Hi, I’m Spencer

Introduction:
I spent the first 17 years of my life growing up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. As all of you probably know, this specific religion is not a casual every-sunday kind of thing. When you are an active believing member, it makes up your entire life. Your entire being and existence is not your own life to live, it is merely a part of God’s plan. 
I was the last person you’d expect to leave the church. I was the Priest’s First Assistant in my branch. I blessed the sacrament every week. I genuinely enjoyed doing missionary work and tried to get my friends to come to activities. I read my Book of Mormon/Bible every single day and to this day still remember every story within it and what it supposedly means. I visited the temple regularly and planned to serve a mission soon after graduating high school. There was absolutely no doubt that I had the strongest testimony I could have possibly had. There was literally nothing more I could have done to believe harder. A direct quote that I had said on multiple occasions was, “I couldn’t leave the church even if I wanted to”. To anyone paying any amount of attention it looked like I would never leave. 
The first time I had a single doubt about whether or not the Mormon church was true was in the summer of 2022. It was before my senior year of high school and I was about to turn 17. My parents were very strict about the “no dating until 16” rule that was, at the time, clearly spelled out in the For the Strength of Youth Pamphlet. I had attempted to date the previous year and had little success. It was almost as if I lacked experience that I could have gotten before had I started earlier. I then went on a couple more dates but they were the kind the church recommended for high schoolers: purely platonic double dates which really didn’t help me gain any experience. I already knew how to make friends. Theoretically, I was set back by this rule and that was the reason I was so bad at it. I realize now that even though the dating rules set by the church are pointless and don't fit within modern dating culture, It's still just my fault that I’m bad at talking to women.
The disagreement with the dating rules didn’t directly lead me to question the church’s authority. That came soon after when the new For the Strength of Youth Pamphlet came out. In this new edition they redid several sections completely. They now only “recommend” that you wait until 16 to start dating. So then what was it before? Was it doctrine? If I remember correctly you cannot change doctrine, and if this rule was not doctrine then what was it and why was it enforced? This led me to think about other things.
 Why is coffee off limits? There is no scripture that says, no coffee. It says to be healthy. Ok, well then why aren’t energy drinks specifically mentioned? Why not say, absolutely no junk food? Coffee isn’t even the worst thing if consumed infrequently. I will also say that I don’t drink coffee so there’s not any bias here. I think it smells kind of weird and it’s offensively overpriced. 
Why is swearing wrong? We gave these words meaning. It's a part of language. It adds a new layer to expressing yourself. Sometimes it's considered disrespectful so the church decides to ban all of it. No more saying those words. Well guess what? All that came from the ban is a new vocabulary of swear words like Fetch and Heck. These are used the exact same way. Mormons are still swearing just by using different words. Is that a sin? No, I don't think so. So why is regular swearing a sin? It's all just arbitrary meanings behind words that we put on there. We could all decide that the word Nugget is now an offensive term. Why did we do that? We’re a bunch of idiots that’s why. What the nugget did we do it for?
These things seem like small issues, and they are, but there were just too many tiny contradictions and loopholes that I decided to start researching the big things. I finally realized that the difference between doctrine and policy is completely arbitrary and the General Authorities can really just say whatever they want with no consequences. So I kept investigating. I looked at church approved sources, and, here’s where it gets controversial to the Mormons; I looked at non-church approved sources. Why would you only look at one side to decide on something? If the church is truly perfect and true, then all of the things I find will be easily disproved and then I’ll keep believing with my faith becoming even stronger. Makes sense to me. I read the CES Letter and Letter For My Wife and if I’m being honest, they didn’t have much of an effect on me because I was going into it with such a closed mind. I don’t blame myself for that because the one truth was all I knew. How could these sources prove that wrong? I was looking at it through the lens of trying to prove the sources wrong instead of trying to discover the truth. 
