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Mormon/Ex-Mormon Thread of 3 hour blocks and salvation flowcharts
- Thread starter ronito
- Start date
This week Rolling Stone has a fascinating write up about "The Order" a polygamist mormon organized crime family.
It's here and it's really interesting:
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture...ne-mormon-cults-secret-empire-20110615?page=1
It's here and it's really interesting:
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture...ne-mormon-cults-secret-empire-20110615?page=1
Anyone have any resources for calculating the approximate number of active, adult LDS people in the world, or number of LDS people with a current temple recommend.
I would assume the number of people with a current temple recommend couldn't be much higher than 500,000 - 900,000... maybe lower?
I would assume the number of people with a current temple recommend couldn't be much higher than 500,000 - 900,000... maybe lower?
Stuff like this mormons. Stuff like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amJti-h4WWQ&feature=youtu.be
Love the youtube comments:
"It's so easy even an African can learn it!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amJti-h4WWQ&feature=youtu.be
Love the youtube comments:
"It's so easy even an African can learn it!"
There's no real way to know. The church boasts 14 million members. But that number's grossly inflated. I mean if you were ever a mormon and you don't specifically fill out the paperwork to be removed from the church records they'll count you as a member until you're 110 (even if you're dead). So there's no way in hell 14 million is anywhere close to the actual number of mormons let alone temple recommend holders.lawblob said:
But you can sorta work backwards. According to this:
http://lds.org/general-conference/2...t-2010?lang=eng&query=membership+numbers+2010
There were 28,660 wards and branches. A ward can be anywhere between 200-500 members while a branch is less than 200 members. Let's be generous and assume 300 per each of those.
That comes to 8,598,000. Total (that includes inactive members within the church)
According to FARMs (a mormon apologist org) in the 90s the church saw about 40-50% activity in the US/Canada/Pacific, 35% in EMEA, and 25% in Asia/Latin countries.
Let's be generous and say 40% activity is the norm throughout the world. HIGHLY unlikely, but whatevs. That means 3,493,200 active mormons.
Of course of that 3 million not all are temple recommend holders, many too young and a even more are unworthy. Now this is just purely anecdotal evidence but in talking to bishoprics and friends that work in the LDS office building I've heard that only 25% of active members actually have a temple recommend and that's been fairly consistent even when I've moved states. But let's assume that's too low and double it. So even if you do double it to say that a whopping 50% of active mormons regardless of age have temple recommends you're looking at 1,719,600 temple recommend holders. That is the absolute highest number giving the church every benefit of the doubt. If anything I'd think the number to be half that (~850,000) at most.
Out of curiosity why do you ask?
Eight Diagram Bat Fighter
Banned
Meadows said:
About 500 on the island. I was one of them in 台北。
Eight Diagram Bat Fighter
Banned
ronito said:
If they are polygamists, they aren't members of the Mormon church. It even said in the article that they had their own chapel they preached from.
I just got visited by missionaries a couple of hours ago, I had to inform them(once again) that I'm not interested. I like hearing about this stuff, their rituals, secret stuff, magic underwear, etc. LOL! I live in Utah and it's true that the people are some of the nicest people there is.
I do get annoyed though by a few things, they make you feel that they are better than everyone else. Probably unintentionally but it feels that way. What they believe in is TRUE!! I guess if you repeat it it makes it truer?
If I were a mormon girl I would revolt and leave the church. My grandmother is LDS, but my grandfather is not. Same situation with my parents. Guess my mom and grandma won't be going to heaven or whatever they called that place.
Also it's happened to me before, go on one date and they want you to go to church with them.
Any who, I like most mormons. I do think the church intrudes to much into peoples lives though. How come everything has to be church related?
I do get annoyed though by a few things, they make you feel that they are better than everyone else. Probably unintentionally but it feels that way. What they believe in is TRUE!! I guess if you repeat it it makes it truer?
If I were a mormon girl I would revolt and leave the church. My grandmother is LDS, but my grandfather is not. Same situation with my parents. Guess my mom and grandma won't be going to heaven or whatever they called that place.
