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>>> How can people believe this junk?

I’ve been asking God that question for a long time.

I don’t know that I have the complete answer, but I do believe I have a big part of it.

In the course of any person’s life, the desire to “get away with something” is strong. We all make mistakes, and we quickly seek to blameshift or deny guilt. This of course ends up leading to a propensity to lie or manipulate the truth. This is something we are all guilty of at some point in our lives, and we all have to deal with.

The problem is that some people are much better at lying than others. The ones who are not very good at it must either choose to give it up, or figure out what they are doing wrong... otherwise, they fail to “get away with it”.

Determination is a powerful attribute for positive change, but can also be just as destructive if abused. Someone who is so determined to learn how to lie effectively eventually learns that before they can fool others, they have to believe the lie themselves first.

It is my personal belief that this is an attainable goal.
There are methods and practices (justification,repetition,etc.) that enable our brains to deny a truth and replace it with a lie. We call it compartmentalization... and one does not have to understand how it works in order to make it work.

The problem is that there are serious side effects... the most detrimental one being the dismantling of our God-given ability to discern between truth and error.

In other words, or in short....

If you learn to lie effectively, you become extremely vulnerable to being lied effectively to.

Who was it that said that the easiest person to con was a con man? It’s a true statement.

This is not to call all Mormons liars. For that matter, we are ALL liars (even Christians)... because we have all lied at some point in our lives. Rather, I believe it is safe to say that Mormons are deceived because they have handicapped themselves from being able to discern the truth.