Please enlighten me, how on earth do adults fall for this?

[_Polygamy Porter]

Look I was born and bred into Mormonism. I grew up just north of SLC.

I had no choice, or less choice. My entire neighborhood, and even public school was like 98% Mormon.

Watch this video of these young fools pushing the BS of Mormonism on these adults.

Someone please tell me, how do thinking adults fall for this canned drivel?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWyTMPsJYTs

These boys did not know that they were being filmed.

Is this typical for missionary discussions? How do any level headed adults fall for this canned, rote, dry, and extruded crap?

[_Scottie]

Geez, PP...you ever hear of a little thing called THE SPIRIT????

They aren't falling for anything. The missionaries, after knocking on the door a dozen times and wearing a family down, finally gets in during some crisis...usually a death in the family. Emotions are running high and here these 2 men are talking about how they can be together forever in the afterlife. They ask the family to pray, and emotions being what they are, the family feels "the spirit" move them. Viola!! Conversion.

At least the LDS missionaries can play on emotions to convert people. How do scientologists get converts???

Edited to add: Aren't the vast majority of converts in 3rd world countries where education levels are very low? And, even then, aren't retention rates really bad?

[_Chap]

Geez, PP...you ever hear of a little thing called THE SPIRIT????

Viola!! Conversion.

You mean, to raise the emotional temperature while talking to investigators missionaries now play on a stringed instrument a bit larger than a violin? The cunning bastards ... what will they think of next??

Oh no ... you probably just mean "Voila".

[_Scottie]

Geez, PP...you ever hear of a little thing called THE SPIRIT????

Viola!! Conversion.

You mean, to raise the emotional temperature while talking to investigators missionaries now play on a stringed instrument a bit larger than a violin? The cunning bastards ... what will they think of next??

Oh no ... you probably just mean "Voila".

ROFL

No, I have it on good authority that missionaries will be required to carry viola's while tracting. The MTC training will be stretched out another 3 weeks to teach them how to play.

And, we'll be suffocated by Faith-Promoting Rumor's of those missionaries that just couldn't grasp the playing of the viola, who were suddenly filled with the spirit and played a beautiful rendition of popcorn popping on the apricot tree that moved the family so much that they were baptised the next day.

[_Some Schmo]

Someone please tell me, how do thinking adults fall for this canned drivel?

The fact is, they don't. It's only the unthinking ones that do.

[_beastie]

I was 19, does that count as an adult?

Yeah, not really, but I'll tell you anyway.

I was at a crossroads in my life, very confused, wondering about my choices to that point, and needing direction. My older sister, for whom I had a lot of respect, had already joined and was delighted I was interested. (she was 22, recently married, had her first child, and desperately looking for help in being a "family")

I was extremely skeptical and critical at first. But I am an avid reader, so had already read a third of the Book of Mormon by the time the missionaries came back for the second app't. They taught me how to pray and ask God if it were "true" and if Joseph Smith were a prophet. That night I prayed and asked God if the Book of Mormon were "true" (whatever that vague phrase means, obviously I wasn't being precise) and immediately had an incredible sensation I had never felt before. It was like a spiritual, full body orgasm. I am sure that endorphins were flooding my system. I felt full of light, like some light had fallen from heaven and filled my entire being. I probably sound like I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. It was an incredible experience.

What else was I to conclude other than that God was speaking to me? What did I, or most other older adults, know about religious experiences?

Anyway, a clunker got thrown into the system because the next night I prayed about Joseph Smith being a prophet and got nothing. Nada. Zip. Nothing but dark silence. I despaired and decided to junk it all, until my sister convinced me, like other members tried to do on MAD, that the Book of Mormon being "true" necessitated that Joseph Smith was a real prophet. (no, it doesn't, and my instinct to separate the two issues was verified when I learned about the changes in the D&C, which formerly said Joseph Smith' ONLY gift was to translate the Book of Mormon, period, full stop).

That is how/why I bought it. And it took years for me to completely lose faith, even after learning some of the junk, because of the strength of that experience.

Now I understand that mystical, numinous events can occur across any religious spectrum (and even nonreligious spectrum) and human beings tend to associate that numinous event with whatever theology they happened to be exposed to at the moment, but clearly there is no direct correlation.

As an atheist, now I believe that these numinous events, albeit powerful, are not even indicative of an outside source.

But it took a lot of reading and thinking to get to that point. Most adults are not willing to expend that sort of effort - but nor do most investigators have the type of experience I did, either. Obviously, I was the highlight of "my elders" mission.

[_Who Knows]

As an atheist...

Have you read the recent Sam Harris article, The Problem with Atheism?

[_barrelomonkeys]

As an atheist...

Have you read the recent Sam Harris article, The Problem with Atheism?

Wonderful! Thanks for the link Who Knows.

Enjoyed the entire transcript and this part especially:

As someone who has made his own modest efforts in this area, let me assure you, that when a person goes into solitude and trains himself in meditation for 15 or 18 hours a day, for months or years at a time, in silence, doing nothing else—not talking, not reading, not writing—just making a sustained moment to moment effort to merely observe the contents of consciousness and to not get lost in thought, he experiences things that most scientists and artists are not likely to have experienced, unless they have made precisely the same efforts at introspection. And these experiences have a lot to say about the plasticity of the human mind and about the possibilities of human happiness.

So, apart from just commending these phenomena to your attention, I’d like to point out that, as atheists, our neglect of this area of human experience puts us at a rhetorical disadvantage. Because millions of people have had these experiences, and many millions more have had glimmers of them, and we, as atheists, ignore such phenomena, almost in principle, because of their religious associations—and yet these experiences often constitute the most important and transformative moments in a person’s life. Not recognizing that such experiences are possible or important can make us appear less wise even than our craziest religious opponents.

[_DaniteDan]

Geez, PP...you ever hear of a little thing called THE SPIRIT????

They aren't falling for anything. The missionaries, after knocking on the door a dozen times and wearing a family down, finally gets in during some crisis...usually a death in the family. Emotions are running high and here these 2 men are talking about how they can be together forever in the afterlife. They ask the family to pray, and emotions being what they are, the family feels "the spirit" move them. Viola!! Conversion.

At least the LDS missionaries can play on emotions to convert people. How do scientologists get converts???

Edited to add: Aren't the vast majority of converts in 3rd world countries where education levels are very low? And, even then, aren't retention rates really bad?

I was just thinking about that this week: can you imagine a Ph.D (who was not born into the church) listening to what really happened. Elders telling them that Joseph Smith put a stone in a hat and then put his face in that hat and translated the Book of Mormon. Ph.D says and you also want ten percent of my gross income, right?

[_barrelomonkeys]

Geez, PP...you ever hear of a little thing called THE SPIRIT????

They aren't falling for anything. The missionaries, after knocking on the door a dozen times and wearing a family down, finally gets in during some crisis...usually a death in the family. Emotions are running high and here these 2 men are talking about how they can be together forever in the afterlife. They ask the family to pray, and emotions being what they are, the family feels "the spirit" move them. Viola!! Conversion.

At least the LDS missionaries can play on emotions to convert people. How do scientologists get converts???

Edited to add: Aren't the vast majority of converts in 3rd world countries where education levels are very low? And, even then, aren't retention rates really bad?

I was just thinking about that this week: can you imagine a Ph.D (who was not born into the church) listening to what really happened. Elders telling them that Joseph Smith put a stone in a hat and then put his face in that hat and translated the Book of Mormon. Ph.D says and you also want ten percent of my gross income, right?

Cause those with a Ph.D are such skeptics by nature?

I really wish we had smilies on this board!