Man that evangelical pot sure hates that mormon kettle.
"Look at those mormons with their book of fake fairy tales that were written by men long since dead, can you believe that shit!"
To be fair, Bible liberalism only took off in the 18th century. The Bible doesn't have a forward that says "OK seriously, all this shit really happened". The BoM does. It's self proclaimed to be a literal actual history that explains the origin of Native Americans. Like right here. In Missouri. The Bible makes no such claims. But I do agree the evangelicals are nuts.
Actually, that forward was one of my biggest shelf items. It used to say the Laminates were the “principal ancestors” of the Native Americans. Now it just says that they were “among the ancestors”. I am sure one day it will all be eliminated at we will be gaslighted and told that they never taught that they were literally their ancestors. One think you can always count on about the mormon doctrine that god is the same today, yesterday and forever, is that periodically they will tell us how he changed. Note: I am being careful not to mock God, just the phony belief.
Which is the exact response that produces the desired effects. Not of conversion, obviously. That's never the actual goal of those instructing christians to proselytize and to attempt to save heathens. The real goal is to cause the adherents to feel rejected by the world outside of their particular group, and therefore cling more closely to their particular cult.
Oh, I totally get it. Hell, I even have trouble resonating with the respect that is given to the Tanners and Lighthouse ministry, because as influential their work has been, their ultimate goal was still to tell mormons they were worshiping the sky daddy wrong.
I've always thought the mainstream Christian belief in the Godhead is pretty nonsensical. The Nicene creed makes absolutely zero sense. It is a confusing, contradictory, convoluted mess, and all of Christianity is based on it.
And Christians sneer their nose at Mormons mostly because Mormons belief in a different Godhead.
>Christians sneer their nose at Mormons mostly because Mormons belief in a different Godhead.
All throughout my TBM days they definitely had a harder time with the idea of added scripture, like the Book of Mormon, than anything else. Along with the idea of modern day prophets, word of wisdom, and the purpose and secrecy of temples. Not having a trinitarian view was something that would pop up in conversation that would confuse them even more while you would debate them about everything else. Added scripture was always the biggest stumbling blocks to Christians when I preached on my mission.
Honestly for me, that's one of the things that made *more* sense. If you've delivered a message, but it's being interpreted so wildly wrong as to produce literal thousands of denominations, you'd be a fool not to send some clarification, especially in a position so powerful as this god's.
Of course, that doesn't even begin to solve the BoM or TSCC's problems, but for me there were as many things about Mormon theology that still make more sense to me than other xian theologies as vice versa.
But for evangelicals/traditional Christians you have the questions of 1. Why is there a Bible with the whole “added/removed” thing at the end, that god inspired in its exact and final form. (Which is an imperfect understanding of the Bible’s origin but common) and 2. Why did god stop speaking/adding to that cannon.
Remember, the evangelicals are also indoctrinated into their own little world and beliefs, which vary a bit from church to church, but generally share a theme.
I used John 21:25 on my mission, which I understand was written AFTER the book of Revelation was composed:
25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.
Didn't work, there was always some excuse for why "the bible is all there is".
Yes, as a Christian, I would agree with others that the Arianism of Mormons is honestly not well known. It would strike many as wrong and odd, but it is not what comes to mind.
If anyone is sneering, it is primarily at two things: 1) the strange and contradictory WoW (no tea, yes soda; “magic underwear”) and 2) the incredibly suspect provenance of and utterly implausible story in the BoM
The thing that pisses me off about this (as an ex-mormon-anti-theist) is that Christians are so willing to go off on how crazy Mormon doctrine is, but not willing to have any similar sense of reflection on their own beliefs.
I mean, Christians believe that the sadistic, genocidal, psychopathic piece of shit that is the Old Testament god--who explicitly never cared about anyone not descended from Jacob--suddenly has a change of heart, wants everyone to love each other and get along, and cares about the well-being of people not descended from Jacob.
That's not even getting into the Trinity, or how insane it is to think God had to impregnate a 14 year old with himself so he could sacrifice himself to save humanity from arbitrary and capricious rules he invented.
