Why Mormons Don't Leave the Church
I wasn't sure where to put this post; I don't want to hijack any threads (including this one), yet I don't know that it's likely to prompt enough forum response to result in a decent sized thread of its own. I haven't "tended my blog garden" for awhile, so maybe this is as good a "blog update" as any. It harks back to my
March 25 post; maybe this is like a sequel.
When looking out from within, churchmembers think, "How could you leave the church? How could anyone do such a thing?" Up until now I have responded to that viewpoint, not considering that when looking in from without, nonmembers may think, "How could you stay in the church? How could anyone be so gullible?"
I know the Mormon church looks pretty wacky to outsiders, but try to imagine if you were steeped in Mormon doctrine and culture (in the heart of Utah) from the cradle on up, sheltered from all outside points of view, and spooked out of doing your own research. The Mormon world becomes "the normal world" to those who were born into the midst of it.
But nevermind the plentiful minions who remain (active in and) loyal to the church for all of their adult lives. What about me, what's my excuse? What do I have to say for myself? It's one thing to be duped as a kid. Nobody should need 35 years to figure out that the church is a sham.
I've spent the last 12 or so years trying to figure that out myself. Why did I "believe" (pretend to believe, really -- want to believe, fervently enough to tell myself I believed) in a church, a body of doctrine, and a set of scriptures, that were so obviously false? Can anyone be so stupid? Can I?
I guess I can, but I couldn't tell you how. Maybe I'm too much of a people pleaser? "Must please my parents." "Must please my numerous aunts and uncles." "Must please my authority figures." "Must please my fellow churchmembers." Always wanting to get along. Always willing to sweep my misgivings under the rug for the sake of social acceptance. Perhaps if I had any mettle I'd have said, "Fuck this! This is ridiculous; this is for the birds." Instead I was always trying to be Mr. Switzerland, hoping I'd find the common ground the church and I (supposedly) shared around the next bend.
The other possibility is that I'm too much of a slow learner. I mean when I get a lesson learned, I usually learn it well, but it takes me a long time to get that far. Good aim; slow on the draw. Maybe a case of tunnel vision. A shortage of critical thinking. Most likely it's a combination of everything in this paragraph, and in the paragraph above.
But I don't want to excuse myself. You get to a certain age, and you start being responsible for your own choices. You even start being responsible for your own brainwashing. At some point (or over the course of many points), I decided to let myself remain brainwashed. It was my call. I screwed up.
At the same time, I give myself credit for leaving when I did. Many social/subconscious forces resisted the decision, and I'd never dreamed that I'd ever go through with it. I can't tell you how many friends and relatives I have who have (so far at least) failed to do likewise. A handful have left the church; a small handful. Brainwashing is a formidable enemy.
I've heard it said that the Book of Mormon is obviously bogus due to the crude way it imitates the King James Bible (the Bible Joseph Smith was familiar with). Aside Joseph Smith's assertion that God wanted the Scriptures to be written that way, the fact is that far more substantial issues plague the Book of Mormon. The three biggest issues in my mind are
- DNA studies,
- archeological evidence,
- the Pearl of Great Price.
Re: DNA ... studies have been done on ethnic groups around the world, showing which ethnicities are the closest relatives of which other ethnicities. It's been found that Native American DNA is most-closely-related to Far Eastern (Oriental) DNA. This supports the idea that humans were first introduced to the Americas via a bridge of land connecting Alaska and Russia during the last Ice Age. However, the Book of Mormon asserts that the Americas were seeded by Hebrew people (who were guided by God in ships sailing across the Pacific). But modern DNA studies indicate that Native Americans have little or no ancestral connection with the people of Palestine.
Re: archeological evidence ... the Book of Mormon is rife with references to animals and materials in the Americas that simply don't exist in any pre-European archeological finds. One example is the horse which was introduced to the Americas via European conquest and colonization. Yet, Book of Mormon narratives describe an abundance of ancient American horses. And that's just one example. IIRC there are hundreds of other examples.
Re: other scriptures ... people often don't realize that the Mormon church uses several volumes of scripture besides the Book of Mormon. It uses the Bible, and it uses two other volumes composed mostly by Joseph Smith: the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.
The Pearl of Great Price includes the Book of Abraham, with facsimiles of ancient Egyptian drawings and hieroglyphics. Joseph Smith claimed to translate some ancient papyrus into the Book of Abraham which then became part of the Pearl of Great Price.
Well in more recent years, scholars obtained the original papyrus and translated it independently. Their translation turned out to have nothing at all in common with Joseph Smith's "translation." The facsimiles in particular, which can be visually seen in church scriptures today, were translated completely erroneously by Joseph Smith when compared to what modern scholars know about hieroglyphics.
All of this discredits Joseph Smith as an inspired translator of ancient records, and so, indirectly, disqualifies him as an inspired translator of the ancient Golden Plates from which he claimed to have derived the Book of Mormon. In fact, the Pearl of Great Price fiasco proves pretty darn conclusively that Joseph Smith was a con artist rather than a Prophet. So that then discredits the church in toto; the Book of Mormon is just one of its casualties.
This information is readily available today via the internet. But when I was younger I had no internet; my first computer was gifted to me for Christmas in 1994. After that it took me awhile to get plugged into the available information, and even then I'd have never left the church if I hadn't been badly mistreated by authorities and by rank-and-file members. Indeed, the mistreatment had to get much worse before I'd finally had enough.
I think that in many or even most cases, the reason Mormons don't leave the church is because they've already invested so many years (decades) of their lives into serving and supporting the church. Nobody wants to think that they've done all that service for nothing. So while the internet may be church's undoing, it probably won't undo the church for many centuries to come.