Hi, I'm Doug
I'm a physicist, engineer, educator, nature worshiper, father, grandfather, and I was a Mormon.
About me
I was born into a devout Mormon home, but from an early age I questioned many Mormon beliefs and practices that didn't make sense to me and I never received convincing answers to those questions.
It started with something as simple and innocent as me, at a very young age, watching newborn babies get carried up to the front of the chapel where priesthood brethren would solemnly place their hands on the baby and say words like, "I bless you that you will be righteous throughout your life and always obey God's commands". I remember asking my parents, "If this baby does, in fact, grow up to do as he has been blessed to do, and does obey God's commands all his life, then in the afterlife when he stands before God to be judged, will God give him credit for what he's done?" If the blessing he was given as a newborn had the power which I'd been taught that priesthood blessings contain, then THAT BLESSING is what caused the kid to lead a good life. The kid doesn't get the credit. My question caused my parents to just laugh and tell me I was a silly little boy, but it was a valid question and I really wanted an answer to it. What's the point in blessing a baby if the blessing has no meaning?
That first childish question might have been just an inconsequential curiosity, but it shows my questioning mindset. I don't know where I got that mindset. I clearly didn't inherit it from my parents. On multiple occasions my father "bragged" to me that he had never ever questioned the teachings of the church, and my mother said similar things, and they implored me to be more like them. If my parents had been born into Muslim families, they would have spent their entire lives completely sure that Islam was the one and only true church. It would be the same if they'd been born Jews or Hindus or Catholics, or whatever. Even as a young boy I somehow saw the foolishness of this line of thinking and I tried to get my parents to see it too, but to no avail.
As I grew I encountered soooo many church doctrines and practices that made no sense to me and/or which contradicted the available evidence or other teachings of the church. I trust whoever's reading this is familiar with the CES Letter (cesletter.org), or websites like mormonthink.com, or podcasts like mormonstories.org. (If you're not familiar with them, then definitely look them up.) I didn't have the advantage of those resources when I was growing up. The person who wrote the CES Letter wasn't even born when I was in my teens, and there was no such thing as the internet back then, so it was extremely difficult to learn things about the church that the church didn't want you to know. My only source of reading material that wasn't approved by church authorities was a used bookstore close to my home that had only two or three books about Mormonism which were written by non-Mormon authors. That was it. One of those books talked about Book of Mormon anachronisms, which was totally new and eye opening to me. Church leaders claimed that the authors of that book, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, were "in league with Satan", so to try and get an unbiased opinion I wrote a letter to the Smithsonian Institution, asking if they had ever discovered any archaeological evidence backing up the historical claims of the Book of Mormon. They apparently got asked that question a lot and they sent me a reply listing all the types of artifacts which SHOULD be readily found all over the place if the Book of Mormon was true, but informing me that none of that stuff had ever been found. It was quite interesting for me to discover that the authors who were supposedly in league with Satan had got it right.
By the time I was nineteen I had complied a three-ring binder full of Mormon doctrinal issues that were either highly dubious or things I thought were flat-out wrong. Because of how difficult it was to get acurate information about the church back then, my binder only contained a tiny fraction of the things than anyone today can easily find with a click of a computer mouse. However, that tiny fraction was enough to give me serious doubts about the Mormon church's claims. I'm sure anyone reading this knows what nineteen year old Mormon boys are supposed to do, and here it was, time for me to do it. When I showed my parents my three-ring binder and I told them how sincerely I had prayed about it without getting any "burning in my bosom", they told me the problem was my doubting mind. They said that Satan was the one placing those doubts in my mind, and as long as I listened to him, the Holy Ghost would never speak to me. They said the only way to answer my questions was to serve a mission as God wanted.
What could I, a teenage kid with no real life experience, do? The people who I had loved and trusted all my life were fervently assuring me that God would answer my questions, but he would only do that if I went on a mission. If I didn't go on a mission then God would withdraw the Holy Ghost from me, my questions would never get answered, and it would all be MY FAULT since I was being disobedient by not going on a mission. I kid you not. My parents and the church leaders I talked with were pinning the blame on ME for the fact that the Holy Ghost wasn't speaking to me. I was committing the sin of asking questions, and I needed to repent of that sin.
