Oh God, yes. I am terribly shy and hate approaching people. This is part of the reason they send you out in twos. Often, I let the other guy take the first part, but also, if there are two of you, you can hound each other into approaching people.
However, sometimes both me and my companion didn’t feel like approaching people and we’d just walk around for hours, neither mentioning it to the other. I assume we both felt guilty about it, but neither of us wanted to do anything to fix it.
Also, going to a foreign country helps. You don’t know anyone and you don’t feel as embarassed. It’s a lot easier to approach someone in a language that’s not your own. I don’t know what I would have done had they sent me to somewhere in the United States. I would have been mortified.
Thanks for starting this thread. I’d never met Mormons until I moved out here and I’m too scared to ask the guys at work these kinds of things.
Is there an official policy on gambling? How does this work with regard to the well known prevalance of Mormon dealers in Las Vegas?
Is there a religious ‘secret police’ like the Inquisition or the Scientologist SeaOrg?
Is there a doctrinal reason for the strong interest (obsession?) with other people’s sex lives, particularly in regard to promiscuity and homosexuality? Yes, lots of american fundamentalists are hung up on this stuff, but every time I have a political/social discussion with Mormons, they just hammer on immoral sex being the root of darn near all the problems in the world.
I suppose you made a promise to “god” not to divulge those things related to the temple, yet you seem willing to go back on your word. I sense more of a matter of hurt feelings in your posts than any enlightenment you may have received related to your new found beliefs.
Whether or not you believe any longer in a supreme being, a true gentleman wouldn’t break a promise after he has given his word as you certainly did. Now, unring this bell.
I’d be asking you “When I do get my own planet, would I get to do stuff like hit my planet with a 500 km asteroid?”
If that stuff is right, there are some aliens somewhere that should be really glad that I can’t live without my coffee. The Mormons should put me on some “do-not-baptize-posthumously” list, too.
I don’t know if promises made to nothing really hold any weight gentleman or not. Just curious Morgenstern are you a Mormon? Erdosain, he does bring up somequestions I had while reading this though. How does the LDS church keep there from being more outspoken people like you who have left the church? Is it just a case of once they leave they don’t want to talk about it at all? Have there been any higher level members of the church that have left and written anything about it?
is the caffeine thing really prohibited, or simply advised against? I have about 4-5 Mormon friends, and of them 2 of them drink Mountain Dew like water, I suppose that answers my question a little but I always thought the rule was more like: “Alcohol and Tobacco are straight out but if you sigh HAVE to you can do that caffeine thing.”
Looks like we’ve got enough to start a new doper club here, though. You, me, and Erdosain.
I took a pretty long path from TBM (true believing mormon) to atheist. I left the church when I came out as a lesbian, but my belief (both in Mormon doctrine specifically and god in general) eroded more slowly. One day, I looked up some stuff about the church online, and what I read completely burst what little bubble of belief I had left in church doctrine. When that was gone, I considered the question of god and realized I couldn’t buy that either. Ta da! Born-again atheist!
That’s one reason that they shouldn’t posthumously baptize me. Another is that I’m the sort of person who might, given the ability, destroy the universe just to see what would happen.
If they do posthumously baptize me, and that means I get a planet and can do things like throw 500-km asteroids at it, or throw it into a black hole… well, somebody will be sorry. I wonder if you get a new planet if you destroy yours or wipe out all life on it.
Maybe they should start a “do-not-baptize” list, and put Jews and astrophysicists on it.
The prohibition is against “hot drinks.” It’s in the Doctrine and Covenants (basically a collection of Joseph Smith’s revelations from God) and it’s popularly known as the Word of Wisdom.
Caffeine isn’t mentioned by name. “Hot drinks” is typically interpreted to mean coffee, and what’s wrong with coffee? Caffeine. Some people believe that means all caffeinated beverages, some people only avoid coffee.
