The Internet Is Leading Many LDS To Abandon Their Faith

[Informant]

Even the Mormon internet can lead people away from the Church.

Umm, . . . That’s what IHAQ just said.

FARMS and FAIR are Mowpologist not Mormon. They aren’t associated with the church, duh.

[Dr. Shades]

FARMS and FAIR are Mowpologist not Mormon. They aren’t associated with the church, duh.

So, when Moksha used the words "Mormon Internet," he was referring the the church's official website and no other LDS-related website?

[Informant]

FARMS and FAIR are Mowpologist not Mormon. They aren’t associated with the church, duh.

So, when Moksha used the words "Mormon Internet," he was referring the the church's official website and no other LDS-related website?

Right.

[Markk]

Do you all have dementia? Basically most folks here left the church because of the information available on the net, and the availability of a support system. I can remember debating DCP on this very topic at the old boards and later on his blog. I left the church with books like “shadow and reality” and “ god makers’ as among my 1st sources..but once the web was opened up and smart phones became a staple and game on…every 14 year old kid had access to “the dark side” of our faith.

My firsts response to the thread title is “dah!’ I mean come on …the Internet is changing our nation, our parenting, our jobs, sports, education, how we we work and who I we are…etc…why wouldn’t it affect our faiths? If it was not for the net, I would still be sending letters to the council of the 12 with a stamp in the envelope for a response.

[Moksha]

So, when Moksha used the words "Mormon Internet," he was referring the the church's official website and no other LDS-related website?

I was referring to FAIR and apologetic affiliates in reemphasizing IHAQ's important point.

[Dr. Shades]

So, when Moksha used the words "Mormon Internet," he was referring the the church's official website and no other LDS-related website?

I was referring to FAIR and apologetic affiliates in reemphasizing IHAQ's important point.

So, Informant, how do you feel about your mind-reading abilities now?

[IHAQ]

Nelson, April 2022

As the Church grows, we strive to keep pace by building more temples. Forty-four new temples are presently under construction.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... n?lang=eng

I guess those in the Church statistics department haven't been brave enough to inform Nelson of the elephant in the room...

[Kishkumen]

The Church was in a weak position when the world connected over Cat5. The leaders had the Church on auto pilot while they drooled over real estate and essentially became an illegal for-profit investment fund bilking people out of tithing. The Church stalled on doctrine, embracing a gospel of form letters. There was nothing to get excited about. The Internet, Trumpism, Qanon, and a whole lot the stuff faith is made off came gushing through that hole in the silo wall and members began to feel alive again. They had something with energy, something that drove them the way the gospel was supposed to drive them but didn't anymore.

Yes! Dean Robbers really has something here. For me, the dissatisfaction started on my mission. It just took a decade and the internet to bring it all to a critical point. Mind you, I had really converted to Mormonism before my mission, but it was my interactions with Church leaders and the sales culture of the mission that really got me wondering what was up. After the mission it was slowly getting worse, with me increasingly wondering why the organization seemed so dull, insipid, and authoritarian.

The internet played a role, but it really made Mormonism in a sense more interesting to me. I knew it was a lot more quirky than life in the current LDS Church, but the internet put a lot more information and points of view at my fingertips. But the thing that really alienated from the LDS Church was the Mopologists’ behavior online. To know that good people with sincere questions were routinely bullied over their genuine upset and doubts, while Church leaders let it happen. That was too much. It made it easy for me to stop being LDS when the November Policy happened. That crystallized the reality that the LDS Church from the very top is about bullying, even bullying little kids.

[Dwight]

I owe FARMs for really preparing me. I think I was still in high school late 90s when I first came across it, linked as a response somewhere to something. I then clicked to the home page and at first it was this discovery of all these deep topics. Then a little seed was planted of "wow there is a lot of things that have to be rationalized." Mixed with even in high school I could detect how flimsy some of the apologetics were. I was ignorant to how awful the mopologists could be until I was already on my way out the door, or I probably would have left sooner.

Though it only helped, I firmly ascribe and have the turning point being prop 8.

[dastardly stem]

The internet, or the sharing of information and easy access to data, is leading many religionists to abandon their faith. It's not an LDS specific thing.

From a Catholic site:

The Catholic Church has been hit especially hard: for each person who joins the Catholic Church, nearly seven leave.[3] Many who become religious “Nones” claim they no longer affiliate with organized religion because of its closemindedness, corruption, or an apparent incompatibility between science and religion.[4]

https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articl ... the-nones/

Once the LDS Church reaches the level of 7 leavers for every convert, then I suppose we can at least start claiming the LDS Church has been hit especially hard compared to others.