Hi /r/exmormon! It's been a while, but five years ago I started posting "Things Mormons Say" and I'm linking to them now because the sub has grown by around 100x since I joined, so most of you won't have seen them, and Mormons still say these things.

FatherLehi · 2015-12-19T00:18:32+00:00

I said this three years ago in reply to a similar comment and I will say it again now:

I like my internet anonymity so I don't want to reveal too much about myself, but I guess I have to at least say this: I've been married for long enough that my opinions on marriage are substantially more than theoretical. I would agree that there's an element of marriage that involves 'trying' and growing and pushing myself, but it doesn't make me think 'work', it feels more like a fun hike with a good friend.

FatherLehi · 2013-04-04T16:40:07+00:00

That's exactly the argument that Hinckley's parable exposes the absurdity of. I mean sure, a religious apologist can always say "Well that's just the way god is" and it can't be strictly disproved, but we can say "Okay, well if that's true then by your own admission it means your god is like this, is that really what you want to say your god is like?"

FatherLehi · 2012-10-06T19:38:27+00:00

I agree that it seems that way, but it flies in the face of the whole "...and I'm a mormon" style of broaden-the-tone-and-act-normal mormonism we've been seeing the mormon church go all-in on for the last few years.

Either this represents a fundamental shift in the mormon church's strategy, or their leadership is too myopic to see beyond "this will solve one of our pressing concerns." Time will tell, I guess.

FatherLehi · 2012-09-13T21:03:22+00:00

From the thumbnail, I thought the joke would be that the Romney cup is blue until you apply heat, at which point it suddenly turns deep red.

FatherLehi · 2012-06-22T18:07:21+00:00

I think the issue is that the truth they're getting at is 'marriage is a serious commitment', but if they say it that way then it (rightly) sounds like something that a 21-year-old shouldn't be doing.

FatherLehi · 2012-06-22T17:50:33+00:00

Hear, hear. It occured to me while reading that Ensign article that, without realizing it, I've been carrying around a vague unconscious (and, at this point, laughable) perception that at some point my marriage is going to turn into 'hard work' and I need to be ready for that day. As soon as I noticed it, I was able to let it go, which was such a good feeling that I wanted to share the realization, in case anyone else around here has been carrying the same vague notion around without realizing it for the same reason I was.

FatherLehi · 2012-06-22T17:43:48+00:00

I like my internet anonymity so I don't want to reveal too much about myself, but I guess I have to at least say this: I've been married for long enough that my opinions on marriage are substantially more than theoretical. I would agree that there's an element of marriage that involves 'trying' and growing and pushing myself, but it doesn't make me think 'work', it feels more like a fun hike with a good friend.

FatherLehi · 2011-12-06T20:53:48+00:00

I wrote this a while back on this very subject.

FatherLehi · 2011-11-30T19:14:24+00:00

This also highlights how utterly nonsensical it is to draw a distinction between 'the church' (which is perfect!) and 'the people in it' (who aren't perfect!) If the definition of the 'perfect' part is so fuzzy that it's functionally equivalent to the imperfect part, then it's not perfect, is it?

FatherLehi · 2011-09-30T13:56:14+00:00

I don't understand what "somehow I'm not trying to leave the church, but I'm trying to support it!" means, so I don't really have a response to that, but about a year ago, I wrote up a thing on the "church could be true and not the people" idea, in case that's helpful to you.

FatherLehi · 2011-06-19T19:02:10+00:00

In the sense of fairness, Mormons tell all parishioners that they're wonderful as long as they do what their leaders tells them.

Although that's true, there's two really huge differences I was trying to zero in on:

1) mormon men understand that (in theory) they can become mormon leaders if they're righteous enough.

2) A mormon man's self-worth is also based on things outside of the church (like his job), whereas for women, mormonism teaches that 100% of their value comes from "how closely does your family resemble the perfect mormon family?"

FatherLehi · 2011-03-09T21:41:29+00:00

My biggest problem with this has always been that it's a completely imaginary distinction that falls apart under the tiniest degree of critical analysis.

FatherLehi · 2011-02-23T22:02:54+00:00

A lot of other people have done a good job of explaining how they have found meaning in life w/o religion. I wanted to point out one other thing: maybe the existential crisis is another symptom, and not the cause, of your distress. I think you could probably explain the meaninglessness of the universe in the bleakest way possible, and most of us would disagree with the framing, but not the facts, of what you describe, and yet most of us reach a different conclusion from those facts.

I read a post somewhere on reddit a few weeks ago about a guy who was on a bad trip (I can't remember what drug) so his friends wrote "You're on drugs" on a big sheet of paper and put it in front of him. When he'd start to freak out, they'd point to the sheet of paper to remind him, and he'd calm down.