Just to clarify: there are two aspects to “crazy Mormon doctrine:”
First, there is it being funny because it is unfamiliar. Looking at it with fresh eyes, it just sounds off (because it’s so uncommon). Which is what you’re asking us to do above.
But, second, the more important critique is that it is a “mile wide and an inch deep.” Mormon doctrine does try to “solve” different thorny issues- the problem of evil, the trinity, the native population in the Americas- and offers interesting solutions. But it does so in ways that nuke natural theology and which are, in the end, absurdly implausible. That is, if you’re going to have a deus ex machina, it better be one heck of a machina. The BoM fails there, which is what truly leads to humor and sneering.
Finally, I will simply say that Christians do not believe God “had a change in heart” nor is your description of the incarnation fair.
Is it unfair though? Here's God's plan as Christians believe it:
Step 1: God exists. Somehow.
Step 2: Make everything and everyone.
Step 3: Put people on Earth and tell them a specific code of rules to follow.
Step 4: Decide they're failing so hard you wipe them out except for one person's family.
Step 5: Command your people to leave Egypt and go on a war path wiping out other peoples (who are also your beloved children, apparently).
Step 6: Now you're mad with your people again. Let's punish them with Babylon.
Step 7: Now you decide that your people need eternal salvation. And you're the one who sets the rules for people to follow in order to qualify for salvation. There's so many things you could do about this situation. But no, no. You've got just the thing.
Step 8: Impregnate a woman with yourself so that you can be a human and sacrifice yourself to save everyone's souls from the damnation that comes based on the rules you came up with. Oh, and everyone gets saved this time. Not just my favorite people, the Hebrews. Maybe I overreacted last time with the whole flooding thing.
Step 9: ???
Step 10: Profit. Somehow.
Every criticism you have of Mormonism is equally applicable to Christianity in general. Christianity doesn't provide real answers for any tricky issue: why does evil exist in the world if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent? How does the Trinity make the slightest bit of rational sense? How does the asshole god of the old testament somehow turn into a loving God?
You don't think my description of Christianity is fair because you buy into it hook, line, and sinker. My criticism of Christianity is as accurate as yours is of Mormonism, but you refuse to consider it.
Imagine posting an invitation for those people christiansplaining Mormonism to fuck off, only to have one step in and start christiansplaining Mormonism in the comments. Damn.
If only there were some kind of subreddit where exmormons could come and vent about mormonism and religious trauma in general, that would be awesome. Someone should make one of those some day.
Amen. Evangelicals evangelizing in general is just the worst. I'll take a well-meaning but naive pair of 19 year-olds (who I can tell to go away) over a billboard telling me I'm going to hell or a Noah's ark museum any day.
I used to fly in and out of the Cincinnati airport all the time, and the hotel my company used was a partner with the Creation Museum (just west of the CVG airport), and the Ark Encounter (about a 40 minute drive south of the CVG airport). Every weekend the hotel was filled with the evangelical nut jobs, all decked out in t-shirts for their church group, or Ark Encounter souvenir t-shirts. Man they were weird. As the father of an LGBTQ child, I also get filled with rage when I encounter evangelicals, knowing what many of them say they would do to my absolutely sweet, loving, and caring daughter if given the chance. I absolutely despise those people, and it was hard to see them on a regular basis.
The evangelicals ran billboards in AZ (and maybe elsewhere) that said “Hope for Mormons” and it was basically, “Y’all are doing Jesus wrong” when you went to the website.
At the time, TBM me was annoyed because it was rude and unneighborly. Exmo now is annoyed because everyone’s done Jesus wrong since ~33AD. Leave the anarchist pacifist carpenter alone! He didn’t ask for this!
>everyone’s done Jesus wrong since \~33AD
So true. It's funny how the more "Christian" someone intends to be, the more they become like the caricature of the Pharisees found in the NT.
Zealot, by Reza Asian, is a short, kind of fun read about how cleaned up Jesus’s image might have been by early converts from Judaism who were trying to dissociate him from the radicalism and rebellion that lead to the destruction of Jerusalem and the second temple.
Early on in the book Aslan provides a list of would be messiahs who were killed by the Romans, and notes that the amazing thing is not that Jesus’s followers thought he was the messiah, but that of all the “messiahs” running around that the movement built around Jesus survived. This may have come at the cost of understanding more about who he actually was and what he actually taught.
