Conclusion

It’s rather difficult to sum up the whole thing. But we’ll take a stab at it.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to be credible to objective observers. If a stranger told you he could jump twenty feet in the air, you likely wouldn’t believe him. If he pointed to a post-it note high up on a nearby wall and claimed to have put it there simply by jumping, you would suspect he used a ladder instead. If his buddy, also a stranger to you, attested to his jumping prowess, you would likely still be skeptical. It would take significant evidence, like actually watching him jump that high yourself, to believe him.

That is a standard cynical response to extraordinary claims. Why are we so often incapable of applying that same skepticism to religious claims? None of us have a shred of physical evidence that Joseph saw God, translated the Book of Mormon, or was visited by angels. Instead, we have considerable evidence that he was a fraud, that he did some very bad things even by his own moral standards, that the Book of Mormon is simply not historically accurate at all, and that his other translations like the Book of Abraham and the Kinderhook Plates were scams perpetrated on the church.

So where is the extraordinary evidence to support the church’s claims and balance out all the evidence against the claims? We had to conclude that it simply didn’t exist outside of subjective and nebulous claims of feelings, the same method for countless other religions to claim that theirs was the one true church.

The difference between faith and insanity is that faith is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence, whereas insanity is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence.

(William Harwood, Dictionary of Contemporary Mythology)

We reject Mormonism for the same reasons we reject Zeus or Quetzalcoatl: a complete lack of physical evidence as well as numerous contradictions, illogical assumptions, and irrational claims.

We love our Mormon friends and family. We don’t think any less of them for believing the same things we used to believe. They aren’t gullible or stupid. However, we think a deceptive and dishonest organization founded by a con-man has convinced them of falsities. Our efforts in building this site are what any responsible person would do after discovering his or her loved ones are caught in a confidence scheme: try to let them know.

Each of us has to face the matter–either the Church is true, or it is a fraud. There is no middle ground. It is the Church and kingdom of God or it is nothing.

(President Gordon B. Hinckley, April Conference, 2003)

We are extremely confident in our conclusion that the Mormon church is false. We are very grateful that other people helped us make the giant leap to examine our beliefs instead of just accepting them without critical thought and relevant knowledge.

Our life now is better. We are happier. We are wealthier. We recently bought our first house and would undoubtedly have been unable to do so for many years had we continued to pay 10% of our income to the church. A few relationships with some friends and family are strained, but the freedom we feel is invaluable. We spend more time together as a family without church callings, separated church meetings, and church activities. We are no longer wracked by guilt when we spend a lazy Sunday morning at the park instead of in a stuffy church.

Though we still don’t drink alcohol, smoke, etc., our motivation to abstain is not from a belief that it is wrong morally, but rather a carefully considered decision weighing the benefits and costs. We are no longer beholden to some invisible being a billion light-years away listening to our every thought and watching our every action. When we do good, we do it because we want the world to be a better place, not because we selfishly want to end up in a better place when we die.

To sum it up: We were at first devastated that Mormonism was false. Now we are incredibly grateful that it is false and that we know it is. It’s almost like getting out of prison, one we never even knew we were in. The world is no longer the black and white of Mormonism; it is a veritable rainbow of bright colors. It’s a big beautiful world out there.