After faithfully attending the LDS church throughout my childhood, I was inactive from the age of fifteen to nineteen. At nineteen I had a powerful spiritual experience. I realized that I should find out for myself if god exists. I began to read the Book of Mormon daily, to study it. I began to keep the commandments. I began to study the gospel. But I still didn’t feel like I ‘knew’ that the Church was true. I remember praying for over two months to get an answer. Finally, one day as I knelt down beside my bed I heard the thought within my own mind, ‘You already know it’s true.’ I was so happy, and overjoyed, I had my answer. I began to prepare to go on a mission. Before my mission I had several other strong spiritual, confirmatory experiences.
I served in Arkansas and Tennessee. Three major things became clear as I served.
One, I was really good at finding answers to Christian “anti-Mormon” arguments. I still argue to this day about what is good evidence that the church is not true. I am regularly on the side of the church in these conversations. It is not that I believe, but I am not willing to allow bad arguments to stand. I would do the same to anyone who had bad reasons for not believing the church. I have also thought many times that if someone believed that the bible was true they should become a Mormon, and I would tell them that. If the bible is true, then Mormonism is the best version of Christianity, as far as I have been able to tell. I was the generally accepted missionary one would ask about resolving doctrinal, or logical concerns.
Two, I became very bitter against people who were not open-minded. “No thanks, I already know the truth” when I knocked on the door would drive me nuts. I developed a response that I thought should get their attention. I would say “But wouldn’t 2500 people on a different continent claiming that they felt the risen Lord’s body be something important for everyone to know?” They would respond along the lines of “Not interested” or “I don’t need more information, I already know” or “I already have enough info”. This drove me nuts.
Third, I became very frustrated with people who could not accept or see clear, well reasoned, well evidenced arguments. One good example that I think most committed LDS understand, if they have served a mission or tried to share the gospel with other Christians, is the idea that one cannot add to or take away from the bible. The arguments the Church has against such a position are fool proof to anyone who believes in the bible. It would blow my mind, and I think many LDS’ minds, when people would blatantly ignore arguments that were so persuasive and compelling.
There is something else important to this story as well. I have an incredibly powerful aversion to hypocrisy. This aversion led me to several conclusions. I would never let myself be like those people who were not open-minded and ‘knew’ they had the truth. I would always be open to new information, and to the possibility I was wrong. If I was not open to the possibility that I was wrong, I could not expect someone else to be open to that same possibility without being a hypocrite. How could I expect anyone to admit that I could possibly be right, if I could not admit the possibility that they could be right. How could I expect anyone to take a serious look at my beliefs, and allow a possibility for those beliefs to be right, if I could not do the same for them?
Also, because I was so frustrated by people who were not open to sound reasoning, I resolved to always be open to well reasoned arguments. I would always go with what was compelling and could be evidenced to be true. I was in no way worried about losing my testimony at this point, because like many LDS, I ‘knew’ that it was true and I was not worried about subjecting my beliefs to the strongest scrutiny.
My mission was fundamental in developing in me my desire to be honest, open, and not hypocritical.
When I got home, I went to University. I wanted to take classes that interested me. Because of this I took a philosophy course the summer I got home. I remember being so confident that I would be able to find answers to any of the questions in philosophy because I had the truth. That summer, the major issue I encountered was evolution. I strongly believed that it could not be true. Yet so many intelligent people believed it and supported it. I struggled with this and did a lot of research on it. I finally found that the church didn’t have an actual opinion on evolution and that many high up leaders believed in it, and many didn’t. But the McConkie/Smith group sure made it hard to figure that out. So, I was just as strong in my testimony as ever. In fact, I taught seminary during the next school year.
The next summer I took another philosophy course. Again, I was entirely confident that I would be able to find answers to any questions that came up. I had in the last philosophy class hadn’t I? A large portion of this class was on the philosophy of religion. I remember seeing some of the famous classical arguments for god (Ontological, Cosmological, and Teleological), and seeing them deconstructed and agreeing that they were not good arguments. One thing I took away from the class was that the same type of reasoning that I used to defend the faith was the same type of reasoning being used in my philosophy class.
The class covered a lot of other things that I did not have answers to and that the gospel did not even address. Things like personal identity, determinism, and epistemology. Personal identity is an interesting one in the gospel. The question is what makes you, you? To cut the story short, could you be you without your memories? I believe the answer is no (this is what John Locke thought). If memory is vital to identity, then when we came from the pre-mortal existence to earth and lost our memory, there became two versions of us or two persons. Think about a person who suffers total amnesia, and never regains their memory. Are they the same person still? Imagine that person committed murder the day before they lost their memories. Should the new person who has no memory of the crime be punished for what the other did? Should god punish pre-mortal me, who no longer influences me because I don’t have his memories (he is in a state of non-existence till those memories come flooding back; then there will be two conscious entities in the same soul). Will god send him to the telestial kingdom because of my actions even though he was valiant in the pre-mortal life? He was valiant, he had no ability to influence me and the decisions I made on earth. Why should he be punished for my choices? I am not saying these issues should make you lose your faith. This is only a quick brush with one deeply important issue not addressed by any of god’s prophets. There were many more like this that I encountered.
I began to analyze my own faith with the same vigor and passion I did all the arguments I had been exposed to previously (including the Christian “anti-Mormon” arguments). I identified the foundation of my belief. I realized that it was not the Book of Mormon, or the First Vision, or the Atonement. It was the Holy Ghost (HG) that witnessed to me that these things were true. Anything I knew about the church and the gospel I knew because I had received a witness that I believed had come from the HG. So I began to analyze this foundation which was the HG. I realized that I had no way to show that what I had experienced actually was the HG. I discussed this with many of my close friends, my father, and church leaders over the next few months. I was frantic. The more I tried to find a way to justify that what a believer feels is the HG, the more I realized that it was just a shared assumption among believers that the HG existed and that the HG was the explanation for what they felt. I started to push members. Not to break their faith but to try to find an answer. I was hoping that they would say something that would be the key for me to find a way to justify that what I experienced was the HG. I have multiple thousand word long letters to different believers. Brother XXXXX (Institute Teacher) referred me to the most philosophical Institute Teacher he knew. Brother XXXX (2nd Institute Teacher) referred me to the smartest believing member that he knew. I emailed and discussed these issues with those on the mailing list from FAIRLDS.org. I learned a lot from these discussions. But they still could not provide a good reason with any level of certainty that what I had experienced was the HG.
