20 Truths about Mormons

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Geocacher said:
I have lived with Cronic Fatigue for several years, and this is my cross to carry.
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Oh brother… I worked nights for 17 years. Finally went to days about a year ago. What a difference! Still am sleep-deprived, though. Problem sleeper. So I know what you’re talking about.

BTW I compliment you on being so straightforward and honest. Most people would just join the religion over the objections of the intellect. I know I certainly did, a couple of times, and ended up in sects that were not very good places to be. I think you’ve got it all together.
 
Thank you all for your support. It has been very helpful. It’s very tragic to find myself in a situation where doing what I believe in causes those I love so much pain. They are so convinced of what they believe that they will not give up on me for an instant. They keep telling me that I’m just not spiritually “in tune” and I need to give it more time. I don’t want to give it more time. I’ve given it 20 years and it’s sucked the life out of me. It so frustrating to find myself in this hell that I never asked for. My bishop and my parents seem to believe that I’ve brought this on myself. I’ve simply given up on trying to talk with them about it as it only intesifies the situation and causes more people harm. I have no idea what to do with my life. I have no connections if I leave the church and if I leave the church, I’m crushing the hopes of so many people who love me. It makes me wonder whether it is really worth it in the end.
 
isaac.madsen said:
Thank you all for your support. It has been very helpful. It’s very tragic to find myself in a situation where doing what I believe in causes those I love so much pain. They are so convinced of what they believe that they will not give up on me for an instant. They keep telling me that I’m just not spiritually “in tune” and I need to give it more time. I don’t want to give it more time. I’ve given it 20 years and it’s sucked the life out of me. It so frustrating to find myself in this hell that I never asked for. My bishop and my parents seem to believe that I’ve brought this on myself. I’ve simply given up on trying to talk with them about it as it only intesifies the situation and causes more people harm. I have no idea what to do with my life. I have no connections if I leave the church and if I leave the church, I’m crushing the hopes of so many people who love me. It makes me wonder whether it is really worth it in the end.
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No offense to any mormons here, but I find this to be the reason why many people stay in the faith. Some people figure out that it’s a false religion built on the egocentric writings of a nut case and lose their faith. Yet there is so much pressure from their family and people in the church, it’s hard to leave the support system and the nice people and the life. So they just stick it out and live with the falsehoods and contradictions. Not because they have a true faith in the religion.

I have a friend that converted that lives this way. He knows so much of it is bs, but he had to convert to marry his gf. And he’d rather be with her and in the religion, in the community and system, than not. Which, IMO, is sad. Because he’s missing out on true Christianity.
 
That’s quite true. I think there are far too many cases like mine, where people find themselves trapped in a religion that holds little truth for them. If that isn’t a living hell, I don’t know what is. I admit, there is much of truth to be found in Mormonism, and a lot of lessons to learn from it. I find that the more I try to leave, the more pressure I get against leaving. Every time I go in the Bishop’s office, I’m put on a guilt trip - he brings up old things that I’ve already been through and repented of and says, “Well, you just lost the spirit because you did this or that wrong.” I think that’s a load of BS. I’ve been close to Christ all my life - even moments after knowingly going against a commandment. Christ accepts us, no matter our condition. The only times I haven’t been able to recognize Christ in my life were those moments of guilt when I felt unworthy to associate with Christ. That is Satan’s tactic - one which he uses on all people to get them to think Christ will not accept them. Christ is willing to accept us back any time - any condition. All we have to do is accept Him and do our best to improve our lives and bring our will closer to God’s.
 
isaac.madsen said:
All we have to do is accept Him and do our best to improve our lives and bring our will closer to God’s.
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…and I think that means all of this symbolic temple worship junk is truly meaningless. I can spend all my life trying to take special meaning out of funky symbols and signs and stuff, but I think I would have a far better life if I were to forget that worthless bile and focus on Christ instead.
 
hi,
However, I’m straying from the point. Brigham Young then says, regarding the first vision, “the Lord did not come - but He did send His angel.” (Journal of Discourses, Vol. II, p. 171). It was on quoting this church-authorized publication that I was immediately banned from the website without explanation.
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Oliver Cowdery also made statements of it being an angel that delivered the priesthood rather than Peter James and John. There is much to find that does not line up with the way it is told today.
 
