So I watched this special last night on PBS on "The Mormons" and it made me even more disgusted at religion, I have to say.

Who do these people think they are, baptizing non-Mormons who are already dead?! And up until a few years ago, they were baptizing Holocaust survivors! They still baptize dead people and then record it in writing!

That is truly horrible and wrong. How dare they record people as Mormon who have no intention of being so?

The women are subordinate to the men, and they have no status in the church. People who don't get "selected" or "accepted" or whatever, into the temple are ostracized and treated horribly. They can even be excommunicated completely.

And not to mention the outrageous treatment of Gays and Lesbians.

It made me sick!

I think the absolute worst was this couple where the woman was 43 years old and she'd already had 7 children, and they thought God "told" them to have another baby. The doctors advised against it because she was high risk, but they did it anyway, and she got diabetes and she DIED of a blood clot because of being too old and being a high-risk pregnancy! Now their children are without a mother! Horrible!

And PBS didn't go into the widespread practice of forcing little girls to have sex with old men, and into polygamy, because that's not "officially" part of the Mormon religion, but that too makes me mad.

I don't care what consenting adults do about their religious beliefs, but don't go around baptizing people who don't want to be baptized and recording it for history, and don't treat women like subordinates and force them into high risk childbearing! And don't force little girl children to get married!

And I can't believe that people go around bashing law-abiding Gay people who just want to live their lives and don't hurt anyone, when these Mormons are running around abusing people and desecrating Jewish graves and treating women like total crap and emotionally abusing their members!

And it's based on some dude who had a visions of angels and Jesus. Just some regular guy who would be considered a total mental case today! Unbelievable.

Sometimes I think the most people in the world are 100% delusional.

I have known some pretty horrible people that are Mormon, but I have known some pretty horrible people that were of all faiths and lack of faith. People are people, there are good and there are bad. Religion has little to do with it.

If you look at stats of who is in prison, it isn't the atheists taking up the bunk beds. It is the Christians. Does this mean Christianity has failed? I don't think so. If you look at educational levels between Christians and atheists, atheists win that one hands down. So I'm not sure religion has anything to do with it overall, I really think it is based on education. The more education someone has the less likely they are to do drugs, steal from others, harm others, etc.

Atheists have a lower divorce rate than most Christians. I credit a variety of issues to that. I think organized religion puts pressure on people that is simply unrealistic. Their God doesn't put this pressure on them but their churches do. I think many Christians don't know what actual love is. They claim to love everyone. Yet they are divorcing at rates higher than the average. Maybe they are expected to get on with their married lives so they hurry and try to find a spouse, not sure. Maybe education plays a role in this as well. While the atheists are in college Christians are getting married and having a family? Atheists marry later in life? Just a thought.

Overall I don't believe religion does society a lot of good. It may do individual people a wealth of good, but not society as a whole. Stats demonstrate this quite well. People talk about charity. Atheists donate money too. During the national day of prayer the atheists had a blood drive. We all do our own thing, some choose to advertise their good deeds so they get some special credit for it. Others don't care if people know or not. People assume all the time since I am not Christian that I don't contribute to my community. I'll put my dollars and volunteer hours up against 95% of the Christian community and I'll win that one. I don't count those hours and chalk it up to religion so for society, it apparently doesn't count.

So when people talk about their church donating more money than any others during Katrina, etc., I have to laugh. Honestly... how silly is that? So atheists don't stand up and insist on being counted when we do a good deed... I guess it doesn't count unless we insist on recognition.

The world has a lot to learn about atheism. We merely believe in one less God than the Christians. Do the Christians believe in Ra or the Hindu Gods? No? I don't either. I merely believe in one less God than the Christians.

I've been slammed by a patient in ICU before for working on a Sunday. It's the Lord's day. The mere notion that I could possibly be a nonbeliever never crossed his mind. He kept telling me all day long I'm a good girl, I have morality, I do a good job, but I work on SUNDAY! Hello? I was taking care of HIM while HE was in ICU! Would I have been a good Christian girl had I left him to fend for himself after his heart attack? I couldn't have won that one.