Also it's happened to me before, go on one date and they want you to go to church with them.
Any who, I like most mormons. I do think the church intrudes to much into peoples lives though. How come everything has to be church related?
speculawyer
Member
Who is more Mormon: Huntsman or Romney?
elrechazado
Banned
Huntsman has said in the media and intimated elsewhere that he's not really a practicing mormon.speculawyer said:
i am a member going to Brigham Young University ......in idaho. its the retarted stepchild of BYU provo utah. Church has done nothing but bless me. I strongly believe in its doctrine and teachings since i have read the book of mormon and believe it is the word of god thus verifying the church today.
i served my mission in New Jersey for two years speaking spanish. It was amazing and i dont know who i would be without it. I also got to bless lots of people.
.....yep
i served my mission in New Jersey for two years speaking spanish. It was amazing and i dont know who i would be without it. I also got to bless lots of people.
.....yep
speculawyer
Member
Interesting. I did not know that. Well Huntsman must have been into it at one point . . . doesn't he have 7 kids?ronito said:
I also got the feeling that Romney wasn't really into it either . . . but perhaps he has been downplaying it (for obvious reasons).
elrechazado
Banned
From everything I've read, romney has been a lifer, whereas Huntsman was raised with it, but kind of stopped being invested in the last decade or so. Huntsman Sr. is a major bigwig in the church though.speculawyer said:
Atramental
Banned
Keep on seeing two Mormon missionaries riding around on their bicycles near where I live.
I couldn't imagine myself biking from home to home, wearing a dress shirt and tie in the summer heat, while trying to spread another version of Christianity to people who are firm Protestants. I think I would go AWOL.
I couldn't imagine myself biking from home to home, wearing a dress shirt and tie in the summer heat, while trying to spread another version of Christianity to people who are firm Protestants. I think I would go AWOL.
speculawyer
Member
I want some Mormons to hassle me. I'm bored with the stuttering Jehovah's Witness guy that keeps coming.
Eight Diagram Bat Fighter
Banned
speculawyer said:
I know lots of non-mormon familes with 7+ kids also. What's your point?
http://universe.byu.edu/index.php/2011/07/19/22-percent-of-americans-would-not-vote-for-a-mormon/
This always struck me as strange. Really to an outside observer Mormonism, while admittedly stranger than most Christian religions, they aren't all that much more so.
Sorta like the people that laughed at the rapture guy but still believe in the rapture, all they disagreed with was the date, not the concept.
This always struck me as strange. Really to an outside observer Mormonism, while admittedly stranger than most Christian religions, they aren't all that much more so.
Sorta like the people that laughed at the rapture guy but still believe in the rapture, all they disagreed with was the date, not the concept.
ronito said:
Mormon intolerance is a strange thing. Growing up in Houston, it was infuriating how so many evangelicals had such poor opinions on Mormons. It's amazing how the Church's nutty history continues to stick around and haunt it, long after the actually nutty stuff has any day to day relevance for LDS people.
OK, I have some questions. I'll just put out one for now.
I had some Mormon missionaries come talk to me once. We got stuck on this:
God created Adam and Eve and gave them two commands:
1) Be fruitful and multiply (ie have babies).
2) Don't eat the forbidden fruit.
But apparently Mormon theology holds that it was only after they ate the forbidden fruit that they gained physical bodies and the ability to have children.
So, that would mean that God gave two commands that where mutually exclusive of each other. They would only be able to keep one by breaking the other. I can't understand that.
Follow up questions: Is this the only time that God has done this? Are there other commands today that we ought to break in order to keep others and/or receive the benefits from?
The Fall of Adam and Eve (lds.org)
Moses 5:11
I had some Mormon missionaries come talk to me once. We got stuck on this:
God created Adam and Eve and gave them two commands:
1) Be fruitful and multiply (ie have babies).
2) Don't eat the forbidden fruit.
But apparently Mormon theology holds that it was only after they ate the forbidden fruit that they gained physical bodies and the ability to have children.
