I’ll take a crack as a former believer. Do I believe this? Nope. Nor do I recall ever believing it. Nor do the currently devout Mormons in my circle of close associates believe it.
Clearly this is a big issue for you, and you are entitled to it. We all have them.
Some thoughts on some of your other assertions:
I should be very clear about the fact that the I believe the current LDS church efforts re: marriage rights will fail, and rightfully so, in the long term. Having said that, I see some misrepresentations that need to be addressed.
The most current line of thought in the church leadership is that what they refer to as ‘same-gender attraction’ is not known to be a choice, nor is it know not to be a choice. It sounds stupid, but this is the way they operate. It was the same way with the priesthood ban. What you are seeing today is a softening of the rhetoric - where homosexuality used to be ‘curable,’ now it is not; where men were encouraged to get married as a form of therapy, now they are not; where they used to know that homosexual attraction was a tool of the devil, now they say ‘we don’t know.’ It’s part of the process. It may take a generation, but when enough societal pressure is applied, a ‘revelation’ will be presented that accepts gay individuals and couples as fully fellowshipped members of the church. And it will be treated as the priesthood situation was: what was true yesterday is no longer true today. Yes, it will take too long, but it will happen. You have to remember that the LDS church is run by a bunch of 80±year-old yes-men. Try to get your grandma to change her mind about something she has believed all her life - it’s not easy.
I think you are also overplaying the Card angle. An important thinker and writer? Really? The reality is that yes, in the Mormon community he IS a fringe player. Hell, Thurl Bailey and that kid from American Idol are MUCH more well-known than Orson Scott Card. OSC is somebody most Mormons are only dimly aware of.
Do you honestly believe that the average Mormon ‘hates and loathes fags?’ You’re setting up a false dichotomy, just like the church does, and you’re using that to sell your POV, just like the church does.
Not where I grew up. I always knew who the man was, and I never, ever read science-fiction.
Yes, I do believe that actual, genuine hatred is present and mainstream in the LDS church. Oh, they find nicer ways to say it. Homosexuality is a choice, love the sinner, hate the sin, etc. I don’t think the average person wakes up and says, “Man, I really hate those fags!” But actions speak louder than words. It wasn’t just a few nutballs donating to the Proposition 8 fund in California. There was a massive effort in Utah and California to donate time to this and man hours. They can justify it anyway they like (Marriage is sacred) but when it comes down to it, refusing to grant homosexuals equal rights is no better than people who refused to grant African-Americans equal rights. I’m sure there were a lot of racists who would proudly say they had some black best friends–didn’t make them any less racist. My point is, the millions of dollars raised and the hundreds of hours spent “educating” the public came from somewhere.
The Mormon Church believes that each member has a connection to the Holy Spirit, and each priesthood holder has a direct line to God. Furthermore, we all have free will. If the average LDS member finds the current stance of the Church despicable, they have the actual God-given right to exercise their free will and leave the Church to worship in a manner that is pleasing to them.
My experience is 100% the opposite of this. My experience is that a typical Mormon want to be friendly to non-Mormons only in so far as the non-Mormon is a possible convert. If the chances of conversion are revealed to be clearly not possible, the Moron will not continue pursuing a friendship. That’s my experience, with a fairly large sample size, and no exceptions.
As an atheist, I’m more interested in how you act than what deity you believe in, and with that context let me say that I have known quite a few Mormons and with one exception they have all been terrific human beings - kind, friendly, honest, tolerant, intelligent, and funny. I’m sure they would have been happy to convert me if I’d expressed an interest, but since I never did, I assume they let their own lives speak in testament to the validity of their religious practices.
Ordinarily I’d shy away from making a mindless generalization like “Mormons are good!” on a board that strives for intellectual rigor, but if this thread is going to degenerate into an argument over whether people are bad just because they practice a particular religion, I need to reserve a slot on the correct side of the fight. So while I think LDS beliefs are as loopy as those of most other religions (sorry, dangermom :() individual Mormons earn my highest respect and admiration.
Ahem. Umm, let’s say that the truth lies somewhere between dangermom and Knorf. I mean, really. We can make blanket statements but the truth boils down to:
[ul]
[li]some Mormons are jerks and only want to be friends with other Mormons[/li][li]some Mormons are cool and want to be friends with anyone[/li][li]some Mormons are normal and have a normal amount of Mormon friends and non-Mormon friends.[/li][/ul]
A lot depends where you live and how many Mormons you surrounded with. I’ve always had mostly non-Mormon friends and I never tried to convert any of them. If I had tried, I doubt they’d still be my friends. I was guilted once into sending a friend an unsolicited copy of the Book of Mormon, and I am still embarrassed about that incident.