If people only realized that we atheists, the ones that are the outcasts of society, the folks without morality, the folks that let the good Christians do all the work of the world... if they had ANY clue how many of us are in medicine, they might never step foot in a hospital again in fear of demons or some other part of their myth. You can't stand on your tippy toes with arms outstretched at a hospital, spin in circles, and not hit an atheist.

Right, we don't contribute to society much.

Thank you for saying this, Butt.

Instead of one FAMILY getting welfare, each wife of the family is collecting full welfare.

Really?!?! I did not know that!

Unbelievable, these people!

But wait, I thought part of the whole thing about the Mormons is they take care of their communities and the people, etc.

Now you're saying many of them collect welfare, too?

It gets more outrageous the more I hear about it!

I don't know about all Mormons, I'm referring specifically to those that marry off their little girls to old men and breed like bunnies. Not main stream Mormons.

Not main stream Mormons.

Ooooh ok that makes more sense. It seems, upon research, that mainstreamers have an extensive private (aka: Mormons run) welfare system.

I am interested to know if anyone, especially those arguing with me about how misinformed I am, has read the paper I posted by the Mormon Phd. and if so, what are your thoughts on women's depression in the church?

I didn't see the special, I don't know who they were talking to or what exactly was said... but it sounds like they picked a few things and blew them out of proportion, but I dunno.

I do know, that I am about to marry into a very large mormon family. My fiance doesn't practice the religion, but as he hasn't proclaimed a different one, I guess that makes him still mormon. I've learned alot from him about the religion. I have never been approached by anyone in his family with some necessity that I convert or go to church. I've had some conversations with one of his sisters who came to visit and learned some more from her.

I've also learned that even within one family, the degree of rules can vary greatly... and it's all about interpretation. My fiance says that originally there was a rule to not drink hot drinks... somehow that got translated into caffiene... His family for the most part drinks hot chocolate and hot herbal tea, but not coffee, tea, or soda with any caffiene in it. One of his sisters will drink caffeinated soda, others wont drink any soda. One of his brothers' families wont allow their children to read books along the line of Harry Potter, because they believe the idea of magic is evil (I've known Christians like this too).

Interpretation of the religion varies by person. My fiance has 2 brothers that don't practice the religion. One of them has his own family, is a great guy like my fiance, his daughter is well behaved, basically he's teaching the values he learned from the religion, without the religion. His other brother is constantly in jail for various things. Sometimes nuture has nothing to do with anything, but the brother who is constantly in trouble could probably call himself technically a morman too, you know?

So, there probably ARE "Mormons" who do the things that Sunta has proclaimed, and I'm sure that the mainstream Mormon society doesn't want to have much to do with them, but they are probably doing what they have interpreted for the religion. There are dozens of "Christian" religions out there, and they are all separate for the same reason, they don't agree with eachother on the interpretation, but they're all Christian.

I'm more agnostic than anything else, but there are things in lots of religions that I can see why people believe them, and there are things in lots of religions that I can't understand why anyone would believe, but that really doesn't give me the right to say they are "wrong". The whole point of religion is that no one knows. Fear of the unknown drives religion and if religion helps people deal with their fear of what happens after death, so be it... whether one religion is "right" or "wrong" doesn't hold a candle to the people with the faith behind it.

*whew*, I hope I said all that the way I wanted to, lol.

I am interested to know if anyone, especially those arguing with me about how misinformed I am, has read the paper I posted by the Mormon Phd. and if so, what are your thoughts on women's depression in the church?

I read the paper. I'm not one of those who would be inclined to argue with you, but I'll make a few comments.

It makes me very sad to read about that. I think that men are really quite afraid of the power that women have in their lives. Most men, left to their own devices, would be relatively unmotivated. They would be pretty happy sitting under a palm tree counting sand. Men are motivated to do more than that by being around women. Men are capable of doing amazing and wonderful things, don't get me wrong, but they just don't really feel a need to do these things unless they are motivated by women. Women provide the hunger.