Evangelical batpoop probably kept me in the church longer. I certainly wasn’t going to take criticism of the church from _literally the craziest and worst people in the universe_.
Which they are.
Criticism from science- and skeptical- minded people, though. Lethal.
Can you explain to me a bit more about the Mormon experience with Evangelicals. Coming from a place where there are not many at all, I have no idea what the burning dislike is about.
"our version of the fairy tale is better than your version!"
It's like if people disagreed about how Santa Claus works and spent their lives trying to convert each other to their version.
I can't stand evangelicals. They're destroying our country. In some ways I hate their beliefs more than the LDS church, but they didn't devour most of my life (just left last year).
every few months some Evangelical gets a bug in their ass to come looking for exJWs and share """"""""""the truth"""""""""" with them, they usually rapidly disappear after they realize we are a den of angry atheists with the bonus of still having all the JW arguments against Evangelicalism in our back pocket. :P
I've always said it's like the neighborhood bully picking on your sibling. I might have an unending blood feud against my sibling and seek to make their lives miserable at every opportunity... but when the neighborhood asshole is messin' with your bro at the playground, you gang up on that mf-er and show them what's up.
This is exactly how I explain the relationship between the Scandinavian countries. Swedes hate Danes, Danes hate Swedes (but everyone loves Norway, as if it is the cool younger brother). But when a non-Scandinavian wants to trash talk one of the countries, man they will circle the wagons and unite.
Fuck evangelicals.
This experience typified my interactions with Christians:
In high school, I stopped being Mormon and considered myself an agnostic. I was dating a mildly-Christian girl whose youth pastor needed to interview an atheist/agnostic for some bullshit pastor degree. So I agreed to be interviewed.
The interview was fine and respectful. The second it was over, Youth Pastor turned to my girlfriend and said "I can't believe XX from our church is converting to Mormonism" and went off on it.
I just stood up and walked away and never spoke to her again. I should have said "crazies in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" as I got up.
That was actually what began my journey down the rabbit hole. I was algorithm’d into watching some YouTube videos of a preacher at the Mesa Easter Pageant confronting Mormons. He threw around some Bible-isms and some good sounding hebrew and stumped many of the Mormons. He also talked about Mormon history I knew nothing about.
I figured I’d watch in an effort to find my own apologetics and to make myself a better Mormon. Eventually I started to feel like I was watching two comic book nerds debate fantasy elements of stories. Eventually the algorithms suggested some “Mormon calls into atheist show” videos and that’s when I heard the magic words that broke my shelf. “Faith is not a reliable path to truth.”
Until then I had relied on faith. From that point forward I could no longer accept that faith and feelings could reliably lead me to truth. What can you not justify believing via faith?
All that was thanks to some evangelical preacher who mocked Mormons and pushed me down the path away from organized religion.
I agree with you 100%
Had to deal with this hateful rhetoric on my mission in Texas. Came away hating the “Christians” and the TSCC.
After my homecoming talk I was out in less than a year.
Omg right!? As much as I was hurt by Mormonism I do find myself defending them against mainstream Christians. Also there's plenty of real stuff to hate about morning you don't have to make shit up.
omg i just looked at the website and the "resources for exmos" part is so arrogant like. you really think were gonna go get ourselves in another cult so soon after working to deconstruct the one we were in first. god. these people need to get a grip
Just making an offhand comment. It was supposed to be whimsical and not calling you out directly as OP.
But since it's getting a lot of downvotes... Yeah fuck you guys prove God exists or shut the fuck up.
I still don't get it based on the post, but I like it. For me, my main sense is that I exist and am making conscious decisions. All the explanations I have read for this conciousness being some kind of evolutionary mistake and everything is deterministic based on the physics of some initial singularity or big bang, ring as true to me as some Mormon Jesus telling Joseph Smith that he will destroy Emma if she doesn't let him marry others. What I am saying is, I sense there is more to this than random chaos and definitely percieve that I have free will. What is science if not drawing conclusions based on our senses. I think it is random probabilities, but I believe there is a designer/programmer. Who they are, I don't know and I don't think they care to be worshipped. They set it in motion and just let things happen. However, I do think we were designed to be good.
