It took me a few years of researching and dedication of time and energy to discovering the truth about Mormonism. As a lifelong member born in the church, returned missionary and married in the temple, it was very difficult to let go.

However, even though it took me about 3 years from when I started doubting to realizing for sure that the LDS church was not true, I turned to Christianity in hopes of finding the "real Jesus". So, I started reading the Bible. I was hopeful that I would find answers to what I was looking for. It didn't take long for me to realize that I was fundamentally approaching it the wrong way. Instead of coming from the assumption that the Bible is true and going from there, I thought what if the Bible was not true? It simply made more sense from that perspective.

I simply applied the exact line of reasoning that led me to realize that Mormonism is false to Christianity, and I came to the same conclusion.

There is no credible evidence to support the Book of Mormon, or any of the fantastical stories in the Bible. Garden of Eden? Never happened. Noah's flood? Complete nonsense. 6,000 year old earth? Laughable.

So it took me about 3 years to realize Mormonism was wrong, and about 6 months from there to come to the same realization with Christianity.

I eventually deconstructed the Bible as I had the Book of Mormon. Its a great piece of literature and shows what people in the Bronze and Iron ages believed but that is about it.

My belief in Jesus/Bible went away at the same time as my belief in Mormonism did. I saw the same problems and there were too many things that didn't make sense. I had an even harder time believing in the stories of the Old Testament than I did with the BoM or other Mormon scriptures. I had a hard time just "trusting" that it was all correct and from God. I sincerely tried to believe in Jesus but it was to no avail. In fact I remember praying on mission as my belief in Mormonism was failing, Jesus are you out there? Even if Mormonism is not true, I still accept you as my Lord and Savior. I prayed like this for several weeks and NOTHING. I did not receive any kind of spiritual experience or witness. After a certain point I just had to accept the fact that I didn't know if God really existed.

i had been studying to strengthen my testimony & one day out of the blue it dawned on me how stupid the whole jesus story was. that someone was "immaculately" conceived, was killed for the sins of millions yet to be born..it was silly and made no sense.

http://www.irreligion.org/2009/08/06/tada/

it really was just like this, like a "ta dah moment."

I did the same thing as other posters have said. Christianity fell apart within a couple years of Mormonism though I really wanted Christianity, or Christ, to be true.

I've come to a place now where I don't believe in the literal Jesus Christ being God. But I believe that if there is a God, God would have all the characteristics of Christ. That Christ is true in the sense only that it represents the true nature of God (the love, the healing, the release without the human sacrifice).

I'm also believing currently that God exists but is not something human beings can comprehend. Along the lines of the principle of emergence--that perception of some things are only possible when sufficient complexity and sophistication is present. The human mind lacks the necessary complexity to even begin to perceive a resemblance of what God is. That would account for me for the reason God is so invisible to us, so out of our reach in terms of seeing and knowing. No one knows because we lack the brain structure to get even close. But ultimately, I think God exists in a form outside our comprehension.

But I'm being good anyway, because it feels right.

...that there was a historical man named Jesus, who was an itinerant teacher in Galilee approximately two thousand years ago.

I also believe that there were many stories that were overlaid onto his in the process of turning him into the Christ. For instance, my university professor said that there were many "virgin birth" myths in the middle east at the time of Jesus's existance. A light bulb went on in my mind and I realized that the story of a virgin giving birth to Jesus was mythological in origin.

I think that the "Garden of Eden" story is our origins myth. It's our way of talking about what it was like to evolve into a self-aware, higher-order thinking species capable of making moral choices. Partaking of the apple represents our loss of unthinking innocence, a necessary step in our evolution. There may also have been a physical reference to a time when the African climate changed from a lush, green jungle into a hotter and drier environment. I think as a species, in recounting this story, we remember a time when things were less complicated and happier. Rather like how people often happily recall events in their childhood.

I agree. And for anyone interested in taking a free online class on the History of Jesus go to iTunesU and looks for Stanford University's class by Thomas Sheehan called History of Jesus. Its very good.