Glory, it’s important to remember that, in the Mormon view, all of our souls (or spirits) are spirit children of God (Heavenly Father). Does that make sense? God (Heavenly Father) got together with Heavenly Mother (or Mothers, but we NEVER talk about this part!) and created all of these souls, or spirit children. These souls are in heaven, and one by one, they get physical bodies here on Earth. Everyone alive or who has ever been alive, Mormons believe was first a spirit in heaven, waiting to receive a physical body. So my biological father is the father of my body, but both of us are considered spirit children of God. I hope I explained that without being too confusing. Therefore, God’s goal is that as many of us as possible (his spirit children) will progress to become gods ourselves.
When we become gods ourselves (obviously, theoretically, since I don’t believe any of this), the man will be the Heavenly Father or God of the new world, and his wife (or wives!) will be the Heavenly Mother. They will create billions of new souls, or spirit children, and create a new world for them to populate, and the whole cycle will begin anew. Any physical children that this couple had on Earth, remember, are not their spiritual children, but rather their spiritual siblings, so they would be off creating their own worlds (assuming they lived well enough to progress to the god stage).
That is the quick and dirty explanation, but it is a bit more complicated than this, and many things are simply not known. You could spend a lifetime or two looking into changing Mormon beliefs about God, Adam, Jesus, and the roles that all three play in the creation of the world and whether these roles will have to be reprised in future worlds or past worlds. Frankly, to me, it’s interesting, but ultimately as pointless as arguing how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. However, it does give believing Mormons something to argue about and speculate endlessly about. Such deep doctrine is often referred to within the church as “space doctrine” and many Mormons don’t worry to much about it.
In answer to your other question, mainstream Mormons believe that God has a wife, Heavenly Mother. Less well known is that early Mormon prophets taught that Heavenly Father has several wives, since polygamy is an eternal principle. However, that is pretty much ignored in the modern church. Mormons teach that God didn’t want Heavenly Mother’s name dragged in the mud, so she is completely missing from any overt reference in the scriptures. Also, you are not supposed to pray to Heavenly Mother, because the church leaders feel this is a step leading towards apostasy (and feminism!). You can only pray to Heavenly Father.
I’ve been out of this for a couple of days, but I wanted to respond to a few of the threads that have come through in the last page or two.
On the Word of Wisdom, post-Mormon:
I don’t smoke. I had tried smoking when I was a rebellious teenager but the only time I tried to inhale, I got puke-my-guts-up sick. That pretty much cured me. I tried it once after I grew up and left the church, but bleh!
I don’t drink, but I probably would if I could. I have a very odd aversion to alcohol. Even if I like the flavor of the drink (I often like the dark beers that **Fetchund **prefers), I start gagging after a few sips. I’ve debated whether the aversion is mental (sociological reaction from my drinking-is-a-sin upbringing) or physical.
I love coffee.
On why intelligent people believe:
Sometimes, I suspect the will to believe is hard-wired (it seems like there’s some science to back this now, but I’m not willing to take the time to look it up). It might seem weird to hard-core atheists, but I miss having faith.
Before I left the church I saw a few instances of intelligent people experiencing cognitive dissonance but choosing to stay faithful. I don’t know where these people are right now or if they’re still in the church. The will to believe seemed to override the dissonance for those people (see my story below).
On homosexuality and member’s reactions thereto:
When I started coming out to myself, I spoke to a former bishop of mine at BYU. He admitted that he had a hard time believing that any love was bad, but advised me to have faith and obey the church. I got a similar reaction from a stake president and his wife (she was a good friend at the time). This speaks to the cognitive dissonance I witnessed (see above). I was lucky. I’ve heard far more horror stories about coming out in the church than I’ve heard positive or even neutral stories.
The church’s anti-gay attitude does a lot of harm in a lot of ways. My mom still treats me as a family member, but keeps an obvious emotional distance from me. I can almost hear her fear: “If I love and accept my daughter for who she is, then the church might not be true, and I can’t go there.” I’ve been grieving for her for so many years (we were quite close when I was still a TBM) that I suspect her death will be a bit of a relief.
I recently learned of a college friend who contracted HIV from her TBM husband, who had been boffing boys on the side. I feel sorry for both of them. For him, because his belief kept him from experiencing love from the gender of his choice and so he looked for sex instead. For her, because she deserved better than to be tied to someone who, even though he loved her, basically screwed up her life.
First, the question if a point is “official doctrine” makes little to no sense in something this fundamental to the founding of the religion. This is Mormonism we are talking about, not some other church. The Book of Mormon is the story of a group of people who left Israel, came to the Americas and their descendents, the Lamanites, became the Indians. The book is not a side story, it is the core reason for the founding of the religion.
