manol

I cannot speak for anyone else, nor am I sufficiently familiar with why other people have left the LDS Church to comment usefully. But if "secularization" means "separation from religious or spiritual connection or influences", then I don't think it has been part of my journey. That being said, I applaud your interest in understanding why people leave the LDS Church and what to do about it. Neither of those are questions I have good generalized answers for.

No, I was my unrestrainedly-weird self. Edited to add: And actually it was kind of nice to not feel obligated to post "in my opinion" disclaimers at regular intervals, even if my audience was an AI algorithm. There was a question about which is more important for exaltation, beliefs or actions. My reply was something like, "Our souls are not at stake, but our trajectory and therefore our timeline is. We are actually Love Incarnate and are here to wake up to that and to live from that perspective." Now I have been "out of the loop", so to speak, for a while now. If ^^^THAT^^^ ticks the current "orthodoxy" checkbox, then I need to reconsider my assessment of Mormonism!

I scored 69% Terryl Givens and 66% Progressive Mormon. Don't know who Terryl Givens is, but maybe I should find out. Edited a couple of hours later to add: I scored 100% "orthodoxy" and 0% "orthopraxy", the two being put at opposite ends of a continuum in the AI's analysis. I don't see myself as "orthodox", and imo pitting them against one another is a false dichotomy. Also, there is this lesser-known thing called "orthopathy", which would be "correct affections". "Orthopathy" seems to be an area where Givens and I have some common ground, so credit to the AI for placing me in the "Terryl Givens" category, even if its analysis did not explicitly include "orthopathy".

Thanks for posting. At the risk of over-simplifying: It seems to me there are two "plans of happiness" within Mormonism, the more modern and well-known being the Covenant Path. The other being the Pure Love of Christ, which is the culmination of Mormon's magnificent sermon (and arguably the capstone of the Book of Mormon's thought system), as recorded in the 7th chapter of Moroni.

I don't disagree with that. But could the Southern elites have instigated the civil war, including the fielding of multiple large armies, without the consent and support of the Southern non-elites? Seems to me a good idea well-argued (and Joseph Smith was a good orator) would have had a chance of swaying enough hearts and minds to divide the South along lines unfavorable to those who preferred war. That being said, recognizing my own tendency to be more optimist than realist, that's not a hill I'm willing to die on.

I often use LLMs for research in my day job, which is in a technical field. It can be a great time-saver, BUT ime you need to know enough about the topic to be able to spot when the LLM is giving incorrect information. Ime sometimes it is incorrect more often than correct on something that should be easy, such as looking at on-line data sheets and selecting parts that have a particular feature listed (numerous time-wasting false positives). And unfortunately it never indicates uncertainty, so if the results matter, it should be double-checked, because it is not really trustworthy. But yes it can save a great deal of time. I have also found that, on topics where opinions and viewpoints and interpretations come into play, LLMs tend to generate responses that align with what its algorithm thinks you want to hear. LLMs try to "read between the lines" and take a position you're likely to agree with. I tried it with gun control and found that I can "steer" the response via the wording of my question. So, relevant to this conversation, how can I trust that the LLM didn't try to "read between the lines" and tell you what it thought you wanted to hear, based on the wording you chose? Not that YOU deliberately tried to steer its responses, but once again the net result is that I don't trust the LLM. If there is such a bandwagon, it's not something I've paid any attention to. My opinion that LLMs are not trustworthy is based on my own experience. That's a fair criticism. I failed to find a way to express my opinion without coming across as rude. For that I apologize to you, Emily. Maybe you're right and I should have said nothing, instead of saying something that could come across as rude.

@Emily, thank you for posting that this is AI-generated content. I think there are a fair number of posts on this site that are largely or almost entirely AI-generated content but there is no such attribution included, such that the poster is acting as if the AI-generated content is their own words. Pardon me for being a species-ist, but I'm far more interested in the actual thoughts and analysis of my fellow humans, as opposed to the word sequences generated by a large language model's algorithm. I would read and might even respond to YOUR analysis, whether or not AI is your background source, but I lack the attention span to read multiple AI-generated paragraphs.

