Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Good at apologetics? You just told me that it's not common for Mormon ladies to have massive mammaries. That is the biggest downsell you could hand me, though I appreciate the honesty.
(This is mostly a joke. Mostly. I'm fond of beautiful women.)
I suppose that missionaries are explicitly or implicitly sorted for charisma/looks. I wouldn't want to have uggos repping me if I can help it, though I have little choice in the matter. Thank goodness I mostly communicate through text.
For what it's worth, I have met a total of 7 Mormons in-person, at least that I knew were Mormon. 6 of them were missionaries. 1 of them was my driving instructor, who was a genuinely nice person. I'm an atheist, and an anti-theist, except I don't have the time or energy to get it into those debates these days. The pragmatic reason for it is that religious debate rarely achieves anything - the expected value calculation is poor, for me. I suppose that if you must know, I think Mormonism is particularly suspect as a religion because of the well-documented nature of its founding, which makes the implausible historical claims particularly jarring to me. Other, more established religions have the minor fig leaf of being founded so far back in the past that the truth is murkier, even if I still don't believe in them.
Otherwise? Uh, I have no real reason to dislike you guys. No Mormon has ever bothered me beyond asking me for a few seconds of my time. I just don't think I'm a good candidate for conversion, and I don't want to be converted. I like alcohol, nicotine through vapes, and "drugs", the last category apparently inclusive of coffee. I think I'm reasonably familiar with your religious tenets, but if you still want to explain after I've said everything above, be my guest. I genuinely don't mind.
Well hey, it all depends on your frame of reference, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to pursue JAPs prior to my conversion and pivot to courting BYU blondes. I don't think LDS mammaries are any bigger or smaller than the national average, you simply have to know where to look to find the size that works best for you.
I respect your disinterest in litigating a theological debate here and as such I will not actively proselytize, but I want to briefly clarify that as a rule of thumb, every theological debate is more nuanced than a 10 minute video essay or an /r/exmormon post, they don't have the last word on the founding of the church, far from it. Joseph Smith had eleven witnesses affirming that he did have the ancient records he claimed to possess, who stood by that testimony even after apostatizing following a feud and believing that Joseph Smith lost his divine authority in the restoration of the gospel. Disproved anachronisms, authentic Mesoamerican and Ancient Near East correspondences, the war strategies delineated in the Book of Mormon that weren't just poetic accounts of Napoleonic warfare contemporaneous to the time of translation, the duration of the translation process and use of Hebraic poetry all convinced me of the veracity of the Church's supernatural claims. If you are interested in critically engaging with LDS truth claims, anthropologist John L. Sorenson's Mormon's Codex is a fascinating read, my irreligious acquaintances who were not looking to be persuaded share this sentiment.
I don't think one's religious affiliation (or lack thereof) should be contingent on how compatible it is with one's priors. On the contrary, the entire purpose of religion is to instill humility and charity into people through their awareness of a higher power's existence, altering their calculus to one that is not aligned with the irrational and egoistic human nature. God is viewed as an entity possessing eternal intelligence, an asymptote we won't reach at this juncture if you will, and as such we believe our worldly intuition will inevitably serve us wrong and that we are meant to be inconvenienced at times, because ultimately that is what will maximize our well-being in the long term. In my experience, most Christian churches offer doctrines, services, etc. as ancillaries to entice people to join, i.e., you're Catholic because mass is cool. If you're looking for a good community, they fit the bill. Our church by contrast, emphasizes that one joins it because they believe it is truly the very church that Jesus Christ established during his earthly ministry, and has been restored through Joseph Smith.
We do not view coffee as a biohazard. I myself love drinking mock coffee made from barley and chicory and popping some caffeine pills, twice as potent as real coffee 😉 Tiramisu and coffee ice cream are superlative. We believe that upon our baptism, we have covenanted with God to abstain from coffee and tea as a sacrifice, similar to the Jewish abstention to shellfish which is not rooted in health grounds. I don't think it's a coincidence that tea, coffee, alcohol, and tobacco are all "rituals" served by hosts to guests in hospitality, transcending cultural barriers. There are obvious benefits to not partaking in substances like alcohol, but by refusing them and making ourselves stick out like sore thumbs in the crowd, it's a way of subliminally attracting publicity to our gospel.