The thing that finally broke my shelf was General Conference Fall 2022. I had been finding things out about the church for a month or so beforehand and I was really struggling with my faith. I wanted so desperately to believe. Contrary to what so many people have insinuated while talking about my own experiences, this was not an excuse to go sin and live a more fun life. I wanted to live the life that had planned out for me for so long. The thought of living without the church left me feeling helpless and I would have given anything for it to be true. When General Conference came on I got a strange feeling. You know the feeling where you are in a bad situation and the holy ghost tells you to avoid that and get out? Well, that’s the exact feeling that I got, against the church. 
That was the last straw for me. Especially because the feeling didn’t go away. I couldn’t read scriptures, I couldn’t sing hymns, I couldn’t even pray without getting this unnerving feeling that something was seriously wrong with this religion. As soon as I began to consider, “what if I’m wrong”, it became so obvious. I had to get out. A few days later I ended up doing the hardest thing I had ever done and told my parents what I was feeling. They were clearly upset but eventually decided that I was old enough to make my own decision and that they would treat me like an adult. That took a huge toll on the relationship with everyone in my family, and due to that, life became so hard for a few months after this big decision. The relationship with my family has since recovered. I know deep down they want me to come back, and deep down I wish that they would be able to see the world through my eyes. Life is so much more beautiful once you are out, and I wish there was a better way to communicate that to the people who are still stuck inside other than saying, “Life is so much more beautiful once you are out” 

“Beyond Our Comprehension”:
There are so many things we just don’t understand about this world and what’s beyond it. Not only do we not know, we can’t know. Something as abstract as an afterlife is not possible for the human mind to fully understand. There is no denying that we truly do not know anything. All that religion is doing is taking a guess. I respect that. We as humans have an innate desire to make sense of everything. Religion is just a way of fulfilling that desire. What I’m not okay with is a religion stating that they are the one and only truth and everyone else in the world is deceived. I’m not saying that there are multiple truths, but I’m saying that there is no way someone here on earth is absolutely correct because how do you know? We rely on spiritual experiences, thousands of years old writing, and the testimony of others to “prove” whether or not a religion is correct. Have you personally met God? Do you know anyone who has met God? No you haven't. If there was a man who claimed this in our present day, people would call him insane. He’s just seeking attention. He just made it all up so he could get his name in the history books. So then what’s the difference between this hypothetical man, and Joseph Smith? Both hypothetically had the same experience. There’s equal amounts of evidence for both. The only obvious answer to this question is that Joseph Smith is a masterful storyteller, one of the best in history no doubt. Unfortunately this storyteller decided to use his talents to dictate the lives of millions of people for hundreds of years to come. 
The objective truth is that we don’t know if someone is telling the truth or not. Unless you have an experience for yourself (which you haven’t. I’ll get into that in the next chapter), there is absolutely no way to know something for sure. If you can’t know, then why do we try?
One thing that I’ve heard repeated so many times during my time in the church is the phrase, “Beyond our comprehension”. Of course it makes sense that whatever is going on outside of regular mortality is not possible to comprehend. I accept this idea and base a lot of my beliefs off of it. What I don’t accept is that the church abuses this phrase. It is often used to cover up various pieces of history. For example: The issue with blacks and the priesthood. Nobody knows why that rule ever existed. To say that it was just Brigham Young being racist is to admit that a beloved prophet called of God used his position of religious authority to create false doctrine. It was considered true doctrine for so long until finally people decided that the church needs to change with the times to be more inviting. Instead of admitting that Brigham Young was not actually serving God, they say, the reasoning is beyond our comprehension and God’s plan is a mystery. You cannot excuse racism no matter how much we don't understand. The fact that the church even still tries to defend themselves on the issue of racism is embarrassing to them. This is not the only historical problem that is covered up. This is used to defend all sorts of events. 
Whenever there is a hole in the story it's just easily covered up by, “we don’t know” and if you don’t know, then how do you know that the rest of it is true? There are core doctrines that are believed with absolutely no verification at all and it's harmful to the believer and others who may be hurt by the doctrine. Nobody knows anything and all these people going up to give a testimony saying they “know for a certainty” that the church is true are just straight up lying to themselves. I once said these things and look at where I am now. I didn’t know. I just thought I did because that’s what I was told to think.
