How My Visit to Church Went Yesterday

     I've been visiting my parents for over a week for some "me" time so that I can focus on myself and not have any marital or parental responsibilities.  One of the things I wanted to do while I'm down here is go visit my home ward on Sunday.  The first time going to church since I left it four years ago was a few months ago—my husband was out of town and the kids had a Primary program in Sacrament meeting that he said they needed to attend, and so I took them and only stayed for Sacrament meeting, but I didn't like it and I felt guarded.  That was because I've never liked the Primary program even when I was a fully believing member of the Church, and in a previous post I mentioned how the Primary songs are indoctrination.  So that was a guarded experience.  For my visit to my home ward yesterday, I wanted to see if it would be painful, if going back there would bring back bad memories and if I would feel emotionally guarded; I wanted to see if the ward members were close-minded or if they were open to thinking about topics and having open discussions; and I wanted to see who was still there that I knew and cared about.

     Surprisingly it was a good experience.  I took notes throughout the three meetings and I'll share them here.

     Sacrament meeting was boring, but the youth speaker brought up a good point: why do little kids take the sacrament?  That's a topic that I discussed with Mike even before I left the Church and it's something we don't have our kids do.  But I was glad to see that this teenage boy was using his critical thinking skills and asking questions like this.  It was hard to listen to the second speaker because at least half of her talk was quotes, and even her own words might not have been hers because she said she got help with her talk.  The third speaker was easier to listen to because she had a much more conversational tone.  She said a few things that made me feel bad for her: the guilt and sorrow she feels because of her belief that some of Christ's blood in the Garden of Gethsemane was spilled for her, and that she feels sorrow and discouragement for her failures.  I understand where those feelings come from, and guilt and sorrow are meant to be motivators to change, but it's a sad and negative way to look at one's imperfections—that they caused Jesus to bleed and suffer.  If your current actions or inactions aren't causing pain to a person that's currently living, don't worry about it.

     My mom came with me and we sat on the back row, and so I was able to have a good view of the chapel and the members.  It was nice seeing quite a few familiar people.  There were some women who I was surprised to see are still alive because it feels like they've been old forever.  There was a young man who I last saw years ago as a little kid who would run up and down the aisles in the chapel, and while of course he's not a kid anymore, it's still strange to see him grown up.  Other people have died since I was last there about six years ago, and it was sad seeing someone else playing the organ because the old organist died a few years ago.

     Also in looking around I saw a man who's probably ten years older than me, and he's a very intelligent man and I've always admired that about him.  I wondered how someone as intelligent and well-educated in religion as he is can reconcile things about the Church and gospel that don't fit or make sense?  How does he do it?  I didn't get a chance to say hi to him after Sacrament, but I would've liked to chat with him.

     The reason I didn't get a chance to talk to him was because when Sacrament meeting was over, a lot of people walked by me to leave the chapel and quite a few of them recognized me and said hi and we hugged and chatted.  It was so nice to see people who remembered me and were happy to see me.  That felt really good and it was the best part of church.  The sense of friendship, of community and of belonging—that's the final thing I considered before officially leaving the Church.  I wondered if I would be able to sit through three hours of church every week in order to have that social life, if I could stay just for the people and the sense of community.  The answer was no, I couldn't do it.  And like I said in a previous post, I do miss that sense of community and that sense of belonging, and it was nice to feel that again here.

     In the Gospel Doctrine class, the teacher asked the class if there have been times when they didn't know something about the gospel and what they do about it, and someone actually said that sometimes you have to go by blind faith.  She actually used the phrase "blind faith", and I cringed because she said it like it's a good thing—like it beats searching for evidence—and no one in the class spoke up against blind faith.  No one mentioned looking for evidence, they only gave examples of what they do in falling back on faith.  That was disappointing.

     Also in Gospel Doctrine, my mom made a comment and that's when I learned that she only took the discussions for two weeks before getting baptised!  That's a missionary's dream and she said she was ready for the messages when they came, but wow, I had no idea she joined that quickly.  But I guess when you see something you want and you're in a position to have it, it's easy to just go for it.

     At one point someone mentioned anti-Mormons, and he said, "It's like 'why do you listen to our General Conferences?  Go do something else.'"  He said it defensively, and members do get defensive when people aren't there to feel the Spirit and accept the gospel, when instead they're there for intellectual or research reasons.  I felt that way back in college when someone I knew came to church with me but it was to take notes on an LDS Sacrament meeting, so I understand.  But the members don't understand anti-Mormons' mindset or their desire to look at the Church from an outsider's point of view.

     The teacher pointed out something that makes me think he's done a lot of reading about Church history.  Moses 6:54 mentions original guilt, and the teacher pointed out that those sounded like Joseph Smith's words and language because the revivals of his time talked heavily about the concept of original guilt.  He moved past that point and no one commented on it, but it is an important point overall and the teacher recognized it.  I've read about that a lot in one of the sections of the Tanner's book Mormonism—Shadow or Reality?, and so I recognized and know exactly what he's talking about, and he's correct: that was a hot topic in Joseph Smith's time.

     Throughout the lesson I could tell that the teacher has done research into what the scriptures say and that he was trying to get the class to think.  From the things he said in class, I can tell that he's put a lot of thought into what he's studying, and he's someone I could have a very good intellectual discussion with.  I went up to him afterward and I shook his hand and said "You gave a good lesson.  You were trying to get people to think, and I appreciated that."  I walked away from that meeting feeling good because Sunday School used to be my favorite hour because Gospel Doctrine is the most intellectually stimulating of the meetings, and I liked that this teacher tried to create an atmosphere that was conducive to good discussions.  I felt so comfortable there that if I had read the lesson's scriptures beforehand I would've felt comfortable commenting.  That was an unexpected feeling, but I liked it.

    Relief Society was different, though.  What I felt in there is a camaraderie among the women of the ward, and I felt that one of the main strengths of the Church is being around like-minded people.  What I didn't feel was the desire to comment, even though there are things I could've said, because the atmosphere wasn't the same as in the Gospel Doctrine class.  It's hard to describe the difference, but I'll try.  Gospel Doctrine is more conducive to getting into topics and dissecting things, to delving into the scriptures and even debating what's in there to find out what's true.  In Relief Society, there's none of that—it's more a feeling of complete agreement, that there's really nothing to discuss and figure out about the lesson, it's more like we all agree completely about everything that's in the lesson and we're just here to talk about it and feel good.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't leave room for differences of opinion, which I have.

     The RS teacher said that someone who leaves the Church and becomes anti-Mormon does so because they're doing something wrong "obviously" (which made me wince because there's nothing "obvious" about it), but also because they were offended or because the person didn't have someone to talk to who could help them (i.e. someone who was strong in the Church).  Here was an example of members who don't understand or want to admit that many people leave the Church because of things that are wrong about the Church.  I asked my mom later that afternoon why she thinks people leave the Church, and she said that everyone leaves for their own reasons, but she thinks it boils down to one thing: a lack of faith.  She is extremely faith-based and so that answer isn't surprising at all.  I thought about her response and my thoughts are that faith is okay until there is evidence.  Once there is evidence that something about the Church isn't true, then it's blind faith to reject that evidence and continue to have faith in its truthfulness.  My mom is so entrenched in the Church and in her faith in the gospel that we are on completely different pages when it comes to Church stuff and even talking about it.

     Satan was brought up a few times, and the women attributed negative thoughts and feelings to him, not as coming from our own minds because of our circumstances.  It's the idea that all negative things come from Satan and all positive things come from God, and that it's Satan who gives us the thoughts that we're not good enough as women or mothers or members of the Church.

     Someone talked about the Dark Ages and how it came about when the last of Jesus' apostles was killed and the priesthood was no longer on the earth.  However, by that logic, the Dark Ages must've lasted until the 1830s when Joseph Smith was restoring the Church and brought the priesthood back to the earth.  But that's definitely not the case.  The modern popular concept of the Dark Ages refers to a time of intellectual darkness and general lack of written records which occurred in Europe during the Middle Ages, between the fall of the Roman Empire in ~5th century AD and the Renaissance in the 14th through 17th centuries AD.  But actually, modern scholars put this Dark Ages time period as occurring in the early Middle Ages (5th and 6th centuries), and the term Dark Ages isn't really used anymore in scholarly circles when talking about that time period.  Priesthood had nothing to do with it, and the Dark Ages certainly never extended into the 1800s.

