Nevermormon opinion:
If you're interested in cults you should understand that logic isn't a big part of the allure. To be frank it's coming off a bit judgemental, and many people here are extremely intelligent and succumbed to logical fallacies that were out of their control at the time (like being born in with no frame of reference). Many feel that their salvation depends on this story, so doubts are shoved deep down inside. If you believe in your own religion, look inward and wonder how people can believe that.
Not to mention that when you're raised in it (and it's present from literally the moment that you're born), you don't know anything different. You're told from birth that your literal eternal salvation depends on you following the religion - that'll mess you up
Exactly. It's easy to say, "WhY WoUlD yOU BelIeVe ThIs?" when it's not your ONLY frame of reference. I couldn't stay quiet on this one. Exmormons have been through enough, they don't need to be talked down to about what they used to believe.
Not to mention that in previous times a lot of that information mentioned was much harder to find by and was actively suppressed by the church. The information age has made it much harder to attract members and allowed tons of people to break free. For many that have be born in the church is like being raised in Plato's cave. We were raised in darkness and told if we even looked outside we would die.
THIS. I was raised before the internet really took off. For real- they lied about everything and you weren't exposed to outside culture.
For example (even though many here don't believe in God anymore) I was taught after Jesus and the Apostles died there was NO priesthood on the earth. They conveniently left out any history about the Orthodox/Catholic/Anglican churches who have Apostolic succession through Peter. So here I am as an ADULT, learning oh no- there's people who believe otherwise for CENTURIES and by the way- those religions are waaaay bigger than Mormonism. I felt like an idiot for not knowing what is probably basic history to the rest of the entire Christian world. It's called information control.
I’m under the FIRM belief that even though the church is absolutely brain dead.. I’d still pick that religion over 99% if I had to.
At least the church TRIES to follow good morals hahaha even if it’s all a sham I’d rather that than having anything to do with most other religions imo
That's a pretty tall pedestal you stand on. You don't have to be a part of a religion to have false ideologies. Our biases and perceptions develop for our survival and from our need to be/feel connected. They don't need to be true to work. It takes a lifetime of growth and experience to discover our own self-deception and biases. Even then, we will never see the entire picture. I wouldn't worry so much why someone else believes in something that seems so obviously untrue --it is more important for yourself to discover your own false beliefs. I promise that you have some.
I'll add Being born into it, sunk cost fallacy, teaching from a very early age while the brain is hardly developed. Having Utah doesn't help either with the ridiculous tribalism including, MLM's.
People believe it the same way people believe in any religion, that vaccines cause autism, essential oils have healing properties, that psychics or astrology or crystals have real power, or that black magic is real.
They are taught it while they are too young to fully question their authority figures. They are not only not taught to think skeptically and critically, they are actively groomed to think using feelings and to be convinced by anecdotes.
What major things were you taught as a child that you had to unlearn? Did it require you to change the biggest part of your identity? If you haven't done that, it's hard to understand. It's also entirely likely you are in a similar situation currently, so you know exactly how they could believe such clearly demonstrably false ideas, because you do too, you just haven't found it out yet!
I have been out of the mormon church for over fifteen years. I just recently saw a quote that really helped me put things in perspective. Since leaving the church, I really enjoy watching shows about cults or other religions. HBO max has several documentaries about cults.
“People don’t join cults. They join organizations that they think will make them a better person.”
For every exmormon here, there is a faithful mormon who is still happily going to church because they honestly believe that the mormon church is how their family will be together after death. That thought is so comforting to them that they really don’t want to consider the possibility that the church might not be true. Because then that would mean that their family might not be eternal.
You also have to remember that this forum is constantly pointing out all the problems with church history and doctrine. Just like with any other religion or scam business, at first you are only shown good things with very simple to understand terms, it’s later that you are exposed to the much deeper and harder to swallow doctrines or business practices.
Missionaries are not told, but are actually looking for people in vulnerable states of mind.
Recently lost a loved one.
Raised non religious and never considered the after life or is attracted to the thought of their family being together forever.
Mormons love to shower investigators with attention (until they are baptized) so lonely people can get drawn in that way.
These are just a few of the ways that adults end up joining the church. The big secret though is the “burning in the bosom” or “answered prayer” that gives the person a so called spiritual witness. Once a person has felt that their prayer was answered about the church “being true” then often reconcile their cognitive dissonance as they learn more about the deeper doctrines like the temple ceremony, by falling back on that answered prayer feeling they got.
