conference talk he se
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If you have no money and live with parents who do have money, you are in a very vulnerable position. Think about when you were still in your early teens. Did you ever question the Church? I mean SERIOUSLY question it? Chances are that you just went with the flow, going to church like everybody else. Economic dependence is also a problem with things such as sexual abuse, where the victim of
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I quit going to church before the internet explosion, so I don't know what Mormons teach about looking up anti-Mormon stuff on the internet. Do they teach that it is a sin? Do they ask about it in interviews? Do they tell their members not to view exmormon.org?
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Being in the military is a lot more dangerous now than it was 20 years ago. There are serious wars going on, and you could get killed. If you don't get killed, you could get emotionally wounded. The government is not kind to its soldiers. Look it up on youtube. America is in trouble. Its current wars are necessary because America can't lose oil and America needs to keep oil priced in dollar
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When I have leisure time my favorite subject to read about is atheism. At the library I look for books having to do with atheism and religious criticism in general. Right now I have a book in front of me titled, "Civilization and its Discontents", by Sigmund Freud. I like reading him because he criticizes religion. I just got through reading "American Theocracy", a book that p
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Mormons, and ExMormons, find that other people don't understand their experiences in the Church. ExMormons in particular find this hard to take. You decide you don't believe in Mormonism, and you try to find somebody to understand your situation. Most people can't identify; they have not experienced Mormon church meetings, serving a mission, temple work, Mormon mind warping, etc. It is like
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Some people are constantly talking about religion. I'm not talking about people who just believe or just go to church. I'm talking about people who are obsessed with it. Every other word that comes out of their mouths has to do with religion. I wonder if this results from some psychological reason. You try to talk to these people about some other topic, and they sneak religion and religious
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My doctor gave me too much dilantin. It was his fault. I went to the emergency room. He would not pay for the damages. Several books out there talk about how American medicine is killing people. It is not set up well. Hospitals are dangerous. Somebody came up with a figure as high as 300, the number of people that are being killed every day in hospitals. That actual number is probably l
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George Ritchie coauthored a book called Return From Tomorrow, which is very powerful. It is very convincing as evidence for Jesus and an afterlife. It is one of the things that convinced me to serve a mission. I'm not quite as convinced by it as I once was, but I am still trying to look for reasons why it is not as convincing as it appears to be. Someone wrote a good critique of it on Amazon.
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I get annoyed by people who demolish Mormonism but then claim that another religion is the absolute truth. In a way, Mormonism is a counterbalance to other religions. It is a reminder that not all people agree. If Mormonism disappeared, other religions would become that much stronger. If only one religion existed, that religion would dominate, dominate, dominate. The mulitiplicity of religio
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A drug called Ketamine can induce near-death experiences. Whether or not ketamine is a vehicle to a real place is a separate question.
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At BYU, before my mission, I had a lot of questions about whether Mormonism was true. I heard about Hugh Nibley. I got the idea that he was a giant of a man, that he was one of the smartest men on earth, and that he had successfully answered any and all arguments that could possibly be made against the Church. Hugh Nibley inspired me to go on a mission. After deciding to go, somebody I knew s
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Christ says, "Do what I say, or else." No other human being has that right. If somebody comes up to you and says, "Hey, buddy, you'd better do what I say. If you don't, you'll be sorry," we view him as immoral. Hitler said, "Do what I say, or else." Hitler was immoral. Is Christ exempt from the accusation of immorality because he is supposedly a deity?
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Mormonism bans R rated movies. Three of the best movies I have ever seen are R rated. These are "Great Expectations", with Paltrow, "Scent of a Woman", with Pacino, and "Five Easy Pieces", with Nicholson. The first one deals with frustrated desire, the second one deals with a man who cannot get a woman except by paying for her, and the third one deals with the unc
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