In terms of the Church doing a really great job of showing how all the other churches are wrong: Can confirm!! They just never expected me to turn it around on them and realize Mormonism is just as wrong as all the others!!
For me, it was because when you really question everything-you really come to realize that nothing about god may be true. When you once believed so deeply and strongly and then when ya realize all the untruths you make connections about how collective imagination and mythology is similar throughout all religion and that it is more of a cultural belief that you were born into rather than something objectively true.
its worth noting that just because one is a lie it doesn't automatically make another thing a lie. If you find out you are adopted in an unhealthy way, for example, you may feel your adopted parents were lying to you. However, that does not mean you do not have biological parents. Having parents is not the lie, not being told you were adopted is the lie. There's a common phrase "don't throw the baby out with the bath water" which should apply to this situation. Another thing to consider is no counterfeit $3 bills exist because there are no real $3 bills, and a counter fit $2 bill would not mean all $2 bills are fake. Mormon teaching is deceptive mixed with truth, unfortunately, and that creates bias towards truth with all the trauma and pain that causes. The LDS religion is Satanic, and wants people away from knowing the real God, even if that means being super religious on a fake idea of him. Jesus spoke against the religious leaders of his day who are very similar to the LDS.
@@Bullybob77 the whole Bible is dubious, as are other religious texts. They are basically just traditions. Every major era of civilization has had their creation story and religions relative to their culture.
@@PutingPinoy Can you explain how the bible is dubious? Its about being made right with God. However, without a way to measure objective morality, you could say anything is dubious as its all subjective at that point. Can you explain how the bible was just tradition? It is antithetical to the religious elites and Rome saw it as a threat to their empire? even then, tradition does not determine true or false.
@@saintnash1 You will only have true joy if you believe what I believe, and you are destroying others by spreading your belief... where have I heard that before? Unfortunately, happiness does not determine truth. maybe in the short term while under the veil of ignorance, many things can make someone happy, that does not make them true. Someone doing something in the name of theism does not determine if theism is true or not. Just like Charles Darwin saying racist things about how Blacks will be further away from us as we evolve like baboons are to us now, that does not make evolution false. Evolution is false all by itself, regardless of what a prophet of evolution may do or say. I think it's more important to look at the source material to determine if it is true or not, not its followers. I have sympathy for mormons and exmormons who still are looking to man as the authority for their beliefs.
@@saintnash1 Wow, you sound like a Mormon missionary, only atheist. similar explanation, different belief. The only way to be happier is to believe what you believe, and everyone who disagrees is only making things worse.
I don't see any peace in atheism. You just become another animal living a life where you have no higher purpose than what you decide is right. Funny, but you become your own god. Then it's old age and death, followed by oblivion.
@@GuyRegular Yup. Free to be just another animal with enough brains to cause mass destruction and no moral laws higher than what you want in the moment because your morality is no more valid than the next person's. Live for the blink of the cosmic eye and go happily into oblivion to become compost.
The more I left organized faith, the more agnostic I became. Some people think this is hedging my bets. I just realized that I just don't know and for that part of my life, that's okay. What I won't do is use someone else's definition of what a god is, or what happens before or after our time here on earth, as the definition for why a god would or would not exist, or what our purpose here is. I figure I'll know eventually, or not, and that's good enough for me.
Same my life has just too much bad when I converted I gave all my heart and soul to god and he stabbed me in the back and twist the knife. I’m done with him
@@BrianWaller-qe7gr you were duped by a ridiculously obviously false religion. A religion that screams “hoax” from the opening paragraph. That’s not God‘s fault.
@Exmo Lex As a Christian I truly appreciate you answering this question honestly! To my fellow Christians the best thing we can do is just take a step back & listen to what our exmo friends are telling us. When someone asks, then answer them appropriately and with kindness...
Well, as someone who used to do archaeology here for a living, I know entirely too much about the prehistory of North America to see the Book of Mormon as anything other than a work of fiction. If the Book of Mormon were historically accurate it would be painfully obvious at this point in light of all the archaeology that has been done here over the last century and a half. Instead what we see is Native American cultures developing on their own over thousands of years.
Hey pittbulking 87, I assume you heard they found a "lost" native American city in Kansas called Etzanoa that the Spaniards knew about in the 1500s. It was lost for more than 500 years and they had a general idea of where it was! We have no clear idea where the Book of Mormon took place. Archaeology is constantly publishing about new finds. And with the destruction wrought on mounds and ancient sites of North America through farming and building, could we even know if those sites might be something valid? It's a pretty big haystack out there.
The weak argument that "archeologist just haven't looked hard enough" is absolutely crap. Settlers from another continent wouldn't have dug into the farthest unsearchable reaches when setting up civilizations. They would've picked the easiest, most obvious choices to build. In the 1830s it was easier to bamboozle people with lack of evidence by spinning an emotional story. People are wiser now and have unlimited access to information.
@@misssue1824The point is well taken. We don't know as much as we would like about the peopling of the Americas but the Book of Mormon makes testable claims. Sure, it is a big haystack, but we have dug enough holes to say what probably happened and what in all likelihood did not happen. If the Book of Mormon were true than prehistoric sites from 600 B.C. to 400 A.D. should look a lot more like historic sites from the 16th to the 19th Century. They don't. There are no iron tools or weapons, just implements of stone, bone, or wood. There was some use of copper too but copper nuggets were heated and hammered into shape, not smelted. There are no old world domestic animals like horses, cows, sheep or goats. Native Americans had domesticated dogs and out West I believe turkeys. There are no Old World crops like wheat and barley. What we do have is crops unknown to Europeans such as corn, squash and beans. In contrast once contact with Europeans is made Native Americans acquire iron tools and weapons, Old World domesticated animals like horses and sheep as well as Old World crops. There are other items from the Old World like glass beads that you don't see until contact with Europeans is made. I could go on but you get the point.
For me, the journey to athiesm was centered around the idea that life is simply too short to worry about whether or not God exists and what that is going to look like when we die. I have more than enough things to worry about in the here and now to be concerned with what some real or fictional God might think. And quite frankly, if God does exist, he's not doing a lot to help make the world a better place, so why on Earth would his judgement of me mean anything? How dare someone claim that God will judge me and decide my eternal fate when most religions paint God as a mostly terrible person. Why should I value the opinion of such a being? Debating God's existence or lack thereof is meaningless when you stop caring about what God and others think of you.
Sorry but your reasoning makes no sense. If God exists you better know about Him, especially if he's angry with you! Right? And if there's an afterlife, we need to know what that is, because that's literally where you will be when you die? And the Christian teachings (Mormanism isn't Christian btw) reveal that God gives us the standards for right and wrong. How can you say God is painted one way or another or make a judgement claim without operating on some moral system that reveals right and wrong aka religion?
@@Shelb13v What is wrong in my reasoning? Would you get on RUclips and talk about bad experiences with people of color or different gender identities and tear them down? Channels like this foster hate speech against religion. Why is that okay? How do you know whether God is mad at me? I don't judge your standing with God. (Matt 7:1-2) Have you ever honestly and humbly tested what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has to offer? If not, then you are just believing in man, not God.
Dude. This! So this. When I left Mormonism, believing in Christ was one of the things that got me through the initial pain of my entire world crumbling. But then, after while I decided I needed to look into Christianity the same way I looked into Mormonism just like was said above. There was no way I was going to believe some thing that I hadn't vetted first because finding out Mormonism was faults was one of the hardest things for me to deal with in my entire life. Next to the death of a loved one. Now I'm an atheist however, I'm open for any truce that I can discover. But I have to have good reasons to believe it.
Try finding faith in God -- not in religion. Mormonism pimps out God and Jesus to foster faith in its organization. Looking at religious organizations will find the shortcomings of the religious organization. Religious organizations did not create the world. Or you. But God did. And religious organizations did not die to save your soul. But Jesus did. Faith in God is between you and God -- no organization required. HOWEVER -- people who share faith in God do come together (i.e. "organize") to share their faith and encourage one another, and tell others about their faith. Don't put the cart before the horse. People who have faith in God may organize, but not all organizations are based on having faith in God. Does that open the way for a "truce" for you? Have faith in God -- in the God of The Bible -- and The Bible as God's Word -- as if you were the only one. Then find others who believe likewise ...
Well said. My deconstruction started with critically thinking about if god is true as well as heaven and hell since those were things I was really curious about. After I lost belief in those things, my belief in mormonism wasn't so far behind. I find it really cool to discover how differently people can deconstruct.
My path was different but similar to yours Lex. I was about sixteen when I left the church for the wrong reasons (if there can be wrong reasons to leave). My father had a faith crisis because he gave his best friend a blessing that she would recover and she died not soon after. He was told he had not given her the blessing Christ would have wanted him to give and that's why his blessing did not come to pass. In any event, the magic that is the Priesthood let him down and he eventually left the church. I'm not sure he entirely lost his faith, at least in Christianity as a whole, but his wife (my step-mom) stayed and is a TBM through and through to this day (and is very proud of her Utah pioneer ancestors). I left because my dad left. My faith was predicated upon his, the man I had admired my whole life. I don't think I was privy to the exact reason why he had left. Had I known, I probably would have stayed actually, because I was TBM, too, an indoctrinated youth. But if it wasn't good enough for my dad, it wasn't good enough for me. But deep down I still wanted to believe and I wanted it to be true. As I learned more about my father's reasoning, I reconsidered and in my late twenties I decided I wanted to come back. But I began researching because I had been hearing disturbing things and after a few years I actually became a bit rabid in my "anti-mormonism" because I had my religion ripped from me. It was a very painful experience and something I was not coping with very well. In that process, I first lost Brigham Young as a Prophet. I then considered the reorganized church as possibly being correct but then I lost Joseph Smith as my prophet. So much so I wanted to urinate on his grave. I was so angry (I'm over the anger now, most of the time). The church always taught it was the restoration of the original church so I sought out what that church might be. I learned, and educated myself on the history of Christianity and considered that maybe the truth lie in either Catholicism, Orthodoxy or Eastern churches. Even the Coptic church of Egypt. I considered all the ones I considered to have deep historical roots. Considering all the contradictions in the Bible, it was the verse in Matthew where Jesus stated that when the second coming were to come to pass, members of this (his) generation would still be alive. That seemed a blatant lie. And that's when I lost Jesus. If there is a God, he wouldn't make finding him so hard. So yes, the critical thinking that led me away from Mormonism is the same that led me away from religion in general. It was very painful, like having my soul ripped from me. And yet I still live a moral life, want to be a good person and do good by my fellow humans and my family. My moral compass, though, doesn't rely on a carrot or a stick from a magical power. It's internal now. It's up to me.
Once I faced the reality that the Mormon church was untrue, it took zero time to reject all other religions. They all operate on the same misguided principles of faith and tradition. I will never again cede my ability to reason to an unsubstantiated authority.
Yeah, I did a little church hopping, but I found myself cringing as I saw people were being emotionally manipulated in a similar way I had been as a Mormon.
"We have done our homework." PERIOD. And yes, we're tired of being bugged about it. For me, I left the LDS Church and God at the same time because my problem was with God specifically, that lack of morality of God, the narcissism, the counter-evidence of promises in scripture being untrue. I knew anywhere else I'd go, God would still "be there" so to speak, and I wanted nothing to do with that. Only after I left (years later, actually) did I start to learn the depth of the problems specific to the LDS Church.
Mormonism isn’t any goofier than the rest of it. It’s just more modern. Based on fanfic of what was already mythology. My family was Mormon, but my grandma walked away. Never heard the word “god” in her house at all. My black sheep father was the most religious member of the family, and he’s a narcissist. Never Mormon though. The idea of a perfect being needing worship doesn’t square. I’ve used the analogy of catching your teenager destroying his ant farm because they won’t worship him. He needs therapy. Badly.
For me it was like my brain was hyper-aware of teachings and doctrines that seemed sketchy or were inconsistent/incompatible with other teachings when I left Mormonism. I had already been struggling, prior to my faith crisis, with what seemed like god playing favorites with some people while neglecting others. During my deconstruction of Mormonism my brain started making connections to all the other teachings in the Bible about god that seemed to portray him as narcissistic, petty, or vengeful and realized that Bible god was not only full of inconsistencies but also wasn’t that great a guy. I am still open to the possibility of some grand organizing something that humanity doesn’t really understand - I do not see Bible god as anything more than an invention used to both explain things we don’t understand and act as a control tool for corrupt people. As for Jesus - while I believe there was likely a influential person named Jesus (or some variation of that) 2000ish years ago, the academic historical studies of the Bible lead me to believe his divinity was a ‘fish story’ that grew overtime.
I just love how so you and other throw the word cult around. Here is the Oxford definition: cult /kəlt/ noun -a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object. "the cult of St. Olaf" -a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister. "a network of Satan-worshiping cults" -a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing. "a cult of personality surrounding the leaders" The LDS Church isn't a great fit, unless you count devotion to God as cultish.
