Why I am not a Mormon

[_Sam Harris]

Beastie and Gad are right.

My mother doesn't precisely know I have no belief in God, yet, she knows I'm not religious -- she pushes me to attend Church. Picks up my children every so often with a tsk tsk and a scowl in my direction when I can't be bothered. I've attended reluctantly with my family as an adult. I delete the chain emails that are forwarded to me from family, colleagues, peers, and friends, I pray at my parents house before dinner, I accept the literature, the bookmarks (what is up with religious bookmarks?!) -- I tell no one I have a disbelief in Jesus Christ. I am asked where I attend Church constantly -- even on job interviews. I have knocks on my door constantly and smile and talk to those concerned for my soul. I deflect questions... I worry my children will be shunned in the community.

I'm quiet. I smile. I nod.

I'm not even an apostate of any religion and I'm in hiding. GoodK is very courageous to be so open with his disbelief.

Ah, yes, the complexity of living in the South... ;)

I live in the North Carolina Bible belt, and being asked what church you belong to is second nature for most conversations. I get email forwards all the time from co-workers in the "God loves you" vein. It doesn't bother me, but it is rather annoying from a business sense because it's not like you can delete these people from your contact list. LOL

I never really thought about this from the perspective of someone who has no religion, but, yes, it would be hard. Churches, at least here in the South, are a HUGE part of the social structure.

When I was LDS and living in rural VA, I got a lot of funny looks and horror stories about Mormons from the relatives who knew I was LDS. They eventually convinced themselves that I was a witch and left me alone.

[_The Nehor]

They eventually convinced themselves that I was a witch and left me alone.

No fun stories about people trying to burn you?

[_GoodK]

Hi GoodK. Your post lured me out of semi-retirement from the MB. Please expand on these points (though you might want to do it in a new thread).

Richard

Well Richard, if I am back I'm dragging you with me:)

Where should I begin? I guess I'll start with number 1 on my list.

God.
There is no evidence for such a God. Nor is there evidence for the thousands of other dead gods that whom now nobody worships.

Christianity and Mormonism
For someone to say that they know Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, crucified, and resurrected is intellectually dishonest. There is not a shred of evidence or any other reliable way for anyone to know anything about Jesus' life, and what we know about him is likely all a fairy tale. What is more likely to have happened is the engineering of a religion - borrowing from Judaism, Paganism, Sun worship, and past Messiah myths - in order to control the masses.

The Bible and the Book of Mormon are just books, written by human beings.

The Book of Mormon is filled with contradictions, plagairism, and absurdities.

The changes made to the Book of Mormon are not simply minor changes as the Church professes. First Nephi chapter 11 is full of changes that are doctrinal. Chapter 12 mistakenly drops the name Jesus Christ contradicting 2 Nephi 10:3 before it was changed to read Messiah. There are many more.

The Bible is worse. The way were are instructed to view and treat women, homosexuals, or anyone else who God is mad at would be laughable if people really didn't believe, profess, and indoctrinate their children to believe the creator of the cosmos helped author this ancient text.

The Bible's contradictions and absuditites are too numerous to list or overlook.

These books hardly represent our best understanding of the universe. There is so much knowledge that is absent in them. Every specific science today has enlightened humanity more than these books have on what is true about our world.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I'm assuming that the reason you told GoodK's father about his posting is because you were afraid he would see it on his own and be hurt by it.

No. I simply judged -- rightly or wrongly, but, I think, scarcely immorally -- that he would want to know what his son was saying about him here, on the basis of the fact that I would want to know about it if it were my son.

He knew -- even I knew -- that his son is an atheist, but I wasn't sure that he knew how derisive his son was of his beliefs to others.

Again, though it would be painful, I would have wanted to be aware of that.

How were you afraid he would come across it?

I wasn't.

Is he a known lurker here?

No.

It’s unfortunate that you chose to be snide and dismissive towards Gad’s latest post, because it could have helped you understand the interactions between Mormon and exmormon.

Though you will find it impossible to believe, I'm neither the unethical and heartless monster that many here love to imagine nor the insensitive clod of certain fantasies.

In the relationships between Mormon and exmormon, it’s almost always the exmormon who is expected to, so to speak, “suck it up”.

Not so. Half of my extended family are non-Mormons. Many in the rest of my family are largely or completely out of the Church. One or two are, if you push it, quite hostile.

We have to have non-religious extended-family Christmas parties, so as not to offend or marginalize some of our more sensitive relatives. (A wholly non-religious Christmas is, to my mind, rather absurd, and somewhat offensive.) We go out of our way to avoid mentioning the Church -- which, as you can understand, is a large part of our lives (I'm a current bishop, for example, and a frequent author on Mormon topics, and one of my sons is on a mission in Japan) -- and to steer clear of any religious topics, because some in the extended family hate Mormonism or, even, theism.

By suck it up I mean tolerate a certain amount of preaching, cajoling, chastising, in order to maintain the relationship.

Just as I've had to more or less silently endure sermons on the virtues of Bertrand Russell, the stupidities of Mormons and Mormon culture, and etc., in order to maintain certain relationships. If I were to argue back as forcefully as I would like, the relationship would be dead. Yet my interlocutor, it seems, feels no such restraint.

If/when exmormons attempt to engage in reciprocal preaching, cajoling, chastising, the Mormons are normally quite offended and demand that it cease and desist.

Very familiar, mutatis mutandis.

It’s a microcosm of our larger society – religious belief is accorded special, protected status, and to challenge or confront that is deemed unacceptable, militant, rude.

Sorry. I understand that atheists feel somewhat marginalized. Justice William O. Douglas (no conservative) was right when he observed in a Supreme Court opinion that our institutions "presume" the existence of a Supreme Being. But it scarcely rises to the level of persecution. It's mere annoyance, once in a while. Tough luck. All of us suffer from annoyances. In academia at large, for example -- and, to a surprising degree, even in certain quarters at BYU -- a left-wing political stance is simply presumed. Do I feel marginalized as a committed political conservative with libertarian leanings? Absolutely. Have I often had to suck it up, to silence myself, in order to maintain good working relationships in scholarly organizations and conferences? Absolutely. Am I a martyr? No. Is this unusual? Not particularly.

We exmormons understand this reality, and do suck it up, by and large, in order to maintain familial relations. But Gad is right – the relations we maintain through this devil’s bargain are more superficial thanks to the bargain. Yet we understand that those of us who can maintain somewhat friendly relations with Mormon family are lucky to be able to do so. Do you realize how sad that is?

I realize precisely how sad that is.

The result is, although I love my family and they love me, we do have a somewhat superficial, controlled relationship.

Been there, done that.

Our society is permeated with religious belief.

It's also permeated with political ideologies, consumerism, bad entertainment, and the like. Those who dislike or dissent from any of this simply need to buck up and learn to get along.

If a Mormon wanted to whine about how non-Mormon religious presuppositions dominate, s/he could easily do so. When I was in the Boy Scouts in California, we had the choice, at big Scouting events, of a Sunday morning Protestant service or a Sunday morning Catholic service. Jews and Mormons didn't exactly fit. I had no Mormon friends at my school or in my neighborhood, and my religious beliefs were a subject of frequent comment and not infrequent ridicule. The same was very much true in graduate school. And many Latter-day Saints have it worse in the heavily evangelical American South, for example, or in very secular Europe and Asia. Their peculiar opinions on religion can affect their careers, as well as their level of social acceptance.

When I attend meetings on the philosophy of religion, the working definition of theism or of God that is used is almost never one that I can accept. I live with it. When I attend meetings of my Middle East studies colleagues, Republican-bashing and attacking Israel are almost invariably part of the ritual, simply accepted as reflecting the attitudes of all sentient and sane academics. I'm a Republican, and I'm relatively sympathetic to Israel, and I don't fit. When I spend time with my many Arab and Muslim friends and with the Arabs and Muslims that I need to work with, I have to endure endless diatribes against Zionism and, very often, amazingly triumphalistic sermons on Islam and invitations to convert. I take it in silence because I think these relationships are really important, and that they outweigh the very limited benefits that would ensue if I chose to pick a fight.

And on and on it goes. Dealing with this sort of thing is part of being a mature adult. Negotiating life while figuring out when to speak up and when not to speak up, when to resist and when to go along, is a substantial part of growing up.

I suck it up. You know why? I have to. If I didn’t suck it up, if I actually requested religionists to understand that not everyone believes, I’d be viewed as a “militant atheist”. I don’t want to hurt the relationships I have with these people.

