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That's not an invariable progression, but it doesn't appear to be an atypical one, either.

My empirical data for that claim is pretty spotty. It consists almost entirely in my reading of Mormon-themed message boards. It's pretty look-around-town-ish, to be sure.

For those atheists who fit the pattern: How did the progression unfold for you? For some, there were detours, I'm sure. For others, not so much. There are a plethora of competing worldviews between Mormonism and atheism.

My assumption is that ex-Mormon atheists who are interested enough in the topic of religion to post on Mormon-themed message boards as critics of Mormonism generally view themselves as rational thinkers.

(I don't equate "rational" and "atheistic," by the way, though I'd guess some of you would. And, that's fine.

But I'd like for you to cash out the step-by-step implications of your journey as you see fit, if you're interested.)

What happened to you, personally?

Doubting was a weigh station for me between being a TBM and becoming a non-believing evidentialist/reliabilist. And I did not consider other religious beliefs as an alternative when going from point A (TBM) to point Z (a non-believing evidentialist/reliabilist). However, in addition to doubting, there might have been other stages of significance. For example, one I have identified clearly was my mopologetic dalliance--in the throes of doubt and as the end of belief neared, I dug my heels in and protested too much. I tried to defend more ardently that which was fleeting.

Some of my reasons:

Once I stopped believing Joseph Smith had seen God and the Book of Mormon was a miracle from God, I stopped believing in God altogether. Believing in God was just another piece of believing in Mormonism. There was never a deeper, independent reason for God.

One of the principal reasons I stopped believing in Mormonism was from the realization that my church wasn't special or privileged. Like the arrogant Jehovah's Witnesses or the blaring Pentacostals, we were just another cult. We were just as self-centered and narrow minded. The competition for believers that I experienced as a missionary is one of the things that helped me see through the system. So flipping from Mormonism into another monotheism did not feel like a vertical progression.

During the time when I did fervently believe in God, when I was a missionary for example, enough prayers and fasts went unanswered that I started doubting. I denied the doubts but they were there. The few prayers that were "answered" were easily ambiguous and most likely coincidental. Once I stopped wanting it to be different, thinking wishfully, the universe became simple and impersonal to me. It is what it is.

It felt amazing to stop worrying about my sins and just be myself. I wish I had done it 10 years earlier because I put myself through a lot of emotional torture for nothing. I didn't want that for my kids.

Without the desire for there to be a God, there is no need for that hypothesis.

sock puppet wrote:Doubting was a weigh station for me between being a TBM and becoming a non-believing evidentialist/reliabilist. And I did not consider other religious beliefs as an alternative when going from point A (TBM) to point Z (a non-believing evidentialist/reliabilist). However, in addition to doubting, there might have been other stages of significance. For example, one I have identified clearly was my mopologetic dalliance--in the throes of doubt and as the end of belief neared, I dug my heels in and protested too much. I tried to defend more ardently that which was fleeting.

(Thanks for not correcting my grammar, sock: "There is a plethora...")

The issue of The Mopologetic Dalliance is quite interesting insofar as it sometimes signals the crescendo of beleaguered belief, after which there is only silence.

Was there a noticeable cascade of entailments along the road from A to Z?

When you leave Mormonism, you leave with a feeling that you have been duped. Your whole life was based on a sham. Some people can't even bring themselves to admit this, so they stay in as true believers. Who wants to admit to themselves that they have based their whole lives on a crock o' crap?

When you leave you are now once bitten, twice shy, baby. You now look at every religion as bunk wrapped up in a different dressing. In my opinion that's just what it is. Religion is just ancient myth that has been passed down from generation to generation. Why would you question it? It's what you were taught from birth.

This is the perspective you gain when leaving Mormonism. Now you are looking for a God that has no religion. There isn't one to be found. God is wrapped up in myth that has been passed down from generation to generation no matter where you look.

I don't know that I'm atheist, but if there is a God he can't be found in man made myth. I don't know why religious people are so afraid of Atheism. It's really not that threatening. Atheists are good just because it's the right thing to do. Religious people are good because some mythological being is always watching. That seems more scary to me.