@@misssue1824 I take it you’re a POed lds member. Hassan’s BITE model says it’s à cult just like JWs. It’s good enough for me. Lex calls it à cult too.. yell at her too hun. Stop using weasel words like others. Can you name them? No? Your premise holds no water. Drop the smug sanctimonious crap.
@@misssue1824Have you heard of the B.I.T.E. model? It's a list of cult behaviors to help cult members figure out if they are in a cult or not. Cult members don't know they are in a cult. Steven Hassan realized he was in a cult (the Moonies), and then he developed the B.I.T.E. model. It's quite fascinating on a psychological level. B.I.T.E. stands for behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control.
@@misssue1824Have you heard of the B.I.T.E. model? It's a list of cult behaviors to help cult members figure out if they are in a cult or not. Cult members don't know they are in a cult. Steven Hassan realized he was in a cult (the Moonies), and then he developed the B.I.T.E. model. It's quite fascinating on a psychological level. B.I.T.E. stands for behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control.
For me, I think that after deconstructing Mormonism, the natural next step was for me to look at Christianity in general with that same critical lens. If everything I was raised to believe was wrong, what else might be wrong? Was there any truth in Christianity or religion? So, I just asked basic questions like, who wrote the bible and when was it written? Learning about how far Christianity is removed from actual eye witness accounts made me feel like it's not a very reliable source of truth (in regards to factual information, I actually love the philosophy of Jesus as far as I've interpreted it). Now, I just look at it like people thought Jesus was a great guy with good ideas and people liked to embellish stories. Who doesn't like a good story? That's how folklore and myths are created, and stories can be a good way to teach people good morals. Now, I realize how easily people use religion to manipulate others for their own gain, and there's no way I'm going to let that happen to me again. Religion is too often a tool for misogyny and racism, and I don't want my future kids to be a part of that. Is there a god? I'm not convinced, but maybe. Either way I'm not going to let it affect the way I choose to live my life. I can be a good person without needing external validation and manipulation from a religious organization.
For me, growing up being told that this was the “only true church” turned me off from any other religion and the concept of God I had in my head for so long. And with time I’ve concluded that if God is real, he’s not the Mormon version, and he’s an asshole either way. However, I lean more toward the idea that god is a human concept the ancients used to explain things they couldn’t explain. We have technology such as the James Webb Telescope, yet still no evidence of god. Evolution disproves creationism. And we now know that we are, at the molecular level, born from stars. The planet, our water, asteroids, other celestial objects, etc, all share characteristics of stars. So it’s very unlikely that a god exists.
There a difference between leaving organized traditional religion vs becoming an atheist that doesn't believe in the existence of God. If you decide that God doesn't exist, then you have another problem: Where did everything come from? Scientifically, there is no explanation for the existence of matter/energy/time and the existence of the universe. Logically and scientifically, if you are depending upon a naturalistic beginning to the universe, you run into the problem of Causality. All naturalistic scientific explanations for the existence of the universe fail due to Causality. Quite simply, science is about understanding and explaining What Causes What. Science has yet to explain the origin of Life or the origin of the universe. Seriously, all explanations violate their own understandings of math, science and logic. Eventually, they devolve into "Well, we just don't know yet, but eventually Science will figure it out. This is just a "Science-of-the-Gaps" explanation and is no better than religion. Darwinian evolutionary theory looks reasonable in the broad strokes but when you delve into the chemistry and biology, it fails. For example, if there were a process where LIFE could come from lifeless chemicals, we should be able to observe it in nature or in the laboratory. Every since Miller and Urey made some random organic compounds in 1952, the evolutionary community has been promising that their research that life will be made from chemicals will produce results is just around the corner. But the more we learn, then further the goal recedes. The best science clearly shows that Life only comes from Life. Additionally, every naturalistic explanation for the origin of the universe depends upon the actual physical existence of infinity -- something that has NEVER been observed in nature and is impossible to even prove. I have yet to find a true atheist. Every so-called atheist I've spoken to has an axe to grind regarding religion or how they feel they were treated by God. Leave religion if you wish, but if you are so bold as to deny the existence of God, then you had better come up with a logical, scientific and mathematically coherent explanation for the existence of the universe and life. Something better than, "Well, I just don't feel that way!" Belief in God is not the same as following a religion. We can clearly see that a God is needed for the existence of the Universe, Time, Space, Life and Reality. There is no other way for these things to have caused themselves and no place for them to have come from naturally without violating Causality. What that God actually happens to be is a different question altogether.
I’d been struggling financially for years and years before I left the Mormon cult. I felt like God was going to bless me for finally recognizing I was in a cult. He didn’t. He didn’t care that I was trapped in a cult, and he wasn’t proud of me for getting out of it. If there is a god, he doesn’t love me.
What helped me with leaving mormonism and becoming atheist is realizing that there is NO invisible "sky daddy" who blesses some people and punishes others. For me, it was very liberating to no longer feel like I'm being watched and judged all the time. Life isn't set up as rewards for the righteous and damnation for the wicked. Life just is. And sometimes it isn't fair. We do the best we can each day and maybe make a difference in someone's life along the way (even if it's just our own). I hope you can find the freedom to love yourself and no longer feel like you're hated by a mythical creature. Gods are myths created back when people needed answers to things that we now have scientific explanations for. ❤❤❤
@@laycie_mnmI’m doing great now. The story was mostly about the feelings that led me to shed my beliefs in those abusive overlords. I would have never guessed I’d no longer believe in the god of the Bible, but here we are and I’ve never been happier.
I was 16 when I left the church. A large part of why I left is the problem of evil, but I didn’t either idea of god altogether, I went to paganism because I hadn’t been taught how to be skeptic.
@@misssue1824 the problem of evil. I was seeing quite a lot wrong with the world. I was 14 when 9/11 happened and I wondered where the hell was god? Then our retaliation: our soldiers died, innocent civilians died, and it took forever to take out the guy responsible. When god could have snapped his fingers and stopped everything. He was apparently fine controlling Pharaoh so he could show off and send a bunch of plagues against Egypt, but couldn’t stop a couple of airplanes. Then there were my own problems. I did all the things I was supposed to as a mormon boy, and I was miserable. I was being taught the happiness came from serving the lord, and yet I had really bad depression. And despite my praying for my depression to go away, I remained depressed. Plus antidepressants didn’t seem to help at all.
For me it was the spiritual witness. If I had a spiritual witness the church is true and that was false, how can I believe any spiritual witness? And once you take out that “faith” component well there’s not a lot of proof god exists. So yea I threw the baby out too because the baby turned out to be a doll.
People should be left to make their own choice regarding religion. It shouldn't be forced down their throat, nor should they be indoctrinated. I will tell you this. I was walking to the shop to get my lunch. I kid you not, this bloke barged up to me and said... "Do you know Jesus loves you?" "That's nice," I replied. "Did you know the bible says we can all be saved if we just accept him into our hearts?" he asked. "The bible says lots of things, some of which I agree with, some of which I don't," I responded. "Like what?" He enquired. "Oh," says I, "like stoning to death for adultery, or it being fine to sell your children into slavery provided it's within a certain distance of where you live." I quoted certain verses. His question, "Do you know why people CHOSE slavery?" he asked. "No," I replied, "do tell." I shit you not. His response was....... "Because they wanted the security." At that point, I turned and walked away without a backward glance. I've not been so appalled for a long time. You just can't teach stupid or those deliberately blind to the truth, I guess. 🤷🏻
Once again i give exmo lex so so much credit and validate her journey of life entirely. I wrestled with my own similar church struggle and wanted to walk away at one point but i knew it was that church and churches like them (i strictly speak from a fudemental evangelical presoective here). I am now squared away in my faith and my beliefs about faith but i know i may also wrestle with churches and where i fit into them personally. I will however nevwr criticize, belittle, or judge anyone on their journey of life and that is from a christian. I dont speak for orher Christians nor will i argue or judge them if they so choose to raise holy hell thats their own progitive. But i just want to say i value and respect the legitimacy that exmo brings with this video and every video.
For me, I already went to Catholic school and largely studied other religions at some point. I already knew if I wasn't Mormon, I was going to be atheist...or at least agnostic. Nothing else seemed to have any kind of answers at all, all while pretending to. Atheism was honest enough to not pretend to have answers, and Mormonism seemed to have all the answers. I knew I wasn't going to trust decentralized, near authority-less religions, and to this day I'm still an advocate for organization if it's true. After what God did, I realized either none of it was true, or I'd have to reject the truth altogether because it is ruined at best, evil at worst...ironically these arguments were used in the Chronicles of Narnia to dissuade the characters back to Jesus...I mean Aslan.
As an exmo, after 42 years of strong testimony in the teachings of the LDS Church, where i often bore my testimony, how I knew Heavenly Father loved me, that I knew families could be eternal, that small and simple things were evidence of the love of God and Jesus... I find it immeasurably relieving and joyful to bask in not knowing. I'll be pleased if I find out God, Jesus, and Heaven are real. But if i don't, I'll find the joy and sacredness of life itself every day. And if I'd be punished for not understanding something or taking it only on faith when so many of the principles are bent into harmful practices, that's not a God I'd worship anyway.
I wish more brainwashed and pearl clutching Mormons saw testimony for what it really is - indoctrination and nothing more.. it has zero value other than as a mind control tactic loved by cults and door to door salesmen.
I left the church in 2015 and I immediately became an atheist. I pretty much deconstructed the Mormon church and Christianity at the same time. The concept of omnibenevolent and omnipotent god is absurd to me. I'm finally free to live my life as I please.
There a difference between leaving organized traditional religion vs becoming an atheist that doesn't believe in the existence of God. If you decide that God doesn't exist, then you have another problem: Where did everything come from? Scientifically, there is no explanation for the existence of matter/energy/time and the existence of the universe. Logically and scientifically, if you are depending upon a naturalistic beginning to the universe, you run into the problem of Causality. All naturalistic scientific explanations for the existence of the universe fail due to Causality. Quite simply, science is about understanding and explaining What Causes What. Science has yet to explain the origin of Life or the origin of the universe. Seriously, all explanations violate their own understandings of math, science and logic. Eventually, they devolve into "Well, we just don't know yet, but eventually Science will figure it out. This is just a "Science-of-the-Gaps" explanation and is no better than religion. Additionally, every naturalistic explanation depends upon the actual physical existence of infinity -- something that has NEVER been observed in nature and is impossible to even prove. I have yet to find a true atheist. Every so-called atheist I've spoken to has an axe to grind regarding religion or how they feel they were treated by God. Leave religion if you wish (not a bad idea, I agree), but if you are so bold as to deny the existence of God, then you are forced to come up with a logical, scientific and mathematically-coherent explanation for the existence of the universe and life. Something better than, "Well, I just don't feel that way!"
Wow. From previous vids, I thought you were an exmo that turned to Nicene Creed Protestantism. Regardless, I learned a lot about LDS teachings from your vids. Hope you consider doing a vid that focuses on the specific questions you raised that led to deconstruction. Stay skeptical and cheers.
This is interesting; thank you for posting. As a missionary, I was never instructed on how to defend the Church against other religions. We don't learn any details about other religions at Church, and I only studied them on my own after the mission out of pure curiosity. The basic tenant is that everyone is using their free agency to believe whatever they want to believe, and we only teach them if they want to learn.
I feel like 2010-ish was a pivotal period for exmos fate. I find that Mormons who left prior to 2010 often join other religions, whereas those who leave after 2010 seem to go agnostic. I feel like the Internet and the "Google era" may have something to do with this pattern. Those who left before Google found comfort in other faiths, but those who left after Google find comfort in.... well, Google. Agree? Disagree?
Very interesting. I have two siblings that left before or right around that time. I'll check with them. My family and I just left last year, and we're all pretty much agnostic.
For me, it's because Mormonism made the most sense. A loving god who will sentence his child to an eternity of torture just for not believing him? No matter how generous, kind, and compassionate you are, if you pick the wrong God, you go to Hell forever; and no matter how evil, corrupt, and harmful you are, you go to Heaven as long as you believe in Christ? That's beyond dumb - that's narcissistic. That is clearly something some human came up with to manipulate people. But a God who created a tiered system based on how you live your life - where if you're a good person, you're rewarded with an eternal paradise, but if you go the extra step and do what needs to be done, you to can follow in our father's footsteps and one day be like him? That makes sense. That's rational. A god who actually cares about all his creations, not just the ones in the Middle East? Where he brought the gospel to the entire world? Absolutely, he's god, why wouldn't he, and of course those people would write about it. And a church that uses its wealth to build a robust social support system to help people meet their temporal, not just spiritual needs? Yes. Absolutely. Everything about the Mormon church just makes so much rational sense, that if it's wrong, there's no other religion that even comes close. But it's that same rationality that killed my belief too. If god loves all his children, if he wants us all to return to be like him; if one of the conditions of that is entering into the temple and having the priesthood; and if we receive divine revelation which we are to obey directly from god through a living prophet - how could that prophet say that black people should be denied the full blessings of the church? How could they, for over a century, claim that God didn't want black people to go to the Celestial Kingdom - which is what they say by denying them entry to the temple & the priesthood. "But it was a different time" - not for God, and not for those who truly believe they should obey the revelations from God through his prophet. There's no excuse for it. And then once you're out, you start learning about all the other crap - how Joseph Smith was a pedo and married other men's wives while they were still married, how he was a con artist, how his story changed so many times, etc.
