in real life - How often do you see people leaving the church?

[_JoetheClerk]

I saw in real life and thought this was a post about people leaving church to watch auto racing (Indy Racing League)

As for people leaving the LDS Church or any Church, most I know would just stop going. Why go through formal foolishness when you really don't care anyway? Kind of like leaving during a movie you really don't like. Most will just leave while a few will go to the box office and try to get their money back.

People are people, some get mad and some just don't get bothered too much as long as you leave them alone.

[_Mercury]

Innoculate against insidious criticisms of the Church. Church history on it's own is just fine.

Oh my FSM. So let me get this straight. There are very biased and unbiased pieces on most NRM's.

Lets break this down for you, OK? First is the charge that pieces on Mormonism in which case after case of damning supporting evidence is shown in intricate detail.

Science papers disproving the Mormon narrative are constantly coming out of the woodwork and further infesting the muddied sewer that is LDS apologetics.

But wait, thers another view. The view of infallibility of the small handfull of families currently controlling the Mormon social club. Outside of the social club are its support mechanism, indentured servants indebted to this family, bought and paid for by the stupidity of their ancestors or themselves. They are taken by the balls or ovaries every step of their sad way through life, not giving a care in the world about what 'the natural man' has to say.

So “F” em. (I<3 Liz...and sometimes Harm) They can take their social club that is given only to the hereditary Oligarchy and a chosen few and go “F” themselves. I have and will continue to tell them that they are no more special than another few thousand bands of families that make up the powerful. These outside groups differ from LDS Inc in several ways.

The most pronounced is the slave classes, the lower to upper middle class Mormon, and have installed blinders into the brains of their followers through heavy breeding practices and a seige mentality.

Petty, irresponsible and violent, the upper classes of Mormonism practice an iron fisted parentage system. It does this by several methods, the most prominent being a theology that holds a disastrous future to the heads of the practitioners children and says to the parent "Do what I say or the kid gets it. Most distasteful of all is the repercussions of repression, social and moral stressors and a draconian ruleset where it is statistically likely there will be a major infraction in your family.

So Screw you and your incredily ignorant worldview where up is down, Mormons are gods in embryo and everyone but the church itself is out to get your church and by extension your family you [personal attack deleted].

Merc Out

[_moksha]

Inoculate against what? Its own history? I hear people say this quite a bit and I don't get it. Many of us left because of things we learned about the Church's past.

Inoculate against insidious criticisms of the Church. Church history on it's own is just fine.

We just get religious lessons in my Gospel Doctrine and Priesthood classes. History seems not to be on the agenda. Those sparse tidbits that can be viewed as history, fail to even jive with the approved versions of history at MAD. Scottie's suggestion of inoculation is the best way to prevent members from coming unglued when they find the real history to be non-faith promoting.

.

[_NorthboundZax]

In John L. Smith's latest Newsletter (Nov-Dec 2003), he published the following statistics about the number of Mormons who are requesting name removal. He said his source was "someone inside the church." For the years 1995 through 2000 they are identical to the numbers that were reported above, also from an anonymous source.

For what they are worth, here they are:

1995:.......... 35,420
1996:.......... 50,177
1997:.......... 55,200
1998:.......... 78,750
1999:.......... 81,200
2000:.......... 87,500
2001:.........101,454
2002:.........105,763

If these numbers are reliable.....

Packham's numbers make little sense at face value. Not only do they seem much higher than anyone can account for, they are monotonically increasing. One would expect at least some occasional dips from year to year. However they match up reasonably well with more thoughtful estimates if the numbers are viewed as cumulative. I.e.,

1996...14757
1997... 5023
1998...23550
1999... 2450
2000... 6300
2001...13954
2002... 4309

The variability is pretty high, though. Any reason 1998 would have been a banner year for resignations?

[_Ray A]

The variability is pretty high, though. Any reason 1998 would have been a banner year for resignations?

The founding of RFM in 1996?

Why We Left.

[_Mercury]

I know apologists will deny this happens, but I have some pretty good evidence that members do not want to know any of this stuff.

Are you kidding me? Jeez. I remember a seminary teacher getting jumpy, edgy and almostcoming to tears because there were several girls in teh class that were going to 'prove wrong' a pamphlet one of the girls was given at school by a friend.

Even when the J-dubs came by my family would slam the door and declare themselves to be Mormon.

I and others have experenced a heightened threat response, almost like a small panic attack when conflicting information was thrust upon us.

Mormon children are broken of their link to reality. Their tongues are symbolically snipped at a very young age, making conscription into servitude to the Mormon elite that much easier. Once someone gets another to never be questioned you own that person for all intents and purposes.

The sick scary fact is Mormons will agree that blind, ignorant obedience is the favorable alternative to questioning the history.

[_Sethbag]

I still think the church needs to take inoculation seriously. I don't care when or where they teach the troublesome history, but the problem is only going to get worse.

Inoculate against what? Its own history? I hear people say this quite a bit and I don't get it. Many of us left because of things we learned about the Church's past. I find the idea that if they just teach more accurate history they will save more members quite strange.

Inoculation only works with a weak or dead strain of the disease. But this strain is alive and well.

What do you think about Rough Stone Rolling? If that isn't an attempt at innoculation, I don't know what is.

"Sure, Joseph Smith went around telling people where to dig for buried treasure that he saw in the peepstone in his hat, for money, but that's just the way the Lord trained him for his later service as a Prophet." He'll admit to versions of the truth, but always with the faithful spin on it, that attempts to defuse it. That way when someone later on reads about Joseph's "glass looking" from outside sources, they just think yeah, I read that already, it's no big deal.

[_John Larsen]

Inoculate against what? Its own history? I hear people say this quite a bit and I don't get it. Many of us left because of things we learned about the Church's past. I find the idea that if they just teach more accurate history they will save more members quite strange.

Inoculation only works with a weak or dead strain of the disease. But this strain is alive and well.

What do you think about Rough Stone Rolling? If that isn't an attempt at innoculation, I don't know what is.

"Sure, Joseph Smith went around telling people where to dig for buried treasure that he saw in the peepstone in his hat, for money, but that's just the way the Lord trained him for his later service as a Prophet." He'll admit to versions of the truth, but always with the faithful spin on it, that attempts to defuse it. That way when someone later on reads about Joseph's "glass looking" from outside sources, they just think yeah, I read that already, it's no big deal.

I don't see RSR as an attempt to inoculate, more as an attempt to buffer. The book is very thick, its prose inaccessible to most of the membership. Any member questioning about Joseph will simple be referred to the book, which they will likely not read. Many will just assume that Brother Bushman has dealt with the most troublesome issues and all has been handled and all is well. Meanwhile the Church will go on pretending that many of the events never happened, at least in official publication. They will operate on the unwritten rule that 90% will never get any idea of the unseemly stuff, especially if they are not in the US. They few that do can have the Bushman defense thrown in their eyes.

[_Scottie]

Many will just assume that Brother Bushman has dealt with the most troublesome issues and all has been handled and all is well.

Yeah, this is another argument that was used against me all the time. "There are smarter men than you in the church that know all this stuff and THEY still believe!!"

[_karl61]

what I would like to know is how many college educated adults in America are joing the church each year.