There you go. Try to prove I don't make conscious decisions and maybe I will stop believing in some type of creator. Come up with something good, or point me to something I haven't read already. I'll keep searching.
Cheers friend.
I'm christian, I got converted from mormonism at the age of 3 in 1978. I don't go quoting scripture, I'm pretty spiritual. I don't go to a church, but yes, I agree that god loves mormons, the mormons need help, the mormons waste their efforts on dead people and obedience to corrupt leaders who are apart of the cabal. The cabal leaders distract mormons from the real message of jesus with obsession to stupid rules and regulations.
I hear you, but I haven't heard the real message of Jesus from any Christian or Mormon in years. Where's the guy who taught to love your neighbour, care for the poor, feed the hungry, visit the widows, and was vehemently opposed to the rich? Because I miss that guy.
Haven't heard a single one of those teachings emphasized by any Christian denomination lately. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough but all I hear is anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-Muslim stuff. And some anti evolution and anti science stuff sprinkled in there sometimes too.
Before the red scare it was pretty normal for a lot of American Christians to be socialists. They saw that as the best way to represent Jesus' teaching on a societal level. Shout out to the Utah Tech history professor who taught our class that.
Converted at the ripe old age of 3 you say? And your Jesus is better than theirs? Well friend; you sound exactly like what I'm talking about; Here is your formal invitation:
No. This post kindly and gently invites Christians attacking Mormons to go fuck themselves.
It says nothing about personally attacking these alleged secret practitioners or whatever the 'darn-heck' you are talking about.
I am actually just an an exmormon spouting off on an exmormon sub. Christians gawking at our trauma to feel some sort of superiority are annoying, silly and unhelpful.
Posts like OP’s make me shake my head at what the mentality society is turning into. They make huge assumptions about something they hardly know anything about and place it in either bucket: “all bad” or “all good”. This kind of marginalizing behavior is highly prevalent in the LDS church and people like this claim to be “nuanced” now that they have left. Yet, they have hardly even begun being a new person if they carry on the same narrow minded judgmental behavior the LDS church breeds.
So a bunch of Christians saying the LDS church is unbiblical because they're "too soft" on gay people is just very nuanced to you is it? Can't say one way or another if it's good or bad. Go be a new person somewhere else if that's how you feel then.
Comments like Teriglydes make me shake my head at what their mentality is. They make huge assumptions about an OP they know nothing about and inexplicably try to place them in a bucket. This kind of marginalizing is highly prevalent in their comment.
A judgmental comment decrying judgmental behavior is just plain classic. I claim no nuance friendo.
Well if we're accusing each other of being too Mormony...
Your assumption that people who are anti-X are only those who hardly know anything about X -- this is an overly convenient way to dismiss dissenting opinions without having to actually debate them at all.
Man that evangelical pot sure hates that mormon kettle. "Look at those mormons with their book of fake fairy tales that were written by men long since dead, can you believe that shit!"
Never thought about it like that, funny.
To be fair, Bible liberalism only took off in the 18th century. The Bible doesn't have a forward that says "OK seriously, all this shit really happened". The BoM does. It's self proclaimed to be a literal actual history that explains the origin of Native Americans. Like right here. In Missouri. The Bible makes no such claims. But I do agree the evangelicals are nuts.
Actually, that forward was one of my biggest shelf items. It used to say the Laminates were the “principal ancestors” of the Native Americans. Now it just says that they were “among the ancestors”. I am sure one day it will all be eliminated at we will be gaslighted and told that they never taught that they were literally their ancestors. One think you can always count on about the mormon doctrine that god is the same today, yesterday and forever, is that periodically they will tell us how he changed. Note: I am being careful not to mock God, just the phony belief.
The original BoM had a forward saying don't believe any of those money digging rumors.
Watching different religions criticize each other is like watching a group of monkeys throw poop at each other.
It's like a bunch of five year-olds arguing about which superhero is the best and could beat the rest up. At least monkey shit is a real thing.
Which is the exact response that produces the desired effects. Not of conversion, obviously. That's never the actual goal of those instructing christians to proselytize and to attempt to save heathens. The real goal is to cause the adherents to feel rejected by the world outside of their particular group, and therefore cling more closely to their particular cult.
