Parakeet , here's my turning point post- http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/166727/1/Thanks-for-all-the-fish. I'd do a proper link but I'm on an iPad.
Crazy Religions
by Qcmbr 46 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Cold Steel
I agree that dangerous religions are a different question, a religion like early Mormonism and the Heavens Gate group are extremely dangerous (Mormonism almost tipped into full scale totalitarian hell)....
I would certainly like to see your references for the above. Joseph Smith, if anything, was anxious to "roll off the kingdom" to the Quorum of the Twelve. According to President Wilford Woodruff, who was the church's chief historian and later a church president:
I am the only man in the flesh that was with the Twelve Apostles when he turned over the kingdom of God to them and laid upon them the commandment to bear off this kingdom.
He stood for some three hours in a room delivering to us his last lecture. The room was filled as with consuming fire. His face was as clear as amber; his words were like vivid lightning to us. They penetrated every part of our bodies from the crown of our head to the soles of our feet.
He said, ‘Brethren, the Lord Almighty has sealed upon my head every Priesthood, every key, every power, every principle that belongs to the last dispensation of the fulness of times, and to the building up of the kingdom of God. I have sealed upon your heads all those principles, Priesthood, apostleship, and keys of the kingdom of God, and now you have got to round up your shoulders and bear off this kingdom or you will be damned.’ I do not forget those words—I never shall while I live. That was the last speech he ever made in the flesh. Soon afterward he was martyred....
Before Joseph Smith began forming the individual quorums by the direction of God, or so he said, he had considerable power. But as the quorums of the Twelve, and the Seventy, were formed, he surrendered much of his authority to them, as was planned. In 1839, he told several close friends that if he were faithful, he had about five years left in which to minister. In the summer of 1844 he was martyred.
There were sources then who accused him of being a tyrant, but I've never seen that part of him in my studies. One writer later wrote that had not Joseph Smith been murdered, "he would have murdered Mormonism."
Bottom line: It's unfair to compare Joseph Smith to a loon like Marshall Applewhite. Applewhite never produced any sort of a complex theology, but was instead demented. Since this is a Jehovah's Witness website, I don't want this to turn this into a debate about Mormonism. I would, however, like to know what made you think that "early Mormonism" was so tyrannical. In my opinion, the LDS church had Old and New Testament scriptures pointing to it; it had others who witnessed Smith's revelations with him, fulfilling the law of witnesses. It was organized by prophecy and held apostolic authority restored through the instrumentality of Heaven. Applewhite worked out of a website development shop in San Diego. In short, it would have been more appropriate to compare Applewhite to either Jim Jones or David Koresch, not Joseph Smith and the Mormons!
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return of parakeet
Thanks, Qcmbr. I read the thread and am glad you decided to come back to post again. There was not one "I told you so" that I could see.
As I thought, your struggle was similar to mine and many others here. The only difference is that mine happened 34 years ago. Time provides a tremendous amount of perspective. You will heal.
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Qcmbr
Hi Cold Steel, it was such a shock to me to find out what living in Utah was like in the early days because now that Mormonism is ultra respectable and SLC is beautiful and prosperous it is hard to see how it could have been anything else. Here is one primary source that I found very illuminating. There are lots more which I can provide on request but I would ask that you start with this one: This is the story of the most notorious of Brigham Young's wives, Wife No. 19
http://archive.org/details/wifenoorstoryofl00youniala
This story does not focus on what Joseph did or said but on what Brigham did. Joseph had his own set of totalitarian ideas such as breaking the free press ,being crowned King of the world, marching on Kirtland at the head of an army to reclaim it in blood etc. but we can look at those later if you'd like.
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new22day
Humans are bat shit crazy (no offense to bats)! We have a lot to learn from the species we share this planet with.
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Qcmbr
Parakeet, I agree it was amazing to see no triumphalism in my loss of faith. Made me realise that I'd been fighting a war , as a believer, on a battleground I'd made up. What I saw as persecution and abuse was more often than not illustrative facts and the harsh but justified comparison between my belief and the historical results of those beliefs. As a believer I refused to accept that the skeptical posts were attacking ideas and demanded in my own whiny posts that we move the debate away from the really painful areas ( facts, history and logic) to areas I felt equal (persecution, name calling) by reframing other posters posts as personal attacks. I chose to make things about persecution because then the content of a post can be ignored and rejected. Evolution? pffft they said my faith was crazy how dare they.
All along I made my faith all about everyone and anyone who disagreed all about me. A cunning but self defeating tactic. Thankfully I learnt so much from the threads I simply observed that , added to other research, I came to a strong self realisation that I was simply wrong.
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THE GLADIATOR
Understandably, calling all religious beliefs crazy is provocative and immediately causes anyone with religious beliefs to become defensive. I tend to put religious beliefs in the category of magical thinking. We all indulge in magical thinking one way or another. It can provide a form of escapism from the reality or life and death. People collectively spend billions of hours watching fiction films and reading fiction books in an attempt to escape into the world of magical thinking.
As long as we know we are being entertained by fiction and can separate it from reality, there is no problem. The difficulty arises when we begin to believe in magical thinking. In time we start to believe we are special, next we believe we have special powers. Perhaps we can hear God talking? Perhaps an invisible version of our self can fly during the night attached to our body by an invisible cord? Or start to build an invisible body which can survive physical death? We start to seek out like minded people who also believe in magical thinking. Anything becomes possible, but only in our mind and the minds of those who share our irrational belief.
Like an addictive drug, magical thinking escalates and alters the mind’s grip on reality. Evidence is absent and fiction becomes fact. Given long enough, escapism through magical thinking has a profoundly negative affect on a person’s ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Once the ability to distinguish between the two is lost, our ability to navigate the world we function in can become irreparably damaged.
Hard as I try to live and let live and remain neutral, it saddens me to see decent people slowly surrendering their independence and rationality on the altar of magical thinking. I have watched it break up families and ruin lives. Jehovah's Witnesses are only one small group enslaved to magical thinking. The world abounds with magical thinkers and enslaves billions of people.