RANDOM DISCUSSIONS

Want to share an interesting discussion I recently had about Mormonism, kind of "out of the blue."  I'm a Legal Secretary at a law firm in downtown Denver, and I just started working with a new attorney.  Last week, he came by my desk to ask me to do something, and we got into a discussion which included the fact that he was born and raised in Fort Collins, Colorado.  This lead to me telling him that my mother was born and raised in Loveland, Colorado, which isn't very far from Fort Collins.  Then I mentioned that I was in Loveland for the first time in October (on my way to Estes Park), and that I went by Loveland Park Cemetery to find my grandparents' gravesites, and that while I was there, I took pictures of their gravesites (and also my two uncles' gravesites which also turned out to be there).  Then I mentioned genealogy, and told him that before she passed away, my mother had done our genealogy way back, and that after her death my brother took it over and later submitted it to the Mormon Church's genealogy website, www.familysearch.org.

When I told him that I was born and raised Mormon but had left the church about 10 years ago after realizing that it is a bogus religion, his eyes lit up and we launched into a 20-minute discussion about Mormonism, during which he told me that he is Christian and goes to a non-denominational church, but that Mormonism has always fascinated him because it makes no sense and yet intelligent people adhere to it seemingly without questions or doubt.  Of course, I told him that this aspect of Mormonism has baffled me since leaving the Mormon Church - the fact that there are a lot of very intelligent people in the Mormon Church who use critical thinking in all aspects of their lives EXCEPT when it comes to Mormonism.

During our discussion, I told him that I didn't discover the truth behind Mormonism until the Summer of 2001 when I (finally) started doing some independent research.  Having been born and raised in the Mormon Church, I had just "gone along" for all those years, and was deterred from doing independent research because of the Church's directive to only study in "approved areas," which as I now know is one of the signs of a cult.  Of course, that directive also includes the Mormon Church characterizing anything negative about Mormonism as "Anti-Mormon Propaganda," a phrase that, in my opinion, is designed to keep people from venturing into areas that the Mormon Church wants them to avoid.  

It was great discussing Mormonism with him, and it was especially great hearing what he already knew about the sordid history of the Mormon Church, including Joseph Smith's venture into polygamy and polyandry; the Book of Mormon (and its questionable origins); the Book of Abraham (and the fact that it was supposedly translated from some papyrus that Joseph Smith found, and that although it has since been proven that the "translation" is not accurate, the Mormon Church still adheres to it as actual scripture); the Three Degrees of Glory, including the Celestial Kingdom; and so on.  It's great to know that others outside of Mormonism, who have never been Mormon, know so much about the Mormon Church and its fallacies.

Our discussion ended with agreeing to talk about Mormonism some more when time permits, and I'm looking for to discussing all of this with him again - and hearing more of what he already knows.  Just fascinating.