So, that would mean that God gave two commands that where mutually exclusive of each other. They would only be able to keep one by breaking the other. I can't understand that.
Follow up questions: Is this the only time that God has done this? Are there other commands today that we ought to break in order to keep others and/or receive the benefits from?
The Fall of Adam and Eve (lds.org)
Moses 5:11
lawblob said:
I don't think its really that strange that the Church's history continues to plague it. One of the first fundamental things the LDS church asks anyone to do is accept that Joseph Smith was a modern day prophet who saw God and Jesus. If you can't accept that, then you can't accept pretty much anything else about the LDS church as being true.
When you hear all the stories about Joseph Smith being a pervert, a treasure hunter, a serial liar etc it makes it harder to accept the LDS church as the one true faith.
I'd be very interested in what the missionaries had to say. I'd be interested in what active mormons have to say. I have heard/have been taught that the timeline was just misinterpreted (which always sounded like an apologist's argument to me). And I've also heard that there might've been a way from Adam and Eve to eventually pro-create if they had stayed in the garden without eating the fruit (again another apologists's argument). I could never get my head around this like the whole "The natural man is an enemy to God." teaching (well, who created the natural man?). I'd be very interested to hear what others have to say.heyf00L said:
They never said anything convincing. They kept saying why the Fall was a good thing, but even if you believe that it does nothing to explain the paradoxical commands. They eventually said it's just a matter of faith and urged me to pray for the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth to me.
You can't make a confused timeline argument because even the retellings of the story in the Smith-produced scriptures give the same timeline and emphasize it (Moses 5:1 for example).
While looking through Smith's stuff there I can't get over how often God reveals the full details of Jesus (called the Only Begotten or the Son) to Adam, the patriarchs, Moses, etc. Even there in Moses 5:8 an angel tells Adam to call on the name of the Son forever. Yet somehow none of this made it into any of the Hebrew scriptures and was completely unknown to the Israelites or Jews. Is there some explanation for why these important details (on how to worship God) were intentionally withheld and instead put into secret books that would only be discovered over 3000 years later in America well after teachings about the Son of God are well known?
You can't make a confused timeline argument because even the retellings of the story in the Smith-produced scriptures give the same timeline and emphasize it (Moses 5:1 for example).
While looking through Smith's stuff there I can't get over how often God reveals the full details of Jesus (called the Only Begotten or the Son) to Adam, the patriarchs, Moses, etc. Even there in Moses 5:8 an angel tells Adam to call on the name of the Son forever. Yet somehow none of this made it into any of the Hebrew scriptures and was completely unknown to the Israelites or Jews. Is there some explanation for why these important details (on how to worship God) were intentionally withheld and instead put into secret books that would only be discovered over 3000 years later in America well after teachings about the Son of God are well known?
heyf00L said:
Without going into detail, (mostly because im' too lazy to dig out books I haven't read in a decade), I think this question generally falls within the broader context of the logical problems with Judeo-Christian theodicy.
Roughly speaking, the LDS Church holds to the theodicy that God is both (i) all knowing, and (ii) all powerful. Problem is, to hold both of those beliefs, you simultaneously have to accept that there are many elements of the LDS theodicy which don't make logical sense, holding both of those premises as true. For example: (i) God's plan could only work if a certain % of his kids rejected him from the beginning, (ii) Adam and Eve could only leave the garden by disobeying his commandments, (iii) for God's plan to work, there must be a "Satan" to oppose him, which either means God is not all powerful, because his plan could only work if he created certain children which had to oppose him, or God is not all knowing, or even all good, because if he knew this going into it, he either was ok with the idea of creating children spirits who would ultimately be doomed to "outer darkness," or he didn't care (not all good), etc....
If you really want to go down the rabbit hole of LDS theology and where it falls apart; consider that Mormons believe that Jesus is the savior not just of this Earth, but of all the planets god has created. So what does that mean? Does that mean us on Earth won the lottery and just happen to live on the one planet Jesus visited to perform the atonement, and that every other planet in the universe created by God and populated with people worships some space alien? Or does it mean Jesus goes from planet to planet, living and dying on each one? Or does it mean there is a different Jesus for each planet God made? Of course, all three of these sound ludicrous, but the logical extension of LDS theology is that one of them must be correct.
