Mormons

This is the most important teaching of Mormonism. Nothing else comes close to it. We believe that God was once a mortal man on another planet who progressed by living in obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel he had on his world, then he died. He became a resurrected man and evolved to become a god. He is still married now (some early leaders say he is a polygamist) and created this world. We worship only the one true god, which is really one god among millions or billions or more. We believe that we will follow in God's footsteps by becoming perfect and we too will become Gods and Goddesses creating spirit children and peopling other worlds. The Mormon TV commercials showing family togetherness is the foundation for life in the next world - as a family - as gods.

Reference: Journal of Discourses Vol. 6 Page 4, 1844. Joseph Smith speaking:
"...you have to learn to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, - namely, by going from one small degree to another..."

Reference: Journal of Discourses Vol. 6 Page 275, 1852. Brighan Young speaking:
"After men have got their exaltations and their crowns - have become Gods..."

We believe we have all existed for all eternity. First we existed as "intelligences", which has never been defined, then we were given spirit bodies in a heaven by our eternal parents. Our "intelligences" have existed forever just like the our God's has and we have been around him in one form or another forever. He has just simply progressed ahead of us.

Reference: Journal of Discourses Vol. 6 Page 7, 1844. Joseph Smith speaking:
"God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a priviledge to advance like himself"

Jesus was begotten by physical union of God and Mary. Since God has a body of flesh and bones, he really had literal sex with Mary. The product of this union was Jesus, part man and part God. We believe Jesus was the first born in heaven by heavenly father and mother who created his spirit and our spirits using our "intelligences" as a foundation for our spirits. Our "intelligences" were floating around in the universe and needed to be organized into spirits. Since he was the first born spirit, and according to the Book of Abraham, his "intelligence" was better than the other "intelligences" out there, he is the most important spirit creation. When Jesus received his physical body by the union of God and Mary, his spirit was put into his body like our spirits were put into our bodies. His body was special though because his father was a god. The rest of us have only regular dads.

Again, a few Mormons wrote saying they do not believe this and I am misrepresenting the church's position. Actually the quotes from the early leaders are stranger than I could create from my imagination. Here are a few references:

Brigham Young speaking in the Journal of Discourses Vo1 1, Page 51 1852, "Jesus our Elder Brother was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the garden of Eden, and who is our Father in Heaven."

Brigham Young speaking in the Journal of Discourses Vo1 15, Page 770 1853, "Now remember from this time forth, and for ever, that Jesus Christ was not begotten by the Holy Ghost... if the Son was begotten by the Holy Ghost, it would be a very dangerous to baptize and confirm females, and give the Holy Ghost to them, lest he should beget children..."

We believe we know the truth by our feelings. We do not rely on and we will disregard any facts that contradict what our feelings tell us is true. If something feels bad, like someone telling us that Joseph Smith was a fraud, then we know that Smith must of been a prophet since falsehoods create bad feelings and it feels bad when someone tells us that we have been duped. In other words, if we get a bad feeling, we are hearing bad things which must be lies. We feel good when we read the Book of Mormon, therefore it is true. Archeology, genetics, science, metallurgy, agriculture and animal studies are irrelevant since our feelings tell us it is a true book revealed by God. This good feeling applies to all aspects of our lives. We determine if we should do something or know the truth of something if we have prayed about it and have a good feeling about it.

We believe that when the Prophet, the head of our church, says something that is definitely wrong he was not being inspired at that time. He was only speaking as a man. We believe that the newer Prophets can override the older Prophets. We believe we have a prophet on earth today even though he never prophecies anything.

Reference: Ezra Taft Benson '14 Fundamentals in Following the Prophets' pgs 1-16, 1980:
"Beware of those who would pit the dead prophets against the living prophets, for the living prophets always take precedence."

We believe we have temples where we get the handshakes and passwords that allow us to become gods. We also baptize by proxy dead people so they too can become Mormons.

We believe apostates, if they had a testimony, will be cast into outer darkness. The others who leave Mormonism must never had a testimony.

Any literature which is critical of the church is Satanic and/or written by disgruntled apostates or others who do not know the truth. They can be ignored and any reasonable arguments they have are unimportant since they oppose the gospel of Mormonism.

We believe we must send all our young men from ages 19-22 on missions throughout the world and many of our unmarried daughters. We must also save our money so that when we are older we can go on a mission as a married couple.

We believe that even if we are wrong about Mormonism, God will forgive us since we believed in Christ just like the Christians said we should. If we are right, and we know we are, then we will be together forever with our families as gods. Why should we want to be anything other than Mormons since we have all our bases covered?

Only the true church would have Christ's name in it. We ignore the fact that the Doctrine and Covenants and other books were published by the church when Joseph Smith had the church renamed for several years as the Church of the Latter-day Saints.

