On Facebook I found a post by a current Mormon who lives in Oregon. Below I've drafted her questions & my responses. The text next to the Q for question items is her text. And my responses are next to the A for answers.
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Howdy.
Your profile doesn't look like a one-off troll type account, and so I'm going to respond in more detail:
Q. Why is it so important for non LDS people to tear down the LDS religion?
A. Normally when people act in this regard it's for reasons they feel are good & valuable.
There is a substantial difference between the Evangelical protestors outside of the Great & Spacious Building & Temple Square during Mo. Conference, and why we wish to "tear down the LDS religion."
I also don't put much stock in people who're unhappy with Mormonism because the Mormon Jesus is different from the Baptist or Protestant or Catholic Jesuses. I could care less about such differences.
However there are many valuable, good, reasonable, valid, cogent, evidence-based, experience-based, fact-based reasons we can give as to why we express concerns, and why we use the tonalities we use as we express our concerns.
Do you REALLY want to know the answer, or are you just claiming there CAN BE NO answer which contradicts the validity of Mormonism? If your approach is the latter, then there's not much use in proceeding further. However if you really want to know the answer, here's where to find out more:
1. My own exit journal: http://corvus.freeshell.org/corvus_corax/two/life_path/life_path.htm#history
2. The exit journals of hundreds of others:
http://www.exmormon.org/stories.htm
3. Specific exit journals by others I find particularly valuable:
Simon Southerton - http://www.exmormon.org/whylft125.htm
audio form his speech during his 2006 appearance at an exmo conference:
http://www.exmormonfoundation.org/audio2006.html
Additional conference audio files: http://www.exmormonfoundation.org/conference-archive.html
Q. I don't see anyone trying to do this with any other religion.
A. Are you sure? Atheists tend to know the most about religion.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/28/nation/la-na-religion-survey-20100928
http://bigthink.com/videos/reading-the-bible-or-the-koran-or-the-torah-will-make-you-an-atheist
Scientology criticism: http://www.xenu.net/
JW recovery: http://www.watchtowerdocuments.com/jw-sites.html
Unitarian Univeralist recovery: http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-new-creed-of-unitarian-universalism.html
Catholic: http://bishop-accountability.org/
Islam: http://ex-muslim.org.uk
Q. Belief is belief
A. What a person believes in makes a difference. Not all beliefs have equal value. Some beliefs hurt people & destroy lives.
Q. belief in something is better than belief in nothing.
A. We don't believe in "nothing." We just don't believe in Joseph Smith's alien Kolobite god.
http://corvus.freeshell.org/psittacus/three/tract/kolob_tract.htm
Q. Like all religions it is not for everyone
A. Abusive controlling brain washing iron fisted destructive religions should be for no one, ideally.
Q. should remain a personal choice.
A. Children cannot choose. Most children are sucked into the religion of their parents. They don't have the ability to choose. Even adults can be sucked in though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones
Q. If you make the choice to remain a non believer in the LDS religion
A. A non-believer is no longer in the religion.
Q. then you have no right to tear it down.
A. We have EVERY RIGHT (!!!) to speak our mind, and we shall continue to do so. It is a terrible offense and abuse to request that we do otherwise.
Your church did this (among MANY other abuses):
http://web.archive.org/web/20131021180407/http://www.affirmation.org/suicide_info/sin_and_death_in_mormon_country.shtml
"On March 2, 1982, Kip Eliason, age 16, distraught and filled with self-hate over his inability to stop masturbating, committed suicide..."
Good job there, Mrs. Mormon. Good job, Spencer Kimball, Boyd Packer, and parents like you (presumably). You helped Kip stop playing with his "little factory" such that he felt it necessary to kill himself.
More appropriate responses:
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/search/label/boyd%20packer
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/search/label/Spencer%20Kimball
Yes, they couldn't keep their Jesus off my penis. But, there's many other abuses that happen.
Abuses of power. Telling members they cannot question the leaders, and if they do they'll be kicked out. Being kicked out may also be turned out onto the street from your family. Complete exclusion from your own family. And even for more "nice" Mormons it will still mean exclusion from temple marriage ceremonies & other things.
PART-Member family. PART, part, part, part, member family. Which "part" is the good part and which part is the evil part? Which part is the good wing, and which part is the damaged wing that one would be better off cutting off? Member. Non-member. Apostate. Enemy of the Church. And so on.