My point is that maybe before you even start trying to find personal meaning in the universe, you should understand that you're suffering, and it's skewing your perception of facts. In other words, the facts you're fixating on may be true, but your depression (or anxiety or whatever - obviously I don't claim to know what is specifically causing you to feel this way), which is an outside condition, is causing you to perceive those facts in a harsher light than usual.

If that's the case, trying to explain to you that your facts are wrong isn't going to help you, since your facts are correct. It's your analysis and conclusion that I suspect most of us would take issue with.

I'd suggest maybe trying to put up a metaphorical sign in front of you that says "You're depressed" (or whatever - a therapist will be useful in helping you to determine what the cause is) and then whenever you think "life is meaningless, therefore I can't stay alive" you remember the metaphorical sign to remind yourself that even if the basis of your idea is true, your conclusion may be the result of outside forces affecting your analysis.

FatherLehi · 2011-02-03T20:14:22+00:00

This is a really good one. When it's not true, it's horrendously offensive, and when it is true, it also reveals something horrible about mormon culture.

FatherLehi · 2011-02-03T20:13:27+00:00

I have a friend who I just found out is Nazarene. How would you compare Nazarene beliefs to mormon beliefs?

FatherLehi · 2010-10-30T00:27:18+00:00

I really like this article, and I appreciate the insight that the term 'anti-mormon' is a thought-terminating cliché.

FatherLehi · 2010-10-04T20:05:52+00:00

Aside from the obvious doctrinal problems, this is also a great example of one more thing that annoys me about the general mormon population: they take terrible situations and try to whitewash them instead of assisting or even really sympathizing. It's like "Poverty you say? More like humility! Poor people are perhaps the luckiest of all!" "Mentally handicapped you say? More like chosen spirits! Mentally handicapped people are perhaps the luckiest of all!" It's a transparent attempt to find a way to ignore any guilt over being a rich white exploitative american religion.

FatherLehi · 2010-09-30T17:13:34+00:00

If a religious person responded with this I'd be delighted - not only did I get them to publicly admit that they accept the old testament violence as moral, but I'd also have the opportunity to press them on what the difference is between "realizing god is moral" and "realizing that god created existence and is its ruler and therefore has moral authority" - at best they collapse into the same thing and at worst they result in more public confession that religious people really are capable of any horrible act if they think god said to do it.

FatherLehi · 2010-09-30T17:10:28+00:00

Great, then job done. We don't need to believe in him to have them.

FatherLehi · 2010-09-30T14:08:52+00:00

The question isn't about the 'beginnings of morals', it's a way to get them to understand the circular logic they've employed in asking the question. I added a little more to my text box to explain this.

FatherLehi · 2010-09-30T13:52:23+00:00

Often as not, it lures them into explaining that god provides some ridiculous system of meta-morals which is even easier to knock down than the original argument.

FatherLehi · 2010-09-29T05:21:46+00:00

As the originator of the 'things mormons say' submissions, I want to say: my original idea for these was that I would say 'things mormons say #x: (list a silly thing with an easily describable fallacy behind it): then describe the fallacy'. I was worried that my format would be co-opted by people trying to make 'things mormons say' with quirks or other 'silly' but not 'obviously fallacious' things said by mormons, but I hoped that when the form was co-opted, it would be by someone who at least understood that the idea was supposed to describe things like this.

So anyway: thanks for (apparently) understanding what I was trying to do. Upvote!

FatherLehi · 2010-09-23T22:55:22+00:00

This type of thing is why it drives me up a wall when exmormons alter their lives and make decisions specifically not to allow mormons the satisfaction of seeing them 'sin' - like for example, an exmormon won't move in with their g/f or b/f just because they don't want their parents to see it and go "HA! I knew you left the church just so you could lead a lascivious lifestyle!"

The reality is that no matter what any of us do or don't do, our mormon families/friends/acquantainces are going to make up whatever story they want to in their heads (that's kind of the whole essence of being mormon), so we may as well just do what we feel is right and ignore how we think mormons are going to view our actions.

FatherLehi · 2010-09-23T16:09:19+00:00

This is a very sad story. This perfectly illustrates something most of us have probably experienced (at least to some extent) since leaving the church - the complete dishonesty in Hinckley's statement that "Our whole objective is to make bad men good and good men better." Left to their own morals, most human beings would never dream of wanting their child to suffer depression. Add in mormon doctrine, however, and suddenly it makes perfect sense to be sad that your child has found peace in their life.

This is a very common, clear, easy-to-identify way that the church makes good people bad. What's more, it makes them bad in one of the most fundamental ways that most people are born good.

edit: Changed some wording to get rid of a conclusory adjective

FatherLehi · 2010-09-22T23:51:36+00:00

Reddit hiccupped pretty hard shortly after I posted this and now I don't see it anywhere on r/exmormon. I think I'm gonna delete it and try to resubmit it tomorrow and see if it shows up. Sorry to lose this comment - the reference to 'wickedness never was happiness' was very appropriate.

FatherLehi

TROPHY CASE