You might say, “Spencer, there’s no proof that the church isn’t true so that means we’re right”. First of all I believe there is evidence for it to be wrong, and second, there’s no proof that the theory of quantum immortality is not real (look it up). Yet that doesn’t make it true. You just get caught in a place in between where you don’t know what to believe because there’s no proof for anything. Welcome to real life. 
We just don’t know, and there is no way for us to know. I personally choose to be comfortable with that uncertainty. I live the best life I can and I hope to be favored in whatever happens after this life. I see no point in trying to understand any of it because I’ll never reach the point where I do. I don’t even know if the church isn’t true. I’m just pretty sure it isn’t and if it is, then I want no part in it. On the off chance that somehow I’m wrong on every single shred of evidence showing the church isn’t true, I’d still rather burn in hell than contribute to this god's objectively flawed plan.

The Holy Ghost:
Now we talk about the thing that is the central foundation of almost every believing member’s testimony: feeling the holy ghost. To be quite blunt about it, you aren't special. Everyone on the planet experiences this feeling. I don’t know what exactly I’d call it but it isn’t unique to Mormons or even religion for that matter. It’s some sort of feeling of cosmic ecstasy that everyone feels for some reason, or for no reason at all. I still feel it after I left the church. I just don’t have a name for it anymore. It comes in whatever form you expect it to come in. For Mormons it's the holy ghost. Other religions and non-religious have this same thing but by a different name. Some people hear voices, some have prayers answered, some just feel at peace, and for some people it's literally schizophrenia. 
All of it, whatever it is, is purely psychological. It is only because of the culture that we interpret these experiences differently. Let's say that this cosmic feeling is a cat. If someone told you repeatedly that a cat is called a dog, then until you are informed otherwise, you will go on calling cats, dogs. Then you would proceed to use the existence of the cat as proof for your dog worshiping religion. See how that works? 
The LDS church uses something not unique to the LDS church as proof that the LDS church is the one and only true church. Doesn’t make much sense does it?

An Unjust God:
“If I strive to be the best person I can be outside of the church and God punishes me for that, then that’s not a god I want to be worshiping anyways.” - Some guy on reddit that I saw last year
 If what the Mormons say about God is all true, then I hate the guy. God would never treat his children this way. If he did, then he is not the generous forgiving perfect god that I was taught he was. 
If God is real, I think I’m doing just fine. I don’t think that God would care about arbitrary rules that don’t really affect anyone else but yourself. Obviously murder is wrong. Theft is wrong and all that. But there are doctrines that a perfect being wouldn’t make unless it's for a reason beyond our comprehension. So, I have respect for the rules that make sense like loving one another, but I don’t think that God would make the ones that condemn same-sex marriage and other things like that. I really don’t think that God cares about making sure homosexual people don’t have romantic relationships. Because why would he deny a small portion of his children such a beautiful part of life, for seemingly no reason at all, other than, he said so. 
Based on church doctrine, people will be punished for the mere act of not believing. In fact the single greatest unforgivable sin is denying the holy ghost. Which is something I did in the last chapter and have done in the past countless times. Does this make me a bad person? I don’t think so. I live every aspect of my life trying to be a good person, yet by the churches standards, I am a sinister sinner who cannot ever be forgiven. 
How can God expect everyone to believe when information is so hard to spread around? I know there's that whole thing where someone who hasn’t heard of the church and didn’t have a chance to come to the gospel will still have a chance to learn the stuff after death or whatever, but if that’s the case then why tell anyone at all. Why is there such an extensive push for missionary work when you are just potentially dooming people’s afterlives. If God really wants people to know and make an educated choice then why not tell everyone. Give people a way to know all of it and then make a decision. Instead his plan is to send some 18 year olds to do it? 18 year olds who a lot of the time aren't able to share the information accurately? That’s not fair to the people taught by them right? They were informed about the church though and chose to not accept it so now they will be punished. If that's not how it works and all factors are taken into consideration about the teaching process and people are spared for how well they were informed then wouldn’t everyone get equal treatment? Wouldn’t I just be chalked up as a guy who wasn’t taught well enough? That’s not how it works though. Theoretically the actions we do here on earth will have an effect on our afterlives. If not, then life is pointless. We are here to learn and grow and if we aren’t able to make mistakes that affect things then really what's the point. If you say that some things are out of the control of the sinner, and God will be fair about that, then you could just say that everything is out of your control and it doesn’t matter what you do here on earth. I am actively against the church. If I die and find out that the church was true, and God says that it's alright that I did all that evil because I only did it based on the circumstances I was in, then there is no free will. I never made a choice. I don’t like that. Any way you try to explain it you end up at a dead end with a contradiction. Either it doesn’t make sense, causes some sort of logical paradox, acknowledges the absence of free will, or God isn’t truly kind and just.

