With the release of the essay concerning Smith's polygamy, we have seen members publicly question their faith; Joseph Smith wasn't who they thought he was. If he is this philandering, polygamist pig, members would probably wonder about his credibility as a leader and what other information is being withheld from them.

All this will subside, no doubt--maybe not this year, but eventually. Missionaries out and about spreading the gospel will have answers to Smith's 40 wives when confronted because they've been taught how to answer these accusations. These essays have built up the LDS' armor its members need when defending their faith in public.

This modicum of transparency hurts Ex-Mo's and makes the church stronger in the long-term.

innoculation

I don't think so. Only those who NEED the church to be true are swallowing the flimsy excuses and limp explanations. To all others, the essays don't pass muster.

What that means is . . .those missionaries won't be able to sell their very tainted product.

And those who don't NEED the church to be true will be disgusted by the lies, half truths and stinky coverups.

In the developed world, religion is having trouble keeping it's members. The LDS church is doubly so.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2014 11:54AM by Devoted Exmo.

I agree. The polygamy essay doesn't provide ANY explanations...it's just TSCC airing their dirty laundry. How does the essay help? An investigator might do their research and ask the missionaries why Joe illegally practiced polygamy, why he did it behind his wife's back, why he married already married men, etc..., but the missionaries still have no explanations. All they can say is, "Our church wrote an essay on this in 2014...it acknowledges all of these things..." What would any sane investigator say?..."Man, I was really hoping those were lies...you seemed like such nice guys/gals...you seriously believe that f'd up $#!+?"

"...why he married already married men..."

Should be "...already married women...", though nothing would surprise me about Joe at this point.

I have read that men were sealed to men in some eternal brotherhood kind of thing, but I have no reference for it. People have mentioned it before as a kind of precedent for gay marriage in the temple, along with women having the power to give blessings as precedent for women getting priesthood.

I'm not sure it will. The fact the church is making excuses for and condoning the pervert's actions is and should not sit well with people.

I was thinking I was fortunate to find out about Joseph Smith's plural wives on my own (reading anti material) while the church was still denying it. I think it made it easier to see the church was full of lies.

Now, I agree with OP and think that it will be easier for active members to do the mental gymnastics and stay in the church.

With the church saying "it was there all the time and you just didn't look" members will feel the need to just go along, not wanting to expose their ignorance.

As long as the church uses these "essays" to show its own people that they no longer have to excommunicate and shun people for talking about those topics, then they can have that point. Until then, no score.

Leaving the church over information can be very heartbreaking, but the main need for Recovery comes from the abuses of the "faithful" heaped upon doubting friends, neighbors, children and parents. At least, that's what the most painful posts suggest.

LDSism currently and historically teaches that the scoring system gives points to those who successfully shame people into compliance.

Absolutely 100% disagree with OP.

These essays are gateways drugs.

They will cause TBMs to look more deeply into the cesspool that is LDS history. They will open avenues of research most members NEVER ventured down before.

Times have changed, dramatically, and the polygamous flings of JS are HORRIBLY weird to the youth of today.

Also, who is going to be a NEW convert to this festering den of corruption now that the truth is out?

Make no mistake, they HAD to publish these, and they knew for 180 years that it was best to suppress info when they could. Now they can't. So yes, fewer already brainwashed TBMs will now accuse them of lying, but they know now things they never did before.

I think it is delusional to think that the dissemination of information actually HELPS the LDS cause. Darkness and secrecy has been their only refuge.

Don't hurt this exmo in the slightest....I don't care about the church, or JS and who he banged, or didn't or BY or the gang of thugs running it now...haven't for 50 years...

Ron Burr

For some members it is easier to come up with explanations and justifiable scenarios for the shortcomings of the founders of TSCC than to abandon the basis upon which they have built their entire ethos, social structure, and virtually their entire lives upon.

Mormons used to just toss it off as anti-mormon lies. Now they have to accept those ugly facts, and spin them. My two cents is that it just became a lot more difficult to stay mormon... or at least to be proud to be one. Mormons may try to dismiss the facts flippantly; others won't be so accepting.

So, mormons out there... hey, when you walk into that staff lounge at work, your co-workers are probably snickering behind your back.

I see it drawing an even more definitive line between being mormon and not.

Mormons just say it's not their place to judge Smith's actions. And we don't know all the details etc. etc. I know this cause i just had to read something from my sis-in-law who said this, when i sent her the link from a thread yesturday where a counsellor to girls tells how this kind of thing would have fucked up poor helen as her mind/ body was not ready at 14 to be married to an almost 40 yr old.

We all say eww, to flds doing this kind of stuff, but it's perfectly ok for Smith to do it cause he's dead now so we cant judge him.

But i made the same excuses when ifirst heard this info years ago. I didn't want to deal with it either. It wasn't affecting my life at the time. But then i was also told that people could come to america in wooden submarines with everything tumbling around and around for a year. So my BS detector was broken. Like most church members's BS detectors.

I do not agree.

It makes the subject current, sourced to LDS.org and is a half-truth at best, any any percentage of Truth is not a good idea for a religion that demands Truth from lowly membership and the even lowlier Gentiles.