I am an apatheist.

I don't give a flip about life before or after death.

We have zero supporting evidence, so why waste time thinking about and planning for it?

Mormons come to know God through the Book of Mormon. They don't come to know the Book of Mormon through God.

How does a Mormon know there is a God? Because if the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith was a prophet, and a prophet wouldn't have lied about seeing God! (I know, the logic isn't sound, but that's basically what you're taught). So, you follow Moroni's promise, and all the rest is supposed to fall into place.

When the "keystone," the Book of Mormon, is taken away, the arch really does fall down.

For me it was really the Old Testament God that caused me to lose my faith. When I started evaluating the behavior of the Old Testament God critically I begin to question the idea that these could be the actions of a loving God.
A few examples include:
Killing the firstborn of all of the Egyptians. From the son of Pharaoh to the son of the maidservant at the mill. Is this the best method of persuasion God could come up with? Killing their kids?
Ordering the genocide of the Amalekites. 1 Samuel 15:3 "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." I wish I knew how to defamiliarize this for Christians. He is ordering the murder of infants. Please explain to me for what purpose infants need to die.
Consider the case of David. To punish David for his affair with Bathsheba and for Killing Uriah "The Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife bare unto David, and it was very sick." He didn't die quickly either, it took seven days for the child to die. Who kills a child to punish a parent? God does.
Using a Global flood to kill everyone.

To you Christians I say this without apology. Your God is NOT good. You worship a God that is malevolent. You worship a God who is evil. Your religious beliefs don't deserve to be respected.

Would any of you leaving Mormons have been saved from the progressive slide into atheism if some kind evangelists had been waiting for you with Holy Bibles and tambourines?

cksalmon wrote:

sock puppet wrote:Doubting was a weigh station for me between being a TBM and becoming a non-believing evidentialist/reliabilist. And I did not consider other religious beliefs as an alternative when going from point A (TBM) to point Z (a non-believing evidentialist/reliabilist). However, in addition to doubting, there might have been other stages of significance. For example, one I have identified clearly was my mopologetic dalliance--in the throes of doubt and as the end of belief neared, I dug my heels in and protested too much. I tried to defend more ardently that which was fleeting.

(Thanks for not correcting my grammar, sock: "There is a plethora...")

The issue of The Mopologetic Dalliance is quite interesting insofar as it sometimes signals the crescendo of beleaguered belief, after which there is only silence.

Was there a noticeable cascade of entailments along the road from A to Z?

I'd say within two months of going silent was the onset of unbelief in Mormonism. Two months of almost continual cognitive dissonance which then broke like a fever at its end. At that point of disbelief, I would have been highly vulnerable to persuasion by another belief system that was not so smothering and controlling. JSJr et al. were gone, but at that juncture Jesus was not entirely out of question. Distrustful of the notion of Jesus, but not unbelief at that point. Having just spent 2 years of my life for a religion that I'd found out was an artifice, an alternate religion then would have to have been a religion that was much lighter on the commitment scale than Mormonism. And its history much cleaner. Other Christian religions, those the focus on the mercy of the Atonement and being nice to each other would have been the best poised candidate for an alternate religion.

When I realized just how much of my life I'd given to Mormonism, what parts of a normal adolescence were missing, unbelief turned to disbelief and resentment of Mormonism. I truly felt liberated from a cult/controlling machine. As I reconstructed my mental paradigms in the wake of Mormonism, I adopted the attitude of Missiouri, the Show Me State, about whatever anyone else might tell me, particularly when talking about the grand scale of life. I became then, even though I did not know the terminology back then, an evidentialist of the reliabilist stripe. Since this development, it has been extremely unlikely that I would have joined any other religion. (About 15 years ago, I did read up some on Buddhist ideas, and although I'm not conversant on them anymore, some were appealing.)

I'd say having been burned as badly as I was by Mormonism, I am not going to allow any other such construct to suck me in and then get burned again.