Here’s a fascinating link - direct from the source!

Joseph Smith and the “seeing stone” …

This subject has not only been taught before… It’s considered scripture. I’ve been told time and time again at church that the LDS church magazines (Ensign, etc.) are to be taken as modern scripture. Elder Neil A. Maxwell spoke on the subject of Joseph’s use of a “seer stone” as recently as 1997. The manner in which it was used is disconcerting.
 
isaac.madsen said:
Here’s a fascinating link - direct from the source!

Joseph Smith and the “seeing stone” …

This subject has not only been taught before… It’s considered scripture. I’ve been told time and time again at church that the LDS church magazines (Ensign, etc.) are to be taken as modern scripture. Elder Neil A. Maxwell spoke on the subject of Joseph’s use of a “seer stone” as recently as 1997. The manner in which it was used is disconcerting.
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Okay, I give up. What is so disconcerting about this? Now lets look at the positive. It is often claimed that the lds church hides its history and yet, we see that the official site of the lds church as mentioned the seer stone and the hat. I find that to be a positive. But I am afraid Isaac, you will need to give more details for me to comment on what exactly is disconcerting.
 
Allweather said:
I only mentioned it because it seems that an awful lot of people leaving religions like Mormonism lose all faith in God and become kind of like atheists. I can understand the devastating effects of realizing that the religion you’ve spent your life defending and promoting is false, and that you’ve led others into that error. In fact, I’ve seen up close the trauma of a person leaving Mormonism after raising her children as Mormons. Really tough stuff.
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And yet, the same can be said for many catholics who lose their own faith. We seem to live in faithless times and the Pople as said the same. The god of science, relativism, and postmodernism is leading many people into disbelief or at least into questioning their own foundations. How many catholics attend mass on a regular basis as compared to the catholic population? Where are the Catholic young people of Ireland, Poland, Italy, Lithuania when it comes to church attendance?

It is the sign of the times.
 
thomasf said:
No offense to any mormons here, but I find this to be the reason why many people stay in the faith. Some people figure out that it’s a false religion built on the egocentric writings of a nut case and lose their faith. Yet there is so much pressure from their family and people in the church, it’s hard to leave the support system and the nice people and the life. So they just stick it out and live with the falsehoods and contradictions. Not because they have a true faith in the religion.
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What is a false religion? Some people figure out that catholicism is a ‘false religion’ and join the EVs or other protestants. Some return to the fold and many others don’t. We need to be careful about this whole idea of false religions. Much better to say, religions that ‘don’t have the truth’ or ‘complete truth’. ‘False religion’ is subjective and based on a statement that cannot be verified.
 
why_me said:
What is a false religion? Some people figure out that catholicism is a ‘false religion’ and join the EVs or other protestants. Some return to the fold and many others don’t. We need to be careful about this whole idea of false religions. Much better to say, religions that ‘don’t have the truth’ or ‘complete truth’. ‘False religion’ is subjective and based on a statement that cannot be verified.
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I believe it’s a false religion because it’s completely made up by an egomaniac that wanted people to follow HIM. Not God, not Jesus, not Christianity. He reinterpreted and added to scripture for his own benefit. People follow his religion believing they are getting closer to God and Jesus and are good Christians. When in fact they are not. They are being led away from these things, and believe in something that does not resemble Christianity at all. As much as there are differences between the catholic church and the rest of Christianity, at least we are all believing in the same God and same Jesus.