     I got a picture with some of the ladies after church was over because they were part of my Church experience growing up and I like them and I'm not sure I'll be back to the ward again before some of them pass away, and I want to remember them.

     Well, the best parts of church were the intellectual atmosphere of Sunday School and seeing people I know and who were happy to see me.  My mom was hoping that I'm warming up to coming back to Church, and last night I said in no uncertain terms that I will never come back to the Church.  I told her that even if I find God again and decide to start believing he exists (which I probably will never do), I will never rejoin the Mormon church, and I wish she would stop getting her hopes up and then being hurt when I reject her efforts help me come back.  So she was disappointed that I didn't go to church because I wanted to come back to the religion, and I was disappointed that she hasn't made efforts to understand why I left and what I think and feel about the Church—she's never read this blog, even when she knew about it years ago, and she just assumes it's totally anti-Mormon and Church-bashing and full of swear words (which further shows that she doesn't understand me).  But I still had a good time at church overall.  I had my specific reasons for going and it's probably the last time I'll go to church, but at least it wasn't a negative experience.

Path to Information I Never Dreamed Existed

     This past August 1st marked the 4th anniversary of my leaving the Church.  This year has been good; I continue to be well-adjusted to life outside the Church, and pro-LDS posts on Facebook don't annoy me so much anymore.

     About a month ago I delved back into LDS history and doctrine, but for a much different reason than renewed faith.  I started on a path that led me to a sea of knowledge, and I want to share how I got here and also to share some of the truths I've learned about the Church that I had absolutely no idea about until now.

     Here is a quick outline of the path my research led me, and I'll explain each one in detail below:

     "Citizenfour"/"Snowden" —> 1984 —> the Church's Gospel Topics essays —> Tanners' articles on race and the priesthood —> David Whitmer's An Address to All Believers in Christ —> Tanners' book Evolution of the Mormon Temple Ceremony —> Tanners' book Mormonism—Shadow or Reality?

     A month-and-a-half ago I finished reading the book 1984 by George Orwell.  I read it once in high school, and I wanted to read it again after learning more and more about the invasion of our privacy by the government (if you want to know what's going on, then watch "Citizenfour" (2014) and "Snowden" (2016); don't let the R rating deter you!).  But this time around, what bothered me most in 1984 was the idea of changing history.  A lot of the meat of the story is about history—what's reality, how do we know what really happened?  The main character answers that history and truth are in people's minds and in the written documents, and his interrogator says that the Ministry of Truth ensures that the documents are altered to reflect what actually happened so that it appears that everything The Party and Big Brother say and do looks correct, that they are always right.  This got me thinking about the Church.

     A couple of years ago the Church finished publishing their Gospel Topics Essays which admit things about the Church's history that they previously sought to hide, things that too many members are now finding about on the internet.  Here's the main page from the Church's website where you can follow the links to the essays: https://www.lds.org/topics/essays?lang=eng  And this is an online article by the Salt Lake Tribune which talked about a memo written to leaders of the Church regarding the release of those essays:  http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=1606088&itype=CMSID  I tried to find the official memo itself but I couldn't; this news article is the best I could find.  According to the article, the memo to the LDS leaders states, "The purpose of the Gospel Topics section is to provide accurate and transparent information on church history and doctrine within the framework of faith... When church members have questions regarding [LDS] history and doctrine, possibly arising when detractors spread misinformation and doubt, you may want to direct their attention to these resources."

     Notice it says "within the framework of faith".  I read through these essays and yes, they all have a pro-LDS spin on them, even when they're coming clean with some unpleasant facts.

     Reading 1984 reminded me that these LDS essays are proof that the Church came clean on many controversial topics (multiple First Vision accounts, violence in the early days of the Church, polygamy in Nauvoo and Utah, etc.).  Information can easily be changed online, and so I wanted to print them out so I have a physical copy of what these essays said.

     One of the topics is "Race and the Priesthood".  This reminded me of the website I linked in one of my first blog posts, the one which had two articles by Jerald and Sandra Tanner that dealt with statements the LDS leaders have said regarding doctrinal reasons why black men will never hold the priesthood in this lifetime.  Here is it again for easy reference:  http://www.bible.ca/mor-blacks-racism.htm  (the more recent of the two is at the top).  I printed off those articles, too, and included them with my copies of the Gospel Topics Essays.

     The night I did all this printing, I reread those articles by the Tanners, and I decided to look up a few references they made.  One of the ones that caught my attention was in a book by David Whitmer called An Address to All Believers in Christ.  Here is what they said in their article and the quotes that intrigued me,

The reader will remember that President Brigham Young once said that if the blacks were given all the blessings of the Gospel, the priesthood would be taken from the Church and it would go to destruction. Our research leads us to believe that the Mormon Church never had any priesthood to lose. Even David Whitmer, one of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, seems to have had some real reservations about the "priesthood":

"This matter of 'priesthood,' since the days of Sydney Rigdon, has been the great hobby and stumbling-block of the Latter Day Saints....Authority is the word we used for the first two years in the church—until Sydney Rigdon's days in Ohio. This matter of the two orders of priesthood in the Church of Christ, and lineal priesthood of the old law being in the church, all originated in the mind of Sydney Rigdon." (An Address To All Believers in Christ, Richmond, Missouri, 1887, page 64)

The question might well be asked, "If what David Whitmer says is true, how can Section 27 and other sections of the Doctrine and Covenants be accounted for?" Actually, these revelations have been changed from the way they originally read when they were first printed. David Whitmer charged; 

"You have changed the revelations from the way they were first given...to support the error of high priests. You have changed the revelations to support the error of a President of the high priesthood, high counselors, etc." (Ibid., p. 49)

      (This is an especially interesting topic since a current issue that the Church is dealing with is a group of people who say there is no scriptural reason why women can't have the priesthood and the responsibilities that come with it.)

     I found the reprint of David Whitmer's book on Amazon and so I bought a copy.  I read the whole thing and yes, the Tanners quoted that portion correctly.  What was so interesting about David Whitmer's Address was that if I had still been a Mormon when I came across this book, if I still believed Joseph Smith was a prophet and that he did translate the Book of Mormon by the power of God, then this Address would have kept me a believer for a while longer, because many of the things I disagreed with about the Church that made me want to leave it were found in the Doctrine & Covenants, which had been changed by the leaders.  It would have made me realize that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the Utah chapter of the original Church of Christ—is false.  And since the original Church of Christ as Joseph Smith first organized it in the Midwest no longer exists, then God's true Church is no longer on the Earth.  It was an excellent book which painted a very good picture of the early days of the Church in the Midwest; it really takes you back in time, and I thought that was pretty cool.  And I appreciated that David Whitmer based his arguments on scripture; like the Tanners, he also cited his sources.

     The accusation by David Whitmer that the leaders of the Church changed the revelations really struck me, because that is exactly what 1984 was largely about!  And the next sentence in the Tanners' article is what made me want to delve further into this topic: "In Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? Pp. 19, 22-25, we show through photographs of the first printing of Joseph Smith's revelations that Whitmer was right when he charged that serious changes were made concerning priesthood, and on pages 177-182 we demonstrate that the Mormon idea of "priesthood" is unscriptural."  These two articles of the Tanners were very well-done and they have a scholarly quality to them, and throughout these articles about the Priesthood they reference a few of their previous works which dig deeper into many topics.  And so I bought some of their books to read further.

     The first one that arrived at my house was called Evolution of the Mormon Temple Ceremony: 1842-1990.  At the bottom of the cover it says "Includes the complete text of the 1990 endowment ceremony and a study of all the recent changes," which it does.  But they discuss so much more!

