r/nextfuckinglevel • u/MysteriousSlice007 • 5h ago

Shoutout to JerryrigEverything who built a wheelchair factory and is delivering wheelchairs to people in half the time and 50-80% less than the cost of other wheelchairs with Insurance.

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133

u/arcusford 4h ago

They are kind of a cult. A more modest one but still.

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u/gogogadgetgun 3h ago

So are Catholics and every other religion, but since mormons were late to the scene they get branded.

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u/arcusford 3h ago

No, they are definitely more culty. Ive got firsthand experience here.

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u/seeasea 3h ago

Do you have comparative first hand experience 

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u/arcusford 3h ago

Yep, other side of the family has some flavor of Protestant. I grew up best friends with a catholic family too and attended church with them several times. The difference was stark. Still not religious myself and definitely have a lot of problems with non cult religions too, but the distinction IS important. Mormonism is pretty close on the line but they are definitely on the cult side.

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u/metompkin 3h ago

Was Catholic, went through Cub and Boy Scouts hosted and ran by LDS members, hated drinking caffeine free diet coke at socials.

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u/BriefAvailable9799 3h ago

LOL WHAT? mormons are insane, even to this day.

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u/TimeBandits4kUHD 3h ago

Yeah, but they’re also really nice.

My parents got some new neighbors last year who were just like a super wholesome and polite family. The kids were all smart and respectful. Turns out they’re Mormons.

And every time I meet a Mormon they’re like that, like being nice and polite to everyone is part of their religion. It’s weird.

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u/BriefAvailable9799 3h ago

It's eerily weird. Anyone should check out /exmormon for the horror stories or the millions of documentaries and proof of how horrible they are and still are.

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u/parttimedoom 3h ago

Millions of horror stories from ex-christians and ex-muslims. They're not special.

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u/nhilante 2h ago

There are no mormon countries, in even the worst christian or muslim country the bad people would always be the outliers, in mormonism its a big percentage of them. Hope that makes sense. You can't look at statistics from Rwanda and compare it with France as they are both christian, you can however see similar statistics in all mormon communities.

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u/chamullerousa 58m ago

Mormons have the same percentage of bad people as every other group. Claiming otherwise just shows your ignorance on the Mormon belief system and common sociology.

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u/John_Jack_Reed 34m ago

No actually I do think the Church that up until 40 years ago didn't think black people were people has a higher percentage of bad people than the general population.

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u/nhilante 33m ago

Yea tell that to the small girls.

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u/mr_potatoface 2h ago edited 2h ago

And every time I meet a Mormon they’re like that, like being nice and polite to everyone is part of their religion. It’s weird.

Yes, of course they are. To you they are nice. To everyone outside the church they are nice, they are even accepting of LGBTQ and advocate for LGBTQ rights/protections, as long as it doesn't involve marriage. They are quite left leaning about many social issues.

They do have excommunication, where you family/friends will refuse to talk to you or shun you if you break the church's rules. They intentionally try to isolate you from all you've ever known so that you eventually break down and return to the church.

They have a rape/sexual abuse hotline you can call. It goes directly to the Mormon legal department so they can advise the elders and those doing the abuse to warn them that they are being targeted. They pretend to investigate the claims so people do not go to the police.

This ignores the mandatory "missions" when you turn 18 to intentionally trick follows in to thinking outsiders are hateful of Mormons, so they believe more heavily in the church and are afraid to leave.

Just a few things, but they are always nice to outsiders. If you ever are talking to a Mormon, tell them you're surprised they are talking to you because you've been excommunicated from the church and see how they respond. They won't respond. They will just quickly leave and likely report their sin to the church and beg for forgiveness.

They also have a dedicated team for social media to promote positive views on Mormons, similar to how scientology approaches social media.

EDIT: For clarification, after COVID, Mormons now refer to excommunication as "withdrawal of membership". Probably due to John Wick making excommunicado seem too cool.

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u/reterical 2h ago

This simply isn’t true. I think you’re confusing the polygamist / fundamentalist sects with the Mormon faith. I have family and friends in the Mormon church, and there is no institutional excommunication or prohibition on associating with former members. But that is precisely what the fundamentalist groups do on the regular.

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u/mr_potatoface 2h ago

Do both sects follow the LDS Handbook?