The Church’s Past:
I am going to tell you a story about a man who claimed to be a prophet. He claimed to talk to God and wrote down his revelations as scripture. Some people say that he was married to multiple women and that some were really young. That could just be anti-literature though. He was thrown into prison for being a prophet and for preaching things people didn't want to hear. While in prison, he received even more revelation and wrote pages and pages for his flock to read. Many people hated this man and called him a liar, and unjustly imprisoned him. Would you have given your life to protect this man?
If you said yes, then I think you should know I was not describing Joseph Smith. I was describing Warren Jeffs. The known sex criminal and leader of the FLDS cult. Does this give you an insight to how the rest of the world views Joseph? If you would defend him, then why not defend Warren? 
So many terrible acts were committed during the founding of the LDS church and with who Joseph Smith was as a person, but they are now glossed over. The church can’t hide the history completely though.
In their own sources you can read about things I guarantee you weren't taught in Sunday school. For example: were you aware of the fact that Joseph Smith did not use the gold plates in the translation of the gold plates. He put a rock in a hat and looked at it and then said the words out loud that he was “seeing”. So what was the purpose of having the plates? I don’t know. Nobody does. Or how about the time when a witness of the Gold plates spoke out against them and said he never actually saw them. So did the gold plates ever exist? Pretty convenient how they just got taken back to heaven after they weren’t used for the translation and weren't ever shown to the witnesses. 
Have you heard about the Kinderhook Plates? When someone tried to trick Joseph into admitting he made it up. He came to Joseph with forged plates and told him to translate them. Joseph began to translate and thought they were real. He said they came from a descendant of Ham in egypt. It was later revealed that the plates were fake and only afterwards did Joseph go back on his word and claim that he knew the whole time. 
How about the Book of Abraham, while still accepted as true doctrine, they have been proven false by pretty much every historian that has looked at them. When Joseph was translating these he did not know about the rosetta’s stone discovery. He figured there was no way for anyone to check his work. Well it was discovered and people learned how to translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Turns out that everything Joseph translated was wrong and he made it up. Now the argument is that it wasn’t actually a direct translation from the plates. Then what was it and what do the plates have to do with that? I guess that’s just beyond our comprehension. 
Were you taught that Joseph Smith was uneducated and couldn’t have possibly written a story that intricate? Wrong. Yes, Joseph Smith was too poor to afford much public education,  but he was taught by his parents, one of which was a school teacher, along with all of his siblings and he studied the bible religiously. He was extremely familiar with how to write scripture. Also, who's to say that he only did it in a few months. Joseph could have potentially been working on it for years and only decided to publish it later in life. In fact there is a written account of Joseph mentioning the ancient civilization 5 years prior to the time that he actually began translating. You might say that there is such a slim chance that some random boy would be able to do all of that, so the church must be true. But like what are the chances that he actually met with god? I’d say one is definitely more realistic than the other. 
Have you heard about the time when Brigham Young was under oath in the Reed Smoot hearing and denied having any sort of spiritual experience or revelation since he had become the prophet? Yes, the prophet who had changed so much policy and was said to be leading the church under the authority of God, never actually had any of that revealed to him. He admitted this to an official US court. But that doesn’t get talked about ever. 
On the topic of Brigham Young, were you aware that Brigham Young taught the Adam-God Theory. Something that the church now seems to be completely false. He taught in contradiction of the godhead, one of the key principles of the Mormon gospel. A prophet who was, “guided by god”, but never had revelation, taught that Adam was God. Bro was insane. He got 3 colleges named after him though, so he must have been a great guy who definitely was a man of God, right? Well we could ask his 56 wives and 30 slaves. 
