The church is the party making the extraordinary claims. Their evidence is insufficient in my view.

They also don't live up to my standards of inclusion, diversity, and intellectual curiosity.

Thank you for coming here and talking with us.

First off, a little introduction: I studied LDS apologetics deeply for about 20 years and was a science professor at BYU [I wasn't one of the liberal, non-committal types, either--I was an all-in, fully devoted, ~100% home teaching, show up at all the moves, testimony bearing, disciple of Christ]. Here's a brief synopsis.

I am curious what people’s reasons are for leaving the church

This is really two questions. The first is: what could possibly convince you the Church wasn't objectively true? The second question: how could you leave the Church when you previously loved it?

What could convince me the LDS Church isn't objectively true? [despite studying all the best counterarguments for decades]

• Five Key Facts
• Questions to Ask

How could I leave the Church when I loved it?

Motivation to resign

is there any PROVABLE evidence against the church?

I document each of these points in my two links above (Five Key Facts, Questions to Ask), but these are provable facts** that undermine the orthodox LDS narrative:

1. The 3rd Book of Abraham facsimile is incorrectly translated (confirmed by Michael Rhodes, BYU Scholar)
2. The Book of Mormon is packed with 19th century ideas (confirmed by Richard Bushman, LDS Historian: "… there is phrasing everywhere–long phrases that if you google them you will find them in 19th century writings. The theology of the Book of Mormon is very much 19th century theology, and it reads like a 19th century understanding of the Hebrew Bible as an Old Testament …")
3. Spiritual confirmations are common to members of many religions
4. LDS leaders officially taught that the Priesthood/Temple ban was divine (1949 First Presidency Statement)
5. Joseph frequently misled others about practicing polygamy.
6. Joseph was sealed twice to the Partridge sisters in order to hide the first sealing from Emma.
7. Joseph proposed marriage to a happily newlywed, 7 month pregnant woman who was married to a righteous LDS man.
8. Both Emma and Oliver Cowdery believed that Joseph Smith's relationship with Fanny Alger was adulterous (confirmed by Brian Hales).
9. Before the 1900s, over 60 individuals received patriarchal blessings indicating that they will “remain until the second coming” or “not taste of death.”
10. LDS scholars all concede that the First Vision began its life [in the historical record] after 1830: “In the early 1830s, when this history was written, it appears that Joseph Smith had not broadcast the details of his first vision of Deity. The history of the church, as it was then generally understood, began with the gold plates.” (Joseph Smith Papers project)
11. Joseph Smith retro-fit Book of Commandment revelations with Priesthood restoration stories in producing the D&C.
12. The Church believes that Adam and Eve were literal people (1909 FP Statement), lived at approximately 4000 BC (8 current manuals) and walked out of the Garden of Eden into Missouri. This is fully irreconcilable with the scientific record:
    • Aboriginal Australians likely migrated to Australia about 50,000 years ago, and extensive evidence shows migrations into the Pacific islands around 20,000 years ago
    • There was no global flood at approximately 2348 BC that would transport Noah from the new world to the old world.
    • All human genetic sequence data and inferences about viable population size suggest that there was never a time when there were only two humans on earth
    • Restored LDS scripture describes Adam and Eve tilling the ground immediately upon their explusion from the Garden of Eden (see Moses 4:29). Agriculture was not invented until about 10,000 years ago.

I'm happy to calmly (and charitably) discuss any of these points with you.

---

** A provable fact in this context means that all LDS and non-LDS scholars who are intimately familiar with the data will agree that what I have stated is most likely to be true. I will happily walk with you over to BYU to poll several science and religion professors on any of these points that you want to confirm.

edit: minor

The book of Abraham hoax is provable.

The lack of any archaeological evidence of BOM civilizations is provable.

DNA evidence showing native americans didn't come from the Middle East is provable.

The multiple accounts of the first vision is provable.

The temple endowment ceremony being a copy of Freemason rituals is provable.

The kinderhook plates hoax is provable.

The list is long and distinguished of the things that are provable with evidence that contradict many, if not most, of the truth claims of the church.

is there any PROVABLE evidence against the church?

Yes, Eygyptologists have reviewed the Book of Abraham. The BoA is an obvious hoax.

Robert Ritner's work is very good.

Yes. I am 54 years old, and gay. I lived Mormonism, through and through, following every jot and tittle I was told to by prophets, "judges" in Israel, and never, ever cheating on my wife of 29 years, either with a man and certainly not with women (LOL). Prophets of my era told proveable lies about homosexuality, horrible lies that hurt me emotionally. That is proveable, and someday, when I've won the lottery (yes, I'm joking a bit, but only a bit) I'm going to sue the LDS Church for what it did to me emotionally. The book "Homosexuality: A Straight BYU Student's Perspective" available in various e-formats for free and for nominal charge, has a whole chapter on the verifiable lies (they're so obvious that if you're truly open-minded and "not opposed to hearing different perspectives", you'll see how ridiculous these prophets of my era sound). Good luck in your journey. Try to have empathy for us who have left Mormonism. I truly, sincerely believed and lived it for 49 years.

FYI, In early January of this year, I was about as TBM as they come, no TV on Sunday, etc. Learned of this sub from a cross post on r/mormon. Visited this sub to see what lies these heathens were telling about my church.

I read something about someone named Fanny Alger. No clue who she was. Decided to find out. Not TBM now.

Keep coming back.

Can I introduce you to /u/FaithfulTBM? He might have an interesting perspective for you.

here is a mind bender - i struggled with polygamy and was given the answer that joseph probably didn't do it and that it started with BY - that it was instituted because men died and women need to get taken care of. this was still hard to understand so I prayed about it and got spiritual confirmation that these were the true answers.

then recently the church itself publishes essays stating things in opposition to what my testimony from the spirit was years ago. i am just using polygamy as an example - there are several examples for me.

so what kind of conclusion can I draw from this experience? did i receive false testimony before? are the church essays lies now -etc. etc. Kind of destroyed the whole system of belief for me.

so dude. let’s chit chat.

first, go look in your october 2015 ensign. behold the peep stone used in translation. the church has been sitting on that puppy for a century. isn’t that what you always were taught? no? the narrative you were given was that joseph translated the golden plates, right? reformed egyptian. those plates were soooo important. lehi and nephi went back to jerusalem for them. nephi decapitated laban for them. they passed those puppies down and protected them for a thousand years. mormon wandered around in the wilderness with those babies. buried them in a hill. god preserved hem to come forth. the whole book of mormon is a testimony of the plates. joseph claimed and the church has taught that an angel gave him the plates and he translated the plates. fair summary? we get the book of mormon from those plates. the book of mormon is the keystone of the faith. hinkley said it either is true, or the church is a fraud. there is no in between. holland said to leave the church you have to crawl over the book of mormon to do it. right?

does it shake you a little bit, even the slightest, to learn what joseph publicly preached about the coming forth of the book of mormon does not match eye witness accounts or what he actually did? does it bother you at all to learn he did not use the plates at all after he lost the 116 pages? he stuck that rock from the ensign in a hat and then buried his face in the hat and read off what appeared. sing the golden plates song in your head and let this sink in. he did not use any golden plates. that can be verified using only church sources. sugar coat it how they will, the fact is that the same rock he used to go fraudulently treasure digging is the marvelous instrument he used to bring forth the book of mormon.

sketchy.

chew on that for a bit. go do some homework to read up on that yourself. it’s a big deal. original sources are far more powerful than the readers digest reddit version.

let’s discuss the book of abraham. it is not some obscure book of scripture. the doctrine found in the temple is pulled straight from that book. the temple offers the crowning blessings the church has to offer. right? all roads lead to the temple. the temple is at the center of our worship. the temple is where the church spends the big bucks that are worship related. and yet, the doctrine taught inside the temple comes from a document that is a known fraud. the text it was pulled from is common and is a part of the book of breathings. it is a funerary text. it is so common that most egyptologists have seen multiple copies from multiple tombs. we know what it looks like. we know what it says in its entirety. joseph said he translated it. he did no such thing. he pulled something out of his ass and called it the book of abraham. he said it was penned by the hand of abraham. except it wasn’t. the church hid that since the 60s. apologists say he didn’t really translate it. he just used it to inspire revelation. umm...ok, but if you read his own words, that is not what he said. he was coming up with alphabets and said he was translating characters. go read original sources yourself. it is fraudulent. if dishonesty includes withholding information that leads to an incorrect conclusion, the church has been dishonest about this. they knew it was a fraud and still are teaching the youth it is not.

you have the book of mormon which is not a translation, even though joseph said it was. you have the book of abraham which is not a translation, even though joseph said it was. there goes your temple and your book of mormon. i truly hope you go look at original sources, because they are so, so damning. no apologist can make you unsee what you will read. if both of those foundational items are lies, it follows that joseph was not a prophet. if he was not a prophet, then where is the authority that makes the current prophet god’s mouthpiece? everything else just crumbles down imo.

but what about warm fuzzies? go google testimonies and conversion stories from people of other faiths on youtube. those are not exclusive to mormons. that feeling is actually called elevation. it is an emotion just like happiness or sadness or whatever. you cannot say something made you feel elevated, therefore all its claims are true. that is nonsensical. i felt elevation at a hair show. therefore mousse is true? i felt elevation camping. therefore rei is true? i felt elevation reading harry potter. therefore hogwarts is true? you felt elevation in a meeting carefully orchestrated to help you feel elevation, therefore the corporation providing the heartsell is true? one does not follow the other.

time to do some homework.

happy reading.

What type of evidence would be sufficient for you tell disprove the church?

I guess here’s a follow-up question: After you’ve left the church what new religion (if any) have you found to be your new truth?

Here’s one for you. The church teaches that sexual sin is second only to murder in seriousness. It also teaches that pornography and masturbation will preclude you from the influence of the spirit. Keep this in mind as we go.

Why then is it ok for a prophet of God to send a man on a mission and then marry his wife, or to marry a woman who is pregnant by her husband?

PROVABLE: (ain’t it great church emphasized genealogy for so long?)

Marinda Johnson Hyde was Married to Orson Hyde on Sep. 4, 1834. Orson was called on a mission, I believe to Jerusalem, Apr. 1842 and Joseph Smith married Marinda Apr. 1842.

PROVABLE:

Zina Huntington Jacobs married Henry Jacobs Mar. 7, 1841, and was pregnant with Henry’s baby when she married Joseph Smith in Oct. 1841.

Apologists try to justify Joseph Smith marrying other men’s wives with: 1) their husbands were unfaithful and JS married them so they could have an eternal marriage; 2) JS didn’t have sex with them, marriage only for eternity.

1) Jacobs and Hyde were very faithful. Jacobs served more than one mission and Orson was an Apostle.

2) Jacob 2:27:” for there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife...”

Jacob 2:30:”for if I will raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.”

In the early 19th century, no sex, no “seed.”. Therefore, in violation of Jacob 2:27. Very grievous sexual sin. How could JS receive revelation?

PROVABLE:

Also, church admits Fanny Alger was Joseph’s first plural wife. However, while the church hedges on when Section 132 was given to Joseph, it says it was given at Navoo, Ill. Section 132 is the revelation authorizing plural marriage. Fanny Alger never went to Navoo. The Fanny Alger “affair” was over before Navoo.

I could go on, but my fingers hurt from typing on my phone.

There is overwhelming "provable" evidence against the church. That isn't even necessarily the problem, for me at least. It's the fact that the church has lied and continues to lie about their past. These are provable, cold, hard facts. That's a big problem for me, as the church claims to be the mouthpiece of God.

I invoke the Hitchens rule. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. There is no evidence that the LDS church's truth claims are actually true.

Mormonism is the easiest religion to disprove all thanks to ... the well documented mormon history. It literally takes 5 minutes to disprove. We were all indoctrinated no shame in that, you don't know you are in a cult until you get out.

I learned the LDS church wasn't true back in 2007. I stayed active in the church as a closet non-believer for 9 years and finally left the church in 2016. I stayed in for those 9 years for the sake of my husband who remained (and remains) a believer. I also stayed out of fear- fear of what my family's reaction would be, fear of the unknown, fear of nothing to replace the church in my life. But here is why I ultimately left (not necessarily in order of importance):

1. The lessons are boring and depressing, with a constant emphasis on what you should be doing "more" of. I was spiritually starving, dying for anything inspirational and uplifting and grasping tightly to the few spiritual breadcrumbs I received from an occasional good talk or lesson, which were few and far between.

2. The control mechanisms of the church got to be too much. It's hard enough to submit to callings, visiting teaching, garments, unproductive meetings, and cleaning the church when you are a believer. But when you don't believe it, the situation becomes intolerable. During this period they changed the garment styles and I couldn't find any that fit properly or were remotely comfortable. My callings became an increasing burden that seemed pointless. My visiting teaching companion and visiting teachers were annoyingly relentless in their quest for absolute visiting teaching perfection, regardless of the desires or needs of those we visited. By themselves, each of these irritations was small. But their cumulative impact became great.

3. Recognizing that the LDS church is far, far away from what Jesus taught. When you are in Mormonism, you have no perception of just how bizarre and even creepy the teachings and practices of the church are. But over time it became pretty clear to me. The doctrines and practices of the church- such as food storage, the Word of Wisdom, the wearing of garments, the focus on dead ancestors, the creepy temple ordinances with penalties, have nothing to do with historical Christianity or Jesus, and in many cases contradict what Jesus taught. What is missing is genuine in-depth teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospels, and the rest of the New Testament- which have an entirely different emphasis and perspective from what is taught in Mormonism.

4. Recognizing that the modern LDS church is corrupt. This is hard to see initially, but once you see it, you see it everywhere. Sometimes it takes a personal experience (such as I had as a missionary on Temple Square) to see it. The Mormon church is supposed to be God's church, and a restoration of the early Christian church. But when you take off the blinders you see a church that is run chaotically, constantly changing policies and even teachings, trying to make something work, and responding to the crisis of the day with no apparent foresight. You begin to see in both big and small ways that the church does not care for the happiness and well-being of its members, it cares for itself. The whole concept of following the prophet, which is one of the primary principles of Mormonism, becomes a joke when you see how the prophets and apostles themselves have constantly contradicted each other and/or turned out to be wrong.

5. Realizing that it is spiritually damaging to live a lie. I lived a lie as a practicing Mormon for 9 years. I thought it was worth it to keep my family together, but it brought very little peace. Having the courage, the faith even, to live honestly has made all the difference, both for myself and my family.

In summary, I left Mormonism because it was a toxic spiritual environment that brought about fruits of depression, frustration, and confusion. And I also realized that, while living Mormonism can help prevent certain problems in life, it ultimately lacks the power to make better people. This is because Mormonism inspires bad priorities (such as serving dead people over the living) and motivates people to satisfy their desires to exercise power over others, which is a very spiritually unhealthy thing. It also causes people to worry so much about their place in heaven that it creates anxiety, which is not how god intended us to live.