I stopped believing in God when I lost my cat and there was no reasonable explanation for why such a traumatic event happened. Then I realized that many traumatic things happen and have happened over thousands of years and if God was real, he should have intervened long ago.
So God is a vending machine for your needs? My cat is missing right now and has been for several weeks. I nursed her from a tiny feral kitten who rode on my shoulder and on the dash board of my car. I will grieve that I may never know what happened to her. My comfort is that if she is dead I will see her again and I know all things are in God's hands, including my own life and health. In return I feel comfort and peace as I study scripture and pray. God gives me sunsets, stars, family and so much else. Count what you have! This life isn't all there is. It's a training ground. Too many people are walking off before they even see what the purpose is, which is to learn to find God and our better selves. We learn in this life to overcome problems, be patient and loving even when we are hurt, to forgive and learn to help others. We seek God. That is where we begin to find the true source of peace, light, joy and love. And it is magnificent.
Agree on God (if exists) should’ve intervened by long time ago. Imagine God is just watching people die from horrific incidents as if they are exchanged like drinks of vending machines😢, I as former JW was said paradise on earth and will have eternal life with no sorrow and pain as written in Rev. 21. So it means this book God acknowledges what SORROW and PAIN is, but decided to just watch these continually occur😢And historical facts tells us some had experienced EXCRUCIAL, TORTUROUS PAIN that we the ones hadn’t faced. I wonder how God was watching the Dark Ages, Holocaust and WW2 victims affected by atomic bomb😢If exists could’ve sent His Angels to let them rescue the innocents during those horrific days, as He did in Bible stories!
@@misssue1824At some point you realize God either isn't the kind loving being we were all taught about, or he is far from all knowing, or he just plain sucks ass at his job.. which is it?
I think that for me, becoming aware of all of the deceptions in the church (misrepresentation of early church history, lack of transparency about former and current practices, etc) caused me to lose all trust in anyone who claims to speak for God, all the way back to the writers of the New Testament Gospels. The church also establishes in the minds of its members the concept of a singular "true" church, and does a fairly good job of deconstructing other religions; realizing that the "true church" is a sham becomes the last step in deconstructing religion entirely, since the church already deconstructed the rest of it for us. I ultimately don't think that it's impossible that some form of diety exists, but I don't trust anyone who claims to speak for or represent such a diety. If there is a God, he'll need to come down from heaven and tell me himself what he wants before I'll base my life decisions on it.
Great video Exmo well done. I think you pretty much explained it. When I was still TBM I said to myself...'if I ever find out that Mormonism is't true, then I'll know Christianity isn't true." I Never dreamed that it would come to that, but it did. Losing my faith in the LDS Church forced me to do some serious study of religion in general. That is how I became an Atheist. 😁
I stopped believing because if there was a god nobody deserves the bad as much as I have endured. I think our lives are just random chances of having good ones and bad ones. My life is like one shitty hand of poker.
Rejecting all other religions on the same basis as you rejected Mormonism is actually stopping short of fully rejecting your former faith. There is a little bit of you that still believes Mormons are right. I’ve seen this among Christian fundamentalists who reject all of Christianity even when their doubts center around unique issues within their sect.
I had a friend reach out to me after he heard that I'd walked away from our shared faith. I don't know what part of "I have no intention of going back" he didn't understand, or why "I don't feel comfortable fully participating, so.... Why bother?" was confusing.....
Appreciate your honesty. I didn't come out of Mormonism but evangelical Christianity about 25 years ago. I didn't embrace atheism, however, but saw a divine fingerprint in eastern thought and Greek philosophy and finally landed upon pantheism. I found it answered a lot of questions for me me but I know it's not for everybody.
I consider myself agnostic, but I stopped really believing in God because I prayed SO MUCH to feel welcome at church, for people to like me at church, to get a calling at church, for my daughter to stop being bullied at church, for her to stop being bullied at school, and literally NONE of those prayers were answered. God is not who they say he is. He's not an all powerful being that will solve any problems for you. He's something else. Not sure what he is yet.
After I'd already "checked out" of the church I decided to support my daughter by reading the OT in parallel with her since that's what she was studying in seminary that year. Once I got to Ezekiel I was mentally "done" -- I just couldn't accept this was really "god" being presented here. Today I'm not sure if I'm an atheist in general, but I sure don't believe in the "god of the bible" as a result of reading it!
Imagine there are people who have escaped from some weird group that pretends to be "doctors", wears scrubs regularly, uses a lot of medical terminology in their speech while completely redefining what those terms mean, and performs horrible, medically unnecessary "surgeries" on their adherents. Anyone who escaped from such a group would quite naturally associate medical personnel, garments, terminology and procedures with their own traumatic experiences with the so-called "doctor" group they were raised in. Thus, most of them would tend to desperately avoid all things medical to keep from being ensnared by another such group and might understandably disbelieve in the existence of any real doctors, hospitals or medicine, assuming they were all just more of the same sick group that had traumatized them in the past. In the same way, those who have escaped from a cult, whether it's Mormonism, the JWs, the "Children of God", the "People's Temple" or so on, will tend to understandably view all faiths as being like the cult they escaped from and will tend to avoid any faith, right or wrong, good or bad.
Your analogy is flawed. What if a person finds that the "treatment" is exactly what they needed and they feel far better and have answers to their "medical" questions? You make the assumption that all the faiths you named are false and their leaders faking it. How do you check for the credentials of a religion? Those of you out there who are members of any religion or who believe there is no God and are engaging in this criticism should realize one important fact. You hold a belief that can't be proven. If you criticize any strongly held belief, you can criticize them all. It's all good to join in until someone comes after you.
@@misssue1824 The fact that you don't like my analogy doesn't make it "flawed". I have studied cults extensively for decades. All the cults I named are 100% proven to be false belief systems. When a religion makes "prophecies" that never come true, claims about history and science that can be easily disproven and uses extreme mental and emotional manipulation to control its adherents, its "credentials" are revealed as a sham. While each of the cults I named deceives many people into believing in their teachings, any supposed "benefit" any member of them has received (apart from the leaders getting fat off the labor of the victims of their deceptions) is at best a product of the "placebo effect". No doubt you belong to one of them, and are feeling upset about the fact that it made the list, but the facts don't care about your feelings. Do yourself a favor and escape from it while you still can.
Didn’t grow up in the church and that was part of the problem. They never fully expected me. I prayed so hard for GOD to help me and NOT people and all that happened was he brought the Mormons and the witnesses into my life over and over again. I became an atheist for four years and then for some reason, looked up at the full moon and started praying to Kaguya and then to Artemis and they brought Sun Wukong and Guan Yin in to my life and I have been so happy having deities who actually care about me.
Thanks I bless the Mormons and they have my FAVOR. I bless also my friend Nick Chapman aka RiversideKaitlynn aka BMWAddictStudentVanB. I also bless all my friends nesr Lion King Mufasamormon Rocks (Phelanutah We came to see sightsee mormons and some fled to utah so my question is how can i PENPAL KRISTIN AT BYU CHOIR AND THE PIGNOSED CUTE YOUNGER BUT SASSIER LIKE I FEEL LIKE A GOOD MORMON STEPDAD THAT SINGS ON RUclips WITH MY GIRL(MY GREATER SELF BTW). You look so beautiful like beyond hollywood or tv or celebrities or paintings or literature or poems or even ai...
For me it was about finding my own way without the indoctrination. What started out as an exercise in discovery led to a path of agnosticism. Not quite athiest, just an understanding that chrisianity is no more real than greek mythology. Religion started out as a way to explain the unexplainable, and turned into a way to seize money and power. If there is an intelligent designer, he/she/it/they has done a poor job at guiding us toward him/her/it/them. It would take several hours to fully explain it, but I won't explain it. Only ask questions to provoke thought as to the possibilities, and let others find their own way. And if anyone brings up faith and blah, blah, blah... I've heard it all before and it's a weak argument. Faith is a blinder and a cop out, and a way to say "I can't articulate my point, so here's smoke and mirrors."
Not only Mormons, ex JWs too! To me after knowing JWs teachings were wrong I researched the SOURCE (Bible) they’ve been using and telling us it’s the only truth but in reality it was/is also messed up😅
Mine is a bit different. I went to BYUH (ironically), and education made me start questioning Mormonism and religion as a whole. For the next decade and a few years we still went to church as a family, but I'd got more and more info about Mormonism, and my heart had distanced from it--not only from this church, but also all the organized religions. Finally, one day, we just stopped going.
Random thought: I think there is a god…you know why? Because when we are first born, we wear diapers and poop are pants and when we are about to die, we wear diapers and poop our pants? Is that a coincidence? I think not
I think once we left I started to realize that I’m ok with living agnostic. I’m ok with there being a God, but I’m also ok with there not being one. I think if there is a God, they are likely a lot more reasonable than expecting people to solve life puzzles on religion before gifting afterlife benefits to them. If there is a God I’m excited to have a reasonable sit down talk with them about whatever the hell this mysterious life on earth thing was all about.
I love your channel and your videos Lex ❤ I’m sorry to say though, if you did your research and came to the conclusion that God is not real, you didn’t do enough research. You’re right that organized religion isn’t great, but I promise you Jesus is real. The bible is all you’ll ever need ❤ said with love
This is all Martin Harris' fault. He was the one who wanted God's true church of old restored. JS just fulfilled his wishes for money. Then realised that people were actually buying it and it got out of hand, to say the least!
My sis and I were raised JW, and it was unnerving once we left the faith to realize that our Southern Baptist grandparents just assumed we would still want to be Christians. As with the Mormons and their mission preparation, the JWs spend an enormous amount of time and effort trying to convince their adherents that other religions (tbh other denominations of Christianity) are fallacious and even dangerous. We had just gotten free from the shackles of religion and were not looking to put blinders back on and dive into another pool.
I was deconstructing christianity (aka obsessively watching genetically modified skeptic lol) as a whole before I even learned the truth about the church, so leaving the church was literally just letting go of the entirety of religion for me
Well said! Digging deep to root out the damage caused by mormon beliefs typically results in realizing their god is false. Healing from mormonism doesn't require replacing Elohim with Bible God.
I'm nevermo, but the problems christian scriptures are the same as the issues with the claims of the BoM. Plus so much of the BoM IS the christian scriptures. Paul is a liar and no one knows who wrote the gospels or why...throw out Paul and the gospels, the christian church has nothing.
That's an accurate point that for me as well I was afraid of believing in something that I would later find out was not just false, but actually harmful. For example the concept of sin. Who actually is defining sin? Is it a leader or church organization? Is it yourself personally just reading the bible? The fact that I'm pinning my actions being bad or good based on something that is too ambiguous means I'm putting myself at risk for unnecessary shame. At that point it truly does make you want to steer clear of religion and the bible. That being said I do still believe in spirituality and I'm growing to believe in a higher power of some sort again, but not taking any dogma's on it's conceptualization.
I, too, believe there is something out there. I just don't know what. But, who really knows and, more importantly, who cares? It's not like we can do anything about it! ♥️♥️♥️
I left after 60 years, yes I was pissed off about being lied to and brainwashed, but due to personal experiences, I WILL NEVER ABANDON my belief in God.
Because the mormon teaching: “the natural man is an enemy to god” is actually true. The god described in the scriptures is a monster, antagonistic to human flourishing.
Thank you for your work, this is a very good explanation that fits my story as well. When I studied my way out of Mormonism, I looked at history, evolution, science, the lack of DNA and other evidence to support the Book of Mormon, Biblical archaeology, Biblical study without the blinders of religion on, and there was only one conclusion that made any sense. And that was that religion is man made and there is no god. Rather than depressing me, I realized that I have only one life and that I should live it in such a way that I leave this world a better place to live, if I can.
I totally agree with this. I however don’t consider myself anything. I am now comfortable saying that I have no idea what’s going on, why any of us are here and so on. And I am comfortable with that because I now realize that nobody else has a clue either. I don’t rule out any possibilities, but I refuse to practice in a church that tells you how it is because they want it to be that way.
That's exactly it for me. I don't know for sure AND NEITHER DO YOU. What I do know is that an all knowing, all powerful, ever loving God doesn't require an intermediary to tell me anything about anything. Organizations are great....so very human....but no thanks on following one against my better judgement because they said it's what God said.
