No Response

It looks like we severely undershot the initial sting. If you don't remember, we sent a weekly family update email wherein we planted the sentence "We're not attending church right now, so we decided to take advantage of the continuing nice weather the next day and walk around the neighborhood a bit." It was right in the middle of a long paragraph, where it must have either gone unnoticed or unconsidered. There was literally no reaction whatsoever. My sister posted on my FB wall that she loves me, and when we saw that we were almost certain that it was a reaction, but then I looked at her FB wall and saw that she had done this to all the siblings with FB accounts.

My dad's birthday came up recently, so we gave him a call as is tradition. Needless to say, we were a bit apprehensive about it. We decided that if he directly asked questions about it that we would say we weren't going to church but that we'd rather discuss that over email. Well the call went pretty normally, and (luckily?) he didn't ask that question. It seemed to me like he hadn't noticed the hidden message in our previous email. In fact, at one point in the conversation he exhorted us to pay tithing and started going off on his tithing testimony in his usual way. It is very typical of him to do that -- definitely not out of the norm. At the first available pause I changed the topic of conversation. I didn't detect any unusual worries or curiosity about us.

I think that if anyone noticed the sentence in our last email they probably thought nothing of it. They probably just assumed we had some good reasons for not yet attending church because of the move we just made or whatever. It was too subtle and too temporary-sounding. It may have raised a few eyebrows, but it definitely didn't spark any open curiosity. We probably should have made it the start of a paragraph and left out the "right now".

It's somewhat difficult to figure out what to do next. We thought about making yet another sting but this time make it not as subtle or hidden. The problem with that is it potentially becomes a little tedious for them if they noticed the first time. I know if I were them I would have noticed the first one and would be annoyed at seeing yet another little hint. "Do they have something to tell us or what?" I'd think. Dropping all these stupid little hints everywhere would just confuse everybody.

We're potentially just one conversation away from coming out. All it takes is for someone to ask about how we like the ward or something, and I don't want to lie about it or play games to avoid answering directly. I think it may be time to draft a full on disaffection notice letter and send it to everyone. When the news comes out it is going to spread quickly through the family and it's going to be a Big Deal, so we can let it out on our terms or on theirs. I want to make the letter short and sweet. I don't want to go into our journey story or anything like that, because I don't want to make a big deal out of it. Just simply "we don't believe but we love you still" and tell them we're open to talking about it via email if they really want.

It'll be nice to have it all out on the table. This really shouldn't be a big deal, but it is.

Stage One Complete

We just hit send on the first email to our parents and all of our siblings. It is a rather long email about the various goings on of this past couple of weeks. Embedded in one of the longer paragraphs, there is this sentence:

The park and the community center are only a short walk away, so we'll be going there a lot. We're not attending church right now, so we decided to take advantage of the continuing nice weather the next day and walk around the neighborhood a bit.

We can see that my mom is currently online, so she may be reading it now. I don't know how many people are going to notice it, or think much of it. Many of them may just think we have some good temporary reasons that weren't mentioned. I'd be surprised if no one asks about it. I still think it was a good idea to do it this way, because it gets across the very true message that to us it's not a big deal. It hides our apprehension of course, but that's a good thing to hide. If this little tidbit doesn't spark any questions, then stage two will just have to wait. We can be at least a little bit more open now, because technically we have told them that we aren't attending church, so at the very least I hope they're not surprised if we can't tell them all about our new ward here.

The Coming Out Plan

We've come up with a plan to come out to our families. It is going to be via email. It is going to be via email because it simply cannot be via the telephone, video chat, IM, in person, or snail mail.

