Leave It, But Can't Leave It Alone

[Brian 2.0]

What if you were a part of a group of moms that were insistent that vaccines gave their children autism. You planned events, made fliers, went to rallies, and were close friends with these moms. Then you read more of the sciences and determined for yourself that it wasn't the vaccines that gave your kid autism. Would you simply leave the group without saying anything? Or would you try to talk with some of the other moms with what you found out and pass along that scientific report you read that changed your mind?

[mfbukowski]

I don't see how that would fuel anger or harsh attacks. I personally find it VERY astonishing that I ever believed in the stuff I used to believe in (I was LDS). It may be that I'm more focused on other things now, but I can't express how weird it looks from the outside that people actually believe they talk to a person like God or believe in demons or that Jesus will come back again; it's bizarre to me now yet there is not a trace of anger or desire to criticize harshly. I can see how disillusionment and regret and the like could produce anger but not that I was wrong or that I now find it hard to believe I could have been so wrong for so long.

 

Something I found curious about my case, though, was that I saw, say, Protestants and Catholics as being wrong since the LDS Church was the one with authority and now that I'm an atheist I believe they are wrong as well but the sense in which I take them to be wrong is a much more tolerant one and with the eyes of someone interested in such social phenomenon as the religious experience. So, if anything, it was the exact opposite for me as what happens to the apostates Robert talked about. When I left I felt liberated both intellectually and emotionally. Maybe I'm one of the few that can truly say, "Thank God I'm an atheist!" without reservations.

Uh huh.

 

And you are here......... Why?  To tell us how bizarre we are?

 

No, not a single trace of a desire to criticize harshly.  What a cool guy!  So liberated!

Edited September 18, 2013 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

What if you were a part of a group of moms that were insistent that vaccines gave their children autism. You planned events, made fliers, went to rallies, and were close friends with these moms. Then you read more of the sciences and determined for yourself that it wasn't the vaccines that gave your kid autism. Would you simply leave the group without saying anything? Or would you try to talk with some of the other moms with what you found out and pass along that scientific report you read that changed your mind?

Bad analogy since science has nothing to do with religion but has every thing with the causes of autism.

 

A better analogy would be a Lutheran talking with a Mormon.  Oh wait, that's what we are talking about and is not an analogy at all.

Edited September 18, 2013 by mfbukowski

[Robert F. Smith]

I think that it seems to be an affectation, if I understand it correctly. If we go back to the early days, there were people who left the church but could not leave it alone. They attacked the early members and the leadership both verbally and physically. And these attacks were very serious. And we can also see this today on a different level with the use of words. There are many exmembers who are now involved in attempting to destroy the lds church. And they do this under a number of excuses of why. And their words are often extremely hostile.

 

..........................................  

The upshot of all this is that among the most systematically determined of the anti-Mormons, Jerald & Sandra Tanner, the result of all their hard work was to strengthen the LDS Church.  That was the conclusion of Georgia Tech history professor Lawrence Foster (a non-Mormon) in his "Career Apostates: Reflections on the [Life and] Work of Jerald and Sandra Tanner," Dialogue, 17/2 (Summer 1984), 35-60 (the complete title is Foster’s), published in revised form as “Apostate Believers: Jerald and Sandra Tanner’s Encounter with Mormon History,” in R. Launius and L. Thatcher, eds., Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History (1994), 343-365.   The Dialogue version is available at https://dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V17N02_37.pdf .

 

Adolf Hitler had the same notion in his attempt to exterminate the Jews.  His killing machine was very effective, but only resulted in strengthening the world Jewish community and in establishing the State of Israel -- thus bringing to a close the two-thousand year Exile of the Jews, and presaging the end-times.  Unmerited suffering is redemptive.

[Robert F. Smith]

 

......................................................

Maybe I'm one of the few that can truly say, "Thank God I'm an atheist!" without reservations.

Like John Dutchendorf becoming John Denver and exclaiming "Thank God I'm a country boy!"

[ERayR]

You submitted a request to have your name removed? Huh, I never would have figured you for an exmo.

 

There is a lot you don't know about me but being an exmo is not one of them.  My experience has to do with my service as a counselor in a bishopric and several years of service as a ward clerk in several wards. In all instances, that I know of, when a bishop receives such a request he has taken it very seriously.