I was at a loss. What should I do? The very foundation of my belief system was no longer strong enough to hold up my beliefs. I was also in regular counsel with my Bishop, and semi-regular contact with my Stake President throughout this experience. One interesting thing my Stake President said was ‘You just have to start evaluating the things of the spirit from a spiritual perspective’ (might not be an exact quote). I replied, I would have no problem doing so if I could justify that there was a spiritual realm. Otherwise such reasoning is simply “begging the question”.
I also remember the movie, A Beautiful Mind, having a large impact on me. What did it mean for me if the human mind could have such experiences? I knew of hallucination and that human beings could experience it. How did I know that what I was experiencing was not just my mind, other than just saying ‘I know it’s not’ (I realize now that this saying that ‘I knew’ was really just a bad way of saying that I assumed). Think of the power of the human mind.
Hopefully, in analyzing my story you will take into account the nights where I would kneel on my bed, put my face into my pillow in tears and beg for an answer. “If you are there just please reveal yourself to me in a way that I can know it’s you. Please…..Please….Please. I just need to know.” Hopefully you will take into account how I begged and pleaded to have the strength to overcome this issue. And most of all, hopefully you will take into account the covenant I made with god. I told god that if he would just give me an answer such that I could know that he was there, I would never, ever, ever stop trying to serve him to the best of my ability, and would continue to dedicate my entire life to his cause. I wish the words that I am putting down could convey to you how much, how hard, and eventually how pathetically in tears I pleaded for these things over and over and over for many months.
There was one other thing that I tried to do to find out that god existed. All my life I had been told about how amazing the Book of Mormon was and how the only explanation for it was that it came from god.
I remember telling my Dad that ‘I can’t leave yet, I can’t not believe yet, because I still have to account for the Book of Mormon (interestingly, this was before the Elder Holland talk on the subject). I studied, and I researched and I found many interesting things that “anti-Mormons” said was wrong with the BoM. But every time I was able to find an answer that, even if it didn’t completely get rid of the point made by “anti-Mormons“, it still left the believer in a place where I thought their belief could still be rational. At the time, I found that nothing the “anti-Mormons” could throw at me was able to show me that the Book of Mormon had any other possible explanation than that god had done it. This kept me around the church even when I didn’t have a testimony based on the spirit. I could not explain how this book came to be.
But then it happened. I stumbled across a quote made by B. H. Roberts. B. H. Roberts was a member of the first quorum of the seventy in the early nineteen hundreds. He wrote one of the comprehensive church history series. This was a serious player in the LDS faith. He said that it was possible that Joseph Smith, if he was creative enough, could have come up with the BoM based on the information available to him where he grew up (make sure you check this for yourself, don’t just take my word for it). I was stunned. I immediately began to search to see if it was just a lie. Something made up by “anti-Mormons” to cause unbelief. I checked the FAIR apologetics site. Even they knew of this and had some ideas about what it actually meant. Their best answer was that he was playing devil’s advocate. But even if he was, it was still a possibility according to a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy that the Book of Mormon could have come some way other than god. All the strength the Book of Mormon held as evidence that the church was true came crashing down. I had nothing left to cling to.
Side note: I have since, as I studied this more, realized what Roberts meant (I still need to read his book, I am 20 pages in or so). View of the Hebrews, written by Ethan Smith, talked about the origins of the Native Americans as a lost tribe of Israel. There were many other similarities. The apologists brush this off by saying, well sure there are some similarities but there are so many differences that Smith must not have ripped it off. But they fail to even address the idea that the basic ideas of View of the Hebrews could have been used to come up with a new story. I also learned about the fact that Oliver Cowdry, who was some sort of cousin to Joseph, was a member of Ethan Smith’s congregation, giving a completely natural explanation of how Smith could have been influenced by this kind of thinking. There is also the similarity of how Joseph found the plates of gold to the Manuscript that Solomon Spaulding wrote (Well, in some theories, one of the manuscripts he wrote). In Spaulding’s manuscript someone goes out into the woods and finds a stone, uses a lever to pry it open, and finds inside ancient records (I got sick to the stomach reading this for the first time due to the similarity of it to the account found in the JSH in the scriptures). You can read it for yourself. I am not saying that this means that god did not inspire the Book of Mormon. That it did not happen as Joseph said that it did. Only that it takes away the certainty that it is the only way that it could have happened. And not having that certainty, and not being able to know if what I had experienced was the Holy Ghost or something else, I had nothing left to base my belief on.
From there I began my exodus out (which included a trip back into the Church to give it one last shot), but that is another story.
Honesty. Integrity. Reason. Truth. These are the values that I was taught and cherished as I returned to the church. These are the values that led me as I sought to deepen my understanding of god. These are the values that gave me the courage to continue when my beliefs began to lose their lustre under scrutiny. These are the values that led me to ask the tough questions. These are the values that drove my exit, this video, and will guide me as I continue to seek for the best understanding of reality as possible.
My name is Dustin Patzer, and I am an Ex-Mormon.
A review of Dustin Patzer’s excommunication council
Resources that Dustin found helpful in his exit from Mormonsim:
“Confirmation Bias” on Wikipedia
A thought provoking deconversion video series by youtube user “Evid3nc3″
Psychology of Belief youtube video series
No True Scotsman Fallacy
“If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.”
-J. Reuben Clark, D. Michael Quinn, J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1983, p. 24.