***Heads-up: the things I'm going to write about in the next three paragraphs are things that were in the LDS temple endowment ceremony but they've been removed and are no longer part of the ceremony.  If you don't want to read any of it, even though they're not sacred anymore since they've been removed, then just skip to the 4th paragraph down that starts "If you're looking for information..."***

     1990 was the year that many key parts of the Endowment ceremony were removed and changed.  All of these changes were unknown to me until I left the Church.  When I joined the ex-Mormon Facebook group that first year I left the Church, that's where I learned about the penalties.  When you are shown how to do the tokens of the priesthood with their accompanying name and sign, there used to be penalties attached to them as well.  You used to do a motion with your hand that indicated a way in which your life would be taken if you revealed the tokens, names, signs, and penalties outside the temple.  One of the oaths you took was, "we agree that our throats be cut from ear to ear and and our tongues torn out by their roots"; the next one was, "we agree to have our breasts cut open and our hearts and vitals torn from our bodies and given to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field"; and the third one was, "we agree that our bodies be cut asunder in the midst and all our bowels gush out."  The Tanners aren't sure when exactly, but sometime in the early half of the 1900s the gory wording was removed, but the hand motions along with the replacement words, "Rather than do so [reveal the token, name, sign and penalty], I would suffer my life to be taken," remained until 1990.

     I found out about the penalties from the Facebook group a few years ago.  But there were a few other things that the Church removed or changed in 1990 which I just learned about: the women used to have to swear obedience to their husband, not to the Lord; Satan used to hire a non-Mormon preacher to spread false doctrine; instead of God and Jesus and the apostles addressing and referring to Adam and Eve and their posterity, they used to refer to Adam only and his posterity; there used to be something called Five Points of Fellowship at the veil and it were removed entirely, as was the lengthy lecture at the veil; and the words "Oh God, hear the words of my mouth" used to be "Pay Lay Ale".  Many things in the Endowment ceremony were taken from the Masons, of whom Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were members, and the Tanners compare the similarities between the two ceremonies in this book.

     The Tanners also show evidence that there were other changes made to the Endowment ceremony prior to the big 1990 alterations; these I also just learned about.  The patrons used to have to strip down nude for the washing and anointing portion of the ceremony, and the workers rubbed oil over the patron's whole body, including women's breasts; thank goodness they had sense back then to separate the men and women for that part!  Women were initially banned from the ceremony.  Men used to be sealed to other men; it was essentially a pyramid scheme.  The Oath of Vengeance (inserted into the ceremony after Joseph Smith's death) was also removed; this is where those who went through the temple took an oath to avenge the blood of Joseph Smith on this Nation (the USA), and that they would teach their children and their children's children to do the same.  The Tanners aren't sure exactly when the Oath of Vengeance was removed, but they show evidence that it was gone by 1927.  The Tanners also show evidence that the temple garment was originally much longer: the neckline used to go all the way up to the neck, the sleeves went down to the wrists, and the pant legs went down to the ankles, and there was a strict charge not to alter the garment in any way since those specifications were given by God.  The Church says the same thing about the current garments, although clearly those measurements have shortened over the years to accommodate the fashions of the time.  There was even talk at one point a few decades ago about getting rid of the garment all together, but that hasn't happened yet.

     If you're looking for information about the history of the temple ceremony or the exact wording of the ceremony itself, you really need to look no further than this book.  The Tanners give multiple examples and much evidence for every topic they cover, along with their sources.  I've said it before: they are very thorough and their work is truly scholarly.  And when they come to a conclusion or they're putting forth their best guess about something, like with the woman's role in the Eternities, they say they're guessing—they make it clear they're presenting their opinions and suppositions rather than facts.

     In their articles about black men and the priesthood, they quoted a few times from their book called Mormonism—Shadow or Reality, and so I bought that as well (the reformatted 2008 version).  Man, that thing is huge!  The pages are 8.8" x 11", with 11 or 12 size font, and the whole book is 1.5" thick!  It's exciting, though, because from their previous works I know they're going to present a mountain of evidence.  They cover many topics: changes in the revelations, changes in Joseph Smith's History of the Church, the Book of Mormon, complete lack of archeological evidence that the BoM was about real events, Joseph Smith's money-digging, false prophesies, the book of Abraham, polygamy, and the Danites, just to name a few.  In fact, many of the chapters in this book are topics that were covered in the Gospel Topics essays.

     I've been reading this book for about a week-and-a-half and I'm about 1/4 of the way through it; it's fascinating and extremely eye-opening.  The amount of 1984-style rewriting of the early documents of the Church is astounding!  The Church leaders changed words; they removed words, sentences, sometimes whole pages with no indication that they did so; they added things to support practices the early leaders were already doing; they keep many early members' journals that contradict anything written in the canonized history literally under lock and key in the Church historian's office, to where even family members of those who wrote the journals can't have access to them.  I had my own reasons for leaving the Church, but I had no idea how dishonest the Church has been in the past and currently is!  And again, the Tanners provide ample evidence to support their claims.  Many things they outright prove were false, and for a few things that can't be proven for certain—such as did Joseph Smith really see words translated through the seer stone when he put it into his hat and covered his face with it?, and did the Three and Eight Witnesses really see what they said they saw?—the large amounts of evidence they give is enough to cast reasonable doubt that it really happened.

     I am so grateful for the time and effort the Tanners have put into uncovering the truth.  The amount of evidence they provide is incredible, and in many, many cases this information was extremely hard to find and I probably would never have found it for myself.  Books like this are priceless.  Well, I paid about $50 total for the three books I mentioned here, hehe, but the information in them is priceless for someone like me who is a seeker of truth.  For someone who is still a believing member of the Church, the things in these books will be hard to accept and it will take a lot of thought and contemplation and soul-searching to accept the truth.  But for those who are pondering their doubts or who have left the Church, or who never were members, it'll be easier to read through the books and accept the evidence in them.  These books are an excellent place to find that truth, and I'm so glad I found it.  I can't wait to keep reading!

A Response to "The Alarming Truth Behind Anti-Mormonism"

     Early last week I saw an article on Facebook that one of my relatives linked.  It's called "The Alarming Truth About Anti-Mormonism" and he said that this article contains some profound truths and he encouraged everyone, Mormon or not, to read it.  I was curious and so I read it, and in it I recognized why people in our country have a fear and distrust of atheists: it's because of many things that this author talks about which, rather than being profound truths, are actually fundamental errors.

     Here's the article:  http://federalistpress.com/the-alarming-truth-behind-anti-mormonism.php

     Last night one of my brothers linked the same article to me from the website above and asked me what I thought of it.  I told him I would write to him my thoughts on it.  I told him it would be pretty long unless he'd like the Reader's Digest version, and he said that an in-depth response is better so he can know more about my personal views as an atheist.  So that's what I gave him, and I've copied and pasted my response here with a few changes like removing my husband's name, adding this introduction and conclusion to this blog post, correcting spelling and grammatical errors, and adding sentences and a topic that I forgot to mention in my response to my brother.

     I should preface my response by saying that there are belligerent idiots in all groups of people: theists, atheists, Mormons, anti-Mormons, professors, church leaders, even scientists.  There are people who keep their opinions to themselves or who voice them honestly but civilly, and there are people who can't seem to help but bash others over the head with their beliefs.  I'm sure everyone has heard some atheist say things like, "Of course there's no way God can possibly exist, what's wrong with you morons?!  Wake up, Sheeple!!"  When I'm referring to atheists in general, I'm referring to reasonable people within that group who are motivated by knowledge and who remain civil, not the belligerent jerks you see on the internet.

     Alright, here is my response to my brother (and now the public) about this article.

