Honestly, as long as you "stick with the basics" (faith, prayer, attend church, pay tithing, go home teaching, sacrifice etc...) it's really pretty easy to believe. But as soon as you actually sit down and dissect the various aspects of "the gospel" is when it becomes impossible to believe.

Adam and Eve were the first humans and they broke a law of God so that's how sin and death entered the world. All fine and dandy as long as you don't dig deeper. It's when you realize human remains have been discovered that pre-date Adam and Eve by thousands of years that the story becomes impossible to believe.

Noah was an ancient prophet who warned the people to repent. They chose not to so God flooded the earth and killed all the wicked people. Moral of the story: follow the prophet. Easy to believe until you realize that hundreds of problems associated with that story and the fact that there is absolutely no evidence of such an event and there were civilizations all over the planet that were thriving at the time, uninterrupted by a flood.

So, I think that's why the church is pushing so hard these days to stick with the basics. As long as members don't think about it, and only concentrate on their warm fuzzies all will be well in Zion.

So they're just sort of converting themselves into a social organization with lessons on being good and lots of busy work.
All the history and strange doctrines are just pushed under the carpet. I can't do that, but even if I did, the current setup even without considering the past is enough to dislike and disavow it as a belief system. Apparently you must go along with giving 10% without question, obey a bunch of clowns who are obviously not inspired without question.. Not gonna happen. The cult of obedience has lost me forever.

I kind of agree with you as long as the emphasis is on how you feel and not how you think. If you feel good going to church, if home teaching is sold as a way to help others, if your friends are all convinced being Mormon equals having high standards, if you feel good and special, yeah then it's easy to believe. Like I WANT to believe people when they tell me my new hairstyle looks good. Especially if the proceeds from the salon were being donated to what I believed was a charity. I'd feel good about what I was doing, reinforced by my friends' approval. The haircut may look ridiculous to everyone else but I would want to believe it looks good.

One problem the church is having now is that they don't necessarily make people feel good. Too many people are having to take on multiple callings, too many people outside the church are acting unimpressed with Mormons, too much emphasis on obedience and too much being sacrificed. When something that should make you feel good makes you feel bad, then you start to think. And when you start to think, it's harder to believe in Mormonism.

I love secular humanists like Dawkins and Harris, but I think they miss one point: Reason is not the antidote for religion. Religion and ritual are a psychosocial rejection mechanism of reason. Rational/critical argument has been around since long before Jesus, hence we still consider the Greeks to be the founders of modernity to this day. Religion has been rejecting reason for thousands of years. So, the answer isn't to just pile on more reason, but rather to figure out HOW religion causes the mind to reject reason.

amos2 Wrote:
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>... So, the answer isn't to just
> pile on more reason, but rather to figure out HOW
> religion causes the mind to reject reason.

Or, perhaps, to counter one train of irrationality with
another, ideally it's rival or antithesis.

I had a learned, retired Jesuit professor in grad school
who had returned to academia for a semester to teach a
single class in RCC/Orthodox mysticism. He was quite
experienced in applying reason to address complaints
against religion -- he seemed to tacitly agree with most
of the exterior criticism, and to dismiss whatever
remained unaddressed, by a shrug of the shoulders.

But, when confronted with Buddhist teachings, that prof's
grasp of logical/rational methods lapsed, and he tended
to contradict himself in a stream of metaphysical jargon.

In other words, he was practiced in defending/avoiding
criticism of his own religion, but lost a great deal of
steam when cornered into explaining the basis and dynamics
of another, vaguely similar religion

I suppose that comparisons can indeed become odious, when
the effort causes the upsetting of our own favorite applecarts.

UD

Well that's not even Mormon. Those are Bible stories. It gets way worse when you delve into the dark depths of the BoM.

TSCC keeps its members REAL BUSY doing all sorts of worthless busywork. The main reason for that is so they WILL NOT THINK.

"Focusing on the basics" is the response I get every single time I bring up a concern.

Without fail. From my family, from local leaders, from my mission presidents. Focus on what you know - the Book of Mormon is true, families are for ever, etc.

YES all fairy tales are easy to believe if you don't think about them in detail. I remember thinking that Chicken Little, and all of those characters were real when I was a little kid.

One of my bff's is a Nazarene. Her beliefs are pretty simple. She honestly just tries to follow Jesus and that's about it. No one shuns her if she doesn't go to church on Sunday and her kids are well adjusted and educated. Then I think about my TBM family who spends their weekends doing stupid rituals in the temple when they could be visiting family or spending time with their grandkids. It's just not the same even if they are living the "simple" LDS life. How much more simple do TBM seniors have it? They are still worked like dogs but if they were younger they would probably have several callings.

So ya, it's VERY different from a regular church and in general, I don't think it's easier to believe in because you are expected to act upon your beliefs even if the job doesn't fit your personality whatsoever.