I agree with what you're saying. I consider myself atheist. It isn't to say that I know there isn't a God. I'd make no such claim. But, I see it the same way that I see things like Bigfoot or alien abductions. I definitely can't prove that either of those things don't exist. Can't prove a negative. So, they might, and I can try and keep an open mind. It doesn't mean that I really believe that they do. In fact, I pretty well operate under the assumption that they don't, because both seem pretty far fetched to me. God is no different for me. In fact, it seems even more far fetched to me. Thus, I guess that makes more atheist than anything. To me the really silly thing about all of this is the fact that there are labels for this at all. There's no such terms for non believers of Bigfoot, or uncertainty around alien abductions. Why do we have labels for God?
If you lack belief in a god, then you are an atheist. If you believe there is a god, then you are a theist. All atheists have to say when someone makes a god claim is "I don't know". Don't get too caught up on labels.
@@kmurphy0620 I’m not, that’s what I was saying. I don’t consider myself anything. That includes an atheist, because I don’t 100% believe or not believe in anything. I just straight up have no clue.
Ex Mormon here & I will second this I didn't believe in our worship Satan. I don't actually know how I feel about God. I do know that organized Christianity isn't for me @ all.
Personally, I was struggling a lot with the Bible long before I lost my mormon faith. I read the Bible for seminary, during my mission in the US south, and for classes in BYU-I, and there were so many things about it (especially the Old Testament) that bothered me deeply. I always rationalized, "well, I've received a spiritual witness of the Book of Mormon, so I know it's true. And the Book of Mormon can't be true without the Bible, so, therefore, the Bible must also be true. The God of the Book of Mormon is also the God of the Old Testament." I knew that if I didn't believe in the Book of Mormon, then I would have no reason to believe in the Bible. So, when my testimony of the Book of Mormon fell apart, I had nothing tying me to the Bible. I wanted to believe in Jesus, I loved Jesus and it felt like I was grieving the death of a friend when I realized I didn't believe anymore. But I couldn't ignore the problems I had with the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament was not the same God who I felt like I had a personal, loving, and forgiving relationship with. I don't know why I should trust anyone else's ideas about God after my previous ideas of them were proven false. I figure if God is real, it's clear to me they don't want to be known.
When I left Mormonism, I became an agnostic (rather than an atheist). I decided that there was no scientific evidence regarding the existence of a supreme being one way or the other. I think what kept me from being an atheist is a book I read when I was a child. My father died when I was quite young and my mother gave me a copy of Dr. Raymond Moody's book called "Life After Life". At that time, I still believed in God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit (although I must admit I had a really hard time wrapping my head around the Holy Spirit stuff I was taught). That book really cemented the fact that yes, there absolutely could be something after we die. Since that time I've read other books and have heard many Near Death experiences from people. These are people from all walks of life, from different cultures and religions, from different age groups, different educational levels. These people would tell doctors things they simply could NOT have known (because they were "dead"), the would recall the resuscitation efforts (complete with the correct names of instruments used--and very, very few of these people had any sort of medical training and would know the names of the instruments and the steps that would have been taken to save their lives). I also had heard stories from folks who work at Hospice about visitations and "angels" visiting patients (that were seen by medical professionals working at the care facility--not people usually given to flights of fancy and paranormal mumbo jumbo. I'd heard other paranormal stories--one I'll never forget. There was a tragic traffic accident and a young woman was killed. The accident happened late at night and her car was down a steep embankment. When first responders arrived at the scene and made it down to the car, they realized they would not be able to get her out and pull the car up the steep embankment at night--it would be too dangerous for rescuers. So they placed a tarp over the car and left--to come back when the sun was up and it was less dangerous for workers. When there were about a third of the way up the embankment, a voice cried "Help me. Please help me". They thought they had made a terrible mistake and that the young woman was still alive, so they hurried as best they could back down to the car. They re-checked and the young woman was, in fact, lifeless. They were getting ready to leave when the same voice said "I'm fine, help my baby". Baby? They hadn't seen a baby. So they shifted some things in the car's back seat and discovered an infant, barely clinging to life. Had they left the infant there over night, he (or she, I don't remember the baby's gender) would have died. These were fire fighters and paramedics, some attended church regularly, others considered themselves atheists. They said they all definitely heard the voice, they all said nothing like that had ever happened to them before (or since). I read things like that that simply cannot be explained and part of me allows for the possibility of a supreme being. What I am sure of is that most religion's concept of a supreme being is likely dead wrong. I am not certain we humans have the mental and intellectual capacity to understand a deity. I do know that the Christian concept that "God created man in his image" (of course God has to be a man, Christianity--all Christianity is extremely misogynistic), is just wrong. If God created man in his image, then God is just another human being--a powerful one (one with super powers, if you will, but nonetheless a human being), with all the flaws that come with being human--bigotry, intolerance, getting angry and taking revenge, etc. Not the kind of God I want to worship, really. I think it much more likely that humans cannot understand "God" (or whatever you want to call your supreme being) so they made "god" in THEIR image (not the other way around). So I consider myself an agnostic. I do not attend church. My husband and I had a brief flirtation with the Unitarian Church, but that didn't last long. We found it better, but still open to the corruption and issues faced by other organized religions--because of the very flawed human beings in the church and it didn't settle the question of "is there a god?" for either of us (my husband also is an agnostic). I am quite happy as an agnostic and if I want to talk to you about your religion, I'll ask, so please don't try to convert me. BTW, last time I asked about a religion, it was a very nice conversation. We have a wonderful friend who is of the Sikh religion. I realized I didn't really know anything about Sikhism. So I asked my friend what she believed and what the Sikh churches teach. We had a nice discussion--she was forthright with her answers, she answered my questions, but didn't feel the need to try to convert me. If that's the kind of religious talk you want to have, great. But if you're going to try to convert me, I'd just as soon you leave me be.
After leaving the church decades ago, the lack of spiritual elements in my life turned me to to pray to something I KNOW exists. I pray to the Sun every day, 4 times a day. I don't ask for things, only thanks for the energy it gives.
I appreciate hearing why an ex-LDS is atheist and your saying the LDS church did not make you atheist. Informal polls indicate about 2/3 of ex-members become atheist or agnostic and to say it is from critical study and not from a negative, opposite reaction to the high demand religion experience does clarify the reasons. I went from the LDS church to an even more high demand religion but that was my choice and I knew what I was getting into. Others though seem to give me the impression that their one experience of a high demand religion means they do not want any part of any other, and I wonder if others do feel like the LDS church and other high demand religions pushed them to see atheism as a peaceful out.
Your journey has been so fascinating to me. I completely understand the hurt. I also understand your situation. You are very positive and you seem to have a lot of love for people, including those in the LDS community. Maybe you won't agree with this, but i see you as a way of God reaching out to all your viewers, and especially your Mormon ones, to not complicate things with man made religion and just follow the command to love one another, as Jesus has taught. Thanks for the entertaining videos and i wish you all of the happiness and good will. Take care
Well spoken Lex. I appreciate when people leave organised religions and choose to be critical atheists. I shall call myself critical atheist. INA philosophical circle you can be an agnostic. The best belief we can stay with is what is compatible with the lifestyle we live or would like to liive. We don't need the influence of corrupted religionist representatives.
I love and read the Bible everyday as man made mythology. Which is what it truly is. I would like to see the Bible studied as the Greek Myths are by more people and not just dismissed because it is man made and not a divinely inspired faith document.
I am a ex Mormon but was only in the church for a short time and that was as an adult later in life so my view and experience is not like those who grew up with it. I've watched your channel and some parts I agree with and some are I think none of us will can ever truly say definitively yes/no right or wrong. The church as a whole is not bad there are many aspects about it that are positive and healthy. Most of the commonly known religions share this trait I would say. In listening to this video you do leave out one crucial very important factor....emotion. It is very much an influence in every decision you've made, listening to you describe your experiences it's clear that emotions were present and affecting your thoughts. Most people on a daily basis fail to consider how much they are affected by their emotional state at any particular moment which why we so often hear people say they regret making decisions. Those decisions were made with a lack of information or under the duress of emotion and not accounted for. When we say someone is rash we're referring to letting their emotions dictate their decisions versus logic. I know for me personally leaving the church I had to take time to think about how I felt emotionally and logically before making any final choice. Making the decision for anything significant should involve more than just research but also serious self reflection and understanding of your own emotions.
There is a difference between organized religion and believing in a higher power .Organized religion is man's best attempts to understand God. It's fine if you don't believe in either one, but there is a difference.
I'm agnostic but I will say that Mormonism is fake in a way that other religions are not. Like the different parts of the Bible were written at roughly the times that Christians claim it was written. The Qur'an is really from Muhammad's lifetime. Whether these things are scripture revealed from a god is a different question, but their followers are not mislead about their origin or timeline.
I have been away from the church for about 7 years now. I was a very literal beliver in the LDS church. I did my deep dive into church history, 😂and Joseph Smith and World was turned on its side. When I was in, I was a history minor, and I studied a semester on the protestant Reformation. I also studied the history of the Catholic church. For me, I stopped at being an agnostic. There may be a source of the divine out there, but it's not found in holy men and holy books or magical messiahs.
I based my testimony of Mormonism on "feelings" which I thought proved it was true. Once I learned those "feelings" can be easily replicated outside of religion and don't mean anything, there was nothing left to make decisions with except logic. Athiests rely on as many unproven theories as those who have faith in a God. In the end we just don't know everything.
Lex, do you realize that in 2021 that it was estimated three in ten people in the U.S. were agnostic, atheist or "nones?" Since members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made up less than 5% of the U.S. population, it wasn't just members of the LDS Church leaving God. It's pretty sad that you spend so much of your life looking back. Emotionally healthy people learn to forgive and move on. I also don't know why it is okay in a time when our society is so careful not to offend people that you and others get a pass on criticizing the LDS Church. If someone got on RUclips and started making fun of Native American religions, or Buddhists it wouldn't take long before public outcry would be raised to defend them, and rightly so. Why are we not respected in the same manner and there is such a double standard?
Jesus fulfilled the Law at the Cross. By Design he saved us from our Sins. Jesus doesn't want you to practice a religion, He wants a relationship with you One on One. When he rose from the Dead after 3 days, the New Church was open for business. Our bodies became Temples for the Holy Spirit; the Kingdom of God is in you and around you and inside you. When you come to Repentance the Holy Spirit comes inside of you and Dwells in you. You change from the Inside out and you become Christ Like. You will never be like Christ while you have a physical body but he will lead you thru life, give you knowledge and wisdom to help you make good decisions. Mike Gendron is a really good Pastor. I highly recommend him.
Maybe....because mormons believe in the god of this world? just guessing. god of Joseph Smith has nothing in common with the God of the Bible. Seek the TRUTH and the TRUTH shall set you free. jesus in mormonism, JW, islam, new age, hinduism, etc is the false jesus. 2 Corinthians 11:3-4, NKJV. “But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted-you may well put up with it!"
In terms of the Church doing a really great job of showing how all the other churches are wrong: Can confirm!! They just never expected me to turn it around on them and realize Mormonism is just as wrong as all the others!!
For me, it was because when you really question everything-you really come to realize that nothing about god may be true. When you once believed so deeply and strongly and then when ya realize all the untruths you make connections about how collective imagination and mythology is similar throughout all religion and that it is more of a cultural belief that you were born into rather than something objectively true.
its worth noting that just because one is a lie it doesn't automatically make another thing a lie. If you find out you are adopted in an unhealthy way, for example, you may feel your adopted parents were lying to you. However, that does not mean you do not have biological parents. Having parents is not the lie, not being told you were adopted is the lie. There's a common phrase "don't throw the baby out with the bath water" which should apply to this situation. Another thing to consider is no counterfeit $3 bills exist because there are no real $3 bills, and a counter fit $2 bill would not mean all $2 bills are fake. Mormon teaching is deceptive mixed with truth, unfortunately, and that creates bias towards truth with all the trauma and pain that causes. The LDS religion is Satanic, and wants people away from knowing the real God, even if that means being super religious on a fake idea of him. Jesus spoke against the religious leaders of his day who are very similar to the LDS.
@@Bullybob77 the whole Bible is dubious, as are other religious texts. They are basically just traditions. Every major era of civilization has had their creation story and religions relative to their culture.
@@PutingPinoy Can you explain how the bible is dubious? Its about being made right with God. However, without a way to measure objective morality, you could say anything is dubious as its all subjective at that point. Can you explain how the bible was just tradition? It is antithetical to the religious elites and Rome saw it as a threat to their empire? even then, tradition does not determine true or false.
@@saintnash1 You will only have true joy if you believe what I believe, and you are destroying others by spreading your belief... where have I heard that before? Unfortunately, happiness does not determine truth. maybe in the short term while under the veil of ignorance, many things can make someone happy, that does not make them true.