I eventually decided to obey my parents and my church leaders and I went on a mission, trusting in their promises that by doing so I'd gain that elusive testimony. Looking back on it now, I think it's horrible that church leaders who knew full well I didn't have a testimony told me that the only way to gain a testimony was to go on a mission and falsely claim to people that I had a testimony. Church leaders coerced me into spending two years LYING to people. Full disclosure... I didn't last the entire two years. Or rather, I should say that thanks to a compassionate and creative mission president, I didn't have to spend the entire two years lying to people. My mission president and I found a workaround that allowed me to stay in the mission field and contribute in a way that did not involve proselytizing. He and I both hoped that if I stayed in the mission field and kept studying and praying while doing alternate work that did not involve me having to lie to people every day, then eventually I'd find out that the church was true. Yes... I really was hoping for that to happen. I really WAS NOT looking for proof the church was false. I really truly WANTED the church to be true and was sincerely looking hard for a way to convince myself that it was true. But the more I studied things, the more evidence I found that the church was false.
I ended up staying in the mission field for the full two-year term, but I left the church immediately after returning home. I now regret not having the courage to face the facts sooner, cut my mission short, and come home early. Church leaders love to say that it takes courage to stay in the church. They say those who leave it are lazy cowards, However, the opposite is actually true. The thing that actually takes courage is to admit that everything you've been told your whole life is a lie and to walk away from the only community you've ever known.
I've now been free from Mormonism for more than forty years... or at least as free as is possible for someone who lives in Utah. My neighbors still try to bear their testimonies to me. They don't know that I’m an escapee. They just know that I’m not a Mormon. When they give me Books of Mormon and tell me how it'll change my life, I want to tell them that the reason I'm not Mormon is NOT because I haven't read the Book of Mormon. The reason I'm not Mormon is because I HAVE read it... and the other Mormon scriptures and a long list of other Mormon writings... and in those documents I found a mountain of unrefuted evidence proving conclusively that Joseph Smith was con man, not a prophet. That's what I WANT to tell my neighbors when they do that... but no... if I say that to them then I'll be marked as one of Satan's emissaries and shunned by people with whom I need to have good relationships, so I have to just smile and nod and thank them for their concern on my behalf.
One recent development in my life related to religion is this... As I've watched the rise of Christian Nationalism and have seen religious zealots gain a frightening level of control over our government, I've decided to become active in efforts to counter that. I helped found and am now the president of the Salt Lake Chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. If you'd like to know more about that organization, what it does, and why I felt the need to establish a Salt Lake Chapter of it, watch the video below or go to our website, ffrfslc.org. Please note that the sound quality of the video is not great, but if you turn on the closed captions then you can read everything that I say. The CC button that you need to click in order to turn on closed captioning won't appear if you watch the video clip while leaving it embedded in this wasmormon website. You need to click on the YouTube button in the lower right of the screen, so that the video opens up on the YouTube webpage, and then you'll see the CC button at the bottom of the video.
On my shelf
# Why I left More stories of 'Why I left' the Mormon church
For me it's all about integrity, or lack thereof on the part of the Mormon church and its members. It astounds me how Mormons can look straight at a mountain of unrefuted evidence which proves that their religion is a hoax, and just shrug it off, saying, "Yes, those facts are puzzling, but I'm not going to think about it. I have faith that God will answer all our questions in the next life".
I realize that many Mormons will question my claim that there's a "mountain" of evidence. In order to keep this write-up from getting too long, I'm only going to talk about a few key items in the paragraphs that follow below. If you want to see all of the stones that, when piled together, form the mountain of evidence, here are a few links you can click on:
- cesletter.org
- mormonthink.com
- mormonstories.org
- letterformywife.com
- mormonleaks.org
- wivesofjosephsmith.org
- fnhenderson.us
I realize that many Mormons will question my claim that the evidence in this mountain is "unrefuted". They will say, "But the Church HAS refuted that alleged evidence!" They'll point to the articles the church has published which ATTEMPT to refute the evidence, but if the Mormons who are pointing to those articles have even read them at all, they are somehow unable to see how those articles fail miserably at refuting anything.