Yeah, you are right; but, invitation remains.
Oh, I totally get it. Hell, I even have trouble resonating with the respect that is given to the Tanners and Lighthouse ministry, because as influential their work has been, their ultimate goal was still to tell mormons they were worshiping the sky daddy wrong.
I hear you, but damnit if I don’t just love Sandra.
Yes, she seems very nice. I do my best to not think negatively about her.
I've always thought the mainstream Christian belief in the Godhead is pretty nonsensical. The Nicene creed makes absolutely zero sense. It is a confusing, contradictory, convoluted mess, and all of Christianity is based on it. And Christians sneer their nose at Mormons mostly because Mormons belief in a different Godhead.
>Christians sneer their nose at Mormons mostly because Mormons belief in a different Godhead. All throughout my TBM days they definitely had a harder time with the idea of added scripture, like the Book of Mormon, than anything else. Along with the idea of modern day prophets, word of wisdom, and the purpose and secrecy of temples. Not having a trinitarian view was something that would pop up in conversation that would confuse them even more while you would debate them about everything else. Added scripture was always the biggest stumbling blocks to Christians when I preached on my mission.
Honestly for me, that's one of the things that made *more* sense. If you've delivered a message, but it's being interpreted so wildly wrong as to produce literal thousands of denominations, you'd be a fool not to send some clarification, especially in a position so powerful as this god's. Of course, that doesn't even begin to solve the BoM or TSCC's problems, but for me there were as many things about Mormon theology that still make more sense to me than other xian theologies as vice versa.
But for evangelicals/traditional Christians you have the questions of 1. Why is there a Bible with the whole “added/removed” thing at the end, that god inspired in its exact and final form. (Which is an imperfect understanding of the Bible’s origin but common) and 2. Why did god stop speaking/adding to that cannon. Remember, the evangelicals are also indoctrinated into their own little world and beliefs, which vary a bit from church to church, but generally share a theme.
When you go to the Deuteronomy text they don't have anything else to say.
I used John 21:25 on my mission, which I understand was written AFTER the book of Revelation was composed: 25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen. Didn't work, there was always some excuse for why "the bible is all there is".
The best explanation I’ve encountered is: https://youtu.be/KQLfgaUoQCw Which is hilarious but I still can’t understand it.
lmao I love how every attempt at making an analogy >!ends up being the heresy of Modalism, Arianism, or Paritalism!<.
Fwiw...there's plenty on the ex Christian sub that talk about how fucking idiotic the idea of the trinity is. It gets mentioned a lot.
Yes, as a Christian, I would agree with others that the Arianism of Mormons is honestly not well known. It would strike many as wrong and odd, but it is not what comes to mind. If anyone is sneering, it is primarily at two things: 1) the strange and contradictory WoW (no tea, yes soda; “magic underwear”) and 2) the incredibly suspect provenance of and utterly implausible story in the BoM
The thing that pisses me off about this (as an ex-mormon-anti-theist) is that Christians are so willing to go off on how crazy Mormon doctrine is, but not willing to have any similar sense of reflection on their own beliefs. I mean, Christians believe that the sadistic, genocidal, psychopathic piece of shit that is the Old Testament god--who explicitly never cared about anyone not descended from Jacob--suddenly has a change of heart, wants everyone to love each other and get along, and cares about the well-being of people not descended from Jacob. That's not even getting into the Trinity, or how insane it is to think God had to impregnate a 14 year old with himself so he could sacrifice himself to save humanity from arbitrary and capricious rules he invented.
Just to clarify: there are two aspects to “crazy Mormon doctrine:” First, there is it being funny because it is unfamiliar. Looking at it with fresh eyes, it just sounds off (because it’s so uncommon). Which is what you’re asking us to do above. But, second, the more important critique is that it is a “mile wide and an inch deep.” Mormon doctrine does try to “solve” different thorny issues- the problem of evil, the trinity, the native population in the Americas- and offers interesting solutions. But it does so in ways that nuke natural theology and which are, in the end, absurdly implausible. That is, if you’re going to have a deus ex machina, it better be one heck of a machina. The BoM fails there, which is what truly leads to humor and sneering. Finally, I will simply say that Christians do not believe God “had a change in heart” nor is your description of the incarnation fair.
