Why I left the LDS Church

My personal journey began as a young man.  I was enthralled by the LDS teachings and could not fathom why more people did not understand the truth of the religion.  I eventually became focused upon learning how to teach the truth to non-mormons.

Hugh Nibley was a great inspiration to me.  For those not aware of him, he was a scientist who was firmly LDS.  One thing that he said really stuck with me.  When confronted with human fossil evidence, he declared "our knowledge of the fossil record is sparse, and heavily skewed toward representation of jaws and teeth."  Given that I admired him so much, I assumed that this was true.

Around the time I graduated from high school, I began to do research of my own into the human fossil record.  I found it to be very thorough.  Shockingly thorough, in fact.  And I had great difficulty reconciling this with my belief that God created man.  But this was not enough to dissuade me from my belief.

A year or so later, I decided it was time to follow the Book of Enos and fast and pray seriously and deeply for a testimony of the church.  This is not to say that I had no testimony at the time, but rather I felt it was time to really develop my testimony and to set myself apart from the world around me.  I fasted for 48 hours in preparation for praying.  I prayed for about 6 hours.  Nothing happened.

Now, by the statement "nothing happened" I don't mean that I was expecting a fantastic revelation.  I mean that I expected the familiar feeling in my heart which said the spirit was nearby to flourish and grow.  This did not occur.  I was exhausted and disheartened.  I decided it was time to sleep.

The next morning I awoke and realized that my testimony was crumbling.  I was severely worried.  So I prayed.  I prayed for several more hours.  I eventually gave up assuming that I had offended God somehow.

A few weeks later, I ran across a piece of anti-Mormon literature on the internet.  It presented questions about the Book of Abraham.  Of course, I assumed it was nothing but lies, but I wanted to respond to the questions on a forum I frequented.  In researching the answers to these questions, I was shocked to discover that the Book of Abraham had been translated by Egyptologists and had been proven to be a common Book of Breathings.  Literally none of the translation matched or even resembled the translation by Joseph Smith.

This startled me quite a bit, and I quickly found myself delving deeper into the world of anti-Mormon literature.  While some of it was clearly lies created by other religious groups to defame the Mormons, most of it turned out to be well reasoned and even verifiably true information.  Increasingly, I felt a great weight lifting from my shoulders.  I no longer was required to teach this obviously false religion, but I had no doubt that I could live my life as I pleased without guilt.  Every day I am grateful to those who worked on the translation of the Book of Abraham when the papyri were rediscovered.

Some years later, after having confirmed that I was now an atheist, I decided it was time to resign from the LDS Church.  I had my name stricken from the records.  It was a momentous day.  I no longer can be counted amongst the bigoted and judgmental people called the Mormons.