For instance, consider the church's response to the total absence of archaeological evidence supporting the Book of Mormon's claims. Their articles say, "There's so much jungle in South and Central America that hasn't been explored. The evidence you want could be sitting right there and just hasn't been discovered yet." That's a perfect example of blowing smoke instead of making a sincere argument. Sure there's lots of jungle that could be hiding artifacts, but look at the countless artifacts that HAVE been found. If the people of the Book of Mormon reached the vast population levels that the book claims, and spread out across the land as far as the book claims (with those people who allegdly kept written records on long-lasting media... gold plates and the like... reaching as far north and east as present-day New York state), it is inconceivable that none of the innumerable artifacts which have been found would support the Book of Mormon's claims.
Or look at the church's articles that claim to refute the DNA evidence which shows that American Indians are not descended from Israelites. The church's articles about this say, "DNA evidence is not reliable". YES IT IS! The church's articles say, "We never claimed that the Lamanites are the PRINICIPAL ancestors of the American Indians". YES THEY DID! How can they lie about something that's so thoroughly documented? It's just like how they lie when they say that "It was never official church doctrine that the reason for black people being denied the priesthood is because they were not valiant in the pre-existence". YES IT WAS! That doctrine was taught from the pulpit with "God's prophet, seer and revelator" sitting right there listening and not objecting. Sometimes he himself was the one who said it, or things like it. Teachings that are even more reprehensible than the “Not Valiant Doctrine" were preached directly by the prophet Brigham Young and similar things were taught by church leaders who came after him.
And by the way, don't fall for the line that "they were just speaking as men, not as prophets when they said it". A core idea that was drilled into me and every Mormon I grew up with was the promise that "the Lord will never permit any man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray". We were also admonished to "accept the words of local church leaders the same as if the prophet himself was saying them". Teachings which the church now tries to distance itself from were taught as official church doctrine from the pulpit in general conferences and included in books and magazines that were published by the church, with the full knowledge and blessing of the president of the church... the one who "the Lord will never permit to lead anyone astray". I find it incredible that the brethren can just do a Jedi hand wave while saying to the members, "you didn't see what you saw or hear what you heard", and the members simply shrug and say, "OK".
And then look at the articles published by the church which attempt to explain away that fact that Joseph Smith's "translation" of the Book of Abraham scrolls bears no resemblance whatsoever to what the scrolls actually say. Published right there in the Pearl of Great Price are images from the scrolls, side by side with Joseph's alleged translations. At the time the Pearl of Great Price was published, nobody could argue with Joseph's "translation" since nobody at that time could read Egyptian. But now people CAN read Egyptian and Joseph's "translations" are laughably wrong. And what's the church's explanation? They don't have one. The articles they publish which claim to refute that evidence simply say, "The Book of Abraham is a religious text, not a historical one, and therefore the only way to know if it's correct is to pray about it."
In fact, that's the essence of the church's response to basically EVERYTHING in the mountain of what I say are unrefuted facts. In pretty much EVERY case, the church falls back on the claim that prayer is the one and only way to know truth. Well, if a warm feeling in your heart when you pray is all you've got to counter a mountain of solid, tangible evidence, then you've got nothing. Do church leaders seriously expect us to believe that Mormons are the only ones who get a warm feeling in their hearts when they pray to their chosen god, asking for confirmation that their chosen religion is true? People in other religions get warm feelings in their hearts that are EVERY BIT as strong as what Mormons feel. A warm feeling in your heart isn't worth shinola as evidence for the truth of the Mormon church.