As cool as it would be to boast about being a lifelong member descended from the original Scandinavian and English pioneers who migrated to Utah, I am a convert who took 8 months of my precious time to ponder over what the Church offered to me. I myself have long been beholden to coffee, booze, and cigars. After a little cost-benefit analysis, I arrived to the conclusion that if the Church is true, I should be able to find joy and purpose in life without these ephemeral niceties, but rather from the rich company and safety net I have thanks to my coreligionists. I don't think any less of people who don't share my outlook, I view it as a personal matter and they have not entered the covenants I have, there's no contract they are bound by to abstain from any of those substances. I do see benefit in alcohol at an individual level, though I believe strong social and institutional cohesion in a community is an even better alternative to the benefits alcohol does offer. Speaking of which, another reason we abstain from drinking and smoking is because we want to set the right precedents and stand in solidarity with the people who are less capable of drinking and smoking within reasonable measure, "for the weakest of saints" as we say.
I'm pleased to hear that. Our missionaries do tend to be more compassionate and less aggressive in their proselytizing tactics than the Jehovah's Witnesses, as the training programs for missionaries emphasizes not viewing prospective new members as statistics or homogeneous units, or treating their ministry as solely transactional, but rather gaining tangible experience in serving others and leaving one's comfort zone. You will have some inexperienced 18 year olds potentially ask you to get baptized 2 months after visiting with them, but they mean well. If you do decide to attend, I think your boundaries would be absolutely respected if stated clearly, as we absolutely enjoy building rapport with curious people of other backgrounds :)
Thanks for taking the time to explain! I can't productively engage with the specifics, but I appreciate the effort nonetheless.
Hmm. I understand the mindset, but it doesn't really appeal to me. Or at least I like tea and coffee too much to sacrifice it for anyone, even God. If he didn't want me to drink the stuff, he shouldn't have made extracted insecticide so delicious and compatible with my neurotransmitter receptors. Then again, he does have a tendency to make plants you're not supposed to eat, and then putting them right next to you with not so much as a chainlink fence for protection. It's in character.
I do believe that your current explanation is idiosyncratic, in the sense that the typical Mormon wouldn't see caffeine pills as an acceptable way of dodging their nominal religious obligations. I respect you for that, of course. Very Jewish coded, and I like Jews. Anyone who bases their theology around arguing with God and sometimes winning that argument (Rabbi Eliezer?) has my vote.
Out of curiosity, what would happen if someone were to get baptized, and then very conspicuously continue drinking coffee? Polite tutting? The Bishop grabbing you by the collar and throwing you out? A Dyson hand dryer (as opposed to the swarm) being used to un-baptize you? I don't know! It's an academic question, I like drugs in general, for personal consumption and as a peddler for pay. I don't know any Mormon doctors, but I wouldn't want to be one on a night shift.
The Mormon prohibition of tea and coffee is much more akin to the prohibition of Jews eating pork than a prohibition of caffeine. There is official clarification from the church that the prohibition is about hot drinks not caffeine. This was done precisely because of the reasons you state. But it's totally kosher for Mormon teens to drink monster.
Giving you the side eye plus not getting a temple recommend which would likely distress your buxom Mormon bride. Ironically if you weren't baptized but attended church people would tolerate it a lot better. As for Mormon doctors they are free to consume all manner of energy drinks, just no tea or coffee,
Reading around apparently it comes from the Mormon Words Of Wisdom "hot drinks are not for the body or belly", which gets interpreted as tea and coffee. But drinking hot herbal tea is okay, and hot chocolate is okay, and caffeine in non-coffee drinks is okay, but cold tea and coffee aren't, even though the original text doesn't mention tea, coffee or caffeine.
I couldn't find a clear answer whether you can drink cold decaffeinated coffee. Some say yes, some some say no.
The most common hot beverages consumed at the time were coffee and tea (black or green tea that comes from the camellia sinensis plant), hence the use of the term. Coffee and tea are counseled against regardless of their serving temperature as the substance remains the same. Anybody who claims drinking cold coffee is permissible, or that the Word of Wisdom prohibits caffeine or beverages that happen to be hot has poor command of the doctrine.
I just find it interesting that effectively someone can sit there drinking one hot drink while condemning someone else for drinking a different hot drink, or potentially a drink that has never been hot, under the authority of and despite the relevant passage unambiguously referring to "hot drinks".
I'm not trying to start an argument but this seems like it's purpose built for starting arguments.
The entire premise here is fuzzy. Nobody's condemning anyone, hence your perplexity. Upon our baptism, we have entered a voluntary agreement to abstain from specific beverages. Nobody is imposing that framework on people who do not adhere to our Church. Once again, it is a sacrifice we make akin to the Jewish kosher laws wrt shellfish.
"I just find it interesting that effectively someone can sit there eating chocolate with cherry liqueur in it while condemning someone else for slamming jägerbombs at the bar."
My perplexity is in learning that "hot drinks" is interpreted by those it affects in a way that includes certain cold drinks and precludes certain hot drinks. That's all. It's such a simple rule with such low stakes that I find it difficult to think of how it became contentious.
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