This score is only correct in a world where integrity has no value, i.e. the world of Mormonism.

The essay's existence confirms that the Mormon church has been less than honest to the world in general and its members in particular. The essay's content confirms that they continue to lie.

Maybe "strike two" would be more appropriate.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2014 01:17PM by rt.

One of the most important things to remember when dealing with TBMs is that they really do believe that they are having the utmost Integrity in all that they do. Why its obvious that in the real world they don't have really Integrity is because we see that they are living in a bubble of delusion where the central law of the universe is Obedience to the bubble, not Truth.

On occasion the shelves they keep in their bubble collapses and then may tear a hole in the bubble that causes them to think "hmmm this is a bubble and not the real foundation of the universe" .... and then they become like us, former TBM. On occasion they can have their shelf collapse without tearing the bubble or them pretending that the tear they saw wasn't some bubble. Thus they are able to continue to "think inside the box" and stay TBM.

Objective surveys show that Mormonism has remained at about 1.4% of the US population for decades. Given their bigger birth rate, that means growth is truly over for them except in third world countries. The essays just put the final nail in the coffin.

Things like polygamy will continue to create cognitive dissonance. Some will continue to succumb. Every time a new 'Bill Cosby' type scandal erupts, it'll be a problem for those with any functioning brain cells.

In the long run, I think it will only hurt the church and make it less and less relevant to real life.

I think the essays change everything because it changes the unstated rules about debating the religion. It shifts the burden from those who rejected Mormonism to have to explain why, and puts it on those who continue to follow Mormonism, notwithstanding the fact that the supposed prophet is a serial child molester and adulterer.

EG: My uber TBM ex-girlfriend used to confidently tell me all the time that anything that caused any doubt about Joseph Smith’s veracity was just anti-mormon lies. Now she does not want to talk about it. (And the reason she does not want to talk about it is because she knows she cannot find any justification for what he did.) It might not seem like it but that is huge in the scheme of things.

Wow. That's a very good point! And one that I'd not been quite able to put my finger on, but you're so right. It has shifted the burden completely!

Thank you Devoted Exmo! It is nice to see someone here agree with me. It is so uncommon!

This atheist thinks that your second paragraph, especially, is very sharply drawn and insightful. In light of that, the conclusions in your first paragraph make a lot of sense.

See what I mean? I guess my screen name must cause the atheists on this board (easily the majority opinion espoused here) to see red. Such is life for a Christian on the RFM Recovery Board. Phhhht!

Methinks you chose your screen name for a reason, CB.

If your intial statment was not sarcasm then I apologize. I suppose I could not believe I would get two real compliments in one day at RFM?

Ah, common....this is where the real miracles happen!

Our goal is to gain freedom to live as we choose. Leaving the morg and recovering is what we're about.

Anything else is gravy.

LDS Inc. put out some of the facts. They have not even begun to deal with the implications of those facts.

One small point often overlooked is the small matter of trust. Most Mormons have in the past maintained an absolute trust in their leaders. Many of them will now see, through the medium of the essays, that that the men at the top were not worthy of their trust and things will never be the same for them again.

All it takes is the simplest of thought.

Nothing more than a "what else don't I know" type of thought.

In that microsecond the truth is known to the thinker, but it might take a while longer for it to all coalesce.

Someone is a little delusional if they think this hurts exmo's, it only makes the church look more and more cult like. Sure the TBMs might not care about their pervy prophet but the rest of the world outside of the cult now has proof that mormons are freaks.

"Leaving the church over information can be very heartbreaking, but the main need for Recovery comes from the abuses of the "faithful" heaped upon doubting friends, neighbors, children and parents. At least, that's what the most painful posts suggest.

LDSism currently and historically teaches that the scoring system gives points to those who successfully shame people into compliance."

+1 to that, and everything else said on this thread! Truth and light will eventually destroy the black mold that hides covered up with lies, in the dank cellars of deception. Beware what dwells in Mormon food-storage basements, and in the hearts of the 15 geezers and in those unpublished financials. Someday, the sun will shine in and kill it all.

I haven't read them. I'll bet less than 5% of TBMs have read them. I read the New York Times article about JS where they had a few quotes and highlights from the articles, but they're long and boring. On purpose.

See? We've addressed all the issues. Now pay your tithing and go back to sleep.

All I can conclude from watching my TBM relatives squirm for a few days and then get over it by justifying it and testifying that none of this matters, is that LDS survived the worst of the essay storm, at least for existing members. Potential converts will ask if it's true that JS was a perv and when they learn that it is, they'll run away as fast as they can. But isn't that really the goal of the essays anyway? Keep the members you do have and put on a show of an army of missionaries trying to convert the world.

To me the essays seem to help Ex-Mo's and harm the LDS church. An official essay that talks about Joseph Smith being a bigamist, adulterer, and statutory rapist, can cause severe cognitive dissonance with a member who had always thought Joseph Smith was a great guy.

When I was in the church, I was not comfortable with polygamy. If my gospel doctrine teacher had sent me to go read the essay, it might have driven me out of the church then and there.