That there is not one historical account of any person named Jesus Christ documented in any of the histories penned by the local historians of the time? You find not one mention of anyone by that name, or of any of the fantastical events that supposedly accompanied that fictional person called Jesus Christ.

You can find documented entries of many people talked about in history but not one, save a fraudulent entry at around 300 AC by a Catholic Priest, entry of any person called by that name or of any of the supposed events that happened. You would think that if he was teaching and drawing huge crowds of people to listen to him there would be some entry in one of the histories since they talk about mundane things like minor disturbances or crimes, but there is not one mention of any of the events that supposedly transpired during the fictional life of the myth called Jesus Christ.

Sorry but when I left mormonism I looked at the rest of organized religion with the same logic and it all fell apart for me. In fact, despite the fact that the Bible is written about a land that is still in existence today, evidence of biblical accounts are near impossible to come by as well. You will find biblical scholars who claim that there is wide evidence of the proof of Bible accounts, but in reality if you look at research that has been conducted by impartial archeologists you will soon find that pretty much everything in the entire Bible is fictional.

So no I didn't turn to Christ because for me all organized religion crumbles when you look at it through eyes that have been opened and are no longer colored by the brainwashing instilled by the religions themselves.

But yes, I have also wondered at the total lack of any public record concerning the miraculous opening of graves and the dead arising.

Matthew 27:52

My critical examination of Mormonism, helped me critically examine the claims of Christianity. I have come to the same conclusions.

happycat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My critical examination of Mormonism, helped me
> critically examine the claims of Christianity. I
> have come to the same conclusions.

exactly

Why would a heroin addict, who gets clean, willingly become an alcoholic

No, I didn't go that route. As soon as I was done destroying the Book of Mormon, my mind instantly went, "Well what does this mean for the Bible? Would I find the same problems?" and so I continued to study everything I could get my hands on and decided that every belief on Earth is simply a man-made organization, each with their own interpretation of what God is.

I had doubted that there is a god from the time I was 7 years old. The only hook I had was the Mormon church's assertions that Smith had seen God and Jesus. The basic Mormon testimony is that (1) The Book of Mormon is true, (2) Joseph Smith is a prophet and (3) the Mormon church is true. There's nothing about Jesus anywhere in that. Jesus is a secondary belief in the Mormon church that exists only when the primary beliefs exist.

So, once I no longer had a testimony of the primary beliefs of Mormonism, I no longer believed in god since I had no reason to believe in such a thing.

Here's another thing. I've always been puzzled by what Christians have told me. When I was a Mormon, Christians always said that Mormons aren't Christian for various reasons and I think they're right about that. The things that the Jesus of the Bible taught is anathema to the corporate Jesus of works that I knew in the Mormon church. BUT THEN after I left the Church, they would say "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water." Ehh? What baby? I thought we were all in agreement that Mormonism isn't Christian. So, why would Christianity be any sort of fallback? You can't have it both ways. Either Mormonism is Christian, or it isn't. I think that it isn't, and while I investigated Christianity after leaving the Mormon church, I did not become a Christian as it never had any appeal to me as a belief system.

I learned that Christianity is just as problematic, if not more, than mormonism.

It served as a crutch until I realized that morals and ethics don't come from a god (or gods). In fact the god of the bible is one of the most immoral and unethical creations out there. And to say, "that's ok, he's god" is a logical fallacy of special pleading. How could one say this and used the adjective of 'all loving' at the same time for a being like this?

It was a pretty easy to start realizing that the whole christianity thing was just as ridiculous as the BofM, etc. While I consider myself agnostic because there may be some higher power, I no longer believe the bible either. There are plenty of fanatical christians around who are just as toxic as LDS.

From the age of Primary, we heard time and time again that the bible was full of errors, and that the apostate christianity had almost no idea what they were talking about. I was raised to believe that all scriptural matters must be weighed and measured by the Book of Mormon.

One of the discrepencies that I struggled with during my time as a TBM was that spiritual experiences seemed to be subject to church approval, and that they could not be valid unless you were "worthy" to have them, and that depended on how strict of a pharisee you were, which Jesus condemned most strenuously.