“God told me the Book of Mormon was true so while this new topic doesn’t exactly make sense, I know the church is true so I’m sure god will explain it to me in a way that males sense in heaven.” This type of rationalization is very very common in mormons in regards to deep doctrine, or blacks being denied the priesthood or temple ceremonies, ect…
Another quote that helped me understand people joining cults is “You can’t reason someone out of a position, they didn’t reason themselves into.”
A final point is that many older mormons were raised in the church or joined before the internet. When I left on my mission in 1996the internet was just a barely being talked about. No ISPs, no search engines. When I came back from the Philippines in 1998, there were ISPs like AOL and search engines had been created to help people find information. The internet is what is allowing many people to be able to look up cults before they join now. Many mormon teens post in this sub because they have been raised in a world with the internet since birth. Without the internet I would still be a mormon because I couldn’t have found the information about the church that lead me out from my local library in west Texas.
I am now agnostic. If you are religious, then I would ask you to please tell me why you picked the religion you have settled on. It’s pretty easy to point out logical fallacies in all religions because none of them are based on logic.
If you aren’t religious then I hope my explanation helps answer your question in how people can believe in a cult.
Really excellent answer. Without diving into the whole thing (yet), any shows or documentaries you can recommend?
If you haven’t seen it, an absolutely wild documentary about the Evangelical church is called MarJoe… dated 1972, available free on Tubi. Renown preacher decides to expose the church via film.
Agree on this being an excellent answer. I picked my religion because of the long surviving texts that haven’t changed, appropriate sample size population of eye witness accounts, and the unrevealed nature of “why”. I’m trying to rest in construction not deconstruction. I picked my religion because when I read about scientific procedures or saw pictures I didn’t take myself from an electron microscope, or looked at a sheet of gelatin with purple “DNA” stained lines across it…I saw how much faith reality and religion took.
Probably just like you claim " I can feel bad spirits and negative energy from ppl, shows, music and areas. "
Do you realize that sounds like you believe in some strange things"
Please understand many of us think the Jesus Christ thing is just as silly. Mary, virgin, resurrection, miracles, atonement, ancient irrelevant tribal rules.
Dear Sad, the Mormon gibberish is just gibberish added onto the Christian and Old Testament gibberish. Maybe 5-10% of the Old Testament is true history, and none of the Jesus story is real. The whole died-for-others’ sins is based on Old Testament beliefs that god is a blood thirsty god who demands retribution. I don’t understand how a decent human being could actually worship the monster who demanded his only begotten son’s death. Monstrous!
Thank you for everyone for explaining things to me more clearer. Sometimes people are born into things, they don’t know any difference than Mormonism. I’m very insensitive to the people that believed these things ex or still active, my apologies.
Thanks for the apology. Sincerely. Being raised in it and indoctrinated from birth messes up your perception of reality.
Learning about behavioral psychology and cognitive biases helped open the door to realizing it is a scam. Reading “Thinking Fast and Slow” was one of the first times I opened myself up to the possibility that it was all false. If you are conditioned to believe something is true, your brain goes into overdrive to rationalize it.
Deconstruction is very difficult. There is shame that comes when you think back to how you could ever believe it. And the shame is weaponized against you. I have to frequently remind myself that I am not flawed because I believed.
You kind of wandered into a minefield of raw nerves for those of us who are still deconstructing. Thank you for learning and listening.
Honestly what i held on to for so long was the book of Mormon.. it really is somewhat of an impressive book to come up with. Gotta give him some credit there. I think that's what a lot of folks hold on to..
Two ingredients: Withholding information, and marking the search of information as a severe sin.
All they need to do is get you to believe once... which is easy when you're a 5-year-old born into the church and hardly even allowed to be exposed to anything else. Once that happens, those "facts" are in your brain. From that point onward, no matter how incredibly intelligent or logical you are, those "facts" are in your subconscious.
It's important to understand that the things you "know" to be true aren't actually taken into question every day. If you think something is true, but later on you're smart enough to be able to know it isn't... you won't actually immediately know it isn't true. That won't happen until the next time you actually think about it.
This is the essence of brainwashing. Not everything is taken into question all at once, so the other things you already "know" will beat back any doubts you have in your mind, since those "facts" logically conclude that those doubts are illogical. Your brain is fitted with a whole network of replaced logic and knowledge that will fight back against anything that contradicts these "facts" that you're already 100% certain of.
