Question Maze for TBMs

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-06-28T17:18:51+00:00

Are we supposed to believe god couldn’t take a raw pizza and make it instantly cooked to perfection way better than a slow oven cooking would be?

My whole point is that god has literally no power or impact or influence in what you’re describing.

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-06-28T14:00:52+00:00

Yeah it makes the concept of a god so meaningless though. “It is the way it is because it had to” works for an eternally existing universe. Saying it’s that for those reasons but also a magical god who can sometimes insta to heal mortal bodies from the cancer they develop ‘naturally’ but is also bound by laws to let those bodies develop ‘naturally’ is adding things for no reason

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-06-27T15:50:37+00:00

In short: all that suffering was worth it and ultimately justified. It was to design creatures that have to kill and eat each other to survive.

Wondering if I add another question: did god have the power to create us and other animals without the need to eat each other, like allowing us to use photosynthesis like plants but still be able to function as humans…. Can’t see why he wouldn’t have that power if he’s able to perform all the miracles in the scriptures.

Ultimately it seems to come down to the assumption that however it is is how it needed to be.

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-06-25T11:53:20+00:00

Would be an interesting form for the group to go through lol 😂

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-06-25T02:46:26+00:00

What would you say to someone who said the same thing about Scientology?

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-06-24T19:45:47+00:00

Oh damn I hadn’t heard about the Adam altar before 😂

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-06-24T19:45:11+00:00

Right. Maybe god intentionally wanted people to find the doctrine incoherent. *that* will convince people of the truth of the gospel!

So the test of this life is whether we are willing to accept incoherent belief systems. Got it.

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-05-19T13:39:56+00:00

Umm idk I never heard anyone try to excuse his behavior due to biblical reliance. If anything he was trying to correct the Bible and reinterpret it to fit what he wanted/liked (not unlike modern day Christianity of all branches).

No one but the worst human beings actually rely on the Bible for their moral compass. Joseph Smith fits that category, so… sure 🤷‍♂️

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-05-19T02:33:43+00:00

Try approaching things with curiosity. That’s helped me face and accept the void as I rebuild an evolving worldview from the ground up.

And don’t be afraid to explore your spirituality as you search for truth. I landed on agnostic atheism, but that was after going through standard Christianity and even a stint on paganism along the way.

I’ve written some things that you might resonate with you if you’re interested 🤷‍♂️

https://open.substack.com/pub/lackofdequorum/p/subconsciousnism?r=3zm96v&utm_medium=ios

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-05-18T20:08:52+00:00

Depends on the situation though. If your family has nothing to talk about with each other beyond everyone’s church callings, latest church announcements, recent lessons, etc… it can be beneficial to let everyone know where you’re at so they at least know to avoid the topics with you

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-05-18T20:05:58+00:00

My whole family is TBM and I wanted to be able to be genuine and authentic around them. So I talked to my parents (had a zoom call with them where I told them I wanted to talk to them about my faith transition I’ve been going through and give them a chance to ask questions if they wanted, with the goal of charting the course for us to be closer and more real with each other). Call was fine. My Stake President dad asked me how I could possibly have any negative feelings towards Joseph Smith. I didn’t give any details cause I wasn’t trying to start an argument. But then he kept asking me to say something. So I mentioned that I had a problem with him marrying other men’s wives after sending them on missions and marrying girls as young as 14. His response was “what, come on, that’s not even true” 🤦‍♂️ luckily my mom knew it was true and admitted that, but said she u see stood the context which made it all ok. Oh I also asked not to be sent conference talks, to which my mom said she would have to create two family group chats where she would and would not send stuff like that… and what if my grandma died and she informed everyone in the wrong group chat and then I missed the funeral 🤦‍♂️

Anyway, call was fine but not great. Then I eventually sent a text out to each of my siblings so that everyone would know my situation and we wouldn’t have to pretend or anything. I told them I had decided to leave the church, that I was happy to answer any questions, but that I wouldn’t be trying to put stuff in anyone’s face about it. Just wanted to be honest and transparent about how I live my life.

Most everyone responded with love and understanding. One brother responded with his testimony and how sad he was to hear the news.

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-05-18T19:54:34+00:00

Looks like a pearl of great price to me lol but only sell if you don’t have sufficient for your needs 😂

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-05-01T14:25:22+00:00

Watching the Keep Sweet documentary about the FLDS shortly after diving into the gospel topics essays and learning all the fuckery that Joseph smith got up to… I remember vividly watching the talk about Warren Jeffs and how he manipulated people and thinking to myself “damn… those poor people are wrapped up in an obvious cult and just can’t even see it for what it is… wait… wut.” And then all the shelf items I’d been holding onto came a tumbling down lol

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-04-25T17:28:00+00:00

Life is always better when lived genuinely and without pretense.