There are two reasons why it cannot be over the phone, video chat, or in person. First, there is too much risk of emotions getting out of control. This is going to be a touchy subject, and it is difficult to be precise and careful with what is said. A situation like this is a minefield. Both sides are likely to say things that are very offensive to the recipients. It is better to have a buffer of time between the messages to keep things under control (on my side at the very least). The second reason why this can't be in real-time is that I actually do love my parents, a lot, and to see the horror on their faces or to hear it in their pause as a result of simply telling them that I don't believe would kill me. Horrified at me, and for what?! That they would feel such anguish just because I have the integrity to follow the truth wherever it leads me would make me very angry and sad. That very moment of hearing or watching their completely unjustified anguish wash over them would ignite something in me that I'd rather not experience. I do not want to be a witness to any kind of pathetic mourning, as though I had died. If they're going to mourn me like that, I'd rather they just got it over with on their own, and then they can get back to me when they finally realize I'm still right here and I'm still the same person. Even if they mourn at me in an email it will be easier to take than to watch them bawl in person.

This leaves snail mail, email, IM, blog, or Facebook. It's not going to be Facebook because Facebook is stupid. It's not going to be IM because we'd much rather broadcast it and have everyone hear it from us first. It won't be our public blog because, well, it's much too public. It won't be snail mail because then the suspense would kill us. Email it is.

Now the problem is: how do we bring up the subject via email? I don't want to give anyone the impression that they are entitled to know our religious status (or lack thereof). I'd quite like to give the impression that no we aren't going to church, but it's no big deal. It really isn't a big deal at all, and I want to convey to them that from our point of view it really isn't. This is why I dread coming out with some grand announcement, thereby giving credence to the notion that leaving the church represents some gigantic, fundamental shift in who we are and what we represent. I can't ignore that this will be quite shocking to them, but honestly our attitude is, "Yeah, so what? We haven't changed."

This is why we'd prefer to come out in response to some inevitable church queries. "So, how's the ward? Have any callings yet?" That sort of thing. We could say in response, "well, we're not going to church right now." Two problems with this: 1) unfortunately it is the case that these questions are much more likely to come by phone call or video chat than by email, and 2) even if that question did come via email, there isn't a clear, non-awkward way to respond to one query like that with a response that spams the entire family.

My mom always sends a email to the family about the goings on at home, and so does my sister. So we've decided to start writing our own weekly family email and casually bring up the subject ourselves as part of a future email update. My wife has been doing an excellent job at writing up an update email for a few weeks now, so we've been able to establish a precedent.

We've come up with a two-phase plan for release. The first phase will be a casual mention in an update email. The purpose of this phase is to be the initial shock preparing the way for the full coming out, and therefore it is softened a little. I do not want them to be happily reading a fun little email update from us and then to suddenly come face to face with "we don't believe in Mormonism anymore" or something to that effect. That would be a lot for them to handle in one shot, and they'd be completely unprepared for it. Rather, we'll include a sentence like, "Since we're not attending church right now, we spent Sunday afternoon taking a walk around the neighborhood and letting [our son] play in the park." This is a softer hit because it says nothing about our beliefs or our reasons for not attending church, and it is presented in a nice casual, matter-of-fact way that is (hopefully) slightly disarming. The phrase "not attending church right now" leaves open a sliver of hope for those who desperately need it in that moment. I want to provide that sliver of hope for them in the very beginning, because it very well may be the only thing keeping them from plunging into shock and despair for us at the time that they read it and double-take. I just want them to feel that preparatory sting first, to get them to mull it over in their minds, to get used to the idea. Carson and his wife aren't attending church right now. What could it mean? I want them to be prepared to hear what they are about to hear, because from their point of view it is about to get worse.

The second phase will be at least a day after the first, and if at all possible I'd like it to be in response to questions coming about as a result of the first phase. I think there will be plenty of questions. "Wait, why are you not attending church right now?" Surely they will be curious. I'd like to have some sort of critical mass of questions first, and then we will deliver the answer email to all. We haven't composed this email, but I'm thinking it will be similar to this one. It will clearly state that we no longer subscribe to Mormonism in diplomatic terms. I don't want to drag it out and make them think we're just struggling with our testimonies, as that was three years ago. I want to leave the door open for questions, and we'll handle those one by one. At this point the real fun will begin. For the first little while afterward I will refuse to talk about it over the phone or video chat, insisting that all conversations about this subject be had via email for the meantime. This is to give some time to calmly come to terms with each other before risking a real-time back-and-forth discussion. How much time this will take depends on what the initial reactions are. My biggest hope is that my family will take it in stride and all of this worrying and planning on my part will be completely unnecessary.