It was not simply Joseph Smith, and 180 years of prophets, apostles, missionaries and seminary teachers asserting this. God said so himself. The Doctrine of Covenants, a collection of revelations to Smith is filled with reverences to Lamanites when talking about Indians living in North America.
But see, arguing the specifics missing the point. And that is, that the church, which claims modern revelation and the sole guardianship of The Truth, has no higher batting average than ordinary people. Worse, in fact, than many
In the early days, it was the belief that Indians came from Israel. Until the late 70s, it was that Blacks were cursed by God. Now, it’s that allowing gays the same rights as others will destroy the family.
If the church didn’t claim divine inspiration and holy guidance, then you can understand them being wrong again and again and again. But if their god can’t get it right, then what is the point of having a god?
Which comes back to the weasel factor. Considering the certainly of this teaching, the history involved and the public preaching by the top leadership for all these years, I cannot see how it can be claimed to not be quote, official doctrine unquote, but if it was not, then that is a failure of the church to clarify its doctrine.
Then again, if a religion needs to resort to spinning its history, what difference separates it from a politician when he’s caught with his hand in the cookie jar?
I have heard from Mormons that their school age kids experience terrible discrimination from the other students because of their religion. To the point of having almost no friends. Now, this is in Oklahoma where the full-on crazy wing of evangelical Christianity has more or less total control, so anything is possible. But still, of all the things kids make each other miserable about, is being a Mormon that big a deal?
Did you go to high school with Mormons? Were you a Mormon or a non-Mormon?
If you did, I am curious as to how Mormons and non-Mormons get along as social groups in school (according to what you perceived). Seems like if all the Mormons you grew up with were like this, high school would be an absolute mess!
Other Mormons and non-Mormon-Utes can chime in too. How was high school?
ETA: Posted this while Furious Marmot was posting. I’m more interested in high schools where most of the population is Mormon.
Conversely, I can tell you about a good friend of mine, who moved from Denver to suburban SLC with his family (wife and 4 kids) 4 years ago. They aren’t Mormon – he’s an atheist, his wife is Catholic, and she’s raising the kids Catholic.
The first few years there, the kids were miserable. The vast majority of their neighbors (and schoolmates) were Mormon, and, once it became common knowledge that my friend and his family weren’t Mormon, a lot of the neighborhood kids wouldn’t have anything to do with my friend’s kids, likely under orders from their parents.
It seems like things have slowly thawed in that regard, and the kids have a lot of friends now, but their initial experiences there were very negative.
And this is totally unlike MY experience. I grew up in Northern California and pretty much the only church-going people I knew were Mormons. I had a number of Mormon friends (one good friend in particular) and I never ever ever felt any pressure from them about my lack of religious beliefs. I think that my very good LDS friend had some hopes that I might convert because I showed a lot of interest in her religion (I’m just interested in religion in general; this eventually led to my doing the discussions with the local missionaries), but if she was upset that I didn’t, she sure hid it well. It didn’t affect our friendship at all.
Just wanted to chime in as another ex-Mormon atheist.
And wanted to ask if anyone else has noticed how much of the Mormon faith is undocumented? Things that most Mormons hold to be true, but aren’t written down; like abstaining from caffeine or paying tithing on gross income (as I recall, the instruction is to tithe base on your “increase” which seems pretty clear to me to mean net).
Maybe most religions work this way; but I don’t have much experience with any others.
As I mentioned about my son’s friend – this is definitely true in this area of TN. I knew immediately which church the mother was talking about, but would wager that she answers the question the way she does out of necessity.
My son’s friend was a bit weird at first about my son spending the night on a night that would have him (my son) going to church with them the next day, but has found that since we don’t own any religion we also don’t discriminate against any – and loves having a school-mate that he can hang out with at church occasionally.
Apparently the Mormons don’t agree - they reserve the right to change what they teach. Maybe they got what God said to them wrong, or conditions have changed such that God is now telling them something new or different.
I am a parent, so I am familiar with the concept of different rules for people in different stages of life, or different levels of experience and maturity.
It just seems a little harsh to condemn Mormons for teaching something you don’t agree with, and then condemning them again when they stop doing it.
A very central point of Mormon doctrine is that revelation is alive and well. If they need to change something, it’s a new revelation from God. If anyone questions why God didn’t just say so in the first place, it’s because we didn’t ask or because we weren’t ready for the knowledge. Very convenient.
I agree that changing what you teach is ok - most institutions have done that; but if God has told you that revelation He’s given is “true and everlasting” (as has been done with much of the doctrine of the Mormon church), then you really ought to stick with it.