”Mormonism must stand or fall on the story of Joseph Smith. He was either a Prophet of God, divinely called, properly appointed and commissioned or he was one of the biggest frauds this world has ever seen. There is no middle ground. If Joseph was a deceiver, who willfully attempted to mislead people, then he should be exposed, his claims should be refuted, and his doctrines shown to be false…” (“Doctrines of Salvation,” vol. 1 pp 188-189.)
“If faith will not bear to be investigated; if its preachers and professors are afraid to have it examined, their foundation must be very weak.”
-George A. Smith, 1871, Journal of Discourses, Vol 14, pg 216.
“. . . convince us of our errors of doctrine, if we have any, by reason, by logical arguments, or by the word of God, and we will be ever grateful for the information, and you will ever have the pleasing reflection that you have been instruments in the hands of God of redeeming your fellow beings from the darkness which you may see enveloping their minds.”
Orson Pratt, from The Seer, pp 15-16, (1853).
“I hope that you will develop the questing spirit. Be unafraid of new ideas for they are the stepping stones of progress. You will of course respect the opinions of others but be unafraid to dissent if you are informed. Now I have mentioned freedom to express your thoughts, but I caution you that your thoughts and expressions must meet competition in the marketplace of thought, and in that competition truth will emerge triumphant. Only error needs to fear freedom of expression. Seek the truth in all fields, and in that search you will need at least three virtues: courage, zest and modesty. The ancients put that thought in the form of a prayer. They said, “From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth, from the laziness that is content with half truth, from the arrogance that thinks it has all truth – O God of truth, deliver us.”
-Hugh B Brown LDS Apostle, Member of the First Presidency (BYU Devotional, 1958)
Dustin, you rock my socks off.
I enjoyed reading and listening to your story. Rational, critical analysis of the church seems to be a way to free members from the shackles of organized religious dogma. Good luck in your journey!
Excellent.
Dustin, great video. I could Identify with it in so many ways. It seems like we have had similar experiences during our trip out of the church. I remember before I left the church, trying to live as faithfully as possible, going to the temple regularly, reading my scriptures at least 30 minutes everyday. I remember praying that they Lord would remove any doubts from my mind, and thinking that I was going to walk with faith and force myself to dismiss any doubting thoughts, and I remember thinking that if I did this then I would get the answer that I needed. After all, faith precedes the miracle. However I never got that “know without a shadow of a doubt” feeling that I was promised. =(
I too remember talking to my parents expressing my doubts in the spirit as a source of truth, I remember asking them if they ever wondered if it could be psychology. I also remember expressing to them at this time, that I still believed because of the Joseph Smith story and I didn’t see how the Book of Mormon could come about any other way (at this time I was not familiar with the REAL history). It was a very sad dark time in my life. I trusted God though, and felt that it was just a test of faith that I had to overcome.
As a member of the church, all I did was straight swallow what they were spoon feeding us. I never took the time to taste it. When I allowed myself to taste it, it didn’t taste right, and I gradually began to realized I never even believed or liked most of what they were feeding us.
I too since I have left, developed an Identity based on my own beliefs and not based on what I was told to be and it is amazing.
Thank you Dustin for sharing, and thank you so much Dan for making these videos.
Heyo broski, tell your Ex Mormons to take a look into joining me as a faux-Jew: no obligations and half the guilt! Get the community/ladies/fellas and not need to follow any sort of religious paradigm.
Fact: “I’m Jewish” is a huge turn-on to most Jewish individuals for the sole reason it will shut their parents up. Conversely, being Jewish has little negative effect on your chances with non-Jewish individuals… or you can just say you’re blah-blah religion and cross your fingers behind your back, problem solved.
Fact: Jews don’t care whether you follow the religion or not; they just want you to keep claiming you’re Jewish and make Jewish babies!
Fact: New members under 27 years old get a free*** trip across the pond to commit multiple sins in Israel! These include, but are not limited to: imbibition of alcohol, inhalation of hookah (or something stronger), various carnal activities (if you’re loaded or fortunate looking), and the potential to make business bonds and friendships that you can later use to control the world!!! Or just Hollywood, whichever you prefer.
*** Deposit Required; Tax, tip, and lunches are not included… Duh, we’re Jewish.
Sign me up, Four-play! Does my joining-status come complete with a selection of cool Jewish toys and accessories like those neato spinning tops and amazing head-ware? Bring it! ;-p
Loved the story and I’m glad you made what record you could of the church hearing. I think a lot of exMos can relate to overcoming the cognitive dissonance and the realization that answers to prayers camo from within (not from god or any other external source).
Good luck getting that message across to anyone whi is still Mormon, though. I’ve never been able to get anyone to understand this simple concept.
Dustin,
Great treatise and story on how a commitment to reason and evidence will lead one to the down low on Mormonism… and a lot of other things. I went through a very similar process myself back in 1980 and ended up having my name removed from the Church in 1985.
Your point about the HG is a critical one. I have since come to realize that people the world over in all cultures and religions have these “ah ha” or “enlightenment” experiences and usually they end up being interpreted through the lens of ones particular religious training or belief. That is to say, it is used (and encouraged by others in the community to be used) to prop up ones belief or faith in said religion. I actually have more of these “ah ha” experiences in meditative practice than I ever did when LDS, but I don’t interpret them the same way i did when I was an ignorant and domesticated being.
I served in Kentucky/Louisville mission from 75 to 77 and was much like you, the great debater who used reason, logic and evidence. How prideful I was and how little I really knew. Since then I have come to realize the enormous, gaping chasm that acquisition of knowledge confirms, that is to say, the more I learn, the less I know. 19 year olds out teaching the world?
My discovery of “View of the Hebrews” and the entire “Book of Abraham” deception were the two biggest single kickers for me, like being electrocuted by ta 220 volt outlet. I was done by the time I crossed upon those two issues in my research. But even more damning for Mormonism, is the sheer volume and weight of terrible evidence against it’s claims. I could not or would not want to perform the mental gymnastics required to maintain belief, and it doesn’t work for me on blind faith.