* * * * * * * * 

     First I want to point out that his title feels like a bait-and-switch tactic. He starts off talking about anti-Mormonism, but then very early on in the article he finds a weak way of turning anti-Mormonism into atheism and then he spends the rest of the article talking about atheism. Atheism has no goals, no platform, no overall purpose, nothing like that---atheism is simply an individual's personal disbelief in god(s), or the lack of belief in god(s); slightly different outlook but basically the same thing. Anti-Mormonism, on the other hand, is very different from atheism: anti-Mormonism is an active feeling against or attack on the LDS church; it's people's inner hostility toward or outwardly bashing of the LDS church's history, its doctrine, its practices, or any combination of those things. The author should have re-titled his article "The Alarming Truth Behind Atheism" because that's the focus of his article.  Again, I think it was done on purpose as a bait-and-switch tactic.

     (I should also point out that no atheist can honestly say "I know for certain that there is no God" because there is no definitive proof anywhere that that's the case, at least not yet. The most anyone can say in that direction for now is "I think there is an extremely high probability, based on what we know of ourselves and our world and the universe, that there is no God.")

     Now I'll talk about each of his 5 points.

Point #1

     He lumps together people who leave the Church into one group and one mindset when he shouldn't. Some members were born into the Church and thus have grown up with an LDS set of beliefs, and others joined later in life and so they have a couple of different views. Some members don't take the Church too seriously—they can take it or leave it and it doesn't matter much to them either way.  If they feel that they have a personal relationship with God or that God created the universe, then they are more likely to remain theists and they are more likely to seek God in another religion. Others take the Church very seriously—they fully believe it and they base their lives around it.

     Members of the LDS Church are taught over and over again that all religions have some light and truth, but the Church has all the light and the truth. My theory is that those who take the Church more seriously as well as those who were born into the Church are more willing to believe that statement and are even willing to look into the faults of other religions as proof that they're not God's true church. If the author's claim is true—that most ex-Mormons become atheists—then it's likely because those people fully acknowledged while they were Mormons that no other religion was God's true religion. And so when they leave the Church, even if they were willing at first to look into other religions, they go into it already acknowledging the faults of that religion; they come into it with an LDS bias.

     It's also important to realize that people leave the Church for many different reasons. The examples the author gives are about one of those reasons: Joseph Smith's character and actions. Many people who leave the Church do have issues with Joseph Smith and what he did. But many people who leave the Church have no beef with Joseph Smith; some have issues with what modern prophets have said or done, they have issues with Mormon culture, the business side of the Church, doctrinal inconsistencies, clashes with science, etc. The example the author gives is extreme: "You see, at first they decide that Joseph Smith couldn’t have possibly been called by Christ. Then they find that they can no longer believe that Christ is really the Son of God." That's a HUGE leap from one idea to the other. People's reasons for leaving the Church and their feelings of a personal relationship with God will determine how much they seek out other religions and if they remain theists, and for many people the path from Mormonism to atheism has many steps to it. To say that the only alternative to Mormonism is atheism simply isn't true for everyone, and even if it were true for all those who leave, it doesn't happen overnight like he suggests that it does.

     I did become an atheist, but it took a little over 3 years after leaving the Church. When I decided that the Church wasn't true, I spent about the first year just dealing with anger that I was feeling about certain things. I was one of those people who took the Church seriously and who fully believed it was true, and I felt betrayed and lied to and deceived, and that takes a while to get over. Then I looked at other religions to see what they had to say. What things did they have in common with the LDS church; what were these "partial light and truths" that I'd heard about in the Mormon church? So I looked into them, and I soon decided that none of them were God's true religion either.

     Through all of this, though, I still believed that God existed.  I'm trying to remember when and why I came to decide that God probably doesn't exist, but I can't remember at the moment. But it wasn't until I had been out of the Church for at least a year, maybe a year-and-a-half. And actually for most of that time I considered myself an agnostic: that there isn't enough evidence for or against God's existence, that we can't know for sure either way and so it's an unknowable answer. It wasn't until a few months ago that I read a book which showed me a different outlook on agnosticism vs. atheism that made me realize I'm actually an atheist, and I'm okay with that label since it's more accurate to my beliefs. So for me, my path to atheism was definitely not a two-step process, and that's true for many people who leave the Church as well.

     Two more things about Point #1. Toward the end he said, "So, for LDS members (particularly RMs and life-long members), Christianity itself hinges upon the question, 'Was Joseph Smith really a prophet?'" (italics are his), and he's just flat-out wrong about that. He tried to use his previous reasoning to come up with that statement, but it's completely wrong. For LDS members, MORMONISM itself hinges upon the question "Was Joseph Smith really a prophet?" Christianity hinges upon the question "Was Jesus of Nazareth really the Son of God, the Christ who saved us from our sins and made Heaven attainable?" His reasoning was flawed and his concluding statement is wrong.

     And the last thing I want to mention about Point #1 is in his last paragraph when he says "Once you’ve tasted the sweetest and most perfect form of Christianity, where else will you go when you leave?" In the most recent General Conference, M. Russell Ballard gave a talk about that, called "To Whom Shall We Go?" (linked here: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2016/10/to-whom-shall-we-go?lang=eng) and it makes me mad because it's a scare tactic.

     People are naturally scared of the unknown; we feel more comfortable in familiar situations even if we're not completely happy there. That's one of the reasons why abused people stay in an abusive relationship: they believe and sometimes are even told "Where else will you go?" That's especially true for the person who is financially dependent on their abuser. And so when I hear that coming from a Church member like this author and from a general authority, I recognize it for what it is: a scare tactic used to prey on people's fear of the unknown and make them stay in the Church. It leads the hearer to think, "I may have doubts about the Church, and I may not agree with this, this, or this about the Church, but at least it's better than the unknown," or in this author's case, "but at least it's better than atheism."

     I see statements like "Where else will you go?" as a scare tactic, and I don't like it one bit, especially since the option isn't black and white. There are other religions; there is your personal relationship with God that can extend beyond a specific religion; and there are comforts that can be found in science if you listen to people who know what they're talking about (Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, and even Charles Darwin are excellent examples).

     Oh, and he's wrong about Mormonism being the most perfect form of Christianity.  Perfect Christianity would be a strict adherence to the Bible, and there is some pretty objectionable stuff in there!  Mormonism, like all modern Christian denominations, teaches the "good parts" version of the Bible.

Point #2

     He is right when he says this:

There are many critics who love highlighting the Latter-day Saints who choose to leave the Church. They say that the rest of us are in denial, that we belong to some kind of crazy and fraudulent cult and have our heads too deep in the sand to see how many people are drawing that very conclusion. They want us to look at our friends and family members who are leaving the Church and feel alerted to the idea that there is something wrong with the Mormon Church.

     However, this section is where he switches from talking about anti-Mormonism to atheism, but he shouldn't for this argument. Not all anti-Mormons are atheists, and not all atheists are anti-Mormons. The critics he describes here fall into the anti-Mormon camp; neither their religious affiliation nor their theistic views are relevant—the actions and goals he describe are anti-Mormon in nature.

     He's probably right when he says that Christians across all denominations in the USA are leaving the religion they were brought up in and that faith is declining.  And as a former Mormon and now atheist, I don't see that as the "problem" he claims it is.  Church leaders across denominations are freaking out about young people leaving their congregations, but I see nothing wrong with letting go of faith in favor of evidence.  There's nothing wrong with the question "What's your evidence for that?"

     (By the way, the scripture Hebrews 11:1 says "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," and it's brought up in church all the time.  If you have somewhat of a mental roadblock when reading that, it's because you recognize that the definition of faith here is wrong.  Faith is a belief in something when there is no evidence to support that belief.  I should add that faith is also a continued belief in something even in the face of evidence to the contrary.)

     Before modern science it was easier to live on faith because there was no evidence or explanations to contradict the scriptures or the clergy.  But now that science has figured out so much about ourselves and our world, religious explanations for things hold less water and we're left realizing that their evidence is too weak to validate their claims.  The dependence on faith is being replaced by a desire for evidence, and that's a strength in a person, not a weakness.

     In this section he also says "So, to be clear, it’s not that we have discovered new information about Joseph Smith that has suddenly changed a lot of people’s minds about the Restoration. The criticisms you hear today are the same criticisms that have been peddled for decades and longer." In this he is correct but only to a point.