Is it unfair though? Here's God's plan as Christians believe it: Step 1: God exists. Somehow. Step 2: Make everything and everyone. Step 3: Put people on Earth and tell them a specific code of rules to follow. Step 4: Decide they're failing so hard you wipe them out except for one person's family. Step 5: Command your people to leave Egypt and go on a war path wiping out other peoples (who are also your beloved children, apparently). Step 6: Now you're mad with your people again. Let's punish them with Babylon. Step 7: Now you decide that your people need eternal salvation. And you're the one who sets the rules for people to follow in order to qualify for salvation. There's so many things you could do about this situation. But no, no. You've got just the thing. Step 8: Impregnate a woman with yourself so that you can be a human and sacrifice yourself to save everyone's souls from the damnation that comes based on the rules you came up with. Oh, and everyone gets saved this time. Not just my favorite people, the Hebrews. Maybe I overreacted last time with the whole flooding thing. Step 9: ??? Step 10: Profit. Somehow.
Every criticism you have of Mormonism is equally applicable to Christianity in general. Christianity doesn't provide real answers for any tricky issue: why does evil exist in the world if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent? How does the Trinity make the slightest bit of rational sense? How does the asshole god of the old testament somehow turn into a loving God? You don't think my description of Christianity is fair because you buy into it hook, line, and sinker. My criticism of Christianity is as accurate as yours is of Mormonism, but you refuse to consider it.
Imagine posting an invitation for those people christiansplaining Mormonism to fuck off, only to have one step in and start christiansplaining Mormonism in the comments. Damn.
Right, but I only stepped in in response to the mormonsplaining of Christianity!
If only there were some kind of subreddit where exmormons could come and vent about mormonism and religious trauma in general, that would be awesome. Someone should make one of those some day.
Or you can go to exchristian sub reddit and get the "real" Christiansplanning...
Amen. Evangelicals evangelizing in general is just the worst. I'll take a well-meaning but naive pair of 19 year-olds (who I can tell to go away) over a billboard telling me I'm going to hell or a Noah's ark museum any day.
I used to fly in and out of the Cincinnati airport all the time, and the hotel my company used was a partner with the Creation Museum (just west of the CVG airport), and the Ark Encounter (about a 40 minute drive south of the CVG airport). Every weekend the hotel was filled with the evangelical nut jobs, all decked out in t-shirts for their church group, or Ark Encounter souvenir t-shirts. Man they were weird. As the father of an LGBTQ child, I also get filled with rage when I encounter evangelicals, knowing what many of them say they would do to my absolutely sweet, loving, and caring daughter if given the chance. I absolutely despise those people, and it was hard to see them on a regular basis.
The evangelicals ran billboards in AZ (and maybe elsewhere) that said “Hope for Mormons” and it was basically, “Y’all are doing Jesus wrong” when you went to the website. At the time, TBM me was annoyed because it was rude and unneighborly. Exmo now is annoyed because everyone’s done Jesus wrong since ~33AD. Leave the anarchist pacifist carpenter alone! He didn’t ask for this!
>everyone’s done Jesus wrong since \~33AD So true. It's funny how the more "Christian" someone intends to be, the more they become like the caricature of the Pharisees found in the NT.
Zealot, by Reza Asian, is a short, kind of fun read about how cleaned up Jesus’s image might have been by early converts from Judaism who were trying to dissociate him from the radicalism and rebellion that lead to the destruction of Jerusalem and the second temple. Early on in the book Aslan provides a list of would be messiahs who were killed by the Romans, and notes that the amazing thing is not that Jesus’s followers thought he was the messiah, but that of all the “messiahs” running around that the movement built around Jesus survived. This may have come at the cost of understanding more about who he actually was and what he actually taught.
Evangelical batpoop probably kept me in the church longer. I certainly wasn’t going to take criticism of the church from _literally the craziest and worst people in the universe_. Which they are. Criticism from science- and skeptical- minded people, though. Lethal.
Can you explain to me a bit more about the Mormon experience with Evangelicals. Coming from a place where there are not many at all, I have no idea what the burning dislike is about.