The Time is Coming

My wife and I, and our young child, have just recently moved across the country for a new job. We've used this as an opportunity to quit church altogether. I hadn't been attending much anyway, but my wife was attending most of the time because she had some friends in the ward. Now that we are here, we will no longer attend the LDS church. Our young son would have just been entering primary, so this was a very convenient time. We won't have to unplug ourselves from the ward, and there will be no close ward friends or leaders to have awkward conversations with. This severance of church participation, however, brings us unavoidably to the largest hurdle in the process: telling our extended family.

There just isn't a viable way to keep it a secret from them. I've heard more than once the question, "Why do you have to tell them? Why do they need to know?" There is a part of me that would love for this to be a secret from them. After all, what business is it of theirs whether I believe in the same myths that they do? Why can't we just get on with our lives and enjoy the tangible relationships we have while we're here? The answer is that the church is so much more than just a set of beliefs to them. The church is their way of life. Every week the family gets an email update from my mom about the goings on at home (I have many younger siblings, and most of them are still dependent on my parents). About 50-70% of each email is church-related. Their lives are filled with church activities, meetings, and callings. Every once in a while there'll be a testimony. My sister is at BYU and she also sends weekly updates, filled to the brim with anxious testimony stories. My family eats, breathes, and sleeps Mormonism.

There are two main reasons why my unbelief cannot remain a secret from them. First, the issue will inevitably come up in normal conversation. In fact, I'm convinced the topic of church will come up in our next phone or video chat. I would literally have to lie outright in order to keep it a secret. They will ask how the ward is and what callings we have. Lying to them is absolutely out of the question. Also, none of my younger siblings have married yet, and when one of them does, we'll have to explain to them why we cannot attend the ceremony. Trying to keep them in the dark about our disaffection without actually lying to them would require a lot of work.

The second reason why this cannot remain a secret is that I simply do not want to hide this from them. Sure, there are advantages to keeping it a secret, but there are also big advantages to coming out, and I prefer those advantages. I want to be authentic. I want the people close to me to know what I think. The fact is that right now they think that I hold certain convictions that I no longer hold. I will not try to force my worldview on them, but I want it made clear to them that I do not accept what the old men at the head of the LDS corporation preach. I want them to know that there is an unbeliever and an atheist very close to them, and I want them to think about that. I want them to experience that cognitive dissonance in their minds. They cannot have this cake and eat it too. However they reconcile it is up to them, but reconcile it they must. Their belief system gives them very little choice. Either I must be evil, or there must be something to what I say. I expect that their conclusion will be the former, but I want them look at me straight on as their brother or son, who loves them, and tell themselves that I am evil. I want them to look at me while they conclude that people who leave the church aren't happy or are deluded. If they want to demonize apostates and atheists, I want them to know that they demonize their own brother. I want them to realize that the logical conclusion of their beliefs as dictated to them by the old holy men is that their brother and his wife are bad, unhappy people.

I haven't been very optimistic when thinking about the possible ramifications of our coming out. I've imagined so many different scenarios. The best possible scenario is that my parents send a warm email about how they love us just the same regardless of our beliefs. I would be awestruck by a response like this. It would render me speechless. I would probably feel bad for having underestimated my parents, and my apprehensiveness would melt away entirely. I'd feel silly for having spent so much energy on the topic, and life would quickly move on.

But every time I think about my dad, I'm almost sure that it will not be that way. He is a very opinionated man (one thing that I inherited) and very devoted to the church, and I can't imagine him being okay with this in any way. He is the stronghold of political/religious opinion in the home, and my siblings have for the most part aligned themselves with him. A conversation with him is typically a 1-way lecture, not a lot of give and take. There are a thousand great things about my dad, don't get me wrong, but these are just some reasons why I don't think this is going to go down as smoothly as I'd like it to. I'll talk about our strategy for coming out in the next post, but we're going to need to send a family-wide email because if we just told my parents first, I know my dad would gather everyone around and let them know the news in his own way, infusing the announcement with gravity, sadness, and that oh-so-poignant spiritual anguish, followed by exhortations to keep the faith. It would be like announcing the death of a sibling, inoculating them as much as possible from any potential cognitive dissonance for whenever I got around to telling my own story.