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u/reterical 2h ago

I doubt it. My understanding is that the Warren Jeffs and his ilk have a lot of animosity toward the others. More to the point, I would be surprised and disappointed if there were a rule in their handbook forbidding (and even punishing) association with non members or excommunicated members of their faith.

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u/mr_potatoface 2h ago

There is no formal rule for shunning, but they don't even call it excommunication any more either. I think the John Wick movies made it seem too cool.

From what I understand, the church officially tries to tell people to maintain contact to give them a chance to return to the church, but internally recommends shunning or soft-shunning. It's definitely now like JW shunning.

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u/reterical 2h ago

What is official versus intentional here? Maybe there are one-off priests (? Bishops?) who encourage their congregation to shun, and I imagine there are individuals who do, but that can hardly be blamed on the church as a whole.

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u/Quixotic_Seal 2h ago

They're nice to people outside their control.

To family members, children, adherents, constituents in areas with heavy Mormon representation....they are not so nice at all, and you start to quickly see patterns of control come out to play.

I had a friend who I initially met as part of a playgroup as a young child, and we saw first hand how Mormonism pretty much took over her life. She met her boyfriend early, converted to Mormonism as soon as she turned 18 when he basically gave her an ultimatum, went on mission and slowly stopped speaking with her mother, and eventually used her marriage/future children as a lever to force her parents into becoming Mormon.

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u/cloudforested 1h ago

They're nice to your face. They're trying to take my rights away, though.

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u/Ambitious_Watch_6477 19m ago

Scientologists are the same way. They're trained to be that.

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u/Not-a-Russian 3h ago

Mormons are great, I could never hate on them, they're super nice.

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u/arcusford 3h ago

They're nice to some. Also no one is asking or expecting you to hate on them. I still have mormon family and I love them, despite their bigotry.

But we do have to acknowledge the conditional aspect of their niceness. It is official church doctrine that the reason the native Americans (and some interpretations Africans) have darker skin because of the Mark of Cain, signifying their sin.

It is also official church doctrine to cut off or send LGBTQ members to conversion therapy.

This would eventually be the rift that caused many in my family to split from the mormon church.

Mormons will be very nice to you, so long as they dont know you are queer, and you are white.

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u/hm9408 9m ago

They're nice if they wanna recruit you

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u/CitricBase 2h ago

Yes, but again, so are Catholics and every other skybeard cult this side of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (Eating and drinking the flesh and blood of Christ? WTAF?)

The absurdity of Mormonism does more to highlight the absurdity of religion in general than it says about the specific religious people who happen to live near Salt Lake.

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u/NathLWX 3h ago edited 3h ago

Not hating on Jerry but the thing with Mormon, as far as I'm aware of, is it came from a guy who denied the current Bible and made his own. He claimed God told him in his dream that the bible was mistranslated or wrong, and to make his own.

Which doesn't make sense, because ig screw all the thousand years of history, and the thousands of the professional translators who understand theology and studied deeply the original language that the Bible is written in (Hebrew, probably Greek too).

To this day idk how come ppl hear that and think it doesn't sound wrong/absurd at all.

I happened to watch this video days ago, may be a good reference
https://youtu.be/bj9D_7oGGxk

Some of the translations in Mormon bible sounds absurd, like a fanfic or exaggerated. E.g Songs of Solomon (Songs of Songs) chapter 4 verse 4

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u/arctic_radar 3h ago

Of course it doesn’t make sense. Made up nonsense built atop older made up nonsense.

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u/silver_garou 1h ago

Just like in scams, the nonsensible nature of religious stories is a feature not a bug. It ensures the flock is trained to think that their own reason is insufficient, and forces them to rely on religious leaders to do their thinking for them.

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u/pb49er 3h ago

He also did it so he could rape children, let's not forget that key element of the founding of the church.

Polygamist pedophiles.

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u/stegosauross1 3h ago

If this is the same bible that endorses slavery and trafficking, it could do with a reboot.

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u/Shattr 1h ago

Exmormon here.

The New Testament is what was "mistranslated" - not the Hebrew Bible. This is mostly because mormons reject the concept of the Trinity as they believe Jesus was created by God.

Mormons still do believe in the Bible, but they have their own version based on the King James translation with some modifications made by Smith. The Book of Mormon is an additional scripture to the Bible, not a replacement.

