Have you been blessed by leaving the church?

[Philo Sofee]

The first real clue to me that there was something "funny" about Mormonism was that during an intense period at work, that kept me busy 7 days a week for several months, I was surprised to find that I actually didn't miss the "joy" of attending church.

Shortly after that I found the website run by Richard Packham, and it was a rapid downhill from there.

That was one of the early ones I read also, it had great information, and was extremely helpful. Good for him for posting his work. We need more of that.

Yes, it is wide spreading into videos, podcasts, and actually live debates as well as many are taking that tac...

[drumdude]

To be fair, I think it might be different if MG was one of many faithful Mormons here. He's carrying a lot of weight being essentially the only Mormon willing to engage with the board. I don't blame him for getting a little testy and riled up sometimes.

[Marcus]

To be fair, I think it might be different if MG was one of many faithful Mormons here. He's carrying a lot of weight being essentially the only Mormon willing to engage with the board. I don't blame him for getting a little testy and riled up sometimes.

I’m going to have to slightly disagree with you on that, although I think you have been here longer, so I am just speaking based on my experience. Over the course of 2 days or so, they participated, and constantly baited, condescended and insulted, with NO provocation that I could see. Then, when people responded, they went into an extreme victim mode, crying about 5eir treatment, when, as far as I could tell, they provoked and instigated. Then, their victim posts were almost identical, across three very different threads! I really think they come here with a goal to pick a fight, and post obnoxiously until someone responds. Why come here to a place where you despise people? And not only that, post really low effort posts, but lots of comments about how they are above others? I don’t get it. Unless it’s a self flagellation kind of thing.

[drumdude]

To be fair, I think it might be different if MG was one of many faithful Mormons here. He's carrying a lot of weight being essentially the only Mormon willing to engage with the board. I don't blame him for getting a little testy and riled up sometimes.

I’m going to have to slightly disagree with you on that, although I think you have been here longer, so I am just speaking based on my experience. Over the course of 2 days or so, they participated, and constantly baited, condescended and insulted, with NO provocation that I could see. Then, when people responded, they went into an extreme victim mode, crying about 5eir treatment, when, as far as I could tell, they provoked and instigated. Then, their victim posts were almost identical, across three very different threads! I really think they come here with a goal to pick a fight, and post obnoxiously until someone responds. Why come here to a place where you despise people? And not only that, post really low effort posts, but lots of comments about how they are above others? I don’t get it. Unless it’s a self flagellation kind of thing.

He has a history here that goes way beyond my short time on the board. I don't know 99% of it. But I think in the past there were more Mormons here defending the faith.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

The first real clue to me that there was something "funny" about Mormonism was that during an intense period at work, that kept me busy 7 days a week for several months, I was surprised to find that I actually didn't miss the "joy" of attending church.

Shortly after that I found the website run by Richard Packham, and it was a rapid downhill from there.

That was one of the early ones I read also, it had great information, and was extremely helpful. Good for him for posting his work. We need more of that.

Me, too. He was instrumental in my exit. So much so I wrote him an email thanking him, and he responded graciously. That site and rfm.org was all it took to crash the shelf.

- Doc

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I’m going to have to slightly disagree with you on that, although I think you have been here longer, so I am just speaking based on my experience. Over the course of 2 days or so, they participated, and constantly baited, condescended and insulted, with NO provocation that I could see. Then, when people responded, they went into an extreme victim mode, crying about 5eir treatment, when, as far as I could tell, they provoked and instigated. Then, their victim posts were almost identical, across three very different threads! I really think they come here with a goal to pick a fight, and post obnoxiously until someone responds. Why come here to a place where you despise people? And not only that, post really low effort posts, but lots of comments about how they are above others? I don’t get it. Unless it’s a self flagellation kind of thing.

He has a history here that goes way beyond my short time on the board. I don't know 99% of it.

The rest of the 99% is just as Marcus describes.

- Doc

[drumdude]

Dan just posted some powerful evidence against our testimonies.

I would like to call your attention to a short but important article in the December issue of the invaluable magazine First Things, written by Brendan W. Case, who currently serves as the associate director for research at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. It joins a very large and growing array of articles and studies that plainly seem to demonstrate the positive effects of religious belief and religious affiliation on the mental and physical heath of not only individual persons but communities and societies.



Dr. Case notes the alarming rise of “deaths of despair” in the United States. “Recent trends,” he writes, “are severe: Deaths of despair caused drops in overall life expectancy in the United States for three consecutive years (from 2015 to 2017), the longest period of decline since World War I.” Moreover, he explains, the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University has “assembl[ed] a body of evidence that suggests that ]about 40 percent of the increase in suicides from 1996 to 2010 was attributable to declining religious participation.”

40% of suicides are attributed to leaving religion?? Fortunately, I was able to discover some compelling counter evidence.


https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index ... of-despair

Screenshot 2021-11-13 143458.jpg (160.5 KiB) Viewed 680 times

I guess the next question is, how many of you have become addicted to opioids after leaving the church?

[huckelberry]

Dan just posted some powerful evidence against our testimonies.