These are ALL expressions of OUT GROUP morality. Not nice. Not good. Yes fully natural. But best worth discouraging where possible.
Thank goodness for the Internet for increasing all the scope of all of our in-group morality. The 'net is hurting Mormonism & other expressions of destructive out-group morality - and that's a good thing.
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/2012/12/genocide-in-bible-ingroup-outgroup.html
http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker
Q. If you are an inactive member due to some wrong you think you suffered then that is also your choice.
A. When a church leader acts as as an instrument of abuse (which they do by default), is that their choice?
When Joseph Smith slept with a 14 year old & with the wives of other men, was it his choice? Or is it only an even-choice when someone decides they don't like the abuse? A choice that can be easily discounted?
Yes, people use their brains to make decisions. To get away from the abusers, the cult, the brain washing, the control, and to be more free. And that's a good thing.
Q. It doesn't make the religion wrong
A. Yes it does. What else would? History, or revisionist-history? Facts, or just faith-promoting-pseudo-facts? The real life experiences of people, or just those interpreted in a way to never criticize the Mormon Church or it's leaders?
Q. It just makes it wrong for you as an individual.
A. No, not everything is equal. Not everything is relative. Not all churches are of equal value. Not all churches help and/or hurt their followers in the same way.
Q. I am an active member and devout in my beliefs
A. Which is exactly why you're saying what you're saying. Meme set defense mechanisms. Amazing, but very sad. Mormon Brain Software. Yes, I had similar software running in my brain, and I'm quite familiar with how it works. The Church is always right, everything else be damned. Joseph the charismatic charlatan has shown you the way.
Q. It was the right choice for me and my children
A. You are actively abusing your children by allowing them to remain within Mormonism.
Q. and we are happy.
A. Happy in the gilded cage?
Happy in the black & white world of Pleasantville, or the color version? Happy in the dream world of all-encompassing all-encircling Mormonism, or in the real world of reality? Is ignorance bliss? It can be for a time. But in the long term being forcibly ignorant keeps a person's brain & soul in a type of prison.
http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/Redpill
Q. No one really knows if religion is true.
A. We know it isn't. 8 year olds at fast & testimony meeting, and their brain washed parents, know it is.
Q. No one really knows if there is an afterlife.
A. There isn't.
Q. My chosen religion has made me a better person
A. You don't sound like a better person so far.
Q. and has given me a standard in which to live my life.
A. Your standard for living should not come from old farts who want to get your money & keep you down. Humans have built-in morality, instilled by evolution by natural selection, and by the "neck-top" apps given by culture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_chalks_it_up_to_the_blank_slate
your neck-top: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q_mY54hjM0
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXvldBqYjGM
Q. I have peace in it.
A. The peace that comes from ignorance. The peace that comes from ignoring the pain of others. The peace the comes from putting your head in the sand. The peace that comes from letting your children be grilled about masturbation, and putting your children's genitals into the hands of fucking old abusive farts. The peace that comes from forcibly excluding others. The peace that comes from being a cult follower.
Q. Just because you have chosen not to believe doesn't mean the religion is wrong,
A. Are your beliefs falsifiable? If not your brain might be in a box. You need to let it out. Science shows us the way: Criticism & skepticism in the first instance. And then later truth & fact finding after cogent theory development, testing, peer review, and so on. But being willing to trash the ideas of your fellows, in good faith, all in an attempt to find out where the actual truth lies. Are you doing that now? No. Yes your religion is wrong.
Q. or that Joseph Smith (my ancestor) was a bad man.
A. OMG. Were I still a Mormon, I would now be in awe of you.
The progeny of JS has spoken, and is here before us. If you were a man you might be a G.A. today. But because you don't have a penis you're pretty much excluded from any real leadership roles. Damn. If you have some male children maybe they've got a chance.
Does a bad man sleep with a 14 year old and with the wives of other men?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Joseph_Smith%27s_wives
http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/
Q. It is the fastest growing religion in the world
A. No it ain't.
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/09/survey-one-in-five-americans-is-religiously-unaffiliated/?hpt=hp_c1
"...The fastest growing 'religious' group in America is made up of people with no religion at all..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_to_be_the_fastest-growing_religion#Overall_statistics
Damn. Looks like atheism or Islam, depending on which column you choose.