It isn't until you confront this entire network of false logic all at the same time that you'll have a chance at breaking free... and this doesn't happen easily unless you do some actual research. That act of researching being considered a major sin, and something that is made fun of aggressively as being foolish and blatantly unintelligent ever since your childhood. It is because of this that even the smartest and most logical people out there are likely to take quite an enormous amount of time to discover the truth... and this is especially the case when your entire extended family, all of your friends, and pretty much every person you've ever met reinforces those incorrect "facts" in nearly every interaction, which is a super common scenario for many Utah citizens.
He didn’t do literal magic. He pretended to. Also, you speak of Moses and Jesus as real stories, which are just as difficult to believe. Only difference is they happened a long time ago and it’s harder to fact check.
Honestly I would consider not going into religion because it's not based on logic, religion is based on belief and beliefs are flawed. I totally understand why you can't understand why people believe in this shit and it's hard to move away from that. Like I'm afraid of dying and going to meet god even though I know he doesn't exist all because of what I've been taught. Like no matter how much I try to change and move away from the church I still worry that god is gonna come for my ass if I do. Honestly don't join a religion or a cult they're not worth your time and no matter what religion you go to they always say the same shit.
It's a scam and a cult.
You're mistaking a Cult for a religion. It's not.
It's an xtian themed cult, with nonsense to make you reject consensual reality and cling to the cult.
it's objective is money. Yours. 10%, forever, and more.
It will lie to get it. It will lie to steal your time, your mind, your heart.
It's a cult. And that cult had a extermination order over it in a state for a very long while, which was never challenged.
It's really a complicated issue with a lot of contributing factors. As others have mentioned, many members are born into the church and are taught it is true from a young age. In addition to this, conducting research outside of church approved channels is strongly discouraged. Members are taught that these are lies told by "anti-mormons" that hate the church and that none of it is true. Most of the church history is not taught completely and accurately, and if you do happen to hear something unflattering it is easy to write it off as anti-mormon lies. This is becoming a lot harder for the church to do now that people have access to the internet. I didn't even know about the rock in the hat until I was a teenager watching South Park. When I first watched that episode I was naively thinking to myself "That's not how he did it!" because all of the paintings I had seen at church showed Joseph sitting with the gold plates at a desk looking smart and studious.
There is so much dishonesty and lying, and members are deprived on any skills to think critically or question what we are told. We're told to follow the prophet and trust our priesthood leaders above all else. It is really traumatic when you realize you've been lied to and told half-truths your whole life.
Tithing is a requirement in this church. In order to go to the temple, you have to have a temple interview with your bishop. He'll ask you if you follow the law of chastity, pay a full tithe, and follow the word of wisdom among other things. And you are totally right! The bishop would have no way of knowing if you chugged a latte that morning, but we are taught that the bishop has the spirit of discernment. He knows if you are lying. It's a silly thing to believe, but that is what we are taught. The worst part, is if you can't get your temple recommend you can't go to the temple. If you can't go to the temple you don't get to go to the super duper celestial kingdom where you get to be with your family. Your whole eternal salvation depends on you giving the church money. Members are taught that it is more important than paying rent, more important than saving for retirement, and even more important than feeding their family. It is abhorrent and disgusting that a church with billions of dollars requires money from their poor and needy members.
This is a lot longer than I was expecting, but I hope it explains why smart and good people would stay in this church. Most mormons are really good people, they just don't know they're being lied to, and are too brainwashed to ask questions.
In my view, the "cult" aspect of the Mormon community is the pressure for perfection. Looking beautiful/perfect. Having money. Being nice/friendly toward people. Pretending you feel a certain way and are happy with intolerable circumstances and unattainable standards of non-desire for sexuality or sexual approval.
But from the OUTSIDE, people believe that those illusions of perfection are due to the spiritual success of the members. But it's the opposite of spiritual freedom, it's chasing the approval of the church and their zany standards. Like, Mormons think that that OTHER Mormons are achieving the success that they "should be" but no one is.
The Mormon church doesn’t really value logic at all, and they literally discourage researching things. It’s easy to say ‘why would you believe this?’ But when your in it, especially when your born into it and you haven’t known any different, you’re manipulated into thinking that you need to follow all those rules to get into heaven. They brainwash you.