I've pictured in my head each of my siblings, trying to think of how they will react to the news. Will they draw away from me? Will they challenge me? I don't think many of them will challenge me, as I think they know I can hold my own in a debate, but I suspect that there will be a quiet distrust there, possibly for the rest of my life.

I've thought about how this is going to go down for so long that I've developed a sort of detached curiosity about it. I feel like just sending the email right now just so that I can observe their reactions and compare them to my expectations. I've thought about how I will respond to their reactions, whether I would be very accommodating and forgiving of insulting behavior or whether I would toss it right back in their face. I've decided that I will not stand for insulting or accusatory reactions, nor will I allow myself to be angry in my responses. I will try to be calm and firm.

Depending on what the reactions are like, I may post them here. I have been at the receiving end of a few blogs and forum posts where people have told their exit stories and shared the reactions of family members, and I have greatly appreciated their sharing them. I think these stories are important and need to be told in a public way. One of the most insidious things about the church in my opinion is its destroying of family relationships over something a simple as a belief, and they cannot and must not be able to do this without the stories being heard.

My List of Issues

People generally want to know what it is that made a person stop believing in the church. Believers want to know often because they want to find out where the leak is so that they can patch it up for you. A disaffection can be a long and complicated process that involves many different threads. Some people have disaffection stories that have one clear cut culprit, like finding out the real history of Joseph Smith. More often the disaffection starts with one thing, like the first crack in a dam, and then the whole worldview falls apart as the crack quickly turns into a flood of issues. Sometimes when a disaffected person shares the issue that was the first crack in their testimony with a believer, the believer pounces on that one issue with some apologetics and stands back and says, "Okay, so now do you believe?"

My own disaffection started with many little cracks in the foundation. Eventually the sheer number of them overwhelmed me and I could no longer ignore what was right in front of my face. I anticipate that I will be asked a number of times to give a reason for my disaffection, and that is why I've decided to make a comprehensive list of all the little doubts and questions that contributed. These are all the little nagging doubts that I tried to shelve as best I could when I believed, before the shelf just couldn't hold them any longer.

Remember that these were all the questions and doubts I had when I was still a faithful believer. Do not assume, for example, that the reason I couldn't feel the Spirit, receive an answer to a prayer, or whatever it may be is because I was a filthy, unbelieving apostate. I read my scriptures, said my prayers, paid my tithing (gross), went to church, believed in the doctrine, loved the church leaders, fulfilled my callings, did my home teaching (usually), attended the temple, and was an all-around agreeable albeit quiet guy at church. I felt a strong sense of duty to God, to whom I felt I owed everything I had.

I haven't added anything about church history to this list because there are just too many issues there and it would overwhelm the rest. Suffice it to say that studying actual church history raises an overwhelming number of questions by itself, enough to bring about the disaffection for many people.

As I remember more questions I had, I will add to this list.

1. Why is it that I've never received a confirmation from the Spirit that the church or the Book of Mormon was true despite many sincere prayers?



2. Why do I pray and ask for physical protection when I know very well that not only am I not guaranteed protection by praying but that my statistical chances of being in harm's way does not diminish at all as a result of asking for protection? Countless other righteous people have prayed sincerely for protection and yet have been killed, maimed, tortured, have had their families destroyed, their daughters raped and murdered, etc. Apparently God had his own plans for them (for our own experience, right?), and so I must also accept God's will for me if it so happens that physical protection is not in my destiny. What is the point of praying for physical protection then, if it isn't going to change God's unknowable destiny for me? What reason is there to feel safe and secure (physically) after praying for protection, knowing that for all I know it's just not part of God's mysterious plan? Is it not arrogant, after having had a safe trip somewhere, to claim divine intervention on one's own behalf while other no less deserving people perish in flames after praying for the same kind of protection?