Thanks for letting me share these thoughts, I hope something I wrote here was helpful to you. Best of luck.

If you look closely enough, you will see that "doctrine" and "scripture" changed in response to legal, political, and social pressures. For example, why were D&C 101 (1835 ed.) and D&C 109 (1844 ed.) removed, and replace with D&C 132 (1876 ed.) two years after a new anti-polygamy law was introduced? See citations here

On a more basic level. How did Nephi build a boat, transoceanic vessel, pretty much by himself, with a "rudder" before it was invented? How did they have enough water? A non-trivial issue . . . how did they do it without sheep to make a sail? See here

Why is there no archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon? See this Yale Archaeologist, Michael Coe, discuss the impossibility of Book of Mormon historicity here

[deleted]

People leave the church because at some point they discover the whole thing, from top to bottom, is a fraud and a hoax. If you haven't discovered this for yourself yet, then keep going and paying tithing until you do.

It was either that or kill myself. :)

In your post on the “faithful” sub, you mentioned there has been a “non stop onslaught of anti Mormon doctrine” to your post. What info here is so anti Mormon? Just read the gospel essays on LDS.org and ask yourself, “why didn’t the church tell me about this until now”? There is a reason why the church kept this all secret (polyandry, polygamy, sear stones) because it is so freaking disturbing and not faith prompting!!

Can I just ask you to stop referring to truthful answers as “anti Mormon” info? It gets real old. Mormons wrongly term anything that doesn’t support their version of church history and doctrine as ‘anti Mormon’, when it’s really simply ‘pro truth’.

Honestly for me, it was finding out that I couldn't trust answers to prayers. I'd built everything on those spiritual experiences I'd had and been raised to believe they would lead me to truth, truth meaning facts. Then I started realizing many other people have strong spiritual experiences about other religions, and who are we to say their experiences aren't complete because they don't have the complete truth? How would we even study the level of spiritual experiences in people? And if we have the highest level of truth, how come we're such a tiiiiny church compared to other churches? The holy ghost suddenly seemed very unreliable. Now people in the church are changing the definition of "truth" by saying the holy ghost only testifies of true principles rather than facts. That's not what I was raised to believe and it seems like the church is backing off of certain extreme things they use to teach because it's becoming a problem for them. Like how the book of abraham may not have been a direct translation, but instead maybe the egyptian papyri were a catalyst for Joseph to recieve a revelation for the book of abraham instead of a literal translation. Or that the book of mormon is more for spiritual purposes than factual purposes. Let me know if you want links for any of those last few, I have lds approved sources. Also, if you want to check out some of the tougher church issues in a softer, faith promoting way, there's the gospel topics essays that the church put out. I'll put links below for you. So basically, when I realized I couldn't trust prayer answers or the prophets (I'd been taught to believe the prophets could make mistakes but it was okay because we could pray and know if what they said was right, so we'd be safe) then I couldn't fall back on those things and had to figure out how to find truth without spiritual witnesses. It wasn't until my testimony had already been broken that I started looking into historical things, and finding legit things on lds approved sources (because I was still afraid of anti-mormon material) that showed I had been taught a completely hand picked version of church history my entire life. I still feel the spirit but I don't 100% trust it anymore. The only reason I haven't resigned yet is I'm giving myself time to process everything and giving my family time to adjust to me having serious questions and being inactive. But when my mind is calm and clear and logical, it only comes to the cinclusion that this is just a church, not the one true church.

Here's a link to the essays: https://www.lds.org/topics/essays?lang=eng

And they removed this one from the list, but it's still on thier website, it's on Joseph's polygamy and polyandry (marrying other men's wives):

https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng

Eta: oh and I would suggest actually reading the first vision account from 1832. The essay says they all support eachother, but the first account ever written in Joseph Smith's hand is missing many important things i.e. two personages or satan trying to stop him from praying

I'm a never-mo (never mormon), not religious myself because I (like many other people) realize the nature of religion being man-made.

I have family that are Mormon.

Mormonism is one of the easiest religions to disprove because it is a relatively young religion.

Also I'm largely bothered by the sheltered worldview and behavior manipulation is puts on its members.

These things are obvious to me. They are not to people who believe in it obviously(because it's all under the shroud of "agency").

All I can tell you is the whole nature of hiding church information and "only use church approved sources" or "only get it from LDS.org" are telling to any person who understands and cares about peer-reviewed sources and ....anyone who tries to control how you get your information is really not in your best interest.

1. There is nothing true about the Mormon church and its doctrine. The BOM is completely made up and is not history of any people in the Americas. The BOA is a fake. Joseph Smith was a con-man from start to finish. The D&C sections are inconsistent with each other, with the BOM, and with teachings by the later prophets.

2. Mormon teachings are homophobic, misogynistic, and racist. The homophobia does not have to be explained to you. You know it. The Mormon church limits women to being reproduction vessels only. The founding documents are still clearly racist and probably can't be changed.

3. Mormon leaders are inveterate liars. They have only recently started telling slips of the truth. But it's because they were being sued for fraud. They still make finding the essays difficult.

4. Mormons claim to be the true church of Jesus Christ yet they do not follow the basic teachings of Jesus. They do not care for the poor unless the poor become Mormons. They are judgmental and exclusive. They waste incredible amounts of money on great and spacious buildings buildings that Jesus would find repugnant.

5. The Church is nothing but a corporation bent on making money. They are not transparent in their finances, which organizations should be.

Okay, that's enough for now.

Hi /u/purplevengeance, welcome to the exmormon subreddit.

You ask "is there any PROVABLE evidence against the church?"

The answer is YES, there are tons of evidence against the church.

The church, however, has placed a psychological barrier in the minds of its members: it has labeled all that evidence as "anti-mormon", and has convinced its members that it is wrong to look at it. So, to access that evidence, the member faces an internal conflict.

It works exactly the same as when parents tell their little children that candy is bad, and whenever the kid is in front of a sweet he feels conflicted. Later in life, the kid learns to distinguish good candy from bad candy and is able to experience sweets while preserving his health at the same time.

With evidence against the church is the same: the member has to learn to distinguish between hostile lies invented by enemies of the church, and real documented history by impartial, accredited researchers and historians.

I don't want to tell you what conclusions you'll draw once you become acquainted with the huge body of real, historic, documented evidence out there. Just hope you'll reach the point where you are confident enough in your personal ability to distinguish between truth and lies to examine all that evidence by yourself.

Best luck in your journey :)

I had a lot of issues that bothered me for a long time (what we refer to as a "shelf"). One of my big issues was polygamy. I was really bothered by the LDS doctrine of plurality of wives, and I still am. And as long as an apostle can be sealed to two women (Oaks, Nelson) and expect to have both wives in the eternities, and as long as D&C 132 is still canonized, then polygamy is alive and well in Mormonism, despite the assertions of active Mormons to the contrary.

Anyway, all the things that bothered me weren't enough to make me leave or stop believing. But then one day I actually opened my triple combination and looked at the facsimiles that go with the Book of Abraham. And I could see for myself how silly Joseph's "translations" of them were. I was familiar with Isis even as a kid, but I had never noticed how Joseph had assumed she was male and labelled her "Pharaoh". I had never noticed how he took the god Min and labelled him "God sitting upon his throne." Uh, yeah... it's a god sitting upon his throne, all right... the god Min! I mean, it's all silly. Those facsimiles have nothing to do with Abraham, and any Egyptologist can tell you that (or maybe any elementary school kid who has done a unit on Egypt). And when I realized how silly all the things Joseph said about those facsimiles were, I had a sudden realization that he wasn't a prophet. He was just a guy making things up. And once Joseph's status as prophet and overall Mormon superhero falls apart, the whole thing falls apart.

It was a painful realization, but it was also the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. All the questions about things I had had my entire life were suddenly answered. It's incredible how simple everything is once you accept that it's all made up. I didn't have to justify polygamy anymore. I didn't have to understand the god of the Old Testament and his violent and cruel ways anymore. I didn't have to figure out when a prophet is speaking as a prophet and when he's speaking as a man, and I didn't have to understand why there was so much contradicting doctrine. Suddenly it all made sense, with the one simple idea that none of it was real. It explained everything I had ever wondered about and everything I had agonized over for so long.

You would be surprised at how easy it is to prove "the church" isn't true, once you are willing to ask whether it's true or not. The only thing that keeps you from the truth is your assumption that you already have it. Being willing to ask the question changes everything.

Think about this... Joseph Smith illegally destroyed the Nauvoo Expositor because he claimed they printed lies about him. Over the decades, however, each “lie” in the Expositor has been proven to be true, and now most of the info is in the essays on the lds website. Doesn’t that just blow your mind??

I based my entire life on the LDS belief system. It affected big things, like my lifelong future goals, and smaller things, like how I spent my weekends. Eventually, I realized that it is no more provable than any other religion. They "prove" themselves through scriptures, prayer, and spiritual feelings. If I'm going to live my entire life being obedient to religious rules and doctrine, I need reasons that go above and beyond what every other religion has.

Spiritual Witnesses

Scriptures

Provable evidence = LDS gospel essays found on LDS.org. Those essays were the last nail in the coffin for me.

You know the church hides info and history that’s not even debatable. Many of have left because, we found info about the church that we were never told by the church. The Essays being released was a complete shock. Let me ask you a question, would your Heavenly Father treat you the way the LDS church does?

“There is something fundamentally immoral to presenting a narrative that people build their entire lives upon. They decide what to do with their education, how much money to give, who to marry, when to marry, how many kids to have, what professions to pursue. There’s this massive amount of decisions that you make—in a finite life. And to base that life on a narrative—when not only the narrative isn’t what it claims to be, but when the leaders know that the narrative isn’t what it claims to be, and intentionally, for as long as they could, withheld the information that would allow people to make an informed decision about how they spend their finite time and resources—is profoundly immoral.”

John Dehlin

Op, I️ see your post in r/lds.

Ya know there is a difference between hearing things about church you don’t like and “an onslaught of anti Mormon doctrine”.

I've never been mormon. I take very strong exception to the idea that my parents were incapable of teaching me morals and values because we were not mormon. That is insulting to 98.8% of the world population.

My parents also did not teach me that their religion was superior to anyone else's, nor that I am super-special just because of their religion. They never told me that anyone not white and heterosexual was somehow deficient. Not for a second would my parents have claimed their religion was perfect or "true" to the exclusion of all others.

When their religion did not work for me, they accepted that - without ever pressing it on me, love-bombing me, sending anyone to call on me, putting me on a mailing list, or discussing it in their church or with their friends.

I did not need to resign from my parents' religion - freely given, it does not chain members, require tithing for entrance to heaven, or presume that I am going to hell for leaving.

"Bible Study" in my parents' religion meant "Let's talk about the bible, and all its meanings, nuances and interpretations," not "I will tell you what you will think." The historical accuracies (or not) of the bible were openly discussed - with fervor, enthusiasm and candor.

Despite not being mormon, I am a kind, loving, accepting, open person, disinterested in harming others or telling them how to think/be. Neither god nor satan control my life - I have chosen to take on that responsibility myself... and am doing a pretty good job, not in small part because of my not-ever-mormon parents.

The thing that did it for me was when I realized the Prophets statements are not eternally consistent. They change with the times. This made me realize they were products of their times and essentially winging it. I decided I can made better decisions for my own life (being better informed of my life's circumstances) than provably fallible persons claiming to be inspired by a higher power can with their limited information about my life.

Thanks for opening a respectful dialogue. I'd love to hear your response to this:

I would encourage you to examine the Jehovah's Witnesses, or Scientology, or the Seventh Day Adventists. How do you know whether those religions are true or false? What reasons can you cite?

Take that same logic and apply it to the LDS church, and you'll see why we left. The argument for Joseph Smith and Morminism is no better than the arguments for L. Ron Hubbard or Ellen White. What would you think of someone who left those religions?

After being out for almost 4 years now, I see Mormons the way perhaps the Mormons see the Amish. They are good people, and I have a lot of respect for their commitment and devotion. But does that mean that the Amish have the one true religion? Of course not.

Does that mean that you have to leave Mormonism like I did? No. It's up to you to find your religion wherever and however you want. I lose no respect for anyone who stays in the church. But you really should be able to comprehend why most people don't find Mormonism to be convincing. I sense that you are earnestly trying to understand, but for everyone else outside of mormism, it's fairly obvious.

For me it was a number of things. I was somewhat aware of Joseph Smith's money digging and marriage to Fanny Alger (because of RSR bought at Deseret Book). There were many other things I had never been taught.

First, the accounts of the tower of Babel and the flood cannot be literal, but the church still holds to that narrative.

Second, the doctrines of heavenly mother were very troubling- is it really my version of heaven to be part of Polygamy and have endless spiritual babies?

Third, I could no longer testify of Joseph Smith. I still loved the book of Mormon as a spiritual guide, but I didn't think Joseph was what he claimed to be, especially after the essays came out about polyandry.

Forth, I don't trust the church to teach my kids about loving your neighbor as yourself. Not after November 2016. I couldn't live with myself teaching my kids that gay marriage is evil knowing one of my kids could be gay.

That's why I left. Here's why I can't ever go back: I read the CES letter. I too the most troubling parts and researched both sides (apologetics and the best research I could find). I simply think that Joseph Smith was never a prophet.

You can take any piece of evidence I give you and discount it. Joseph Smith certainly did have sex with at least some of his underage wives. I can give you the evidence of you like, but you need to establish what evidence you will accept and commit to following truth whether it leads you away from faith or not.

I applaud you for doing your own research. Be brave in diving deeply and being brutally honest with yourself.

I left because my sense of self worth told me that I should be able to make direct covenants with God in the temple and not through my husband. I left because I had a lot of life experiences that didn't match up with things I had been taught my whole life: gays and non-members were some of the most "Christlike" people I knew, abstinence before marriage can backfire. I guess I would say that life proved a lot of things I had been taught to be false. I learned about the history stuff afterwards.

For me, my testimony boiled down to three things. As long as one of these things remained I was happy to keep being active in the church.

1. It was empirically "true". That is Joseph Smith saw God and translated the plates, Thomas Monson spoke directly with God, essentially all those things you mean when you say "I know the church is true."
   
2. It was altruistically "true" to the teachings of Christ in its community behaviors. Meaning that it did more good in the world than not.
   
3. It was socially "true". Meaning it was the best choice for me, my family, and my relationships.
   

I believed all 3 for many years. The first one that I lost was the empirically true thing. You've read about 500 issues on here already I won't go over those, but they weighed on me. I dismissed it as, "Okay, Maybe it's not 100% true, but it's true enough."