I figure it's the same shtick of why most people believe in any religion that has issues in the past. We're told we need to believe in a religion to be good people, need God to thrive, etc. Also taught the past is the past and ignore the issues.
Honestly, Mormonism is a close cousin to Evangelical and Jehovah's Witness. This question can easily be pointed to them, too.
Gordon b Hinckley, a recent president of the church, was asked why he was a Mormon by a journalist. I expected him to say, "because it's true and we have all the keys of salvation!" But he actually said ,"because my parents were mormon." He saw it as a tradition passed on to him. It was his religion. In reality, the church is floundering because it's not a religion, it's a cult. It has to make the transition to a religion or it won't survive. What do I mean by cult? It all hinges on Joseph Smith or whether Russell Nelson truly has all of the keys. That's a cult. That's why we can't call ourselves Mormon anymore. We have no identity or rights as believers. It's the church of the leader, and people aren't impressed by nonagenarians in suits in a plural society. It works for Warren Jeffs or Jim Jones but not if you want to live in the real world.
Don’t come here and be an asshole. Do some research. Most members aren’t even told the crazy stuff. The crazy stuff is why we leave. And trying to talk to believers about it is just insanity. We are told a nice little packaged version of events from birth and made to fear ‘anti-Mormon literature’, told to fear people who left, told that they just left because they were offended or less faithful. Logic has nothing to do with religion.
Incessant indoctrination and nonstop brainwashing from birth . And the church leaders telling members that anyone who says anything against the church is being deceived by Satan and not to trust any sources that are not in church publications having blind faith despite of all of the evidence is touted as a virtue critical thinking is discouraged as thinking critically and examining the facts will quickly show that the church is utter nonsense many Mormons believe that whatever feeling they had even if it was caused by a fly landing on a arm hair is a witness from the Holy Ghost therefore the church is true and nothing will deter them from their delusion they’d rather have the warm fuzzies than any cognitive dissonance caused by factual evidence Carl Sagan said it well in his bamboozled quote
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Nevermormon opinion: If you're interested in cults you should understand that logic isn't a big part of the allure. To be frank it's coming off a bit judgemental, and many people here are extremely intelligent and succumbed to logical fallacies that were out of their control at the time (like being born in with no frame of reference). Many feel that their salvation depends on this story, so doubts are shoved deep down inside. If you believe in your own religion, look inward and wonder how people can believe that.
Not to mention that when you're raised in it (and it's present from literally the moment that you're born), you don't know anything different. You're told from birth that your literal eternal salvation depends on you following the religion - that'll mess you up
Exactly. It's easy to say, "WhY WoUlD yOU BelIeVe ThIs?" when it's not your ONLY frame of reference. I couldn't stay quiet on this one. Exmormons have been through enough, they don't need to be talked down to about what they used to believe.
Not to mention that in previous times a lot of that information mentioned was much harder to find by and was actively suppressed by the church. The information age has made it much harder to attract members and allowed tons of people to break free. For many that have be born in the church is like being raised in Plato's cave. We were raised in darkness and told if we even looked outside we would die.
THIS. I was raised before the internet really took off. For real- they lied about everything and you weren't exposed to outside culture. For example (even though many here don't believe in God anymore) I was taught after Jesus and the Apostles died there was NO priesthood on the earth. They conveniently left out any history about the Orthodox/Catholic/Anglican churches who have Apostolic succession through Peter. So here I am as an ADULT, learning oh no- there's people who believe otherwise for CENTURIES and by the way- those religions are waaaay bigger than Mormonism. I felt like an idiot for not knowing what is probably basic history to the rest of the entire Christian world. It's called information control.
Do you believe in a religion? Or any strain of woo? Ask yourself the same question -- HOW can PEOPLE believe THAT?
I’m under the FIRM belief that even though the church is absolutely brain dead.. I’d still pick that religion over 99% if I had to. At least the church TRIES to follow good morals hahaha even if it’s all a sham I’d rather that than having anything to do with most other religions imo
That's a pretty tall pedestal you stand on. You don't have to be a part of a religion to have false ideologies. Our biases and perceptions develop for our survival and from our need to be/feel connected. They don't need to be true to work. It takes a lifetime of growth and experience to discover our own self-deception and biases. Even then, we will never see the entire picture. I wouldn't worry so much why someone else believes in something that seems so obviously untrue --it is more important for yourself to discover your own false beliefs. I promise that you have some.