We believe in a book which has no archeological support whatsoever and claim it is a religious record of various peoples who populated the Americas for over 2600 years from around 2200 BC to 420 AD. We believe that the second group of people who occupied the Americas were Jewish and spoke Hebrew and kept their records in reformed Egyptian. These people also numbered in the millions and somehow they left no tangible proof of their existence. Some Mormons believe that in the near future the leaders of the church will admit that the peoples the book describes are fictional, but maintain that the book still contains religious truths.

We believe by manipulating statistics we can show we have a superior belief system. We disregard statistics which are embarrassing to our position such as the high divorce rate in Utah.

We believe that those who write against us and assail our beliefs are proof that we are the only true church. Only the true church would have anything bad said about it. The Devil fights against the truth.

This is from a letter received from an Internet friend 2/8/96:
"As a Mormon for my entire life, the very first time I felt persecuted for my beliefs was when I tried to leave the LDS faith. Never on my mission did I ever feel opposed (I went to a foreign country with virtually no anti-Mormons). Never did I feel like someone didn't allow me the "same priviledge of worshipping God according to the dictates of my own conscience" until MY OWN FAMILY found out I no longer believed in the fairy tales of Mormonism. Then all of a sudden my active LDS mother-in-law thought it would be "better" for my wife to leave me. All this despite the fact that my wife loves me, I love my wife and child, and I hadn't even committed anything the Mormon church would consider a sin (except perhaps apostasy, but apostatizing from a lie is no sin in my book). Anyway, if "only the [truth] would have anything bad said about it" the reaction I received by leaving the LDS church meant I was heading into the truth."

let's see. i live in Utah (park city) and know :  3 legit Mo's, who smoke and swear and stuff.  2 skiier Mo's who are actually really good.  and like 20 who play ball sports (football, basketball).. the rest are all quiet and some are really nice, but i don't really hang around them. the kids are nice but it's sad there minds are being made up for them at such a young age. but i'm not gonna lie , if you've seen that south park with the really nice awesome family, basically that's what you get.  3-4 kids and the nicest people ever.. now it's beyond me what it would be like to live in price (80 % morman) but i don't know if i could handle it. but I actually think there discriminated against just a little much.. 

AND FOR THE RECORD.. this doesn't go for any poligimists... that shits whack

Really?  Whats this?  Is this real?  This leaked on the internet.  This is really in there policy book.

"Filtering church policy information for women

One of the problems we have in the LDS church is making sure that the female gender is kept in their proper place as subordinate to the male gender. It's very important that any information about church policy and procedures be meted out to them through the male gender. We cannot tolerate them having firsthand access to current information on policy and procedures.

There is a way that we can legally discriminate against their gender. First, we publish all the policies and procedures into a handbook. Then we copyright the handbook. We next specify that the full handbook can only be distributed to certain classes of people that are only of the male gender. And any complaints we get of discrimination can be dismissed by our copyright protection and operation as a church under the freedom of religion.

If the handbook is made available where women might access it then we threaten legal action against whoever violated our discrimination policy. In all correspondence and pleadings we always use the term "copyright violation" in place of "violation of church gender discrimination policy that females are to be prohibited from getting direct access to policy/procedure information". And we use our status as a religion and our Intellectual Reserve entity and every other legal warfare means to silence those who dare publish, discuss or display links to information on our church handbook.

The PR war on this is more tricky. We must never publicly admit the truth that this is an issue of discriminating against the female gender. This could cause a backlash as not all people in the 21st century are strong supporters of keeping women uninformed. These evil anti-Mormons who think that women should be informed will criticize us. And that would be bad for PR.

The courts, legislators, policymakers and the sovereign people will have to decide through their votes, decisions and actions whether good freedom of religion and copyright laws will protect our desire to purposely discriminate against the female gender. Do we have the right to make sure that the females don't get informed on the church's policies/procedures information unless its done so through the filters of males? "

Now my purpose in sharing this on exmormon.org is to instruct all of you to leave this issue alone. Don't make any complaints about it and just accept it quietly.
 

yer retardid, im christian and all but thats bull

wouldn't the world seem dull and flat with nothing to grumble at?

if you are going to look at the beliefs of mormonism as silly, you have to be willing to take an objective look at your own religious beliefs as well.

take the old testament for example. the foundation of christianity, judiasm and islam

seas part, bushes burn and talk, people live to be hundreds of years old and have children way past the age science has proven to be possible to do so, sustinence falls from the sky, and don't forget the 7 plauges on egypt.

or the new testament for the jesus fans out there.

walking on water? magically making bread and wine appear? raising the dead? healing the sick with nothing but a touch? and his own resurrection? really?

upset over the dogma of the lds church? what about women not being able to be priests in the catholic church? or even priests being able to marry and have children until the middle of last millenium? or the catholic church's stance on birth control? their support of slavery? raping and pillaging in the name of the church in the crusades, exploratory ages? their reluctance to denounce hitler and the nazi party until well into WWII? also, the catholic church has done more to damage the worldwide perception of homosexuality than the lds church could ever do, recent donations or not.

every religion is ridiculous if you look at the beliefs as real life occurances. mormonism gets a bad rap because it is so new. if it was 2000 years old and part of the world's collective belief system it would not be so scrutinied. it might even make it into the constitution of countries and their judicial, monetary, and legal systems.

religions exist to unite a group of people around a system of beliefs and practices designed to better the current state of their communities. 

karl marx described them as an opiate for the masses, which is the most succint and accurate description you will ever find.

to argue over the legitimacy of religions based on the specific stories and fables used in them to promote the lifestyle each deems important is simply uneducated.

