My Introduction

Thanks bc_pg. You’re right, that’s not a great reason to stay. I guess the real reason that I’m trying to stay- and the reason that I’ve stayed in spite of being significantly dissatisfied with the Church for quite a while- is that Mormonism is most of what I’ve ever known and I’m afraid to leave. I don’t know what’s out there and I don’t know how to live as a non-Mormon. Plus I’m moving to Salt Lake City in about a month, and though there are more non-LDS than LDS there, I’ll still be one of the “other” if I quit the Church. Being a single guy, I’m also afraid to leave because, if I decide to come back later, I’ll have the stigma of having had a “period of inactivity.” Mormons seem to show a strong preference for people who have been active in the Church their whole lives. Plus it’s easier to stay from a social and a family point of view. But I suppose I should put those fears aside and do what I think is best, and I’m not really afraid that I would incur divine displeasure by going inactive.

I don’t like the idea of identifying myself as an atheist, but if I decide that’s the most plausible reality of the universe, I would be joking myself if I believed otherwise. Atheists are the most hated minority in America, so it’s not just Mormons who think that Atheists are enemy number one. I don’t like the idea that human consciousness ends with the death of the brain, but we really don’t have any evidence that indicates that our consciousness survives the death or our brain. Then there’s the argument from poor design, the argument from evil, the argument from conflicting revelations, and the argument from reasonable non-belief, all of which seem to indicate that the concepts of God and the afterlife were created by humans who knew their own mortality and created a way for themselves to believe that they could survive death, even though no way may actually exist. These views made them more likely survive and reproduce, and so they passed on their believing genes, regardless of whether or not those beliefs were actually true.

I’m almost scared of what I would do if I didn’t fear any divine consequences. I’d have to invent my own moral code. I don’t know how I’d make friends. I don’t know how I’d meet girls. Sometimes it seems that I’d like to just walk away and forget about Mormonism and become a secular humanist, but it won’t be that simple given that I’ve been more or less a lifetime TBM. I could leave the Church, but it’d be a long time before the Church left me, even if my beliefs were long gone. If I quit the Church, I would have to fill the void in my life somehow. Grieving the loss of a belief in an afterlife has been a hard thing for me, or at least grieving the loss of the certainty of an afterlife. It’s tough to think that I’ll never see my family or friends again because I’ll never see anything again. If death is a dreamless sleep from which we will never awake, there would be no pain of loss, but no joy or reunion. I’d have to find some kind of social organization to fill the void and keep my mind off of staring into the abyss.

Hi IM. Welcome. I am new here as well and tring to find “balance” or being “centered”. I love science but history In itself isn’t a exact science. I’m not fond of black and white thinking. Being raised all my life as TBM you here a lot of black and white thinking. It works inside inside Mormonism if you don’t crawl out of the box, but once you do you realize that life isn’t black and white and is more complex. But since historically we have been taught in black and white we tend to carry that outside of the box with us(many times without realizing it). The whole argument that if the BOM is true or if part of it is true then it is all true(everything inside LDS faith) can be used against it once you crawl out of the box. That if part of it is false then it is all false. Both thinking is inherintly flawed. There ate some things that science can’t explain(like why I am even alive after my hospitalization in ICU). Everything they knew at all explained why I should have been died and there was no chance to live. Yet here I am. That doesn’t make science not correct, it just means it can’t explain everything. And that is we’re faith comes in what you CHOOSE to believe for unexplainable or provable things. That is a answer that only you can decide, no one else can tell you who you are. It’s up to you to choose. If you decide it’s not here, I respect that. If you decide it’s here, people will be here(including me) to support you.

And another thing, FC. As a TBM I believed a lot of very optimistic things about God that turned out to be wrong. For example, one time I almost wrote a check that I didn’t have money in my account to cover because I believed that God would miraculously put the necessary money in my account before the check cleared. Gladly, I didn’t end up writing the check. I believed a lot of things like that- I believed that God would do this or that for me if I prayed and was faithful, and my beliefs turned out to be wishful thinking. So I’m quite hesitant at this point to believe things about God that I don’t have evidence to support.

Welcome! I’ll just put my two cents in. I’m a little over 6 months into my journey now. For a long time it seemed completely unfeasible that I would be able to believe any of it again, but I feel like I’m finally starting to make peace with a lot of things. Don’t be too quick to dismiss a path of belief, but be willing to accept that your new form of belief may look very different than your old one. I disagree with bc_pg’s comment about sunk costs. That may be a good strategy when applied to business, but I’m not sure it applies here. I look at my relationship with the Church more as a marriage than a business venture. There are a lot of negative costs involved in choosing to end a marriage. Walking away from it simply because your spouse turns out not to be the person you thought he/she was when you first married them I don’t think is justifiable. I think there needs to be an attempt to do some serious self evaluation and repair the relationship first. Of course, going with the analogy still, sometimes the relationship may be so abusive or psychologically damaging that a divorce is the only healthy option. (And this is all coming from a single guy, so I apologize if my analogy falls a little short) . I’m not going to push for staying in the church or leaving, but I think maintaining some type of faith is definitely viable after a crisis.

Welcome InquiringMind, we love inquiring minds! I can relate to alot of what you express, I have experienced similar thoughts along my own path. While I have my own personal reasons for remaining fully involved in the church (and finding deep personal meanings therein) it’s important for me to note that feeling a desire to remain connected does not have to be battled with others’ concepts of “reliable” or “physical” definitions of truth exclusively. Think about obtaining conclusive outward physical evidence for an exclusively inward experience such as love or even elation. You can observe signals that point you toward it, but you cannot prove or disprove the specific experience of an individual. Is it therefore unimportant – because it is not concrete in the outward physical sense?

I contend that a HUGE part of what makes life worthwhile has nothing to do with concrete physical realities. I will never argue against the importance of understanding what can be proven physically, but I think we’re missing out if we limit what is meaningful in life to those things.

I would also love to see the world not argue over the existence of God, but rather turn to a more meaningful discussion around the true nature of God. While I could agree that many of the ideas of God throughout the world have been shaped by man’s thinking, the reality, the “more”, the goodness and love have existed through all time. I like to define God at the very least as the source of life, love, goodness, as “truth”, etc. God IS. To say God doesn’t exist is simply absurd. God IS what is. It is our task to learn more about that, not to engage in pointless arguments around narrow definitions. I’ve heard people say “I don’t believe in a personal God” and while I appreciate the distinction of “personal” as an effort not to rule out all concepts of God, it still hits me as narrowing the discussion where it could be left more open and expansive. I agree that much religious discussion is limiting and narrow, but I try not to let that limit my own personal musings.

What I am trying to say is there are many ways to discover deeper “truths”, both in the physical or concrete way but also in the deeply meaningful or personal/subjective way. What I was SO happy to find in my journey is how compatible these expansive views can be with Mormonism. Anyway welcome! I look forward to more discussions in the future.