Q. in the Hispanic population
A. Less educated people in Mexico & South America are more easily sucked in.
Q. so there must be something to it.
A. Yes there is. Amway on steroids. A cult. A sink. A whirlpool.
Religion is a natural phenomenon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_the_Spell:_Religion_as_a_Natural_Phenomenon
Q. See it for what it is.......A CHOICE
A. I don't really know why you keep saying choice. Choice this. Choice that.
You don't seem to understand the subtleties or realities of how the human brain works. A brain can be sucked in and held down. When a brain is in Mormonism it engages in meme-set defense & maintenance activities. There's a lot less choice in this process.
While I do believe & maintain we have free will, I can see where Sam Harris is coming from:
Sam Harris's view on free will:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk
Daniel Dennett's response:
http://www.naturalism.org/Dennett_reflections_on_Harris%27s_Free_Will.pdf
or http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/reflections-on-free-will
Harris's response to Dennett's review:
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-marionettes-lament
In any case we have more free will that a petunia or a carrot. Our neural networks are incredibly complex computers which has far more decision-making power than other animals. But we are animals, and built-in traits & proclivities have far more of an influence than many would like to admit.
Humans can be sucked into cults. They are sucked into cults. Children are sucked into the religions of their parents. If a child's parents believe in an abusive religion, then they will probably grow up and become an abuser themselves - unless they come to their senses as they become more psychologically adult, or if they're exposed to enough evidence (personal or otherwise) which finally dislodges them from the abusive-religion meme set.
Q. The ones who feel damaged and destroyed can go their own way and figure out what is best for them.
A. What's best for us is to do exactly what we're doing now.
Trying to help educate people like you about the problems with the cult you're in. Your brain & body have been hijacked, as have the brains & bodies of your children.
Here's a quote from a post I made back in 2012,
at http://www.postmormon.org/exp_e/index.php/discussions/adorations_index.html/viewthread/35772/#561941
Recently I discovered that Miracle of Forgiveness is available at the mobot distribution centers, in several different languages. In each language section they have the BOM, maybe a bible, but always this POS book.
http://www.lds.org/braille/The Miracle of Forgiveness.txt
Very appropriate responses to this book can be found in the form of one star reviews at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Miracle-of-Forgiveness-ebook/product-reviews/B002JQK1VG/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_1?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0
Since the Mormon Church apparently considers this book to still be highly relevant, then every despicable thing Spencer Kimball & Boyd Packer have done relative to negative portrayals of human sexuality to the youth & adults in the church is relevant also.
On oral sex, Spencer wants to get into your bedroom:
http://lds-mormon.com/worthy_letter.shtml
http://lds-mormon.com/worthy_letter1.shtml
On masturbation, Spencer & Boyd both want to have a look:
http://www.zionsbest.com/only.html
http://mormonthink.com/QUOTES/masturbation.htm
Also Spencer really is concerned about "petting" and "heavy petting." Oh my, that f-ing old fart must really have been hyperventilating when he wrote his Miracle of Forgiveness book. Necking. Petting. Heavy Petting. Tell us more Spencer, about all the things you dream about at night but also hate yourself for thinking of.
But people say he was such a nice man. My father has said this, as did my mother who worked as a nurse in the COB. But the guy was really not so nice after all, after you read all hateful the trash he put out.
Here's a related blog post:
Subverting normal human sexuality: Mormon Church's principal crime
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/2012/12/subverting-normal-human-sexuality.html
Anyway, with my new wife seeing the pretty white shirts and the pretty buildings, and with my more recent research into the issue of Kimball's trash book being widely promoted in different languages by the mobot church, I decided to put on youtube a reprise of a song I created some time ago:
We were all just sperm in god's balls, a parody of the song Seeds:
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/2012/12/we-were-all-just-sperm-in-gods-balls.html
And, with Joseph Smith's nutty view of heaven in the form of Kolob, and "Kobol" entering the common consciousness in the form of the much less campy newer Battlestar Galatica version, the following newer song came out of a recent morning shower singing session:
Launch a Mission to Kolob...