Read up on why medical researchers have to test new drugs against placebos before concluding that the new drugs actually work and you'll find documented proof that when people have been told that something will help them, their minds can cause very real and measurable changes to their bodies. In multiple medical studies, a statistically significant number of people who were given a placebo while being told that it's a stimulant experienced increased heart and respiration rates, while people who were told that the exact same placebo was a depressant experienced decreased heart and respiration rates. Check out this video from Stanford School of Medicine for even more detailed information about the very real and measureable results of Placebo Effect.
youtu.be/…
When Mormons report feeling a "burning of the bosom" they're not necessarily imagining things, but what they're feeling is not necessarily from God. The burning in their bosom is much more likely to be from chemicals that their brains caused to be released into their bloodstreams or from subtle muscle contractions or something similar.
So yes, I do think it's completely correct to say that the evidence showing Joseph Smith was a con man is unrefuted. And by the way, that unrefuted evidence also shows that he was a sexual predator… of girls as young as sixteen, fifteen, and even FOURTEEN YEARS OLD, as well as a sexual predator of older women who were still married to other men at the time Joseph "married" them. I've put the word "married" in quotes because all too often those alleged marriages were sham weddings that were never recorded either by civic officals or by the church... the same church which teaches that genealogical records are of supreme importance. Also, it's not clear at all whether Joseph provided financial support to his supposed "wives" after he'd had his way with them, or if he paid child support for the kids he fathered with them. If the church has evidence showing he did support them, I'd like to see it. For a church which insists that Joseph did nothing wrong, they've been astoundingly quiet on this subject. For many years, they excommunicated people who dared to talk about Joseph's many so-called "marriages". Thanks to the intenet, the church has now been forced to admit the truth of the things they excommunicated people for talking about before, but they still won't come clean on all the details.
Joseph did a whole lot of things that would rightfully get a person thrown in jail if they tried those things nowdays and which in fact, DID get Joseph throw in jail during his day. I hope you're aware that before he started the Mormon church, Joseph was jailed multiple times for swindling people, falsely claiming he could find buried treasure by peeking at a rock in his hat... the EXACT SAME rock in a hat that church leaders have now finally admited he used to "translate" the golden plates rather than doing the job the way they had previously taught us. That's just one example. Joseph committed many other crimes which the church previously refused to discuss or outright denied he did. But now thanks to the intenet they can't hide the truth any more. They now admit that he actually did violate all those civil laws as well as violating the rules of his own church... rules which he required other people to obey but he himself flaunted. The church's stance now is, "It was OK for him to do it because God told him to". If any of us attempted even a small portion of the things Joseph did, we would definitely be barred from the Celestial Kingdom according to the teachings of Mormonism, but Mormons just shrug it off saying, "Don't delve into the mysteries". They say not to worry about those "unknowable questions". They say to just be patient and God will explain it all later. This shows a stunning lack of integrity on the part of Mormons. They sit in church and sing "Do what is right, let the consequence follow", but they clearly don't mean it.
The kicker, for me, is the fact that Mormons believe that men are put here on Earth to prove they've got the intelligence, initiative, and critical thinking skills needed to become gods in the next life. (Women aren't. The best a woman can hope for is to become one of a man-god's multiple wives in the next life, pumping out spiritual babies, but let's not go off on that tangent right now.) If life on Earth is meant as a test, to prove that you've got what it takes to become a god in the next life, then closing your eyes to clear and obvious proof that Joseph Smith was a con man is how you FAIL the test, not how you pass it. A God doesn’t sheepishly follow where others have already led, blindly trusting that those others are going in the right direction even when evidence all around him is screaming out that he's going in the wrong direction. A God needs to blaze His own path through the universe. A God needs to think independently, to examine evidence and to make His own decisions based on that evidence.
Questions about Mormons My Answers to Questions about Mormonism
#Link to this answer of 'Why are you sharing your story?' by Doug Why are you sharing your story? See more answers about 'Why are you sharing your story?'
One answer to that question is that my Mormon friends and neighbors have been bearing their testimonies to me for so very many years in hopes of getting me to see the error of my ways, it's time I returned the favor.
;)
Another reason is that when I was younger and questioning the church's claims, I was told that I was the only one who had those questions. I felt terribly alone. I felt very real torment. It would have given me great comfort to know that I actually wasn't the only one asking those questions. Perhaps someone reading my story might find at least a little comfort.