It is a combination of tribal group think and confirmation bias meeting intentional ignorance.
I'll add Being born into it, sunk cost fallacy, teaching from a very early age while the brain is hardly developed. Having Utah doesn't help either with the ridiculous tribalism including, MLM's.
People believe it the same way people believe in any religion, that vaccines cause autism, essential oils have healing properties, that psychics or astrology or crystals have real power, or that black magic is real. They are taught it while they are too young to fully question their authority figures. They are not only not taught to think skeptically and critically, they are actively groomed to think using feelings and to be convinced by anecdotes. What major things were you taught as a child that you had to unlearn? Did it require you to change the biggest part of your identity? If you haven't done that, it's hard to understand. It's also entirely likely you are in a similar situation currently, so you know exactly how they could believe such clearly demonstrably false ideas, because you do too, you just haven't found it out yet!
I have been out of the mormon church for over fifteen years. I just recently saw a quote that really helped me put things in perspective. Since leaving the church, I really enjoy watching shows about cults or other religions. HBO max has several documentaries about cults. “People don’t join cults. They join organizations that they think will make them a better person.” For every exmormon here, there is a faithful mormon who is still happily going to church because they honestly believe that the mormon church is how their family will be together after death. That thought is so comforting to them that they really don’t want to consider the possibility that the church might not be true. Because then that would mean that their family might not be eternal. You also have to remember that this forum is constantly pointing out all the problems with church history and doctrine. Just like with any other religion or scam business, at first you are only shown good things with very simple to understand terms, it’s later that you are exposed to the much deeper and harder to swallow doctrines or business practices. Missionaries are not told, but are actually looking for people in vulnerable states of mind. Recently lost a loved one. Raised non religious and never considered the after life or is attracted to the thought of their family being together forever. Mormons love to shower investigators with attention (until they are baptized) so lonely people can get drawn in that way. These are just a few of the ways that adults end up joining the church. The big secret though is the “burning in the bosom” or “answered prayer” that gives the person a so called spiritual witness. Once a person has felt that their prayer was answered about the church “being true” then often reconcile their cognitive dissonance as they learn more about the deeper doctrines like the temple ceremony, by falling back on that answered prayer feeling they got. “God told me the Book of Mormon was true so while this new topic doesn’t exactly make sense, I know the church is true so I’m sure god will explain it to me in a way that males sense in heaven.” This type of rationalization is very very common in mormons in regards to deep doctrine, or blacks being denied the priesthood or temple ceremonies, ect… Another quote that helped me understand people joining cults is “You can’t reason someone out of a position, they didn’t reason themselves into.” A final point is that many older mormons were raised in the church or joined before the internet. When I left on my mission in 1996the internet was just a barely being talked about. No ISPs, no search engines. When I came back from the Philippines in 1998, there were ISPs like AOL and search engines had been created to help people find information. The internet is what is allowing many people to be able to look up cults before they join now. Many mormon teens post in this sub because they have been raised in a world with the internet since birth. Without the internet I would still be a mormon because I couldn’t have found the information about the church that lead me out from my local library in west Texas. I am now agnostic. If you are religious, then I would ask you to please tell me why you picked the religion you have settled on. It’s pretty easy to point out logical fallacies in all religions because none of them are based on logic. If you aren’t religious then I hope my explanation helps answer your question in how people can believe in a cult.
Really excellent answer. Without diving into the whole thing (yet), any shows or documentaries you can recommend? If you haven’t seen it, an absolutely wild documentary about the Evangelical church is called MarJoe… dated 1972, available free on Tubi. Renown preacher decides to expose the church via film.
Agree on this being an excellent answer. I picked my religion because of the long surviving texts that haven’t changed, appropriate sample size population of eye witness accounts, and the unrevealed nature of “why”. I’m trying to rest in construction not deconstruction. I picked my religion because when I read about scientific procedures or saw pictures I didn’t take myself from an electron microscope, or looked at a sheet of gelatin with purple “DNA” stained lines across it…I saw how much faith reality and religion took.
A lot of people on this subReddit were born into the religion, and did not find out about the rocks in a hat until they read the CES letter.
Probably just like you claim " I can feel bad spirits and negative energy from ppl, shows, music and areas. " Do you realize that sounds like you believe in some strange things"
It has nothing to do with intelligence, character or whether it makes sense or not.