     It's true that people have been leaving the Church for decades and longer and they've been criticizing it for just as long. However, for decades and longer any information against the Church has been labeled as "anti-Mormon propaganda" and "hate group propaganda" and Church members have been told by the leaders that they are not to read those books or websites.  It's even a requirement for a temple recommend that you're asked about in the interview: "Do you support, affiliate with, or agree with any group or individual whose teachings or practices are contrary to or oppose those accepted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?"  ( http://www.lds-mormon.com/new_temple_questions.shtml )  And that kind of information used to be harder to find anyway—you really had to make an effort to find it. Information is a lot easier to find now that we have the internet, and it's easier to seek information about topics or questions or doubts you may have. And with social media, often you don't even have to go searching—it appears right in your news feed (that's how I come across current LDS topics nowadays).  That's probably why it's largely Millennials who are leaving their religions: they're the generation who grew up with the internet and they're the ones who are most used to surfing the web for anything that piques their interest.  They're also probably the age range that's the most active on social media right now.  Information about Joseph Smith in particular and what he did and said is new information to most members today. And that does change a lot of people's mind when they've heard one version in church, sometimes for their whole life, and then they come across another version or more information from other sources. . . and more recently from the Church itself.

     From 2013-2015, the Church released a series of essays on its website regarding various Church topics. There are 11 essays total and they are all approved by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.  Here's the link to the main page: https://www.lds.org/topics/essays?lang=eng  and the individual essays are linked on the right side of that page.  Most of the topics are familiar to everyone in the Church, but there is information in many of them that was previously only available in anti-Mormon books and websites, things that the Church always said was "propaganda" and shouldn't be read or taken seriously by faithful members, and that of course never made it into the Church curriculum. Many of the topics cover issues that contribute to most ex-Mormons leaving the Church: race and the priesthood, polygamy, multiple First Vision accounts, etc.

     While I can appreciate the greater transparency and honesty of the Church regarding these topics, I do not like that the Church leaders make no apology for keeping this information from their members until now.  Members, if they're told about the essays at all, are supposed to accept the information they read there and they're expected to deal with issues on their own that arise because of that information which, while not new in itself, is new to them. The Church leaders have done a very poor job of training bishops and teachers on how to address these essays when they come up in church, and most members probably still don't know these essays exist. But this is the Church's way of coming clean about undeniable facts that too many members are finding out about on the internet.

     My last point about this section is concerning his last two paragraphs:

So, why might the Adversary lay the foundation for plunging Western society into Atheism? The reason goes deeper than you may have ever expected.

Now that we understand the central role that Atheism is playing in the crises of faith for both Mormons and other Christians, it’s time to understand the profound implications.

      First of all, Atheism does not play a role in the crises of faith—atheism is often the end result of a crisis of faith, but it's never a cause. And second, he just equated Atheism to The Adversary. This is the only time in the whole article that he mentions Satan specifically, and he went right back to talking about atheism after that.  He is saying that Atheism is Satan. Church doctrine says that Satan plays an active role in your crisis of faith, but instead of saying that, he says Atheism plays that role.  He does the same thing later on in Point #4 as well.  Satan—Lucifer, The Devil, The Adversary, whatever you'd prefer to call him—is a supernatural being who is pure evil and is hellbent (pun intended) on the destruction of the soul of everyone who's ever lived on the face of the Earth. Atheism, again, is an individual's personal belief that God does not exist. They are not even close to being the same thing, and he's wrong to use them interchangeably.

Point #3

     I am very glad to see him say, "To be clear, people who become Atheists don’t suddenly become moral monsters. Their moral views shift, but they probably have more in common with the moral beliefs of their religious friends than they have in contrast." That is true, and it touches on a huge fear that non-atheists have about atheists. But I start to take issue with this paragraph:

. . . most Atheists have had a religious upbringing and live in an environment that has been deeply influenced by Christianity. It is one thing to reject revealed religion, and another to abandon mindsets, attitudes, and values which you don’t even realize have been socialized into you since birth. Thus, many Atheists don’t realize that while they have rejected God, everything about the way they see the world is still deeply influenced by religion.

     I would not say that atheists abandon mindsets, attitudes and values, at least not at first. We reevaluate them, and we keep the ones that we find are universal and good for the welfare of ourselves, our family, our community, and ultimately our species. We abandon religion-exclusive values and continue to hold fast to universal ones. I can't speak for all atheists, but I can definitely speak for some when I say that I absolutely realize that everything about the way we see the world is deeply influenced by the religion we grew up in and the most popular religion in our country. In fact, those Mormons who leave the Church are more likely to realize that their worldview has been based on LDS doctrine because they're now looking at the Church and the world from outside the Church, not strictly from the inside. And atheists are more likely to realize just how much of our country's national and local laws and policies are influenced by and favor Christian lobbyists and churches, even though our Constitution is strictly secular.

     Here he starts to use the term "post-modern atheism" but he doesn't define what it is. I found a definition that seems right: "Modern atheism began about 150 years ago, when all the factors came together to make a lack of belief in a deity seem intellectually sustainable." (that was when Darwin's "The Origin of Species" was published in 1859).

     I would say that he is correct when he says that most people who identify as atheists, especially those who used to be religious, don't want to believe something that cannot be studied or confirmed by scientific inquiry. He goes on to talk about what philosophers have to say about humanity and the direction that atheistic beliefs will take society. I don't know about philosophers' views; I haven't looked at things from their point of view much. Instead I've been looking into what scientists have to say about things like that, particularly atheist scientists.

     (Just to be clear, philosophy and science have different purposes and outlooks on life, and it would be an insult to both fields to lump them into the same category.)  ;)

     Where I start to disagree with the author and his philosophers' views is the direction that society will go if religion and theism were to die off. I've been listening to videos and debates with a prominent evolutionary biologist and atheist named Richard Dawkins, and I've recently finished reading his book The God Delusion (that's where I realized that I'm an atheist and not an agnostic). He calls himself a Darwinian, meaning that he believes that what we know about our world and ourselves can be explained by Darwin's discovery of evolution. In his book he devoted an entire chapter to the question of morality: it's called "The Roots of Morality: Why Are We Good?" and he has very good arguments for the roots of morality being not in religion but in our evolution as a species. In arguing that morality comes from our evolution and from an instinct for the survival of our species, he has a positive outlook for our species and he argues that we might actually be better off without religion (and of course he backs up his arguments with scientific data and reasoning).

     I agree that the push for same-sex marriage is probably about respect. Not being homosexual myself and not being part of that same-sex marriage movement at all, I can't really say for sure, but it sounds plausible.

     Here is where I have another huge problem about his labels:

The consequence [of rejecting moral codes] is that society begins to gravitate around radical equality. That is, people will fight and fight until society cannot and will not recognize that any choice is better than another, that any lifestyle, belief, or action has more moral merit than another. (Of course, equality is an important social value, but Christian equality looks very different from Atheistic equality for reasons listed here.) Post-modern Atheist philosophers, following the logic of Atheism, say that all differences, such as gender and family hierarchy must be eliminated in the process. They claim that once the forces of radical equality are unleashed upon the old system of traditional morality and institutions, our world will be transformed into something that even they cannot fully conceive.

     I followed the "listed here" link ( http://happiness-seekers.com/the-difference-between-christian-and-atheistic-equality/ ), and here's what it says. I'm copying and pasting the whole thing because this Alarming Truth article was originally on this website but it's no longer viewable, so I'm spelling it out here in case this page becomes inaccessible, too:

To understand the difference between Christian and Atheistic equality, we must understand the difference between what I call “Christian progressivism” and “Atheist progressivism.”

Christian progressivism is the struggle to bring society in line with truth that God has revealed. The long history of Christian abolitionists who opposed slavery on the grounds that it is an affront to the laws of God is an example of Christian progressivism. Christian progressivism has been at the forefront of this type of social progress since Christianity’s inception (which means since the days of Judaism).

But when Christians fight for equality, human dignity, and love, it is to ensure that all Humans are empowered to fulfill the purposes that God has ordained (in scripture) for Human existence. So, the guiding force for Christian progressivism is the desire to serve, obey, and learn of God’s will for His children.

