Breaking news is the perfect place to remind people what Mormonism stands for and who Joseph Smith was, especially with all this Romney talk. I don’t dislike people who believe different than I, but Smith’s ideas were pure fantasy, and it’s hard to believe that people believe in his teachings. For one, polygamy is just another form of women’s subjugation and the bible says nothing about Smith’s alien beliefs. I grew up not far from Palmyra,NY where Smith supposedly received his “revelations”. The area, close to Rochester, was just ripe with a religious fervor that started out as a search for truth, but in the case of Mormonism, IMHO, Joseph Smith veered off course and either thought up ( maybe initially with good intentions, I don’t know) or dreamed a bunch of wacky notions he made into a pseudo religion, trying to make it sound legit by including Jesus but changing and diminishing his role. How can we believe the bible and then believe the writings of Joseph Smith? Smith’s followers didn’t even believe all he said, and before he was dead and buried a power struggle went on within his sect. IMHO Smith was the L. Ron Hubbard of his century.
Well, said. How can people believe? Well, some grow up in it, and are brainwashed - literally told the same mantras over and over again - since childhood.
Some (like me are converts). Nominal Christians who don’t know their Bible very well and have never had a relationship with Jesus Christ and are looking for a nice conservative (RELIGION).
Mormonism has several ‘draws’ to the worldly. It claims to be the only ‘true’ church (One stop shopping), claims to have the answers for every question (claiming that other churches don’t ask or answer them which isn’t true), tugs at the heart strings (eternal marriage, families are forever).
For me, part of the draw was the ‘families are forever’. My parents divorced when I was four and I spent most of my time with my grandparents while my mother was out fighting communism in Eastern Europe. The idea that a family could stay together always was appealing.
Thirdly, the LDS missionaries (and often members) use deceptive methods in order to gain converts. They only tell potential converts PART of the story (like they leave out the BoM being translated with Smith’s face in a hat) under the guise of ‘milk before meat’. Once you are in, you start to get the ‘meat’ doctrines, then more once you go to the Temple for their secret initiatory rituals.
Finally, the LDS are masters at getting you to rely on your feelings rather than your mind for ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’. The mormon ‘testimony’ is all about how they ‘know’ (through warm fuzzy feelings they claim are messages from God) that ‘the Church’ is ‘true’, that Smith was a prophet, etc.
The focus on feelings over thought as a measure of truth leaves many LDS flat out ignoring basic facts and the Bible.