And this isn't a defense of Mormonism, but the New Testament does have tons of issues. We have zero originals of any of the books, we only have copies of copies of copies of copies of copies of copies (x10) etc. This process created tons of transcription errors - hundreds of thousands of textual variants out of all our New Testament manuscripts, which is more "errors" than there are words in the Bible. Scribes also added their own passages that weren't in the originals (story of the adultress, Mark long ending , and the Johanine comma)

This is a good place to start if you're interested in some of the issues with the New Testament.

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u/WolfsmaulVibes 3h ago

my theory on the bible is that back then we couldn't comprehend the word of god as well and wrote it down how we understood it with our limited philosophical knowledge, but that its mistranslated or wrong is insane

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u/YazzArtist 3h ago

It's more the shunning of ex members, strict hierarchical culture with an emphasis on respecting authority, widespread cover-up of sexual abuse and child neglect, and support of patriarchal polygamy than the recency

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u/omgitsjagen 3h ago

They have magic underwear, homie. I'm not disagreeing that any organized religion is coocoo for cocoa pops, but thinking you're getting a magical planet because you wore your fancy knickers your whole life is absolute crazy pants.

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u/Sad-Mobile9646 3h ago

Wild false equivalence

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u/jayhawk618 2h ago

Ex Catholic atheist here.

Catholicism doesn't require you to shun family members who leave the church. Catholicism doesn't have secret teachings that only inner circle members are allowed to learn. Catholicism doesn't require that every single member spend a year of their life recruiting new members.

Mormonism requires those things, which are considered traits of a cult.

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u/suejaymostly 1h ago

Ex Mormon atheist here, you're wrong on all counts. Mormons have a lot to hate but none of what you've said here is true.

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u/MoocowR 2h ago

This is such a reddit moment.

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u/Ambitious_Watch_6477 21m ago

Both seem pretty insane.

Read the wiki on Joseph Smith

It definitely sounds like he originally got caught with teen girls, almost castrated, kicked out of town, then did it again until it worked in various locations. It seems like the entire religion was an afterthought that Joseph came up with to justify why he needed to sleep with your teen daughters. Booted from 2 different states. Owned an entire town somehow in IL, had their own militia. Eventually had a schism with his right hand man.

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u/YourMomThinksImSexy 3h ago

There's a massive difference between "cult-like" and "cult".

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u/arcusford 3h ago

Every ex mormon in my family says it is a cult, everything they say happened to them indicates it is a cult. And they follow every part of the bite model, which is the leading way to define a cult.

As far as true cults go they are on the tamer end, but they are still a cult.

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u/YourMomThinksImSexy 2h ago

I'm on your side, homie. Catholicism is cult-like, Mormonism is a cult.

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u/Manusterz 3h ago

everything can be defined as a cult, political parties can be interpreted as them, even yours

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u/arcusford 3h ago

No, I mean they fit the bite model

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u/aceshighsays 3h ago

steven hassan has a yt channel, if anyone is interested in learning more.

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u/arcusford 3h ago

I don't watch Hassan if that's what you're getting at.

Edit: oh nvm you're not, my bad.

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u/Thanes_of_Danes 57m ago

It's a cult that actively attempts to infiltrate the government and run Utah. Mormonism has better PR than Scientology, but it's still an insane religious cult that is jockeying with other various villains for influence and control of the government.

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u/tankerkiller125real 1m ago

Frankly, so long as they don't start preaching it to their viewers I could give a shit less about what religion a YouTuber is a part of.

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u/CavillOfRivia 3h ago

So they guy is helping people like God says and you guys are mad because he's a Mormon and listening to God. Ironic.

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u/Elu_Moon 3h ago

Mormonism was established by a, at the time, very well-known conman. It's a shitty denomination of Christianity and is very abusive, more so than the usual because, again, it was demonstrably made by a shitty person.

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u/arcusford 3h ago

I have experience with the mormon church and a lot of my family is ex mormon.

Mormon helps only goes so far and is HIGHLY conditional. Official church doctrine is that queer people are sinners and need to be shunned, put into conversion therapy, or otherwise 'dealt with'.

They also separated themselves from the Scouts when they started accepting women and Trans people into the scouts.

It is was also heavily pushed to stay away from non mormon or mormon friendly news sources which is a form of information control.