Women are capable of motivating each other. Women don't really need men in that way. But men don't really get much motivation from other men. James Brown was pretty correct in his song It's A Man's World. Men build the buildings, but it don't mean nothing, nothing, nothing, without a woman or a girl.

This kind of power is terrifying to men. That's why men feel a need to wrap women up head to toe in burkas, and why men feel a need to suppress and control women in the ways described in this piece by the Mormon scholar. It seems like every religion has its own particular scheme for making sure women are controlled and that their power is undermined.

Men happen to have the advantage when it comes to physical strength, and fear of female power causes men to seek to control women through use of that physical strength. I think that pretty much explains what rape is about.

And it is really a loss for both sexes when men seek to suppress and control women. A happy, fulfilled woman is capable of motivating a man to become far more than anything he could have dreamed. Most men lose out on so much by deluding themselves into believing that they have the power and the control. We all lose so much from that.

This is one of the main reasons I hate religion. It takes such a heavy toll on women. Women pay a huge price, and men lose so much too, without understanding why. Men seemingly have the advantage because they "control" everything, but they pay an enormous price as well. Everyone does by the imbalances created by religion.

I'm married to a strong, confident woman. It amuses me to think of what might happen if I tried to pull some of these control games on her described in the article by the Mormon scholar. My approach with her is to do what I can to help her fulfill herself. I'm not Mr. Perfect and I make all kinds of mistakes. But I know that to the extent I can support her, my life will be doubly blessed. I always get back more than I give.

Every religion seems to feature its own scheme for controlling and suppressing female power. Everybody loses because of it, but women are the ones who pay the heaviest price. What a sad and foolish way to live.

I just finished reading Dr. Ponder's report. I loved it. True, I am not LDS, but it was a sensitive, liberating paper written by a man who loves his Church and his Family but having difficulties reconciling the two.

I did have a thought halfway through -

Would his daughters have an easier time with the faith if they had been forced to submit to the 'creepy, dirty-minded" men who conducted the worthiness interviews?

Sorry, but if anyone tried to spend time alone with my daughter talking to her about sex and sexual feelings... that would be one less dirty old man.

Sheesh, they really do this? Sounds like mental rape, it has to be abuse by some definition, right?

Thanks Sunta! Another GREAT find.

I read the paper. I'm not one of those who would be inclined to argue with you, but I'll make a few comments.

It makes me very sad to read about that. I think that men are really quite afraid of the power that women have in their lives. Most men, left to their own devices, would be relatively unmotivated. They would be pretty happy sitting under a palm tree counting sand. Men are motivated to do more than that by being around women. Men are capable of doing amazing and wonderful things, don't get me wrong, but they just don't really feel a need to do these things unless they are motivated by women. Women provide the hunger.

Women are capable of motivating each other. Women don't really need men in that way. But men don't really get much motivation from other men. James Brown was pretty correct in his song It's A Man's World. Men build the buildings, but it don't mean nothing, nothing, nothing, without a woman or a girl.

This kind of power is terrifying to men. That's why men feel a need to wrap women up head to toe in burkas, and why men feel a need to suppress and control women in the ways described in this piece by the Mormon scholar. It seems like every religion has its own particular scheme for making sure women are controlled and that their power is undermined.

Men happen to have the advantage when it comes to physical strength, and fear of female power causes men to seek to control women through use of that physical strength. I think that pretty much explains what rape is about.

And it is really a loss for both sexes when men seek to suppress and control women. A happy, fulfilled woman is capable of motivating a man to become far more than anything he could have dreamed. Most men lose out on so much by deluding themselves into believing that they have the power and the control. We all lose so much from that.

This is one of the main reasons I hate religion. It takes such a heavy toll on women. Women pay a huge price, and men lose so much too, without understanding why. Men seemingly have the advantage because they "control" everything, but they pay an enormous price as well. Everyone does by the imbalances created by religion.