I’ve never regretted getting out. It opened the universe to me in ways that would never have been possible had I remained under the hypnosis of the LDS Church.
Best of luck to you my fellow traveler,
Rodger Lee
Dustin,
Great story, website, and videos. Well appreciated. My deconversion was very similar, the hinging point for me was faith. I could really never understand why faith was always seen as so important. But when I was younger, I just accepted the rationale that I would understand it later. After mission, and during college, I realized I still didn’t really believe, and it was time to determine what I did believe. My religion came under deep scrutiny first, followed by the other major faiths. And none of them seemed to have a good explanation for why God would be such a distant father, or give his children questioning minds and the ability to reason, and then demand that they use neither when it comes to the greatest questions of all.
Keep up the good work!
Dustin, I wept all over again with you as I read of your struggle in desperate prayer. I KNOW how that feels; not because of an external witness but from experience. I find it so upsetting still that believing members of the Church will not give us that much. They believe in the Church despite its many inconsistencies, but they do not want to believe our stories. A few people have written to castigate me about my reasons for no longer believing – as though I came to this decision without study and the mental torture that you experienced too. Others have written to thank me, because now, they no longer feel alone.
I’m sure that your well balanced thoughts and the sincere video will help others who find themselves in a similar situation. These videos are helping people very much.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience.
Go to Iamanexjehovaswitness.com. It is my favorite website
Not sure what that has to with Dustin’s excellent video… but let me fix that for ya there. It’s actually http://www.exjehovahswitness.net/. And yes, websites and recovery forums for former members are common among many oppressive religions such as, but not limited to Mormonism, Scientology, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
well done! That BH Roberts quote is incredibly important.
Im sorry to hear that your an “ex-mormon” being Mormon is such a great thing. How do you become a so called “ex-mormon”? There are so many great things about Mormons! If its the people in the ward…dont let them bother you….dont go to church for the people or not go because of the people….go for you. Im just saying…..
Leaving ultimate truth over being offended would be ridiculous!
Apparently you didn’t even watch the video.
He left because he realized Mormonism is completely and utterly false.
But just to humor your comment.
1) If people in the church are the problem, why would he go to that church where the problem people hang out?
2) There’s nothing great about Mormons. They don’t have have exclusive traits that only belong to them and no one else. And that lot is a racist, sexist, and homophobic so nyuh.
Random connection I made today with the “No True Scotsman Fallacy” (thanks for educating me!):
Libyan (sort of president and) Colonel Gadaffi recently appeared in an interview with Christiane Amanpour while his army slays hundreds of Libyans nearby. He said that “They love me. All my people with me, they love me, they will die to protect me, my people.” When the Amanpour replied in shock and asked something like “How can you say that, when they are capturing Benghazi, and they say they are against you?” (tens of thousands of people are protesting). His reply was, “MY people love me… the others, they are Al Qaeda.”
Wow. Anyway, thanks again for your video and write-up.
Dustin,
Based on the claims that you have made in your video, you haven’t proven that there isn’t a God or Christ or that the LDS church is not true. The only thing you have done is bash on mormonism. Shame on you….. for denying your testimony of everything you once knew or did you really know it?
Jeff,
It is impossible to prove the non-existence of a proposed entity. The burden of proof is on the one making the assertion of existence. The best anyone can do, short of his existence being proven (please do try), is to evaluate the probability of his/her/its existence on the available evidence and reasoning.
In the short amount of time I had in the video, I addressed why it is far, far more likely, based on the available evidence that a god or Christ did not exist, as well as why it is far, far more likely that the LDS church is not true.
You are the one making the claim that these things exist and are true. The burden of proof is on you. The world awaits your evidence, reasonings, and proof.
Jeff, please point out where I have bashed Mormonism. I described my personal experience with the religion and my reaons for leaving. If stating an opinion contrary to a belief system, and evidencing it by reason and evidence is ‘bashing’, then by all means I will bash until the end of my life in a quest for truth. Your leaders seem to agree with my sharing with the world my reasons for leaving. “If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.”
-J. Reuben Clark, D. Michael Quinn, J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1983, p. 24.
You said “Shame on you….. for denying your testimony of everything you once knew…” This is called emotional blackmail. Are you familiar with the reductio ad absurdum form of argument. The reductio for your argument is to apply it to those who were once of other faiths and are now LDS. “Shame on you for denying your testimony of the Jehovah’s Witness church/Islam/Judaism/etc. etc.” If it really is shameful to deny something that someone once knew, but based on new evidence and reasoning realizes that that knowledge is actually false, then a large portion of the LDS church should be in shame. Not to mention those poor shamed people who once ‘knew’ that blacks and/or women were inferior, and then came to the realization that they were wrong.
You said “or did you really know it?” This is an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy I listed at the end of my exit story.
Jeff, you also leave implicit in your short statement the idea that because I havn’t proven the non-existence of god or Christ, that they therefore do exist. Such reasoning is called an argument from ignorance. Because we can’t show something, therefore we can show something.
Jeff, you came onto my video site and called me out in a very passive aggressive manner. I have responded to your accusations and logic. Please do me the honor of responding as well.
This video aside, Mormonism is NOT true. At all.
None of it.
Thanks so much for sharing…this was brilliant! I enjoyed it a great deal and can identify with what you speak of…
Thanks again!
Cheers!
I disagree on alot of it, i can disprove most of those arguments and im only 17, but well written all the same. All im going to say though is well educated people can have faith too, not all questions have answers right when you need them, thats part of our mortality here on earth. I hope your internal journey takes you to great places.
Tom, I would love to see my arguments disproven. You can either share them here or we can work out a way to message each other in a private way. Hope to hear from you.