If this offends anyone, I’m sorry. But I cannot sit and pretend that this babble is okay or equal to christianity. IMO, the fact that it leads people away from Christ is a sin, and to acknowlege it as a version of Christianity would be sinful as well.
 
why_me said:
Okay, I give up. What is so disconcerting about this?
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Like I said, it was the manner in which Joseph “received revelation” - he puts a stone in a hat, sticks his face in the hat, and by this act of wizardry sees “spiritual light” that reveals a translated manuscript of the Book of Mormon letter by painstaking letter. Seems to me the guy was just putting his head in a hat just for show and telling the story he had imagined up since he was a small child. Evidence shows that he had this stone long before the supposed time and place he received the said plates and urim and thummim (the stone) and such like articles. I find it all disconcerting, but perhaps that’s just me?
 
thomasf said:
If this offends anyone, I’m sorry. But I cannot sit and pretend that this babble is okay or equal to christianity. IMO, the fact that it leads people away from Christ is a sin, and to acknowlege it as a version of Christianity would be sinful as well.
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I’m not offended. I tend to agree with a lot of what you said. Still, I believe that anyone who accepts Christ is a Christian - even if they have it all screwed up.
 
isaac.madsen said:
I’m not offended. I tend to agree with a lot of what you said. Still, I believe that anyone who accepts Christ is a Christian - even if they have it all screwed up.
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It’s not Christ as Christians believe, though.
 
isaac.madsen said:
Well perhaps we can just focus on the Observations link then?
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What would you like to discuss from the observations? The spiritual eyes comment is easily explained. The questions that the witnesses got were often the same questions. Did you see the plates? And all never denied that they saw the plates. However, how one answers the question after being asked over and over again, can vary but the meaning remains the same. They saw the plates.

What is unfortuanate is that one takes an example, takes it out of context, and puts it on a website and says: Hey, look here! And this is what the creator of that website you posted as done.

However we can also read this in:
*** Martin Harris and the “Eye of Faith”* (selection from the article listed below as source).

Martin Harris is probably the first person to start with. He talked about his experience in terms of “the eye of faith.” I have to believe that people remembered that accurately, but John H. Gilbert is the person that says most about this and I’d like to deal with Gilbert just a bit.

He was the compositor of the Book of Mormon and he said he asked Martin Harris, “did you really see the plates with your natural eyes as you’re talking to me?” He said Martin Harris looked down at the floor–Joseph Smith looked down at the floor very often in contemplation I don’t know that that means that he was ashamed–but he thought about his answers to the point and then he said “I saw this with the eye of faith.”

Martin Harris had to have faith in the experience; he separated himself from the other two. That was his Achilles’ heel–that he didn’t have enough faith and maybe he was trying to explain to Gilbert how it happened and Gilbert took that in more simplistic terms.

All I can say is that when I deal with Martin Harris and his own statement, I want to make a comment on that in a moment, this is what he actually wrote to a person who inquired: “I received your favor. In reply I will say concerning the plates, I do say that the angel did show to me the plates containing the Book of Mormon.1” He saw the angel, he saw the plates; so whether you talk about “eye of faith” or not, if you take what Martin Harris actually said and then start to measure all these other things by that and see how consistent they are; sometimes witnesses are getting misquoted, sometimes they’re quoted accurately but not with a realization of their whole experience and I feel that this fits within that dimension.**

fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2004_Explaining_Away_the_Book_of_Mormon_Witnesses.html
 
And we can also find this from the same website that I quoted from: fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/2004_Explaining_Away_the_Book_of_Mormon_Witnesses.html

**And then this is what Turley reports–now this is a memoir in Nauvoo that Turley writes down four years after the fact. You’re trusting his memory, but this is what he says. He said “I call on you, John Whitmer, you say Corrill is a moral and good man.” I want to quote Corrill in a minute. “Do you believe him when he says the Book of Mormon is true, or when he says it is not true?” And he said Whitmer asked “Do you hint at me?” Turley replied, “If the cap fits you, wear it; all I, know is that you have published to the world that an angel did present those plates to Joseph Smith.”

Well, I open the Book of Mormon, and that it isn’t what it reads. It reads that he saw the characters and hefted the plates. So Turley thinks that John Whitmer has testified to an angel. That’s got to get into the mix here some way.