Yet another reason is this.... Hopefully I've still got many years left before I die, but I am getting on in age and before I go I think it’s important that I put my story out in the public record, much like I think it’s important for Holocaust survivors to put their stories in the public record before they pass away. Given the way the Mormon church likes to rewrite history and then gaslight its members, I think it’s vital that people who witnessed first hand the teachings and actions which the church employed in the past but which it now wants to deny, should set the record straight. People who know things which the church doesn’t want its members to know should speak the truth and put that truth out on the public record.
INTEGRITY, or lack thereof, is the key. Since Mormon church leaders refuse to act with integrity and admit that their church is built upon a foundation of lies then somebody else has to say it for them. Closing your eyes to unrefuted proof that the church is a scam is not an act of integrity. Church leaders who tell members not to read or listen to anything critical of the church are not acting with integrity. Church members who follow that bad advice are not acting with integrity. If the church is true then it can stand up to scrutiny. If you refuse to take an unbiased look at the evidence then you're admitting that you suspect (perhaps only subconciously) that the evidence will lead to a conclusion you don't want to accept. That's not acting with integrity.
Don’t get me wrong. Mormon culture has some great things going for it and I have tremendous heartburn about saying anything to a Mormon which might cause them to leave such a close-knit, supportive community. I’ve seen firsthand how wonderfully members of the Mormon community care for each other. My father was a bishop. I’ve seen him come home after visiting a member family that’s struggling and he then picks up the phone and calls the elder’s quorum president, telling him to find an elder who has the tools and the skills needed to fix a roof and send that elder to the struggling family’s home because their roof leaks and they can’t afford to pay a contractor to fix it. There were times when my father asked me, as a young boy, to go over to some poor widow’s home and mow her lawn or shovel her snow, and not charge her for it, because she didn’t have anyone in her life who could help her out with those things.
What an incredible community that is! It’s one that I would genuinely like to be part of again. But the price of membership in the Mormon community is too high, and I’m not referring to tithing when I say that. (Although we could have a long talk about that topic.) No, when I say the price of membership is too high, I’m referring to the requirement that you have to throw away your integrity in order to be a Mormon. You have to close your eyes to clearly obvious truths and pretend like those truths don't matter.
#Link to this answer of 'What is the reason or reasons for your loss of faith?' by Doug What is the reason or reasons for your loss of faith? See more answers about 'What is the reason or reasons for your loss of faith?'
In what I wrote above, I made several references to what I called a “mountain of unrefuted evidence” which led me to conclude that Joseph Smith was a con man and to conclude that the church leaders who followed him are little if any better. I only went into specifics for a small fraction of the pieces which make up that mountain of evidence, but I did list some links to websites which a person could look up in order research things in depth for themselves. I’ll repeat those links again here, in case someone is just skimming through this admittely long writeup, rather than reading it all from start to end.
- cesletter.org
- mormonthink.com
- mormonstories.org
- letterformywife.com
- mormonleaks.org
- wivesofjosephsmith.org
- fnhenderson.us
There are a great many more. The links I've given above contain links to other websites and they reference books and magazine articles which you could spend years reading.
In order to make it easy for you (the reader) to see the other side of the issues discussed above... to see the church’s attempts to refute this evidence and see why I say the church fails miserably in those attempts, I’ll give a few links here. I think all the church does is try to blow smoke, muddy the water, and then fall back on their catch-all claim that "prayer is the only way to know truth"... but you should of course judge that for yourself. (As with the other links, these are good as of July 2024. They might change in the future.)
Regarding the problems surrounding the Book of Mormon...
churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/…
Regarding the problems surrounding the Book of Abraham...
churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/…
Regarding the problems surrounding polygamy...
churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/…
When you open these links on the church’s website, you’ll see a list on the left side of the page (at least as of July, 2024) that will take you to the church's responses for many other issues besides just the three I’ve given above.
#Link to this answer of 'Why don't you leave the mormon church alone?' by Doug Why don't you leave the mormon church alone? See more answers about 'Why don't you leave the mormon church alone?'