Part of that discrepency is rooted in my reactivation into the church, and the testimony of the power of God and redemption that came through that experience. And I was not alone- I had known two other people who had found God and had made remarkable changes in their lives and were never members of the church, but still much more spiritual than I judged myself to be. Yet they were lost and deluded...right?

It was when I was ordained a High Priest that I began to seriously question what I believed. The biggest problem was that as a member of the Bishopric there are a lot of opportunities to give spiritual counsel, but the guidance I was expected to give ran counter to my deepest and most basic beliefs. And so it was that the harder I tried, the more confused my faith became. After all, only the church is true and controls all facets of the ministration of the spirit (despite personal experience).

It wasn't until I left the church that I began to realize that it was because the church hijacks a persons faith and replaces it with covenants to serve the church for the sake of the church, and that keeping the temple as our focal point removes Jesus entirely from the picture. Faith in God is replaced with determination to endure everything the church sees fit to inflict upon its children.

In fact, the times that I have felt the spirit the most, has been outside of the church. Before my wife converted I went a couple times to her church and the spirit I felt there was something I will never forget. It became somewhat of a measuring stick against which I've measured my spiritual experiences in the LDS church and always always came up short (including the culminating event in our lives, the temple).

Despite the pain and confusion of realizing that the church of my life was false, leaving it has been the cause for my faith in Christ to grow dramatically, and it has become okay to openly believe the things I always had to keep under guard.

One time I said to my dad, well you're a Christian, and he replied "no, we're mormons".

Nobody could have explained it more clearly...

With all my heart

There are 2 ways to connect with belief in Jesus, study and faith/prayer. Jesus claims to have done 2 things for us, saving us from sin and from death. He either will give us the resurrection or he won't. He either will have atoned for the sins of the repentant or he didn't.

Yes people can have misguided faith. They can also come to wrong conclusions to special experiences. But that doesn't mean that faith is bad. The world runs on faith. Businesses run on faith, marriages, schooling, even sports. We analyse, we have faith and we do.

Those that seek Jesus will find him. I have, mainly through prayer. Then he tests our faith. If we all saw him, we wouldn't need faith, and we wouldn't bond with Him. It would be an external connection, rather than an internal/emotional/spiritual connection.

I don't see how the lemon of all religions called mormonism would turn me away from my faith in Jesus. Mormonism is a cult of the pharisees, intermixed with Christianity. I just chose to through out the pharisee religion.

Please don't take this as an attack to the poster but as a set of statements to think about and questions.

6 iron Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There are 2 ways to connect with belief in Jesus,
> study and faith/prayer. Jesus claims to have done
> 2 things for us, saving us from sin and from
> death. He either will give us the resurrection or
> he won't. He either will have atoned for the sins
> of the repentant or he didn't.

It wasn't Jesus who made the claims but Paul and the Gospel writers. As Sheehan quite succinctly shows in the ItunesU class the Jesus of Paul is very different from the Yeshua of Galilee.

>
> Yes people can have misguided faith. They can also
> come to wrong conclusions to special experiences.
> But that doesn't mean that faith is bad. The world
> runs on faith. Businesses run on faith, marriages,
> schooling, even sports. We analyse, we have faith
> and we do.

There are many that will disagree with your version of faith. But I agree, people may have misguided faith. Many have faith in the Mormon profit. How many would lay their life down for Monson?


>
> Those that seek Jesus will find him. I have,
> mainly through prayer. Then he tests our faith. If
> we all saw him, we wouldn't need faith, and we
> wouldn't bond with Him. It would be an external
> connection, rather than an
> internal/emotional/spiritual connection.

Yeshua of Galilee died. He was crucified because he was a revolutionary and was a threat to the stability of the temple which brought in money for Rome. Paul created the Christ figure. He never taught from Yeshua's teachings because he never sat at the master's feet.

