End goal?

[_Scottie]

No, but you have to understand that Mormonism is unlike most other religions out there.

In most religions, you belong to the religion. In Mormonism, you ARE a Mormon. It is at the very core of what you are. When you find out it isn't true, it goes much deeper than most religions. People try very hard to hold on to their faith.

Scottie, with all due respect, I disagree with you here. There are a lot of religions that are at the very core of who their members are. Just think Islam. Think Jehovah's Witnesses. Think Hinduism. Think Roman Catholicism for those who actually still believe it, and grow up in faithful households, attend Catholic schools, etc. The LDS church is certainly not alone in representing a deeply immersive way of life for its members, to the point where the church or belief system itself represents a substantial portion of that person's identity.

I think you're probably right.

[_charity]

Bottom line, anger IS healthy to express appropriately and safely. I think these kinds of boards help.

Appropriately and safely are the key words. Expressing anger can quite easily move into reinforcing anger. For some people, the more they participate, the angrier they get.

Ask yourself this. If you grew up a lifelong Jehovah's Witness, missed out on your chance to go to college because they emphasized church service and activity over education, were now stuck in a blue collar job when you'd had the potential for much better, that you'd given half of your life to an organization that you now realized was not only false, but which employed strong psychological and emotional tactics to keep people in line, wouldn't you be somewhat upset about that? Do you think some anger would be understandable?

Now substitute LDS in place of JW and the situation isn't all that different. The analogy isn't perfect, because the two organizations aren't exactly the same, but they're close enough for the purpose of these conversations.

Please tell me why you believe that anger is not understandable in a situation like this?

You cannot just throw off a small caveat such as "the analogy isn't perfect" and then run headlong into pushing forward a parallel between the two. This analogy doesn't come anywhere close to being an LDS scenario, in the first place.

In the second place, no one held a gun to your head. You were smart. You could study. You could reason. You made choices. You invested your money and time and you got benefits. Later you changed your mind. So what is the beef?

[_Runtu]

You cannot just throw off a small caveat such as "the analogy isn't perfect" and then run headlong into pushing forward a parallel between the two. This analogy doesn't come anywhere close to being an LDS scenario, in the first place.

In the second place, no one held a gun to your head. You were smart. You could study. You could reason. You made choices. You invested your money and time and you got benefits. Later you changed your mind. So what is the beef?

The benefits are quite small compared to the investment.

And I did study, I did reason, and ultimately I chose to get out. But of course I regret the years of giving to an organization that is not God's true church, after all. You'd have to be an idiot to just walk away and say, "No harm, no foul."

[_Sethbag]

You have one person named Infymus who I have read some of his posts. I would like to understand his views but some of the way he expresses himself is so angry I just do not want to read it anymore. I can not take it seriously. If I take the time to express my views I would not know how to do so in a way people would take me seriously. I might be better reading than posting.

Infymus' tactics are blunt, to be sure. He's right, though. He may not convince many LDS this way, but on the other hand, there are few ways in which true-believing LDS would be convinced anyhow. Infymus is telling the truth, even if in a way that you find very offensive.

Infymus may put this bluntly by challenging some LDS priesthood holder to curse him, but he's right on. The overwhelming majority of LDS PH holders wouldn't dare stand up and actually curse him, because deep down inside they know it won't really work. And if any did actually stand up and curse him, it wouldn't work. The Melchezedek Priesthood is a mirage. It's the illusion of power, without the substance of it. LDS priesthood power exists inasmuch as people submit themselves to it, and in no other way. Infymus knows this, and so he stands up and calls out the Priesthood holders, and nobody, of course, can respond, except to get mad at him for having the audacity to call them out in such a rude way.

[_Scottie]

In the second place, no one held a gun to your head. You were smart. You could study. You could reason. You made choices. You invested your money and time and you got benefits. Later you changed your mind. So what is the beef?

Actually, a proverbial "gun" WAS held to our head. Fear is fear. Whether it be the threat of immediate pain or the threat of eternal misery, what is the real difference?

[_wenglund]

Hi DogMaster,

I am an active member of the Church, and my "end goal" in participating here is to help improve relations between members and former members by focusing attention on the shared basic human needs to love and be loved and to feel worthwhile to self and others, and by proffering proven and constructive life strategies.

I do so recognizing, of course, that other participants here may have opposing "end goals", and may wish to see themselves as victims and/or are intent in spending their time here whinning, complaining, gossiping, and tearing others down.

Still others may have intellectual interests and may simply wish to explore Church related issues in rational and open-minded ways.

To each their own.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_Some Schmo]

...and my "end goal" in participating here is to help improve relations between members and former members by focusing attention on the shared basic human needs to love and be loved and to feel worthwhile to self and others, and by proffering proven and constructive life strategies.

I do so recognizing, of course, that other participants here may have opposing "end goals", and may wish to see themselves as victims and/or are intent in spending their time here whinning, complaining, gossiping, and tearing others down.

This is true. Whenever I'm trying to improve relations between members and former members by focusing attention on the shared basic human needs to love and be loved and to feel worthwhile to self and others, I always feel the need to point out that nonmembers may wish to see themselves as victims and/or are intent in spending their time here whinning, complaining, gossiping, and tearing others down.

