I want to start by talking about the belief system I was raised in and how I was taught to view the world. I won't bore anyone with a history of Mormonism since that can be found in so many places, (I probably shouldn't worry about boring anyone sense I have attracted a grand total of 0 readers so far).
My mom brought me and my sister to church every week as a child. From the time I was able to formulate my first full sentence I was taught the Mormon history of the world, as follows;
Six thousand years ago, God made the universe in 6 days. He put Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, they sinned, and got kicked out. God kept sending prophets like Noah, Abraham, and Moses, but the wicked people of earth kept rejecting them. Finally Jesus came and, through some mechanism we don't understand, died for our sins. They people became wicked again and the church Jesus formed was destroyed within a single generation. All subsequent Christian churchs were apostate groups of sinners without the authority to perform the rituals, like baptism or communion, that they were preforming.
Then in the early 19th century, God decided he'd had enough of this "Great Apostasy" and decided that of all of the millions of people on earth, he was going to choose a 14 year old boy named Joseph Smith to restore his church. Joseph lead a near perfect life, second only to Jesus, suffered terrible persecutions, worked tirelessly to restore the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and died a martyr's death. Brigham Young then lead the saints to Utah, where they established Zion, and even today we have prophets and apostles to guide our lives.
There's more than a few major problems with this worldview, but I'll go into those in other posts. What I want to start exploring hear is why anyone could buy into something as bat-shit crazy as Mormonism, and still be a functional human being.
One thing I'm firmly convinced of is that it is not lack of education. I developed a love for science as a little kid. I loved learning as much as I could about the natural world. I learned about and accepted the theory of evolution early on. I was aware of the scientific consensus on the age of the earth and the universe. I loved physics. I read Stephen Hawking and Richard Feynman in middle school. I was fascinated by technological developments that science brought us.
So how did I reconcile this with my religion? I compartmentalized. I had one part of my brain sectioned off for Adam and Even, and another sectioned off for Darwin and Einstein. I can't expect anyone who hasn't been experienced a similar state of mind to understand how that feels. I managed to justify it by saying things like, "It doesn't matter how God created the earth, just as longs as he did it." Or, "Leave science to the scientists, and let the rest of us concentrate on the things that are important to our salvation."
But how did I deal with all of the errors, contradictions, and unethical behavior in church history? Apologetics. Mormon apologetics is a thriving field. Mostly because Mormons are starting to realize that the version of history they were taught does not stand up to much scrutiny, and people need easy answers to Mormon critic's questions. It's the job of an apologist to spin every criticism of the church in such a way that believers can justify their faith. Popular apologetic sites include fairlds.org, shields-research.org, and the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS).
It's important to understand the way an apologist's mind works. A critic might present an argument such as the rampant racism throughout the church's history. They may site such quotes as; "You may inquire of the intelligent of the world whether they can tell why the aborigines of this country are dark, loathsome, ignorant, and sunken into the depths of degradation ...When the Lord has a people, he makes covenants with them and gives unto them promises: then, if they transgress his law, change his ordinances, and break his covenants he has made with them, he will put a mark upon them, as in the case of the Lamanites and other portions of the house of Israel; but by-and-by they will become a white and delightsome people" (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 7:336). Or they may state facts such as black people being denied the ability to hold any priesthood office in the church until 1978, when the social pressure was insurmountable and the church was about to lose tax-exempt status, had they not changed their policy.
An apologist will answer this by saying that Mormon prophets are just men, that we don't believe they are infallible, or that ,and this is a very important phrase in apologetics, 'a prophet is only a prophet when he is acting as a prophet', thus the racist statements have no relevance. The priesthood ban has never been apologized for, or even explained, so the apologist is left to create an explanation on his own which usually goes along the lines of "Well, we don't know why the blacks were banned from holding the priesthood, but Jesus did the same thing to gentiles in the New Testament, so obviously it was OK for Mormon leaders to do the same".
The obvious objections to this, that if you can simply say that your prophet was speaking as a man whenever he says something objectionable, then how can any of his words carry any weight, and that racism in the bible does not excuse racism in the present, is irrelevant to the apologist. He's provided the church members an easy answer they can cling to when they need it.
But why believe any of this stuff in the first place? It's understandable that a religious person could make the effort to delude themselves into believing that their beliefs are justifiable, but why make that initial effort? Two reasons, much of the message can appear to be very appealing, and the consistences of not believing can be dire. To explain the first, there are many of the doctrines Mormonism that I still find quite intellectually and emotionally appealing. For example, two arguments against traditional Christianity I hear from atheist are, well if you have to use God to explain the origin of the universe, then who created god? And, who would want to live in heaven, praising God for all eternity? What could be more hellish? Mormon doctrine has answers to these questions that are satisfying on the surface. They believe in "eternal progression", which means that God was once as man like we are, living on a planet, with a god of his own. He proved his righteousness in life, and became a god after he died. We have the same opportunity to live according to the Mormon religion, and after we die become gods with our own worlds. As ridiculous as that belief is, it answers a lot of problems if you have a Christian framework through which you view the world. This and many other beliefs made Mormonism less internally contradictory in my eyes.
Consequently, the price for leaving Mormonism can be huge. Like other religions, in Mormonism, you are taught that morality is doing what God, or the person speaking for God, says. The purpose of your life in to conform as much as possible to what the person speaking for God says. All happiness come from doing what he says, all suffering comes from disobeying him. You're only value as a human being comes from obedience to the will of God. Without understanding where morality, purpose, happiness, and value actually come from, approaching the edge of disbelief seems extremely dangerous. One of my main arguments against atheism as a believer was that I could not understand why an atheist would be moral. I don't know if I realized the question of morality had nothing to do with the question of whether a god existed, but the thought that there was no universal order scared the hell out of me. Without understanding Secular Humanism, without understanding morality, purpose, happiness, and value without god, it's extremely difficult for a Mormon, or any other religious person to question their own beliefs. They can't understand what there would be to live for without their religion. They probably don't consciously recognize that as their true reason for believing, but it does act as a subconscious bloc to keep them from seriously questioning their own beliefs.
The other negative consequences of leaving are largely social. The Mormon church ties all family relationships intrinsically to itself. It teaches that if family members don't participate in temple rituals and questioningly follow whatever orders are handed down by the prophet, family members will not be together in the afterlife. If you come from a Mormon family and leave the church, as I have, you're telling your family that you're ripping up your ticket to heaven, and choosing not to be with them in eternity. Some loving God. Many marriages fail when one spouse leaves the church. Many of us apostates leave and realize that all of our former friendships were conditional on activity in the church. Some lose everything by leaving. Their spouse, their children, their friendships, their jobs, their homes, everything.
As I said before, these three factors, the appealing doctrine, the inability to conceive of morality, purpose, happiness, and value without Mormonism, and the detrimental affects of apostasy leave most Mormons unable to even question their beliefs. Mormon doctrine may be filled with so many ludicrous, contradictory, irrational, unscientific, immoral, and demonstrably false claims to be laughable to anyone on the outside, but to those on the inside, Mormonism is the image of perfection, beauty, symmetry, love, and family.