Whitmer replied, “I now say, I handled those plates; there were fine engravings on both sides. I handled them.” Well that is exactly what Whitmer said in a dozen other very well recorded statements that he saw, handled, and lifted. And then he said, “they were shown me by a supernatural power.” If you want to be a good prooftexter–and these people are–they pull out “supernatural power” and say, “Aha! That’s the subjective experience. They weren’t really handling…that’s the giveaway.” Again, do you believe the 95% or the 5%?**

And this is a favorite tactic of the anti mormons as given by Isaac’s example website. And this is why such websites are filled with deception. Much better to see the forest for the trees and think one’s way through the process.
 
isaac.madsen said:
Thank you all for your support. It has been very helpful. It’s very tragic to find myself in a situation where doing what I believe in causes those I love so much pain. They are so convinced of what they believe that they will not give up on me for an instant. They keep telling me that I’m just not spiritually “in tune” and I need to give it more time. I don’t want to give it more time. I’ve given it 20 years and it’s sucked the life out of me. It so frustrating to find myself in this hell that I never asked for. My bishop and my parents seem to believe that I’ve brought this on myself. I’ve simply given up on trying to talk with them about it as it only intesifies the situation and causes more people harm. I have no idea what to do with my life. I have no connections if I leave the church and if I leave the church, I’m crushing the hopes of so many people who love me. It makes me wonder whether it is really worth it in the end.
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It hasn’t been near that difficult for me since my wife and I don’t have any Mormon relatives or even religious ones for that matter. Mine are unchurched and my wife’s relatives are nominal Catholics. Still, my wife is still active Mormon, three of my boys have served Mormon missions and my daughter is very active. They don’t understand why it was necessary for me to go Catholic – it is kind of the elephant in the room they all try to ignore. But it was worth it for me to be able to enter a church that understands what the Eucharist is all about.
 
isaac.madsen said:
That’s quite true. I think there are far too many cases like mine, where people find themselves trapped in a religion that holds little truth for them. If that isn’t a living hell, I don’t know what is. I admit, there is much of truth to be found in Mormonism, and a lot of lessons to learn from it. I find that the more I try to leave, the more pressure I get against leaving. Every time I go in the Bishop’s office, I’m put on a guilt trip - he brings up old things that I’ve already been through and repented of and says, “Well, you just lost the spirit because you did this or that wrong.” I think that’s a load of BS. I’ve been close to Christ all my life - even moments after knowingly going against a commandment. Christ accepts us, no matter our condition. The only times I haven’t been able to recognize Christ in my life were those moments of guilt when I felt unworthy to associate with Christ. That is Satan’s tactic - one which he uses on all people to get them to think Christ will not accept them. Christ is willing to accept us back any time - any condition. All we have to do is accept Him and do our best to improve our lives and bring our will closer to God’s.
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This is one of the differences I found between Mormonism and Catholicism – when I go to confession in the Catholic Church and am absolved, my sin is forgotten. When I went as a Mormon, it was something that could be used against me in the future. Christ’s yoke is easy, not hard.
 
why_me said:
And yet, the same can be said for many catholics who lose their own faith. We seem to live in faithless times and the Pople as said the same. The god of science, relativism, and postmodernism is leading many people into disbelief or at least into questioning their own foundations. How many catholics attend mass on a regular basis as compared to the catholic population? Where are the Catholic young people of Ireland, Poland, Italy, Lithuania when it comes to church attendance?

It is the sign of the times.
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You keep saying this, “the same can be said for Catholicism” and I have invited you to provide some specific citations for us, but so far I have seen none.

We know many Mormons who’ve realized the fantasyland that Mormon mythology is, and departed from that religion. Some have become Christians, some have become atheists. But we don’t know anyone who has decided that the Catholic religion is based upon myth.

You are mixing apples with oranges in your comparison of the false religion with the general trend in the world towards secularization.
 
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