Then around 2010 the church started getting kind of political in ways that I believed were harmful. There was Prop 8, then they built a gigantic luxury mall, then they purchased a whole bunch of land for suburban development in Florida and luxury condos in Philly and I started discovering the network of political lobbyists in Utah and realized that the church actually did a lot of things which I truly believed Jesus wouldn't be very proud of. Personally I don't think Jesus cares about real estate development or who marries who, yet the church is spending orders of magnitude more on these items than they do on actual charity. That really struck me as concerning.

But ... despite my "questions" it was still my culture. It was my people. I had been Mormon for almost 3 decades. Then my extended family and neighbors started treating me poorly because I would openly question things like City Creek. My family (wife, 2 kids) and I moved, quit paying tithing, and the stake president told my wife that she should leave me. At that point we nope'd out of the church almost overnight. It had been coming for years, but that was the final pillar holding up any remnant testimony.

The church wasn't exactly 100% empirically truthful and while I still maintain beliefs in some tenets - I became unable to trust the things I hear or have heard from apostles. The church didn't seem to be very altruistic or Christlike in its community behaviors with such focus on investment and politics. And now the church was trying to fuck with my family.

We all left, we've not been back.

Yes. But what I have discovered with my TBM family, you won't trust the evidence offered until you prove it for yourself. Tell you what, though, read the 7 volume History of the Church and the 26 volume Journal of Discourses. You'll come away with an opinion, guaranteed!

Cannot “prove” a negative. The church has the burden to prove the positive by objective evidence. Not “feels.”

Not everyone leaves for reasons which can be proven with some concrete facts. Some people leave for the same reason people stay: it feels like the right choice.

I left 11 years ago for a multitude of reasons. I gave it a second chance two years ago and immediately regretted the choice. I only attended for three weeks and then I permanently decided I will not return. I am happier outside than I was in. And that is perfectly okay.

I left after trying to prove it right. Almost joined the sniffer movement in the process of trying to make all the doctrine add up. Praise to the man I dodged that bullet.

Mormonism is provably false. I’d suggest you do a lot of reading on every relevant topic discussed in this thread, from non-Mormon and Mormon sources: Book of Mormon authenticity. Early polygamy. The claim to priesthood keys. The Book of Mormon Witnesses. The Boom of Abraham. The Joseph Smith Translation. I personally believe that fidelity to Mormonism should REQUIRE a deep dive into the Church’s truth claims. But very few Mormons are willing to go there. And the Church actively discourages it (why might that be?).

Whether or not you take that invitation to dive in on your own, I’m sure this sub would be happy to engage on any topic you’d like to discuss. And I mean any topic. I’d wager, whatever the topic is, it will tend to disprove rather than support Mormonism.

Actually, I’ll throw that out as an invitation. Pick any topic of your choosing. Bring it here. If, after a thorough discussion, you conclude that that topic supports the truth claims of Mormonism, I’ll buy you a coke. If it does not, you may, if you wish, buy me a beer. If you don’t want to discuss here, send me a direct message and I’ll gladly discuss with you.

Very best wishes on your journey. You have wandered into very deep waters here. For most Mormons, it’s waaaay too much and they run away screaming. But if you’re sincere in wanting to learn, you will find this sub to be a fountain of helpful information. And I at least hope you will feel welcome and respected. Presuming you give us that same courtesy.

After my divorce, I realized every decision I had made my entire life based on the teachings of the church had only made me miserable.

I decided I needed to know everything there was to know about the church if I was going to continue in it. Lo and behold, everything that my seminary & institute teachers and priesthood leaders had told me were anti-Mormon lies were being confirmed as true in the Gospel Topics Essays.

On my mission, people told me that Joseph used a seer stone to defraud people as a treasure hunter. That the same seer stone was used to translate the plates. That Joseph married teenagers and other men’s wives. I called them liars and felt the spirit while doing it. Now I feel betrayed, and can no longer believe the truth claims of the church.

Because we were offended, lazy, and wanted to sin.

I see you got a lot of stuff.

I'll be brief. I was 100% in the church for 34 years. The fact that they now disavow teaching of past prophets of this dispensation tipped me towards the door. If God was not leading them, then where were they leading me. I have sadly come to find almost all they claimed has been altered in some way. If God is at the helm why the deception, the half truths, and misrepresentation?

What is anti-Mormon doctrine?

First off, the Book of Mormon has a racist story between the righteous God chosen people the Nephites against their enemies; the cursed with dark skin evil Lamanites. And for the Lamanites to get that desirable white skin, they need to repent.

---

2 Nephi 5:21:

21 And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people, the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.

22 And thus saith the Lord God: I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities.

---

Alma 3:6:

6 And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men.

---

Jacob 3:8-9:

8 O my brethren, I fear that unless ye shall repent of your sins that their skins will be whiter than yours, when ye shall be brought with them before the throne of God.

9 Wherefore, a commandment I give unto you, which is the word of God, that ye revile no more against them because of the darkness of their skins; neither shall ye revile against them because of their filthiness; but ye shall remember your own filthiness, and remember that their filthiness came because of their fathers.

---

3 Nephi 2:14-16:

14 And it came to pass that those Lamanites who had united with the Nephites were numbered among the Nephites;

15 And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites;

16 And their young men and their daughters became exceedingly fair, and they were numbered among the Nephites, and were called Nephites. And thus ended the thirteenth year.

---

Then on top of it, you find out that the Book of Mormon was plagiarized:

http://wordtreefoundation.github.io/thelatewar/

But overall, that racist doctrine is the reason why blacks were denied the priesthood and white supremacy teachings were taught. Like look at this photograph of a lesson manual from the 1930's:

https://i.imgur.com/Iq1OWXf.jpg

The one true church contains only 00.2% of the world's population? (that's being generous, not accounting for any inactive record members)... Yah I'm gonna say not.

Also I'm an atheist so the church didn't line up with my "values".

Read the LDS church "essays," including the footnotes, and you will discover scores of lies, half-truths, and revisionist history. Go to LDS-support FairMormon and you'll see hundreds more examples.

The only evidence that you need is the evidence the Mormon church waives directly in your face. The amazing thing is that people will discover the Mormon church is directly lying and directly contradicting itself, and say, "oh well, I'll understand why in the next life."

Take any one of the essays, look at the facts only. Based on church provided facts, and also the fact that a completely different story was taught to members for decades, the essays killed my testimony. If the story changes, trust in that storyteller is gone.

It's no better than any other religion. Same fear driven, "us versus them" mentality that does little to bring unity and peace to the world, even though they try through proselytizing like everyone else. It only brings unity and security in the circle of believers, not the world. Anyone not in the circle are judged and feared more. You can't love what you fear. And without love there can't be unity and peace. I align myself with the universal law of "love others as yourself" (aka the golden rule and pure essence of the gospel of Christ) , not the laws of yet another fallible man claiming to speak for the creator of the universe. Like other religions, the foundation the church is founded upon is fear, manipulation, and tight-gripped control, candy-coated with the typical pretense of "you are loved and saved... but leave and be damned." Also, feeling "The Spirit" and spiritual confirmations/testimonies are not exclusive to mormonism.

There is a lot of evidence. You have to take off your TBM blindfold and look at it.

For me my doubting of the faith started with the story of Noah. The church believes in the literal biblical account. The church teaches the literal biblical account. The church also says the entire planet was submerged fully like unto baptism. The scientific evidence concludes that Noah’s never happened.

If this piece of doctrine is false, then the church is false. I can’t see it any other way.

The funny part? Church members believe in this magical zoo boat that could not have possibly happened. It was most likely a moral story that got embellished and stuck in the Bible. The same church members don’t believe in science and discount it.

If you have time you can see the church is verifiably false if you do unbiased research without confirmation bias.

For me, the provable evidence was that I was lied to, period. That proved to me the church is not "true" in any manner. I also believe the facts prove it is not true, but TBMs will argue those until someone falls over with a coronary. I have no need to argue those things, the church lied about all of them, which gets back to my original reason for resigning: The church was not truthful with me, and no dishonest entity can be a "true church."

For me, it was the general lack of demonstrable evidence to support anything the LDS Church (and any religion) claims. That was the first step. Then I found out that a lot of stuff the LDS Church claimed was true, actually wasn't.

For instance, the BoM states the following things existed in the Americas during the time it was claimed to have been written, when we know for a fact they did not:

• Horses
• Steel
• Coinage
• Cimeters
• Elephants
• Silk
• Wheat
• Barley
• Sheep
• Goats
• Cattle
• Swine

You have the fact that the BoM quotes verses from Isaiah in 2 Nephi. The part quoted from Isaiah wasn't written until 60 years after the date Lehi's family is claimed to have left for the New World.

Also, the Isaiah quote that is made is word for word from the KJV of the Bible, translation errors and all. The KJV of the Bible wasn't even translated until two millennia after the claimed time Lehi's family left for the New World.

Not to mention that no Egyptologist agrees with Joseph Smith's translation of the papyri he claimed was the Book of Abraham. In fact, the hieroglyphs don't even mention Abraham. This isn't a matter of contention, as LDS Church leadership has admitted this as fact as well on LDS.org.

Speaking of which, the recent essays published by the LDS Church state that Joseph didn't actually translate the BoM from golden plates. That's right, those paintings and illustrations we saw of Joseph translating directly from the plates were actually a lie. People in the past were excommunicated from the LDS Church for pointing this fact out. Now the First Presidency has stated those people were right and that Joseph used a seer stone he had found in a well by putting it in a hat.

Take all those things and you have no choice but to conclude that the LDS Church is a farce.

My shelf crashed on my mission when I discovered that there was absolutely NO archeological evidence for the BOM. I even ordered a book from F.A.R.Ms and they could not point to any evidence for the BOM. All they had was excuses and speculation about what happened to the archeological evidence.

That’s staight up proof right there!

ETA: Welcome to this subreddit! Just a word of warning, the rabbit hole is deep, very deep!

Sorry, looks like I forgot to put question marks. The questions were1. Did I believe the church was true and 2. Was my faith in God strong enough to accept whatever answers I got if I searched for truth.

Just couldn't afford the gold star membership.

For me I watched everything going on with the policy change that affected children with homosexual parents. All of it came straight from the church.

The change was initially called a policy, then the policy was changed, then a month later it was reported to be revelation.

Besides the fact that I could never believe that that policy could come from God, I also can’t believe that a church that claims it will never be lead astray could change a policy and then claim it as revelation.

I just thought, oh wow this really isn’t true! I do not believe the church is being lead by God.

Do you take first-hand accounts as evidence against the church?

http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/home.htm

Read Helen Mar Kimball's account if you aren't convinced that Joe Smith was a statutory rapist.

My question to OP: what proof do you have that the LDS church is what it claims to be?

My biggest concerns are almost all philosophical and logical.

Firstly, I cannot stomach the Mormon lifestyle. Even if the church were true, I couldn't bring myself to carry the burden. If I did, then I would be miserable and depressed as I was before I left. 3 hours of church meetings, callings, 10% tithing, the expectation of missionary work, home/visiting teaching, church activities, church dating, reading scriptures, Sabbath day observance, etc. etc. etc. I want to note that it is not as much that I am exhausted by these things, rather they bore me to tears. I struggled to identify as a Mormon because I had so little desire to do church things compared to "worldly" things. Pursuing those "worldly" goals and things has made me immensely happy as compared to years awful depression and anxiety that was not able to be resolved until I left. In my humble opinion, the "strongest" members of the church are just people who love the culture. Those who have the most firm testimonies and who succeed in their callings have always (as far as I have observed) LOVED the whole deal. It's no surprise that when they lose their friends and experience life changes they fall away. I could be wrong, but again: my observations.

Secondly, there are quite a few doctrines that I cannot come to terms with. The first is the concept of unconditional love. One could logically argue that the Mormon god has all the traits of an emotionally abusive father. He asks you to do exactly what he says, and if you do not he takes away blessings and excludes you from his presence in the Celestial kingdom. That is not a loving father. Holding my eternal salvation over my head with guilt and shame is abhorrent. Again, even if the church were true, I would not participate. I do not want to be affiliated with a father that treats me so. The doctrine of prayer and obtaining answers is also cyclical and terribly flawed. It's anti-intellectual and silly that we are expected to pray for answers, and if they don't come, we are supposed to get more spiritual and keep praying until they do. I think the concept of the Spirit is really just emotions that people have associated with the church. Many of the more than a billion Muslims claim that Allah and Islam is the truth. Millions of religions and churches across the earth claim the same. How can we discredit their feelings, which led them to "the truth", and accept only our "truth"? There are other doctrines that bother me, such as how many people God killed in the Old Testament for not believing.

Third, the fact that the church is a cult. As aforementioned, people cannot question the church. They are told what to think, and how to think. The grey areas in the church are very limited, it seems to me. They perform secret rituals, pay a heavy price financially and time-wise to be members, and treat leaving the group as anathema. Members who attempt to leave are cut off from the family, or ostracized to an extent even if they are allowed to remain. People outside are treated with little to no respect for holding opposing views, especially homosexuals. People try to say that this is a cultural thing in the US, but that's clearly a lie when the church uses tithing funds to lobby against it. This behavior and culture is sickening, and it doesn't matter how true it might be, I want no part.

Ironically, the historical claims were merely a few extra nails to secure the coffin. I would have left without them regardless. But having read as much as I have about the church (almost all of which is verifiably true) I have enough that if my other concerns did not exist, I would still leave the church.

Apologies that this is so long. You would be surprised to know that I was a hardcore Mormon. Leaving the church took about 2 years of gradual questioning and examination. This after serving a mission and attending BYU-I. All I ask from you, /purplevengeance, is that you be considerate to exmos. You may not agree with their decisions, but remember that they are human too. Remember that they have their reasons, and as hard as it may be to believe, they can be good reasons. The attitude that exmos are all lost and in need of the gospel is simply false. It's an attitude that is harming many people who loved the church just as much as any other. Thanks for your willingness to hear from us!

They protect pedophiles by (legally) not reporting to authorities.

If Jesus wants it like that then I want nothing to do with the church or Jesus.

If Jesus doesn't want it like that, then the church is going against His will, in which case I want nothing to do with the church.

I came to the firm conclusion that Joseph Smith was not a prophet of God and that Mormonism was nothing more than a creation of man (just like all other religions).

I first started questioning just before my mission. I happened upon TheGodMakers. It's a terrible book and I would never recommend anyone to read it but there were still a few things in there that are true and Mormon apologists failed to make a convincing rebuttal to them. For example, I thought the Masonic parallels to the endowment were lies or at least exaggerated, but when I went through the first time I was shocked to see those same secret handshakes, symbols etc.

During my mission, I came across various other "anti" publications, which were not much better. They were mostly evangelical Christian arguments about "bible bashing" LDS doctrine.

It wasn't until I read Mormonism Shadow or Reality when my Mormon testimony got crushed. It was then I realized that Mormon history has been so thoroughly whitewashed and that there are serious issues regarding the Book of Mormon, book of Abraham, first vision, etc.