I could go on and on about every single issue in the church's past like blacks and the prieshood, when Joseph Smith married a 14 year old (no that wasn’t normal at the time)(the average age for women to be married back then was like 25), or the fact that he told a young girl she would be doomed to hell if she didn’t marry him, but I won’t get into that. If you would like a more extensive look into the church's past, read the CES Letter. It’s honestly not that great and you can tell it's got some extreme bias. I read it a couple times while still in the church and I stayed in. But regardless of what you think of the quality, everything in there is true and has been verified. Some of the conclusions that are drawn from the evidence are just a bit weak in the first couple chapters and that’s why so many people take away all of its authenticity after not even reading the whole thing. If you would rather not take it from only that one source then the CES Letter tells you where all of the information was gathered. Much of it comes from the gospel essays. So how’s that for an approved source? You don’t know what to believe now. 
So is this God’s perfect church? The same one that has caused pain for so many? These events that happened were almost all a result of something that was doctrine at the time. Do you deny that it’s doctrine? It’s either all true or it was all made up by taking parts of other religions and for some reason masonic rituals. I don’t know what that’s about because it's kind of just creepy. Anyways, clearly it's not all true. 

The Church’s Present:
We often act as if all the bad things happened in the past. This is false. The church finances are proof of this. The amount of money that the church has is just unnecessary. They have 10% of the money from millions of people. I did the math based on the average salary just to see how much the church collects every year. It is so many billions. Guess how much the church donated to charity in one year. 1 billion. Building Maintenance doesn't cost that much. I subtracted that out, I subtracted the costs of building new temples. Just based on my amateur calculations it would seem that the LDS church is hiding billions of dollars somewhere and they don’t know what to do with it. My calculations were also down on the low side because there are people who have more than the average salary and I didn’t include any fast offering money. 
This is confirmed by a leaked SEC report. Feel free to research that. The church has also made many questionable investments. Why did the church invest millions in the construction of a mall? Is that really what people would want their tithing going towards? You don’t hear about this all that much because they like to keep their finances quiet. Tithing was never supposed to be a permanent thing. It was only added to doctrine so they could afford to build the Nauvoo temple. Now that they have just kept it going and don’t need this much money, the general authorities are left not knowing what to do with it all. They couldn’t possibly stop taking money. That would be ridiculous. 
And no, they are not using it for charity and humanitarian work. A few years ago they proudly announced that they spent 1 billion dollars on charity. That’s good, but it's literally less than 1% of the money they are collecting. The amount of things that could actually be fixed with 200 billion tax-free dollars is insane. Like you could actually solve world hunger. Why not just give all the money to me. I wouldn’t use it to buy farmland and factories. I’d probably better the world with it. 
Not only are the finances bad, but also it's just a bad evil corporation. The church is sexist, homophobic, and not nearly as racist as it used to be but still a little bit. Jesus Christ loved all and the church is not being christlike in these regards. 
The church also likes to skew statistics. How many members are there? You’d probably say about 16 million. That’s what they claim it to be. But that doesn’t account for the people who have left and haven’t removed their papers, it doesn’t account for people who are sort of on the fence/have never really taken the religion as seriously as people like me did, nor does it account for the people who are only pretending to be members because their situation doesn’t allow them to publicly leave. How can the church claim that they are rapidly growing when the church’s numbers have stayed stagnant for the past few years. Even if your missionary work is working, the rate at which people are leaving is increasing. Also new converts rarely last more than a year. They’ll find out that the Disney version they were taught in the 3 weeks before their baptism wasn’t everything. As the world and internet  grows, it gets harder and harder to hide the truth from the members. I have hope that one day everyone will leave. Then everyone will finally be free. 