Someone doing something in the name of theism does not determine if theism is true or not. Just like Charles Darwin saying racist things about how Blacks will be further away from us as we evolve like baboons are to us now, that does not make evolution false. Evolution is false all by itself, regardless of what a prophet of evolution may do or say.
I think it's more important to look at the source material to determine if it is true or not, not its followers. I have sympathy for mormons and exmormons who still are looking to man as the authority for their beliefs.
@@saintnash1 Wow, you sound like a Mormon missionary, only atheist. similar explanation, different belief. The only way to be happier is to believe what you believe, and everyone who disagrees is only making things worse.
I'm an ex-Mo, very happy atheist, finally at peace after leaving all the toxicity behind.
Exactly, and now you don't have to worry about an imaginary God sending you to a non-existent hell... Free at last free at last!
I don't see any peace in atheism. You just become another animal living a life where you have no higher purpose than what you decide is right. Funny, but you become your own god. Then it's old age and death, followed by oblivion.
@@GuyRegular Yup. Free to be just another animal with enough brains to cause mass destruction and no moral laws higher than what you want in the moment because your morality is no more valid than the next person's. Live for the blink of the cosmic eye and go happily into oblivion to become compost.
The more I left organized faith, the more agnostic I became. Some people think this is hedging my bets. I just realized that I just don't know and for that part of my life, that's okay.
What I won't do is use someone else's definition of what a god is, or what happens before or after our time here on earth, as the definition for why a god would or would not exist, or what our purpose here is. I figure I'll know eventually, or not, and that's good enough for me.
I just got out of an abusive relationship with a god, not interested in finding another one.
Same my life has just too much bad when I converted I gave all my heart and soul to god and he stabbed me in the back and twist the knife. I’m done with him
exactly this
@@BrianWaller-qe7gr you were duped by a ridiculously obviously false religion. A religion that screams “hoax” from the opening paragraph. That’s not God‘s fault.
Wow. How do you people find joy and peace?
@@BrianWaller-qe7gr How can God stab you in the back?
@Exmo Lex As a Christian I truly appreciate you answering this question honestly!
To my fellow Christians the best thing we can do is just take a step back & listen to what our exmo friends are telling us. When someone asks, then answer them appropriately and with kindness...
I second that. You really want to be Christian, just be a good neighbor to everyone
Well, as someone who used to do archaeology here for a living, I know entirely too much about the prehistory of North America to see the Book of Mormon as anything other than a work of fiction. If the Book of Mormon were historically accurate it would be painfully obvious at this point in light of all the archaeology that has been done here over the last century and a half. Instead what we see is Native American cultures developing on their own over thousands of years.
Hey pittbulking 87, I assume you heard they found a "lost" native American city in Kansas called Etzanoa that the Spaniards knew about in the 1500s. It was lost for more than 500 years and they had a general idea of where it was! We have no clear idea where the Book of Mormon took place. Archaeology is constantly publishing about new finds. And with the destruction wrought on mounds and ancient sites of North America through farming and building, could we even know if those sites might be something valid? It's a pretty big haystack out there.
The weak argument that "archeologist just haven't looked hard enough" is absolutely crap. Settlers from another continent wouldn't have dug into the farthest unsearchable reaches when setting up civilizations. They would've picked the easiest, most obvious choices to build. In the 1830s it was easier to bamboozle people with lack of evidence by spinning an emotional story. People are wiser now and have unlimited access to information.
@@misssue1824The point is well taken. We don't know as much as we would like about the peopling of the Americas but the Book of Mormon makes testable claims. Sure, it is a big haystack, but we have dug enough holes to say what probably happened and what in all likelihood did not happen. If the Book of Mormon were true than prehistoric sites from 600 B.C. to 400 A.D. should look a lot more like historic sites from the 16th to the 19th Century. They don't. There are no iron tools or weapons, just implements of stone, bone, or wood. There was some use of copper too but copper nuggets were heated and hammered into shape, not smelted. There are no old world domestic animals like horses, cows, sheep or goats. Native Americans had domesticated dogs and out West I believe turkeys. There are no Old World crops like wheat and barley. What we do have is crops unknown to Europeans such as corn, squash and beans. In contrast once contact with Europeans is made Native Americans acquire iron tools and weapons, Old World domesticated animals like horses and sheep as well as Old World crops. There are other items from the Old World like glass beads that you don't see until contact with Europeans is made. I could go on but you get the point.
@@pittbullking87DNA as well says nothing in the book of Mormon ever happened.
For me, the journey to athiesm was centered around the idea that life is simply too short to worry about whether or not God exists and what that is going to look like when we die. I have more than enough things to worry about in the here and now to be concerned with what some real or fictional God might think. And quite frankly, if God does exist, he's not doing a lot to help make the world a better place, so why on Earth would his judgement of me mean anything? How dare someone claim that God will judge me and decide my eternal fate when most religions paint God as a mostly terrible person. Why should I value the opinion of such a being? Debating God's existence or lack thereof is meaningless when you stop caring about what God and others think of you.
If you never look, what will you find? If you never study and seek, what will you learn?
Sorry but your reasoning makes no sense. If God exists you better know about Him, especially if he's angry with you! Right? And if there's an afterlife, we need to know what that is, because that's literally where you will be when you die? And the Christian teachings (Mormanism isn't Christian btw) reveal that God gives us the standards for right and wrong. How can you say God is painted one way or another or make a judgement claim without operating on some moral system that reveals right and wrong aka religion?
@@Shelb13v What is wrong in my reasoning? Would you get on RUclips and talk about bad experiences with people of color or different gender identities and tear them down? Channels like this foster hate speech against religion. Why is that okay?
How do you know whether God is mad at me? I don't judge your standing with God. (Matt 7:1-2)
Have you ever honestly and humbly tested what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has to offer? If not, then you are just believing in man, not God.
Dude. This! So this.
When I left Mormonism, believing in Christ was one of the things that got me through the initial pain of my entire world crumbling. But then, after while I decided I needed to look into Christianity the same way I looked into Mormonism just like was said above. There was no way I was going to believe some thing that I hadn't vetted first because finding out Mormonism was faults was one of the hardest things for me to deal with in my entire life. Next to the death of a loved one. Now I'm an atheist however, I'm open for any truce that I can discover. But I have to have good reasons to believe it.
Try finding faith in God -- not in religion. Mormonism pimps out God and Jesus to foster faith in its organization.
Looking at religious organizations will find the shortcomings of the religious organization.
Religious organizations did not create the world. Or you. But God did.
And religious organizations did not die to save your soul. But Jesus did.
Faith in God is between you and God -- no organization required.
HOWEVER -- people who share faith in God do come together (i.e. "organize") to share their faith and encourage one another, and tell others about their faith.
Don't put the cart before the horse. People who have faith in God may organize, but not all organizations are based on having faith in God.
Does that open the way for a "truce" for you?
Have faith in God -- in the God of The Bible -- and The Bible as God's Word -- as if you were the only one.
Then find others who believe likewise ...
Well said. My deconstruction started with critically thinking about if god is true as well as heaven and hell since those were things I was really curious about. After I lost belief in those things, my belief in mormonism wasn't so far behind. I find it really cool to discover how differently people can deconstruct.
My path was different but similar to yours Lex.
I was about sixteen when I left the church for the wrong reasons (if there can be wrong reasons to leave). My father had a faith crisis because he gave his best friend a blessing that she would recover and she died not soon after. He was told he had not given her the blessing Christ would have wanted him to give and that's why his blessing did not come to pass.
In any event, the magic that is the Priesthood let him down and he eventually left the church. I'm not sure he entirely lost his faith, at least in Christianity as a whole, but his wife (my step-mom) stayed and is a TBM through and through to this day (and is very proud of her Utah pioneer ancestors).
I left because my dad left. My faith was predicated upon his, the man I had admired my whole life. I don't think I was privy to the exact reason why he had left. Had I known, I probably would have stayed actually, because I was TBM, too, an indoctrinated youth. But if it wasn't good enough for my dad, it wasn't good enough for me.
But deep down I still wanted to believe and I wanted it to be true. As I learned more about my father's reasoning, I reconsidered and in my late twenties I decided I wanted to come back. But I began researching because I had been hearing disturbing things and after a few years I actually became a bit rabid in my "anti-mormonism" because I had my religion ripped from me. It was a very painful experience and something I was not coping with very well.
In that process, I first lost Brigham Young as a Prophet. I then considered the reorganized church as possibly being correct but then I lost Joseph Smith as my prophet. So much so I wanted to urinate on his grave. I was so angry (I'm over the anger now, most of the time).
The church always taught it was the restoration of the original church so I sought out what that church might be. I learned, and educated myself on the history of Christianity and considered that maybe the truth lie in either Catholicism, Orthodoxy or Eastern churches. Even the Coptic church of Egypt. I considered all the ones I considered to have deep historical roots.
Considering all the contradictions in the Bible, it was the verse in Matthew where Jesus stated that when the second coming were to come to pass, members of this (his) generation would still be alive. That seemed a blatant lie.
And that's when I lost Jesus.
If there is a God, he wouldn't make finding him so hard.
So yes, the critical thinking that led me away from Mormonism is the same that led me away from religion in general. It was very painful, like having my soul ripped from me. And yet I still live a moral life, want to be a good person and do good by my fellow humans and my family. My moral compass, though, doesn't rely on a carrot or a stick from a magical power. It's internal now.
It's up to me.
Once I faced the reality that the Mormon church was untrue, it took zero time to reject all other religions. They all operate on the same misguided principles of faith and tradition. I will never again cede my ability to reason to an unsubstantiated authority.
Not even remotely true. However, you are free to believe what ever you want.
@@robertmacfarlane8176 prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt
Amen. But it's easier to discredit a 200 yr old religion than a 2K one.
Yeah, I did a little church hopping, but I found myself cringing as I saw people were being emotionally manipulated in a similar way I had been as a Mormon.
And it is untrue because...? And you know this how, if there is only unsubstantiated authority?
I have been looking into the supernatural for a long time I have found no evidence at all as of yet.🌹
"We have done our homework." PERIOD. And yes, we're tired of being bugged about it. For me, I left the LDS Church and God at the same time because my problem was with God specifically, that lack of morality of God, the narcissism, the counter-evidence of promises in scripture being untrue. I knew anywhere else I'd go, God would still "be there" so to speak, and I wanted nothing to do with that. Only after I left (years later, actually) did I start to learn the depth of the problems specific to the LDS Church.
Mormonism isn’t any goofier than the rest of it. It’s just more modern. Based on fanfic of what was already mythology. My family was Mormon, but my grandma walked away. Never heard the word “god” in her house at all. My black sheep father was the most religious member of the family, and he’s a narcissist. Never Mormon though.
The idea of a perfect being needing worship doesn’t square. I’ve used the analogy of catching your teenager destroying his ant farm because they won’t worship him.
He needs therapy. Badly.
For me it was like my brain was hyper-aware of teachings and doctrines that seemed sketchy or were inconsistent/incompatible with other teachings when I left Mormonism. I had already been struggling, prior to my faith crisis, with what seemed like god playing favorites with some people while neglecting others. During my deconstruction of Mormonism my brain started making connections to all the other teachings in the Bible about god that seemed to portray him as narcissistic, petty, or vengeful and realized that Bible god was not only full of inconsistencies but also wasn’t that great a guy. I am still open to the possibility of some grand organizing something that humanity doesn’t really understand - I do not see Bible god as anything more than an invention used to both explain things we don’t understand and act as a control tool for corrupt people.
As for Jesus - while I believe there was likely a influential person named Jesus (or some variation of that) 2000ish years ago, the academic historical studies of the Bible lead me to believe his divinity was a ‘fish story’ that grew overtime.
Thanks Lex. I’m a Christian and always wondered why so many ex mos and ex JWs come out of the cult as atheists. I appreciate the explanation.
I just love how so you and other throw the word cult around. Here is the Oxford definition: cult
/kəlt/
noun
-a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.
"the cult of St. Olaf"
-a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.
"a network of Satan-worshiping cults"
-a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing.
"a cult of personality surrounding the leaders"
The LDS Church isn't a great fit, unless you count devotion to God as cultish.
@@misssue1824 I take it you’re a POed lds member. Hassan’s BITE model says it’s à cult just like JWs. It’s good enough for me. Lex calls it à cult too.. yell at her too hun. Stop using weasel words like others. Can you name them? No? Your premise holds no water. Drop the smug sanctimonious crap.
@@misssue1824Have you heard of the B.I.T.E. model? It's a list of cult behaviors to help cult members figure out if they are in a cult or not. Cult members don't know they are in a cult. Steven Hassan realized he was in a cult (the Moonies), and then he developed the B.I.T.E. model. It's quite fascinating on a psychological level. B.I.T.E. stands for behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control.