I truly and sincerely wanted the church to be true. I prayed and prayed and prayed over the course of my mission for god to help me overcome my doubts but it never happened. I was an obedient faithful missionary and did my best to gain a testimony that could overcome my fears of the church not being true.

I only wanted to know the truth. I studied both sides. Pro and con. Anti and apologist. Scholarly works. Everything! I even started devouring many of the books by Signature Books.

The weight of evidence against the claims of Mormonism reached a point where I realized it was simply man made. The facts are out there. People can justify, excuse or spin then however they want but in my honest opinion the truth was not on the side of the LDS church anymore than Islam, Catholicism or Scientology. It became abundantly clear to me. The apologist arguments either confirmed the problems but tried to sugar coat them.

If you REALLY want to know the truth, it's out there but you have to struggle BOTH sides, weigh the evidence and arguments and come to your OWN conclusion. I'd suggest A Letter to My Wife and Mormonism Shadow or Reality by the Tanners and go from there.

Hope you want to know the truth and investigate for yourself

Honestly?

The entire religion is based upon a treasure seeking conman using a rock in his hat, he used for his treasuring seeking con, to claim he could read off it words that then were wrote down into the book of Mormon.

Just as Joseph Smith conned people he could find buried treasure with his rock in his hat, he conned us into believing he was a prophet by using that same rock in the hat.

Mormonism is worth leaving because the truth is more important then a fairy tale christian fan fiction from the 19th century

It's funny when you said provable when the historical proof of your church itself is a mess. Go read the CES Letter or the book No Man Knows My History.

The burden of proof lies on the church to prove they have the truth. This is because they demand our time and money to belong. This same principle applies to salesman it is up to the salesman to prove their product will solve a problem. If the salesman has to use social engineering tactics to sell their product and or keep a customer then it isn’t a very honest business. Social engineering (scam artist)? Really you might say? Yes if a company or religion attempts to illicit an emotional response from customer or investigator say by promising a really exciting deal that has a ridiculous time constraint then they aren’t giving the person the chance to think critically about it. TSCC does the same thing with missionaries give an exciting message (JS sees god), have them pray about it hoping they get feel goods aka “spirit” about it and then plan a quick baptism date to get them to convert. Also provide love bombing to make them feel like they belong. The problem for the church is it doesn’t work as well anymore because our education system teaches people to think critically and research more. Now back to social engineering guess how hackers own machines most easily. Illicit an emotional response that prompts a quick response and if the victim falls for it you own the machine.

The point of telling you this is the church doesn’t try to prove it is true using empirical methods and critical thinking it tricks you into joining using psychological tactics. It uses these same tactics to keep you a member. If you have a critical thought about the church you are told to pray about it. This is done to illicit an emotional response hoping you will get the feel goods you call the “spirit” and just ignore the question by placing it on your shelf. The funny thing is the longer you have been a member the longer you have been conditioned to associate this good feeling with the “spirit.” The truth of the spirit however is it is just a feeling I still feel his same feeling I was taught was the spirit when I see beautiful works of art or learn a new concept and if I recall a moment when I felt it I feel it again meaning I can feel the “spirit” anytime I choose. Also try praying about a bunch of random things and see if the thoughts and feelings are always true. Are the results consistent? If not they certainly aren’t reliable enough to always be considered true. Would you bet your feeling on your case if you had to go to court? Could you make a scientific discovery using feelings? No not usually anyway. Critical thinking and attacking an idea using logic and empirical research is the only reliable means of uncovering truth and as the church cannot do that I will not dedicate my time and money to said organization.

Edit: grammatical errors.

I clearly posted several reasons above (word vomit for my first ever post), but one of the biggest reasons is the logical gap that happened when I realized I have to pay money to reach salvation. Can’t reach your full “potential”, (get into the temple endowment) without paying 10% of your income. If that doesn’t scream scam to you than nothing will.

I'll share a summary of my key steps: 1. The November 5, 2015 exclusion policy, in which they declared that children of gay couples was the start for me. How could a church that specifically bans a certain class of children claim to speak for He who taught, "suffer the children to come to me." 2. I started reading the LDS essays, CESLetter, as well as several of their primary source books, which have been discussed much more in depth elsewhere on this thread. 3. (You might want to skip this paragraph if you haven't been to the temple, since it will mean nothing to you). I learned that the temple signs I thought were supposed to represent sacred covenants with God, are actually relics from the pre-1990 temple ceremony in which they vowed to cut their own throats and disembowel themselves if they ever tell temple secrets. The right arm to the square isn't a sign of promising; rather it is the last part of the throats slitting motion with your thumb. The hand up in cupping position with the other hand facing down, similarly, is the end of the disembowelment, with the thumb having symbolically cut your guts open, while the other hand catches your own intestines. At that point, I realized the temple ceremony is not the eternal thing I had been taught about, but is a changing bizarre ritual, with no connection to the divine. 4. After that, I tried to stay because it was making me happy. But once I realized it wasn't true, I also realized it wasn't making me happy. I fully support people who stay despite the glaring problems if it works for them. But it wasn't working for me, so I left.

As a queer latina woman who finds personal fulfillment not through the rearing of her children or expression of some ancient in Utah's notion of womanhood, but through the expression of herself and her interests as a human being, I found the culture and doctrines of the church to be increasingly soul destroying.

That's it basically. The church castrated my self-will, destroyed my self-worth and neutered my self-expression. I found no joy, peace or hope within the church. 

Finding out the truth of it's history just meant I no longer had to make myself miserable in the hope for some future promised rewards. 

You already know:

1. Lazy
2. Want to sin
3. Were offended
4. Never had a testimony to begin with
5. Listened to anti-mormon media

I'm just jerkin' your chain. You're coming here to hear our side. Not many people are willing to do that. I appreciate your dropping by and engaging with us.

Somebody may have already addressed this, but in your edit you mention how surprised you are that comments have been more civil than you were expecting. To be straightforward, the church paints those who leave as deceived, as vengeful, as hateful, as unreasonable, as monstrous creatures whose only goal in life is to tear everyone else down. I hope you can see how untrue that is. It is true that many/most of us feel angry at times because we were trying to give ourselves over 100% to God just to find out that the narrative we were being fed isn't congruent with what actually took place. But we're not monsters. We're just trying to do our best with what we now know. And interestingly enough, it's been so engrained in us to share what we know that it's hard to be conveyed as these deceived, spiteful people when we're just trying to help educate others so they can make their own informed decisions. Be patient with us, but yes, thank you for noticing and mentioning that we're acting like decent, civil human beings.

I left because church is boring.

Read everything you can find, both "anti-mormon" literature and stuff defending it, and everything in between. Talk to those you know who left the church, and get their views. Take everything you read and hear with a grain of salt though, and make an informed decision for yourself, whether it's staying in or leaving.

Your premise starts in the middle with an incorrect assumption.

Back it up to the beginning and ask "Is there any proof that there is a god--a creator god--as originally claimed by the Hebrews and later by the Christians, Muslims and all the sects that claim the same god now?"

Here's your answer.

P.S. https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qkrwu.jpg

P.P.S. Glad you're on this subReddit with us. Hang with us. We do critical thinking. It's one of the best mental skills to acquire. Again, glad you here with us. We've all been where you are.

There's no one reason why people leave the church, or in my case, significantly alter adherence to its rules. I'd say one of the biggest reasons why people leave is because they learn that the narrative they were taught doesn't match up with actual history. Do some digging and you'll see what I mean. One of the biggest issues for me is that the BoM and the BoA are NOT what Joseph claimed they were. We can argue all day long about the translation process, what the church actually means when it uses a term like translation, or how even if the BoM was produced by looking into a hat with a rock in it, that doesn't mean its not the inspired word of God. Aside from any of that, Joseph had a narrative about these books, how they were produced, and where they come from. What he claimed is verifiably not true (which is more apparent with the BoA than the BoM).

"You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into."

I was born in the church. Started my own brand of apolgetics at age 5 or so. It was always important for me that Mormonism made sense, so I worked hard to find the sense in it. For a long time I succeeded. Finally as a married adult and after many major life experiences, my husband and I decided to help some people by taking a major risk. They were a ward member. They betrayed us and then lied about us to church leaders who then also betrayed us. Our hearts were broken...we knew we had been stretching our hearts further than ever before to help, and we were then witness to spiritual betrayal. The leaders apologised. But the emotional tie we had with the church was broken. It was like a blindfold was removed and we could think more rationally than ever before while still our morals and faith in God guided us. We knew that a person who lied terribly while invoking God was no prophet. No longer was Joseph just flawed, he was fatally flawed and not a prophet. I gave my entire life to the church until now, until earlier this year. I'm glad that atleast I can be out and hopefully, mindfully guide my seven children to a better, more moral life than I had.

This is an earlier post of mine, which outlines one of the main reasons I began to doubt. It has nothing to do with church history or the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.

Here's an experience for you to consider that really impacted me with respect to BOM historicity. On Quora, someone posed the question: "What was the largest battle in ancient history for which we have a written record or other evidence." Various historians chimed in, mentioning the conquests of Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, and others. One of the things they mentioned was that, even the "large" battles in ancient history maxed out at a few hundred thousand (at most) simply because the logistics of housing, feeding, and moving large armies.

After all the discussion, I then thought of how ridiculous it would have been if I had chimed in with the details of the Jaredite's battle at the foot of the hill Cumorah. In which over 2 million people died in "mortal combat" resulting in the largest civilization in the ancient Americas being wiped off the face of the earth. And in which the combatants had fine weapons of war, similar to what the Romans would use centuries later, and which archeologists are still finding on a regular basis (the Roman ones).

Even though prophets of the Lord have repeatedly confirmed the exactly location of the battle, there is still not one shred of archaeological evidence of this battle. I did not chime into the conversation because I realized how ridiculous it would sound for me to defend the "recorded history" portion of the question with stories of golden plates that were taken back to heaven.

I would venture to say that most other Mormons, including professors of history at BYU, would similarly have refrained from adding the Jaredite story to the thread due to the legitimate fear of being ridiculed. In other words, you cannot find one person outside of Mormonism -- in any field -- who accepts the account told in the Book of Mormon as being historically or scientifically accurate. Like the primary song says, they are Book of Mormon STORIES ... that is all they are ... stories.

Now imagine this one small example, but multiply it by the hundreds as you begin to critically analyze each and every truth claim made by the Mormon church. This type of experience, multiplied many times over, is what makes life-long members of the church willing to walk away from everything, even in the face of severe cultural ramifications (spouse willing to divorce covenant breaker, family shunning the apostate, etc) and potential economic ramifications (losing clients who now know you are no longer in the club).

I was an active member for over 30 years. Only member in my family, married in the temple to a RM and all three of our adoptive children were also sealed to us. What did it for me was when I discovered that the church history that I was told was no where near the truth. The two biggies were polyandry and JS’s polygamy. Once you start researching, the evidence snowballs into “I was lied to and this is NOT the only true church”. It took me years to get over the hurt and anger.

Book of Abraham. You said no church history, and the truth is, I left over the BOA, which lead me to the forest fire of church problems.

We do not have the Golden plates to compare to the Book of Mormon for translation errors, but we do have the original Book of Abraham manuscript that Joseph translated from, and egyptologists have confirmed it to be complete jibirish. We also have Joseph's Egyptian alphabet in his journal, also confirmed jibirish. That's not history, that is present day evidence he was a fraud.

They find out it isn't true.

Well, given that you're here dwelling among us at the moment, I'd say wait six to eight months and then ask yourself.

All the best.

The translation of the Egyptian hieroglyphics have always been a curiosity to me. It’s what started my path to wanting answers. In the end, watching Holland’s interview with the bbc guy put the nail in the coffin. The one where he was caught in a lie about oaths in the temple. I just couldn’t believe an apostle lied and tried to cover it up by changing the answer to his question. I felt humiliated/embarrassed as a Mormon after that.

"Provable" is an interesting concept. Most of life gives you evidence and you have to weigh and interpret and evaluate that evidence. Some are satisfied with little, some aren't. We all make our decisions. If I jump off a cliff, will I be able to fly? I can't say for sure. I make my best guess based on evidence. Also, sometimes we act on hope. Maybe I don't think I can fly, but I really hope I can. We all jump sometimes. Hopefully we all fly sometimes, too.

I simply want to ask if you are willing to look at the evidence with your spiritual eyes or with logical eyes? There is no evidence in the world that will convince you of anything if you simply state that the evidence is invalid. If you plan to back yourself into the "I just believe it's true just because" corner, I won't judge you. But that requires no effort and only takes "spiritual" eyes.

The Kinderhook plates hoax and the evidence against the authenticity of the Book of Abraham facsimiles is more than sufficient for me. If you are willing, look at the evidence from trustworthy sources. An example: Monsanto, the chemical company, is under intense scrutiny for the chemicals they produce and use. Dozens of studies and reports point to different conclusions. But who paid for and performed the studies? Third party, independent researchers with no bias for or against Monsanto nearly all come to the same conclusion, that Monsanto is a bunch of jerks. ALL of the studies paid for by Monsanto all say Monsanto is amazing. Which is more likely to be correct? I hope you see that the unbiased studies are more likely to be correct.

Another thought, this time regarding the "spirit." In the church, everything relies on you feeling the spirit to know the validity and truthfulness of that thing. I spent years listening to my leaders repeat this, and also repeating it back to others. Then I heard recently that Joseph Smith was reported, by many observers, to have translated part of the plates by looking at a stone placed inside a hat while the plates were covered or not even in the same building. O.o Really? Not once in 30+ years have I heard or seen ANYTHING along those lines. But the "spirit" told me that the story I had always heard was the truth, not the actual true story. So was it the spirit that lied to me? Or was it the CES that lied to me? It has to be one or both. That invariably leads to "what other lies have I believed and defended?" That was it for me. Apologists will say "the method doesn't matter" and I would say that's correct. Then please explain why the true method is not the standard seminary answer.

Everyone has their own story and everyone has their own evidence. I can simply say this: When I believed Mormonism was what it claimed to be I was all in. Money. Time. Family. Reputation. Everything. When my story unfolded and the evidence was clear to me that Mormonism was not what it claimed to be... I was out. All the way out. Mentally at first. Then stopped attending. Then began openly talking to everyone I knew that would listen.

Why do people leave the church?

I feel like most of the comments here have focused on your second question, not the first. I also think there is a third question you are asking which is "what evidence is sufficient to consider leaving?" I'll focus on the first question for now, since the other comments address the other two pretty thoroughly.

I think there are many reasons people leave the church. However, I think for those you'll find here on Reddit, most had very strong testimonies before leaving and most only chose to "sin" after they already lost their faith in the moral authority of the church.

I'm going to take a stab in the dark, but here are my guesses for why people leave by proportion.

• 85% leave due to never having a testimony (think converts who stop attending within a year after their baptism). I would guess that most never had a testimony and only got baptized because they felt pressured by or socially-obligated to missionaries. This also includes people who are on church records as being baptized, but never were.

