All 7 Of Jacob Hansen's Siblings Have Left The Church

[MG 2.0]

The OP presents a current presentation Jacob made. I'm assuming that by this time you've viewed it and given it careful consideration.

May I ask you the same question that I've asked Marcus and IHQ?

Did you ever have a firm faith and belief/testimony of the mission of Jesus Christ and in God the Father...at any time? Meaning before or after your loss of faith...assuming you had faith at some point/time in your life.

This is directly connected to the latter part of Jacob's faith journey. Do you feel he is mistaken in his 'pyramid' analogy and the unfortunate possibility that many people have inverted that pyramid and ended up losing their faith when it might have turned out differently if they had centered on Christ and Heavenly Father and developed a solid belief/faith in them to begin with?

Regards,
MG

Yes. So much so that as my testimony began to falter, I became suicidal when I could not seem to get the Heavens to communicate with me. For a full year, I got up every morning and willed myself to keep believing, even though the facts did not support such a belief. I lost my marriage, many friendships, and the equivalent of many, many days of time trying to recover that testimony. All I could think at the time was that there was something seriously wrong with me or that I was engaging in some terrible sin (neither was true) because I couldn't get an answer to a single prayer to reaffirm my belief in the Church's truth claims. When I finally admitted to myself that I didn't believe in the Church, it was less than an hour later that I could no longer justify belief in any form of a deity. Why? Because the Church had done such an excellent job of helping me pick apart any other religious belief system (I served my mission in Tennessee), that I realized every single one of them was filled with nonsense.

So, the next time you arrogantly affirm that "we" (as exmos) never actually believed, why don't you remember me and people like me who desperately wanted it to be true and then lost everything because we just couldn't believe it anymore. While you're at it, you can shove that condescending attitude about this topic straight up your ass. I, and I alone, am the sole expert on how strong my belief was and you have no business, whatsoever, telling my otherwise.

Vulnerability. That seems to be in short supply in these parts. Thank you for sharing your personal story.

May I follow up? When you said that you tried to "recover that testimony', what was that 'thing'...lack of a better word... which you believed you had that you then lost? You then use the word "reaffirm". Reaffirm what? Again, something you had? If you had something then lost it does that mean it never existed in the first place? I'm asking, truly wanting to know what your thought processes were. Did you later question your non-belief in the church because of what you had once had and apparently 'knew' it?

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

I think you would see that I am of the opinion that God is MUCH BIGGER than any one religion can wrap their doctrine/practice/mind around. God is in and through ALL things. Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc. Any belief system that brings people to greater

Right, a belief system can bring a person to greater things as a Mormon, even if Jesus is just a story like Vishnu. In other words, contrary to what you told me originally, it doesn't require a real connection to an actual real person called Jesus or a real person called Vishnu.

"Even if"...

Yes, if the story of Jesus "is just a story like Vishnu" then...well, he wasn't resurrected. The story, however, doesn't parallel Vishnu in the sense that Jesus, along with witnesses, testified that He resurrected from the dead.

1 Corinthians 15:19-20
New International Version

19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

What I'm saying, and maybe you either bypassed it or didn't take it seriously, is that God is BIGGER than Vishnu or any of the other deities. He was also the ONE in whom Jesus devoted his life and teachings and gave subservience to while a mortal man. God can and does work in the world wherever he can and through whoever He can...even if they don't call on him as Father.

The connection I'm referring to, if I wasn't being clear (although I thought I was), is to GOD in the larger/cosmic sense. Otherwise, none of the god worship makes any sense if under one percent of the world is currently worshiping in fullness and in truth.

This seems to be one of the so called 'problems' that atheists have is the myriad of religious/systematic belief systems that go this way and that way. Personally, that's what I would expect in a natural world.

Sometimes I think it is the critics and non-believers that have a hard time adjusting to and accepting the fact that we DO live in a natural world with all that this entails.

Regards,
MG

[Gadianton]

The connection I'm referring to, if I wasn't being clear (although I thought I was), is to GOD in the larger/cosmic sense.

Well, in the cases where you back off on your claims this is what you say. In other cases you speak of a connection to God and Jesus in the sense of Jesus who died for our sins and no man cometh unto the father except by him (meaning no Vishnu).

[I Have Questions]

You don’t seem to know how to read data, or maybe you don’t understand how percentages work. You say “Granted, a minority retain faith in some kind of deity” using data that shows 56% retain faith in some kind of deity. Not only that, a proportion of the actual minority 44% (that you described incorrectly as a majority) retain an open mind towards the notion that a deity exists.

I don’t understand why you make an assertion but use support data that actually refutes your assertion. I’m actually starting to be embarrassed for you.

From the above poll/survey:

Over 70% of former members consider themselves “nones”.

More:

“Just under half (44 percent) have not become involved with another religious tradition since leaving Mormonism; these are represented . . . under the categories atheist, agnostic, and nothing in particular. Another fifth [21 percent] consider themselves “just Christian” but do not specify a particular church, which likely means they have retained Christian beliefs but are not regular attenders. The remaining third (33 percent) now identify as something else, mostly remaining within the Christian orbit.”

Even more alarming is that very few end up as Christians. Out of the 33% who “identify as something else,” 11% now belong to other religions; 10% became evangelical Protestants; 7% are mainline Protestants; and 6% are Roman Catholics. When the totals for “evangelical” and “mainline Protestants” are added together, this totals a mere 5% of everyone who has left Mormonism. This number is too low, especially since there are more former members who end up as atheists and agnostics than Christians!

https://mrm.org/leave-their-church

You just can't accept the possibility that there might be something to what Jacob Hansen and I are saying, can you?

I'll pose the same question to you as I've posed to Marcus:

Did you ever have a firm faith and belief/testimony of the mission of Jesus Christ and in God the Father...at any time? Meaning before or after your loss of faith...assuming you had faith at some point/time in your life.

I don't expect to get an answer of any depth from either one of you. Your track record for answering questions is dismal.

Regards,
MG

That still isn’t saying that a majority leave God behind. “Just under half (44 percent) have not become involved with another religious tradition since leaving Mormonism”. So that’s a minority of leavers (the opposite of a majority) have not replaced Mormonism with an alternative religious tradition (which in itself does not equate to that minority completely leaving God behind).

Doubling down on a mistake does not make the error better, it makes it worse. Your assertion was, and still is, flat out wrong. I’m struggling to understand why you cannot see that. Let me try and help…

I asked Chat GPT “What percentage can be considered a majority?”

A majority typically refers to more than half of the total. In most contexts, this means over 50%.

I get why you would not want to be seen being corrected by me (and especially not by a female poster, heaven forbid), but you seem to accept A.I. generated information, so now you’ve got no excuse for not seeing your mistaken assertion for what it is…wrong!

[I Have Questions]

They both have YouTube channels that you can dig into if you want to know why they came to different conclusions. As it is, it might be the older brother, younger brother thing. I think they both respect each other and Forrest may have given way to Jacob at times. Although when I watched it, I must say, I came away looking at Forrest as being well spoken and having the opportunity to speak when he wanted to. He may have a quieter/subdued personality than Jacob.

I don't know that I would judge Jacob too harshly.

Regards,
MG

Don't link to a video that doesn't support what you say. I refuse to sort through a swamp land of nonsense.

He demands details and time stamps from others but refuses to provide them himself. He might be lazy, but he might also know that if he provided details and time stamps then it would be easier for people to see that his assertions aren’t as reliable as he wants you to think they are.

[I Have Questions]

His response to you was to post (well, link and run, another no-no here) three links. I took a quick look, NONE of his links dispute what you stated in your post, and not only that, if they came even close to using the same words as in your post, the meaning was only peripherally related to your over-arching concept.

It looks as though he picked out a few key words that he got out of skimming your post, plugged them in to Google, and then picked out what he considers 'faithful' sources from the search, which is meaningless. That's not a researched response, it's a troll tactic designed to disrupt.

From the first link I posted earlier that was apparently ignored:

The survey asked a variety of questions to former Latter-day Saints, including questions related to their beliefs and affiliation with religion. We found that nearly half (about 44%) of former Latter-day Saints said they do not believe in God, or they aren’t sure if there is a God and they don’t believe there is a way to find out.

However nearly a third (about 29%) say that they either know God exists, or tend to believe in God, and about 26% of former Latter-day Saints pray at least once a week.

Despite a significant number of respondents believing in God, over 70% of former members consider themselves “nones”

Granted, a minority retain faith in some kind of deity. Here is an example:

56% is not a ‘minority’. A “none” isn’t the same as an “atheist.”

Most “nones” believe in God or another higher power. But very few go to religious services regularly.

I can’t decide if you are misunderstanding or failing to comprehend the data, or if you’re just deliberately trying to mislead people about the data.

[MG 2.0]

More:

https://mrm.org/leave-their-church

You just can't accept the possibility that there might be something to what Jacob Hansen and I are saying, can you?

I'll pose the same question to you as I've posed to Marcus:

Did you ever have a firm faith and belief/testimony of the mission of Jesus Christ and in God the Father...at any time? Meaning before or after your loss of faith...assuming you had faith at some point/time in your life.

I don't expect to get an answer of any depth from either one of you. Your track record for answering questions is dismal.

Regards,
MG

That still isn’t saying that a majority leave God behind. “Just under half (44 percent) have not become involved with another religious tradition since leaving Mormonism”. So that’s a minority of leavers (the opposite of a majority) have not replaced Mormonism with an alternative religious tradition (which in itself does not equate to that minority completely leaving God behind).

Doubling down on a mistake does not make the error better, it makes it worse. Your assertion was, and still is, flat out wrong. I’m struggling to understand why you cannot see that. Let me try and help…

I asked Chat GPT “What percentage can be considered a majority?”

A majority typically refers to more than half of the total. In most contexts, this means over 50%.

I get why you would not want to be seen being corrected by me (and especially not by a female poster, heaven forbid), but you seem to accept A.I. generated information, so now you’ve got no excuse for not seeing your mistaken assertion for what it is…wrong!

I won't continue to quibble with you on this. In my opinion you are deflecting from the point Jacob was making in his presentation linked to in the OP. I've asked you a question or two that you have not responded to in direct reference to that presentation.

It is what Jacob Hansen presented that I have an interest in, not a continuation of an argument about what happens to the beliefs of folks that leave the church. The fact is, many lose their faith and belief in God.

So again, my question in regards to the OP link:

Did you ever have a firm faith and belief/testimony of the mission of Jesus Christ and in God the Father...at any time? Meaning before or after your loss of faith...assuming you had faith at some point/time in your life.

Regards,
MG

[I Have Questions]

The fact is, many lose their faith and belief in God.

No. That’s factually incorrect. Some lose their faith and belief in God. But the fact is that the majority do not.

[MG 2.0]

The fact is, many lose their faith and belief in God.

No. That’s factually incorrect. Some lose their faith and belief in God. But the fact is that the majority do not.

You failed to answer a sincere question that I asked you. The question deals directly with the content of Jacob Hansen's video in the OP.

Regards,
MG

[Gadianton]

Did you ever have a firm faith and belief/testimony of the mission of Jesus Christ and in God the Father...at any time? Meaning before or after your loss of faith...assuming you had faith at some point/time in your life.

What you're trying to ask is, did you ever at any time know that 2 + 2 = 5 prior to changing your mind to 4?

How could you NOT have had faith prior to a loss of faith?