First encounter with critical information

[_Blixa]

I never read anything "critical" until several years after I had stopped attending. Now I'm not counting reading Juanita Brooks as a child, or those issues of Dialogue about what was actually on the translated papyri or the origins of the priesthood ban that my Dad brought home when I was a teen. Those just seemed like plain old historical information.

When I was in graduate school and working as a teaching assistant in the English Department at the U of U, my office mate, a young Mormon woman from California who had recently been excommunicated (for writing of letters to the editor about the priesthood ban), told me that she had been reading the Tanner's Mormonism: Shadow or Reality. She told me that they described Joseph Smith putting his head into a hat with a seer stone in the bottom to receive the translation of the Book of Mormon.

I thought, "Geez I guess those Tanners are some kind of weirdo anti-mormons because that is ludicrous and completely unbelievable."

[_huckelberry]

my office mate, a young Mormon woman from California who had recently been excommunicated (for writing of letters to the editor about the priesthood ban), told me that she had been reading the Tanner's

When I left the church,freshly finishing high school, I was yet afraid to touch something like the Tanners. But your comments struck me about a different and at that time deeper fear of actually thinking about the negroes and the priesthood.(people were not yet quite black though Mr X was developing that particular incendiary device)

I do not remember knowing if people were exed for speaking wrong about Negroes. I could not imagine anybody risking saying something approving about Mr King. I suspect more than a couple of silent mormans had positive thoughts. Very difficult to express them however. All those demands for change seemed to fly in the face of Gods order. Perhaps watching tv or walking by oneself on Saturday afternoon Kings demands and dreams might sound in harmony with God, but not so on Sunday.

darkness darkness everywhere.

[_huckelberry]

Ok, having read Huckelberry's subsequent reply I was perhaps in the neighborhood, but not really all that close in guessing his real reason corn helped destroy his testimonkey.

Seth, I like your sharpening of my general and a bit plain complaint about the importance of corn suggesting the Book of Mormon has too few Indians. I am personally attracted to simple versions of an argument. I can see a variety of arguments as variations of this same theme. The problem of peoples crops is pretty much parallel to the more current argument about genetics. I was first thinking of 1966 when the genetic problem was less well developed.

I could expand my line of thinking by observing that all along I found certain qualities of the Book of Mormon repellant. I kept seeing an image of 19th century American revival and apocalypse.

I am feeling a twinge of guilt for referring to anything Brant Gardner said as noxious which I did in the previous post. I respect his efforts to relate the book to the real world. He has a commitment to the Book of Mormon I do not relate to however . I think I understand his proposal that the real history has been recreated in the form of a parable or embodiment of a spiritual point of view. I realize that that it is possible for people to do that with history. After all the Old Testament is such a clear example of a genuinely ancient book doing just that.

I find the parable repulsive. I suspect that makes it difficult for me to empathize with Mr Gardners theory. I ask myself how would that choice would be made to so completely erase the vast majority of people living around them? I cannot relate to it as a parable or spiritual point of view.

[_Justlooking24]

Since members are instructed not to read information that is critical to the church. I was wondering, how did most of the people who leave the church come into contact with information critical of the church? Did they read 'anti' material anyway?

I read all kinds of information critical to the Church as evidenced by my presence here. Have done so for 30 or so years now. Am still active TBM and never had any downtime.

Yes but you are "special".

[_Ceeboo]

Hey Racer

My wife is still TBM, but thankfully this has not caused any problems in our marriage.

Awesome!

My wife is very cool. I am a lucky guy.

Aweome x 2!

I know several people who are divorced because they stopped believing.

Peace,
Ceeboo

[_palerobber]

i never read anything remotely anti and didn't know any of the "shadow history" of the church until after i'd resigned.

as a child of about 10 years, i learned that magic is not real, and it became much more difficult to believe in anything supernatural. then, as a teenager, i learned about several other religions from around the world and it didn't seem that Mormonism had a any clear advantage over them. finally, as an adult in the late 1990s, i saw that the church leaders who were supposed to be my moral guides were failing me on the most important moral controversy on my generation (gay civil rights), just as they had failed on the most important moral question of my parents generation (black civil rights).