Dylan

To me after my brothers death only the truth mattered to me. I found out about how the church was gaslighting kids about how Joseph Smith "translated" the book of mormon and how they completely dismissed the fact it was a seer stone in a hat.

Found out more about Joseph Wives and how he actually intended to take over the early United States. Realised the church has been lying a lot to its members.

I studied a lot into different religions for myself admitting all I grew up on could be wrong. Took me from Islamic beliefs, to different Christian denominations all the way to old folk pagan beliefs.

I realised Joseph Smith was a run of the mill seer who's no different than your average psychic fortune teller. Basically making nothing about him special at all and a lot of his claims turning out to be lies never helped me take him seriously anymore.

I think when you lose someone important in your life it makes you realise you only have ONE right now and makes you look at things in a far more serious light.

I do personally think a lot of what people called "Prophets" are actually people with abilities similar to Shamans/Clairvoyants. But I don't believe any person (even if they actually did have special abilities to see special visions) doesn't make them much of an authority to dictate others lives for it.

I don't particularly worship any "god" but I do think from personal experiences there is a somewhat "supernatural" element to life that does appear.

But I don't believe those things all just come from a man who lives in the sky who dictates everything we do. I think there's just a lot of things we humans don't know yet and some people take that ignorance as an opportunity to rip others off time to time.

I do think their is a somewhat of a spiritual afterlife of some sort. But I don't think it's the version particularly written in the Bible or Book of Mormon. I think it's more tied to our ancestors.

I think Western civilisation lost a lot of its "spiritual" roots a long time ago so we replaced it with religion to compensate for it.

I've been out of the church 10 years now. But I still do seem out of place growing up in a strange religion.

To this day I still admire people who have integrity for their beliefs, who live what they preach. I just don't respect people who eventually see the facts about things and just choose to not accept it.

I'm an ex athlete who loved to swim. I exercise in martial arts these days and am currently studying traditional chinese medicine at University to get a better grasp of the Chinese concept of "Qi".

I think the world is STILL full of mystery where we don't need to have all the answers. The journey to carry on and try to figure new things out along the way is what makes life worth living.