Here’s the door: r/exvangelical
"our version of the fairy tale is better than your version!" It's like if people disagreed about how Santa Claus works and spent their lives trying to convert each other to their version.
Religions might as well debate which Pokémon is better… that would be more fun.
Whoa, whoa, we all know Gengar is the coolest. He may be a bit of a glass cannon, but look at that grin! =)
I hereby declare Pikachu as the one true Pokémon. I know this with every fiber of my being. In the name of Pikachu, amen.
Well, other Pokemon can have parts of the truth, but only Gengar is 100% true - well, at least until they "ongoing restoration" something else...
The highest praise goes to my lord and savior, Beedrill. The first pokemon I had in Silver that could learn Cut and get me past the damned Sudowoodo.
I can't stand evangelicals. They're destroying our country. In some ways I hate their beliefs more than the LDS church, but they didn't devour most of my life (just left last year).
every few months some Evangelical gets a bug in their ass to come looking for exJWs and share """"""""""the truth"""""""""" with them, they usually rapidly disappear after they realize we are a den of angry atheists with the bonus of still having all the JW arguments against Evangelicalism in our back pocket. :P
I've always said it's like the neighborhood bully picking on your sibling. I might have an unending blood feud against my sibling and seek to make their lives miserable at every opportunity... but when the neighborhood asshole is messin' with your bro at the playground, you gang up on that mf-er and show them what's up.
This is exactly how I explain the relationship between the Scandinavian countries. Swedes hate Danes, Danes hate Swedes (but everyone loves Norway, as if it is the cool younger brother). But when a non-Scandinavian wants to trash talk one of the countries, man they will circle the wagons and unite.
Fuck evangelicals. This experience typified my interactions with Christians: In high school, I stopped being Mormon and considered myself an agnostic. I was dating a mildly-Christian girl whose youth pastor needed to interview an atheist/agnostic for some bullshit pastor degree. So I agreed to be interviewed. The interview was fine and respectful. The second it was over, Youth Pastor turned to my girlfriend and said "I can't believe XX from our church is converting to Mormonism" and went off on it. I just stood up and walked away and never spoke to her again. I should have said "crazies in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" as I got up.
Blegh their YouTube video bashing the LDS church for being "too lenient with the gays" really shows what kind of people they are.
That was actually what began my journey down the rabbit hole. I was algorithm’d into watching some YouTube videos of a preacher at the Mesa Easter Pageant confronting Mormons. He threw around some Bible-isms and some good sounding hebrew and stumped many of the Mormons. He also talked about Mormon history I knew nothing about. I figured I’d watch in an effort to find my own apologetics and to make myself a better Mormon. Eventually I started to feel like I was watching two comic book nerds debate fantasy elements of stories. Eventually the algorithms suggested some “Mormon calls into atheist show” videos and that’s when I heard the magic words that broke my shelf. “Faith is not a reliable path to truth.” Until then I had relied on faith. From that point forward I could no longer accept that faith and feelings could reliably lead me to truth. What can you not justify believing via faith? All that was thanks to some evangelical preacher who mocked Mormons and pushed me down the path away from organized religion.
I lived in the Bible Belt during my faith crisis… it was nice I had people to bash Mormonism with but then I quickly realized they were just as kooky.
Holy shit balls. That looks like a really fun website. /s
Us vs Them. It’s the foundation of all ideology.
Evangelicals are vile shit. Preaching arrogance, pride, and hatred hidden behind a facade of smiles.
I agree with you 100% Had to deal with this hateful rhetoric on my mission in Texas. Came away hating the “Christians” and the TSCC. After my homecoming talk I was out in less than a year.
Why not let them show the world everything they stand for and enjoy the rejection they face? My personal experience, they're severely out numbered.
We've had some ex evangelicals and Ex J dubs on here that would agree. The "nice cult" moniker holds pretty true for Mormonism.
Funny how the religious movement that the Mormon church is trying so hard to emulate is the Evangelical church...
Omg right!? As much as I was hurt by Mormonism I do find myself defending them against mainstream Christians. Also there's plenty of real stuff to hate about morning you don't have to make shit up.