I mean, who wouldn't?

Thanks, -Some Schmo-

[_Sethbag]

Ask yourself this. If you grew up a lifelong Jehovah's Witness, missed out on your chance to go to college because they emphasized church service and activity over education, were now stuck in a blue collar job when you'd had the potential for much better, that you'd given half of your life to an organization that you now realized was not only false, but which employed strong psychological and emotional tactics to keep people in line, wouldn't you be somewhat upset about that? Do you think some anger would be understandable?

Now substitute LDS in place of JW and the situation isn't all that different. The analogy isn't perfect, because the two organizations aren't exactly the same, but they're close enough for the purpose of these conversations.

Please tell me why you believe that anger is not understandable in a situation like this?

You cannot just throw off a small caveat such as "the analogy isn't perfect" and then run headlong into pushing forward a parallel between the two. This analogy doesn't come anywhere close to being an LDS scenario, in the first place.

Show me. Please demonstrate in what way the scenario of growing up in a faithful JW household, and being indoctrinated into that belief system, and then discovering as an adult later in life that it's not actually true is not at all comparable to the scenario of growing up in a faithful LDS household, being indoctrinated into that belief system, and then discovering as an adult later in life that it's not actually true.

Is the difference here, in your mind, that the JWs really aren't true, but the LDS really are, so of course it's all totally different?

In the second place, no one held a gun to your head. You were smart. You could study. You could reason. You made choices. You invested your money and time and you got benefits. Later you changed your mind. So what is the beef?

You're right. I am smart, I studied, I could reason, and I made choices. That process eventually overcame the indoctrination and conditioning of my mind, the shaping of my whole cosmology and worldview, and lead me to some truth about the LDS church, ie: that it's not actually true. And hence I no longer believe.

My beef is that this required effort on my part that I should never have had to have expended on something like this. There's no good reason why I should have been put in a situation where I had to spend years and years fighting through conflicts between the worldview I'd grown up with, and which I'd been taught to accept as true, and the objective reality of the world that clearly showed me cracks in that worldview, until in the end I could see that the worldview itself was a manmade fabrication, like so many others out there. My beef is that so many intelligent people whom I know personally are still stuck in this false worldview. Some of them are suffering because of it. I had a long talk with my sister recently, where I came away thinking that she's under a lot of mental stress because she knows there's something wrong with her religious worldview, but the cobwebs are so think, and the cords that bind her mind are so strong, that she's struggling to understand what's going on. She's very smart. She graduated #1 in her class from Yale a few years back and is perhaps less than a year from having her PhD. It's a crying shame that a mind like hers, and her PhD husband's, should be subjected to such false belief systems from the day they're born.

What ticks me off, in a way, is that someone like her is stuck swimming in a manmade mire of false beliefs, mythology, and superstition. Her powerful mind and intellect are literally hobbled by Joseph's Myth. And it shouldn't have to be like that. I see it as a fact of life that so many people in the world (almost everyone, really) are raised in false belief systems which fashion worldviews that render themselves nearly impossible to overcome. But I don't like it. It violates my innate sense of fairness.

And Charity, please, you were a 19 year old college kid when you converted. You were only an adult in the strictly legalistic sense. They handed you the Cool Aid, and you gulped it down by the gallon. You've given over your heart, soul, and mind, to a mythology. The church isn't true, and you are incapable of seeing that. You never will, because you have chosen not to, and fashioned for yourself over the succeeding decades a worldview which enforces itself at the most basic and fundemental stages of your thought processes, which ensures that you never will. The axioms and values built into your religious and philosophical cosmology prevent you seeing an ounce of truth in what I say, and even as you read these words you've never taken them seriously and you are merely thinking up what your response will be.

[_ozemc]

...and my "end goal" in participating here is to help improve relations between members and former members by focusing attention on the shared basic human needs to love and be loved and to feel worthwhile to self and others, and by proffering proven and constructive life strategies.

I do so recognizing, of course, that other participants here may have opposing "end goals", and may wish to see themselves as victims and/or are intent in spending their time here whinning, complaining, gossiping, and tearing others down.

This is true. Whenever I'm trying to improve relations between members and former members by focusing attention on the shared basic human needs to love and be loved and to feel worthwhile to self and others, I always feel the need to point out that nonmembers may wish to see themselves as victims and/or are intent in spending their time here whinning, complaining, gossiping, and tearing others down.

I mean, who wouldn't?

Thanks, -Some Schmo-

ROFL! Great Post!

[_rcrocket]

Sethbag:

I will pray for your soul; may God reclaim you.

The Church is true. The Father and the Son appeared to Joseph Smith. You're just one of the many God predicted would hold Joseph's name in derision -- as many others on this Board do.

I'm as familiar with the issues as you -- and more, much more. I've read it all; understood it all. But, I've also seen the miracle of the Church firsthand.

Your posts are all about "me." "Me, me me." You are here in a public place, cowardly anonymous, attacking a former belief system because of your vanity.

Vanity was the first sin and is the ultimate sin.