I would like to call your attention to a short but important article in the December issue of the invaluable magazine First Things, written by Brendan W. Case, who currently serves as the associate director for research at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. It joins a very large and growing array of articles and studies that plainly seem to demonstrate the positive effects of religious belief and religious affiliation on the mental and physical heath of not only individual persons but communities and societies.



Dr. Case notes the alarming rise of “deaths of despair” in the United States. “Recent trends,” he writes, “are severe: Deaths of despair caused drops in overall life expectancy in the United States for three consecutive years (from 2015 to 2017), the longest period of decline since World War I.” Moreover, he explains, the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University has “assembl[ed] a body of evidence that suggests that ]about 40 percent of the increase in suicides from 1996 to 2010 was attributable to declining religious participation.”

40% of suicides are attributed to leaving religion?? Fortunately, I was able to discover some compelling counter evidence.


https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index ... of-despair

Screenshot 2021-11-13 143458.jpg

I guess the next question is, how many of you have become addicted to opioids after leaving the church?

I guess I will up and observe the obvious. It is possible a number of people suffering from emotional or social difficulties do not find religious participation a help. They may in fact find a group people who expect happiness to be emotionally painful so they distance themselves. Later some poll researcher may find that there are emotionally unhappy people out of church and more happy people in church and jump to conclusions about what is cause and what is effect.

[IHAQ]

I guess I will up and observe the obvious. It is possible a number of people suffering from emotional or social difficulties do not find religious participation a help. They may in fact find a group people who expect happiness to be emotionally painful so they distance themselves. Later some poll researcher may find that there are emotionally unhappy people out of church and more happy people in church and jump to conclusions about what is cause and what is effect.

The report doesn’t seem to take into account the mental trauma incurred when leaving a religion is made more difficult by shunning and judgement by family, friends and members of the religion they are seeking to distance themselves from. Peterson is using the report to basically threaten people not to leave Mormonism “or else…”, he is not seeking to understand the core of the issue. He’s not talking about understanding if the religion can make changes so that people feel less compelled to leave, or less troubled within it. He’s purely blaming the victims. Again. And Again.

The other thing reports of that nature seem to conflate is the benefits of community, which they seem to want to make the benefits of religion.

[Jersey Girl]

I also echo the thoughts of honorentheos, CanadianDude2, IHAQ, malkie. Since I’ve been blessed with time let me count the ways …

1) I’ve been given the opportunity to appreciate different trains of thought that are now viewed outside the lens of Mormonism. I spent the majority of yesterday’s ‘tv time’ watching Lex Fridman interview and converse with some of the most intersting thinkers around right now. In other words, my spare time is devoted to developing my own ideas and notions about every tooic under the sun instead of wasting time reading chloroform in print the scriptures and listening to corporate businessmen pretending to be spiritualists the brethren. It’s been invaluable, this shift toward intellectualism, substance really, instead of brainwashing myself with nonsensical pablum that’s destaked from any sort of connection to its claimed spiritual legacy.

2) I’m married to legitimately my soul mate and best friend. This wouldn’t have happened had I stayed in the cult. My wife is a joy to be around and I count myself as lucky beyond measure. The Mormon girl, and I use girl accurately as a mental description for her, that I was married to was narcissistic, a lazy bones, and a poor role model for my girls. How and why did I marry her? Young Single Adults ward and she was nice. I thought she’d make a good mother. How stunted was that thinking? After leaving the cult I was free to figure out relationships on my own terms, and I ended up with a gem of a woman.

3) I own all my crap outright, and have been blessed with the results of some good financial decisions. Pairing my financial present and future with Mormongod was a bad retirement strategy. He seems to really like other people’s money, and, you know, good for Mormongod. He can buy some more farmland, or condos, or cafeteria-free cult factories. I’m doing my own thing and it’s alright.

4) My relationship with my daughters is authentic and excellent. There were no weird structural constraints that affected how I regarded them. They were free to pursue their own ways, I was free to mentor them where I saw fit, and we were free to love and accept each other. I’m surprised at how many strained familial relationships exist within Mormon - so much BS and destroyed families over nonsense. I was and am blessed to have avoided the pitfalls of cultural identity that’s very narrow within the cult.

finally

5) I don’t view life as a test or probation to be ‘endured to the end’. I value my time above all other things, because that’s the only thing I have that’s truly mine. I’m blessed to wake up every day with an appreciation for my life whereas before I wasn’t super excited about living because, apparently, the really good stuff is after you’re dead and gone. My culty BIL admitted to me that he visits his parents’ gravesite occasionally, and wishes for death. My dad used to say he was tired of life and wished for death. My in-law-uncle has mentioned that he’s done with life and he recently retired! This should be some awesome exploring time, adventure time, and yet he wants to die. This is a fairly common theme within Mormonism where members are done with life and just want to get on with the heavenly good stuff. Crazy, and I mean crazy they’d prefer to hold that mindset.

- Doc

Bonus) I’ve been blessed with an appreciation for the natural world that I didn’t have when I was a Mormon.

This was a pleasure to read. That last...as far back as I can remember, I've been bonded with the natural world. I think I know why and I don't think it had anything to do with religious beliefs. I would like to hear more about what you think prevented you from making that connection as a Mormon if you would like to share it here or in some other area of this board that might be more suitable.