Celestialbound asked me to read this account and comment on it. I actually like this one better than most ex-mormon accounts (although he again quickly devolves into his many “issues” brought up by so-and-so). Why can’t you guys simply state “I thought God was talking to me, I was wrong and delusional and now I’m an atheist” – the end…
Anyway, as he starts out with a religious experience and that leads him to becoming religious. However, I don’t know why that necessarily led him to joining the Mormons or reading the Book of Mormon. Why didn’t he start with the Bible or Koran or something else? He should have tried a few books, maybe he would have felt the protestants, muslims, or catholics were the true faith instead? That’s the problem with “feelings” and prayers. They are squishey like that and not very definitive. It would seem to me if you really are going to pursue a religious course, you’d deman something a bit more substantial than that. After all, this is an extraordinay claim and really requires some extraordinary proof. But, this tragically is the mistake most ex-Mormons make – well, at least in the end they realize they should have been atheists (which is where they should have started from to begin with and not wasted everyone’s time).
Tobin,
I am confused with the position that you are taking. I mean it makes rational sense once one is out of religion, but, for those raised to believe in religion your approach is not realistic. Being raised LDS, one is indoctrinated and taught that feelings (aka revelation) are the path to absolute truth.
I was raised LDS and that is why I started with the LDS church. That is why I began with the BoM. In the LDS church you are taught that if the BoM is true, then the entire church and doctrine are true. It is horrible logic, but being raised in the faith you are not given the tools to see that or deconstruct it.
I remember specifically asking one of my trusted leaders a similar question to the one you point out; “What about the other religions? Shouldn’t I investigate them before I make my conclusion?” He gave me some analogy that settled my concerns at the time. I learned more and more to rely on my subjective experiences as the base for my conclusions.
Looking at your post, it looks like the thing that might be missing in your analysis of some of our exit stories is the idea that we were raised in the LDS church. We were raised to believe that prayer and subjective experience were more than enough to satisfy extraordinary claims; we were taught and believed that they were determinative. The majority of LDS will not have approached their faith with anywhere near the intellectual rigour that you are suggesting. Hope this clarified. It was a bit rambly.
That may be true, but I believe that isn’t in keeping with the ideals of Mormonism. One should not seek to impose one’s beliefs on others including your children. I believe Mormons should raise their children with a desire to explore and discover truth for themselves and employ reason, rationality, science and the best learning and knowledge available, and a healthy dose of skepticism. If the children CHOOSE to be Mormon, so be it (but don’t force them or culturally promote them into it). If not because they have no reason to believe in it, that should be respected as well and embraced. I believe ultimately that is keeping the best traditions of kindness, respect and humanity.
Agreed. Unfortunately, such is not the case.
I’m not sure Mormons act irresponsibly when they brainwash their children into their faith. Wouldn’t they be irresponsible if they didn’t? You allow that people have a right to believe as they see best, but your tolerence and respect become weak gestures if you then criticize those believers for letting their beliefs govern their behaviour. If a parent is convinced they have the ultimate description of reality, it is sensible for them to want their children to have that same knowledge. As demonstrated most ably by this site, this kind of brainwashing is reversible. The child will recover if they are dedicated to making their own way and forming their own beliefs. If they aren’t, they’re going to borrow their values from somebody and it might as well be from someone who loves them and is trying to share the most precious thing they have. As a Latter-day Saint, I fully intend to indoctrinate my children with what I hold to be true. Much of the propaganda they run into outside the home will be from parties wishing to exploit them, and I cannot help but feel that my brainwashing is the friendliest form of an inevitable process.
Hawley,
You would willing indoctrinate your child with a method of determing reality that is easily subject to bias and has no way to resolve competeing truth claims? Why is your friendly approach better than Tobin’s where you equip the child with the necessary tools to think for themselves?
But do you draw the line at water boarding?
Is my approach to parenthood better than Tobin’s? Well, there’s a question that could inspire a long and fertile argument. I’m not going to say my way is better, because at the moment I am far more interested by another point: Whatever its effectiveness, my approach is concordant with my beliefs, and therefore it becomes the only sane option for me. If I thought reason, rationality and science were the best and only ways of grasping truth, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Isn’t this the crux of our disagreement? My understanding of truth is different from yours, and so you tell me I am a fool or a bad parent if I act on the truth as I have found it. I am telling you that I would be more despicable still if I did not allow my understanding to inform my behaviour. If I taught my children as you suggest, I would become one of the hypocrites you despise. Believing as I do, indoctrinating my children with notions of faith, repentance, eternity and God is the only responsible course available to me. Isn’t that how truth works? If you think you have it, you become responsible to it or you forfeit your integrity.
Corbin, if you want to understand my lines you will need to ask sincere questions.
“If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.”
-J. Reuben Clark, D. Michael Quinn, J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1983, p. 24.
“If faith will not bear to be investigated; if its preachers and professors are afraid to have it examined, their foundation must be very weak.”
-George A. Smith, 1871, Journal of Discourses, Vol 14, pg 216.
Can one really believe one has the truth when one actively ignores contrary information as evil? (rhetorical, yes I know one can, but should one?) It is telling that the truth you claim requires avoiding all information and a suspension of logic and reason. If you really had the truth, wouldn’t you be able to teach your child the tools for deriving truth and trust him/her with those tools?
Think about what you will be doing. You will be brainwashing a mind. You may claim to have truth, but to force that truth on a mind not capable of anything but accepting what you teach as true? That is inhumane and immoral. Why not guide the mind in many ways of thinking, thereby demonstrating a respect for the autonomy of that mind. If you really have the truth, why can you not wait until they have the mental faculties to analyze what you teach them?
What would happen to religion if children were no longer indoctrinated at an age when they had no ability to do anything but have their world view shaped by that indoctrination? It would be telling if you thought its influence would lessen.