• 10% are youth who never enjoyed church and never gained a testimony. They quit going once they have moved away from home.

• 5% are active members who had full testimonies but left for various reasons.

How I'm reaching my numbers: only about 35% of the church membership is considered active. Worldwide, large swaths of of the church rolls contain people who don't consider themselves "Mormon". This is about 10 million people (rough guess). About 100,000 people have resigned their membership or been excommunicated in recent decades. There are obviously a lot of youth who drop out when they turn 18, but I have no idea how many there are. I'm going to guess about 200,000 and roll any error into the first category. Then I wave my hands a lot and guess some percentages that are somewhat near the numbers I cited above.

So, let me now break down that other 15% percent. By these percentages, I am indicating what I would guess is the initial catalyst for someone breaking from the church. I would say most apostates end up resonating with the first four points at some point during their faith transition.

• 40% leave over social issues like gay marriage, the November policy, etc., financial transparency

• 25% leave over historical/doctrinal reasons, like polygamy, Brigham's racism and greed, shifts in doctrine, changing standards of tithing, temple ceremony origins

• 15% leave because they couldn't handle the pressure anymore, didn't want to continue committing huge amounts of resources, were burned out, etc.

• 10% leave over fundamental truth claims, like whether Joseph was a prophet or not, the lack of modern prophesy, the Book of Abraham/Book of Mormon translations and historicity

• 5% leave because they were offended by someone personally

• 5% leave because they wanted to sin and felt stifled by church morality.

I would further guess that historical issues are the biggest secondary issue for apostates, meaning they start questioning whether the church is true, then they stumble on the history and down the rabbit hole they go.

For me, I doubted because I couldn't parse when a prophet was speaking as a prophet. I thought I had settled the question, but then I came across some full Brigham Young quotes in all their glorious context and learned that BY had inserted false doctrine (according to me, the Bible, and other LDS prophets) into the temple ceremony. How could something that sacred also include the blatantly false doctrine that Adam is our God? How could the Lord allow a true prophet, speaking as a man, to desecrate the most sacred experience in Mormondom? At that point, I realized that there was no clear dividing line. So, then, I reluctantly asked how I would know if Brigham Young was a false prophet. I asked the same of Joseph. After both passed every "false prophet" test with flying colors, I decided to pray about it, and I received a spiritual witness that Brigham Young and Joseph Smith were false prophets. From there, I turned on my flashlight and decided to explore the rest of the rabbit hole.

Naked Mormonism is another great blog that deals with the church's history using factual reference sources that is told in a way that is not necessarily the church's sugar coated version you grew up with. The church's history is fascinating if you're willing to accept the non-faith affirming facts.

There is a complete list here, based on a survey, which I think is roughly accurate.

The top reasons are as follows:

I ceased to believe in the church's doctrine/theology 74%

I studied church history and lost my belief 70%

I lost faith in Joseph Smith 70%

I lost faith in the Book of Mormon 65%

I lost confidence in the general authorities 50%

Church's stance on women 47%

Church's stance on homosexuals / Prop 8 48%

Church's stance on race issues (blacks, native Americans, etc.) 43%

I did not feel spiritually edified at church 47%

Church's stance on science-related matters 40% .... the list continues.

This was done in 2012, so I suspect that "Church's stance on homosexuals" may have increased after the Nov 2015 policy announcement.

This is the best public study that I have seen.

For me it all boiled down to "if Christ were on the Earth, would he approve of the church?" My answer to that is no.

“PROVABLE evidence”

What provable evidence did you use to decide the church is true? There is none, except feelings.

As far as evidence that the church isn’t true, there’s plenty. Whether or not you consider it provable or not is up to interpretation of the evidence, I suppose. Either way, it’s far more evidence than you ever used to decide it was true in the first place.

The church is the one making the big claims here and are unable to provide evidence. That’s like me trying to tell you that I can fly. I’m never going to do it, but it’s up to you to prove me false.

Uh yes, the church was/is racist as hell. They denied the priesthood and temple blessing from blacks based solely on their skin color claiming they were cursed or less valiant in the premortal existence til 1978. Today, they deny all of that to racism. Definitely provable, definitely racist as f*ck.

Here's the logic of the LDS church: Thomas S. Monson is the direct, authorized steward of Jesus' one, true church. If this is true, Thomas S. Monson should be the final and only authority on Earth when it comes to any matter whatsoever due to this divine authority from the Almighty.

That claim is astonishing, bold, outlandish, and the biggest news to hit Earth IF IT IS A LEGITIMATE CLAIM. The only proof of this claim is divine communication, directly from the Lord through the Holy Ghost. The entirety of the LDS church lies in whether the Holy Ghost testifies of Thomas S. Monson and all his divinely inspired words.

Let's analyze whether there are any methods available to mankind to receive pure communication from the Holy Ghost. The communication needs to be divine for it to prove the claims of Thomas S. Monson so it is important to filter out methods that leave doubt as to the divinity of the communication method.

Lets go through some of the ways the Holy Ghost communicates to humanity - I'll use Preach My Gospel since it not only has information on the subject but is supposed to be the ultimate guide to missionary work. Since missionary work is the most pressing issue of the LDS church considering it is the only way to "fill the whole Earth" before Jesus comes back, I would think Preach My Gospel is a sufficient starting place for the subject.

Quoting from Preach My Gospel: "Study the following table. Think >of times when you have experienced any of the feelings, thoughts, >or impressions described in the passages below. As you study and >gain experience, add other passages to this list. Think of how you >can use these principles to help others feel and recognize the >Spirit."

This table of references will help give a starting point on the recognition of this all important aspect of the LDS Church.

D&C 6:23; 11:12–14; Romans 15:13; Galatians 5:22–23 Gives feelings of love, joy, peace, patience, meekness, gentleness, >faith, and hope.

Feelings of love, joy, peace, patience, meekness, gentleness, faith, and hope are, in my opinion, feelings that can happen with no divine intervention. If these feelings come from sources other than the Holy Ghost, how can I use them to test whether Thomas S. Monson is God's chosen prophet?

D&C 8:2–3 Gives ideas in the mind, feelings in the heart.

Ideas in the mind and feelings in the heart, in my opinion, can happen with no divine intervention. If these feelings come from sources other than the Holy Ghost, how can I use them to test whether Thomas S. Monson is God's chosen prophet?

D&C 128:1 Occupies the mind and presses on the feelings.

To continue the theme - Occupation of the mind and pressing of feelings, in my opinion, can happen with no divine intervention. If these thoughts and feelings come from sources other than the Holy Ghost, how can I use them to test whether Thomas S. Monson is God's chosen prophet?

Joseph Smith—History 1:11–12 Helps scriptures have strong effect.

Could scriptures have a "strong effect" without divine intervention? How many religions have scripture that also have a strong effect on their believers? Does this mean all religions which preach with strong scripture are receiving divine intervention?

D&C 9:8–9 Gives good feelings to teach if something is true.

This one may as well be the mantra of /r/exmormon - good feelings while something is being taught could be from a divine source but I think that is a poor method to prove whether Thomas S. Monson has full, god like authority from Heaven. Seems like a good speaker could get a person to have good feelings along with countless other scenarios that human beings experience.

Alma 32:28; D&C 6:14–15; 1 Corinthians 2:9–11 Enlightens the mind.

This one is circular logic - the idea is enlightening if it is divine and the idea is divine if it is enlightening.

Alma 19:6 Replaces darkness with light.

If this is literal then it could be an observable event. However, if it is metaphorical then it is another circular-logic citation.

Mosiah 5:2–5 Strengthens the desire to avoid evil and obey the commandments.

If you follow commandments of Thomas S. Monson, then the Holy Ghost is telling you those commandments are true?

John 14:26 Teaches truth and brings it to remembrance.

Truth is a relative term - if I am taught that the LDS church is true, how am I supposed to know if the Holy Ghost taught that to me or if I was indoctrinated long before the age of 8 years old? Human memory is something that is observable and measurable through science. How would I know if a memory I recall was brought from a divine source?

John 14:27 Gives feelings of peace and comfort.

More feelings and more of the same.

John 16:13 Guides to truth and shows things to come.

Was I guided from birth to Mormonism by my Mom who was influenced by her Mormon upbringing? Determining if this comes from divine intervention is a useless and demeaning process. It cheapens your life to a series of supposedly divine pushes and prods with no evidence that and god was involved at all - besides Thomas S. Monson telling me that a god was involved.

Moroni 10:5 Reveals truth.

Truth being relative is back on the list. How can I determine if the "truth" was revealed by a divine source or just by my own, squishy brain?

D&C 45:57 Guides and protects from deception.

Divine pushing and prodding? Protection from deception? Doubtful at best.

2 Nephi 31:18; D&C 20:27; John 16:14 Glorifies and bears record of God the Father and Jesus Christ.

If I believe in God and Jesus then it is divine - more circular logic.

D&C 42:16; 84:85; 100:5–8; Luke 12:11–12 Guides the words of humble teachers.

The teachers might just be spewing out whatever words come to mind. Not much of a divine test...

John 16:8 Recognizes and corrects sin.

Guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt, and more guilt. If this is the Holy Ghost's doing then the Mormons are overflowing with constant feelings of the Holy Ghost.

Moroni 10:8–17; D&C 46:8–26; 1 Corinthians 12 Gives gifts of the Spirit.

The Spirit giving the gifts of the Spirit is spiritual because the Spirit, spirits the Spirits gifts... Ugh this one is the worst one so far.

Alma 10:17; 12:3; 18:16, 20, 32, 35; D&C 63:41 Helps to perceive or discern the thoughts of others.

Mind reading - Miss Cleo used to have commercials in the early 2000's late at night claiming she could give me a psychic reading over the phone. Sometimes, I can just read body language and I perceive all kinds of thoughts in others. If this is a test of divinity then does that mean autistic children are severely lacking in this gift?

D&C 46:30; 50:29–30 Tells what to pray for.

I could swear it was my Mom telling me what to pray for every night when I was little. I can tell you for sure, she's no holy ghost.

2 Nephi 32:1–5; D&C 28:15 Tells what to do.

This one's not great.

1 Nephi 10:22; Alma 18:35 Helps the righteous speak with power and authority.

What about when the unrighteous speak with power and authority? Is that from God?

D&C 21:9; 100:8; John 15:26 Testifies of the truth.

More truthiness.

2 Nephi 31:17; Alma 13:12; 3 Nephi 27:20 Sanctifies and brings remission of sins.

Gets rid of the guilt that it gave to you in the first place.

1 Nephi 2:16–17; 2 Nephi 33:1; Alma 24:8 Carries truth to the heart of the listener.

Giver, conduit, helper... it's true because Holy Ghost and it's Holy Ghost because it's true.

1 Nephi 1:1–3; Exodus 31:3–5 Enhances skills and abilities.

Here, God gave the early Jews the skills needed to build with more skill. If I gain a skill, does that mean it was from a divine source? If a prostitute gets better at finding clients, that for sure isn't from God. If an accountant makes a superior spread sheet, who knows? This isn't a metric for measuring divinity - this is just a way to point at literally any work associated with Thomas S. Monson as divine.

1 Nephi 7:15; 2 Nephi 28:1; 32:7; Alma 14:11; Mormon 3:16; >Ether 12:2 Constrains (impels forward) or restrains (holds back).

This one isn't really a way to test whether the Holy Ghost is in your life. You could point to any event that put you closer in line with Thomas and say that was the Holy Ghost constraining you. Not a great method to find useful information on the LDS church.

D&C 50:13–22 Edifies both teacher and students.

Edifies is another word for "makes you feel good."

D&C 88:3; John 14:26 Gives comfort.

More good feelings.

If those are some of the best ways to identify whether Thomas S. Monson is the legitimate heir of Jesus Christ, who supposedly is God, then I don't think there is any sufficient evidence to support the claim that the LDS church comes from a divine source.

So for someone who wanted PROVABLE evidence against your current beliefs, you don't seem to require any PROVABLE evidence in the opposite direction.

I'm on my phone and haven't read the responses. But I just want to say thank you for asking instead of just accepting the Brethrens' claims that we only left because of laziness, wanting to sin, being led away by the devil, or never having a testimony in the first place.

You don't need evidence to leave the church. You just need a lack of a testimony. After years of prayer, fasting, scripture reading, obedience, endowments, etc. -- I didn't have a testimony, and I was tired of killing myself emotionally to try and get one.

Simple: who is/was the a prophet? What did they prophesy? I cannot remember the last time there was an official announcement of prophecy. "Statements" sure. Prophesy no.

is there any PROVABLE evidence against the church?

Yes. Quite a bit.

The real question is do you honestly want to know?

The road to leaving the church is paved with questioning it.

This podcast goes over a study that might interest you:

http://www.mormonstories.org/top-5-myths-and-truths-about-why-committed-mormons-leave-the-church/

Honestly, I personally couldn't take the racism and sexism, and I just didn't think God could be behind that. Or Prop 8. The whole gold plates story sounded kind of fishy, too.

Years later I stumbled onto this article. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/us/some-mormons-search-the-web-and-find-doubt.html?referer=

Even though I didn't see myself as Mormon anymore, I was so sure this stuff wasn't true. I set out to confirm it was some kind of mistake and....well actually come to find out early Mormon history is full of ugliness I never imagined. Don't look into it too much if your church makes you happy. Once you learn the truth you may find a way to participate and even to believe, but nothing will be the same again. Recognizing that the approach taken in Sweden - making people either resign from the LDS church or promise never to share true history with anyone - backfired and won't work in the internet age, they are now being more open and all those major facts are confirmed in recently released church essays. If you dig, some of the details are even worse.

If you are Mormon you can avoid doing that research and keep a simple faith or go through the emotional earthquake that comes with learning the truth. But nobody should trivialize the experience or criticize someone else's choices. We didn't create this problem; the founders and leaders did. There is plenty of evidence. How you choose to interpret it is up to you. I think the only way rhe pieces fit is that it was founded as a fraud and through the influence of good people has become a pretty decent community. But the nepotism remains. Just look at the leadership.

I didn’t leave over historical issues. I left because to me, mormon god “Heavenly Father” wasn’t believable. I couldn’t believe in a god that really was that sexist, racist and homophobic.

I left over 2 decades ago after divorcing an abusive priesthood lording controlling husband. Something about that process made me see that the church was also abusive and controlling toward women and girls. My eyes were opened to all the ways large and small that the church dismissed and devalues women while also saying that they value and esteem women. I couldn’t un-see it. Also, after leaving, I didn’t have to try so hard to prove the Church wasn’t racist when I was confronted about it in normal non Mormon society. Also, I’m gay. Historically just in my lifetime the church has done some pretty horrendous things to gay people.