This means that Christian Progressivism pursues values such as equality within the framework of truth that God has revealed in scripture: the purpose of Human existence, gender roles, prohibitions on certain sexual behavior, etc. So, while treating Blacks as equal citizens helps society to better live up to Christian teachings about love and equality, instituting same-sex marriage or legalizing abortion may be contrary to the safeguards established by Christianity (God).

Atheistic progressivism is deceptively similar to Christian progressivism because it professes to retain Christian values such as equality, love, and human dignity.

But it rejects the idea that our pursuit of those values should be guided by either God or beliefs about human purpose, the immortality of the soul, or other transcendent truths (because, like God, none of these concepts can be scientifically studied or confirmed).

This has key consequences: While Christian Progressivism moves toward equality within the structured context of God’s revealed will, Atheistic Progressivism is free to reimagine equality outside of any meaningful restraint.

This is why the Atheist pursuit of equality leads to radical equality that seeks to eliminate differences in general."

     First of all, his claim that slavery was against God's laws is inaccurate. The Old and New Testaments never condemn slavery.  In fact, God gives specific instructions through Moses on how the Israelites were to treat their slaves (Exodus 21:20-21 and 26-27, Leviticus 25:44-46, to name a few), and the New Testament isn't any better on slavery (Ephesians 6:5, 1 Timothy 6:1-2, Titus 2:9-10, to name a few).  Modern humanistic values, not adherence to the Bible, led to outlawing slavery.  So for him to say "Christian progressivism has been at the forefront of this type of social progress since Christianity’s inception (which means since the days of Judaism)," this shows he hasn't read the New Testament very thoroughly.  Again, I suspect he's only going off of Mormonism's "good parts" version that members are taught in church.

     Second, every non-Christian resents the idea that equality, love, and human dignity are solely Christian values, that somehow Christianity is the only one who has a claim on those virtues and that an atheist can't possibly feel those things of themselves.  Here, I believe, is where people get the idea that atheists are immoral.  The reasoning goes like this: if God is the source of morality, as theists claim, then it must be that someone who rejects the idea of God and becomes an a-theist also rejects the morals that originate in Him and therefore they become a-moral as well.  This is where theists are wrong and the important argument for the origin of morality comes into play.  Theists argue that morals and ethics come from God and so to reject God is to reject morality; atheists say no, morals and ethics come from us as a species and from our societies to help society function, and the morals we have are simply not dependent on belief in a supernatural being.

     Third, I have an issue with the last two sentences of his explanation. Scientists, especially evolutionary scientists, absolutely recognize the need for distinction between the males and females of our species. Atheists are more likely than theists to embrace science, especially evolutionary science, and so atheists as a whole absolutely see the need for differences between the sexes. Those last two sentences and his claims about radical equality are not a description of atheism, but of FEMINISM.

     If you want to know what's been going on with modern feminism, and especially if you have a son, then you should read the book by Christina Hoff Sommers called The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men.  Modern feminists in the United States are the ones who say there is a "Patriarchy" in our country that must be dismantled; that women can do anything a man can do; that women should pursue careers and that having children is beneath them—that women who want to be a wife and a mother have internalized misogyny. Feminists are the ones who demand that schools not only provide equal opportunity for girls to play sports but that there must be equal participation as well, and that men in society have squashed girls' desire to play sports just like the boys do. They say that women should be as free with their sexual promiscuity as men are and that those women should be just as respected as men despite their number of sexual partners. Feminists are the ones who deny our basic physical differences, the different ways that men and women think, the ways we reason, and the ways we react to things. They are the ones who want to erase the gender differences by claiming that all gender differences are completely social constructs, that gender is all "nurture" and no "nature".  Biologists embrace our differences while feminists want to erase them.

     Theism and atheism play a role in that debate, sort-of.  Both views say that there are and should be differences between the sexes.  Theism says there are differences because God made us that way, and the differences should stay there because God says so.  Atheists in general lean more toward evolutionary biologists who say that there are differences but it's because we have males and females in our species and our species cannot exist any other way; we've survived this long because of our innate biological differences. Individual cultures determine to some extent what the gender roles of men and women will be in their society, and those role expectations are often reflected in their religion. But I say that atheists are more willing than theists to recognize that our gender differences and our sense of morality are natural in origin (from evolutionary growth), not supernatural (dictated from God).

Point #4

     This deals largely with LDS doctrine, and as someone who grew up in the Church I'm very familiar with these passages of scripture.  Reading them now, to me they sound a lot like philosophy, something you have to take time and energy to wrap your head around. I do have a comment about it, though: the part where it says "[But] man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by one or the other." (He's quoting 2 Nephi Ch. 2.)

     Atheists believe there is no God, and so they do not believe that there is both God and Satan constantly enticing you to do one thing or another. We realize that our thoughts are our own, that our good thoughts come from within ourselves and that our bad thoughts come from within ourselves as well. In that sense I feel freedom, that my mind and my free will aren't being fought over by two supernatural beings, and that in fact I can act for myself. It puts me in charge of my own actions and actually makes me feel more accountable for my actions. It's easy enough to say "the Devil made me do it" or "that good thought and act came from God, he's just working through me." As an atheist, I understand that I'm responsible for my own thoughts since they all come from my brain, not from one of two supernatural forces outside of myself.  If I make a mistake or do something wrong that hurts someone or breaks something, I seek to make amends not because I have God who will judge every unrepentant thing I do, but because that will make things right with that person who I will have to live with or see again, and it's the right thing to do. The author doesn't seem to think that atheists have a sense of morals, of good and evil, right and wrong; but he's wrong.  heh.  ;)  Atheists have a sense of right and wrong, but it comes from within ourselves and our societal norms and values, not from God and Satan.

     Next he makes an outrageous claim, and this is the other place where he uses the word atheist when he should be using the word Satan, according to LDS doctrine: "The goal of Atheism, however, is to destroy the moral distinction between choices. Or, in other words, the goal of Atheism is to destroy the agency of man." I don't know the name of this logical fallacy, but it's where "if B is true of A, and C is true of B, and D is true of C, then A must be true of D."  In this case, Atheism is A and destroy the agency of man is D.  While his chain of reasoning via those scripture passages might make sense to him, the end result is wrong and he's been using this fallacy throughout his article.   Atheism isn't an organization with goals, it's a lack of belief in God. If you flip his statement around, you can see how incorrect it is: "Theism's goal is to uphold the agency of man." No it isn't. Theism is belief in a personal God and a creator of the universe; theism in itself has no goals. Individuals, religions and churches have goals, and Mormonism spells it out with its Threefold Mission of the Church: https://history.lds.org/event/three-fold-mission-of-church?lang=eng .  But theism and atheism as a whole are the belief and disbelief in God, respectively. So he's got a logical fallacy going on here and it's poking holes through his arguments.  And he seems to be twisting the meaning of those verses to take Satan out of the picture, which is a big no-no for Mormonism: Satan absolutely belongs in the picture!

     I also found it interesting that right here at the end of this section is the only time since Point #1 that he refers again to anti-Mormonism in addition to atheism, and again he interchanges the two when they should remain distinct.

Point #5 (finally!)

     I don't have much to say about most of this section because it's his personal imaginings. The only comment I have is where he says,

I have personally experienced overwhelming doubt. In my darkest moments, when I felt like I was losing touch with reality—no longer knowing what was real and what was true—the only thing that enabled me to hold on a little longer, was what I just finished sharing in this article.

     So what he's saying is that the only thing enabling him to hold on a little longer. . . was his fear of atheism. It was his confusing modern feminism and anti-Mormonism for atheism; it was his equating atheism with Satan himself; it was his belief in philosophers who say that a society without religion will break down and basically fall into anarchy and we as people will devolve into primal savages.