We should form a club! I’ll make a group on Facebook
The strange thing about my path was that I decided I just could not believe in God–as in, the concept was just too ridiculous for me to accept. That had absolutely nothing to do with the LDS church, I would have reached the same conclusion regardless of my starting point. It was only much, much later that I really began to understand that the beliefs I took for granted were necessarily lies. The day that I realized Joseph Smith probably was a conman was far more startling than the day I realized that I just didn’t believe in God.
You’re welcome, Furious Marmot. Mormons always complain about misunderstandings about them, yet we get super secretive whenever anyone asks about the “magic undies” or the temple. Seems counter-productive to me. Anyway, gambling is extremely discouraged. You won’t get formally reprimanded for it, but there is a reason Utah doesn’t have a lottery. I think it’s fair to say that believing Mormons in good standing probably wouldn’t gamble. I also believe that you’re not supposed to pay tithing on gambling winnings. (Mormons are supposed to pay 10% of all earnings, pre-tax, to the church). However, it probably wouldn’t be that big of deal to be a blackjack dealer, as long as you didn’t gamble yourself. (I can’t answer for certain, never having lived in Las Vegas.) You probably wouldn’t get any prominent assignments, however.
If you mean my conversion to atheism, I have never discussed it with my parents. All they know is that I don’t go to church. We just have an unspoken agreement not to talk about religious stuff. They believe that some day I’ll return to the church, and I’m happy for them to keep believing that.
Ah, I was wondering when the first believing Mormon would show up. Anyway, I don’t feel the slightest compunction about sharing accurate information. Unfortunately, the church does not seem to feel the same way. Many Mormons can’t believe that otherwise intelligent, faithful people could ever fall away from the faith. The standard response in those cases is:
You were offended. That’s why you left.
You secretly desired to sin/have sex/drink alcohol. That’s why you left.
You never really believed. That’s why you left.
You read anti-Mormon literature and were deceived by the devil. That’s why you left.
I know about all the bad stuff in Mormon history, i.e. Joseph Smith marrying 14-year-old, other men’s wives, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the horses and steel in the Book of Mormon, and I still believe. Why can’t you?
I’ve heard all these things so many times, that it doesn’t offend me in the slightest. Anyway, no one offended me, I’ve only had sex with my wife, and I never had a drop of alcohol until I was out of the church and over 30 years old.
Yes, I agree that the proxy baptism of holocaust victims is beyond the pale. Especially when they already promised to stop doing it. The official rule right now is that you can only submit names that are your direct ancestors. However, for whatever reason, all kinds of names get submitted regardless.
Actually, the South Park Mormon episode is the only place you will see an accurate depiction of how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, i.e., he put a seer stone in a hat and stuck his head in the hat and read out the text. I was a faithful Mormon and I had no idea that was how it happened. It’s mildly embarassing, so the church completely ignores it.
Sorry, not true. It would be cool, though. In the basement, there’s usually a cafeteria for the temple workers. The soda machine does not have Coke.
Why are Mormons supposed to keep huge supplies of food at home? Is it for the End of Days? If you live in an apartment without a garage/basement/storage room, where are you supposed to put all that stuff?
I remember being a teenager and allowing the Mormons to stop me on the street. Yes, they were annoying and I didn’t want to convert, but they were so cute! :o I’ve always liked clean-cut guys, and I was a teen at the height of the waistlines-around-ankles trend.
Anyway, how did you find working as a missionary in Argentina compared to your friends in other places? Were there countries or cities known for being easy to find converts? I’m curious whether, if there were, if those places had a stronger religious culture already in place, or not.
(I remember seeing a group of young American girls on a presumably evangelical Christian mission trip in, get this, Poland. I was particularly disgusted that they didn’t think that the country being 95% or whatever practicing Catholics was enough.)
Another former believer checking in. I was raised in the church, went on a mission to South Africa, got married, had a kid, then had my moment of realization. I still attend part of the service every week, as my wife still fervently believes. I try to maintain an attitude of detached bemusement about the church now. I also try to defend the things that are patently untrue or misrepresented. So far I haven’t seen anything in this thread that needs refutation or correction. In other words, it’s all true.
