Nightlion wrote:I reject the notion that God must prove himself to you. You had no right to reject all the proofs of God that just ARE. Butterflies, and Zebras and moonbeams and rainbows and on and on. Okay the Mormons are horrific about the right shunnin' they put on those who do not abide with them. I was on the opposite end of the spectrum where I was ostracized for believing too much. Same shunning. Did not wreck my faith in God one bit. Why should the same shunning wreck yours?
You wholesale dismiss all that CAN easy pass for proof and evidence like the entirety of creation and demand something super-duper ( impossible) tempting God to come out of his hiding place just for you? The Mormons are hypocrite at the core and THAT is what you rejected. Why does that translate that everything they taught was taught correctly. They are hypocrites for cryin' out loud.
Then you slide down the sides of the pit to encounter Joseph Smith haters and then God haters. These exist only to feed themselves upon the entrails of your soul. Zombies of soul. If you let them eat you alive then you become a Zombie of soul waiting to devour whom you may. Yuck.
You were provoked and overreacted. That's what provocation is suppose to do. Why let it? Why give the hypocrites the satisfaction of turning you into a vomit bag of Zombie guts del sole. Take back your right to believe in God with all your heart. They do not own that. They really do not own that, not even for themselves, damn hypocrites.
Nightlion,
Sometimes I do believe in God, but he is the God I perceive when I read The Dao Te Ching.
sock puppet wrote:Very astute post, why me, very astute.
You must have meant "just me" (I've made that error several times myself). "why me" is never astute. Just me and why me need to sort this out (two falls out of three?).
I suggest that "just me" keep her name and "why me" change his to "Silly me".
Yeah, every time someone calls me that I consider changing my username. *sobs*
~Those who benefit from the status quo always attribute inequities to the choices of the underdog.~Ann Crittenden ~The Goddess is not separate from the world-She is the world and all things in it.~
sock puppet wrote:Very astute post, why me, very astute.
You must have meant "just me" (I've made that error several times myself). "why me" is never astute. Just me and why me need to sort this out (two falls out of three?).
I suggest that "just me" keep her name and "why me" change his to "Silly me".
"Silly me" is already taken, albeit by a different spelling.
sock puppet wrote:Very astute post, why me, very astute.
Quasimodo wrote:You must have meant "just me" (I've made that error several times myself). "why me" is never astute. Just me and why me need to sort this out (two falls out of three?).
I suggest that "just me" keep her name and "why me" change his to "Silly me".
just me wrote: Yeah, every time someone calls me that I consider changing my username. *sobs*
My most profound apologies, dear just me. I think I've committed an unforgivable transgression. I'll give my self 40 whacks with a whip.
Part of it, at least for me being a life long member, was we have such a unique perspective of God's nature and what man can become that anything else seems inadequate. Either he exists the way we have been taught or not at all. If you have grown up believing that one day you might become a God switching to another religion is a bit of a let down.
For members who have converted then left it might be a different perspective.
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
I will post in short and with great caution as a Joseph Smith comment I made (On another thread) has been suggested to be offensive. (Although I fail at times, this is never my intent and when/if I do offend, I am truly sorry)
As a believer and my 9 plus years experience on these religious boards, it is my opinion that once you are no longer Mormon (and all that clearly goes with that. Short version by design), you have a very, very, very good chance of evolving into Atheism (No pun intended) :)
In my OPINION, the saddest legacy of Joseph Smith. (Just an honest OPINION and I will gladly extend you the option to disagree with my FIRM OPINION) :)
The biggest challenge I see is that once you break away from Mormonism, you pretty much have to give up (or extremely modify) the notion that religious experiences can prove that something is true definitively. And while mainstream Christianity and some other religions might not emphasize religious experience to the same extreme that Mormonism does, there still is this same idea that you can have God experiences and that these cumulatively provide a support (in many cases the only support) for belief. Once you've realized that these experiences aren't reliable indicators of truthfulness, it becomes much harder to embrace a religion.
Dad of a Mormon wrote:The biggest challenge I see is that once you break away from Mormonism, you pretty much have to give up (or extremely modify) the notion that religious experiences can prove that something is true definitively. And while mainstream Christianity and some other religions might not emphasize religious experience to the same extreme that Mormonism does, there still is this same idea that you can have God experiences and that these cumulatively provide a support (in many cases the only support) for belief. Once you've realized that these experiences aren't reliable indicators of truthfulness, it becomes much harder to embrace a religion.
True dat! Plus Mormonism has so much rules.
Why would I embrace another religion with rules. Sure most don't have as much but there are still rules. I want to sin!
I think people give Mormonism and Joseph Smith too much credit for this. I would credit human nature and basic facts of sociology.
To leave a religion like Mormonism requires more than a change of building and learning a few new hymns. It requires an overhaul of one's worldview in most cases. My opinion - most people who leave Mormonism for critical reasons as adults approach other religions with the skeptism that Sock described by dint of the fact - they are adults. Don't blame the person that the alternative religions fail the smell test. It isn't Joseph Smith's fault that Catholism (for example) is just as bad a choice if one is approaching it from the perspective of an outsider. If one is concerned about social reasons for being in a religion, it's hard to justify why an ex-Mormon with family in the church would accept that as a choice over faking it in the LDS Church. And that sums up why a lot of Christians in the US are Christian - they are what they were born into.
Give people credit for not falling in the same pit twice. It is, after all, a bit ironic to me that Ceeboo suggested that atheism should be looked at as a religion in order to explain the phenomena. Why not accept there are alternatives to religion that are not only valid, but do not need to be mislabeled as such just so religious types can feel that there must be some familar terrain along that path? It's an undiscovered country to accept one doesn't know if that is the honest truth.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa