Reasons

For those unfamiliar with hyperlinks the words in the text that are highlighted blue have a link to open the citation of what is being discussed at the moment. Click on the word to find out more.

In discussing why I decided to leave the LDS church I don’t want anyone to feel as though I am trying to persuade them to leave as well, that is not my intention. My real intention is to offer a voice of comfort to all of those out there who struggle with the same things that I struggled with. I want people to feel like they have a shoulder to lean on and a place to find comfort. While I am not at all supportive of the doctrines and teachings of the LDS church, I still defend them where I feel they should be defended. I still correct false ideas that I hear thrown around by people attacking the church. But after all my study, prayers, temple visits, and deep thinking I cannot help but be more convinced of the deceit that the church cautiously lowers in front of your eyes than of its truthfulness.

Please understand that as you read this it is not personal. I know where members of the church are coming from. I completely empathize with people who were raised in the church and indoctrinated their entire lives as I was. As you read you will often see me say something like the church did this or did that. Please understand that these are not blanket statements about the entire church membership but instead referring to the leaders who are high enough up to affect the entire church. I am very bold with some of my statements. But, again, please do not take them personal, they are not challenging you as a person but instead the system of religion I used to believe in. I make some bold statements, but I do it because it is the best way I know of to convey my true feelings.

To make a qualifying statement on my own “authority” to talk about church topics I will refer you to anyone who has been over to my house and seen my library. While I haven’t read every Mormon book I own I can very confidently say that I understand and know Mormon history and doctrine as well as, or better than, almost everyone I know. And no, the spirit doesn’t take away the gems of knowledge when you leave the church, that’s just a myth too. I have read two or three other articles written about why the people chose to leave the church. Most of them are friendly and don’t introduce many doubts, but just a general over view of their reasoning. It is an innate human desire to find others whom you can connect with. Being alone in your beliefs can be as wandering through an endless desert without any water. The questions I ask are rhetorical and not meant for the reader to answer. Please remember that! These are the genuine questions I had on my own and why I had them.

Perception

There are many stigmas relating to people who decide to leave the church. The common ones are the usual “lost the spirit” “stopped praying” “deceived by Satan” “lazy” “unworthy.” However, I don’t think that any of those apply to me or most of those I know who have left the church. The idea that we aren’t happy because we no longer have the spirit is one that most of us actually find pretty hysterical. I’ve never been so happy in my entire life, ever. If you know me and my personality, I am a happy person. I have almost no empathy for those who suffer from depression because I have never felt it in my life. Instead, sympathy is all I have to give, and many need it. In the entire time I was a member of the church and even to this day I can honestly say that I have never read an Anti-Mormon book.  I did read what anti-Mormon things people on my mission gave me but that was usually things like we aren’t allowed to ride city busses and Mormons aren’t allowed outside at night. Stuff that anyone with a brain can see around. So, for me to be convinced of the falseness of the church by only reading copious amounts of church literature is something I think is worth noting.

To read the type of statement I am making in this article is one thing. But to truly listen and try to understand where someone is coming from is another thing entirely. Alan Alda once said that “you are not truly listening to someone unless you are willing to change your own personal opinion.” I felt like this was what I was doing. For years I listened to outsiders and tried to convince them of their evil ways. When Bruce R. McConkie first published his book Mormon Doctrine the first presidency made him change passages about playing cards and the catholic church. When someone asked him how that made him feel he said that to be a truly mature person means that you must admit, from time to time, that you are incorrect. I like that idea.

God and Prayer

My search began long ago, a decade before actually deciding to leave. I remember the week after coming home from my mission I was sitting on my parent’s blue fabric couch and looking down at the blue carpet (my mom hated that carpet). As I sat there, I questioned the existence of a god. In all my life of praying I couldn’t remember a time in my life that a real prayer had been answered. The LDS church is known as the religion of lost keys. Because people often loose their keys, they fall behind a bed or in a couch cushion, and in a frantic attempt to get out of the door they often say a prayer. Then miraculously they find the keys, which if they would have just kept looking they would have found them anyways. This kind of prayer I call the “Law of Large Numbers Prayer.” If you pray for happiness in your life and safety in your road trip and they come to pass it is almost as though god was watching over you and answering your prayers. But, sadly, millions are happy in life and safe on the road. So, my way of thinking was that if you pray for something simple over and over and it keeps happening you get sucked into believing that it only happened because you prayed for it.

When I say a real prayer, I mean one where I am asking for knowledge and truth, not lost keys. I had never heard a voice, I had never seen a vision, I had fervently prayed my entire life without ever receiving an answer that was weighty enough to lead me to believe. I thought about god and prayer as I sat on that comfy, ugly, blue couch. I had just testified for two years about the truthfulness of something that I had never received a confirmation about. I was the highest baptizing missionary of my generation (the group of other missionaries who, on the same day, you arrive to the mission with). And it has panged me ever since how deceitful I was to everyone I “converted” and how I led them into a church I didn’t understand myself. I remember opening my mission call and hoping it would say I was unworthy or some other reason that I couldn’t go. I wasn’t excited to go to say the least. I feel like I went on my mission for the same reason that the vast majority of Mormons go on mission, peer pressure and societal acceptance.

Prayer has always been a tricky thing for me. I used to tell people on my mission, and in my personal life, that if god has ever answered your prayer you know he exists. As I went on throughout my life I thought about the real prayers I had offered but had never received an answer for. I had prayed for a testimony of the church, Joseph Smith, the current prophet (whomever it was at the time), tithing, temples and just about anything else relating to the church. And these were not casual prayers. The idea that the church was true was something that had been drilled into my head ever since I was old enough to open my eyes. So to pray about it my whole life and never receive even a hint of an answer was unsettling to me. It isn’t easy to leave the only way of life you know behind and venture out into a strange world, but I felt like I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. Easy prayers receive easy answers, difficult prayers receive no answers.

But wait I thought, what about all those millions of professing believers (of any style of faith, not just Christianity) who feel the same thing I do when they pray to a different god? Why is my god more special than theirs? Prayer alone slowly began to fade as my primary source of a testimony. Even though the church said that all I needed was to pray and listen for the spirit I couldn’t do it again, not after doing on a regular basis for my entire life without an answer. Listening to the way humans of other religions talked about feeling the same way that I heard preached over my pulpit was something that I have always struggled with as well. What makes them so wrong that if they refuse to join my church they are going to burn in hell forever without an opportunity of repentance? How are they feeling the spirit if it is strictly limited to my church? If they don’t feel the spirit in their church, because it’s only in my church, why do they then still attend their church? If Christianity is true and god wants to save all of his children why have less than a third of people alive right now even heard the name Jesus Christ? If this was the true church and we were all there in the battle in heaven to cast out the adversary, and we all chose to come here to earth, why then is it so hard to accept and live in a Christian mindset? Why has the name of Christ been used to massacre untold millions of people throughout history? These are genuine questions I had about religion that I could not find satisfactory answers to. I thought about them all the time, day and night.

This Probationary Time

It’s the little details that got to me. There were so many little things that I couldn’t get over. The doubts about prayer have stuck with me for a long time. But the feelings I had about god were put on a shelf and I didn’t reflect on them that often. For a while I may have convinced myself that it was true. But this was only because I wanted it to be true, not because I had found any divine inspiration or guidance. I don’t remember my exact thought process while going through the process of questioning what I had been told. But I do remember one of the large pervading questions I had was about this earth life and that it is the time when men are supposed to prepare to meet god. I couldn’t get over the idea that god sent us here without any remembrance of where we came from or what had happened before we got here. But then he expected us to find his teachings on earth and follow them to the letter. If we didn’t we would be cast off forever and ever with our sins.

Why was earth life so short and yet the choices I made, here, in my veiled and ignorant state, would affect my existence for all eternity to come. In 900,000,000,000,000,000 years from now I would still be in the same kingdom I was when I first died and it was all dependent on a few decisions I made in my mortal probation, in a veiled state, that I couldn’t go back and fix even if I wanted to. I thought: how is that justice and mercy? But I wasn’t supposed to be questioning the things of god and so I once again put my doubts on a shelf and kept living the Mormon way. I wasn’t thinking about this on a daily basis but I couldn’t get over it.

The more I lived and experienced life I felt that the decisions I was making were my own, that I wasn’t being influenced by some unseen being that had been cast out for rebellion. If evil doesn’t exist in heaven where did Satan come from? In our primordial life we lived with god in his Celestial kingdom that he had earned through his diligence during his own probationary estate. And there it was that he and mother gave birth to Lucifer, the evil one. But who or what was it that persuaded Lucifer, the son of the morning, to make the choices he made? It was his own consciousness! And I slowly began to realize that my own consciousness is the only Satan in my life as well. Nobody was there to tempt Satan and nobody is here to tempt me. To have faith as a mustard seed means that you have the faith and power to command angels to appear and minister to you. I was convinced of that at one point (because that what all the church books I read had said) and thought that it was a level of faith that I needed to achieve. I now feel like it is a completely fruitless enterprise.

Joseph Smith Jr.

When I originally read The History of Joseph Smith by his Mother Lucy Mack Smith, I was amazed at the story about Joseph obtaining the plates. Here was a young man of 22 years old, carrying a chunk of gold that weighed no less than 60 pounds. As he came home with the plates, he was chased through the forest by men trying to steal them. With the 60-pound plates in one hand he fought off three assailants with the other. What a man! I was mesmerized.

When I picked up a few books on American history and learned that many people had seer stones and used them to dig for money it reminded me of Joseph and his egg shaped seer stone. And then when I found out about the restoration movements, I thought about Joseph and the “final” restoration. When I read about the communist style societies that all the religions of the time had organized I thought about the law of consecration. People said that they knew the garden of Eden was in the Midwest. Many people were prophets and received revelations. Many people started their own churches. And then to see that Joseph and the Mormons were not the first one’s to introduce any of these ideas gave me pause. I couldn’t understand how an inspired prophet of god seemed to be copying so much of the religious beliefs of others.

Why is it that a person would write a book and defend it until he died if it wasn’t true? I’m not really that convinced that he knew he was going to die. He said that he went as a lamb to the slaughter, or so the story goes. But he had expressed similar concerns at other times. I had never thought before that his going as a lamb to the slaughter meant he was going to be put on trial and thrown in jail for the rest of his life. If he knew he was going to die why did he go? He had escaped prison before, why choose to go now? It seems to me that books that only portray someone as being perfect and never doing anything wrong ever is not a very honest book, no matter who the person was. And this is how many of the books of the church portray the prophet Joseph and his successors. But what happened to honesty and transparency?

If joseph was so persecuted and hated for having claimed to have seen a vision why isn’t there any mention of the vision anywhere in any kind of record at all until years after the publishing of the book of Mormon? Why did he wait so long and give so many different accounts of the first vision? Why wait to put it in writing until over a decade after it was supposed to happen. The most glorious and important vision the world has ever received and nobody even bothered to write it down until after the book of Mormon was in print and on sale? If he was as persecuted as the church claims he was why was there not a mention of the first vision anywhere until years after the organization of the church?

I also found it hard to understand why Joseph had plural wives eight years before receiving the revelation on polygamy. And why does it seem so convenient that he received said revelation only after his wife caught him sleeping with another woman? I think Joseph Smith was brilliant. He was a genius at what he did. He must have had a charisma second to none. He was probably a fun person to be around. But he was in no way inspired by anything from heaven. He was following the ebbs and flows of the religious feelings of his time, following patterns set down previously by others. Why is it that everything he says to have been inspired to do was already done by someone else before him? (Yup including a gold book about the ancient inhabitants of America that god told him to translate.)

I apologize if this sounds negative but I feel like these are valid questions.

Church Industry

We all know that the church gives its leading authorities a living allowance of around $10,000 a month, or $120,000 a year. I’ve never really been comfortable with this; because, most the men receiving these allowances are already financially well-to-do, so why should they get so much money from my church? The thing is that I was employed by the church for years and required to have a temple recommend as part of my employment status. One of the interview questions I was asked has stuck with me until today. My boss asked me if I had a testimony of the truthfulness of the church, and I replied that I had. He responded by saying good, you’re going to need it.

As I spent time working for the church I learned how vast and extensive their business matters were. I learned that the church had tens of billions of dollars just in their stock portfolio alone. The church owns the largest cattle, corn and wheat farms in the world. They have extensive real estate holdings (not only chapels and temples, but shopping malls, apartments, etc..). The church owns radio and broadcast networks and insurance companies. They own construction companies and printing agencies. And I found out that the council of the twelve and the first presidency sit as chairmen, CEO’s and directors of every one of these corporations (most are owned by holding companies). The church, however, never discloses its finances and they don’t have to because they are a church and don’t pay taxes. But it must be a pretty nice paycheck to sit on the board of directors of one of the largest companies in the world.

Church Sayings and Trickery

One thing that I am openly opposed to is the way the church leaders use twisted and mind numbing sayings in order to trick people into staying in the church. Doubt your doubts, before you doubt your testimony. I felt like I had legitimate doubts about the church and for them to be brushed to the side like this was almost insulting. Wasn’t I was supposed to question things? and that’s how my faith grew. Isn’t it only fair to say that if you have questions ask them and if we can answer them, we will? Instead the answer was to ignore doubts and push forward as if none of them are legitimate. The only people who say bad things about the church are Satan fueled instigators trying to destroy the works of god. Isn’t it possible that someone in church leadership, at some time, in some place, got something wrong? So why not address those faults or problems?

Another of my favorite is trust in the lord means trust in his timing. Is it really the lords timing to never answer my prayers knowing that if I don’t get an answer, I’m going to eventually tell people why I think its fake? Why would he do that? Why not save one of his children by answering their prayers instead? Is that really how faith works? I felt like I wasn’t receiving answers but I was being told that it had nothing to do with the lack of deity’s existence. Instead it was just the laziness and carelessness of the lord in answering his own children. What is so hard about giving your starving child a little bread? Isn’t that what he wants to do? Isn’t that his work and his glory? To me it seemed like the answer is no, it isn’t.  Trust in the lord means trust in his timing means to me that just because you can pray your entire life and never receive an answer, you still need to obey and do what you’re told, just be obedient. I saw it as having nothing to do with revealed religion and everything to do with retaining membership.

This might seem like a hard line to follow and a blatant disregard of what the saying is supposed to mean, but frankly me dear I don’t give a damn! I waited 24 years for an answer of such basal knowledge and never received it. I’m not going to live my entire life subjecting myself to something that wont even let me know if he is there or not.

What about the idea put forward recently in a general conference to not believe secular knowledge? Isn’t secular knowledge what helped many of the church leaders in their private careers?

The problem I see with religion is mainly psychological. Constant self-evaluation and telling yourself that you have to be better. One of the very common church sayings is that the lord will never tempt you, or give you a burden to bear, more than you are capable of withstanding. How terrible of a thing to say! What if someone actually needs help? Well too bad! Because you have the capability to do it yourself it is not the church’s responsibility to help. Am I supposed to tell a person dying of cancer that “they’ve got this” “just pray and stick in there” “the lord will help you overcome.” What an insulting argument. How alienated it makes people feel!

Pearl of Great Price

I was, several years ago, reading about the history of Egypt and the pyramids when low and behold what did I find? It was a section of the book discussing burial customs of the ancient Egyptians. It had several pictures of common artifacts that Egyptians would bury with their dead. One of them looked an awful lot like the Facsimile I had seen so often in the book of Abraham. It is the second Facsimile and today is well known as a common burial artifact called a Hypocephalus.

It was a hard blow to me to discover that Joseph Smith mistranslated nearly everything about it. It did not come from Father Abraham, but by the style of writing was dated to around 200-300 BC. Thousands of years after Joseph said it was written by Abraham.  They are very common now and you can even see them in many museums around the world. The other facsimiles are common place as well. How can an inspired prophet so boldly declare that he had translated these by the gift and power of god and that they are what he claimed them to be? It seemed to me that if god told Joseph Smith what to write it would have at least matched up with all the other translations that are out there. All of them, by the way, are in accord with each other. The only one not matching the others translations are those of Mormon church.

Church Leaders are Not Inspired

Not only had I held callings in elder’s quorum presidencies but also Bishoprics. I had sat through countless meetings about who to call to this position and to that. Not once have I ever heard someone say that the spirit told them to make a certain calling. It was always discussed who would be a good fit and who wouldn’t. That’s how simple church callings are. I had made callings myself and had participated in the same experience. I personally made choices that ended up in the calling of many people to positions in the church.

When I was a child, I was chosen for a brief time to be scout leader of my troop. I never liked scouts and my parents eventually stopped making me attend, but that’s another story. I was instructed by my bishop to pray about who I should have as my counselors. When I went home, I quickly forgot my instructions and went on about my life. When I arrived at church the next week my Bishop asked if I had prayed about it and I quickly said yes. Then I made up two people (there were only like 5 of us anyways) and told them the names of my two best friends. I had lied and gotten away with it (I would learn later that it was just as easy to lie in a temple recommend interview). This man was supposed to be my spiritual leader but he couldn’t see through my lies in the slightest. Isn’t it interesting that as children we were taught to pray about who should be our counselors in Boy Scout leadership? An organization not ran by the church, not religious and who’s CEO is one of the highest paid in the world. I am so glad the LDS Church is leaving that organization.

While I was in the presidencies and bishoprics I continually watched as the church was directed in this same manner. Nobody claiming to receive revelation. Not only that, but when a name was recommended for a calling the leaders often argued about how qualified they were. The person originally putting forth the name was basically pulling names out of a hat, there was no divine direction. I can’t help but think that this style of leadership goes all the way up the church’s chain of command. I have never seen any evidence that it doesn’t.

It seems to me like the church bends and changes it’s beliefs and practices depending on the current political and social atmosphere (three obvious examples being polygamy, humans with black skin, calling minority apostles). The excuse of being a living church didn’t give me comfort when I heard Gordon B. Hinkley tell Larry King that the church no longer taught that “as man is god once was, and as god is man may become.” What ever happened to eternal truths that never change? If the god we worship was the same yesterday, today and forever why do basic and fundamental beliefs often change? I couldn’t wrap my head around it then and I still can’t today.

Being a “pretender” is something that many people are good at. I can say this about church members because I was one of them and I could see everyone else going through many of the same struggles as me. Being a pretender means to put on a façade, to tell people and show them that you are doing much better than you actually are. Because of the Book of Mormon teaching that if you have wealth it is because of righteousness, many people feign wealth in order to appear more righteous. But, far worse than that, so many of the people around me seemed to feign happiness.

Some of the most humble, honest, capable and worthy people I know have never had a significant church calling in their lives. Some of the most financially successful and immoral men I know were called as bishops and stake presidents. Anyone who honestly and objectively looks can’t help but think that people are chosen for callings based on their financial well-being, and not their spiritual worthiness or mental capacity. Some of the vilest and most unscrupulous business men I have met were stake presidents, mission presidents or their counselors. These situations often left me wondering how someone with the gifts of the spirit could select such men for such important positions? As I would think about these things, I would often relate my own experiences that I just listed above. It was confusing to say the least. I struggled with my testimony for years before leaving the church and often thought about the men “serving” in the church.

I will give credit in that there are so many callings out there that there might be a bad egg every now and then. Seeing that the church has over 3,300 stakes its easy to see someone slipping in there with the leaders unaware. I will give them that. I had several men as bishops that I still look up to and admire greatly. But a greater number of them that I don’t care if I ever see again. And others still I think are amoral men. Is god directing the whole church or only part of it?

I enjoy reading about western American history. I like to read trapper journals and exploration journals. Quite often these people came after the Mormon church had moved to Utah, and, therefore, they would often comment on the Mormons that they met. They often explained the physical appearance of the Mormons as extremely depressed and that the women never had a smile on their faces. In fact, every single book I read about the west, that mentions seeing Mormons, said that the members were miserable looking (none of which had anything to do with the church. They mostly just mentioned them in passing). Not a single story said they looked happy. They always said how sad and depressed were the appearances of those who belonged to Mormondom.

 Nobody liked living in Utah during the time of Brigham Young, but they couldn’t leave. Brigham Young taught a doctrine known as Blood Atonement, and this said that if anyone left the church, or committed a great sin, you must save their soul by cutting their throat from ear to ear and draining all of their blood. Many apologists that I read from the church while I was an active member said that he taught this doctrine multiple times but never acted on it. So, my question was then why did he preach it that way? What was the use of saying these things if he wasn’t intending to use them one day?

I was always aware that the Mountain Meadows Massacre had taken place and that the church denied any part of it and still does. That’s fine, if they say Brother Brigham didn’t order it then I can accept that. But when he is said to have been the one to give orders on several of the largest massacres in United States history it becomes a little harder to deny. Mormons and Brigham Young were absolutely responsible for the Timpanogas Massacre, and the Circleville Massacre, and the Battle Creek Massacre, and the entire Black Hawk War. No wonder Arrington called him the American Moses.

I could go on about my doubts and thoughts about Brigham Young but I don’t want to be any more long winded than I already have been. The point I am trying to make is that I couldn’t see any indication of inspiration or guiding of the spirit in the men I was choosing to follow. For me, this was one of the much slower realizations that I had. It was one of the last things that broke the camels back.

Joseph Smith wrote the book of Mormon to make money, not to control people (just read D&C). Brigham Young was the other way around.

When was the last time you heard a doctrinal based conference talk? They still give them, but they are the strawman type doctrines that we hear repeated time and again. God is our father, obedience is key, the temple gives blessings, the lord died for our sins. But we haven’t had a deep doctrinal preacher in years. None of the apostles claim to be Special Witnesses, in the true sense of the word, as they used to. None of the current apostles will admit to seeing either the father or the son or anything else for that matter. They won’t admit to seeing or talking with them because they haven’t done either. If miracles and signs are still existent today, where are they? Finding my lost keys can’t hold my faith forever.

Patriarchal blessings are absolutely bogus. But I won’t even get started on them.

Temple Ceremonies

In my search for new books to read one day I saw a book about Freemasonry. The book was called “Freemasonry; Rituals, Symbols and History of the Secret Society.” It was written by a Mason for the public. I had only stopped going to church a month or so before starting to read the book and my jaw was on the floor through the entire book. The temple ceremony now made much more sense. The book never once talked about religion, let alone the Mormon church. But when it described the three degrees of glory and the progression of telestial, terrestrial and celestial rooms in their ceremonies I knew I had made the right choice. When I learned that they held meetings in their temples and that the officiating leader used a stick with a ball at the end to knock three times to commence meetings and announce the admission of a new member it made sense now. When I read about how the second-class members (women) must sit on the left and first-class members (men) sit on the right it made sense. When I read that they held their meetings outside of the celestial room, but never inside, it made sense. When I read that they painted their walls with gods beautiful creations I understood that. When they use a large altar, similar to the Ark of the Covenant used by Moses, in the middle of the room it made sense. When I visited the Salt Lake Temple and walked up the stairs to the next room it wasn’t interesting to me, until I read that the masons have been doing so symbolically for thousands of years. When the book said that to be a Mason you must believe in a female deity as a partner to the male deity I laughed. It was all making more sense now where the temple ceremony came from. I could go on and list everything the Mason’s do that Joseph Smith copied, including the twelve oxen at ground level in the temple under the baptismal font, the garments, the symbols on the garments, the sign language, and many other items. But this is enough for now.

As a faithful member I attended the temple as most members do, in their spare time and only when it was convenient. Have you ever stopped to wonder why it is so hard to get excited about going to the temple? I sure wondered this for years as I sat in the Celestial room. To give an average of once every month and a half for a decade means around 100 temple visits. Another question I often asked myself when I was going through the temple was “what in the hell am I doing getting dressed up in these robes and doing all these hand signs and reciting written prayers”? Why is it so bad for other churches to use written prayers, as Mormons say it is, yet Mormons themselves use them all the time? Not a single person I have ever talked to in my entire life can tell me why we do, and what we do, in the temple. Nobody knew in Joseph Smith’s day and nobody knows now, not even you the reader. A bold statement I know, but if anyone reading this has an answer to what it all means, I am all ears. What is it all about?!

One last thing about freemasonry before I leave the topic. Masons were heavily persecuted in Joseph Smith’s time. They were so hated that there was even a political party called The Anti Masonic Party. And where were they formed? You guessed it! Right in Josephs backyard. To think about how persecuted the Freemasons were in the time and area Joseph Smith grew up in, it is no wonder that, what people thought of the masons at the time, resembles the Gadianton Robbers so closely. Joseph needed to sell his book and so he included only themes that were applicable for his time and place (the idea that Native Americans were Israelites or the lost 10 tribes was prevalent).

El Libro de Mormon

This was my clincher. It was the cornerstone of the faith. If it fell all the mighty edifices and beliefs that it held up would fail as well. The year before I left the church I was frantic. I listened to the Book of Mormon six times on audiobook and read it cover to cover twice in the printed version. I couldn’t rationalize it, I couldn’t make sense of it fitting in with American natives and history. I was at work one night listening to it once again and I got bored of it so I switched to something else. The book I switched to was a history of Canada, if I could remember the name I would give it here. It was written in the early 1900’s and when it got to the chapter of the native peoples, whom the Canadians call First Nation People, it began to discuss their history and origin. This was before DNA and other medical research positively named the Native Americans as descendants from northern Asians. What the author was describing was the extremely long list of similarities between the American Natives and the people of Northern Asia.

My ears burned like they hadn’t burned in a long time, I couldn’t get enough. The author of the book was not trying to combat any of my religious beliefs, he wasn’t even talking about anything to do with religion. He was laying out the facts that he had in front of him. Just as I had done in defending the church. He might not have even known anything about the Mormon church, because of how long ago his book was written. I listened to the chapter over and over trying to find a flaw or reason in his history that I shouldn’t believe him. I listened to the chapter probably 8 times that night and found nothing that I could contradict him on. Native Americans don’t have facial hair, neither do the Siberians. Native Americans traveled in small family groups and used the same type of dwelling (wigwams and yurts, teepees and chums) as the Siberians. Their skin color was the same. Their way of life was the same. They were the same people.

The more I thought about this the more I thought about the book of Mormon and how I couldn’t match it with anything that I saw in America. The logistics of moving armies of millions of men in Nephite vs Lamanite battles wasn’t something that the Europeans could even do until the first World War in 1914 (even though it appears that more people died in the final Book of Mormon battles than in the first world war {that’s just sarcasm}). The wheel had not been invented in America when Columbus landed. The wheel is found on some Mayan toys but was never used for anything else. There were no horses when Columbus landed and there were no asses, swine, elephants (Mammoths have been found extensively, but the most recent one is 13,000 years old) or cattle either. So why are they in the book?

I enjoy history for its own sake and have studied it on many topics. One of the history topics I like is that of the American west (if you didn’t know that already). As I read about culture in America I learned from many sources that no American culture had a complex written language when Columbus landed. There were cultures that had a written language but none that progressed beyond hieroglyphics. I thought it seemed very strange that so many people could not only forget how to write, but that a written language could even be possible, in such a short period of time. I couldn’t wrap my head around why everyone in the Book of Mormon seemed to know how to read and write and yet when Columbus landed the vast majority of people didn’t even know it was possible to convers that way. You may have your own feelings about this and might have tons of information that I don’t. I certainly don’t have a monopoly on knowledge. But this is the way I see it and the way it comes across to me.

And it may sound funny to you but the clincher for me in my denial of the Book of Mormon was that so many pages (647 pages including the 116 Martin Harris lost) could come from such a small book. And half of it was sealed. If they were really the size Joseph and others claimed them to be, 8 inches tall by 7 inches wide by 6 inches thick, and a large portion were sealed, how did so many pages appear in print? Unless Moroni wrote things down using a microscope it simply isn’t possible. Not to mention the idea that plates of gold, that are as “thin as common tin,” could sustain engravings on one side, without messing up the other side. They were just too thin to allow engravings on both sides. Also how did Moroni, without the use of wagon and ox, carry entire rooms full of gold plates and other artifacts with him as he wandered the Land Bountiful after the wars of extermination?

Happiness

Happiness was not something that I had looked for. I thought I was happy. It had never crossed my mind that there could be another fountain of joy and happiness in my life other than the church. I had been taught my entire life that the only way to true happiness was through the spirit of god and that people who left the church did so because they were deceived by Satan, or had lost the spirit, or had not kept up their study and prayer. I had been taught by church leaders that people who leave the church are unhappy and miserable. Looking back, I can now see how foolish and closed minded I had to have been to believe such openly blatant and confusing lies.

I didn’t know what happiness was until months after I left the gospel. I had come home from work one morning (at the time I worked the night shift) and after waking up around 3 in the afternoon I went outside to look after my chickens. I stepped out of my door and onto the small concrete steps leading to my back door. I paused for a long time. After a few minutes of staring into my backyard I realized I had a smile on my face. It wasn’t a small smile and I don’t know where it came from. But for the first time in my life I knew what it was like to be happy. It made me think back and reflect on the mental slavery I had subjected myself to for my entire life. One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from Harriet Tubman, the famous Underground Railroad hero. If you follow me on Instagram you know that I quote it often. She says: “I freed a thousand slaves. But, I could have freed a thousand more, had they only known they were slaves!” The gospel does not bring true happiness.

It does contain teachings that make people hopeful and loving towards each other. It is my opinion that to say by reading an irrational book and never receiving an answer to prayers is joy and happiness is to not think for yourself. Once you free yourself from the mental slavery that held you down life rushes onto you, not like a freight train, but like a tsunami tearing the train to pieces. Your eyes are opened to the true beauty and majesty that is this universe. A universe with over 3 trillion mapped galaxies, not stars but galaxies, each with billions of their own stars and solar systems. The idea that I am supposed to accept that one anthropomorphic being knows and controls every singles particle of matter in the universe is absurd to me. I don’t care how enlightened he is, it isn’t possible.

When someone leaves the church over doctrinal and historical issues, as I have, it is very difficult to continue in the path of belief. Belief in an afterlife, belief in revelation, belief in what my concept of the world had been from the time of birth until the moment I stopped believing, it all changed. More profoundly than this is my new belief in god. My belief in god is now more profound and all encompassing than it could have ever possibly been in the church. My belief now is that he not only does not exist now, but has never existed ever, save in the minds of men. When men in ancient times looked up into the sidereal heavens and saw the vast milky way and all the planets in our solar system that was the limit of their knowledge, and therefore, god made more sense.