@@misssue1824Have you heard of the B.I.T.E. model? It's a list of cult behaviors to help cult members figure out if they are in a cult or not. Cult members don't know they are in a cult. Steven Hassan realized he was in a cult (the Moonies), and then he developed the B.I.T.E. model. It's quite fascinating on a psychological level. B.I.T.E. stands for behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control.
For me, I think that after deconstructing Mormonism, the natural next step was for me to look at Christianity in general with that same critical lens. If everything I was raised to believe was wrong, what else might be wrong? Was there any truth in Christianity or religion? So, I just asked basic questions like, who wrote the bible and when was it written?
Learning about how far Christianity is removed from actual eye witness accounts made me feel like it's not a very reliable source of truth (in regards to factual information, I actually love the philosophy of Jesus as far as I've interpreted it). Now, I just look at it like people thought Jesus was a great guy with good ideas and people liked to embellish stories. Who doesn't like a good story? That's how folklore and myths are created, and stories can be a good way to teach people good morals.
Now, I realize how easily people use religion to manipulate others for their own gain, and there's no way I'm going to let that happen to me again. Religion is too often a tool for misogyny and racism, and I don't want my future kids to be a part of that. Is there a god? I'm not convinced, but maybe. Either way I'm not going to let it affect the way I choose to live my life.
I can be a good person without needing external validation and manipulation from a religious organization.
Hear hear! I couldn't have said that better ♥️♥️♥️
For me, growing up being told that this was the “only true church” turned me off from any other religion and the concept of God I had in my head for so long. And with time I’ve concluded that if God is real, he’s not the Mormon version, and he’s an asshole either way.
However, I lean more toward the idea that god is a human concept the ancients used to explain things they couldn’t explain. We have technology such as the James Webb Telescope, yet still no evidence of god. Evolution disproves creationism. And we now know that we are, at the molecular level, born from stars. The planet, our water, asteroids, other celestial objects, etc, all share characteristics of stars. So it’s very unlikely that a god exists.
Carl Sagan said it " we are star stuff" The creationist would say if we came from the Stars why are there still Stars? (Sarcasm alert)
There a difference between leaving organized traditional religion vs becoming an atheist that doesn't believe in the existence of God. If you decide that God doesn't exist, then you have another problem: Where did everything come from? Scientifically, there is no explanation for the existence of matter/energy/time and the existence of the universe.
Logically and scientifically, if you are depending upon a naturalistic beginning to the universe, you run into the problem of Causality. All naturalistic scientific explanations for the existence of the universe fail due to Causality. Quite simply, science is about understanding and explaining What Causes What. Science has yet to explain the origin of Life or the origin of the universe. Seriously, all explanations violate their own understandings of math, science and logic. Eventually, they devolve into "Well, we just don't know yet, but eventually Science will figure it out. This is just a "Science-of-the-Gaps" explanation and is no better than religion. Darwinian evolutionary theory looks reasonable in the broad strokes but when you delve into the chemistry and biology, it fails. For example, if there were a process where LIFE could come from lifeless chemicals, we should be able to observe it in nature or in the laboratory. Every since Miller and Urey made some random organic compounds in 1952, the evolutionary community has been promising that their research that life will be made from chemicals will produce results is just around the corner. But the more we learn, then further the goal recedes. The best science clearly shows that Life only comes from Life.
Additionally, every naturalistic explanation for the origin of the universe depends upon the actual physical existence of infinity -- something that has NEVER been observed in nature and is impossible to even prove.
I have yet to find a true atheist. Every so-called atheist I've spoken to has an axe to grind regarding religion or how they feel they were treated by God. Leave religion if you wish, but if you are so bold as to deny the existence of God, then you had better come up with a logical, scientific and mathematically coherent explanation for the existence of the universe and life. Something better than, "Well, I just don't feel that way!" Belief in God is not the same as following a religion. We can clearly see that a God is needed for the existence of the Universe, Time, Space, Life and Reality. There is no other way for these things to have caused themselves and no place for them to have come from naturally without violating Causality.
What that God actually happens to be is a different question altogether.
I’d been struggling financially for years and years before I left the Mormon cult. I felt like God was going to bless me for finally recognizing I was in a cult. He didn’t. He didn’t care that I was trapped in a cult, and he wasn’t proud of me for getting out of it. If there is a god, he doesn’t love me.
What helped me with leaving mormonism and becoming atheist is realizing that there is NO invisible "sky daddy" who blesses some people and punishes others. For me, it was very liberating to no longer feel like I'm being watched and judged all the time. Life isn't set up as rewards for the righteous and damnation for the wicked. Life just is. And sometimes it isn't fair. We do the best we can each day and maybe make a difference in someone's life along the way (even if it's just our own). I hope you can find the freedom to love yourself and no longer feel like you're hated by a mythical creature. Gods are myths created back when people needed answers to things that we now have scientific explanations for. ❤❤❤
@@laycie_mnmI’m doing great now. The story was mostly about the feelings that led me to shed my beliefs in those abusive overlords. I would have never guessed I’d no longer believe in the god of the Bible, but here we are and I’ve never been happier.
There's a God and He loves his creation. Put your faith in Him.
@@Shelb13v I’m glad he loves you!
I was 16 when I left the church. A large part of why I left is the problem of evil, but I didn’t either idea of god altogether, I went to paganism because I hadn’t been taught how to be skeptic.
What took you away if you don't mind me asking? At 16 I didn't know God from my own head.
@@misssue1824 the problem of evil. I was seeing quite a lot wrong with the world. I was 14 when 9/11 happened and I wondered where the hell was god? Then our retaliation: our soldiers died, innocent civilians died, and it took forever to take out the guy responsible. When god could have snapped his fingers and stopped everything. He was apparently fine controlling Pharaoh so he could show off and send a bunch of plagues against Egypt, but couldn’t stop a couple of airplanes.
Then there were my own problems. I did all the things I was supposed to as a mormon boy, and I was miserable. I was being taught the happiness came from serving the lord, and yet I had really bad depression. And despite my praying for my depression to go away, I remained depressed. Plus antidepressants didn’t seem to help at all.
@@misssue1824 Why baptize 8-year-olds then?
@@misssue1824 Why baptize 8-year-olds then??
For me it was the spiritual witness. If I had a spiritual witness the church is true and that was false, how can I believe any spiritual witness? And once you take out that “faith” component well there’s not a lot of proof god exists. So yea I threw the baby out too because the baby turned out to be a doll.
People should be left to make their own choice regarding religion. It shouldn't be forced down their throat, nor should they be indoctrinated. I will tell you this. I was walking to the shop to get my lunch. I kid you not, this bloke barged up to me and said...
"Do you know Jesus loves you?"
"That's nice," I replied.
"Did you know the bible says we can all be saved if we just accept him into our hearts?" he asked.
"The bible says lots of things, some of which I agree with, some of which I don't," I responded.
"Like what?" He enquired.
"Oh," says I, "like stoning to death for adultery, or it being fine to sell your children into slavery provided it's within a certain distance of where you live." I quoted certain verses.
His question, "Do you know why people CHOSE slavery?" he asked.
"No," I replied, "do tell."
I shit you not. His response was.......
"Because they wanted the security."
At that point, I turned and walked away without a backward glance. I've not been so appalled for a long time. You just can't teach stupid or those deliberately blind to the truth, I guess. 🤷🏻
Once again i give exmo lex so so much credit and validate her journey of life entirely. I wrestled with my own similar church struggle and wanted to walk away at one point but i knew it was that church and churches like them (i strictly speak from a fudemental evangelical presoective here). I am now squared away in my faith and my beliefs about faith but i know i may also wrestle with churches and where i fit into them personally. I will however nevwr criticize, belittle, or judge anyone on their journey of life and that is from a christian. I dont speak for orher Christians nor will i argue or judge them if they so choose to raise holy hell thats their own progitive. But i just want to say i value and respect the legitimacy that exmo brings with this video and every video.
For me, I already went to Catholic school and largely studied other religions at some point.
I already knew if I wasn't Mormon, I was going to be atheist...or at least agnostic. Nothing else seemed to have any kind of answers at all, all while pretending to. Atheism was honest enough to not pretend to have answers, and Mormonism seemed to have all the answers. I knew I wasn't going to trust decentralized, near authority-less religions, and to this day I'm still an advocate for organization if it's true.
After what God did, I realized either none of it was true, or I'd have to reject the truth altogether because it is ruined at best, evil at worst...ironically these arguments were used in the Chronicles of Narnia to dissuade the characters back to Jesus...I mean Aslan.
As an exmo, after 42 years of strong testimony in the teachings of the LDS Church, where i often bore my testimony, how I knew Heavenly Father loved me, that I knew families could be eternal, that small and simple things were evidence of the love of God and Jesus... I find it immeasurably relieving and joyful to bask in not knowing. I'll be pleased if I find out God, Jesus, and Heaven are real. But if i don't, I'll find the joy and sacredness of life itself every day.
And if I'd be punished for not understanding something or taking it only on faith when so many of the principles are bent into harmful practices, that's not a God I'd worship anyway.
I wish more brainwashed and pearl clutching Mormons saw testimony for what it really is - indoctrination and nothing more.. it has zero value other than as a mind control tactic loved by cults and door to door salesmen.
I left the church in 2015 and I immediately became an atheist. I pretty much deconstructed the Mormon church and Christianity at the same time. The concept of omnibenevolent and omnipotent god is absurd to me. I'm finally free to live my life as I please.
There a difference between leaving organized traditional religion vs becoming an atheist that doesn't believe in the existence of God. If you decide that God doesn't exist, then you have another problem: Where did everything come from? Scientifically, there is no explanation for the existence of matter/energy/time and the existence of the universe.
Logically and scientifically, if you are depending upon a naturalistic beginning to the universe, you run into the problem of Causality. All naturalistic scientific explanations for the existence of the universe fail due to Causality. Quite simply, science is about understanding and explaining What Causes What. Science has yet to explain the origin of Life or the origin of the universe. Seriously, all explanations violate their own understandings of math, science and logic. Eventually, they devolve into "Well, we just don't know yet, but eventually Science will figure it out. This is just a "Science-of-the-Gaps" explanation and is no better than religion.
Additionally, every naturalistic explanation depends upon the actual physical existence of infinity -- something that has NEVER been observed in nature and is impossible to even prove.
I have yet to find a true atheist. Every so-called atheist I've spoken to has an axe to grind regarding religion or how they feel they were treated by God. Leave religion if you wish (not a bad idea, I agree), but if you are so bold as to deny the existence of God, then you are forced to come up with a logical, scientific and mathematically-coherent explanation for the existence of the universe and life. Something better than, "Well, I just don't feel that way!"
Wow. From previous vids, I thought you were an exmo that turned to Nicene Creed Protestantism. Regardless, I learned a lot about LDS teachings from your vids. Hope you consider doing a vid that focuses on the specific questions you raised that led to deconstruction. Stay skeptical and cheers.
Mormon Jesus was out, Christian Jesus was never an option because I had deconstructed him on my mission.
This is interesting; thank you for posting. As a missionary, I was never instructed on how to defend the Church against other religions. We don't learn any details about other religions at Church, and I only studied them on my own after the mission out of pure curiosity. The basic tenant is that everyone is using their free agency to believe whatever they want to believe, and we only teach them if they want to learn.
That’s so funny, my husband learned lots of techniques for “disproving” other religions on his mission 😂
*Basic tenet. But, I get your point ♥️♥️
@@vikkiledgard8483don’t do that. You knew what they meant.
I feel like 2010-ish was a pivotal period for exmos fate. I find that Mormons who left prior to 2010 often join other religions, whereas those who leave after 2010 seem to go agnostic. I feel like the Internet and the "Google era" may have something to do with this pattern. Those who left before Google found comfort in other faiths, but those who left after Google find comfort in.... well, Google. Agree? Disagree?
Very interesting. I have two siblings that left before or right around that time. I'll check with them. My family and I just left last year, and we're all pretty much agnostic.
Mormon God and American Jesus Christ
For me, it's because Mormonism made the most sense. A loving god who will sentence his child to an eternity of torture just for not believing him? No matter how generous, kind, and compassionate you are, if you pick the wrong God, you go to Hell forever; and no matter how evil, corrupt, and harmful you are, you go to Heaven as long as you believe in Christ? That's beyond dumb - that's narcissistic. That is clearly something some human came up with to manipulate people.
But a God who created a tiered system based on how you live your life - where if you're a good person, you're rewarded with an eternal paradise, but if you go the extra step and do what needs to be done, you to can follow in our father's footsteps and one day be like him? That makes sense. That's rational. A god who actually cares about all his creations, not just the ones in the Middle East? Where he brought the gospel to the entire world? Absolutely, he's god, why wouldn't he, and of course those people would write about it. And a church that uses its wealth to build a robust social support system to help people meet their temporal, not just spiritual needs? Yes. Absolutely.