3. Why does God get all the credit when things work out, yet none of the blame when things don't work out? It's indistinguishable from God not being there at all. Or at least if he is there, he apparently doesn't have to answer our prayers, as we will praise him regardless.
   



4. Why is it that I feel zero inspiration when I lay my hands on someone to give them a blessing despite all of the promises made to me that the words would come? The words never came. The first time I gave a blessing I had faith that the words would come. I was a little anxious about it, but I believed that the inspiration would come at the right moment. The moment came and I put my hands on this person's head. I stood there and felt nothing. No words came to my head; no feelings, no impressions, nothing. I was horrified. I eventually just blabbered some churchy words, the kind that you reserve for an impromptu prayer at the front of a Sunday school class or something. I left that blessing and went and prayed and pleaded with the Lord, asking why I couldn't feel anything and asking for help next time. The next time was the same, and the time after that, and so on. Promised inspiration from the Spirit has never been a part of my believing life.



5. Why have I never experienced this "still small voice" that so many love to talk about? People are constantly telling stories about how they received a prompting from the Spirit to go do something or talk to somebody, promptings that came out of the blue and were obviously external to their own thought processes. So many people will swear by these experiences, even basing their entire testimony on it. Why is it that I never experienced anything remotely like this? I have never had a voice in my head telling me to do something. Not even a feeling or an inclination. Does this make me abnormal?



6. Why are the scriptures simply uninspiring to me? Why is it that people gush about the scriptures all the time and yet when we open and read them, they sound tired, repetitive, barely relevant, and trite? Why is it that when my wife and I read scriptures together, it depresses us rather than enlightens us? Why do these promises that our lives will be full of spiritual warmth as a result of reading the scriptures never come to pass? When I read the Book of Mormon for the 100th time, I get nothing out of it that I didn't already get when I first comprehended the stories at age 4? I've tried to look deeper and analyze the text for new meanings and angles, but it is like squeezing water from a rock. Why is it that when my wife and I try reading from a different book together other than the scriptures, suddenly there is much more to discuss and think about, more substance to meditate upon? Why is it that I feel infinitely more inspired by reading Flags of Our Fathers than I do by reading the scriptures?



7. Why is the curriculum in the church so dumbed down? Why do we cherry pick so few versus from the scriptures in every lesson manual and in every class in the church? Why is it that I'm told I still need milk before meat despite having spent a lifetime in the church? During church classes I increasingly felt distant from everyone else because I could no longer muster any excitement about the shallow, correlated topics that have been covered from every possible angle since I was a small child.



8. Why are the church publications and general conference talks full of fluffy, trite gospely talk that could have been generated randomly? Why are there so many glaring logical fallacies at the pulpit in sacrament meeting, in Sunday school, in the Ensign, and in general conference? My wife and I sat down to read an article the Ensign together one evening in an attempt to revamp our FHE, and we were surprised at how content free the article was. Where are the deep introspections? Where is the intellectual rigor? Why must everything taste like mass-produced spam? Why do people with otherwise impressive academic credentials so easily and willfully confuse correlation with causation and throw about massive generalizations during church?



9. Why do I feel so depressed when I go to the temple? I constantly came out of the temple feeling frustrated and depressed. At first the endowment ceremony was just very strange and new to me. I figured that I'd eventually come to learn more about it and that it would expand my understanding of the plan of salvation and my place in it. It did nothing of the sort. Each time I went I tried to understand more, but ended up being more confused than ever. What depth of meaning could there possibly be in all this weird ritual and excessive repetition? It was very frustrating. I almost memorized the entire thing in my quest to learn from it somehow. Eventually the frustration gave way to monotony and depression. People at church kept gushing about how wonderful the temple experience was, and it kept making me feel distant and separated from them. I continued attending the temple because I felt it was my duty, but I finally accepted that I would probably never like it.