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/2012/12/launch-mission-to-kolob-and-blow-place.html
Joseph gets to have a 14 year old wife & wives who are still married to other men.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Joseph_Smith's_wives
Brigham gets a 15 year old & wives still married to other men.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Brigham_Young's_wives
But, Spencer & Boyd really were/are obsessed with that you and your children are up to at home, at night, in the privacy of your bedrooms. What's up with that? And since Spencer's piece of trash book is *very* relevant for the Mormon Church, as per their having it readily available in many different languages at their distribution centers, (and reportedly since it's required reading for new missionaries) it's clear that they are still very interested in transmitting this human spirit destroying set of memes onto everyone they can.
What is up with the Mormon Church & sex? Their horn dog founder created a religion whose god, apparently, has to have an orgasm every 4.6 minutes to create 107 billion people in one million years.
107 billion people may have lived on Earth so far:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097038/Are-really-people-alive-today-lived-Earth.html
...and that number doesn't account for "worlds without end."
Perhaps the Mormon God is rather like a giant space termite:
http://www.termite.com/images/queenking.jpg
...that would be more fitting.
Is your god an alien?
http://corvus.freeshell.org/psittacus/three/tract/kolob_tract.htm
...and yet, now they want to very much control even the mere thought of sex in their members. Why? Because once a person actually allows themselves to be open to the possibility of sex being fun, normal, natural, empowering, and liberating, they can more easily find they have no use for the Mormon God or for the supposedly good feelings you get during Mormon Church meetings or from reading the lies of Joseph in the form of the Mormon scriptures.
The Mormon Church tries to hijack people's basic emotions, and to subvert & control & misinterpret them for their own nefarious ends. Other conservative religions do this also.
In any case I get much better feelings of validation from the love of my wife & new son than I ever got in mostly boring Mormon Church meetings, and from the occasional good feelings they claimed "proved" their church was correct. There's a price to be paid for pretty white shirts and pretty buildings.
If feelings can be used as a form of validation, then that means the much better feelings I've had since leaving mean their lies were incorrect.
----------end of quote
Q. That doesn't mean it isn't good for those of us the religion is working for.
A. It's bad for you even if you think it's good.
Life in Oregon is rather substantially different than life in Provo (unless you live too close to the Portland Temple).
Q. I was a Catholic before I converted to LDS and I wasn't happy but I refuse to bash that religion.
A. Bash away. They need some bashing. Child raping priests? Sounds like a good reason to bash. Have at it!
Q. I have seen no evidence worth my time
A. It was worth your time to write. Is it worth your time to read the responses? If it's not, don't bother complaining in the first place.
Q. I do believe in the church and our prophets, the apostles and the corum of the 70.
A. It's spelled quorum.
Your post is a prime example of why you're not really a happy nor healthy person while being Mormon. Blind ignorance to the life experiences of others. Forcible ignorance to evidence, truth, fact, real history, and so on. You have been abused. You are being abused. And if your children are in the church, they are being abused, for many reasons.
Q. I believe in its teachings and how the church was restored by Joseph Smith.
A. More examples of your abused-status.
Q. All that evidence you talk about is made up and false.
A. More evidence of your being in a cult.
Q. This is a life style for active members, not a hobby or just something we do on Sundays.
A. We know damn well what life is like in the Mormon Church.
Q. We cannot be swayed by false propaganda and 'evidence' written by angry inactives or non-members.
A. More evidence that you're not a nice, happy, or healthy person.
If you want to have a dialogue with people who've left, you can have one, you can have a conversation. But NO we won't shut up at your request. We WON'T stop speaking. We WON'T stop calling out problems with the church of our youth. We WON'T stop trying to free people from the abuse - and that includes trying to free YOU from it.
Sincerely,
Jonathan
April 22, 2014
p.s.
Regarding the process of science & how it works:
"Trashing"
& "tear down" might imply that everything's up for grabs when it
isn't. Yes it's the goal of all reasonable honest scientists to try to
"tear down" existing theories. To disprove them. To show where they're
wrong. But more often than not one theory builds upon another.
Einstein's theories didn't destroy Newton's. It simply built upon the
previous theory, showed where Newton's claims remain valid (for most of
human experience & speeds & viewpoints), and where they fall
apart (eg: close to the speed of light or when next to very massive
objects). Same goes for other new theories, usually. But when a bigger
part of a theory is overturned, we view that with joy, not concern.
Cha-ching - we've now learned MORE about the Universe. Super!
The truth finding method of science is far more powerful because of this. Far more accurate results than other methods.
In science you get ahead by disproving or finding flaws with previous theories - and that is it's power.
Related article by Steven Pinker:
