I was a Mormon. Yes, I said it. A Mormon. Or, as Mormon leaders wish to be referred to today, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Looking back, I can see that I was always questioning. In my former religion, there were many things to question, and I found many things to question as matured. I thought that the error lay with me. I thought that the questions came because I didn’t have enough knowledge. So I studied. I read the scriptures, and I bought and read books that I thought would have the answers to the questions I had. I knew that the only books that were sanctioned by the Church were ones that had the “Seal of the First Presidency” on the title page. I wasn’t interested in opinion by some member of the Church with his own ideas, nor was I interested in the opinion of some high-up member in a position of power. For example, in 1958, Bruce R. McConkey, a member of the Church’s highest inner circle, wrote a book titled Mormon Doctrine, in which he asserted that many of his own opinions were actual church doctrine. This book wouldn’t do me any good, since the answers were a person’s opinion and not the actual doctrine of the Church.
I won’t hide this fact about myself: in 2004, I was excommunicated from the Church. I had some “sins” that the Church considered serious enough to revoke my membership. Not only did I support this decision, but I actually turned myself in. I confessed my sins to my bishop and cooperated fully with his inquisition. When the decision was made that I would be stripped of my membership, I supported it fully. Not only did I completely support the decision, but I vowed to do everything that was required of me to be welcomed back into the church. I studied more, I attended church more frequently, and I met with the bishop for at least two hours each week.
I disclose this about me because there is a common trend among members of the Church. When they find out that a person who has left the Church has been excommunicated, they discard any part of his story simple because “it was easier for them to find fault with the Church than it is to find fault with themselves.”
I only studied the scriptures. They had already been set up with footnotes, indexes, appendices, and glossaries for easy cross referencing. The problem, though, is that the more I studied, the more questions I had. I came across contradictions such as:
Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord.
(Jacob 2:24)
and
David also received many wives and concubines, and also Solomon and Moses my servants, as also many others of my servants, from the beginning of creation until this time; and in nothing did they sin save in those things which they received not of me.
David’s wives and concubines were given unto him of me, by the hand of Nathan, my servant, and others of the prophets who had the keys of this power; and in none of these things did he sin against me save in the case of Uriah and his wife.
(D&C 132:38–39)
To me, the contradiction is clear. I would find other contradictions too, especially when I attended church and listened to the lessons. I would look around me and wonder if others were thinking the same as I was. Yet I found no concerned or confused expressions on anyone else’s face. I had to conclude that the problem was only with me—that I clearly misunderstood something, or that I lacked sufficient faith, or that I simply didn’t know enough.
The thought never occurred to me to question the material itself. I had been taught from a young age to “follow the prophet,” to recite over and over that the church was true, that Joseph Smith was a real prophet who spoke for god, and that The Book of Mormon was more correct than The Bible. I couldn’t question those things. It was a part of my subconscious programming. It was my duty (and my eternal salvation relied on it) to believe it all.
By 2007, I was definitely questioning more. The contradiction that was weighing most heavily on me was the scriptures that stated that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”(Hebrews 13:8) If that was true, I reasoned, then why is there so much difference between our present day and the time period during which the scriptures where written? Some of my questions were:
- Back during the epoch of scripture writing, during which The Bible and The Book of Mormon were supposedly written, it seemed like whenever an earthquake, hurricane, or other natural disaster occurred, the ruling prophet at the time would step forward and state that God had punished the people for their sins, and unless they repent, He would most certainly do it again. So, if God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, why is it that when that tsunami struck Thailand in 2004 did not one religious leader—specifically the one who claims he speaks with God face to face—come forward and say that God had punished the people for their wickedness?
- During the time of Noah, when man had been on the earth for only a short while (as claimed in the Book of Genesis), God chose to destroy all people on the face of the earth because of wickedness, saving only a family of seven. Using religion’s definition of wicked, I would have to assume that people today are far more wicked than they were then. It has been thousands of years, after all. Does God not care that we’re wicked now? If he set the parameter for rebooting the human race when they achieved a certain level of wickedness, surely we would have been wiped out several times by now.
There are those reading this who will wish to make the argument that God promised never to destroy man by flood again. That God created rainbows as a covenant between Him and man that this would never happen again. To counter this argument, I will ask this reader to return to Genesis Chapter 9. God tells Noah that He will never destroy man by flood again. I would also argue that this story about how rainbows are created is just as silly as any Greek myth about a God creating something that man couldn’t explain. The Greek religion faded into mythology as man developed the science to explain what was once referred to as a miracle. Now that man knows how rainbows are made, what use does this silly myth about Noah and his ark have?
For additional deconstruction of the ark myth, please refer to my separate article on the subject, “The Myth of Noah’s Ark” https://wordpress.com/post/ethanworthen.com/113. - Prophets in both the Old Testament and the New Testament were always healing people. Jesus in particular was healing people constantly. The Church claims that the Jesus gave this power to Peter, James, and John, and that they as heavenly beings gave it to Joseph Smith, who “handed” it out to men whom he deemed worthy. So if there are all of these men who have the same healing power that Jesus had, why is it that we don’t hear of people being healed all the time? It would seem to me that news of someone being healed by the power of the priesthood would be an everyday occurrence now.
Around this same time, I was studying the concept of liberty for work. The first book I read was The 5,000 Year Leap, by Kleon Skousen, who proposed the theory that the sudden and giant leap in technology after being dormant for nearly 5,000 years was caused by the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The key factor in that was the declaration of man’s natural rights and his resolve to stop subjecting himself to tyranny. I believe that to be true—that when man removes the yoke holding him back, he begin to enjoy that freedom that would naturally lead him to discover and invent.
This was a tricky position for America to be in, and the rest of the world was watching. For at least 5,000 years, the civilizations had been ruled by kings who claimed to either be direct descendants of God or specifically chosen to rule by God. (What better way is there to maintain power than to convince people that your rule had the full support of the ultimate supreme ruler of the universe?) This was the first time in history that man stood up and said, “No, I don’t think so. We will rule ourselves.” And the rest of the world was watching. Mexico and the South American countries were being ruled by the king of Spain, and France was being ruled by a couple of spoiled brats. These countries were waiting—waiting to see what revenge God would take on the Americans for refusing to obey the King of England. When no punishment came, the Hispanic population of the New World and the French people rose up and declared their independence too. Little by little, the world was rejecting the idea of the Divine Right of Kings and learning to think and act for itself.
This led me to study liberty more specifically. For example, I was greatly interested in the difference between freedom and liberty. I learned that liberty is the absence of force. I learned that force is anything that takes away a person’s freedom of choice. When I think of force, the first thing that comes to mind is physical force. A person can get another person to do pretty much anything with the use of—or even the threat of—physical force. Physical force has many forms and philosophies, such as: “might makes right.” But equally as evil as physical force are the mental and emotional versions. Among them are: cheating, lying, manipulation, fear, guilt, shame, and any other form of trickery. I concluded that whenever a person uses any kind of force, either physical, mental, or emotional, he is taking away his victim’s ability to think through a choice and make a choice for himself. I do believe one universal truth that has become the foundation of my belief system is simply “do not initiate force on another person.”
The second truth that I can derive from this is “whenever a person initiates force (of any kind) against another person, he is acting immorally.” He is taking away his victim’s freedom of choice and mostly making his decision for him. I have also concluded that any person or institution that uses force as the primary factor to get people to act the way he or it wants them to, the person or institution is evil. Government is guilty of this, and so are churches. When I discovered this, I began looking at my church in a different light. Eventually I saw it. Underneath the disguise of love were layers and layers of guilt, fear, and manipulation.
But I set it aside. Surely the church didn’t mean to be this way, did it? Surely God’s true church wasn’t set up this way. Surely the scriptures were true that stated that everything in the church was founded on love. So I ignored the thoughts nagging at me. Surely it was some misunderstanding of my own that was causing the confusion. More church and more study would certainly restore my faith and testimony.
I did, however, establish barriers to protect myself from getting burned by uses of force again. Some of them are
- Being male does not make you right (or superior).
- Being stronger does not make you right.
- Being louder doesn’t make you right.
- Being more clever at debating doesn’t make you right.
- Being older does not make you wiser.
- Scaring me doesn’t make you right.
The fifth one was a big one for me. I had been raised my whole life with the idea that I should respect my elders. But I could see these older people using that idea inappropriately. To them, it became, “Do what I say because I’m older than you, and because I’m older, I have more knowledge and experience; therefore, I’m smarter than you.” It became clear to me that years and years of the wrong experience and beliefs did not make an older person smarter or wiser than me. If they had lived their whole lives under a false premise, then trying to get me to obey them based on their wisdom and experience alone was absolutely a use of force. And once I determined that an elder was exerting force against me, whether they were aware of it or not, they became evil in my eyes, which disqualified them for receiving any respect from me whatsoever.
I basically concluded that if a person truly has the truth, he doesn’t need someone else to act on it. The person will share the truth with someone else, hoping that the truth will enhance the other’s life. Whether the listener will implement the truth isn’t of concern. It’s when the person doesn’t have the truth—when they’ve lived his whole life with a subconscious programming that begins with “do this or this will happen”—that he suddenly gets upset when he can’t get someone else to do it too. It’s as if he justifies his behavior by proving that the majority of the people he knows also do it.
Once I had this figured out, another action from the church really struck a chord with me. The church published a book about standards that they expected people to live by. And, of course, they used the line “this is how God wants us to live, and if we are obedient, He will be happy and bless us with abundance and happiness.” There were some people who cried tears of joy out of gratitude to be able to prove their faithfulness to God. Some of the rules:
- Women can only have one piercing per earlobe. Men can not have any. No other body piercing at all.
- No tattoos anywhere.
- Men should not have any facial hair.
This disgusted me because another contradiction bit me:
But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused have refused him; for the Lord aseeth not as a man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.
(1 Samuel 16:17)
There is nothing inherently wrong about long hair or beards, any more than there is anything inherently wrong with possessing an empty liquor bottle. But a person with a beard or an empty liquor bottle is susceptible of being misunderstood. Either of these articles may reduce a person’s effectiveness and promote misunderstanding because of what people may reasonably conclude when they view them in proximity to what these articles stand for in our society today.
New Era. December 1971. Standards of Dress and Grooming. Dallin H. Oaks.
On one side, we should not be concerned with a person’s appearance, but on the other side, we should be. This has bothered me for a long time. Even when I considered myself the most faithful of the faithful, I couldn’t reconcile this. Yet I just set it aside to pile up with my other frustrations.
While in this state of frustration, a two-year-old girl in my neighborhood was diagnosed with leukemia. The ward began fasting and praying for her recovery. The whole ward was involved. And then, in 2007, two years after she had been diagnosed, the little girl died. I sat in Elder’s Quorum with the priesthood-holding men of the ward. They were so confused! They had done everything by the book. They had fasted and prayed. They had given her those priesthood blessings. They had exerted so much faith! “Why had God taken her?” they asked. There were several ideas:
- God’s will always wins. If it was His will from the beginning to torture her for two years and cause a great deal of suffering among her family members and leave them with a huge amount of grief and debt, then no amount of fasting or praying would sway Him from His goal.
- While there was fasting and prayer, perhaps not everyone fasted and prayed. Maybe there were even some doubters. God refused to accept the tribute since it wasn’t a complete and significant sacrifice.
- The priesthood holders who gave her the blessings weren’t truly worthy, so the blessings didn’t have the desired effect.
- As a child, her own faith in Jesus Christ was insufficient to save her.
The main consensus was that God simply needed her more than her family and friends did, so He brought her home (to heaven) where she is now experiencing a fullness of joy. But that still raised questions like
- If God wanted her so badly, why didn’t he take her instantly in her sleep instead of making her and her parents suffer miserably to two long years?
- If God’s will always wins, then what’s the point of praying and fasting in the first place? He’ll do what He pleases whether there are a hundred prayers or no prayers.
- If God’s will always wins, then what lesson is there to learn from that? Pray always only to watch God do what he wants to anyway? Have unquestionable faith even though it doesn’t mean anything?
This may have been the first time that I actually asked, “Or what if there isn’t a god at all?” It seemed to me to be not only the easiest explanation but also the one explanation that would silence all of the other questions. But again, I just placed it on the pile and let it fester.
In 2009, I was given the assignment to teach geometry to eighth grade students. I remember thinking how easy it would be. I had a blast when I was in tenth grade learning it for the first time. I thought that it would be a fun and exciting experience. Boy, was I in for a surprise. My tenth grade teacher had left out proofs. All we had to learn were the theorems and postulates and use them to solve problems involving shapes. But the geometry that I was to teach involved proving postulates and then using them to derive other theorems and postulates. I had to work really hard. I was always studying. I read the textbook over and over, and I read other books too. Geometry for Dummies really helped me to learn how to solve two-column proofs. I learned a lot about truth in general by studying geometry. I learned that:
- Truth is true forever. Since truth is constant, man can discover truth and replace his absurd notions with that truth, but a truth can never cease to be a truth. If it is actually truth, it is true in every period of time.
- Truth is true for everyone. A truth cannot be true for one person and false for another. If it is true, than reality is that truth. A person who refuses to accept it is not living in reality.
- Truth cannot be proven false. No counterexample can be ever be made to disprove a truth.
If a counterexample is discovered, this is called a contradiction. If a claim has a contradiction, there are only three possible outcomes:
- The claim is true and the counterexample is false.
- The counterexample is true and the claim is false.
- Both are false. (Since both can’t be true.)
I also learned that all truth is derived from a previously learned truth. If a statement or claim is false, then what stems from those will eventually be proven false. When we hit a contradiction in our thought process, it’s important to return to the beginning and check our original premise. But it’s impossible to derive a truth from an originally false idea.
I went on struggling with religion. I watched programs on TV that offered scientific explanations for the miracles described in The Bible from the plaques of Egypt to the parting of the Red Sea. I was beginning to conclude that a miracle was simply an observed event that could not be explained.
And then in April, 2012, I got a new assignment at work. I was to edit The Collected Works of Greek and Roman Mythology that my company printed for our sixth grade students to read. I had so much fun reminiscing over the stories I had read from Edith Hamilton’s Greek Mythology as a ninth grade student prior to reading The Illiad and The Odyssey.
I really enjoyed this assignment. I wanted to make the stories come alive for the students. I created a genealogy chart of the gods. I found pictures of statues and paintings that represent the people from the stories. I created references to modern stories that are based on these myths.
While pouring my energy into this project, I suddenly had a thought: two thousand years ago, these stories weren’t myths. These stories were this civilization’s religion. The stories themselves came right out of their bible. These people built temples to their gods. They created rituals to please the gods. They consulted with their prophets to find out what the will of the gods was.
Yet here we are two thousand years later. All of the prophecies have gone unfulfilled. We don’t need a god to explain the constellations or one to explain why day becomes night or why summer turns into winter. We know why that happens. We can explain it scientifically. We don’t need those stories anymore to explain it. I could see it so clearly: as man increased his knowledge, he replaced each god one by one until even Zeus himself was nothing more than a character in a child’s book. And yet today, billions of people teach this very concept to their children while worshipping the exact same type of god.
That’s when it hit me. If Greek Mythology isn’t a true religion, is it possible that my religion is nothing more than mythology too? I need to clarify something right here: I did not conclude that because the ancient Greek religion is nothing but mythology, my religion must be mythology too. I simply asked the question: if my religion comes from a religion older than Greek Mythology, is it possible that my religion is actually mythology too?
I resolved to find out.
I decided to put all my acquired knowledge about truth to the test. I know that truth is derived from truth. Truth cannot come from something false, and truth must be true eternally. I was a Mormon. Mormonism is derived from Christianity. Christianity is derived from Judaism. Judaism is derived from earlier, unnamed religions practiced by Adam, Noah, and Moses. Likewise, In order for The Book of Mormon to be true, the New Testament has to be true. In order for the New Testament to be true, then the Old Testament must be true.
My question was basic. What if Judaism and these earlier religions are nothing more than mythology? There are many stories in the Old Testament that I had always had a hard time swallowing. The story of Job, for example. Why would God speak with the devil? Why would he destroy a man’s life and deliberately murder many people just to test the man’s faith? This god sounded way too much like the Greek gods who toyed with the people. What about Lot’s wife being turned to a pillar of salt? What about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah? What about the Garden of Eden and Adam being the first man? What about Noah’s Ark? The ten plagues of Egypt? The parting of the Red Sea?
After completing all of my research on the Old Testament stories, I did conclude that the Old Testament was not true. Not only was it not true, but much of it was plagiarized from older myths told by the Egyptians. Many of the popular stories in the Old Testament were directly ripped off from The Epic of Gilgamesh, which predates the Old Testament by a thousand years.
And if the Old Testament is false, then the New Testament is False. If the New Testament is False, then the Book of Mormon is false.
I also found a pattern that rings true throughout history, regardless of the region or the time in which a people lives. It is what I refer to as the evolution of religion.
- Man creates God to explain aspects of the world and universe that he himself can’t explain. (A miracle is simply something that can’t yet be explained scientifically.)
- Man tell others that he speaks for God.
- Man tells others what they need to do in order to please God.
- Man uses natural devastation as proof of God’s power when man fails to please God. (See that volcano that erupted and destroyed that city? Those people really ticked God off and he punished them for it! Do you want to be punished too?)
- Man builds places of worship like churches, temples, statues, etc. to please God.
- Man demands sacrifice to please god. Nowadays, it’s all about the money. All God needs you to do is sacrifice your money, and you will make him happy.
- Man warns people that if they get too smart, they will stop believing in God. (Don’t get too smart or observe too much, or you’ll discover the man behind the curtain operating the Great and Powerful Oz.)
- As science develops and provides explanations for things previously credited to God, man replaces religion with science.
I see this in every religion on the planet. Every religion has a central leader and local leaders. Every religion has a set of rules that the people must live by. Every religion uses force (refer to the various types above) to keep its people in line. Every religion demands financial compensation or some other form of sacrifice. And most offensive, every religion limits the people’s ability to reason and think critically. This is the only way to keep the whole system from toppling down.
I had to conclude that any system that followed this pattern—that used force—to keep itself in power is a corrupt institution. I had to conclude that every religion is not only false, but also destructive. But I couldn’t stop there. I had to conclude that the God that religion invented is also false. There is not an all-powerful, white-bearded dude floating in the clouds, tormenting man for his own amusement. There isn’t some all-powerful creator who is testing man and rewarding the obedient ones with eternal life.
But here’s the point: why did I spend all that time trying to sort out the contradictions in my religion? I was so sure that it was true that I thought that I could reconcile all of the contradictions.
But when something is false, it is just false, plain and simple. If something is false, it will reveal its flaws. There will be contradictions. A rational person who is interested in the pursuit of truth will recognize this.
If something is false, no amount of coincidences, rationalizations, or justifications can make it true.
Ethan Worthen, 2023
So I walked away. It had nothing to do with the contradictions. It had nothing to do with the creepy things Joseph Smith did. I had nothing to do with any of the bullshit that religion creates. It was only about the truth. And the truth has never existed within any religion. But I didn’t walk away easily. It was difficult and terrifying to leave behind a dogma that I had lived and breathed for 38 years. I had all sorts of subconscious programming screaming at me to go back. But I couldn’t. Like Neo, I had taken the red pill, and there was no getting plugged back in to the Matrix. I wouldn’t have wanted to anyway. The illusion was over, and I would never be able to see it as anything but an illusion. I could no longer sit in church and listen to people defend stories that simply weren’t true. I couldn’t shut off my brain so that religion worked in spite of the contradictions science had discovered.
I also lost a lot of friends. My Mormon friends who based our relationship on a common religion abandoned me immediately. The long-lasting effect is trust in authority. To be honest, to this day, I still struggle with this one to some degree. After all, if I had been lied to for thirty-eight years by people that I was conditioned to trust, how do I trust anyone else that I am told to trust? You’re telling me that whenever someone says, “Trust me, and give me money,” That I am supposed to pull out my wallet and fork over some cash? No way. The list of people that I could no longer trust included, but was not limited to politicians, doctors and mechanics, especially when the bill is huge. I will never trust a politician, which is why I no longer vote. I have never seen one who didn’t let the power go to his own personal interests and ego. I have gotten better about trusting doctors, but I am still weary about the mechanics, especially when their slogan is “Honey is our first policy.” And don’t get me started on car salesman (Thank you for reinforcing my wariness, Time Dahle Nissan in 2022).
I found a new love for math and science. Because I couldn’t trust anything or anyone, I decided that all I could do was return to the idea that truth is derived from other truth. I found that because math is nothing more than fancy counting, I could start with the quantity of one, and add one to it to get two. Every concept in math derives itself from this initial truth, and doesn’t ask me for money to believe it. Science is the same. What I particularly love about science is that when something can’t be explained, science says, “We don’t know! But here is our best guest after countless tests repeated by non-biased people.” Or, when presented with new evidence, science is the first to admit that it is wrong and cling to the new evidence. When was the last time you saw your religion do that? (This isn’t an original thought. Carl Sagan said it first is his television show The Cosmos.)
I spent the first thirty-eight years of my life studying what I believed to be true. But I did learn how to study. And somewhere in that time, I learned how to critically think about things. Why not continue studying what I know to be true? I have found new heroes in the realms of science and mathematics that have demonstrated based on their learning processes. Scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Richard Dawkins; and mathematicians like Pythagoras, Alan Turing Fibonacci, Isaac Newton, and Arthur Benjamin show how amazing and beautiful and understandable the universe is.
What better way is there to spend one’s time than in pursuit of actual truth.
Ethan's Journal 