10. Why is there such a focus on "saving ordinances" when fairness dictates that everyone who has ever lived will receive an equal opportunity to receive the ordinances regardless and that the more important thing is to live righteously? Is it more important to live a good life or to receive the ordinances? The LDS gospel tries to have it both ways. The church claims that both the ordinances and living a good life are required for exaltation, and the assumption here is either that all genuinely good people will accept the ordinances or that the genuinely good people who don't accept them will not be exalted. The former situation renders the ordinances as superfluous; just some strange little bureaucratic rituals that for some reason have to be performed. Even though you are completely worthy of exaltation, God cannot exalt you unless you've been dunked in the water correctly and have watched the right movie and memorized the right tokens. What? If this is the case, then why is there so much emphasis placed on receiving these ordinances as if they were only going to be available for a limited time? Why must all good people join the church if they are perfectly happy where they are now, and will accept the superfluous ordinances in due time in the afterlife? The latter situation in which perfectly righteous people get damned is of course grossly unfair.



11. Why do grand, faith-affirming experiences occur just as much if not more in every other religion, even when the principles or doctrines that the experiences affirm are in direct contradiction with the LDS gospel? We claim the companionship and gift of the Holy Ghost, yet we are outnumbered by people who daily experience the constant companionship of various godly figures. Do we reject their experiences outright, or only when they don't contradict our particular beliefs? Are we to believe from our burning-in-the-bosom experiences that we belong to the only true church on the face of the Earth? What about the burning-in-the-bosom experiences that countless others have about completely different religions? What are they to conclude? Does the universe really revolve around us? Are we really the chosen few of the latter-days?



12. The LDS gospel teaches that Jesus is the savior of not only this world, but innumerable worlds (Billions? Trillions?) aside from this one. And yet he happened to have been born on this particular world. Does anyone understand the fantastical probabilistic hubris of this doctrine? Did Jesus visit every one of these worlds, like an ultimate cosmic Santa Claus? Which is more likely: that we are really the one planet out of trillions that was chosen for Christ's ministry or that this part of the doctrine is just a result of conventional self-centric musings, much like the early idea that the sun revolved around Earth.



13. Why do we believe that thousands of years ago a man built a giant boat and put a pair of every single species of animal on it in order to save them from a flood that covered the entire globe?



14. Why do we believe that thousands of years ago that a large group of people who spoke one common language were instantly altered such that they spoke various languages which are the roots of all the languages we have in the world today?



15. Since evolution of humans as well as all animals cannot be seriously dismissed anymore, how does this not conflict with what our prophets have been saying for years? I was taught evolution at BYU, but I was also taught to ignore and/or deny that the church's teachings had ever been in contradiction to evolution. How does this not conflict with the creation narrative or the Adam and Eve story?



16. What is it about an ape-like body that is otherworldly and perfect? God apparently has a body of flesh and bones just like ours, since our bodies were apparently fashioned after his. Does he have a bellybutton? Do his intestines process food waste like ours? Do his opposable thumbs come in very handy in his celestial world? What about his anus? Does he find his androgenic hair to be of great use to him? Does his facial hair keep his face warm in the winter, or is it useful for something else? Is it simply for good looks? Are all the compelling evolutionary explanations for all of our ape-like features completely bunk? Almost all of our bodily organs have a well-understood terrestrial and mortal function, most of which would be useless in a world without the biological properties and dangers of our own. Is there an equivalent celestial function for every single one of our bodily organs? What use are fingernails in a perfect, indestructible body? I could go on and on. This seems to me like yet another self-centric idea: that our bodies are perfect in conception; that we are at the very peak of our evolution, and no other kind of body could be superior; that our bodies are created from a celestial template -- the very same ape-like body that the creator of the entire universe has. Take away anything, change anything, or add anything to it and it would be unlike God and therefore inferior. The universe ultimately revolves around humans, and was created by a superhuman.



17. Why do we believe that the very same atoms that were part of our body will again be reunited in our body at the resurrection? How is it that we can be so profoundly ignorant about the cycle of life that we think that every atom that becomes a part of us belongs to us forever? Why do people in the church get so worked up about people being cremated after they die, as if this is going to make resurrection significantly more complicated than it would otherwise be?