Do you understand what that means?

I understand it very, very well.

Nonbelievers have to understand that they have to suck it up or hurt their relationships with believers. Do you understand what that says about believers and their sense of entitlement and privilege???

I understand what that says about human relationships.

Sorry, but I'm not going to sign on to your apparent faith in the moral superiority of unbelievers.

That is what GoodK was doing, and the fact that you couldn’t tolerate it and had to drag it into his real life demonstrates how little you understand the “devil’s bargain” we nonbelievers live with every day. And your dismissive response to Gad’s post demonstrates how little you care about that devil’s bargain, even when it is pointed out to you. You are just like the other believers – your sense of religious entitlement and privilege is so deeply engrained that you cannot imagine it being any other way. It is the natural order of the universe.

Actually, the smug sense of superiority here seems to be yours.

Now I predict that you will respond to my post dismissively, just like you did with Gad, probably by saying something like: yes, we all know I am a malicious, entitled, and privileged person.

Which would only be to agree with what you've just been saying, no?

So I'll tell you in advance: thanks for not listening and proving my point.

The condescension fairly oozes from your post.

Which is ironic, considering that -- I think -- your post is a plea to be treated with respect, as an equal and not with condescension.

OTOH, you could surprise me and respond in a thoughtful way. You do that now and then. And it does surprise me.

Ditto.

All I did -- in this now-legendary Crime of the Century -- was to supply GoodK's father with a link to what GoodK had publicly posted about him, in a post that GoodK and others have assured me was perfectly harmless. I did so with minimal comment.

You folks are wasting your time in trying to persuade me that what I did was unethical and a vicious assault on poor innocent GoodK -- or even, according to marg, a deliberate attempt to inflict harm. It simply wasn't.

You're free to call me a jerk, and so forth. GoodK's father and I are still friends, and those who actually know me seem to like me. I take the opinions of people on this board about my character and personality for what they're worth.

[_Sam Harris]

They eventually convinced themselves that I was a witch and left me alone.

No fun stories about people trying to burn you?

LOL, no. I overheard them whispering at a cookout one day. The rumors were hurtful, they thought I was strange because I hardly ever left the house (except to go to the library). But I lived in effing Mayberry, there was nowhere to go!

I made the mistake of going out on a Sunday afternoon, thinking I'd just go to the library and the local ice-cream parlor. Puh-lease. The only thing open in that town was church!

[_Chap]

You folks are wasting your time in trying to persuade me that what I did was unethical and a vicious assault on poor innocent GoodK -- or even, according to marg, a deliberate attempt to inflict harm.

Of course they would be wasting their time in trying to persuade DCP to admit publicly that the bolded statement was true. That is not really the point of a board like this.

On the other hand, I think it is likely that the events referred to in this thread, and the discussions thereof, may have made various sized dents in the regard readers of this board (many of them non-posters) have for DCPs ethical judgment, and for the 'discernment' of LDS bishops as a class.

[_beastie]

This one well thought-out post has done more to help me to understand the feelings of anger that I sometimes come across from atheists than anything else I've read previously. And it's because it's the utter truth. I've taken for granted that most, if not all of my friends are theists, but there may be one or two who are not...they have just never felt comfortable enough saying anything for the reasons you stated above. I get plenty of faith-promoting emails, chain letters, etc. (for a minute I was asking that they not be sent to me, I didn't like the commandment, if it were, to "forward this if you love Jesus". I'll forward it if I feel like it, dammit!). Some I forward, many I do not. But I've never really looked at it from the POV of someone who does not hold a belief in God, for the most part being assaulted by this, by other subtle forms of religious indoctrination. For so many people religion has become a habit that they think has feeling, that it's hard to see how their habits affect others.

Now I can understand a bit more what it is that I see and hear from atheists who are frustrated that religious belief is so prevalent in society that they cannot comfortably move. It's sad that you had to practically genuflect before your mother to soften the blow that you are an atheist. I'm kind of blessed in that my immediate family doesn't care what I do or believe, so long as I'm happy and stay out of institutional orange jumpsuits. The extended family is another story, but I ignore them anyways.

Thanks for your post.