It's one of the biggest "Take Out The Trash Day" stories we've ever run across. On Friday, the Church of Latter-Day Saints finally fessed up that its financial involvement in Prop. 8 was significantly larger than it previously maintained. The Mormon Church initially said that it had only donated $2,000 to the Yes on 8 campaign, but in a filing with the California Secretary of State, the LDS Church admitted to spending $190,000 on travel expenses for high-rankimg members of the Church, food, audiovisual services, permits and most damningly, on their own staff and offices.

LDS is facing an ongoing investigation by the state Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) triggered by requests from Californians Against Hate, a grassroots group that has been instrumental in post-Prop 8. boycotts. Roman Porter, executive director of the FPPC said on Friday that "cases like these hinge over what had to be reported and when it had to be reported" and it appears the LDS Church's late filing broke at least some laws. Previously, the church maintained that donations came solely from church members and that the Church did not need to file. The church has refused to comment on the recent filing.

So, what did the Mormon Church spend it's money on? We'll show you.

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Let's start with the most damning evidence. In the filing with the Secretary of State. the church admits that it spent nearly $100,000 paying its own staff to run the Yes on 8 campaign, quite literally, from the Church basement. It dropped another $20,000 on "use of facilities and equipment." If you're looking for a smoking gun, this is it. The exact details of how this money was spent are not mentioned in the report, however, the money trail overturns the notion that the Church simply encouraged its members to donate their own time and energy to winning the California ballot-initiative. Instead, it's now clear that the Church had a well-funded and well-staffed operation running out of Salt Lake. And while this gives gay rights activists a wonderful "I told you so" moment, it's the fact that the Church failed to fess up to its involvement sooner that is likely to cause it the biggest headache. These expenses are the sort that could not have been unknown to the Church, and campaign finance laws are fairly strict about expenses being filed quickly. The Church is most likely making the information public now as a result of the FPPC inquiry and as a way of preventing a full-scale inquisition into its finances, but it's hard to see why the FPPC should start believing them now.

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In addition, the Church spent thousands on "audiovisual production services."  California Mormons reported that their Church leaders would show video presentations on how they had to vote for Proposition 8.

So is this all the money was spent on? Is the $189,000 reported in the latest filing the full extant of the Church's financial involvement in Prop. 8? Consider this: When the investigation against the Church was announced, it revealed it had spent $20,000 in legal fees. Now that the investigation has ramped up, they admit to nearly $200k more.

Fred Karger, of Californians Against Hate, thinks the rabbit hole goes deeper, saying "As I read this report, it seems to raise more questions than it answers.  I think there is still a lot of missing parts of the report because we know they've been active since June."

We agree. Looking through the report, the expenditures are dated solely from the fall of '08, however, we know the Church had been involved with the Yes on 8 campaign from the get-go. In fact, as we've reported earlier, the Mormon Church had developed an elaborate 'war plan' that included bringing in Catholic leaders and other religious groups into the fight, and that the Church had plans to get involved in a California marriage battle going back to the late '90s.

What we have seen with the Church of Latter Day Saints is a pattern of denial and lying. At this point, it's clear that the Church used its own resources to win Proposition 8 and that it did so in an organized, structured and well-funded way. It's also clear that the Church will continue to deny responsibility for it actions, which, increasingly, look to be illegal. In releasing these latest numbers, the Church is hoping to avoid censure for failing to file, however, the damage is done. It's clear that the Church actively worked to cover up its involvement, denying that it had spent significant money to defeat Prop. 8, while knowing full well it had.

So, is $200,000 the final total on Mormon involvement? Should the FPPC launch a full-scale investigation into the Mormon Church's books? And if the Church cheated, don't California gay and lesbians deserve a do-over?

Mormonism is a cult, not a religion.

hey, something has to be done to keep us

i'm sorry you can't marry your boyfriend, but the mormons didn't vote for prop 8, californians did.

irregardless of the campaigning by religious institutions, it was the bigotry and nearsightedness of californians that caused what happened to happen.

you're just upset about it so you blame the easy target. it's ok, i know it takes thought to figure these things out, you must be saving what precious little of it you have for something important.