They're both crazy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2012 05:18PM by mondaymorning.

Really both of them are salesmen's religions, because they demand that members go out and try to convert people. In Mormonism it's mandatory for young men to do it; Christian Fundamentalism makes it more like a hobby, which is why you see more elderly Bible bangers out there tracting (i.e, sticking pamphlets of windshields or front doors.)

I'm continually amazed at people who will give up one box for another.

I'm amazed at the amount of people that have no belief at all around here. And I'm what you call a never-mo. Only reason I started snooping around this site is because my neighbors have been trying to get me to join.

Why does that amaze you?

No offense, but that is because you are a nevermo

When you are a mormon, you work constantly towards perfection, which you are constantly reminded is not obtainable, but that you better keep trying. You go to church every day. You wear crazy underwear. You are treated like a 2nd class citizen if you're a married woman with a million kids and much worse if you aren't, are gay, black, or think very much. But you live with it... THEN you find out that it is all a sham and your suffering is for nothing. So you decide to leave... THEN your family abandons you because you left and they accuse you of being sinful.

THAT is why there isn't a whole lot of belief around here. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice???

No offense suzanne, but I don't see how that would destroy someone's faith. It seems to me like you would realize that Christ loves EVERYONE. No complete unbelief in Christ.

But like you said I am nevermo, so I can't begin to understand it.

Christ loves everyone, if he even existed.

If you look at the NT, you will see Christ does not love everyone. His love is actually conditional and rather controlling. If you do NOT accept him, you don't get eternal life.

Think about that. It's really creepy. He will save you only if you do what he says and accept him. It will be death for us who simply don't see enough evidence to believe in what he says.

I'm really annoyed by the "Jesus loves you" attitude. It tells me either the person hasn't read the Bible or cherry picks the puppies and rainbows from it.

I would rather serve in Heaven than reign in Hell if its all the same to you.

You are just as brainwashed as any Mormon.

For what it is worth, I would stand up to a cruel or unjust god if he punished you for simply not believing.

Maybe my standards are higher than the ones in the Bible. That's one reason I don't believe. The behavior of God throughout the Bible is exactly what I would expect from regular people with human ideas about serving and reigning. Ask yourself why it is OK with you for God to send people to hell. Maybe you fear a god and will play along with anything He says.

Holy crap dude, if a god that supposedly loves you is going to throw you in hell for using the brain he gave you, then what kind of god is that?

But I thought you were the nearest god there ever was? Wait, I'm confused?

I'll love you, as long as you keep your sceptre away :)

A God that the good book says that is loving AND vengeful. Or so I have been told.

You are quite impossible...

You said it best, you can't undo what you have been taught all your life. Like I said, I came here to find out if this LDS stuff was worth my time. Clearly it is not.

No offense taken :)

I was just trying to explain why I think a lot of people run from anything having to do with religion after their experience with Mormonism.

Faith in someone or something that you can see is difficult enough in the best circumstances. When the religion you cherished for your whole life turns out to be an abusive fraud, it makes unbelief see much healthier and safer.

Hmm, trading one form of irrational, unquestioning, obedience-oriented, easy-answers, "Us vs. Them" fundamentalism for another. Different stripes, but still a tiger.

I prefer seeking and questioning with hefty doses of humility and openness. I might have faith in religious concepts that are difficult to articulate given our culture (loosely termed 'sacred' or 'God' oriented thoughts) but I'll never pretend it's a whole-cloth substitute for continual learning that seeks to ground one's existence in compassion and wonder at what it means to be human, warts and glories and all.

It's the kind of approach that clearly sees the sacred in various intimate human moments, and refuses to divorce itself from the hard realities of how we know the world unfolds.

I like to call it a religious love affair with scientific knowledge: the universe is glorious, knowable and yet still inscrutable. Quantum mechanics, chaos theory, mathematical/theoretical biology, parallel universes, anyone? The same thoughts I have for all of these, I apply to my cultural construct of God. I find comfort, amazement, challenges, stimulation and deep meaning in all of these, and have been able to hold much of these in equal awe in my life: scientific knowledge, the awesome power and evolution of the human brain, our uniquely human ability to tell our reality through story, legend, metaphor, and myth, and what God might mean to any, all, or just some of us.

There are no easy answers, and perhaps this is the real cause for my deeper moments of fear and trembling: an appropriate response before things that are greater than me by orders of magnitude.

A born-again Christian does not have to be a creationist or take everything in the Bible literally. Unlike mormonism which has to accept the Tower of Babel as literal (because of the Jaredites), a BAC does not. How does at TBM mormon feel about a literal Adam? A BAC can take it as not literal. A BAC may believe in evolution, etc. The critical charistic of a BAC is the belief that, through baptism, they have a rebirth. Hence, in at least a figurative sense, they are born again.