AND THEN.......I discovered the historical problems, the lies, the absolute lack of evidence that Book of Mormon cultures and societies and wars ever existed, the legacy of polygamy and its many harms to women and girls that still persist today in spin off fundamentalist Mormon sects. It doesn’t matter that mainstream Mormons don’t practice it today. If you look at how it is practiced today in the fundamentalist sects (watch “Escaping Polygamy” on A&E) it is horrifying....and then you realize that this was the reality for women and girls (and boys) from the 1830’s to 1904 and beyond -almost 75 years-in the mainstream church. Generations of women and children lived and died in this horrid way.

The best thing about having left is that I am free now. Free to have my own thoughts and opinions-not the thoughts and opinions I “should have” I’m free to live the life I want- not he life I “should want”.

I'd say I ran out of evidence FOR the church. Without going into church history stuff, here's why I left.

I had gained a testimony and a spiritual witness of the origins of our scriptures.

Then I read some LDS church-produced essays, which directly contradicted many things I'd gained a testimony of.

Beyond the fact that the essays were incongruent with what the LDS church had taught me my entire life; beyond that fact that this information was known before I was born, yet somehow kept from me despite all my studying; beyond finding out that things previously labeled anti-mormon lies were actually true all along, the thing that broke my testimony was that I had received a spiritual witness confirming the truth of something that was actually false.

Sure, I could blame my own inability to properly recognize the spirit. But if that was the case, then everyone else in the church was just as bad at it. Zero church members have ever claimed a spiritual witness that the book of Abraham is not what it claims to be. And if the spirit is so ubiquitously misunderstood among members, how could I claim to be correct while everyone else is wrong? What if the spirit is nothing more than the feeling of having your prior beliefs reinforced? That would lead to people of every religion on Earth sincerely believing they received a witness from God that their religion is true.

Maybe we're just all wrong together - when I allowed my mind to consider that possibility, it was like an explosion of understanding in my head. If I still believed in the spirit, I'd call it the greatest spiritual witness of my life, like a hydrogen fusion bomb in comparison to black cat firecrackers of all my previous experiences.

Maybe God is a huge dick and deliberately made his one true church look super sketchy so it's damn near impossible to believe. More likely, Mormons are wrong along with every single other religion that's ever existed on Earth.

I don't have a huge list of reasons. The church has always left a bad taste in my mouth. As a small child I loved to sing. I refused to sing the songs in primary so much that the teachers complained to my mother. I never believed a thing I was taught in my excruciating classes (sunbeams?) Never cared about any of it. Never tried to remember lines in boring church plays. Then when I was 11 or so my bishop and I had a meeting. During this meeting he asked if I ever touched myself. I had no idea what he was talking about so he further explained. I was mortified and felt so disgusted. I stopped going...told my parents there was no way I'd ever go back.

Then I dated someone who is mormon and I loved him and wanted things to work out, so I took discussions with missionaries. I wanted to believe and I tried really hard. We got married with the plan that I would become temple worthy (fucking worthy??? I always hated that) so we could be sealed. After the wedding I realized I'd made a huge mistake and how I could never raise any children in the church, especially any daughters I might have. We lasted about a month. I don't know what I was thinking.

So basically I hated everything about the church from a very young age. Maybe I'm possessed but I seriously recoil when I think about it. Do bishops ask everyone if they masturbate when they're 11?

I didn't really have an axe to grind against the church. If it was true I wanted to be there. If it's not true, I don't.

I left because I came to a new conclusion based on new (to me) information. I had no idea there were so many hidden problems in the church despite having been a lifelong, committed member, including giving up two years to sell the church to others, temple marriage, and so on. The church had created some major fear in me when it came to examining any information that they didn't give me. I somehow overcame that and found out about a lot of things including:

• Book of Abraham translation, a verifiably BS translation. We know because the papyri exist and can be fact-checked, unlike the Book of Mormon's gold plates which God repo'd.
• Joseph Smith not only practiced polygamy (didn't know, thought it was a BY thing), but also married at least 10 women who were currently married. WTF? I thought polygamy was God's way of helping out all the widows because we Mormons were so persecuted?! Well, among these women included two whose current husbands were sent on a mission by JS. Another was currently pregnant and married, Zina Huntington Jacobs. WTF? That's not suspicious at all. Some husbands knew and agreed to the odd arrangement, others didn't.
• Martin Harris was pressed about whether he legit saw the golden plates with his bodily eyes, and he said they saw them with their spiritual eyes. In other words he saw them in vision. Um, Ok. That's a big difference from what I was taught.
• Mountain Meadows Massacre. The name sounded familiar. That's when Mormons were massacred because we're always persecuted, right? No? OMG they did what?!

Those were among the many things that woke me up. Over 30 years, the church had 3 hours every Sunday plus seminary, plus mutual and scouts, plus 2 years of me selling Mormonism in another country, plus at home scripture study, plus church college, plus temple trips, plus this and that and the other to fill me in on a few pertinent details about its history. This is a pretty high demand religion and I was there for the same lessons again and again, it's not like I just missed that week where the lesson was on how Mormons massacred around 120 travelers after disarming them. Yet they conveniently left out every piece of information they wanted to. It was clear the information was withheld on purpose. We were lied to. Ironic that I learned about lies of omission at church.

I think it all became pretty obvious once the church no longer had to be true. I had been misled. Still, leaving was not easy because members are trained to be suspicious of people who leave the church, labeling them apostates and speculating that they have done something sinful. e.g. "He probably has a porn problem." My whole family and community was Mormon, and their opinion of me matters. Being Mormon had been the easy thing. Going against the flow, when the flow thinks they know the truth about everything, is hard and it takes backbone. Leaving required faith unlike anything I'd ever experienced in the church, even though I had formerly been completely convinced it was true. It was definitely hard at first because mormonism kind of hijacks your whole identity, and I had to figure out who I really was and sort of rebuild my identity when I had a family, in my thirties. But fortunately life has gotten so much better since letting go of the beliefs I inherited.

Sorry for the wall of text. May god have mercy on my soul. Good luck on your journey, wherever you end up.

I do not believe an Angel with a drawn sword commanded Joseph Smith to practice polygamy.

I just can't reconcile that.

Do you believe this? Do you actually believe an angel did this? What do you have to tell yourself to be okay with this?

For me Joseph Smith was false. If he is false then the church can't be true.

When I investigated the church as a young adult I determined that it was true, based on the information I was told, what I read and how I felt. When new information was presented to me after 25 years as a faithful and fully believing saint I later determined that it was not and could not be gods true church; again, based on what I've read and felt. From the various, contradictory accounts of the first vision, the obvious plagiarisms of the bofm, the outright fabrication of the pearl of great price, to the many moral issues involved with polygamy, polyandry, and marrying teenage girls nearly 1/3 his age, there is no way joseph smith could have been the mouthpiece of any god. He was the L. Ron Hubbard of his time.

I sincerely believed that the church was "true" and that Joseph Smith was a prophet for nearly 40 years. I gave the church everything that I could give to it (time, money, passion). I would have given my life for the church (and Joseph Smith, for that matter).

I stumbled into the word "polyandry," online, in 2010. I had no clue what the word even meant. I was a counselor in a bishopric at the time (and the Stake President had hinted that I would be called as the next bishop). This website I stumbled into said that Joseph Smith practiced polyandry (which I had never heard before). I started looking into it that night. I started learning things about Joseph's polygamy that I had never heard about at church (or in seminary, or instutute, or in any church books, or from any family/friends members of the church). I ended up on the FAIR website. I then realized that there were MANY things that I was fairly clueless about. But the one thing that really stood out to me, on FAIR's site, was the Book of Abraham. I had no clue that there was even a debate about the Book of Abraham.

Polygamy led me to the Book of Abraham. Book of Abraham led me to the "translation" of the Book of Mormon and gold plates and 3 and 8 witnesses. This led me to the alleged priesthood restoration. Then the first vision. Then the Kinderhook plates. Then the temple endowment. And so on and so forth. I immersed myself in FAIR apologetics but FAIR seemed to make things worse.

I stopped attending church after studying all of this for 3 years. I can honestly say that I've never been happier. I was very happy in the church, but so many things make so much more sense now. Everything is much clearer and I have the freedom of thought that I didn't completely have in the church.

Best of luck as you sort through all of this. Be open-minded and examine both sides of every issue. Do your research.

Personally, I️ left because of church history, how I️ felt constantly on the back burner as a woman, the way my non-member boyfriend was treated constantly, the fact that a bishop made me go through the repentance process for being raped, and how essentially every policy and statement regarding LGBT people is hurtful and harmful.

A) I prayed a lot about the book of Mormon and about whether the church was true, and the silence was deafening.
B) After years of trying to be a fully active, devout member, it became clear to me that Mormon doctrine violated my moral and philosophical beliefs. Easy examples would be the priesthood ban, polygamy (I don't care much about whether JS was a polygamist, although I think it's pretty likely, it's enough to know about Brigham Young and John Taylor and their ilk). More subtle examples would be the belief that God could instruct someone through the Holy Ghost to commit murder, the belief that 100% of the time if science and religion are in conflict, religion is right, the misery judgment pit that is Relief Society, and the division of the world into "members" and "nonmembers."
C) The church is dishonest - for example, the Church cannot be trusted to report its own history correctly until forced to do so, the Church twists the meaning of quotations from historical church leaders and from the scriptures to support doctrine, and the Church won't report membership numbers correctly (every former missionary knows that huge portions of the membership do not consider themselves members anymore, and yet the church proudly counts everyone who is still on the rolls as a member. Including people whose current whereabouts are unknown, until those people would be 110 or so). If I can't trust the Church to get the easy, verifiable stuff correctly, why should I trust them with anything else?

Church made me want to kill myself as a teenager. It destroyed my sense of self-worth, and I'm still trying to pick up the pieces of my life. My decision to leave was based solely on my own mental health.

Once I was out, I read the CES letter, as well as doing some research into my own family history (Cannon line, as well as Hyrum Smith), and realized there's no solid evidence for the church. As a scientifically minded person, I couldn't go back. They make outstanding claims, but can't back them up with anything remotely resembling evidence.

The main reason to leave the church is that many teachings it used to teach prior to about 2000 (when the internet was massively taking off) , it now disowns or says it never taught. How can the church teach something as truth , then later disown as not truth. Such as examples are The Mark of Cain, polygamy, celestial polygamy, Adam-God Doctrine, God having sex with Mary, that we can become Gods of our own planet,!that our God was once a dude on some planet, that Black people are cursed due to their performance in the War in Heaven, that Jesus and Satan are brothers. Just a few examples of back peddling....

In a sentence: I was always for the church there when it needed me, but when I needed the church it was not there for me.

There were doctrinal, social, historical, etc. issues, but that's what it really boiled down to. I wanted real doctrinal answers, and the church covered things up. Same thing with the history. Socially, well, as soon as something went wrong in my life everyone abandoned me. What a loving bunch of assholes. What I asked for, I didn't get what you would reasonably expect to receive. Why stay with something like that?

I left because I discovered everything I knew about early church history was a lie. The founders of the church were either con-artists or were deceived by demons. The church today runs like a business. Then the final straw was seeing the endowment video that New Name Noah posted. The endowment is horrible. I feel like it has some satanic elements to it.

Once I reached this point I started really reading the bible and I found that Mormonism just does not line up with what's taught in the bible.

If the church is a net-benefit for you, it is true for you. If it is a net-negative for you, it isn’t true for you. Truth of this nature is in the eye of the beholder.

is there any PROVABLE evidence against the church?

Going to church sucks ass? That was enough for me.

My personal experience when I️ went through my faith crisis and eventually ended up resigning:

1. The church lied to me about the history of the church my entire life. Why would god’s one true church EVER try to cover their tracks?

2. The brethren are paid, cheapening the value of their testimonies. (I’d have a testimony, too, for $10k a month plus fame plus adulation plus benefits.)

3. “The Spirit” is an experience that all spiritual people share that convinces them of the truthfulness of whatever they happen to believe. (Meaning that my ONLY evidence of the truthfulness of the church, aka “spiritual experiences” didn’t actually qualify as evidence.)

4. When I️ felt obligated to negate my witness of the spirit, I️ realized that there isn’t a single evidence of the truthfulness of the church. The good it does? Exactly the same as dozens of other sects. The doctrine? Proven false by science and history over and over and over again...

5. Prophets? Yeah right. As soon as they’re dead, they’re thrown under the bus and negated by whoever is currently in charge...

It all added up, for me, to being a man made institution with no connection to god.

For me it's the fact that I have not been able to find a single faith promoting answer to any foundational question. I started then searching for just one single answer, and just haven't found one.

Then it dawned on me that the only answer that fits and answers ALL the questions is that the church isn't true.

However that hasn't caused me to leave the church yet. I'm still active and going every week. However, every week I feel absolutely horrible inside when I go to church. I honestly feel like I am not listening to Good by not leaving....I just don't know how to leave yet given my wife is TBM (even though she has read and studied literally almost everything), and all my in laws are TBM (my family is easier as many cousins have left already and one of my brothers is basically out, but I live by my wife's family, not mine.

I didn't want this, and to be honest I still don't. But truth is truth, and the fact is that the church I grew up in is not the church that exists. Things aren't just messy, they are seriously messed up.

Now, as to what started it all for me was actually a combination of reading Under the Banner of Heaven about 10 years ago. I was given it by my boss who asked me to read it and tell me if it was true. Well, I read it and told him it was a bunch of anti Mormon lies that I had never heard of. Then the essays came out and actually started to confirm some if those "lies".

That lead me to study the essays, which led me to study the essay sources, which lead me to study a whole ton of things and learn what actually happened (to the best of our ability). In the process I came to know both intellectually and spiritually that Brigham Young was absolutely not a prophet of God, and that destroyed testimony (hence my username).

I will warn you much like many others have. Ignorance is bliss... But if you do end up walking that lonely path (not trying to be presumptuous, but I have seen several others just like you in just the last few months), know there are some really great people here to help you in your time of need.

RemindMe! 1 month

I conducted an experiment on the spirit. I prayed for two mutually exclusive answers, changing only the material I studied and pondered, and my desired outcome in each case. I received a clear affirmative answer for both mutually exclusive outcomes, which proved definitively that the spirit is not a reliable source of truth.

With that collapsed every reason to believe in the church, since the evidence is overwhelmingly against it in every other way. And I don't think I can sufficiently emphasize "overwhelmingly." The fraud can be clearly traced, step by step, as a very logical progression back to the early 19th century, to the point that any conclusion other than fraud is extremely unlikely to the point of negligibility.

I encourage you to try a similar experiment. The church would never condone this type of controlled experiment. Everything they teach on the subject encourages and reinforces various forms of bias.

Because is it a harmful, man-made institution.

My list is a mile long but what it really came down to is that I was giving time and money to the church but it didn't serve me in any way, unless you count guilt and shame as a service.

I left when I found out they'd been lying to my family for 7 generations, and apparently intend to maintain that. After 54 years of that, and the abuse dished out to me and my family, I had enough.

