Trigger reasons for apostasy from ‘Zelph on the Shelf’…

“I read ‘Early Mormonism and the Magic World View’ about a decade ago. It was recommended to me by a TBM [True-Believing-Mormon] friend who read it. He said to me at the time, ‘Make sure your testimony is rock solid before you read this.’ While reading it, I took pride that I still believed, that my testimony was still strong. But cracks were forming and my cognitive dissonance grew.

“A few years later, a different friend and I were talking about the tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean and killed 300k+ people. He was having a hard time making sense why God would let this happen. My defense of God was lame, no matter how hard I tried to rationalize it. That conversation forced me to rethink my view of the world. It put me on a path that led me to the conclusion that God doesn’t exist and the church is not true.”