Are Mormons Christians?

I subscribe to her channel and like her content, but I don’t see how her experiences are any different to anybody else who decides they no longer believe their religion when their family and entire community belongs to that religion and they all take the religion very seriously. If anything, her experiences have been more positive. For example, her family hasn’t shunned her, she’s still invited by Mormon friends to church weddings, nobody has threatened to kill or hurt her…

From memory, the only time she ever referred to Mormonism as a “cult” (or “like a cult”) was when she described the temple endowment ceremony and the weird Freemasonic parallels and secret handshakes. Notably, she says that in the past, the LDS church threatened people who revealed the secrets (like Freemasonry did), but that they no longer make these threats and she doesn’t feel like her life is on the line for exposing these secrets online for the world to see. The fact that she hasn’t been shunned by her family (some of whom she says are old enough to remember when the LDS church still made these threats) and still gets invited to Mormon weddings is telling if you’re trying to argue that she escaped a cult. I also remember her saying in a video something to the effect of that she feels uncomfortable walking through Utah now that she’s well known and chooses to hide her face if she has to, but she doesn’t actually think anything would happen to her if she was recognised.

I keep reading this as Are morons Christians?

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She also said it is a common believe that people who left the church can corrupt people who still believe. She said it in the very video I shared and time coded.

Like I said, the LDS church is capable of change, and as a result it continues to change practices that would infringe on people’s rights and liberties. This includes dialing back on judging or even punishing, whether just socially, economically, or worse psychologically or physically, those who left or spoke about the nature of the church.

This is why I’m saying that I don’t think it’s any different to leaving any religion where everyone around you takes it seriously because it’s part of the identity of your family and community. Most people don’t describe mainstream Suni Islam or Evangelical Protestantism as “cults”, but if you come from a background and community where everyone takes those religions very seriously, then you would also be looked at suspiciously as a potential corrupting force if you leave. Of course, people who take those religions very seriously are going to be concerned that this person who left might “corrupt” their impressionable children and neighbours with “dangerous” ideas.

I’m not justifying it, but I’m saying that not only is Mormonism no different to these mainstream religions that are known to have communities where people take them very seriously, but that based on her own videos, her experiences don’t sound as bad as what happens to a lot of people who do leave those other religions, let alone what happens to people who leave actual cults like Scientology, even JW (which my mum was a member of, so I have some knowledge about what that’s like to leave).

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So is they can not drink tea and strong beer (I saw only lighter beer in Utah rules)

They avoid caffeine.

I mean both are whackadoodle, but “virgin birth” actually has been documented in nature, leagues less whackadoodle, and it’s not even close.

Plenty of nice people out there that believe absolutely wacky stuff that flies in the face of reality.

Actually, their scriptures tell them to avoid “hot drinks”, which in recent years they’ve largely (but there isn’t complete agreement on this) come to interpret to mean coffee and tea, including decaf and iced coffee/tea. They can still have fizzy drinks containing caffeine, for example.

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If you or anyone is interested in knowing exactly what church policy is…this covers everything straight from the source.

The part about caffeine is here…
go to section 38.7.14

Actually, the church’s official stance on caffeine is “moderation”. Try to avoid it, abstaining completely from it is not required.

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I read a fair bit , and that’s very impressive; especially their very strong stance and support network for preventing or dealing with abuse. It’s interesting that those imprisoned for over a year have to serve their sentence before starting proceedings to becomes member. That’s very sensible. There are lots of very good policies contained within the document.

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Well yeah, some organisms reproduce by binary fission, quite the stretch.

But the “your own planet” thing is a belief about the afterlife, not about nature. It’s in the Bible that certain territories are governed by certain deities.

Christian myths just seem less weird to you because they’ve been around longer and are more worn out.

Probably not possible in humans but maybe in extremely rare cases.

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I think you can extend that to all mammals.

Right so it’s within the realms of possibility unlike a flying unicorn. It is also possible a virgin can give birth without being penetrated such as in foreplay.

And if that happened with Joseph and Joseph was also from the Line of David then the child would have been noble and a scribe at least. And maybe the messiah as prophesied by Isaiah except that Isaiah was written by st least three different people.

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