No more. The air is cleaner, the sky is bluer, my family is closer, and life has been amazingly better. My marriage improved immensely once we got the middle men out of our business.

I'm good enough. I'm quite content with me. I was taught it was a sin to feel that way. What a load of shit that was.

The CES letter contains a lot of information that I feel is damning to the truth claims of the church, one example being the Book of Abraham. JS claimed it was a literal translation, and it definitely isn't according to Egyptian scholars LDS and non LDS

Aside from all of that, let's take a step back. Logic dictates that when a claim is made we don't believe the claim until there is sufficient evidence to believe it, especially for extraordinary claims. The way the church presents it's claims runs contrary to logic. For example, when I was a Mormon I began my thought process with the presupposition that the church is true, and worked backwards to get evidence to align with the church's claims, the problem is that any belief system can do the same thing.

So just as an exercise, let's start with this. The church claims to be the one true church..well lots of Churches do this so we can't assume they're all true until proven false. Since the church is the one making the claim the burden of proof falls on the church. Therefore, the church is not true until such time as it can reasonably demonstrate that it is true

With that in mind take each primary claim the church has made and test it.

BOM is the most correct book. Well, first of all, which version? Let's just take one example, the statement about the Lamanites being the principal ancestors of the native Americans. We know from DNA testing that isn't true, and the church figured that out too and changed this phrasing in 2006. How can it be that the most correct book contains such errors? Then there's the anachronisms, steel, elephants, horses. None of these things existed in the Americas at the time the BOM was supposed to have been written. I could go on and on, there's more in the BOM, but you can research it yourself, and once you can discredit the BOM everything else falls apart with it.

TLDR; The point is don't assume the church is true until it can be proven false, assume it (and any extraordinary claim) is false and that it has to meet the burden of proof in order to be considered the one true church. If it can't meet the burden of proof for even one of its primary, extraordinary claims (and it can't), we cannot determine that it is true. And that is why some people, including me leave the church.

Hello OP Their is so much to discuss about your question I know you are not convinced but Kudos for asking the question. This is something simple you can go that might be helpful. The Book of Abraham glyph number 1, is not a correct translation of the scrolls. look at your scriptures you can see the pictures Joseph Smith approved himself and his explanation it is all 100% wrong. I verified this myself by looking up the 4 sons of Horace. They are the 4 figures under the lion couch. Look them up on google all have the wrong names. their are also no Egyptians gods by those names JS gave. Their is a whole book that breaks down the whole thing. But that you can do yourself easily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_sons_of_Horus Look at figures 5, 6,7,8 http://nowscape.com/mormon/kolob-defined3.htm#Facsimile_1 You can follow up with google search of names JS gave for Egyptian gods. last time i check nothing showed up. just take a look. To me it was evidence enough to look further.

Most people leave the church because they no longer believe it is true.

You're asking for provable evidence against the church. That's a reasonable approach to take, given that you assume it is true.

But perhaps you should ask yourself, is there any provable evidence FOR the church?

A good article on the topic:

https://steemit.com/scams/@alexbeyman/don-t-get-tricked-bro-how-to-recognize-a-cult

You can place the tenets of Mormonism into two groups, falsifiable claims (meaning they can be proven true or false) and the unfalsifiable claims. Of the falsifiable tenets, every single one can be proven false. The church's go to defense for these is to ex post facto change the doctrine so its no longer a core tenet and then say the initial author/s was speaking his opinion rather than doctrine, even if it appeared in scripture or an official church outlet (conference). Every single tenet that is not falsifiable can be shown to be more likely false than true. Usually this is demonstrated by seeing multiple unbiased contemporary accounts painting a different story than the church's version which almost always originate years (sometimes decades) later and out of necessity. After accepting those points and learning about how my cognitive biases skewed my reality I was left with no good reason to believe.

Disclaimer: I say "all" because I was once an armchair apologist and spent years combing through the reasons to believe to find an example I could use in defense of the church. That journey lead me out. You very well could have a reason that makes a core Mormon tenet more likely true than false, but I have yet to see one. I am always open to having my mind changed.

http://40yrmormon.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-smoking-gun-why-mormonism-isnt-true.html

You need to look at the PowerPoint bubble chart that is on mormonleaks. That has all the reasons /s

Let’s ask the bigger question - what are your doubts? What have you “put on your mental shelf to be answered in the next life?”

Do you live in Utah?

u/purplevengeance

Is it easier knowing you are right as a mormon or accepting that you may not know and the church may be wrong?

If the answer is that it is easier to lean on your faith and feel the strength of the church, the second question is this...

When else in life have you improved yourself by taking the easy path?

Is your religion a crutch that you use to get easy comforts and answers. To provide structure in a scary world? If so, are you okay with that?

Thank you for asking. :D Major props for not assuming we're all sinners or offended - the vast majority of us left for other reasons.

I'll include some of mine later when I have time and I'm not just on my phone

Other than incongruent recounts of the events of the early church (Joseph Smith was a treasure hunter, statutory rapist, etc.)

This isn't incongruent evidence, and is even acknowledged by LDS scholars, like Richard Bushman.

is there any PROVABLE evidence against the church?

The big one for me is the Book of Abraham, nothing in the papyri is what Joseph said it was. Nothing. The facsimiles are completely different than what he said, and the text is completely different than what he said.

Can I ask, is there any PROVABLE evidence for the church?

Seems like to me that glass-looking in a hat without using the "gold plates" is a very big start on the path to why people this JS was a conman. if you cant see that then not much people can say to help you here.

For me the death blow was recognizing the circular logic inherent in using the feelings I associated with the spirit as a means for determining truth.

Having discovered definitively that prophets were fallible and had led the church astray (BoA and Adam/God, for example, though the most important for me personally was polygamy, the priesthood and temple ban, and the Exclusion policy) despite being taught that that could never happen, I was trying to sort through all the aspects of the gospel and church history to figure out what was of God and what I should reject. I was concerned about imposing my own social and political bias on each issue. I was becoming frustrated; I shouldn't have to be an expert in history, religious theory, Egyptology, social science, psychology, and logic to figure all this out. If the gospel is truly for everyone it should be accessible to everyone.

The answer was easy: the spirit! I could come to a conclusion about an issue and the pray to ask if I had gotten it right or not. I could even start with the basics: praying about whether or not the LDS Church was God's one and only true church on the Earth.

But, what about all of the other religions whose adherents also receive string spiritual witnesses that their own religion was the one and only true religion on Earth? How could I know the witness I received was any better than theirs?

Well, I have the gift of the Spirit given to me via the proper priesthood authority as restored by Joseph Smith.

Wait, but how do I know that Joseph Smith really and truly restored the priesthood to the Earth? Isn't that just "is the church true?" tweaked a little bit?

So we're back to the spirit! But...how do I know I can trust what I feel is from God and not from my own brain?

The church says those warm feelings over my heart are the spirit!

But how do I know I can trust that the church knows what it's talking about? Wasn't that my original question?

The spirit will tell me! How do I know I can trust the spirit? The church says so! How do I know I can trust the church? The spirit says so! How do I know I can trust the spirit? The church says so! How do I know I can trust the church? The spirit says so! How do I know I can trust the spirit?

And so on, forever and ever.

As it turns out you can't use trust the spirit as a means of discovering truth without first taking the church at its word that warm fuzzies = the spirit. I believe drawing a conclusion from this type of logic is called Begging the Question.

I'm not willing to take that leap of faith because:

1) the church says I don't have to. They say I don't have to blindly follow the prophet, I can follow the spirit, but how do I know I can trust the spirit without first trusting the church (continues ad infinitum)

2) the church lost the right to my trust and the right to a leap of faith. First with the Exclusion policy, then with its whitewashed history, half truths, lies of omission, and outright lies. They have given me every reason not to take that leap of faith.

Edit: quick clarification

The LDS church doesn't share my values.

I left because of all the things that the people wrote above and plus: religion is fiction. I'm an atheist. LDS just exploits the faith of people by guilty and mental control to have the members money like all the other religions

RIP OP's inbox I'm guessing.

D&C 9 7 Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me.

8 But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.

Smartass response. Really though, the full response to why people leave the church is much deeper than an simple response on Reddit. I think if you would really like to know, John Dehlin has some interesting presentations on survey results. Mormonthink, CES letter, fairmormon all have lots of information that can be validated to actual historical documents. This Reddit had a lot of sources at bottom right of page. Stick around a while and debate some specific subjects. I think most of us here are fair when it comes to honest debate.

I expect by the time you get to this comment you'll already be out of the church (kidding) but...whatever.

I think MormonPrimer.com is a genuinely great starting point. It will give you all the resources you need to analyze things for yourself and is a better use of your time than reading my thoughts, but you are welcome to do both.

What I think initially triggered my investigation was some part of my brain connecting what I've seen and learned about cult leaders with what I knew and have learned about JS. It wasn't a detailed pattern, but a charismatic leader acquiring a loyal following and then resulting in some sort of sexual deviation... I could picture the possibility, and then I couldn't leave it alone.

I first started looking at polygamy. Read section 132 and try to reconcile that with JS's actions; without even leaving LDS.org you'll already be faced with one of a few choices:

1. JS was a fallen prophet
2. Section 132 is a fake
3. Uh...JS...was told to do whatever he wanted as long as he didn't kill anyone in cold blood so he totally ignored everything in 132 cause, "YOLO" we'll all laugh about this in the CK.

This prompts some additional questions about JS, like, what is the most reasonable explanation? A legally define-able con-man-treasure-hunter just happens to be the guy God chooses to find and translate a golden book that no one ever sees and that JS doesn't even look at when translating? Is this just a terribly unfortunate coincidence? 3/12 apostles at one point left the church when they found out that none of the 3 witnesses ever saw the plates.

After that you might think the next reasonable topic is Blacks in the Priesthood, real quick you have to come up with an explanation of why dozens and dozens of Prophets, Seers and Revelators over more than a 100 years didn't realize that they were just implementing a racist policy into an organization that is supposed to be more in tune with God than any other on earth.

The church has consistently covered up it's history. They have consistently made it seem like, "If the Book of Mormon is true, JS is a prophet and then this is the true church!" That reasoning could maybe work if the church stayed together after the martyrdom, but it didn't. How many of the witnesses went with Brigham? How many of JS's wives?

Then there is the BOM, Bushman, the guy the Apostles call when they want to get the down low on church history basically says that the book is a 19th century production with long strings of text in common with other books of the same era. Did God inspire JS to write the exact same words as he inspired other authors? Is that a plausible explanation? Would that explanation work for you to one of your school teachers?

Anyways, the kicker is I'm still in the church...I've resigned from all callings and receiving home teachers but I'm only a couple months into this and taking it slow. It is all a bit heartbreaking, realizing the Proclamation on the Family was just a legal instrument, and that people may have died traveling to Utah believing that the church didn't practice polygamy because they were given a pamphlet that said so, and that people killed people (Mormon Massacre) believing that they were protected under the "new and everlasting" covenant, and that girl's married JS because he promised them and their entire family eternal life, etc. etc. etc.

We leave because the church isn't true. I know that's hard for you to hear right now, but each of us here has once stood where you now stand, and each of us has come to know the truth. Stick around here, read the posts. Read the CES letter at CESletter.com. You'll get there too.

If you haven't already, check out Brother Jake's YouTube channel. His videos are amazing at explaining the problems with the church.

Hi there,

Biblical False prophet = false prophecies (D&C -well, a lot of them: anti banking, treasure mission, Zion's camp, selling BofM)

D&C 132 read it start to finish

Mormon canonical doctrine proves itself wrong. Early leaders wanted power, money and women.

When church leaders are saying the Book of Mormon is not history yet the book states it is a record of real people - who is right?

I got tired of people in the church telling me lies to convince me they had the truth. When I checked things out they did not add up.

Joseph was to marry virgins, permission of his first wife and to "raise seed". Where are the kids from all these women? How were the women already married "virgins"?

It is not credible when you start looking at what is claimed and what is reality.

Absolutely there is. However if you are convinced in your own mind there isn’t, you won’t believe it when it is right in front of you. I was that way for far too long, hoping and wishing it was true. . The Sunday school lessons with depictions of the BoM translation is nothing like the real history where Joe used a brown rock in a hat. . D&C is riddled with proficiency that never came true.
. Read the crap Brigham said about blacks, slavery, moon men, enemas, women... anything associated with him should be discredited automatically. . Name an actually prophecy in the last generation... say 40 years from the “prophets” of the church. They don’t and haven’t and won’t, they can’t!

I don't know your age or if you've been endowed and, if you are, when you went through, but please tell me how as believers in Jesus Christ any of us can honestly believe that He would be OK standing in front of us in His "Holy House" looking approvingly and lovingly upon His chosen people as they pantomimed their deaths in gruesome ways? Would He really want us to act out such macabre scenes? I suppose some older folks could explain it away but I don't wish to worship a God, a Savior, who wishes for me to do that. It just doesn't make sense. So as you look for a smoking gun of proof in the history of the church also take a clearer look around and ask if Jesus, the one we proclaim is the head of the church, is even found in this religion, in the actual organization and theology. Don't look at individual people, because there are some rock star Mormons who are good, God fearing people in spite of the church, but look at the actual church. Good luck on your journey. As you can see from all the responses you'll always have all of us here to question and vent to. :)

"It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry." T Paine

Over to the right there's a link to CES Letter. [https://cesletter.org/Letter-to-a-CES-Director.pdf](Click and Read) -->

I was raised LDS but never really felt a strong attachment to god despite reading the BoM and OT/NT -- have always felt very agnostic. Church was fine until I realized how political the leaders were in the wake of LGBT issues and ultimately I felt the moral obligation to cut ties. Wasn't until years later that I started reading into church history issues and started getting pretty surprised (though mountain Meadows was discussed in seminary)

Joseph Smith didn't use the gold plates. Let that marinate.

Has someone already linked cesletter.org? That's more than enough to answer your question.

The doctrine of the church is not logical. Look up the signs of a cult and go through the list, then compare the list to the questions to get a Temple Recommend. After you go "holy hell!", next peruse the Primary Songs and Manual and cross reference those with the signs of a cult. If you ain't convinced by then...

Spirit of discernment of PH leaders (bishops, SPs, APs, etc) is all bullshit. At best, it's just a gut feeling.

As someone who has devoted their educational endeavors to Communication Studies, I lost interest in the church when I realized I was heavily participating in sociological and psychological phenomenons that have troubled me in my studies, mainly confirmation bias and groupthink. For me, it was most important to step back from the church to make sure I was acting as an individual, not under a group. After that, the historical research completely turned me off from the church. Also, the temple has ALWAYS made me uncomfortable, and I never felt as if I fit the “Mormon mold” growing up. I feel more authentic outside of the church’s jurisdiction, and frankly, I am more comfortable with who I am when I feel like I am 100% acting like myself and living on my own accord. Authenticity is everything to me. Also, I hate people telling me what to think, who to be, and what to do. To me, especially after walking away, I’ve realized it’s more important to just be a good human than it is to structure your life so severely as the church does.