Whether it be the paradox of the "universal atonement," the Garden of Eden, or the litany of contradictions between the Book of Mormon and D&C, id' say the real answer is that LDS theology actually isn't all that well developed. Actual LDS theology is surprisingly loose and fluid when compared with other protestant or Catholic beliefs.
Again, you're getting your stuff here from people that WERE mormon and the church changes rather quickly.heyf00L said:
There used to be a teaching that the reason that the "fullness of the gospel" was withheld until Joseph Smith was because the world wasn't ready/worthy for it. There certainly was talk about how people were chosen to live in this day and age because they had earned it by being valiant in heaven and that the later people were born the more "choice" they were. Now when I started getting ready to leave the church they were retreating really quickly from this kind of teaching. It'd be good to hear what a currently believing mormon has to say on the matter.
The whole "God cannot be both all-powerful and all-good and still allow sin to exist" thing hasn't been a logical problem for a long time now. Of course that doesn't stop people from thinking it is a problem. But anyway, I don't think that God giving two logically inconstant commands would fall into that category.lawblob said:
OK, I'll keep that in mind. I was just Googling a bit, and I found this posted on some Mormon's blog talking about neoorthodox Mormon views on the Fall which attempt to conform more closely with traditional Protestant views without abandoning key Mormon doctrines. However, I don't see anything that would solve the paradox.ronito said:
So maybe that's the direction they're headed.
I also have asked Mormon missionaries about the controversy around the Book of Abraham facsimiles, but none has ever known what I was talking about.
Most mormons don't know about it. And those that do explain it away with a small line that one of the founders (I believe it was Oliver Cowdery) had written in a journal or something that said the ring around the facsimile was red. The one shown was blue.heyf00L said:
Even the most prominent mormon apologists use this to cast doubt on the whole thing. Doesn't change that ring color aside it all doesn't mean what they say it does, or that the prophet at the time had given the approval for the facsimile to be shown. I even emailed one apologist Jeff Lindsay on this one with "Surely there must be more to your argument than the ring color." He answered the other questions in the email but never that one.
I'll ask my brother--if anyone would know the answe rto this, he would. He publishes a lot of papers regarding statistical analysis of church membership and retention rates over time. A lot of it has been focused on international numbers, like this one:lawblob said:
http://bycommonconsent.com/2006/10/21/review-phillips-rethinking-expansion/
but I'll bet he has access to overall numbers, too.
This one little encapsulated quote might be enough to make the estimation though:
mik said:
Interesting. I remember a few years ago reading that in the Brazilian census, some tiny number of people self-identified as LDS, compared to what the Church had listed as the number of LDS people in Brazil.
For the obscene amount of money and resources spent on missionary work, the LDS Church seems to get pretty bad results. Back when I was in the Church, the answer to this problem was that it was the Church's strict rules that make it hard to bring in new members. But what about Islam? That's a very strict religion, and they bring in plenty of new converts. Not to mention that I knew plenty of evangelicals in the South who didn't drink alcohol, etc., and lived essentially LDS lifestyles, and they were constantly building more and more enormous mega churches. IMO, the forced enculturation into a very midwestern-waspy-Leave it to Beaver lifestyle is what kills a lot of missionary work, at least in the US.
I also have a hunch, purely speculative, that the internet is basically killing Mormon missionary work. In short, you can no longer feed people the same BS, whitewashed answers about polygamy, seer stones, the occult, and all the other bizarre stuff in LDS Church history, and they have no way to verify it.
DigitalDevil
Member
I worked for a company (in an industry) that employed lots of Mormons. The owner would travel to BYU every spring and recruit young men who had finished their mission to come and sell pest control door to door. I got to meet, work with, and manage a lot of really interesting people during that time.
