One of the few redeeming qualities that religion has is the creed that one should treat others the way they wish to be treated. This idea is very ancient, appearing in the Code of Hammurabi in ancient Babylon (around 1,700 BCE), in ancient Chinese philosophy such as Mohism, Taoism and Confucianism, and even in Ancient Egypt where Maat appears in the story of the Eloquent Peasant wherein he delivers this message; and the list goes on. It should be no surprise that the idea was attributed to Jesus as well, and even the Book of Mormon contains the idea in Mosiah 27:4.

On the surface this seems like very good advice. If I don’t want someone doing something to me, what right do I have to do it to them? This starts to get complicated when we consider that we are all individuals, and just because I wish to be treated a certain way does not mean that other people want to be treated that same way.

Consider same-sex marriage. Because I am heterosexual I may not ordinarily care what laws are passed in that regard. Nor would I flirt with or date another man, even though there are lots of men who are gay and would like to go out and date, and others still that are in relationships and would like support and validation from their peers; and still others who may wish to keep to themselves.

This is not just limited to sexuality. Some people have likes and dislikes that others may find repulsive or annoying. Some people enjoy certain sports but find others boring. Some may enjoy arguments or debates while others find these things confrontational.

The philosophy that you should treat others how you would be treated does not address this. Instead I feel a better philosophy would be to treat others the way they would want to be treated, to the best that your knowledge of that person allows and inasmuch as your treatment of them does not negatively affect or condone the harm of others or yourself. It doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as well, but it does preclude ostracizing people because they’re different from you, taking away rights from others, and even less obvious stuff like sexism or racism; both of which are condoned in the bible.

The version of this philosophy taught in the Bible or Book of Mormon isn’t entirely bad, but since I had to reboot my belief system anyway, why not strive for something more. It is now well within my moral code to fight for equal rights for others even though those rights don’t apply to me. I now find it morally wrong to enforce gender roles or impose my preferences on others. And most of all, I would never condone something that is clearly harmful just because it is condoned in a book or by someone who claims to speak to a deity.

But they say I’m the one with no morals.

Short answer: no.

Even as an ex-Mormon I often look at aspects of the church and ask myself, was it always this obvious?  And when we see Mormons doing foolish things it’s tempting to call them out as being fools themselves, forgetting that we once believed as they did.

Examining the often humorously absurd doctrine it’s easy to forget just how sophisticated the thought reform that the church uses really is. From the emotional manipulation, isolation (missions, church schools, summer camps, EFY), information control (you’re not allowed to look at non-church sources) and social pressure it’s no surprise that most Mormons simply don’t think about the evidence against their faith. Many may not even realize it’s there even as they stare at it in the face. Though there are many exceptions, intelligent Mormons tend to be more liberal rather than apostates. It’s only the lucky ones that hear just the right piece of information to make them aware that something is wrong, and the whole thing comes crashing down.

Our reaction to what we see as stupidity is natural, especially given the American culture. A 2002 study found that the funniest joke in the United States was as follows:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator says “Calm down. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says, “OK, now what?”

Other countries have different jokes as their favorite, but for the United States this says something about our culture. According to the study, Americans (in general) love this joke because, in addition to the surprise ending, the stupidity of the character making the emergency call makes them feel superior to that character. Unfortunately this aspect of American culture tends to harm discourse between believers and non-believers.

While it’s true that not all Mormons are intelligent people, many of them are known to regurgitate floods of nonsense then turn around and have an intelligent conversation the moment the subject at hand no longer involves the church. They don’t realize they’re doing it. That’s their sense of normal.

The question came up several times during the “support Chick-fil-a day” why anyone would want to associate with “bigots.” If my departure from Mormonism has taught me anything, the answer is because they don’t realize they’re bigots. They’re simply doing what they’re told, as they had been trained to do. For the same reason they believe the doctrine of the church to begin with. It’s frustrating, it’s hurtful seeing them flock to restaurants when the common cause is hate and bigotry (even though I’m not gay myself, but you don’t have to be to support your fellow human beings) but being antagonistic will only help polarize them further and drive them to do things that are even more dangerous than what they are already doing. No one thinks of themselves as the bad guy, but if you can maintain credibility with your Mormon friends and help them see how harmful their actions really are then most Mormons would be quick to drop the bigotry. Because again, they’re not bad people, they just never thought to question. They don’t know what they’re doing.

So how do you respect someone that says such inane things while acting like they’re profound, waving around their bigotry and making a fool of themselves? Simple. Change the subject. There was a point shortly after I discovered the truth of the church when I might have had trouble not laughing or getting frustrated at some of the goofy things that come out of Mormon’s mouths, but in short order that became easy. And nothing but good can come from improving our discourse.

But even that will fail if we don’t remember the source of these remarks. Because more than likely the person making them is not, in fact, stupid.

At the beginning of November the house voted to reaffirm the divisive United States motto “In God we trust.” On the face of it this move is embarrassing for a lot of reasons. This was already the motto, despite petitions by atheists there really is no immediate threat to the motto, the motto itself is superstitious and divisive, there are far more pressing issues facing congress (such as the economy) and the vote was almost unanimous making the entire bill even more pointless. Despite all this, my frustration with congress is only from the waste of time. The motto itself doesn’t really concern me at this point.

The very thing that made America so deeply religious that the country would discriminate against certain demographics to show its collective devotion stems from the “Red Scare.” America was facing an enemy that was “godless” and logical, and human nature being what it is, we started working to become everything our enemy wasn’t. This meant becoming religious and devout. As a result, “under God” was added to the pledge in 1954 and “In God we trust” replaced our previous motto—E. Pluribus Unum—in 1957. As an unintentional side-effect anyone who was offended by these changes was persecuted and accused of being communists among other things. This was the perfect formula to make the United States the most religious country in the developed world.

Today things are a bit different. There are parts of the country where you can turn on the television to multiple channels and listen to the preacher of your choice. With both television and the Internet the words of multiple preachers could reach the same ears, and any information we could ever want is readily available at our fingertips. But this has an interesting consequence. Preachers are notorious for contradicting each other, and even more notorious for contradicting observable reality. Many preachers try to convince their congregations that evolution is a fabrication even while the evidence for evolution is overwhelming to the point of being inescapable. Thanks to the Internet, it’s nearly impossible to rely on ignorance alone to command belief; thought control techniques are needed.

Then, in 2001, something happened. The World Trade Center was attacked by a deeply religious enemy. The immediate effect of this was to wake up atheists who blamed religious indoctrination for the attacks. While there was a great deal of criticism for religion available before, never before was the criticism brought about in such volume. Even so, it is not the criticism of religion that will ultimately be its undoing, but the very same thing that made it so widespread to begin with. We are rapidly becoming everything our current enemy is not.

Godless.

Already as much as 30% of Americans report that they are not affiliated with any church, half of those going so far as to identify as atheist and the numbers are rapidly rising. Compare that to the dismal 5-6% from the early 90′s. Combined with the new generations growing up with a bombardment of information that conflicts on every subject imaginable—which tends to make them into skeptics and reluctant to take things at face value—and the complete lack of relevancy that religion has in people’s lives now days thanks to the advances in science, we end up with the perfect storm for atheism to surge and likely become the expected norm. At that point the word “atheist” may even become obsolete in the same way that “non-smoker” has.

Part of human nature is our increased reluctance to change our beliefs as we get older, as reflected by the demographics of the religious. There is already a strong correlation between age and religiosity as the direction of the country is shifting. This makes it reasonable to predict that it’s only a matter of time before we get our old motto back and return to a more secular nation.

But what about the pledge? To me, this is a completely separate issue and unlike the motto, which doesn’t really concern me, my opinion on the pledge can be summed up in this image showing how Americans saluted the flag prior to World War II:

It’s often difficult to recognize brainwashing in action when it’s part of our sense of “normal,” but mixing things up just a little bit without changing any significant detail can make the use of thought control obvious. This is why Fast and Testimony meetings are so obvious and cult-like to outside observers but life-long Mormons would never realize it. Having broken free of similar thought control I have, for better or worse, developed a sensitivity to that sort of thing.

The obvious question is why brainwashing citizens to be patriotic is a bad thing. The answer to this has been made obvious during the recent attempt at health care reform. Citizens lined the streets to protest against the bill despite the fact that opposing such legislation was clearly against their best interests. As humans we have a surprising capacity to fight against our best interests through the use of emotional manipulation, and Fox News has mastered this. One look at the recent empire building from the United States, and the history other countries and organizations have of manipulating their citizens, and it’s easy to imagine how dangerous blind loyalty to any individual or organization can be.

So why not start a big campaign to abandon the pledge altogether? Simple. Pick your battles.

Years ago when the winter Olympics were in Salt Lake City a news reporter went around to public places in Utah and interviewed as many Mormons as he could to try and get an idea of what Mormons “really believe.” I distinctly recall how surprised I was when everyone he interviewed, despite all being Mormon, described beliefs that were very different from my own and even different from each other. My mom, sister and I stood around the TV frustrated. How could these people get it so wrong? Didn’t any of them pay attention in church?

This was a lesson I wouldn’t internalize until years later. Like many ex-Mormons, I’m guilty as charged when it comes to digging up amusing, factually wrong or plain absurd things that Mormon leaders have said or comment on absurd or destructive teachings. Even so, just because the church teaches something doesn’t mean all Mormons believe a certain way. A really poignant example is the godmakers cartoon, which I should point out is not and never was “banned.” The cartoon suffers from two problems. First, it’s old, and reflects teachings of the church from the 1960s and 70s. It was released in 1982, and of course the exact date that any given teaching was abandoned is rather fuzzy since the leaders don’t exactly go to the pulpit and say “we no longer believe this.” They just stop talking about it.

The second problem with that cartoon is that while the church did legitimately teach everything they mention, even Mormons that are old enough to remember being taught the abandoned beliefs and might remember hearing the crazy stuff (God and Mary having literal sex or Jesus being polygamist just to name a few, the video has a lot of them) remember that everyone has their own brand of the religion. I’ve found that many rational people just filter that kind of stuff out and don’t remember it. Some even get uncomfortable if you bring it up or find some excuse to dismiss it.

When dealing with fiction it’s possible to reconcile anything as long as you can be flexible enough to add or remove arbitrary details. A classic example was in Star Wars when Han boasted that his ship could complete the Kessel run in twelve parsecs. But a parsec doesn’t measure speed, it’s a unit of distance equal to approximately 3.2 lightyears. (if you’re curious, it’s the distance a star must be from earth for the parallax to be one second of right ascension in the sky, hence the name. Parallax Second, or parsec) I’m uncertain who actually reconciled the error, but the story now goes that the Kessel Run is an obstacle course that runs you close to a black hole. Because Hans ship was so fast he could fly really close and shave off a good portion of his distance. Of course none of these extra details about the black hole were mentioned or even thought of in the source material, but that doesn’t matter. As long as the reconciliation sounds plausible then it works.

When you can understand how they reconcile errors like this in fiction then you will understand not just how apologetics works but the reason why every member has their own brand of the religion. Your beliefs are shaped by which parts of the teachings you internalized, which you ignored, which you had to reconcile and finally how you reconciled them.

Now that I don’t have to reconcile everything as truth, I often see things come out of the mouths of the church leadership in its raw unfiltered form. Because we can view the teachings this way there seems to be a general agreement among most ex-Mormons about what the church teaches, and we often criticize this version of Mormonism. The trouble is, when a believing Mormon sees our criticism, what we’re attacking usually won’t resemble that individual’s beliefs, and this can lead to the assumption that we don’t know what we’re talking about. I know this because I assumed the same about all the Mormons in that news report years ago that believed differently than I did. This is why “Anti-Mormon” literature had little effect on me.

For public forums that cater to ex-Mormons I don’t really have a solution for this, but in a private one-on-one conversation I’ve found that the best thing to do is find out what the person you’re debating actually believes then go from there. The less assumptions you make the more effective you’ll be. It’s often surprising how unique each individual’s version is.

There are some arguments that, while unconvincing to me, sound reasonable enough that I can see where others might accept them. The timing when I first heard the argument that the church does more good than harm couldn’t have been more impeccable, as I was in the middle of grasping for straws searching for any redeeming quality that the church had. It was brought up that the church has church welfare, humanitarian programs, the bishop’s storehouse etc. Reality is that these entities are charities that the church uses as tax shelters for their business arms. Among other things, the church is one of the largest land owners in the United States with industries in farming, and are building a giant shopping center in downtown Salt Lake City. Their “charity” will ensure that they don’t have to pay taxes on these things. Now to be fair, the fact that they have tax shelters is not evil in and of itself. Unethical maybe but most American corporations that size have them. What’s more, not all tax shelters actually do any “good” in the world, and theirs does.

My first reaction to this argument is that, because they’re a church, much of their activities are tax exempt anyway, and they’re giving close to the minimum that they actually have to. What’s more, they’re getting the contributions from their members, meaning it costs them nothing. This means Wal-Mart gives far more per dollar earned in charity and they have to pay for said charity out of their own pockets. It seems realistic to me that most of the members that donate to the church would have donated anyway to a secular organization, not just the charitable contributions but at least a portion of what they paid in tithing as well. By paying tithing many members feel that they have already “contributed” and choose not to donate further.

If it is true that the good they do would be done anyway—and people’s attitudes seem to suggest that this is the case—then they are contributing nothing at best and at worst depriving our community of tax revenue and charitable donations that could be used helping the needy rather than building chapels, temples and shopping centers. If we ignore the fact that their charity would happen either way, and make the unlikely assumption that hygiene kits and blankets could reach the needy in no other way, then it boils down to cost versus rewards. The cost here is the damage the church does (legislation and bullying of the LGBT community, inducing guilt and diminished self worth, anti-intellectualism, etc) and the rewards are of course the humanitarian aid. This one is a bit harder to weigh in on in an unbiased way because I’m not a recipient of said aid yet I have been at the receiving end of the harm caused by the church. I know, or rather knew, people personally who committed suicide; and the evidence for at least one of these points to their diminished self worth as a result of their beliefs as the cause of depression. (the suicide itself being the lack of sufficient help) So with the full admission of my bias out of the way, I think the benefit is negligible compared to the harm.

Destructive organizations doing “good works” to improve their pr is nothing new. During the depression Al Capone opened up soup kitchens in Chicago (pictured below) and in the recent earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan the Yakuza, a mafia in Japan, passed out blankets and supplies to victims of the disaster.

If you’re going to use the argument that the church is a force for good because they do all this “charity” then you have to concede the same for criminal organizations that do the same.

Finally, if I am having this conversation with fellow ex-mormons, then I think this analogy speaks volumes:

I am compelled to share with you an experience I once had with my dear mother. She baked our family the most wonderful and delicious brownies and presented them to us. The whole house was filled with the smell, and we approached the kitchen drooling like Pavlov’s dogs. Then she informed us that baked into the brownies is a tiny morsel of dog poop. Only a little bit, you can hardly taste it. She then asked us if we still wanted to taste her brownies? (she assured us that the dog poop was not in any way a euphemism for weed)

I’m aware that argument from analogy proves nothing, but it’s always great for making Mormons squirm.

Off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada lies Oak Island. Near the southern tip of this island lies a special little tourist destination called The Money Pit. In 1795 the then-16 year old Daniel McGinnis discovered an odd depression in the ground, and convinced that something special must be buried here, he enlisted the help of his friends John Smith and Anthony Vaughan to excavate the pit. As they dug down they discovered a layer of flagstones, and a few feet below was a layer of logs. Convinced that these logs were evidence that treasure from pirates must be buried underneath, the three boys removed the logs and dug another ten feet, finding a second layer of logs. Undeterred, they removed these and dug yet another ten feet… to find a third layer of logs.

The boys decided that whatever the pirates buried here, they didn’t want it walking off, and pirates obviously had a great deal more resources than three sixteen year old boys, so they gave up. But they never forgot about their treasure, and made a point of sharing the story. Some 8 years after this incident, in the early 1800s, the Onslow Company heard of this “money pit” and decided to sail out with some excavation equipment out to claim the treasure for themselves.  They managed to dig 90 feet, finding another “marker” layer of logs every ten feet. At around the 90 foot mark, just as the company was about to run out of money, they uncovered a stone that read “forty feet below, two million pounds lie buried.”

Elated at this discovery, the crew retired to bed for the night, only to find the pit full of water the next morning. The men bailed water out as quick as they could, but found  that it rose and lowered with the tide. Bailing it out would do nothing. Word of the tablet spread, however, and in 1849 the Truro company came to try their hand at the dig. They dug the pit back down to the 86 foot level, where it quickly flooded again. They then ran a drill into the water-filled hole to see what they could expect to find should they continue digging, and managed to drill through more layers of wood and encountered metal, which they were certain meant they had drilled into a treasure chest.

The next team arrived in 1861 and used heavy pumps to keep the water out, but soon their boiler exploded killing some of their workers and collapsing the cavern below. When paint was lowered into the pit and emerged out into the ocean at three points around the island, the men concluded that the flooding was due to elaborate booby trap meant to keep treasure thieves out. Something really good must be buried here to justify not one, but three flood tunnels!

These booby traps drove wild speculation as to what must be buried behind such elaborate protection. Pirates wouldn’t go to this length for treasure because the only reason for them to bury treasure is for temporary storage to free up room in their ships. They would intend to reclaim it. This must have been something that no one was meant to find, such as the Arc and the Covenant, or even the Holy Grail! Surely a wonderful treasure must be hidden down there to go to all this effort. Afterall, flood gates like this would be quite a technological feat.

More companies tried their luck at digs in 1866, 1893, 1909, 1931, 1935, 1936, and 1959, none of which was successful. In that time they did manage to dig 134 feet down and even take blurry pictures of a chamber at the bottom, but little more.

The entire area in and around Nova Scotia is made of limestone, carved with cave systems and peppered with sink holes. It is very common for a sink hole to drop ten feet or so every few hundred to thousand years, nearby trees fall in, then debris piles on top of that and it’s forgotten as the forest regrows. Hundreds of examples of this phenomena can be found in the mainland and on many of the hundreds of neighboring islands. Cave systems that are capable of flooding the money pit are also normal and expected for this area. The digging companies, including the one running the island today and who are poised to fund yet another dig, are all aware of the geological surveys; but they will not hear any of it. They are convinced that there is treasure at the bottom of the money pit, even while the rest of the world has come to use that phrase to refer to throwing money away.

Self delusion is very much part of human nature, and the more we have invested in that delusion the harder it is to accept the reality that all our efforts and invested money was for nothing. The escalation of commitment bias, also known as the Sunken Cost Fallacy, is one of the most powerful driving forces of delusions. I had the opportunity to witness this in a class at BYU using the popular Dollar Auction experiment. Wikipedia describes the experiment thus:

The setup involves an auctioneer who volunteers to auction off a dollar bill with the following rule: the dollar goes to the highest bidder, who pays the amount he bids. The second-highest bidder also must pay the highest amount that he bid, but gets nothing in return. Suppose that the game begins with one of the players bidding 1 cent, hoping to make a 99 cent profit. He will quickly be outbid by another player bidding 2 cents, as a 98 cent profit is still desirable. Similarly, another bidder may bid 3 cents, making a 97 cent profit. Alternatively, the first bidder may attempt to convert their loss of 1 cent into a gain of 96 cents by bidding 4 cents. In this way, a series of bids is maintained. However, a problem becomes evident as soon as the bidding reaches 99 cents. Supposing that the other player had bid 98 cents, they now have the choice of losing the 98 cents or bidding a dollar even, which would make their profit zero. After that, the original player has a choice of either losing 99 cents or bidding $1.01, and only losing one cent. After this point the two players continue to bid the value up well beyond the dollar, and neither stands to profit.

When I witnessed this experiment, the entire room was shocked when the bidding continued to rise. The instructor stopped the auction as it was about to approach $20. By the time it got this high, both students knew full well that they would not profit from this at all. The more they invested the more they would lose. Yet they could not convince themselves that their best move would be to stop bidding and cut their losses; in fact one of them protested when the instructor stopped them. This is the same psychology that drove people to the money pit despite the geological survey, the absurdity of the claim about what’s at the bottom, and the fact that there’s more evidence suggesting that the stone tablet pulled from there was a hoax than that supports it.

This psychology is taught to anyone studying business, and many students in business classes likely have seen dollar auction or at least heard about it. Being run almost entirely by business men, the Mormon church is all too aware of this, a fact which is brutally apparent with their missionary program. Missionaries are instructed to get investigators (or doubters) to commit to one little thing. Just one, like saying your prayers every night. It’ll just take five minutes out of your day, and what could it hurt? There’s blessings to be had! Then on their next visit they’ll ask for a little more. Read just a few verses in your scriptures every night. Then on the next visit they’ll ask for a little more. Give up your coffee, read a chapter each night instead of a verse, start attending church, and so forth until you wake up one morning a full tithe payer with two callings and a strong testimony in something you previously knew sounded fishy.

From this it’s abundantly clear that the leadership of the church has done their research and knows full well what they’re doing and why it works. If you are asked to do even a little thing by the missionaries, like praying every night, my advice is to take a rain check on that and investigate the truth of their claims—all of their claims—before committing to anything.

One of the most striking things I’ve noticed since leaving the church is how much happier I feel overall. This new sense of normal began a few months after discovering that the Mormon church isn’t what it claims it is (or “true” in their own jargon), and made several jumps along the way as I passed multiple milestones. My guilt over innocuous things that are part of being human melted away, my diminished sense of self worth improved, the bulk of my stress left, I no longer felt scummy over repentance, I no longer feared death or judgement; and indeed the more I distance myself from the church the more the fear of death itself has diminished. That last point was a surprise to me, as the church has some pretty spectacular things promised in the hereafter. What poisons this is the fact that according to their own rules you have no chance of acquiring these blessings unless you actually reject the gospel and have your ordinances performed posthumously in the temple. Almost no living person could really live the standards unless they are asexual and are constantly paying attention to ensure that they don’t break the tiniest of arbitrary rules.

I’ve heard the counter argument to that involving something about the atonement, but that’s a point for another day.

When I finally was able to stop attending church, my integrity was restored and with it my departure was complete. This brought about the final step in my ultimately unexpected transformation into a truly happier, more authentic person. The difference is so profound there were times I wondered if I was living in reality. But when I articulated this to a believing Mormon, I got asked a simple and surprisingly difficult to answer question: Were you  really that miserable as a Mormon?

I… well, I didn’t feel miserable as a Mormon. But would it have really been fair to say that I didn’t understand what happiness was? At the same time, it’s tempting to point at the statistics that show the high rate of depression and suicide among Mormons, including the fact that Utah is the most depressed state in the nation. Knowing that I would have told you without hesitation that I was happy when I was a believer, and I wouldn’t have been lying, this quickly became something I wanted to dig into. To do this, it’s necessary to identify what happiness is exactly. While this isn’t an exact science, it’s not entirely outside the realm of scientific inquiry. Right up my alley.

The gist of it is this. “happiness” can be summarized by the acronym “PERMA”  which stands for Pleasure, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishments. The more these are satisfied the happier you will feel. This certainly reflects my experience. Without going into too much depth, let’s look at these a moment:

• Pleasure — In Mormonism we are taught to avoid pleasure because they somehow detract from happiness. So nothing sexual, artificially stimulating, etc. The only way to satisfy this as a Mormon is if you can get pleasure in other ways that are not arbitrarily considered “sinful,” such as through adrenaline type of activities. If you do masturbate or have sex, the pleasure will be destroyed by guilt. Thus, most Mormons will not be able to satisfy this.
• Engagement — This generally refers to flow of information or mentally stimulating/challenging activities. Like all religious groups, Mormonism discourages critical thinking and goes a step further with thought stopping and dumbing everything down. I was one that found mental stimulation in other places, such as a library, but anyone who isn’t a “nerd” will fall short on this one.
• Relationships — This doesn’t necessarily mean romantic relationships, only social ties. Most Mormons will have little trouble here, but as an introvert I have the personality type where I tend to have fewer, stronger friendships rather than a large facebook-esque social network as the church encourages. So extroverts will be just fine on this one, introverts (like me) score poorly.
• Meaning — Mormons feel like they belong to “something bigger.” Where this can fail for some, as it has for me, is the idea that you’re not going to make it in the end. If you have any guilt then meaning for you is destroyed because you’re doomed to hell. (or the Telestial Kingdom, which we were told is pretty much hell since you can’t progress) The only way to score high here as a Mormon is if you take a liberal approach and assume that “doing your best is good enough regardless.” This approach is not encouraged by the leadership, so it’s not very common. Thanks to a selection bias most believers that stumble onto this blog post are likely to be more liberal, however.
• Accomplishments — This one will depend completely on the individual. There are meaningless little accomplishments within the church and there’s nothing stopping members from participating in activities elsewhere. It all depends on the individual’s attitude toward the accomplishments, meaning that we finally found a factor that the church doesn’t really affect.

It should be noted that stress, fear and guilt can detract from multiple areas in the above list.

The first thing that I’m noticing about that is how different personality types are going to land all over the place based on those parameters, but it’s not hard to see how it can be very common for two or more of those to score very low and lead to depression; just as it is clearly possible to score relatively high and be genuinely happy. The trouble is you have to be just the right type of person to score high in all five areas as a Mormon. (or, just as likely, believe in your own specific brand of the religion)

Had I taken the church more seriously than I did I could certainly have been clinically depressed just as many others are. Another clear case of what doesn’t affect you. What’s more, I can tell from my own experience that regardless of how happy or miserable I am, I will still feel happy since that’s my sense of normal. After all, I judge my emotions off of my normal state, so what do I call how I’m feeling right now if not happy? Throw the fact that I was taught that the church leads to happiness and my trust in the church at the time to tell the truth and voila.

Finally, if your experience with Mormonism was different from mine and you beat the odds and are (or were) happy as a Mormon that doesn’t change the reality of what’s going on. I have learned that it’s unfair to say that anyone is “happy” or “miserable,” since that’s all relative. All I know is that I felt “happy” then, since leaving my sense of normal has shifted for the better, and I feel “happy” now. The fact that my sense of normal is vastly improved doesn’t mean I was that “miserable” before. But I wouldn’t trade the improvement for anything.

The single argument I have encountered most often as to why I should rejoin the Mormon church, or at least stop influencing people to leave it, is the question what if you’re wrong?

Now, the chances that I am wrong are beyond remote, at least about the true nature of the Mormon church. I can’t prove that there is no god, but ultimately that is meaningless as the concept of a god makes very little sense to me. The way I see it, if I’m wrong and God is just, he will know me intimately. He will know exactly how sincere I was about discovering if he was really there. He will then see that I did my best to be a good person inasmuch as I knew how, and will judge me accordingly. If I am wrong but god is not just, then he is certainly not worthy of my worship.

But what if I’m right? A Mormon would try to make the claim that you lose nothing and live your life focused on your family and being a good person. But is this really the case? Let’s examine this for a moment. Do you really lose anything by remaining a member of the Mormon church? Fill in the relevant details in the table below to find out:

The chart above doesn’t take into account other activities like trek, christmas programs, devotionals, BYU, the purchases of materials, temple visits or a myriad of other time and money sinks the church has to offer. And even with all that missing, the numbers are still quite significant. This is time that you could spend with your family, with your spouse, building relationships. Learning and growing. This is money that could be spent paying off debts. Sending your children to college. Paying for your college. Donating to secular charities that aren’t concerned about building expensive temples or shopping centers.

I’ve seen plenty of people try to argue with the psychological benefits that come once you’re free of the guilt, shame and constant self-loathing the church puts you in, but the statistics above are quite hard to argue. It’s clear to me that there is a whole lot to be gained here. All it takes is the first step. All it takes is starting with a little research.

Credit to fellow redditor Mithryn for coming up with the idea for this.

Most religious believers in this day and age have, or will have at some point, lose an argument so badly that they must fall back to the default position: You just have to have faith. When I was doing my research that ultimately led me out of the church, this very thought occurred to me, but with it was the counter point. Faith cannot be a substitute for truth. Later as I got in some theistic debates I quickly altered the way I articulated that point:

Faith is the belief in things which are not seen, which are true; not belief in things which are not seen but proven untrue.

What’s surprising with this argument is not so much that it comes up as an argument or that it is convincing to believers. With thought control techniques it’s perfectly conceivable that one could believe that animals talk to one another whenever we’re not looking and humans just can’t hear them, and be absolutely certain that “You just haven’t listened carefully enough” is a convincing argument for that claim. No, what’s surprising is that this specific claim isn’t a huge red flag for the person who uses it.

Think about this for a moment. Suppose I’m making the claim that you can fly if you leap off a cliff. “Oh that’s preposterous” you say, “I can’t fly!”

“Oh yes you can. This sacred truth is reserved for the few of us who are worthy to hear it.”

“But if I leap off that cliff I will simply plummet!”

“You have to have faith!”

“Well, okay…”

……

…………..

<splat!>

Damn. I guess he didn’t have enough faith.

The obvious counter-argument that a believer is likely to bring up is that you can’t disprove supernatural claims, and you certainly can’t prove that there’s no God. fair enough, I can’t prove there’s no teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars either though. But what about things I can prove? What about the reprehensible things the early leaders of the church did? What about the Book of Abraham? The kinderhook plates or Greek Psaltar? Sure, you can apply faith there, but only if you accept faith as belief in things proven untrue.

Imagine if the world worked that way. Imagine if you could simply believe in something hard enough and it’ll make it true. What would the world be like then? I couldn’t say for certain. We can’t all be billionaires.

When I first came to realize that I had, in fact, been brainwashed into believing some rather silly things I would have immediately answerd the question in the title to this post with a resounding “no.” Of course that was before I learned what brainwashing is, what it does, and how it works. After all, it’s very easy to see where having your thoughts and emotions controlled by someone else is a discomforting prospect.

One thing that I think is important to understand about brainwashing is that you cannot be brainwashed unless you’re willing. There are ways that cults or captors can break down their victim into surrendering their free will, but simply being aware that someone is attempting this is usually a strong antidote. Likewise, if you are willing, you can be brainwashed even if you know that brainwashing is going on. While I could spend a great deal of time listing effects of brainwashing, such as creating emotional triggers, distorting your view of reality, imposing a cult personality and many others, one thing of particular interest is creating needs, desires and aversions.

Let’s say there’s something that you really really don’t want to do anymore, but it’s become a habit or addiction. Drinking alcohol for example. Try this experiment: Think of your favorite song. It can be any song as long as it’s unrelated to alcohol. Whenever you get the urge for a drink start singing this song in your head. Each time you do this, the desire for a drink of alcohol will go away.

This trick is a brainwashing technique called thought stopping. The Mormon church uses it to stop you from thinking “evil” thoughts by instructing you to make them go away using a hymn. “Sing a hymn in your heart” as I was taught. Many cults take this technique far enough as to instruct their members to use it to prevent them from questioning their beliefs. You don’t necessarily need to use a song; a rhyme, chant or even a scene from a movie will work just as well.

What I just taught you is a well documented brainwashing technique and while it doesn’t work on everyone, it does work on most. But is it evil? In my opinion it’s like anything else, that all depends on whose hands its in. A gun in the hands of a serial killer is certainly a bad thing, while that same guns in the hands of a father defending his family from a burglar certainly is not. So too is brainwashing. In the hands of an ethical psychologist, techniques such as these can be powerful tools to help clients overcome drug addictions, violent tendencies and even depression.

But like all powerful tools, it can do just as much harm in the hands of someone who would use it for personal gain. Such as tithing money.