     I can understand the feelings of panic, of despair, and of feeling like nothing matters. For the first two years or so I had many of those same thoughts and feelings myself. But those feelings eventually pass for most of us who have left the Church.  What has given me hope and purpose more recently has been studying science, specifically evolutionary science. It's been exciting to learn how we evolved (we didn't evolve from apes—both humans and apes evolved differently from a common ancestor).  While things like consciousness are still beyond the scope of scientific explanations, I take that as something to look forward to: someday we will know what causes consciousness.

     The main question that haunted me since leaving the Church was "What is my purpose?" I feel comfortable saying that all atheists ponder this question at some point. The Church claims to have the answers, and faithful Mormons feel comfort knowing that their Happily Ever After awaits them ( https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/04/your-happily-ever-after?lang=eng&_r=1 ). Those who have left religion, especially more recently, might be going through serious depression while trying to figure out what their purpose in life is, since they no longer believe that earthly life is a place to prove themselves for rewards in an afterlife.  The way I look at it is that science has done a pretty good job of explaining where we came from and how we got to where we are today as a species. And my purpose in life: it's what I make of it.

     My current purpose has a limited scope but it's something I feel very strongly about: helping my little family be more self-sufficient. We live on a very large and dangerous earthquake fault line, and my husband shared this article with me last year about the state of our country's power grid:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lights-inevitable-failure-us-grid-230000502.html?nhp=1 
And it asks a good question: what will you do when the lights go out? I don't agree with the author's opinion that getting food storage is a waste of time, but the article did make me realize how dependent we are on a daily basis on electricity.  We've already had a few power outages at our house in the past year-and-a-half because of wind storms and so I know what it's like to be without electricity for over a day. So I want to help us be alright when, not if, we lose power for a long period of time. I also want to teach my children as much as I can about the natural world around them—I want their eyes to be open to the wonders of our planet and our solar system, the magnificence of the human mind and body, the amazing things that science has discovered and continues to try to discover, and the morals and ethics that are universal and that are for the well-being of society and our species. Those things give me purpose, even if only a temporary purpose for the short time that I exist.  And as times goes on I will find other things that help me feel fulfilled and that make me feel like I've contributed in a positive way to my fellowman.

     So I feel for this guy in his grasping for any concept that will help him feel better; I just think it's a shame that he based his reasoning on faulty comparisons, logical fallacies, and black-and-white options.

* * * * * * * *

     Well, there you go.  As a lifelong Mormon until three-and-a-half years ago, and as a recently-realized atheist, these are my opinions on this author's article.  Atheism is not the threat that he and most clergy and atheism-philosophers think it is.  Our society here in America does have some serious problems, but the rise of atheism isn't one of them (the real causes are another topic for another time).  Trading faith for a desire for evidence is never a bad thing and it's certainly never a weakness.  There are moral and immoral people in every religious and nonreligious group, and atheists as a whole are not immoral nor do they seek the destruction of morality and ethics in our society—they simply do not believe that morality and ethics come from God.  Furthermore, they do not believe that religious holy books are a pure source of morality; in fact, we look at holy books as evidence of how far many of our societies have come in our ethical treatment of one another (outlawing slavery and no longer viewing women as second-class citizens and as property) and especially how far we've come in our understanding of the natural world.

     And last but certainly not least, I'm grateful to my brother who questioned the validity of this article enough or at least valued my opinion enough to ask me about my views on it.  :)

Rejection of Evidence

     A few weeks ago I finished a book by Richard Dawkins called The God Delusion.  It's a fantastic book which covers scientific explanations for religion's existence and it also argues that religion isn't necessary for morality and that religion is actually more harmful than good, especially for children.  I highly recommend it!

     Also a few weeks ago my husband and I watched the 2015 film with Will Smith called "Concussion".  In it, Will Smith plays the real-life neurologist Dr. Bennet Omalu who in 2002 discovered that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the neurodegenerative disease that affects boxers which is brought on by concussions, also affects NFL players.  That movie inspired me to research concussions in the NFL, and I found three documentaries, all done recently: "The United States of Football" (2013), "League of Denial: the NFL's Concussion Crisis" (2013) and "Head Games: The Global Concussion Crisis" (2014) (which covered football, rugby, soccer, and ice hockey).  These documentaries show that concussions are a very serious problem and hardly anyone wants to address it or believe it.  Over the past two days or so I've also been watching some videos online featuring Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, all of whom are not only atheists but they go a step further and are actually anti-theism advocates.  After finishing The God Delusion I've almost constantly been mulling over the question of "what harm does religion do on a personal level?"  Not just the obvious problems that come with Islam, but also with other more benign religions like modern Christianity.  Is there harm on an individual level in being a moderate in whatever religion you belong to?  And I think the football concussion example is actually a very good example with which I can answer this question about religion.

     From a scientific point of view, one of the harms of believing in religion, even moderately, is that religion trains you to disregard any information, any evidence, any ideas that contradict your religion.  It teaches you to look at evidence and reason and logic right in front of you and reject them if they don't fit within your religion's current world view, and this is absolutely true for the LDS Church.  As I was watching these football documentaries, the leaders at the NFL and even the biased scientists who did studies on concussions but who were on the NFL payroll, looked at the evidence of concussions causing CTE and neurodegenerative diseases in ex-NFL players, and they flat-out rejected it.  They saw the evidence physically right in front of them and they completely disregarded it without for one second considering its validity.  And in watching those video clips, I was strongly reminded of many religious people who do the same thing: they see evidence right in front of them that their religion is untrue or harmful and they reject that evidence because they don't want to believe it.

     After watching these concussion documentaries my impulse was to tell my friends on Facebook about it, to say "Hey you guys, you won't believe what I just found out!" because, like Bennet Omalu, I thought people would want to know about it.  But as I thought more about the reactions Omalu received—disbelief, rejection, and even hostility—as well as remembering people's reactions to what Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins say about religion, I realized that average people don't want to hear it because they don't want to believe it's true.  Too many people who love football don't want to be shown evidence that the sport they love actually causes brain damage and horrible life-threatening outcomes for the players years after they retire.  They just don't want to know about it.  And it's the same with too many religious people: they're happy with their religion and they don't want to hear evidence that the religion they love and their God who "loves" them cause harm to others and even to themselves and that their religion holds them back intellectually and it stunts their critical thinking.  For many fans of football, they are more loyal to football and to their team than they are to their religion.  They watch football games as faithfully or more faithfully than they attend church.  Football is their religion (and for too many places like Nebraska, football is also the only entertaining thing to do).  And the harm of growing up in religion is that you're growing up being taught to reject evidence that goes against your current beliefs, even if the evidence is given in an effort to help people's well-being.

     The attitude for both religion and contact sports is, "Why are you attacking this?  You don't like it but others do, so why are you trying to take away their happiness?  No, I don't care about your evidence, I care about my sport/religion that makes me happy and I don't want it to change.  Leave it alone."

     But I'm not sure I can leave it alone.  I don't go out looking for problems, but when problems do come to my attention and it's something I care about, I don't want to ignore it.  I've spent too many years ignoring and refusing to see evidence because of my religious upbringing, and I'm no longer going to dismiss evidence before I evaluate it.

     I started being bothered by football last year when I watched the Super Bowl on TV: someone got a serious concussion, and that was the ONLY play the broadcasters did not replay.  They replayed all the other plays in the entire game, but they never replayed the play that caused the concussion.  Right then I knew the NFL and the broadcasters wanted to hide the concussion, to pretend it never happened and to make viewers forget about it.  Players and fans know the risks to other parts of the body like the shoulders and knees, but for the most part they don't know that the nature of the game of American football is a danger to the players' brain at all levels of play but especially to children who play tackle football.  I recently heard a sports commentator say that you can't take the danger out of football, and he's right.  There are no rules in American football that you can create to keep the players' brain safe because it's impossible without completely destroying the game itself.  Soccer is easier because all you have to do is say no headbutting the ball; the game of soccer is still very playable as it is without the option to headbutt the ball.  But rugby and American football are different, and what these documentaries have done is to show people that concussions are much more common and much more serious than players and fans are led to believe.  The NFL knows it, but until only about two years ago they denied it because they want to keep their billion-dollar business alive and raking in the money from fans and advertisers and the military (here's a short but informative video about how the military is involved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaW7cOJUt1A ).  And religions like the LDS Church and the Catholic Church want to keep people in the dark about many things because they also want to keep raking in the money and maintaining control over their members and their public image.