A couple things I know about Mormons:
1. Despite the stigma surrounding polygamy, every Mormon I have ever met (hundreds) and the vast majority of all Mormons are disgusted by the practice.
2. Mormons have something figured out. Say what you will about their beliefs, their faith, their practices, but they are some of the (genuinely) happiest and most "at peace" people I have ever known.
3. If you are ever hiring for a sales position, hire a young Mormon who has finished their mission. Believe me, if you can sell god door to door, you can sell anything.
A couple things I know about Mormons:
1. Despite the stigma surrounding polygamy, every Mormon I have ever met (hundreds) and the vast majority of all Mormons are disgusted by the practice.
2. Mormons have something figured out. Say what you will about their beliefs, their faith, their practices, but they are some of the (genuinely) happiest and most "at peace" people I have ever known.
3. If you are ever hiring for a sales position, hire a young Mormon who has finished their mission. Believe me, if you can sell god door to door, you can sell anything.
including alarm systems, satellite television, and pest control
blob I wouldn't consider that the investment people and church makes on missions wasted because converting is admittedly getting more difficult. I always thought of missions as killing a bird with two stones. Returned missionaries are much less likely to leave the church after two years of virtual monkhood in the mission field, and it takes men out at their height of hormones and teaches many how to live in strict church boundaries. Converting people is an added bonus on top of that.
ronito said:
Good point.
Raises another interesting question. How many LDS men would stay in the church into adulthood if it weren't for the mission program indoctrinating them to be active LDS men throughout their lives? Makes you wonder if the LDS church would basically collapse without the missionary program, based on sheer attrition of active members?
Thaedolus
Member
Oh haayyy guys, how did I miss this thread for so long?
Maybe on the outside, but from what I've experienced Mormons are just as dysfunctional as any other group, and instead are experts at putting up a happy, self-assured front. I know I was a pro at it, which is why everyone shat bricks when I finally said enough and washed my hands of the LDS church.
DigitalDevil said:
Maybe on the outside, but from what I've experienced Mormons are just as dysfunctional as any other group, and instead are experts at putting up a happy, self-assured front. I know I was a pro at it, which is why everyone shat bricks when I finally said enough and washed my hands of the LDS church.
On a lighter note. Mormons aren't known for their humor. But this is totally mormon and actually sorta funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yy7AP7Dh6w
"It will be easy to track you down!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yy7AP7Dh6w
"It will be easy to track you down!"
Eight Diagram Bat Fighter
Banned
heyf00L said:
Adam and Eve at that time were immortal, quickened by the spirit and could not die. But without bodies of flesh and blood, they could not multiply the earth. They knew they had to break one commandment to follow another, but this wasn't an ordinary commandment, it was more of a warning. He was saying that "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die". So, they could stay and live in the garden forever if they wanted, not knowing happiness, joy, sorrow- anything that would increase their spiritual, emotional and mental development.
Or if they were to eat it, they would lose their immortal state and become mortal and die BUT they would be able to know sorrow, joy, pain, happiness and more. They would in some small part know the emotions that God feels. What they did was transgress the law, but was not a sin against God.
(SHORT & TO THE POINT VERSION)
Basically God told them not to eat it because there were some bad consequences if they did. It wasn't a choice between evil or good, but an option between a good outcome or a negative consequence for their actions. Kinda like "don't touch the flame, you might get burned." So no, not a sin on either commandments.
http://universe2.byu.edu/node/953
Not sure if troll, or just one of "those" BYU students. Pretty sure it's a troll but still have met plenty of people like this when I was at BYU.
Meus Renaissance
Member
What are the attitudes/perception of Mormonism in America
elrechazado
Banned
by whom, about what?Meus Renaissance said:
DigitalDevil said:
Ehh, I think #2 is a falsehood. Their are a lot of massively unhappy LDS people who just put on happy faces for keeping up appearances. The church has really high rates of depression and suicide, ESPECIALLY among female members.
lawblob said:
Ehh, I think like any Church there are a lot of people who stay in solely for the sense of community being in a religious group provides.
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