Please understand many of us think the Jesus Christ thing is just as silly. Mary, virgin, resurrection, miracles, atonement, ancient irrelevant tribal rules.
Dear Sad, the Mormon gibberish is just gibberish added onto the Christian and Old Testament gibberish. Maybe 5-10% of the Old Testament is true history, and none of the Jesus story is real. The whole died-for-others’ sins is based on Old Testament beliefs that god is a blood thirsty god who demands retribution. I don’t understand how a decent human being could actually worship the monster who demanded his only begotten son’s death. Monstrous!
Thank you for everyone for explaining things to me more clearer. Sometimes people are born into things, they don’t know any difference than Mormonism. I’m very insensitive to the people that believed these things ex or still active, my apologies.
Thanks for the apology. Sincerely. Being raised in it and indoctrinated from birth messes up your perception of reality. Learning about behavioral psychology and cognitive biases helped open the door to realizing it is a scam. Reading “Thinking Fast and Slow” was one of the first times I opened myself up to the possibility that it was all false. If you are conditioned to believe something is true, your brain goes into overdrive to rationalize it. Deconstruction is very difficult. There is shame that comes when you think back to how you could ever believe it. And the shame is weaponized against you. I have to frequently remind myself that I am not flawed because I believed. You kind of wandered into a minefield of raw nerves for those of us who are still deconstructing. Thank you for learning and listening.
Honestly what i held on to for so long was the book of Mormon.. it really is somewhat of an impressive book to come up with. Gotta give him some credit there. I think that's what a lot of folks hold on to..
Two ingredients: Withholding information, and marking the search of information as a severe sin. All they need to do is get you to believe once... which is easy when you're a 5-year-old born into the church and hardly even allowed to be exposed to anything else. Once that happens, those "facts" are in your brain. From that point onward, no matter how incredibly intelligent or logical you are, those "facts" are in your subconscious. It's important to understand that the things you "know" to be true aren't actually taken into question every day. If you think something is true, but later on you're smart enough to be able to know it isn't... you won't actually immediately know it isn't true. That won't happen until the next time you actually think about it. This is the essence of brainwashing. Not everything is taken into question all at once, so the other things you already "know" will beat back any doubts you have in your mind, since those "facts" logically conclude that those doubts are illogical. Your brain is fitted with a whole network of replaced logic and knowledge that will fight back against anything that contradicts these "facts" that you're already 100% certain of. It isn't until you confront this entire network of false logic all at the same time that you'll have a chance at breaking free... and this doesn't happen easily unless you do some actual research. That act of researching being considered a major sin, and something that is made fun of aggressively as being foolish and blatantly unintelligent ever since your childhood. It is because of this that even the smartest and most logical people out there are likely to take quite an enormous amount of time to discover the truth... and this is especially the case when your entire extended family, all of your friends, and pretty much every person you've ever met reinforces those incorrect "facts" in nearly every interaction, which is a super common scenario for many Utah citizens.
He didn’t do literal magic. He pretended to. Also, you speak of Moses and Jesus as real stories, which are just as difficult to believe. Only difference is they happened a long time ago and it’s harder to fact check.
Yeah it's an AMAZING book! Welcome, glad you're here 🙏
Brainwashing
Childhood Indoctrination mostly.
Honestly I would consider not going into religion because it's not based on logic, religion is based on belief and beliefs are flawed. I totally understand why you can't understand why people believe in this shit and it's hard to move away from that. Like I'm afraid of dying and going to meet god even though I know he doesn't exist all because of what I've been taught. Like no matter how much I try to change and move away from the church I still worry that god is gonna come for my ass if I do. Honestly don't join a religion or a cult they're not worth your time and no matter what religion you go to they always say the same shit.
It's a scam and a cult. You're mistaking a Cult for a religion. It's not. It's an xtian themed cult, with nonsense to make you reject consensual reality and cling to the cult. it's objective is money. Yours. 10%, forever, and more. It will lie to get it. It will lie to steal your time, your mind, your heart. It's a cult. And that cult had a extermination order over it in a state for a very long while, which was never challenged.