I'm married to a strong, confident woman. It amuses me to think of what might happen if I tried to pull some of these control games on her described in the article by the Mormon scholar. My approach with her is to do what I can to help her fulfill herself. I'm not Mr. Perfect and I make all kinds of mistakes. But I know that to the extent I can support her, my life will be doubly blessed. I always get back more than I give.

Every religion seems to feature its own scheme for controlling and suppressing female power. Everybody loses because of it, but women are the ones who pay the heaviest price. What a sad and foolish way to live.

You're right about the power us woman have over men. Have you ever read Think and Grow Rich, by Napolean Hill? There is an entire chapter on that called Sexual Transmutation. Fascinating book, one of my favorites

Amen. :clap2:

same experience here, which is what was very attractive about The Church in the first place. I guess it's nice to belong to a community of people like that. Mormon or not.

<p>

angry atheists here

By and large, the atheists "here" aren't angry. And least not enough so to warrant such a blanket statement. Is that typical of the ignorant christians here? (Yes, that's a parallel, for parallel's sake). I understand it's a common blanket from whence to make a statement. Christians don't understand how we could be happy without [whatever version it is] their god. And if you're referring to Sunta (since she has largely been the one expressing anger), she has said many times that she is not atheist. As for the others, don't assume that anger in a message = an angry person. Otherwise I can quote you many angry PEOPLE, theistic beliefs notwithstanding.</p>

You seem like such a bitter and unhappy person, to spend so much time bashing somthing that you obviously know not much about. If living without religion would lead me to anywhere close to were you are, then that is reason enough for me to continue to beleive in my savior Jesus Christ and strive daily to follow his commandments and be a better person, mother, and friend.

Are you addressing me? Since you quoted me in this post I will assume this is addressed to me.

Sunta, it could be either of us. We were both quoted, then referred to as "person." *shrug* *I* don't think we look alike...

Hi sweethot.

I seldom like to post on these threads, but wanted to say that I applaude your respecfulness here. I am not a great debater or defender of my own faith sometimes because of that. I don't agree with your faith, but I respect it. I hope that makes sence. On a thread that you could have easily come off looking bad and defensive, you didn't. Discussion about faith are hard to defend, because it is based on faith, not so much facts and those wanting to beleive only in facts are never satisfied with faith based answers.

...Discussion about faith are hard to defend, because it is based on faith, not so much facts and those wanting to beleive only in facts are never satisfied with faith based answers.

Sincere question here. Why do you suppose that is?

I encourage everyone on this thread to read the following paper, written by a Mormon (not ex-Mormon) doctor and professor in examining Mormon's women's deep depression and use of anti-depressants:

http://home.teleport.com/~packham/prozac.htm

Wow! This is required reading IMHO. Thanks, Sunta.

Discussion about faith are hard to defend, because it is based on faith, not so much facts and those wanting to beleive only in facts are never satisfied with faith based answers.

This is a really good point. I am definitely a facts-oriented person, but I understand the concept of faith. It doesn't make much sense to me in the concept of religion, but if it did, I wouldn't be me.

I was looking for something I posted a very long time ago, because that's easier than re-typing it. I couldn't find the exact post (though I could find one that references it), but here's something similar:

That's why debates based in theology are more difficult from our perspective. In my opinion. (I've posted this before, so I'm just giving the short version). One side has some unseen, unknown, unproven "magical" entity that can do everything and anything imaginable. Kind of like someone with every superpower ever conceived of, all rolled into one. The other side has to try and rationalize against that, which to us is "common sense," but when you believe in the entity, it's all the answer you need - apparently. We tend to see things in terms of the Epicurean riddle, while those with religious faith tend to see things in terms of Because it's god.

Point being, if you come to any forum online or not, with the expectation of entering into a religion-based argument/debate/discussion with the intentions of "winning," you will never succeed because there is no win, there is only share beliefs and at the end of the day it's probably a matter of agree to disagree, but wither way chances are great that both sides walk away knowing more about the other than they did before the dialogue occurred.