Also the changing of Doctrine shouldn’t be allowed if the doctrine is permanent. You can’t have both. Why have there been so many edits to the Book of Mormon, why do the rules keep changing. Why was I taught through an apostle’s words that gay people don’t exist? Up until a few years ago that’s what they were teaching. I went through the whole of middle school thinking that gay people were making a choice and that they are sinning just by being who they are. That policy has completely changed now and I haven’t heard a single person reference the old one. Things have been canceled for a lot less and I think that it's warranted to cancel the church over this alone. David A. Bednar once said, “there are no homosexual members of this church”. This was in 2016. You’d think something like that would have been said decades ago, but that is clearly not the case. 
The Church has some issues that simply cannot be ignored. God’s church would not be this way. Even if all of the doctrine were correct, I would rather worship separate from this flawed entity they call the LDS church.

Those Who Don’t Believe:
“Never take counsel from those who don’t believe” - Russel M. Nelson.
This is actually a major reason for why I questioned the church so much. The treatment towards ex-mormons is insane. The church dehumanizes you so much. Addressing the above quote from Nelson, how terrible is that? He claims that nothing we say can be trusted because we have seen information that didn’t come from the church. My own family has been advised against trusting me. That’s enough evidence right there that they are getting worried about keeping members. I would argue the exact opposite. Seek out the counsel of people who are against what you believe especially, so that way you actually are educated enough to make your own choice. 
Ah yes, a choice. There is no choice. They give you the illusion that there is one, but it's either you choose to believe and stay in the church, or you are wrong and you are a terrible person. Because of my different beliefs I am not trusted. It’s dangerous to be spending time around me if you are Mormon because clearly my sole purpose in life is to drag people away from the church and ruin their lives. Clearly. I am an evil man and I hate all religions and I want to drag everyone to Hell with me. 
David Archuleta is a great example of this. He left the church around the same time that I did so I was able to follow his journey pretty well. David lived his life as a strong Mormon and became a famous singer. He was put up on a pedestal for all Mormons to look up to. Not only that but he was clearly used as a marketing device to try to bring people into the church.  He was a kind and generous man who did everything the church asked him to do. He got married to a woman and lived his life as the average Mormon would. The one difference is that he was actually gay the whole time. He knew it too. When meeting with general authorities they told him to just get married anyways. He listened thinking that it was for his own good. Well eventually it was too much to bear and he decided to talk to his wife and leave the church. He and his now ex-wife remain friends I believe and he continues to be pretty much the kindest greatest person ever. But he made the wrong choice. The church has shunned him for this. When presented with this “choice” he decided to do what was best for him. He is now hated by many members and he’s been completely knocked off of his pedestal. Likely you hadn’t even heard of this story and that only goes to prove that it’s true. The church wants you to forget about him. How could one of the greatest guys ever be fooled so easily. I think that David Archuleta is still someone that everyone should look up to. He was under so much pressure and he made a very unpopular and very difficult decision. 
Not that it means anything, but exmormon celebrities are the coolest ones. We got David Archuleta, Amy Adams, and fucking Ryan Gosling. If he wasn’t my favorite actor before, he was once I found out he left the church. I’m literally him. 
Leaving the church is so unbelievably hard. I had my first existential crisis in my senior year. My family treated me differently. I didn’t have anyone to talk to either. I was the most alone I had ever felt in my life. I had friends that I told stuff to but none of them understood how big of a deal this was because none of them had grown up mormon. I was so stressed about figuring out my future that I almost gave up on it completely. The 3 months following my departure were the hardest in my life and I wish there was a way to make active members understand that. Instead I’m just told that I’m a lazy learner and that all I needed to do was try harder, then I would still be in church. 
Sometimes I get annoyed by myself when I'm talking about the church, or writing excessively long essays about why I don’t like it. It’s very mormon of me to do this. I don’t like that. I’m still the same person I was when I was a member. I can’t help but tell people what I believe to be true. Same goes for so many other exmormons. Once I realized how similar I was to these evil people when I realized that there is no reason I should hate them. 
I want to just shut up about it but I just can’t. I don’t want to be annoying about it. I’m sorry for fighting against the thing that stole 17 years of my life. For most people who leave it's even more than that. We are human beings and we understand mormons more than anyone else, yet we get treated like garbage and have our experiences completely discounted because we have been misled by the devil somehow. I treated people like garbage when I was a member. 