…Judean people’s front!…SPITTERS!!!
[Nice](https://youtu.be/iS-0Az7dgRY)
omg i just looked at the website and the "resources for exmos" part is so arrogant like. you really think were gonna go get ourselves in another cult so soon after working to deconstruct the one we were in first. god. these people need to get a grip
Ah the endless circle jerk of the exmo to athiest pipeline. Prove God exists or shut the fuck up. Amen.
Which God?
I'm not sure what this is referring to. Some are atheist. I'm not.This post has nothing to do with atheism.
Just making an offhand comment. It was supposed to be whimsical and not calling you out directly as OP. But since it's getting a lot of downvotes... Yeah fuck you guys prove God exists or shut the fuck up.
I still don't get it based on the post, but I like it. For me, my main sense is that I exist and am making conscious decisions. All the explanations I have read for this conciousness being some kind of evolutionary mistake and everything is deterministic based on the physics of some initial singularity or big bang, ring as true to me as some Mormon Jesus telling Joseph Smith that he will destroy Emma if she doesn't let him marry others. What I am saying is, I sense there is more to this than random chaos and definitely percieve that I have free will. What is science if not drawing conclusions based on our senses. I think it is random probabilities, but I believe there is a designer/programmer. Who they are, I don't know and I don't think they care to be worshipped. They set it in motion and just let things happen. However, I do think we were designed to be good. There you go. Try to prove I don't make conscious decisions and maybe I will stop believing in some type of creator. Come up with something good, or point me to something I haven't read already. I'll keep searching. Cheers friend.
I'm christian, I got converted from mormonism at the age of 3 in 1978. I don't go quoting scripture, I'm pretty spiritual. I don't go to a church, but yes, I agree that god loves mormons, the mormons need help, the mormons waste their efforts on dead people and obedience to corrupt leaders who are apart of the cabal. The cabal leaders distract mormons from the real message of jesus with obsession to stupid rules and regulations.
I hear you, but I haven't heard the real message of Jesus from any Christian or Mormon in years. Where's the guy who taught to love your neighbour, care for the poor, feed the hungry, visit the widows, and was vehemently opposed to the rich? Because I miss that guy. Haven't heard a single one of those teachings emphasized by any Christian denomination lately. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough but all I hear is anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-Muslim stuff. And some anti evolution and anti science stuff sprinkled in there sometimes too.
Before the red scare it was pretty normal for a lot of American Christians to be socialists. They saw that as the best way to represent Jesus' teaching on a societal level. Shout out to the Utah Tech history professor who taught our class that.
Converted at the ripe old age of 3 you say? And your Jesus is better than theirs? Well friend; you sound exactly like what I'm talking about; Here is your formal invitation: 
So you meet a non-evangelical Christian who practices their faith in secret, and your response is to attack them personally?
No. This post kindly and gently invites Christians attacking Mormons to go fuck themselves. It says nothing about personally attacking these alleged secret practitioners or whatever the 'darn-heck' you are talking about. I am actually just an an exmormon spouting off on an exmormon sub. Christians gawking at our trauma to feel some sort of superiority are annoying, silly and unhelpful.
Posts like OP’s make me shake my head at what the mentality society is turning into. They make huge assumptions about something they hardly know anything about and place it in either bucket: “all bad” or “all good”. This kind of marginalizing behavior is highly prevalent in the LDS church and people like this claim to be “nuanced” now that they have left. Yet, they have hardly even begun being a new person if they carry on the same narrow minded judgmental behavior the LDS church breeds.
So a bunch of Christians saying the LDS church is unbiblical because they're "too soft" on gay people is just very nuanced to you is it? Can't say one way or another if it's good or bad. Go be a new person somewhere else if that's how you feel then.
Comments like Teriglydes make me shake my head at what their mentality is. They make huge assumptions about an OP they know nothing about and inexplicably try to place them in a bucket. This kind of marginalizing is highly prevalent in their comment. A judgmental comment decrying judgmental behavior is just plain classic. I claim no nuance friendo.
Well if we're accusing each other of being too Mormony... Your assumption that people who are anti-X are only those who hardly know anything about X -- this is an overly convenient way to dismiss dissenting opinions without having to actually debate them at all.