18. Why do so many false faith-promoting stories (told not as stories but as truth) find so much success in the church? People are constantly feeling the Spirit very strongly whenever a patently false email forward story is told at the pulpit as though they were completely true accounts.



19. Why is it impossible to tell the difference between an emotional response to stimulus and the Spirit testifying of truth? Regardless of how many times leaders try to point out the distinction, people constantly fail to discern any difference between the two (like with the stories above). If it is that difficult to discern, it does not bode well for Moroni's famous challenge.



20. If my mission president was called of God and was entitled to inspiration from God, why did he so completely misjudge me? Why was my mission run like a slimy marketing campaign?



21. Why are we taught to obey our leaders without question? We are taught that our leaders won't lead us astray and also simultaneously that if they lead us astray we should still follow because obedience is the first law of heaven.



22. Why is our message about "forever families" in essence: "You will not be with your family in the afterlife unless you become a Mormon."? How is it fair that a good righteous family will be immediately separated into spiritual prison cells right after they die, to sit there and wait until some fleshly Mormon gets around to doing temple work for them?
    



23. Why is it that so much of the church experience is based on emotional manipulation?



24. Why does my wife not get the excessively promised fulfillment that she is supposed to get from being a stay-at-home mother?



25. Why is it that people's personalities can completely change when their brains are altered either through damage or added/subtracted chemicals? If you take away a certain chemical from someone's brain, they become humble and childlike, an innocent and righteous person. It seems pretty clear that the more the brain is damaged, the less of a person there is. This doesn't square with the concept of duality, where there is a ghost inside containing the true personality of a person which will be judged in the afterlife.

Mormon Anarchists

I just checked out the ldsanarchy blog and I must say I was not prepared for what I saw. I never imagined a flavor of Mormonism like that. Where do they come from? It's like some weird twilight zone of the bloggernacle. Much more fundamentalist, with strange curiosities about the wildest things turning into long definitive posts laying down "what it is" in detail. And the comments are mostly excited agreement and further expounding upon bizarre heretofore undefined corners of doctrine. It's like a religion within a religion. The contributors wear their heterodox views and oddball theories like badges. Like regular disaffected Mormons and NOMs, they talk about how they have to keep their mouth shut in Sunday school, or how every once in a while they let out a comment about the real truth to everyone else's dismay.

I got curious when I saw a strange comment on Irresistible (Dis)Grace stating with full confidence that it is seeing plasma in the sky that makes humans believe in God. Just from the short perusal of stuff there I found the following ideas (stated confidently with no reservations):

• Pornography exists because of circumcision
• The Earth is hollow
• A fully fledged planetary theory about D&C 88
• And of course - anarcho-primitivism
  

I would love to poll all the contributors about, to name one example, whether they believe the moon landings to be a hoax.

Always Be Specific

An excellent comic found here reminded me of my experience with prayer.

Every once in a while someone at the front of Sunday school or at the pulpit will caution you to be careful what you ask for, because then you might get it. They'll tell a story about how they asked God for humility or patience and were promptly "blessed" with either a situation which required intense practice in being patient or an event that destroyed their sense of worth. Many times in my life I'd kneel down and pray saying, "Father, please help me to be patient... Well... I mean... Okay, what I mean by that is I'd like the Holy Ghost to comfort me or something when I'm feeling frustrated and stuff. I'm not asking for more practice or anything like that, alright? Alright?! Okay look, I'll just work on this patience thing on my own. It's okay, really. I think I'm good with that. You know what I mean, right? I mean, you can read my mind, can't you?"

Eventually I'd just prefix my petitions with a disclaimer: "Father, the following supplication should not in any way be interpreted as a request for an increase of, addition to, or amplification of any trials, tribulations, afflictions, or adversities that I currently have or will undergo in the future in order to learn patience, humility, gratitude, empathy, wisdom, or in any other way further refine my character."