Not that this is "proof" of anything, but here's my anecdote as a descendant of slave owners: First, a bit of background - I was probably about ten years old when this conversation with my grandmother, who lived in New Orleans, took place. This was years before my conversion to Mormonism, and she was not remotely LDS nor did she later express any knowledge of or sympathies towards Mormonism or Joseph Smith. Her grandparents had been slave owners in Kentucky, and after the war they had to sell their farm and move to Mississippi. Three or four generations lived under one roof so she grew up hearing about the war from multiple first-hand accounts. One day I guess she decided to tell me what would have averted the war. She said that if the Southern slave owners had been compensated for their financial loss, the Civil War would, or could, have been averted. For whatever reason that made an impression on me, and then years later when I learned about that aspect of Joseph Smith's campaign platform, it seemed to me that he was either inspired or wise or both. I'm not historian enough to argue whether my grandmother's opinion was right and whether Joseph Smith's plan would have worked. Was compensating the slave owners ever a serious topic of national conversation and debate, and thereby given valid opportunity to change people's minds? Again, I don't know. Seems to me it was an idea that really should have been given the best possible chance to win over support, and perhaps Joseph Smith could have provided it with that best possible chance even if he didn't win.

Agreed. And there are other yardsticks that might be used to gauge whether we have made progress. How much cruelty are we comfortable with, be it towards marginalized individuals or groups, or animals? We still have a long ways to go, but our trajectory is in the right direction.

Agreed. Neither the LDS Church nor any other individual, group, or religion is appointed gatekeeper. Christ employs no gatekeeper (2 Nephi 9:41). Nor is it the job of those who consider themselves wheat to decide who is wheat and who is tare. That is not our job, and ime our spirits rise a bit when we let it go. We are here to be lights, not judges. In my opinion.

Agreed. Wish I was allowed to "like" your posts. Agreed - good point!

Arrrgh meant to "edit" and instead "quote". Again. I have a long ways to go!!

Notice that he (or she) who overcomes sits with Christ in his throne, just as Christ sits with his Father in his throne. Not separate, nor in a separate throne. My point being, this scripture indicates that union (or perhaps re-union) rather than separation is what we are progressing towards. It doesn't say those who overcome get their own throne; rather, it says they sit with Christ, as Christ sits with the Father, in their throne. Maybe I misunderstood, but the paradigm I was presented with in the LDS Church seemed to be a paradigm of ever-increasing separation: First the premortal division; then the three postmortal kingdoms; then the top kingdom being further subdivided into three degrees; and perhaps this pattern is continued, with those who progress faster increasingly leaving the others behind. I'm no longer convinced that progression happens in the direction of ever-increasing separation; I think it more likely that progression happens in the direction of ever-increasing union (or re-union), in plurality rather than in sameness. From the 88th Section of the D&C, verses 12, 13, and 44: "Which light [the Light of Christ] proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space — The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things... He [God] comprehendeth all things, and all things are before him, and all things are round about him; and he is above all things, and in all things, and is through all things..." Imo there is a perspective from which, right here and right now, we may perceive Christ in everyone, and likewise we may perceive God in everything. Imo this is not about our fundamental reality being separation (despite the preponderance of telestial evidence supporting a paradigm of separation); rather, imo it is about our fundamental reality being union with God in/with/through Christ. Of course, I could be wrong.

That has changed? I've been out of the loop for a while. What do the missionaries encourage investigators to do now? Edited to add: Back when I was active LDS, growth rates (in the US at least) supported the view that the LDS Church was the "stone cut without hands" rolling forth to fill the whole earth. My recollection is that, among US religious groups of significant size, the Pentecostals were the only ones with a similar growth rate. Today, my understanding is that, among those self-identifying as religious or spiritual or both, "spiritual but not religious" is not only the largest category (Evangelical Protestants being the second-largest), but also the fastest-growing by a significant margin. One might even posit that, for now at least, this category seems to fit the "cut without hands" part of Daniel's prophecy pretty well, as it has no leaders and no organization and no formal set of beliefs and no particular text. Ime it seems to be mostly just seekers seeking, which makes it a far-from-homogeneous category. My recollection is that there is a series of logical conclusions implied, or claimed to be implied, when someone receives a spiritual witness of the Book of Mormon. Something like this: IF the Book of Mormon is witnessed to by the Holy Spirit, THEN the Book of Mormon is true. IF the book of Mormon is true, THEN Joseph Smith was a true prophet. IF Joseph Smith was a true prophet, THEN Christ restored the one and only true church through Joseph Smith. IF Christ restored the one and only true church through Joseph Smith, THEN the modern LDS church is that church. And IF the modern LDS church is that church, THEN you should join it. Somebody please correct me if I've got that wrong.

There is a local family-owned business that is a shipping location for Fed Ex, UPS, DHL, and the USPS. The area is well outside of the Mormon Corridor. The husband called me "brother" the first time I came in to ship something. This was unexpected, and it felt very inclusive to me. I have no idea what his belief system is - does it really matter? - he and I are now "brothers".