For decades after leaving the church, I DID leave it alone. Not long after walking away from the church I moved away from Utah and didn't give the church a second thought. Well... I guess I did occasionally think to myself what a shame it was that so many of my friends and relatives were being scammed out of astronomical amounts of their time and money... but I didn't SAY anything to anyone.
The thing that changed me was when I retired from my primary career and returned to Utah to spend my twilight years giving back to society by teaching high school. A large number of my students suffered real and terrible harm that was directly caused by religion. Many of my students suffered crippling depression, did self harm (cutting and the like) and/or seriously contemplated suicide because of the conflict between what they thought and what church leaders told them was OK to think. Some of them actually committed suicide, and although we can't be sure exactly what caused them to do that in most cases, one student with whom I was especially close died in a way that I know for sure was due to the pressure he felt as a gay person in a religious society that refused to accept him for who he was. Another of my students got kicked out of his home while he was still just a high school kid because his Mormon parents couldn't accept the fact that he was gay. One of my students was forced by her Mormon offshoot parents to quit school at the age of only 16 and marry some creepy old guy who already had several other wives. Some girls who saw that commented on how glad they were that they were members of the mainstream Mormon church, not that offshoot branch, because they couldn't stand the idea of sharing a husband with several sister wives. They were later horrified when they discovered something their Sunday school and seminary teachers had been hiding from them. According to mainstream Mormon doctrine which isn't openly talked about but which is very real nonetheless, polygamy will in fact be their sad fate for all eternity if they make it to the Celestial Kingdom. Some of my students got pregnant, and on top of dealing with the tremendous stress which that caused them, they also had to deal with the rejection they experienced because the church declared that they had committed a sin second only to murder, and so now the "virtuous girls" in the school no longer wanted to associate with them.
Seeing those things happen to my students... wonderful young people I have come to know well and to care deeply about... changed me forever. I cannot just sit quietly while seeing real, tangible, terrible harm done by religion. If by speaking out I can help even one person avoid the harm that religion has caused for so many of my students, then I must speak out.
I know there are many Mormons who experience nothing but good from their involvement with the church. They say "The church is doing good things for ME, and that's all that matters." Those people say, "Even if the church isn't actually true, why won't you just stay silent and let us enjoy the comfort and support that the church gives us?" Mormons are well practiced at closing their eyes to incovenient facts. In exactly the same way that so many Mormons refuse to look at the abundent evidence which shows that the church is built upon a foundation of lies, they also refuse to look at the abundent evidence which shows that the church is NOT providing comfort and support fot a great many people. It's directly harming them. Not all people, for sure, but far more than I ever imagined prior to becoming a teacher. Read through the other profiles on this wasmormon.org website and you'll find case after case after case where people wrote about the suffering they felt because of the church and the joy they finally experienced after leaving it. Yes, the church is beneficial for some people, but a truly good person wouldn't be so self centered that they ignore the harm the church is doing to others.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear before I finish this write-up... I'm absolutely NOT suggesting that people shouldn't be allowed the option of being Mormon. I would never say that. In fact, if the government were ever to outlaw Mormonism (or any other religion), I would stand side-by-side with my Mormon friends and fight FOR their right to be Mormon (or any other religion). I'm just saying that when there's a lull in the fighting and my friends and I are sitting down together catching our breaths, it's entirely reasonable that I should be allowed to ask them questions that will make them think, just like they've been asking ME questions for over sixty years now that they hope will make ME think.
Church leaders who tell members not to read or listen to anything critical of the church and not to associate with people who have left the church are basically admitting that they know the church isn't what it claims to be and can't stand up to scrutiny. That should be a huge red flag for any person with integrity.
The Mormon apostle J. Reuben Clark once said, "If we have the truth, it can not be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed." The apostle Hugh B. Brown said, "The honest investigator must be prepared to follow wherever the search for truth may lead. Truth is often found in the most unexpected places. He must, with fearless and open mind, insist that facts are more important than any cherished, mistaken beliefs, no matter how unpleasant the facts, or how delightful the beliefs."
If you believe those words to be true then you can see why people like me should not be asked to stay silent and leave the Mormon church alone. We're just following the advice of your very own apostles.