Edited September 18, 2013 by ERayR

[why me]

The upshot of all this is that among the most systematically determined of the anti-Mormons, Jerald & Sandra Tanner, the result of all their hard work was to strengthen the LDS Church.  That was the conclusion of Georgia Tech history professor Lawrence Foster (a non-Mormon) in his "Career Apostates: Reflections on the [Life and] Work of Jerald and Sandra Tanner," Dialogue, 17/2 (Summer 1984), 35-60 (the complete title is Foster’s), published in revised form as “Apostate Believers: Jerald and Sandra Tanner’s Encounter with Mormon History,” in R. Launius and L. Thatcher, eds., Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History (1994), 343-365.   The Dialogue version is available at https://dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V17N02_37.pdf .

 

Adolf Hitler had the same notion in his attempt to exterminate the Jews.  His killing machine was very effective, but only resulted in strengthening the world Jewish community and in establishing the State of Israel -- thus bringing to a close the two-thousand year Exile of the Jews, and presaging the end-times.  Unmerited suffering is redemptive.

I think that you are right about this. However, I do see that the critics have had early success on the internet with being able to have members doubt the truth claims of the lds church. But now, the lds community is fighting back and making headway. In that, the church is stronger,

[Senator]

 But now, the lds community is fighting back and making headway.

 

What makes you think that?

[Alvino]

Uh huh.

 

And you are here......... Why?  To tell us how bizarre we are?

 

Honestly, I just enjoy seeing well-formed ideas, regardless of how bizarre believing they are true may be. Perhaps I'm a little bit more open-minded than you give me credit for.

 

No, not a single trace of a desire to criticize harshly.  What a cool guy!  So liberated!

 

 

You really don't consider my style of conversation here as harsh criticism, do you? I would take you to have remarkably low tolerance for debate if you did.

[Calm]

 

You really don't consider my style of conversation here as harsh criticism, do you? I would take you to have remarkably low tolerance for debate if you did.

If you were the only one employing such a style, it might be entertaining enough....but as one of....well, I've lost count, it is not low tolerance for one encounter, it is more likely exhaustion from the repetition of those who come to share how liberated they feel now they've left the bonds of our foolish or bizarre or crippling or racist or sexist or whatever faith behind.

 

I don't really see much debate in your expression of your current state of mind.

Edited September 18, 2013 by calmoriah

[Alvino]

If you were the only one employing such a style, it might be entertaining enough....but as one of....well, I've lost count, it is not low tolerance for one encounter, it is more likely exhaustion from the repetition of those who come to share how liberated they feel now they've left the bonds of our foolish or bizarre or crippling or racist or sexist or whatever faith behind.

 

Then I guess I am being misunderstood. I didn't mean to say LDS or theistic or Christian beliefs are foolish or even particularly bizarre. I meant to say people believing they are true is bizarre (but not foolish). At most, I was just pointing out how it feels like from the outside, not even how things are.

 

I don't really see much debate in your expression of your current state of mind.

 

 

You mean in giving my experience? Well, I was pointing out the fact that, for me, and I don't believe I'm an anomaly, how one can see other churches being wrong can be much harsher than how a non-believer has the luxury of seeing religions as wrong. Now religions are just wrong, not profane or adulterated. There isn't any Satan or sin corrupting the true Church, but some social adaptations taking effect through time and that's that.

[mfbukowski]

You really don't consider my style of conversation here as harsh criticism, do you?

No more like pompous and condescending, but certainly not "liberated".  You still need to assert your towering intellect.

[mfbukowski]

Honestly, I just enjoy seeing well-formed ideas, regardless of how bizarre believing they are true may be.

Well-formed sentences help also.

[mfbukowski]

Then I guess I am being misunderstood. I didn't mean to say LDS or theistic or Christian beliefs are foolish or even particularly bizarre. I meant to say people believing they are true is bizarre (but not foolish). At most, I was just pointing out how it feels like from the outside, not even how things are.

 

 

You mean in giving my experience? Well, I was pointing out the fact that, for me, and I don't believe I'm an anomaly, how one can see other churches being wrong can be much harsher than how a non-believer has the luxury of seeing religions as wrong. Now religions are just wrong, not profane or adulterated. There isn't any Satan or sin corrupting the true Church, but some social adaptations taking effect through time and that's that.