Perhaps I should explain my attitude toward how to raise children comes from how I was raised and my familty background. I was raised in a environment of intellectual freedom and was often exposed to many ideas in literature, culture, and my home life. My uncle was Eugene England, an English professor of some note a BYU for having had a run in with Bruce R. McConkie (http://mrm.org/bruce-mcconkies-rebuke-of-eugene-england), and our family has always viewed Mormonism through a lense of open debate and tried to endorse only the best ideas. I myself have lived all over the world – having studied Hinduism and Buddhism, Confucianism, the Koran, old English, latin, hebrew versions of the Bible, and so on. My favorite times in my life was working in Paris or in New York working for Wallstreet. For part of my life I was an atheist until about 10 years ago when I had a very real encounter with deity in New York City. And I would not change a thing in the world about my life. Nor could I imagine forcing my beliefs on children or anyone else and feel the best way to honor the truth is to allow people to explore it freely on their own.
Right now I’m semi-retired in Las Vegas, again working for a Wallstreet firm, and our family is busy supporting Glady’s Knight and the Saints United Voices (http://www.suvchoir.org/). Personally, I hate attending the typical Mormon chruch meeting (oh the New England puritanism is so dreadful – it’s silent, dead, and boring) and look forward to introducing some color and life into those meetings some day through our current endeavors.
Oh goodness, I’ve been rude. Let’s back track a little: Nice video! Dan did a great job (as he always does), and I liked the points you made. I was really excited to find this clip because I’d never heard you explain why you left the church and it had perplexed me. I was worried that you became bitter and left out of dysphoria, but you obviously gave the question of the church and its usefulness to you diligent thought. I admire that and respect the way you handled your conclusions. Thank you for posting both the video and the thought provoking essay below it.
In response to your generous reply:
I’m afraid I’m not making my point very well. At the moment, I don’t care if the Church is ‘true’ or not. Instead I am stuck on this concept, as suggested by Tobin: as a LDS parent, I can reasonably be expected to adopt a bizarre assumption – that my best understanding of what is real and true might be toxic to my innocent, defenceless children – and then incorporate it into my parenting strategy. My question is as follows: Is it ethical for me to shield my children from what I perceive to be real simply because they are young and gullible and they might believe me? Please understand, if I thought the gospel were toxic or false I would leave it alone. I’m asking you to recognize that I genuinely believe there is a God who answers prayer, and that as long as I do I will pass this interpretation of reality on to my children because I think it is reality. You say “Believe what you like, just don’t infect your children!” and in practical terms it works out to “Pretend you don’t believe in anything except the supremacy of the human mind!”
As it happens, I don’t buy into the supremacy of the human mind. You speak of tools of truth as if your set were identical to mine. I will give my kids all the truth finding tools I have, some of which you may regard as invalid. Whatever tools I give them, and whatever your approval of those tools, the kids won’t be able to intelligently use them until long after they’ve absorbed a basic framework of what the world is and where they fit in it. The fact is, that young, vulnerable mind is a sponge and it will take what you’ve got whether you’re trying to give it away or not. If everything they learn from me is accidentally transmitted, I am not automatically a good parent and they’re not automatically safe from mindless ideological cloning. Nothing will save them from that except time and maturity. In the meantime, why not show them the best I have? I am not ashamed of it (actually I think it’s wonderful), and it should stand in nicely until they have made up their own minds.
Just as I have a right and responsibility to find truth as best I can, I also have a right to parent as best I can. To be a good parent I will need to rely on my own judgement of what is real and true rather than farming that out to you or Tobin. To ask or expect me to raise my children in religious quarantine is to require that I be less committed to the truth than you have been, and I don’t think that you would knowingly make such a request. Am I wrong?
I am trying to figure out where we are different on this. For you, you have what you believe to be truth and believe it your responsibility to impart truth to children. For me, I am never certain that I have the truth and am always questioning and seeking to falsify my beliefs. Correct me if I am wrong, but you want to teach your child one way, and keep it from material that is critical of that way (at least that is what your leaders recommend). For me, I want to expose my child to all of the differing view points. I want to expose my child to religion to secular humanism. So not a religious quarantine. But never indoctrination into a particular view point. I am not that certain. Neither would I impinge upon the autonomy of that mind.
It seems like that is the difference. I may be wrong and I would like to discuss it.
* * PS: Tobin, my apologies for getting your name wrong previously.
Dustin,
Thanks for sharing. I echo what many others here have expressed: my exit out of Mormonism followed along similar lines, and it’s encouraging to be reminded of the power of rationality and critical thinking to transform lives for the better. For me personally, I can identify the very moment during a session of General Conference (on my mission, of all times!) when that first spark of rationality was quietly switched on, and the thought came: “Something isn’t right. Something doesn’t compute.” I count myself lucky that I was still able to generate this kind of rational intuition (“fallacy-detection faculty”, or “fallacy radar”), even after a lifetime spent squashing it under the Mormon doctrine that the Spirit is the only infallible source of truth. In hindsight, the fact that there is a whole chapter in the missionary handbook “Preach My Gospel” called “Recognize the Spirit” should have been a big clue. If the Spirit is so reliable, why do either the missionaries or the investigators need to take a crash course in recognizing it? I would expect that God would be able to speak to people in such a way that He would not need a 3rd party to explain that He was in fact speaking to them.
But I digress. Congratulations on your video, your exit, and your example. I hope it gives readers the courage to analyse the foundations of their own belief structures as thoroughly as you have demonstrated here. You sound like the kind of person I would love to get into a debate with, but as we’re decidedly agreed on this topic, there’s probably not much point.
Again, congratulations and thanks!
Tobin, the road you’ve traveled does sound lovely. Your parents obviously had a respect for your ability to draw your own conclusions, and I think that is beautiful. I like your interest and delight in the world outside of what is familiar. It’s a trait I wouldn’t mind seeing in my children. What I object to is the substance of the education that you proposed earlier. I would not wish to abandon my charges to reason, rationality and science alone. I don’t think those can provide adequate context for a person to discover who they are and what life is for. My richest, most rewarding experiences were beyond the boundaries of the academic trinity, and this is what I want to share with my family.