I don’t understand why the church feels the need to treat us this way. It’s already a painful experience of leaving. Try to make it a little less painful by leaving us alone about it and at least putting an effort into understanding what it is we have been through. It’s hopeless to try to communicate this to an active member though. Because you simply can’t understand this unless you have left the church.

The Meaning of Life:
Life has so much more meaning once you leave. I don’t really know how, but knowing less makes what you do know, seem even better. The only thing I know for sure is this life, and I plan on using it to its full potential. I don’t know what comes next and yeah it’s scary, yet more powerful than anything I experienced in the church. 
The church, at least in my experience, applies this sense of urgency on you with little allowance for living in the present. While I was in the church there was never really a time where I did something just because it would be fun. It had to have some sort of value. Everything I did had to be a part of God’s plan. Now that I’m out, I rarely think about the future. I don’t like it as much. I like right now. Carpe Diem as they say and such. 
I will say, life is easier when you are a member. I had my whole life planned out. I was going to serve a mission, go to college, get married in the temple, and then raise a family while working some sort of job. Those things may seem like they would be mostly the same as an Ex-mormon. But I assure you that is not the case. You actually have to think about if you want certain things rather than listen to other people tell you you want certain things. So, yeah, it's so much harder. But so much infinitely better and more beautiful as well. If given the choice to forget what I’ve learned and go back and live that pre-planned out life, I would choose to stay right where I am. I would make the decision to leave millions of times again if given the chance because it’s one of the few choices I don’t regret making. 

My Testimony:  
I believe in free will. I don’t think the future is predetermined in any way at all. There is no “meant to be”. There is no guarantee that anything will turn out well. But I know that we can control only what we can control. Our actions are what shape our future. The existence of a God who controls certain aspects of the world makes you question if we have any free will at all. I don’t like to think this way. So I don’t. I have no evidence for this, it just brings me comfort in thinking this way. That’s what a religion should be. Just a guess that brings you comfort. It should not be a corrupted corporation that dictates every moment of your life. I hate to call it a cult because I always hated when people called it a cult while I was still a member, but like, it kind of is. When viewed from the outside it's sort of creepy. 
I believe in a separation of morality and religion which means I don’t need to be religious to try and be a good person. Yes, religion can give a basis for that but I find it unnecessary. I don’t have a reason to be good, I just do it because I know it’s a good thing to do. In fact I’d go as far to say that if the only reason someone is being good is to please a god then they aren’t a good person in the first place. (That used to be me). 
I’m not an atheist. If anything I’m Agnostic but I don’t know if that truly defines me. I do think that Atheists are just as bad as the other organized religions. There’s just as much of a chance that there’s nothing as there is that we just don’t know what it is. I guess you could say it’s all “beyond our comprehension”. 
I believe in a mixture of Existentialism and Absurdism. I agree with Albert Camus when he said that believing in a god is philosophical suicide, and that resorting to nihilism is actual suicide. I choose to acknowledge that there may not be any meaning at all. Yet it doesn’t matter in the slightest. I like trees,rivers, mountains, animals and rocks. Those are cool. Trampolines are fun. There’s those moments when it's been cold and cloudy for a while, then you walk outside on a 60 degree day and the warm sunlight hits your face and it’s the greatest feeling ever. Music is the single greatest human creation. Film also. Really any sort of art is amazing. People are fantastic. Some of them are funny. Some of them are nice. Some of them are both of those things at the same time. We get to be friends with these people! It’s fucking brilliant really. This is what I live for. I don’t need a god to tell me if something is good or not. Even if he’s real, I can see the beauty of life better than he can. 
           I’m me. That’s something I never was up until a year or so ago. I’ll doubt everything except for that. I may not have a clear purpose in my life anymore and that thought was scary at first. If I left the church, where would I go? The answer: anywhere. Everywhere even. I am not limited to anything now and I have the choice to experience it all. I can finally learn and live and see the world as it really is. An ethereal mystery, and it’s fucking beautiful. 
I’m Spencer and this was the story of my truth discovery. Hopefully you enjoyed it, learned something, or know me a little better now. With all that being said, I bid you, Adieu.