Love and Mercy

Going back to what I said earlier about the reasons people left the church as being “lazy” or “unworthy” or “lost the spirit” or “didn’t pray or study enough.” These little catch phrases that Mormons love so much is something that I now find very a unfortunate teaching. It isn’t true at all. Why can’t people leave the church and then leave it alone? Many many many many reasons. Some who have left feel like they had been lied to their entire lives and others feel like they have been robbed of what little time they have on this earth. How is it laziness to make the decision to leave everything you’ve ever known and start something new? Do you think its easy to do that? Or fun? I didn’t leave because I stopped praying or studying. I left because I finally had to be honest with myself that when I prayed and studied the hardest in my life nothing ever changed. God wasn’t there for me when I was making the right choices and doing what he had told me to do. I feel like so many of my friends out there can relate to many of my experiences. I only hope that what I have done was courageous enough to be counted for something.

Leaving the church is one of the hardest decisions people make in their entire lives. Giving up friends, family and trust is something that members need to understand takes deep thought and much struggle. So why make it hard on them? Why do members only want to talk to ex-Mormons to re-convert them? The people I have talked to clearly don’t have my interests in mind when they belittle me for leaving. But the church has pushed people to do just that in order to bolster their own mental reasons why they can’t leave either, it’s all psychological. I must admit that this is a rare occurrence but to say that nobody has said anything like this is not true. Because, after all, what if I’m wrong? What if now I have to live in hell forever? Luckily, judging by the way life has turned out and the happiness I feel inside I can say that I really don’t think that will happen.

I feel like I could go on forever about my doubts and I can list off dozens more with ten times as many pages as I have already filled. I could literally write volumes about why I believe the Mormon church is false. After all, I have read scores of volumes of why it is true. But I think it is not necessary at this point. I even wonder if anyone has made it this far in such a mad rambling article.

Please remember what I said at the beginning. This is not an attack on any one individual. My sentiment of resentment is towards an ideology that holds people bound under a useless system that will benefit no one in the long run. Don’t think that I don’t understand what people are going through in the church. I was there. I lived it. I went through it.  IT WAS ME! I understand why people don’t leave. I never understood how someone could fall for such huge lies as those told by politicians and other religions. But now from the outside looking in I can’t believe how blind I was to my own brainwashing. I thought that it couldn’t happen to me. I thought I was the one doing the right thing. Turns out that I had brainwashed myself and convinced myself, the same way I had frowned on others for doing. The LDS church is set up and ran in such a way as to convince people, for their entire lives, of how they are true; just like every other tribal mindset that we complain about people having.

If you know me I am not a casual observer of anything. If I am interested in something I learn as much about it as possible, until I lose interest and move on to the next thing. The world is so much clearer and makes so much more sense now that I don’t have the cloud of religion in front of my eyes. I can understand thing profoundly more than I ever could before, even though I had the spirit to instruct me. And it all makes sense now. The world makes sense. Everything makes more sense from an outsiders point of view. This might be hard for some people to hear. I was never, in all my time as a member, ever able to picture god in his setting. Did he live in a house? Did he eat meals? Did he really have a beard and dress like a Greek god? I can’t say that I was ever able to picture any of that. But it is so easy now to look back and see where we came from (we are not chimps, our family trees separated long ago). I can’t believe how much clearer that vision of origin is than one of creation. Because, after all, where did god come from?

It won’t make any sense to some people why I would say something like that. And I don’t judge them for that. Why not? Because I was there. I can empathize all day long with you about not believing that. I lived it for decades without ever considering that it might be true. I am only now beginning to comprehend the damage I have done to and in this world by trying to promote religion. In retrospect I blame myself and only myself for not seeing the error of my ways sooner than I did. Only one party can accept the blame of self-dilution. I am almost ashamed of myself for taking so long to leave after I knew it wasn’t true.

Some who read this might accept everything I have said as true. Some will accept most of it but disregard some. Some will not believe most of it. And others won’t believe any of it (they are the truly scary ones). In conclusion I wish to say that I now believe that the Mormon church is false tenfold more than I ever believed it to be true. The psychological mind fuckery the religion plays on people, always forcing them to judge themselves and telling them that they are not worthy enough, not good enough, not perfect as Christ is. YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH JUST THE WAY YOU ARE!!! There is a reason that many of your desires are so hard to control, they are there for a purpose. And it is not a “god given” purpose. I don’t want to argue with people and will not respond to any comments about this article unless I feel like they are genuinely interested in my story. If you have read this long, I applaud you and thank you. Let’s all be real humans together.

Wyoming