I don't even know where to begin with this.  There's not a cogent point in it.

[Alvino]

No more like pompous and condescending, but certainly not "liberated".  You still need to assert your towering intellect.

 

Well-formed sentences help also.

 

well, that hurts. hope to change your opinion, though, so, see you around.

[ERayR]

Then I guess I am being misunderstood. I didn't mean to say LDS or theistic or Christian beliefs are foolish or even particularly bizarre. I meant to say people believing they are true is bizarre (but not foolish). At most, I was just pointing out how it feels like from the outside, not even how things are.

 

 

You mean in giving my experience? Well, I was pointing out the fact that, for me, and I don't believe I'm an anomaly, how one can see other churches being wrong can be much harsher than how a non-believer has the luxury of seeing religions as wrong. Now religions are just wrong, not profane or adulterated. There isn't any Satan or sin corrupting the true Church, but some social adaptations taking effect through time and that's that.

 

1)  And to one who has received personal revelation that they are true your not receiving that confirmation is bizarre.

 

2)  Honestly, your statement is amazingly bizarre to me.  That someone would cling to that mindset when a confirmation of God and Christ is so available.

[canard78]

The upshot of all this is that among the most systematically determined of the anti-Mormons, Jerald & Sandra Tanner, the result of all their hard work was to strengthen the LDS Church.  That was the conclusion of Georgia Tech history professor Lawrence Foster (a non-Mormon) in his "Career Apostates: Reflections on the [Life and] Work of Jerald and Sandra Tanner," Dialogue, 17/2 (Summer 1984), 35-60 (the complete title is Foster’s), published in revised form as “Apostate Believers: Jerald and Sandra Tanner’s Encounter with Mormon History,” in R. Launius and L. Thatcher, eds., Differing Visions: Dissenters in Mormon History (1994), 343-365.   The Dialogue version is available at https://dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V17N02_37.pdf .

 

Adolf Hitler had the same notion in his attempt to exterminate the Jews.  His killing machine was very effective, but only resulted in strengthening the world Jewish community and in establishing the State of Israel -- thus bringing to a close the two-thousand year Exile of the Jews, and presaging the end-times.  Unmerited suffering is redemptive.

 

(Cough, cough, cough) Godwin's law... 

[mfbukowski]

1)  And to one who has received personal revelation that they are true your not receiving that confirmation is bizarre.

 

2)  Honestly, your statement is amazingly bizarre to me.  That someone would cling to that mindset when a confirmation of God and Christ is so available.

Actually I know now why I was impatient with him, and you have nailed it on the head.

 

In fact I was myself an atheist until God decided to wonk me over the head with an earth-shaking spiritual experience, for what reason I will never know.

 

Suddenly seeing believers as "bizarre" became bizarre in itself.  But that is why I am so impatienr I suppose with atheists because I have left that religion and found the truth.

 

It seems I have left atheism but can't leave it alone.

[mfbukowski]

well, that hurts. hope to change your opinion, though, so, see you around.

 

Actually I know now why I was impatient with him, and you have nailed it on the head.

 

In fact I was myself an atheist until God decided to wonk me over the head with an earth-shaking spiritual experience, for what reason I will never know.

 

Suddenly seeing believers as "bizarre" became bizarre in itself.  But that is why I am so impatienr I suppose with atheists because I have left that religion and found the truth.

 

It seems I have left atheism but can't leave it alone.

 

Alvino, in the light of my comment above, I owe you an apology.

Edited September 19, 2013 by mfbukowski

[EllenMaksoud]

Glenn L. Pace, then a member of the LDS Presiding Bishopric, said:

 

"You can leave the Church, but you can’t leave it alone. The basic reason for this is simple. Once someone has received a witness of the Spirit and accepted it, he leaves neutral ground. One loses his testimony only by listening to the promptings of the evil one, and Satan’s goal is not complete when a person leaves the Church, but when he comes out in open rebellion against it."  April 1989, LDS Conference Address, online at https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1989/04/follow-the-prophet?lang=eng .