Am I willing to provide them with caustic criticisms of the LDS church and its gospel? Will I deliberately invite doubt? Nope. That’s everywhere, and they don’t need to get it from me. Will I expose them to other belief systems, just in case those will appeal to them? Not on purpose. When they hit reading age they may notice the Tao te Ching, the Koran, and a few selections from a particular Vietnamese Buddhist monk on the bookshelves, because I like those books and won’t be hiding them. They’ll find thick scholarly tomes on the historical Christ, cultural biographies of Joseph Smith, and various translations of the Bible, because their father plays with those. They’ll come to understand that other people see these things – God, the universe, men as prophets and prophets as mere men – differently or sometimes not at all. But they will also know that I talk to God expecting answers. They will understand that I have thrown my lot in with the LDS church because I encounter God there more than anywhere else.
Dustin, you may be right about our differences. It seems to me that I have the truth my children will need, and I’ll do what I can to surround them with it. You will push your children to construct their own understanding of life and what it means, as you have done for yourself. Won’t we both be giving our kids the best that we have? If I have picked at this topic too persistently, it is because I am upset that this one important similarity between us has been overlooked.
Thank you, all, for this conversation so far. Dustin, I especially appreciate your efforts to tease out a clearer understanding of where we each stand and your patience in handling my multiple attempts to explain myself. I think I’m ready to stop hijacking your comment thread, now.
Hi hawley,
I don’t think you understand where I am coming from. The reason I am championing letting children develop their own interests and give them to tools to rationally understand the world is precisely because they have to grow up sometime and will be exposed to doubts about Mormonism. For example, most parents let their children believe there is a Santa Claus. But, at some point as the child matures, the discover that Santa isn’t real. The problem I have with your approach is by “brainwashing” your children into believing in Mormonism (without giving them a good basis to believe in it and filter truth from fiction), you leave them in a position to eventually dismiss a belief in God when they discover there are some “problems” with Mormonism. You assume that Mormonism is true. It isn’t. It is based on truth, but contains alot of man-made doctrines and practices. These “practices” is what often leads people to leave the faith and become ex-mormons. It is far better that children be given the tools to make decisions for themselves and be able to discern what is from God and what is from Man.
Tobin,
I absolutely love this comment and have never really thought of mormonism in this way.
“You assume that Mormonism is true. It isn’t. It is based on truth, but contains alot of man-made doctrines and practices. These “practices” is what often leads people to leave the faith and become ex-mormons.”
I’m currently at a crossroads with mormonism and have been for the last several years, for some of the same reasons that Dustin and others have stated in their exit of the faith. I’ve spent the last 7+ years studying my faith and the history of my faith only to come to the conclusion that what I thought was true was in fact man-made. It was not my intention to find fault with the church. In fact, my intention was just the opposite. I believed with everything I had that it was true and because of my continual thirst for knowledge and truth, my aim was to know all there was to know about my faith in an attempt to strengthen my testimony.
I can’t tell you how many sleepless nights I’ve had over the last 7+ years calling out to, weeping to and pleading with God to help me understand and know the truth only to feel alone and empty. I can’t say I’ve ever had an answer from God during this time and after all the pleading and praying, one day while mowing my lawn, I received my answer. The weight and burden I felt all those years agonizing over the new, at least to me, information was gone! I realized then that Mormonism, while being a great foundation for establishing “stronger” families, was in fact man-made.
I can’t leave the church because of what that would do to my young family. I have 3 girls aged 2 to 7 and a wonderful wife that is a true believing Mormon. She has an idea of where I stand, but my stance is not one of threat, meaning, I do not intend to leave or publicly admit that I no longer believe. This would be devastating to my little family because of the strong belief my wife holds as well as our stance in the community we live in. My intention in my marriage is NOT to convince my wife that what she believes is incorrect, in fact, I do not want to convince anyone of this. We are each entitled to our own beliefs and who am I to say someone else is wrong…interestingly enough, this is part of what has led me to my conclusions about my Mormon faith.
Phew, sorry for the long post…been wanting to get that off my chest for a while.
i feel really alone i have left the mormon church and seem to have no friends left what do i do know….. i didnt have many during the time of church
You will find lots of friends online, there are many others like you on websites such as postmormon.org or lifeaftermormonism.net or reddit.com/r/exmormon! The transition out is the most difficult, but things get better!
Izzy,
I understand. I did not have many friends in the church. I would not consider myself having many friends outside of it either. Dan gives good advice. My only reason in commenting is to share that I understand.
Hey Dustin,
Thank you for your excellent story! I see you as an example of what would have happened to me had I been brought up a Mormon.
I’m glad to have you on our side! I hope other Mormons will follow your example, even if they do it with the expectation they will show themselves correct in their original beliefs.
And I hope you and I will continue to prove ourselves incorrect in our original beliefs.
Jesse
I have to confess I am completely jealous of your deconversion story. It appears you followed a noble course of action in your exit involving openly discussing your testimony with your bishop and family. When I was beginning to cognitively leaving the church, I wished I could go back to church and be the perfect Mormon before I left, just so that members wouldn’t be able to pick at some common imperfection to say that my situation was compromised by the devil’s influence. I still feel double-minded about the church, in that I see my view from the outside, but I still see what members could be thinking about a given situation or religious argument.
I appreciate your discovery of parallel “feelings of the spirit” across religions. I remember diligently praying and reading my scriptures daily, and noticing that at girl’s camp, I seemed to be the only one who had personal study. Even though I regularly put on the “armour of God”, I was never quite certain whether any of my promptings were the spirit or just my own thoughts. I would wonder how other people could be so confident when they were feeling them. I seemed to only be able to tell if it were a true prompting after the fact because of the positive consequence. Then being taught that sometimes Satan can mimic the spirit, only made it seem dangerous to rely so heavily on the spirit.
Any advice on how to keep close with a strong member family when leaving the church?
great video. very articulate.
The Book of Mormon is a complete fraud perpetrated by Joseph Smith. There were no gold tablets.