Why do I need a savior? Really why? As a parent I would not look at one of my children and say, sorry but you have to die becuase the others are being naughty. If there is a God he created us the way we are. How can he be all powerful if he either one, couldn't create us not to be naughty or two could not simply forgive us? Is God like the Mormon mother in the news that made her young child put hot sauce in his mouth and hold it there and take cold showers when he mis-behaved? To me, a God like that does not deserve my respect. As a father I would still accept my children no matter what they did. I might not be terribly happy with their decisions, but those are their decisions and their growing experience.


>
> I don't see how the lemon of all religions called
> mormonism would turn me away from my faith in
> Jesus. Mormonism is a cult of the pharisees,
> intermixed with Christianity. I just chose to
> through out the pharisee religion.

Actually Yeshua of Galilee, who you call Jesus, was a pharisee or at least taught in the Pharisaical tradition. If you compare Yeshua's teachings to those of Rabbi Hillel who lived just prior to Yeshua you will see a very close comparison of theology, teaching styles and belief. It was the Gospel writers and Paul who created the Christ figure. If you look at the Gospels, and compare Paul's teachings against the teachings of "Jesus" you will see that Paul teaches a very different message. You will also see a progression in the Gospels from Mark who really does not talk about the divinity to John who is all about the divinity of Jesus.

It was getting to these types of nuts and bolts of Christianity and comparing the Hebrew of the Tanakh (Old Testament) to the Greek and English versions and then in studying the foundations and evolution of Christianity that convinced me it was all made up by man.

I do not need a savior to pay for my sins. I will be responsible for my own acts. If God cannot accept me and my mistakes then he can pound salt (up his a$$ with a hammer). As Aurelius said:

‘Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.’

Let's assume that the Christian philosophy of eternal life is real.

My interpretation of sin is harming another person. Let's use the example of a violent rapist. He thinks he got away with it, but in the post earth life, he didn't. Jesus knows everything that goes on. The victim will demand justice. If the rapist didn't repent, make restitution etc.. then he will have a bright recollection of his guilt and will feel in equisite detail all the grief and harm he caused another. You cannot escape it. Terrors will come upon the unrepentant, by the magnification of their guilt. You can't enter the presence of Jesus with guilt.

I have had a taste of what the glory of Jesus feels like. If Jesus came to this earth in his glory, we would vaporize or something. But we have this earth time to correct ourselves and try to improve and with the atonement we can be forgiven.

Jesus was much more forgiving of the sinners than the scribes and pharisees. The latter were hard hearted and pretty almost beyond redemption. He would attack their puffed up, prideful behaviour often and intensily. I see mormonism about performance and punishment over many many stupid mormon rules. I can see why mormonism turns people away from Christianity. Christianity is about love, mormonism is about a whole lot of nonsense. Jesus, who was half Jewish and half God, loved humanity so much that he was willing to suffer and die for us. But he only atoned for those that repent and use his atonement. The rest will have to suffer as he did. The victims will demand it of Him. Just like victims demand justice on earth.

Nope. I turned to Oenophilia and FSM.

True story.

Ron

Nope. I had had enough of religion. I always had the attitude even as a TBM that beliefs were a very private matter. I didn't share my true beliefs with anyone. I didn't bear my testimony. I wouldn't even pray in meetings, although I did teach lessons when pressed into labor.

I hated going to church. There was no way I was going to sign up for more.

I really don't have a clue what I believe as there is no proof. I tend to focus more now on family--even though my family is flawed in so many ways. Losing my parents changed everything for me. My connections to them and my children are what give my life meaning.

Someone quite a while back did a very interesting survey on here. He or she asked the question " Were you, now an exmo, BIC, or a convert to mo'ism, and having left now, have you turned to a Christian church of some kind?

It was very interesting that at least 95% of those that stayed with Jesus, turned to a Christian religion, had been converts.

BIC mormons had let the entire thing go, had no desire for any church or belief in Chris, same percentage.

Maybe we should run that survey here again, ask the same question and see what turns up. I just found it very interesting. I am a BIC mormon, and though I tried to keep believing in Jesus, within a few months I realized Mo'ism had ruined me for God.

I held onto the Christianity myth for about a year and a half after I confronted my doubts about the mormon myths. After copious amounts of study and reading, I realized it was all a myth.