Any truth can stand up to investigation. LDS says you can only read their own materials. I asked myself how could I lose if I honestly investigated my church. I would confirm my life long religion or debunk it and move on. Now I am richer in both time and money and only wish I had the courage to look into things earlier in life.

6 million gods created by humans....but yours, ONLY yours, is the one only true god.

And every other believing human thought the same thing.

You don't teach people by telling them what, not to do. You teach people by telling them why, to do things. (totally not religious, just moved here from Boston, my feed is infected with this exmormon stuff since this apartment complex shares an internet connection. )

Historical and other issues aside, the church simply: Does. Not. Work.

The Corporation, masquerading as a "church" cannot live up to any of it's grand and wonderful promises.

Be aware that just allowing yourself to be curious about this question you are opening the door to further light and knowledge. But the answers may be quite unexpected. At least, they were for me. Don’t stop but don’t rush...

I left because the things the church teaches, doctrinally, and allows to happen, culturally, with no attempts by leaders to correct and no remorse, did not line up with my personal view of morality or deep personal beliefs of what a "loving father heaven" would do or be ok with....Once i allowed myself to consider it in all honesty instead of just going along with what i'd invested in my whole life simply because i'd been exposed to it since birth.

Then once i felt disengaged and could look at it with an outsider's perspective, it was pretty obviously totally fake.

Because it's to much going on behind the scenery, schemes for power. Followers to naive to see they're being manipulated to believe in "anything" and lets not forget about donations. In the end it's someone's job and livestock.

It's good to have something to believe in, but anything?!?

I left the church when I still believed it was true, but I wasn't going to be part of an organization that would never treat me (a female) like an equal. It also bothered me that the church spent more money on malls and ostentatious temples than charity.

Obviously the book of Abraham.

But how about the general ignorance among the q12 and modern prophets? There's no excuse in the 1980s and 90s to not understand evolution, and yet we have the GAs, supposedly the most enlightened men on earth, condemning good science as 'Darwin's Deceptions'. Ok so they are old and not up on science... That's an intellectual weakness not a moral one you might argue. And you'd be right if they only kept quiet on the subject. But condemning from a place of ignorance is a pathetic childish moral failing.

I applaud you for coming here and realizing that those of us who frequent this sub have come here after drudging thru much study. We didn't come here because our feelings were hurt by someone at church (usually), or we just wanted to sin and therefore just left. Good luck to you in your journey. DILLY DILLY! Completely off topic, but you should look up Dilly Dilly on Urban Dictionary. It's funny.

Good luck in your journey!

To be honest, it started with some difficult questions I came up with on the mission regarding the nuts and bolts of judgement day 1. What are the actual qualifiers that get someone into the celestial kingdom, and 2. does anything I do on the mission actually effect that outcome: hint the short answer I came to was 1. basically you just have to be psychologically/spiritually/whatever prepared to live literally for eternity 2. no, virtually nothing I do on the mission matters because all the other "requirements," ordinances and such, are guaranteed to be carried out at some point posthumously. all of which ended up not jiving well with the militaristic nature of the then mission president (or should I say his wife) carried out their administrative responsibilities.

follow that up by enough classes to earn a minor in philosophy from BYU, and listening to Cognitive Dissonance Podcast, and bam it was next to impossible to not write large swaths of the church's (both leadership's and common follower's) beliefs and actions off as incongruous bullshit.

Sticking it out for the next few years serving as primary teacher and ward clerk, initially going to be with my spouse, and then for a year back under the house rules of my parents because I was living with them again, kind of put the last few nails in the coffin as I weekly recognized the soul crushing hateful rhetoric spoken from pulpits and in front of classrooms. Shortly after we moved from my parent's house and ward, a day came that my wife told me it was alright and I didn't have to go, it was sweet relief.

For me, I was an exhausted mother of 6. Trying to live up to every standard set before me. It was impossible. Life was miserable and I felt like I was never good enough. It wasn't about self esteem. I'm extremely confident. It was about the rat race of Mormonism. I was miserable trying to be what god wanted me to be. I couldn't breathe. We were very active in the church until the day we weren't. A friend who felt very similar to me (from my old vt route) recently left and told me to check out this sub. Five minutes in I related to so many things others posted. I mean, people don't talk about these things at church. I felt so much peace knowing I wasn't alone.

I stumbled into the CES letter and it put the frosting on the cake. I was miserable AND it was all a lie. We promptly resigned. Done. Life on this side is so much healthier for our family. Even if Mormonism is true, I could not go on living the way we were. I'll take the lowest kingdom over a life of misery on this earth.

Here is [my story](www.nowlookingforward.blogspot.com)

The of a.org gospel topic essays puts a lot of these issues to bed, by it's own admission.

Growing up and being told that families could be together forever, then after my parents divorced and seeing how the rest of the ward turned on us. That was the start of it.

Next was the confusing time I had with figuring out if I was homosexual or actually transgender and just how hard the church mindset made reflecting and pondering those feelings.

Then I officially resigned after last general conference because I didn't want my names in the records of a church that sees my wife and I as in an abusive relationship when it is far from that.

Provable evidence is what you want. Sure. Joseph claimed he was a prophet. Prophets speak for God and God is perfect. If the prophet makes one mistake he is not speaking for God. In the Old Testament if a prophet was false they'd stone them to death. Go do a Google Search for the failed prophecies of Joseph Smith. That peice of evidence being proved is merely the tip of iceberg of problems. From this perspective everything lines up. We see Mormonism becomes simply his most successful fraud among many others he was legally prosecuted for such as fraud. We see him scrambling to make it work, changing stories, chasing women, being opportunistic regarding money (see Kirtland bank fraud). This is all before he is killed by an angry mob where he shoots two people in the process. Martyrs don't shoot back by the way. He elevated himself as being more important than Christ. All this is JUST Joseph. We could talk about other lds leaders problems starkly showing prophets contradicting each other, changing to adapt around society. God's word unchanging yet Mormonism cowtows to what society wants even to this day. It is not a religion, it is a business club. We didn't even talk about polygamy, or broken families or many other things. Do your research and all of this becomes quickly apparent and provable. The house of cards collapses. It will happen to you. Ready?

Well. This is hard to answer because you have to decide how much or how little you actually believe in the particular tenets of Mormonism.

If you take Mormonism at face value then you're able to test it against historical, scientific, and philosophical information. It doesn't fair well.

If you look at Mormonism through a sort of absolute subjectivity, then you'll be able to create a sort of fan fiction to make it fit any narrative.

The bottom line, and to answer your question, virtually everything about Mormonism doesn't hold up to scrutiny, whether it's ethics, history, science, or policy. Like others I could list off a hundred things that were important or impactful to me, but they may or may not be relevant to you.

I think the best thing for you, if you're genuinely interested in particular issues that you're curious about is to start a thread and be like, "Ok. I thought about some of my hangups, and I'd like input on this particular issue first. I'd like sources, resources, references, and input on the matter." That way you get to tackle a particular issue one at a time. Otherwise "ex-Mormonism" is just so big, or meta, or particular to an individual, it can become pretty vague pretty quickly.

I️ left because of the combined forces of:

Contradictory statements by current/former church authorities on literally every single doctrinal point (try to find even one that hasn’t changed; there isn’t even consistency about whether God’s love for us is unconditional).

Studying church history and realizing that Joseph Smith was a con artists before founding the church, learning that he slept with teenagers and other men’s wives ... meanwhile the church has the nerve to guilt me to high hell over “self abuse.

Uninspired and terrible counsel from my bishops that stuck in me an nightmare relationship for years. Every thing they said “by the prompting of the spirit” proved completely wrong.

Coming to understand non-supernatural explanations of all the early mormon “miracles” etc. Spoiler alert: most of the miracles weren’t recorded for years afterward and typically at self-serving times, and other miracles like the “Angels” dancing on the Kirtland temple were literally fraudulent church leaders acting/dressing up to awe/convert early credulous members, especially foreign converts recently arrived.

Why did I stay so long? It took me a long time to man up enough to admit to myself that I️ had been conned. They always say the hardest person to convince of a fraud is the victim.

I did a really detailed study of the geography and timelines of the Book of Mormon. This was back in the 1970s and before the Internet. I was young (in my 20s) and had not been exposed to any "anti-Mormon" propaganda.

Eventually I had to admit that based on internal study, the Book of Mormon is not what it claims to be. You don't need anti-Mormon research to prove the Book of Mormon wrong; it proves itself false if you look closely enough.

I didn't leave because of physical evidence. I left because I decided that honesty was a priority in my life.

Keep in mind, none of this is "anti-mormon", either. It's too easy to dismiss hard-to-swallow fact as such.

I find it interesting that you asked both why do people leave the church and if there is any provable evidence against the church. It is reasonable to believe that some people would need provable evidence to leave the church. It is also interesting that some/most/maybe even all of these same people did not need provable evidence to join the church. Why do you think that is?

I encourage you to research why the 3 witnesses, Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and David Whitmer all left at some point as likely they would have more credibility in your eyes.

I also invite you to share your testimony. Why do you stay? Why would you leave?

You can not prove the Church is wrong, just as you can not prove it is true. It is very hard to prove a negative.

I'm a bit late to this party, but here's my two cents.

"incongruent recounts of the events of the early church (Joseph Smith was a treasure hunter...)"

As a young man during the 1820s, Joseph Smith, like others in his day, used a seer stone to look for lost objects and buried treasure. - LDS.org, citing the Elder's Journal

But of course, it is easy to justify that with arguments such as, "God can still use a broken vessel to bring us His word."

One thing that gets me is Anthon account in Joseph Smith History 63-65. Anthon was a professor of Latin and Greek, ancient languages to be sure, but not a professor of Hebrew or Ancient Egyptian, and unable to verify the translation of an unknown dialect of Hebrew written with modified Egyptian characters as claimed in JS-H. In fact, in 1828, no one could translate Ancient Egyptian, as the Rosetta Stone had yet to be deciphered. Jean-François Champollion's Grammar and Dictionary of Ancient Egyptian was unfinished when he died in 1838. He died without realizing that Ancient Egyptian was as different from Coptic as Old English is from Modern English. Other trilingual decrees crucial to filling in the blanks had not yet been discovered, and Champollion's student Karl Richard Lepsius later realized that vowels in Ancient Egyptian were unwritten.

That's just a little tidbit of the many discrepancies between the LDS church's account and reality, but I like it since I put together the pieces myself when I allowed myself to doubt. Others in this thread have already mentioned most of the big things. If Joseph Smith and his successors have proven to be humbugs in every testable case, why should I believe their claims that are not testable?

Have you read this? https://wordtreefoundation.github.io/thelatewar/

It's a word comparison of the Book of Mormon and the Late War... This is something that put a crack in my shelf, one among many. Definitely interesting reading nonetheless.

I can sum up the reason for just about all of us:

We were taught one thing : It's all true, or it isn't... Joseph was a prophet and the BOM is true, If the BOM is not true, then Joseph is not a prophet and vice versa. It's the 'keystone' of our religion.

When you realize how many times the church has lied to protect itself ... how can something true have so many lies? Why is it okay to lie for the lord?

A good article w/ 180+ accounts of LDS apostles/prophets getting caught in lies can be found here: http://www.mormonthink.com/lying.htm

It was written by a CES Teacher. The reason why many don't go to another faith is because we were taught and shown that all other faiths were wrong, that LDS is the only true church, that god HAD to restore his church because of the apostasy, to then find out ... the restored church is wrong... but still sort of believe the apostasy thing because -- look at the atrocities the Catholic whore of a church created during the middle ages...

It's hard to find anything to fill the void that Mormonism can leave, and personally I think God is a lot like Trump -- look at me, Worship me, if you don't you'll go to outer darkness... Please make me feel better about myself... No offense if you still believe, but I don't know why God wants to be worshiped so much, when < 10% of mankind has probably ever even heard of Elohim/Jehovah/Jesus Christ. Esp. if you believe science that mankind has been here 100k+ years.

My personal favorite is the claims of steel, elephants and horses in pre Columbian America...

Sorry I'm late. I just saw your thread OP. I love this question. I was a super active member my entire life. I lost my testimony in the course of 2 hours. I spent a solid month trying to regain it before I gave in to my awful realization.

Losing the church hurt me deeply and it felt like the world came out from under me.

But I would never trade my experience for faith or anything else.

No matter what you decide, you've always got a lot of friends here. Real friends too. They'll call you out on your bullshit and they'll support you when you're down.

When you ask questions that have answers, you'll get a mountain of replies on this site.

When there are answers, answering the questions are easy.

Just if you know what all of this is fake, after that your presence at meetings and classes becomes unbearable. All the time I want to laugh. It becomes clear stupidity and trust of the people who believe in this doctrine. There is a very strong desire not to be part of this circus of clowns. It can tolerate only one who has benefited from the Church. Or the one that has the compulsion to attend Church.

Hardest thing we ever experienced. We so wanted it to be true. We both went on a mission. Gave it until our kids were adults. Couldn't find Jesus in what seemed an institution of Pharisee leaders with no revalatory power, looked closer, well, sauce can't be put back in the bottle. We decided our integrity too high and lives too short to continue living a false belief system.

Took 4 adult kids with us, they asked to see what we saw, were honest, lots of tears, sadness. We are all so happy, even though we don't have a belief system leading us. Values remained the same. Behaviors of course different, not much though. We went to church because we were good people. We didn't keep it to keep us good.

Good luck. If you decide to be honest with yourself, and don't let fear control you, this will only end one way. And you will remain a good person, still you

I harbored a lot of doubts about the church growing up, but in the end they didn't matter one bit. I left because I refused to be a part of an organization that restricted black people from getting the priesthood and gay people from marrying. I had a stronger testimony of the idea that black + gay people deserve respect than I did of the LDS church.

Even if every lick of it was true, and I found myself knocking on the pearly gates of the celestial kingdom some day, I knew I wouldn't be able to live with myself knowing that I had tacitly supported these beliefs. So I didn't. I still don't care if it's factually true. I flatly refuse to be a part of it regardless.

I think this is a paid troll for the church to get market research. Sorry. I just don’t buy that you’re innocently here.

The best evidence AGAINST it is that no God worth worshiping would have this be their culture or their core values. It doesnt strengthen peoples moral character, it doesnt really give them resources, its just a group allegiance thing; look at how self-contradictory it is, how much people grapple for straws instead of calmly look at how convoluted it is; look how much avoiding the appearance of evil there is. If God came down tomorrow and showed us the armies of Helaman, showed us his power, told us that the Mormon church was his chosen one, then I'd lecture him on things like wisdom, prudence, the right use of faith, the moral way to relate to authority, and such things.