     For the past two years or so I've been an atheist.  I used to think I was an agnostic, but in The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins addresses the difference between agnosticism and atheism, and I realized by his definition I'm an atheist, and I'm okay with that.  It's only until recently, perhaps two months ago, that I've started leaning toward anti-theism, the view that religion is not only unnecessary for human existence and human morality but there's a good chance that we as a species would be better off if we rejected religion with all its superstitions and myths, and embraced modern science instead.  Last week one of my friends linked a news article on Facebook that told about a life-sized ark (of the Noah variety) that was completed in Kentucky in July of this past year.  According to this article, it took over $100 million to make!  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/07/10/bill-nye-visited-a-noahs-ark-he-doesnt-believe-should-exist/  What a huge waste of money!!  Think of what that money could do if it was given to scientific research facilities, like the ones that are studying CTE in NFL players.  I can't get over what a huge waste of money that ark is, and that it's a huge tourist trap that spreads false science.  (Also, if you want to watch the debate that the article talked about between Bill Nye and Ken Ham from 2014, here it is:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvO3zJaNBjs  It's worth the time, especially to see the sharp contrast between modern science and modern Christianity in America.)

     So American football is one example of what I believe is a harm of a religious upbringing: being trained to reject evidence that may be unpleasant to hear but if listened to can improve the well-being of contact sports players.  And this is one of the reasons why I will never return to the LDS Church specifically, but also to religion in general: religion brainwashes people into believing that their religion is the only true one, and that not even science can provide a good answer to life's questions about our world or ourselves, but oh, our specific religion has the answers for everything we need to know, and for the things we don't know that's because God decided it wasn't necessary for our salvation.  No, I will never rejoin an organization that teaches and trains its members to look at evidence right in front of them and reject it without a second thought if it doesn't mesh with the teachings of that religion.  The practice in religion of rejecting evidence also spills over into other areas of life, and in my opinion the public's reaction to and denial of concussions is a good example.

(And I finally decided to pitch these documentaries on Facebook.  Important issues like this need to get out there, and I realized that not everyone will reject the message even if they like contact sports; there are people out there who care more about the well-being of players than their romanticized view of the sport and their personal attachment to it).

Bible Problems

     At the beginning of the year I had set out to find out for myself what the Bible—Old Testament (a.k.a. the Jewish Bible) and New Testament—had to say.  I stopped after about two months because I got too frustrated.

     The God of the Old Testament is a god of war.  He's a jealous god in the very literal sense of the word (and there are many instances of other gods being mentioned); he's demanding of the Israelites' loyalty, having claimed them as his own so they can worship him, and in exchange for their unwavering faith and devotion he promises to protect them and fight for them.  But the things he had to say, the laws he gave to the Israelites through Moses, were harsh and often times didn't make much sense.

     So I had gotten to Deuteronomy and stopped there; I really didn't like their god and I didn't want to read any more about him and what he commanded the Israelites to do.  But one thing was certain: the god of the Israelites is only their god.  People can take stories of inspiration from the Old Testament and apply them to their own life if they want to, but the Israelite god's commandments to them were not intended for everyone in our day—they were specific to those people at that time.

     Earlier this year one of my uncles recommended a book to me called Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman.  It sounded very interesting and I bought it right away, but it had been sitting on my bookshelf for a while because there were other books I wanted to get to first.  But then my parents came to visit for a few days, and my father saw the book and borrowed it.  He read it from cover to cover, which surprised me, and so I wanted to read it right afterward so I could talk to him about it.  I finished it a couple of weeks ago, and it's an excellent book; I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Bible study and the history of the manuscripts (and who changed them and why).

     The main, overarching messages of this book are 1) the Bible is not the fully inspired, inerrant word of God that the author used to believe it was—it is a very human book; and 2) the Bible we have now is NOT translated from the original manuscripts.  No original manuscripts exist; the earliest ones we've found come from, I believe Ehrman said the second century CE (Common Era).

     A couple of things in the book made me think of the Mormon church in particular.  The first thing is that the LDS church uses the King James version of the Bible from the early 1600s, and in August of 1992 the First Presidency had this to say about that version, "While other Bible versions may be easier to read than the King James Version, in doctrinal matters latter-day revelation supports the King James Version in preference to other English translations. All of the Presidents of the Church, beginning with the Prophet Joseph Smith, have supported the King James Version by encouraging its continued use in the Church."  https://www.lds.org/ensign/1992/08/news-of-the-church/first-presidency-statement-on-the-king-james-version-of-the-bible.p1?lang=eng
 
     The problem with this version, as I found out in Misquoting Jesus, is that "The King James Version is filled with places in which the translators rendered a Greek text derived ultimately from Erasmus's edition, which was based on a single twelfth-century manuscript that is one of the worst of the manuscripts that we now have available to us!" (p. 209).  There are better manuscripts out there, but the Church maintains its stance that the King James Bible is the one that is the most correct.

     The second thing that reminded me of the LDS church in particular was that Ehrman went into great detail about the scribes who made changes to the manuscripts on purpose to settle some political, social, and theological debates going on around them.  The LDS church's edition of the KJV of the Bible has footnotes where Joseph Smith made changes (if you want to read about the history of that edition, here you go: https://www.lds.org/ensign/1979/10/church-publishes-first-lds-edition-of-the-bible?lang=eng ).  When I was a young adult I got sick with the flu for a few days, and to pass the time while I got well again, I took out my Bible and circled all the places where there was a Joseph Smith Translation of a passage of scripture, for future reference in my studies.  And of course, looking through them again, I see now more than ever that all the JST footnotes make the scripture fall in line more with LDS doctrine.  Joseph Smith claims that these changes are the "plain and precious parts" that were either taken away from the Bible or changed within it, and that he's getting revelation from the Lord on what the passages should really say ( https://history.lds.org/article/revelations-in-context-doctrine-and-covenants-joseph-smith-translation-bible?lang=eng ).  But that's what scribes did in the first few centuries CE: they changed the wording of the manuscripts they were copying to settle theological, political, and social issues surrounding them.  Joseph Smith is no better than any of those ancient people who changed the wording to fit their agenda.

     For regular Christians, Misquoting Jesus will be hard to handle because it leaves the reader with no doubt that what we know of the New Testament and what we know of Jesus isn't 100% reliable.  Mormons who read Misquoting Jesus, like my father, still have the Book of Mormon to fall back on and hold onto as something to uphold their faith; Bible-only Christians don't have that safety net.  But really, the Book of Mormon was written by a guy who knew the King James version of the Bible (which is why the Book of Mormon was written in 1600's English instead of 1820's English, to make it sound more authentic), and we know now that the KJV isn't a very good version, so how much can the Church members really rely on the Book of Mormon as an authentic book of God-inspired scripture, either?

     So after reading Misquoting Jesus, I've decided to officially end my previous Bible projects.  The Old Testament is the Israelites' scripture, and its words and commandments have no bearing on anyone not of that lineage.  And as far as the New Testament is concerned, I simply do not have enough knowledge about what the oldest and best manuscripts say when translated into English, and so in my mind nothing in the New Testament as far as Jesus is concerned can be counted on as fact.  And as far as the LDS doctrine that says the Old Testament god is Jesus Christ himself: I say no.  Ehrman discusses the nature of Jesus since that was one of the hot topics in the early days of Christianity, and there are interesting points of view that different people back in the day preached.  I suggest you read Misquoting Jesus and decide for yourself what you want to believe regarding Jesus.  But as far as reading the New Testament, I see it as a waste of time for me since there's a very good chance that the words attributed to Jesus hadn't actually been said by him.

     I admire Erhman's knowledge and his hunger and passion for truth, and I'll likely read some of his other books as well to see what else he's found in his studies.  That, for me, would be a much better use of my time.