No, at least not in the sense of joining another church. After leaving LDSinc. I'm leary of clubs. I've become unclubbable in fact, in the Samuel Johnson sense of the word.

I did, however, grow curious about our inherited Western Heritage. Consequently, my understanding of and appreciation for Christianity and "the Bible" significantly deepened.

In the end poetry become my book and my religion.

Human

I applied the same reasoning to Christianity, the bible, and religion in general that I did to mormonism. I learned that it's all fabricated.

TG

I know of three ways to gain knowledge:

First and foremost is what my physical senses (sight, hearing, feel, taste, smell) tell me.

Second is what science tells me. The scientific method is used by scientists to investigate the universe and everything in it. Sometimes science makes errors, but it tends to be self correcting over time. When science tells me that an atomic bomb works due to certain physical laws, I believe it.

Third is what religion tells me. Religion is based on unverifiable magic. Anybody can invent their own version of religious magic and try to sell it to the world. But it can never be verified or proven to be correct. There are about 1400 active Christian sects/churches in North America. Which of those is the "true" one?

I believe and trust my own senses. I believe in science. I think that religion is worthless nonsense. I will only believe in "God" if he/she/it visits me in person and I can videotape the encounter, or if science can somehow prove that God exists. Otherwise the whole idea of God is magical nonsense.

It was the above reasoning and logic that got me out of the Mormon church at age 17. So I clearly had no further interest in Christianity or any other religion.

Comparing the NT to Mormonism is what fist helped me start really question Mormonism. After I left, I wanted to find a group of people who were, what I considered at the time, real Christians that I could be a part of.

After attending some different churches and reading the Bible for a few months, I realized Christianity and the Bible had the same problems that I found with Mormonism and the BoM. Going completely Atheist is the only thing that made sense in my mind.

some eastern religions.. I have problems with all of it...

I'm not an athiest- I just plain don't CARE anymore.

When the scales tipped against Mormonism, after almost 60 years, due to my really studying Mormon history and I eased myself out, I took a short break to decide what I really believed in.

I searched the internet for information about other religions looking for someone who, accepted (as equals) Blacks and gays, and ordained women, and did not have any hate issues or weird beliefs .

I finally located a local United Methodist church that was just what I thought a Christian church should be like. They are loving, accepting, and have a doctrine of love.

I was accepted the first day and felt right at home. I now look forward to going to church. They are Christ centered where it is more important to be a good Christian than to be a good member.

I am not anti-Mormon nor do I ever argue with members, but the longer I am out, the more the LDS Church looks like a cult and the doctrines on polygamy, Blacks, The rights of Women, and the issues of Homosexuals look like issues to divide the members from any truly Christian belief.

So, extricate yourself if that is best for you but give Christ a chance.

That so many ex-mormons are not Christians is excellent evidence of the fact that mormonism is not just another sect of the Christian faith. It seems very common that if belief in the mormon church (as the one true church) ends, then all belief ends. Not so for Catholics, Protestants, non-denominational Christians. etc. In those faiths the belief is still centered on Jesus, not a church or church community. Hence, if you become disillusioned with the "church" you are in it RARELY results in a complete loss of faith.

In my case, I was reared in the Catholic faith, went to a non-denominational church for years, but now I attend a Presbyterian church, They actually have far more in common with each other than any of them do with mormonism.

Actually, the problems with Old Testament stories were a major reason I started questioning religion in general. Mormonism and Christianity fell together.

“For seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm.”

Yes. The least I would expect of the only true faith on this planet is to improve humanity and do no harm.


Christianity has certainly done more harm than good. Its' history is full of crimes and cruelties - it may give hope and concilation to individuals confronting mortality, but any belief system could do that.


If someone could come up with a system assuring me absolutely that when I die I get to go to Oz and be immortal with Dorothy, Toto, and the Princess Ozma. And will meet every being I have ever loved or admired there too.....sign me up!!!

Eccentric Eclectic: I'm a little bit: agnostic/atheist/humanist/skeptic -- that about sums it up.