Moreover, DNA evidence shows that the Native American is not related to Jews in any way (the same is true for British Israelism, since the Western Europeans, Brits and the White Anglos of the United States have no common genome with the people of Israel). Mormonism is stupid, disproved and wholely unscientific.
I am not a mormon, but I know mormons and worked for one who is a Bishop and was married in the Temple at Salt Lake City, Utah.
If you came to my door, I would tell you about my experience as a baptized Lutheran attending a Roman Catholic Parochial School for 11 years, surrounded by idols and knowing the Catholics were wrong to bow down to them. But I was forced to be in silence because THE CATHOLICS WERE IN POWER over me. I was discriminated against for 11 years in both subtle and gross ways.
This is just the way it is when you grow up in a dysfunctional power structure completely in error, based on insane thinking of the delusions of someone with mental disorders from centuries before. Whether you are an LDS or SDA or whatever, you are forced to live in the hypocrisy of lies for most of your life and just have to take it: You have no protector or defender and all the delusional people around you have power over you and abuse you (even though you may not know it is abuse until you recover from it).
LDS is a cult. It is objectively crap. After spending the past year trying to help other people out of another, but still as destructive cult, I found Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich and Madeleine Tobias. It is the best resource on the topic I know of.
Justin is a hero. It takes someone with the intestinal fortitude to begin to question and take action against the mental disorders which describe the decidedly abberant distorted perceptions of a totally inane cult in which one has grown up in. Initially, there is no groundwork, foundation or basis for questioning the beliefs which all so very reasonable, but staunchly resist analysis because of the emotional investment: To turn on your religion seems to be wrong and such a betrayal. Objectively, it is a moral imperative to turn against the delusions and pursuade others to do so. The quicker the liars, con men, hucksters and nutjobs lose their income the quicker the world will be a better place.
For those who want a snarky look of what cult religion looks like, go on over to The Supreme Cult and see how silly your own religion looks in light of the ironic parody of cult religion by The Supreme Commander (my cat, to be precise).
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED TO HEAR AND READ! So many points of your story are what I am currently experiencing. I am nearly thirty, married with three children, and have just recently begun to study church history more. I couldn’t explain my doubts and curiosity to my husband other than to say, “I just want to know the TRUTH! I don’t believe it’s wrong to ask questions and investigate history and try to really find the truth. If I am seeking for the truth, I have nothing to be afraid of.” I immediately felt an amazing freedom. I think a lot of people leave the church without doing a lot of their own homework, and sometimes that’s because they seek a reason to leave to justify an action or behavior that does not comply with church standards. This is not the case with me. I *want* it to be true, but more than that, I want the TRUTH. Thank you so much for your story. I wish I could sit and talk with you.
I am so glad my story and video were a help to you. If you message the administrator of this site, I am sure he would be able to give you my e-mail address for you to message me if you get this.
“By their fruits shall ye know them” seems to be appropriate to this conversation.
Without faith it is impossible to please God…faith is not to have a perfect knowledge…
Faith is a gift of God, faith has a quality and a quantity.
I have prayed for my faith to be increased; by increased faith I mean more of a “knowing” rather than a believing. If there was a sliding scale with “Not Knowing” at one side and “Knowing” at the opposite side, would “believing be within that scale?
What would increased faith do for me? How would it change my thinking and my actions?
Faith is not “knowing” faith is having a hope in a belief that you “think” is true. Can we have faith in something that is not true?
Where much is given much is expected. With increased faith is there a greater responsibility to act on that faith, is there more condemnation if that faith is not acted upon?
When we act in faith we act believing that a specific result will occur or expecting that a specific result will occur.
Feelings of the spirit are discernible; there is no need to question whether the feeling of the spirit is good or evil, it is immediately obvious and tastes delicious to the soul.
You might question whether this is the Holy Ghost or a feeling from within your head, but you still know whether it is good or bad without question.
Praying to God to take away our need for faith by giving us knowledge of things that we ardently desire, perhaps may not be in our best interest, who knows. Maybe the degree of wisdom we possess is not as great as God’s wisdom.
“Ask in faith nothing wavering” How great is the faith that is required to ask in faith nothing wavering is that even possible? Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge, but we are told to ask in faith nothing wavering.
Asking for God to increase our faith moves us toward that glorious state, as we choose to exercise our faith by obedience to God’s will for us, and in seeking greater light and understanding our obligation and desire is to live according to that degree of light that we possess. In so doing the light and understanding we possess will be added upon according to the wisdom of God that we may press forward at a pace that is not beyond our capacity to endure but as God’s wisdom dictates.
I have experienced first hand the awesome, indescribable righteousness and love of God, he lives, his thoughts are not our thoughts, how could they be when we are as nothing in comparison to him.
To pray for wisdom and understanding is undoubtedly a good thing, but it is not for us to judge the Lord for how he answers.
The fruit that is most precious above all other fruit and is the most delicious to the soul is trusting in God and in his eternal care for us, but we cannot ask for it to be on our terms, in any other way we gather disappointment and unhappiness.
First the Easter Bunny, then Santa Claus and now God isn’t real? What is the world coming to!? Oh, right, just about where it was before thinking those things were real. I remember these shocks as well, but there it is: it seems to me that God was always just the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus for young adults.
And it seems like the Elders know it… That is what is really interesting to me. If they know it, why bother to continue? Perhaps that would be a reason not to leave Mormonism or even for a rational atheist to join? Can’t imagine me successfully explaining it to missionaries though… They’re just so enthusiastic and it must be how parents feel about not bursting kids’ fun with the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus… It’s such a treasured fantasy and, for someone that has been through it and is sympathetic to their plight (I used to be a Methodist and a Baptist – until someone told me I can’t technically be both), it feels terrible to burst someone’s bubble. I did tell them one time that I prayed to God and got an answer about if the Book of Mormon was true, which was “all religion is false and apostate.” They didn’t get the hint.