The doctrine is, in fact, of general Christianity including almost all of protestantism and Catholicism. I think most of the posters have concluded that to be BOA makes someone, by definition, part of a fringe group.

Agreed. Jimmy Carter is a born again Christian. He believes in evolution,science, separation of church and state, equal rights and so on. Not all BACs are fundamentalist nutjobs.

Don't forget that in all those ways, Jimmy Carter is 1 in 100,000,000, plus this: he has ten times the I.Q. of your average BAC.

Don't give them any more credit than they're due.

I doubt he is the only one out there. BAC doesn't necessarily mean Fundie and ultraconservative. Methinks you are stereotyping.Francis Collins who is head of th GEnome Project and who discovered the Cystic Fibrosis gene is also born again. He isa well respected scientist who believes in evolution too.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2012 10:32PM by bona dea.

You can stop now. I'm not going to hold my breath hoping you'll redeem all of them, or even a majority. LOL!

There are many BACs who are very liberal, science and evolution believing, pro-choice, pro gay rights, etc., etc., who do not take Biblical stories literally. They believe in God, Christ, and His teachings, and that's about it. They see fundamentalists as an embarrassment, at best, and as ignorant, hateful and bigoted at their worst.

I'm one of those, and have known many others like me. The term "born again" is often simply used to signify that one is nondenominational. At the ND church I used to attend, we were told that the term "born again" simply means that one has been baptised when one is old enough to understand and consciously make the descision to accept Christ, as opposed to an infant or childhood baptism; hence, a spiritual rebirth.

Unfortunately, since liberal BACs aren't the ones making all the noise, like the fundies do, it's easy to see why people hear the term BAC and immediately assign that stereotype, but you really shouldn't broadbrush.

There are many TBMs who are very liberal, science and evolution believing, pro-choice, pro gay rights, etc., etc., who do not take BOM stories literally.

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By many, do you mean 10, 100, or 1000?

I remember on my mission, we would ridicule pastors of other churches because we felt it was a money grab. They would attempt to bring in religious celebs, or popular speakers amongst their faith in the hope of increasing attendance to increase donation revenue.

It was merely a cash grab.

All the meanwhile us preaching tithing tithing tithing! to the locals.

To N/A. Mormonism is a Cult that controls every one of your thoughts, or at least tries to. In order to escape you have to learn to think rationally about what you are being told. It's a skill. You then take that same skill and apply it to traditional religion, and your discover an interesting thing, it doesn't hold up.

At first this hurts, but then you realize it doesn't matter. As the faith of my ancestors, I will always have a warm special place in my heart for it, but I will not turn a blind eye to its darker side, nor pass up a chance to laugh at how silly it all is.

Mormonism started off as just another Evangelical religion. An Evangelical preacher has got to have a gimmick that sets him apart from all the other crazy preachers. Joe Smith found his in the form of a gold bible. Things then kind of got out of control from there.

I am a BAC who is not a fundamentalist or any of the other stereotypical labels assigned to Christians. If you live in the deep South and you're a Christian, you're viewed as a red-neck, fundamentalist, narrow, bigoted, etc.)

On a thread some time ago, there was a comment:
"unless one was raised LDS, a never-mo can't imagine the conditioning, brainwashing, etc." I got the hint, I'm on your turf, and as a nevermo, my opinion doesn't matter as much. Here's my point. If you watch TBN, one could get a skewed view of these Protestant preachers. I know I would, some of them appear ignorant, over-the-top, crazy and money hungry. Sorry, none of those people converted me. And, I wonder if they actually convert anyone because I would be running the other way. That said, maybe one gets their view of Protestant preachers from these tv preachers.

I go to two of the largest churches in my area, both preachers are well-respected, neither one has a gimmick. I

If I don't appear at one church for a while, I don't have phone calls or people dropping by to see how I'm doing or concerned that I haven't shown up. Plus, I don't have to give 10% of my income to the church. That's always been a silly point with me, like having to buy one's salvation via tithes. Not making fun, but the proof is there, you don't get a recommend!

I dated an ex-mo for awhile. Poor me, he gave in to the brain-washing and wound up moving back home and marrying an LDS girl.

N/A is correct about one thing:

This LDS stuff isn't worth your time. I wouldn't give them a second.


However, if you spend your time studying the 'Good Book,' which was put together by Catholics, reading about Jesus, of which books were written or transcribed many years after his death, at least take it with a grain of salt. There's not point in mocking the kettle when the pot is black, too.

Joseph Smith saw God. Noah loaded up two of every animal onto a boat to avoid a great flood that wiped out the entire world except 8 people. Which one is weirder?