 

Does this notion comport with the view of philosopher Max Scheler, that “an apostate is not a man who once in his life radically changes his deepest religious, political, legal, or philosophical convictions – even when this change is not continuous, but involves  sudden rupture.  Even after his conversion, the true ‘apostate’ is not primarily committed to the positive contents of his new belief and to the realization of its aims.  He is motivated by the struggle against the old belief and lives only for its negation.  The apostate does not affirm his new convictions for their own sake, he is engaged in a continuous chain of acts of revenge against his own spiritual past.  In reality, he remains captive of this past, and the new faith is merely a handy frame of reference for negating and rejecting the old.”  Scheler, Ressentiment, ed. L. Coser, trans. W. Holdheim (NY: Schocken Books, 1972), 66-67, cited in James Breech, Jesus and Postmodernism (Augsburg Fortress, 1989), 83 n. 40. 

 

Is this merely an affectation, or is it a more serious psychological disorder? Indeed, is it more characteristic of ex-Mormons than of ex-Christians of other sorts?  If so, why?

I was 27 when I met Jesus Christ. Before that there was no real knowledge of religion, though we did try church once or twice a year. I became Baptist and remained evangelical so for almost 30 years. I was so angry with the hate that I had experienced that I became Muslim. I officially left Islam on January 29th 2012.

 

I was extremely angry at the Ev, and since I was baptized, Heavenly Father has slowly removed the anger and bitterness against the Ev. I left Islam, but there are no feelings of anger toward them. The tight constraints of Islam made me ready to meet the Mormons.

 

So, no I do not think that bitterness and anger about things in our past is recommendable.

[Alvino]

1)  And to one who has received personal revelation that they are true your not receiving that confirmation is bizarre.

 

I don't get what your trying to say here. I thought I received confirmations from the HG and HF. People can easily sin and stop receiving confirmations and this is allowed for even within LDS belief systems. That can't be bizarre to you, is it?

 

2)  Honestly, your statement is amazingly bizarre to me.  That someone would cling to that mindset when a confirmation of God and Christ is so available.

 

 

What mindset do you think I have?

I did believe I had received plenty of spiritual LDS-like confirmations, though, but now I know they had little to do with LDS beliefs or spiritual influence.

[Alvino]

Actually I know now why I was impatient with him, and you have nailed it on the head.

 

In fact I was myself an atheist until God decided to wonk me over the head with an earth-shaking spiritual experience, for what reason I will never know.

 

Suddenly seeing believers as "bizarre" became bizarre in itself.  But that is why I am so impatienr I suppose with atheists because I have left that religion and found the truth.

 

It seems I have left atheism but can't leave it alone.

 

 

I don't get how some of you guys jumped to focus on that part of my comment and start telling me you find some aspects of my beliefs/actions bizarre. That's irrelevant to my observation. The point was that one doesn't normally get angry or starts attacking harshly what one sees as strange or bizarre (which was the idea in the comment I was addressing).

[Helen47]

Robert, you said that there was no intellectual argument against the LDS church's authenticity. If so why as u mentioned earlier did LDS avoid talking to Wes Walters at MHA meetings? BTW Wes sent me what I thought was a very cogent argument against the "passing" (Nibley) of the primitive church in Church History.

 

Intellectual issues against the church:

1 Lack of evidence for historicity of the BOM - Both HGT and LT

2.BOA-No evidence for the "missing scroll theory"

3 FV - No revival in 1820 as described by JS - There was a revival in 1823-24. When did the family join the PC? 1820 or 1823? 

4.Cumorah/Moroni  Comoras Islands (Capital is Moroni) Captain Kidd worked around there. "Mormon" means "frighting in Greek hence Mormon articus (puffin birds) The Mormon ape. Wes sent me a Christmas card one year with Puffin birds on the outside. Inside he comments 'Some "Mormons" coming to visit you in Beenleigh"

[mfbukowski]

I don't get how some of you guys jumped to focus on that part of my comment and start telling me you find some aspects of my beliefs/actions bizarre. That's irrelevant to my observation. The point was that one doesn't normally get angry or starts attacking harshly what one sees as strange or bizarre (which was the idea in the comment I was addressing).

So you think that calling someone's beliefs "bizarre" to their faces is a kind and friendly gesture? And that such a comment should not trigger any offense, right?

 

That's a very bizarre belief in itself

[Alvino]

So you think that calling someone's beliefs "bizarre" to their faces is a kind and friendly gesture? And that such a comment should not trigger any offense, right?

 

That's a very bizarre belief in itself

 

 

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