Sam,

I am delighted that my post helped you understand this issue. Sometimes internet communications actually work! :)

I do want to add that my mother is a genuinely nice person who would never deliberately hurt another person. But, in a way, that almost underlines the point of my post, doesn't it?

[_Bond...James Bond]

But, as you said, we suck it up because we understand that this is how our American society works. And I do come here to vent, just as you do. In some respects, the idea that we wear different faces in different places is true. There is a lot I can't say over on MAD without getting in trouble, so I don't say it. That's one of the places you have to keep your opinions guarded, but it's not like that here. But when you do that, you get accused of being two-faced.

You really can't win, can you? But I am not complaining. I just understand how the game works, and I work with the rules the best I can.

I've found that writing this stuff out is therapeutic. Even if you don't post it [like on your blog you can set entries to private] writing stuff out and articulating it, putting it on the screen, makes it real. Making something real is important I find, keeping it all bundled up in the brain just leads to crazyness where you ask: "Is that real? Am I just imagining these feelings? Surely not...they're real right?"

Admittingly you're in a less than ideal situation, and putting some stuff on a message board isn't the best thing in case someone decides to take it and tell your wife about it; but you can be free with your opinions, you just have to find the right outlets [friends, emails, private diaries, etc].

[_Daniel Peterson]

I think it is likely that the events referred to in this thread, and the discussions thereof, may have made various sized dents in the regard readers of this board (many of them non-posters) have for DCPs ethical judgment, and for the 'discernment' of LDS bishops as a class.

That's surely possible. This is, moreover, a quite unsympathetic audience for people of my religious persuasion, and I would not imagine that the lurker audience is fundamentally different in that regard from the participating audience.

In any event, I'm happy to be forthright on this: I don't see anything even remotely ethically problematic in calling someone's attention to a post on a public board.

I realize that this will leave many here in stunned disbelief, but I make a very serious and pretty continuous effort to be both ethical and ethically reflective in my life, and, although I'm aware of many deep-seated flaws, I think (and I think that those who actually know me think) that I do a reasonably good job at it.

[_Sam Harris]

This one well thought-out post has done more to help me to understand the feelings of anger that I sometimes come across from atheists than anything else I've read previously. And it's because it's the utter truth. I've taken for granted that most, if not all of my friends are theists, but there may be one or two who are not...they have just never felt comfortable enough saying anything for the reasons you stated above. I get plenty of faith-promoting emails, chain letters, etc. (for a minute I was asking that they not be sent to me, I didn't like the commandment, if it were, to "forward this if you love Jesus". I'll forward it if I feel like it, dammit!). Some I forward, many I do not. But I've never really looked at it from the POV of someone who does not hold a belief in God, for the most part being assaulted by this, by other subtle forms of religious indoctrination. For so many people religion has become a habit that they think has feeling, that it's hard to see how their habits affect others.

Now I can understand a bit more what it is that I see and hear from atheists who are frustrated that religious belief is so prevalent in society that they cannot comfortably move. It's sad that you had to practically genuflect before your mother to soften the blow that you are an atheist. I'm kind of blessed in that my immediate family doesn't care what I do or believe, so long as I'm happy and stay out of institutional orange jumpsuits. The extended family is another story, but I ignore them anyways.

Thanks for your post.

Sam,

I am delighted that my post helped you understand this issue. Sometimes internet communications actually work! :)

I do want to add that my mother is a genuinely nice person who would never deliberately hurt another person. But, in a way, that almost underlines the point of my post, doesn't it?

Beastie, I wish that more atheists had the calmness of mind that you and others here do. I can't imagine living in a world where I felt I had to hide part of myself, I did that for a minute while I was LDS, but I knew I could step out of that. You can't really step out of your world, and I think that might be behind a lot of the anger that some atheists feel.

My mother's mother is just as sweet as she can be, but when it comes to me going back to the faith of my childhood, she just can't understand why I left.

I once went with her to what they call a "cluster meeting", different tabernacles in the area traveling to all worship together. The five-and-a-half-hour service that left me faint with hunger and fatigue was bad enough, but I had to hear all the way up and back about how their faith was true, and Christianity was not (they knew I was Christian). But still, they welcome me when I come, make me sing, and try to convert me again. LOL

Dad's gramma just tells me what my eternal destination is...when I cross her. :P