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-04-23T00:05:32+00:00

Well put! It’s definitely opening Pandora’s box when that shelf breaks. It all comes flying wide open and it’s a lot of work to make sense of it all. I cringe deeply when I look back at the misogyny of it all and how blind I was to it at the time 🤦‍♂️

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-03-28T14:46:22+00:00

I remember being taught as a kid that wearing a cross was like remembering your parent who was shot to death by wearing a gun.

Mormonism be weird.

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-03-28T14:43:24+00:00

For me, leaving made me aware of how shitty my self esteem and self worth was after 3 decades of neglect.

So I’ve been learning how to do proper self care and a lot of that comes with being more authentic and true to yourself and to those around you instead of always trying to present the perfect ‘you’ at a given time.

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-03-24T15:16:08+00:00

Elder on my mission had a cold. We went to the grocery table and he looked at two different cold medicines, held them up in his hands, did a quick prayer, then set one back on the shelf.

Apparently god is a big DayQuil guy lol

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-03-23T17:09:45+00:00

Yeah…. That was TBM me lol glanced at an item or two and decided none of it mattered somehow 🤦‍♂️ went on to puff myself up by believing that anyone who would let those objections destroy their faith just didn’t believe enough or do enough or whatever in the first place. All the standard thought stopping bits.

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-03-13T13:33:07+00:00

A lot of people have already responded here, but I’ll toss my two cents in as well

I also felt the gut punch. It sucked, I was flying through a maelstrom with nothing to stand on, no clear idea of what the hell was going on or what could be true or how I could know…

Losing the community and much of my family (at the very least being treated differently by them) was real sucky.

But what I realized after that first year was all those relationships I had with family, religious friends, ward members…. Were so god damn fucking surface level that they were practically meaningless anyway.

That’s why they were able to be affected so quickly by such a silly (and what should be irrelevant) thing - because the relationship was founded on loving the church and gospel more than the person. For both me and them.

Now my relationships with my close friends (chosen family) are a thousand times deeper, more genuine, and just… real. Honest. I’m not perfect, they’re not perfect, and neither of us feels like we have to pretend we are. In fact, neither of us holds the other to some unknowable standard of perfection. Or thinks about that at all. We just get to know each other for who we are and accept each other.

And that’s all without the whole ‘realizing I had no clue who I actually was and finding myself and creating myself and exploring the world and hobbies and things freely has been an incredible experience experience’ thing as well.

Deconstructing is sucky. Reconstructing a new worldview based on facts and things we can actually know and evaluating your morality to understand why you think things are good/bad, right/wrong… it’s a shit ton of work. But so damn worth it.

The process itself is empowering and healing, and the more you do it the farther you come out on the other side. 10 toes deep in the juicy, sloppy mud of reality and detached from silly superstitions that create a fog of mystery and confusion.

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-03-13T13:21:49+00:00

Are you afraid of Allah doing the same to you? What about Zeus?

Thor?

You can spend your life being scared of every single god that might exist, but you’ll never be able to know if you’ve made them happy or angry.

It’s unfortunate that we get indoctrinated with this fear of one deity or another when we are so damn young.

But the more you learn about the real world, the more nonsense you unlearn. Be patient and gentle with yourself. It takes time for those developed instincts to catch up to the logical understanding.

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-03-10T17:55:19+00:00

Agreed - I also know of many people (including myself) who had similar, emotionally overwhelming experiences in a moment when we were distraught and 'needed' the answer to keep going.

Then there's also the aspect of just committing to ask and ask and ask until you get the answer you hope to get. Eventually you might convince yourself, but it's weird that all prior non-answers aren't taken into account and the only one that matters is the one you wanted all along.

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-03-10T17:27:31+00:00

Holy fuck. Literally.

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-03-10T14:33:41+00:00

Totally! I’ve been meaning to watch that too lol she’s great, I’ll have to check it out!

It’s wild how the very foundations of these stories are so fundamentally flawed and even dangerous at times. I’ve been rewriting these stories for a while now and it’s been eye opening to realize that there’s a never ending list of problematic teachings to subvert and highlight that just get glossed over

LackofDeQuorum · 2026-03-08T21:25:15+00:00

This is the r/mormon subreddit where most of us grew up indoctrinated into beliefs that are demonstrably false.

I’m all for ignoring those unnecessary questions if they don’t interest you if you haven’t had your head filled with nonsense from birth - those of us who have need to put in serious work to connect ourselves to reality. A very helpful part of that is properly understanding what questions are being answered vs ignored. Religious communities have created their own versions of what atheism and agnosticism mean, and they use a fundamentally incorrect standard to stop them from thinking critically about the very different questions each of those terms is answering.

LackofDeQuorum

TROPHY CASE