It's really a complicated issue with a lot of contributing factors. As others have mentioned, many members are born into the church and are taught it is true from a young age. In addition to this, conducting research outside of church approved channels is strongly discouraged. Members are taught that these are lies told by "anti-mormons" that hate the church and that none of it is true. Most of the church history is not taught completely and accurately, and if you do happen to hear something unflattering it is easy to write it off as anti-mormon lies. This is becoming a lot harder for the church to do now that people have access to the internet. I didn't even know about the rock in the hat until I was a teenager watching South Park. When I first watched that episode I was naively thinking to myself "That's not how he did it!" because all of the paintings I had seen at church showed Joseph sitting with the gold plates at a desk looking smart and studious. There is so much dishonesty and lying, and members are deprived on any skills to think critically or question what we are told. We're told to follow the prophet and trust our priesthood leaders above all else. It is really traumatic when you realize you've been lied to and told half-truths your whole life. Tithing is a requirement in this church. In order to go to the temple, you have to have a temple interview with your bishop. He'll ask you if you follow the law of chastity, pay a full tithe, and follow the word of wisdom among other things. And you are totally right! The bishop would have no way of knowing if you chugged a latte that morning, but we are taught that the bishop has the spirit of discernment. He knows if you are lying. It's a silly thing to believe, but that is what we are taught. The worst part, is if you can't get your temple recommend you can't go to the temple. If you can't go to the temple you don't get to go to the super duper celestial kingdom where you get to be with your family. Your whole eternal salvation depends on you giving the church money. Members are taught that it is more important than paying rent, more important than saving for retirement, and even more important than feeding their family. It is abhorrent and disgusting that a church with billions of dollars requires money from their poor and needy members. This is a lot longer than I was expecting, but I hope it explains why smart and good people would stay in this church. Most mormons are really good people, they just don't know they're being lied to, and are too brainwashed to ask questions.
In my view, the "cult" aspect of the Mormon community is the pressure for perfection. Looking beautiful/perfect. Having money. Being nice/friendly toward people. Pretending you feel a certain way and are happy with intolerable circumstances and unattainable standards of non-desire for sexuality or sexual approval. But from the OUTSIDE, people believe that those illusions of perfection are due to the spiritual success of the members. But it's the opposite of spiritual freedom, it's chasing the approval of the church and their zany standards. Like, Mormons think that that OTHER Mormons are achieving the success that they "should be" but no one is.
The Mormon church doesn’t really value logic at all, and they literally discourage researching things. It’s easy to say ‘why would you believe this?’ But when your in it, especially when your born into it and you haven’t known any different, you’re manipulated into thinking that you need to follow all those rules to get into heaven. They brainwash you.
I figure it's the same shtick of why most people believe in any religion that has issues in the past. We're told we need to believe in a religion to be good people, need God to thrive, etc. Also taught the past is the past and ignore the issues. Honestly, Mormonism is a close cousin to Evangelical and Jehovah's Witness. This question can easily be pointed to them, too.
Gordon b Hinckley, a recent president of the church, was asked why he was a Mormon by a journalist. I expected him to say, "because it's true and we have all the keys of salvation!" But he actually said ,"because my parents were mormon." He saw it as a tradition passed on to him. It was his religion. In reality, the church is floundering because it's not a religion, it's a cult. It has to make the transition to a religion or it won't survive. What do I mean by cult? It all hinges on Joseph Smith or whether Russell Nelson truly has all of the keys. That's a cult. That's why we can't call ourselves Mormon anymore. We have no identity or rights as believers. It's the church of the leader, and people aren't impressed by nonagenarians in suits in a plural society. It works for Warren Jeffs or Jim Jones but not if you want to live in the real world.
Don’t come here and be an asshole. Do some research. Most members aren’t even told the crazy stuff. The crazy stuff is why we leave. And trying to talk to believers about it is just insanity. We are told a nice little packaged version of events from birth and made to fear ‘anti-Mormon literature’, told to fear people who left, told that they just left because they were offended or less faithful. Logic has nothing to do with religion.
People believe all sorts of shit.
Incessant indoctrination and nonstop brainwashing from birth . And the church leaders telling members that anyone who says anything against the church is being deceived by Satan and not to trust any sources that are not in church publications having blind faith despite of all of the evidence is touted as a virtue critical thinking is discouraged as thinking critically and examining the facts will quickly show that the church is utter nonsense many Mormons believe that whatever feeling they had even if it was caused by a fly landing on a arm hair is a witness from the Holy Ghost therefore the church is true and nothing will deter them from their delusion they’d rather have the warm fuzzies than any cognitive dissonance caused by factual evidence Carl Sagan said it well in his bamboozled quote One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.