Everything about the Mormon church just makes so much rational sense, that if it's wrong, there's no other religion that even comes close. But it's that same rationality that killed my belief too. If god loves all his children, if he wants us all to return to be like him; if one of the conditions of that is entering into the temple and having the priesthood; and if we receive divine revelation which we are to obey directly from god through a living prophet - how could that prophet say that black people should be denied the full blessings of the church? How could they, for over a century, claim that God didn't want black people to go to the Celestial Kingdom - which is what they say by denying them entry to the temple & the priesthood. "But it was a different time" - not for God, and not for those who truly believe they should obey the revelations from God through his prophet. There's no excuse for it.
And then once you're out, you start learning about all the other crap - how Joseph Smith was a pedo and married other men's wives while they were still married, how he was a con artist, how his story changed so many times, etc.
Yes to all of this!
This video is the story of my life lol
Well said. Whenever I bump into this question the future, I will refer people to this video.
I stopped believing in God when I lost my cat and there was no reasonable explanation for why such a traumatic event happened. Then I realized that many traumatic things happen and have happened over thousands of years and if God was real, he should have intervened long ago.
So God is a vending machine for your needs? My cat is missing right now and has been for several weeks. I nursed her from a tiny feral kitten who rode on my shoulder and on the dash board of my car. I will grieve that I may never know what happened to her. My comfort is that if she is dead I will see her again and I know all things are in God's hands, including my own life and health. In return I feel comfort and peace as I study scripture and pray. God gives me sunsets, stars, family and so much else. Count what you have!
This life isn't all there is. It's a training ground. Too many people are walking off before they even see what the purpose is, which is to learn to find God and our better selves. We learn in this life to overcome problems, be patient and loving even when we are hurt, to forgive and learn to help others. We seek God. That is where we begin to find the true source of peace, light, joy and love. And it is magnificent.
Agree on God (if exists) should’ve intervened by long time ago. Imagine God is just watching people die from horrific incidents as if they are exchanged like drinks of vending machines😢, I as former JW was said paradise on earth and will have eternal life with no sorrow and pain as written in Rev. 21. So it means this book God acknowledges what SORROW and PAIN is, but decided to just watch these continually occur😢And historical facts tells us some had experienced EXCRUCIAL, TORTUROUS PAIN that we the ones hadn’t faced. I wonder how God was watching the Dark Ages, Holocaust and WW2 victims affected by atomic bomb😢If exists could’ve sent His Angels to let them rescue the innocents during those horrific days, as He did in Bible stories!
@@misssue1824At some point you realize God either isn't the kind loving being we were all taught about, or he is far from all knowing, or he just plain sucks ass at his job.. which is it?
Because the same logic that demonstrates Mormonism is false, demonstrates there is no God.
I think that for me, becoming aware of all of the deceptions in the church (misrepresentation of early church history, lack of transparency about former and current practices, etc) caused me to lose all trust in anyone who claims to speak for God, all the way back to the writers of the New Testament Gospels. The church also establishes in the minds of its members the concept of a singular "true" church, and does a fairly good job of deconstructing other religions; realizing that the "true church" is a sham becomes the last step in deconstructing religion entirely, since the church already deconstructed the rest of it for us. I ultimately don't think that it's impossible that some form of diety exists, but I don't trust anyone who claims to speak for or represent such a diety. If there is a God, he'll need to come down from heaven and tell me himself what he wants before I'll base my life decisions on it.
Great video Exmo well done. I think you pretty much explained it. When I was still TBM I said to myself...'if I ever find out that Mormonism is't true, then I'll know Christianity isn't true." I Never dreamed that it would come to that, but it did. Losing my faith in the LDS Church forced me to do some serious study of religion in general. That is how I became an Atheist. 😁
I stopped believing because if there was a god nobody deserves the bad as much as I have endured. I think our lives are just random chances of having good ones and bad ones. My life is like one shitty hand of poker.
Rejecting all other religions on the same basis as you rejected Mormonism is actually stopping short of fully rejecting your former faith. There is a little bit of you that still believes Mormons are right. I’ve seen this among Christian fundamentalists who reject all of Christianity even when their doubts center around unique issues within their sect.
This is absolutely perfect.
100000000000%
Ghost pendant.... Nice!
This. 👍
I had a friend reach out to me after he heard that I'd walked away from our shared faith. I don't know what part of "I have no intention of going back" he didn't understand, or why "I don't feel comfortable fully participating, so.... Why bother?" was confusing.....
Appreciate your honesty. I didn't come out of Mormonism but evangelical Christianity about 25 years ago. I didn't embrace atheism, however, but saw a divine fingerprint in eastern thought and Greek philosophy and finally landed upon pantheism. I found it answered a lot of questions for me me but I know it's not for everybody.
I consider myself agnostic, but I stopped really believing in God because I prayed SO MUCH to feel welcome at church, for people to like me at church, to get a calling at church, for my daughter to stop being bullied at church, for her to stop being bullied at school, and literally NONE of those prayers were answered. God is not who they say he is. He's not an all powerful being that will solve any problems for you. He's something else. Not sure what he is yet.
After I'd already "checked out" of the church I decided to support my daughter by reading the OT in parallel with her since that's what she was studying in seminary that year. Once I got to Ezekiel I was mentally "done" -- I just couldn't accept this was really "god" being presented here. Today I'm not sure if I'm an atheist in general, but I sure don't believe in the "god of the bible" as a result of reading it!
Imagine there are people who have escaped from some weird group that pretends to be "doctors", wears scrubs regularly, uses a lot of medical terminology in their speech while completely redefining what those terms mean, and performs horrible, medically unnecessary "surgeries" on their adherents. Anyone who escaped from such a group would quite naturally associate medical personnel, garments, terminology and procedures with their own traumatic experiences with the so-called "doctor" group they were raised in. Thus, most of them would tend to desperately avoid all things medical to keep from being ensnared by another such group and might understandably disbelieve in the existence of any real doctors, hospitals or medicine, assuming they were all just more of the same sick group that had traumatized them in the past.
In the same way, those who have escaped from a cult, whether it's Mormonism, the JWs, the "Children of God", the "People's Temple" or so on, will tend to understandably view all faiths as being like the cult they escaped from and will tend to avoid any faith, right or wrong, good or bad.
Your analogy is flawed. What if a person finds that the "treatment" is exactly what they needed and they feel far better and have answers to their "medical" questions? You make the assumption that all the faiths you named are false and their leaders faking it. How do you check for the credentials of a religion?
Those of you out there who are members of any religion or who believe there is no God and are engaging in this criticism should realize one important fact. You hold a belief that can't be proven. If you criticize any strongly held belief, you can criticize them all. It's all good to join in until someone comes after you.
@@misssue1824 The fact that you don't like my analogy doesn't make it "flawed". I have studied cults extensively for decades. All the cults I named are 100% proven to be false belief systems. When a religion makes "prophecies" that never come true, claims about history and science that can be easily disproven and uses extreme mental and emotional manipulation to control its adherents, its "credentials" are revealed as a sham. While each of the cults I named deceives many people into believing in their teachings, any supposed "benefit" any member of them has received (apart from the leaders getting fat off the labor of the victims of their deceptions) is at best a product of the "placebo effect". No doubt you belong to one of them, and are feeling upset about the fact that it made the list, but the facts don't care about your feelings. Do yourself a favor and escape from it while you still can.
Didn’t grow up in the church and that was part of the problem. They never fully expected me. I prayed so hard for GOD to help me and NOT people and all that happened was he brought the Mormons and the witnesses into my life over and over again. I became an atheist for four years and then for some reason, looked up at the full moon and started praying to Kaguya and then to Artemis and they brought Sun Wukong and Guan Yin in to my life and I have been so happy having deities who actually care about me.
❤
Thanks I bless the Mormons and they have my FAVOR. I bless also my friend Nick Chapman aka RiversideKaitlynn aka BMWAddictStudentVanB. I also bless all my friends nesr Lion King Mufasamormon Rocks (Phelanutah
We came to see sightsee mormons and some fled to utah so my question is how can i PENPAL KRISTIN AT BYU CHOIR AND THE PIGNOSED CUTE YOUNGER
BUT SASSIER LIKE I FEEL LIKE A GOOD MORMON STEPDAD THAT SINGS ON RUclips WITH MY GIRL(MY GREATER SELF BTW).
You look so beautiful like beyond hollywood or tv or celebrities or paintings or literature or poems or even ai...
For me it was about finding my own way without the indoctrination. What started out as an exercise in discovery led to a path of agnosticism. Not quite athiest, just an understanding that chrisianity is no more real than greek mythology. Religion started out as a way to explain the unexplainable, and turned into a way to seize money and power. If there is an intelligent designer, he/she/it/they has done a poor job at guiding us toward him/her/it/them. It would take several hours to fully explain it, but I won't explain it. Only ask questions to provoke thought as to the possibilities, and let others find their own way.
And if anyone brings up faith and blah, blah, blah... I've heard it all before and it's a weak argument. Faith is a blinder and a cop out, and a way to say "I can't articulate my point, so here's smoke and mirrors."
Right on ExMo!
From a former Bishop who served 6 years, convert to the church 40+ years.
Didn’t accept black people until 1978 ! Garden of Eden in Jackson county Missouri …..
Not only Mormons, ex JWs too! To me after knowing JWs teachings were wrong I researched the SOURCE (Bible) they’ve been using and telling us it’s the only truth but in reality it was/is also messed up😅
Mine is a bit different. I went to BYUH (ironically), and education made me start questioning Mormonism and religion as a whole. For the next decade and a few years we still went to church as a family, but I'd got more and more info about Mormonism, and my heart had distanced from it--not only from this church, but also all the organized religions. Finally, one day, we just stopped going.
Random thought: I think there is a god…you know why? Because when we are first born, we wear diapers and poop are pants and when we are about to die, we wear diapers and poop our pants? Is that a coincidence? I think not
I think once we left I started to realize that I’m ok with living agnostic. I’m ok with there being a God, but I’m also ok with there not being one. I think if there is a God, they are likely a lot more reasonable than expecting people to solve life puzzles on religion before gifting afterlife benefits to them. If there is a God I’m excited to have a reasonable sit down talk with them about whatever the hell this mysterious life on earth thing was all about.
If you "Lose" God after Mormonism, then you never really knew how to believe i.e. Religion doesn't own God.
I love your channel and your videos Lex ❤ I’m sorry to say though, if you did your research and came to the conclusion that God is not real, you didn’t do enough research. You’re right that organized religion isn’t great, but I promise you Jesus is real. The bible is all you’ll ever need ❤ said with love
Seen BOM musical 3x now, it’s brilliant!!a it’s based on fact and makes me wonder how intelligent people can believe such nonsense
This is all Martin Harris' fault. He was the one who wanted God's true church of old restored. JS just fulfilled his wishes for money. Then realised that people were actually buying it and it got out of hand, to say the least!
My sis and I were raised JW, and it was unnerving once we left the faith to realize that our Southern Baptist grandparents just assumed we would still want to be Christians. As with the Mormons and their mission preparation, the JWs spend an enormous amount of time and effort trying to convince their adherents that other religions (tbh other denominations of Christianity) are fallacious and even dangerous. We had just gotten free from the shackles of religion and were not looking to put blinders back on and dive into another pool.
I was deconstructing christianity (aka obsessively watching genetically modified skeptic lol) as a whole before I even learned the truth about the church, so leaving the church was literally just letting go of the entirety of religion for me
For me, reality, history, and evidence ruin Jesus. Thankfully.
I think people get burned out with high demand religions. Once one battles their way out...no one wants to jump back in.
Ah. Now I understand!
Well said! Digging deep to root out the damage caused by mormon beliefs typically results in realizing their god is false. Healing from mormonism doesn't require replacing Elohim with Bible God.
I'm nevermo, but the problems christian scriptures are the same as the issues with the claims of the BoM. Plus so much of the BoM IS the christian scriptures.
Paul is a liar and no one knows who wrote the gospels or why...throw out Paul and the gospels, the christian church has nothing.
Well said.
That's an accurate point that for me as well I was afraid of believing in something that I would later find out was not just false, but actually harmful. For example the concept of sin. Who actually is defining sin? Is it a leader or church organization? Is it yourself personally just reading the bible? The fact that I'm pinning my actions being bad or good based on something that is too ambiguous means I'm putting myself at risk for unnecessary shame. At that point it truly does make you want to steer clear of religion and the bible. That being said I do still believe in spirituality and I'm growing to believe in a higher power of some sort again, but not taking any dogma's on it's conceptualization.
I, too, believe there is something out there. I just don't know what. But, who really knows and, more importantly, who cares? It's not like we can do anything about it! ♥️♥️♥️
I left after 60 years, yes I was pissed off about being lied to and brainwashed, but due to personal experiences, I WILL NEVER ABANDON my belief in God.
Praise the Lord. God is great. The devil is a liar.
@@marygreen2672 the devil isn't real
Because the mormon teaching:
“the natural man is an enemy to god”
is actually true. The god described in the scriptures is a monster, antagonistic to human flourishing.
Yes!!!!!'!!!!!!!!
Thank you for your work, this is a very good explanation that fits my story as well. When I studied my way out of Mormonism, I looked at history, evolution, science, the lack of DNA and other evidence to support the Book of Mormon, Biblical archaeology, Biblical study without the blinders of religion on, and there was only one conclusion that made any sense. And that was that religion is man made and there is no god. Rather than depressing me, I realized that I have only one life and that I should live it in such a way that I leave this world a better place to live, if I can.
I totally agree with this. I however don’t consider myself anything. I am now comfortable saying that I have no idea what’s going on, why any of us are here and so on. And I am comfortable with that because I now realize that nobody else has a clue either. I don’t rule out any possibilities, but I refuse to practice in a church that tells you how it is because they want it to be that way.
That's exactly it for me. I don't know for sure AND NEITHER DO YOU.
What I do know is that an all knowing, all powerful, ever loving God doesn't require an intermediary to tell me anything about anything. Organizations are great....so very human....but no thanks on following one against my better judgement because they said it's what God said.
I agree with what you're saying. I consider myself atheist. It isn't to say that I know there isn't a God. I'd make no such claim. But, I see it the same way that I see things like Bigfoot or alien abductions. I definitely can't prove that either of those things don't exist. Can't prove a negative. So, they might, and I can try and keep an open mind. It doesn't mean that I really believe that they do. In fact, I pretty well operate under the assumption that they don't, because both seem pretty far fetched to me. God is no different for me. In fact, it seems even more far fetched to me. Thus, I guess that makes more atheist than anything.
To me the really silly thing about all of this is the fact that there are labels for this at all. There's no such terms for non believers of Bigfoot, or uncertainty around alien abductions. Why do we have labels for God?
@@GoingApeCostume exactly my thoughts
If you lack belief in a god, then you are an atheist. If you believe there is a god, then you are a theist.
All atheists have to say when someone makes a god claim is "I don't know".
Don't get too caught up on labels.
@@kmurphy0620 I’m not, that’s what I was saying. I don’t consider myself anything. That includes an atheist, because I don’t 100% believe or not believe in anything. I just straight up have no clue.
Oh a complete side note I just want to say you look so gorgeous! I love the necklace, hair and lace cardigan xx
❤️
Ex Mormon here & I will second this I didn't believe in our worship Satan. I don't actually know how I feel about God. I do know that organized Christianity isn't for me @ all.
Personally, I was struggling a lot with the Bible long before I lost my mormon faith. I read the Bible for seminary, during my mission in the US south, and for classes in BYU-I, and there were so many things about it (especially the Old Testament) that bothered me deeply. I always rationalized, "well, I've received a spiritual witness of the Book of Mormon, so I know it's true. And the Book of Mormon can't be true without the Bible, so, therefore, the Bible must also be true. The God of the Book of Mormon is also the God of the Old Testament." I knew that if I didn't believe in the Book of Mormon, then I would have no reason to believe in the Bible. So, when my testimony of the Book of Mormon fell apart, I had nothing tying me to the Bible. I wanted to believe in Jesus, I loved Jesus and it felt like I was grieving the death of a friend when I realized I didn't believe anymore. But I couldn't ignore the problems I had with the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament was not the same God who I felt like I had a personal, loving, and forgiving relationship with.
I don't know why I should trust anyone else's ideas about God after my previous ideas of them were proven false. I figure if God is real, it's clear to me they don't want to be known.
When I left Mormonism, I became an agnostic (rather than an atheist). I decided that there was no scientific evidence regarding the existence of a supreme being one way or the other. I think what kept me from being an atheist is a book I read when I was a child. My father died when I was quite young and my mother gave me a copy of Dr. Raymond Moody's book called "Life After Life". At that time, I still believed in God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit (although I must admit I had a really hard time wrapping my head around the Holy Spirit stuff I was taught). That book really cemented the fact that yes, there absolutely could be something after we die. Since that time I've read other books and have heard many Near Death experiences from people. These are people from all walks of life, from different cultures and religions, from different age groups, different educational levels. These people would tell doctors things they simply could NOT have known (because they were "dead"), the would recall the resuscitation efforts (complete with the correct names of instruments used--and very, very few of these people had any sort of medical training and would know the names of the instruments and the steps that would have been taken to save their lives). I also had heard stories from folks who work at Hospice about visitations and "angels" visiting patients (that were seen by medical professionals working at the care facility--not people usually given to flights of fancy and paranormal mumbo jumbo. I'd heard other paranormal stories--one I'll never forget. There was a tragic traffic accident and a young woman was killed. The accident happened late at night and her car was down a steep embankment. When first responders arrived at the scene and made it down to the car, they realized they would not be able to get her out and pull the car up the steep embankment at night--it would be too dangerous for rescuers. So they placed a tarp over the car and left--to come back when the sun was up and it was less dangerous for workers. When there were about a third of the way up the embankment, a voice cried "Help me. Please help me". They thought they had made a terrible mistake and that the young woman was still alive, so they hurried as best they could back down to the car. They re-checked and the young woman was, in fact, lifeless. They were getting ready to leave when the same voice said "I'm fine, help my baby". Baby? They hadn't seen a baby. So they shifted some things in the car's back seat and discovered an infant, barely clinging to life. Had they left the infant there over night, he (or she, I don't remember the baby's gender) would have died. These were fire fighters and paramedics, some attended church regularly, others considered themselves atheists. They said they all definitely heard the voice, they all said nothing like that had ever happened to them before (or since). I read things like that that simply cannot be explained and part of me allows for the possibility of a supreme being. What I am sure of is that most religion's concept of a supreme being is likely dead wrong. I am not certain we humans have the mental and intellectual capacity to understand a deity. I do know that the Christian concept that "God created man in his image" (of course God has to be a man, Christianity--all Christianity is extremely misogynistic), is just wrong. If God created man in his image, then God is just another human being--a powerful one (one with super powers, if you will, but nonetheless a human being), with all the flaws that come with being human--bigotry, intolerance, getting angry and taking revenge, etc. Not the kind of God I want to worship, really. I think it much more likely that humans cannot understand "God" (or whatever you want to call your supreme being) so they made "god" in THEIR image (not the other way around). So I consider myself an agnostic. I do not attend church. My husband and I had a brief flirtation with the Unitarian Church, but that didn't last long. We found it better, but still open to the corruption and issues faced by other organized religions--because of the very flawed human beings in the church and it didn't settle the question of "is there a god?" for either of us (my husband also is an agnostic). I am quite happy as an agnostic and if I want to talk to you about your religion, I'll ask, so please don't try to convert me. BTW, last time I asked about a religion, it was a very nice conversation. We have a wonderful friend who is of the Sikh religion. I realized I didn't really know anything about Sikhism. So I asked my friend what she believed and what the Sikh churches teach. We had a nice discussion--she was forthright with her answers, she answered my questions, but didn't feel the need to try to convert me. If that's the kind of religious talk you want to have, great. But if you're going to try to convert me, I'd just as soon you leave me be.
After leaving the church decades ago, the lack of spiritual elements in my life turned me to to pray to something I KNOW exists. I pray to the Sun every day, 4 times a day. I don't ask for things, only thanks for the energy it gives.
Jesus is the bath water. Mormonism is just murkier bath water.
I appreciate hearing why an ex-LDS is atheist and your saying the LDS church did not make you atheist. Informal polls indicate about 2/3 of ex-members become atheist or agnostic and to say it is from critical study and not from a negative, opposite reaction to the high demand religion experience does clarify the reasons. I went from the LDS church to an even more high demand religion but that was my choice and I knew what I was getting into. Others though seem to give me the impression that their one experience of a high demand religion means they do not want any part of any other, and I wonder if others do feel like the LDS church and other high demand religions pushed them to see atheism as a peaceful out.
Your journey has been so fascinating to me. I completely understand the hurt. I also understand your situation. You are very positive and you seem to have a lot of love for people, including those in the LDS community. Maybe you won't agree with this, but i see you as a way of God reaching out to all your viewers, and especially your Mormon ones, to not complicate things with man made religion and just follow the command to love one another, as Jesus has taught. Thanks for the entertaining videos and i wish you all of the happiness and good will. Take care
Well spoken Lex. I appreciate when people leave organised religions and choose to be critical atheists. I shall call myself critical atheist. INA philosophical circle you can be an agnostic. The best belief we can stay with is what is compatible with the lifestyle we live or would like to liive. We don't need the influence of corrupted religionist representatives.
I love and read the Bible everyday as man made mythology. Which is what it truly is. I would like to see the Bible studied as the Greek Myths are by more people and not just dismissed because it is man made and not a divinely inspired faith document.
I am a ex Mormon but was only in the church for a short time and that was as an adult later in life so my view and experience is not like those who grew up with it. I've watched your channel and some parts I agree with and some are I think none of us will can ever truly say definitively yes/no right or wrong. The church as a whole is not bad there are many aspects about it that are positive and healthy. Most of the commonly known religions share this trait I would say. In listening to this video you do leave out one crucial very important factor....emotion. It is very much an influence in every decision you've made, listening to you describe your experiences it's clear that emotions were present and affecting your thoughts. Most people on a daily basis fail to consider how much they are affected by their emotional state at any particular moment which why we so often hear people say they regret making decisions. Those decisions were made with a lack of information or under the duress of emotion and not accounted for. When we say someone is rash we're referring to letting their emotions dictate their decisions versus logic. I know for me personally leaving the church I had to take time to think about how I felt emotionally and logically before making any final choice. Making the decision for anything significant should involve more than just research but also serious self reflection and understanding of your own emotions.
There is a difference between organized religion and believing in a higher power .Organized religion is man's best attempts to understand God. It's fine if you don't believe in either one, but there is a difference.
I'm agnostic but I will say that Mormonism is fake in a way that other religions are not. Like the different parts of the Bible were written at roughly the times that Christians claim it was written. The Qur'an is really from Muhammad's lifetime. Whether these things are scripture revealed from a god is a different question, but their followers are not mislead about their origin or timeline.
Becoming an xmormon made me become closer to Jesus..So Grateful! Be Considerate..Love and help one another whenever God gives you opportunity. ❤😊
I have been away from the church for about 7 years now. I was a very literal beliver in the LDS church. I did my deep dive into church history, 😂and Joseph Smith and World was turned on its side. When I was in, I was a history minor, and I studied a semester on the protestant Reformation. I also studied the history of the Catholic church. For me, I stopped at being an agnostic. There may be a source of the divine out there, but it's not found in holy men and holy books or magical messiahs.
I based my testimony of Mormonism on "feelings" which I thought proved it was true. Once I learned those "feelings" can be easily replicated outside of religion and don't mean anything, there was nothing left to make decisions with except logic. Athiests rely on as many unproven theories as those who have faith in a God. In the end we just don't know everything.
Why do Satanist like myself used to be start believing in god?
Your faith journey was different.
Because they are so brainwashed. They probably didn't really know the Jesus of the bible. They only knew Jesus of the bom.
You're crazy if you think the Mormon cult is the same as Historical Christianity.
And you didn't do the work to debunk Christianity.
Lex, do you realize that in 2021 that it was estimated three in ten people in the U.S. were agnostic, atheist or "nones?" Since members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made up less than 5% of the U.S. population, it wasn't just members of the LDS Church leaving God.
It's pretty sad that you spend so much of your life looking back. Emotionally healthy people learn to forgive and move on. I also don't know why it is okay in a time when our society is so careful not to offend people that you and others get a pass on criticizing the LDS Church. If someone got on RUclips and started making fun of Native American religions, or Buddhists it wouldn't take long before public outcry would be raised to defend them, and rightly so. Why are we not respected in the same manner and there is such a double standard?
Jesus fulfilled the Law at the Cross. By Design he saved us from our Sins. Jesus doesn't want you to practice a religion, He wants a relationship with you One on One. When he rose from the Dead after 3 days, the New Church was open for business. Our bodies became Temples for the Holy Spirit; the Kingdom of God is in you and around you and inside you. When you come to Repentance the Holy Spirit comes inside of you and Dwells in you. You change from the Inside out and you become Christ Like. You will never be like Christ while you have a physical body but he will lead you thru life, give you knowledge and wisdom to help you make good decisions. Mike Gendron is a really good Pastor. I highly recommend him.
Maybe....because mormons believe in the god of this world? just guessing. god of Joseph Smith has nothing in common with the God of the Bible. Seek the TRUTH and the TRUTH shall set you free. jesus in mormonism, JW, islam, new age, hinduism, etc is the false jesus. 2 Corinthians 11:3-4, NKJV. “But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted-you may well put up with it!"