Awards
Lists of Brodie award winners:
X-Mormon of the Year 2012: David Twede
X-Mormon of the Year 2011: Joanna Brooks
X-Mormon of the Year 2010: Monica Bielanko
X-Mormon of the Year 2009: Walter Kirn
A Community for Anyone Interested in Mormonism.
Points of agreement between atheists and Mormons
In my last SiOB, I highlighted a list of “things that both atheists and Mormons can largely affirm together” by Aaron Shafovaloff. Then Andrew S picked up the discussion and even attracted Aaron Shafovaloff himself to attempt to explain it. I had highlighted the list mostly because many of the items were so hilariously off. In an attempt to account for the phenomenon of people choosing to “stay LDS” after a loss of belief, Shafovaloff had tried to come up with a list of beliefs that are common Read more [...]
Posted in Aaron Shafovaloff, Atheism, Atheists, Christianity, loss of faith, NOM
Gregory Prince Doesn’t Care About Freethinker-People?!?
In the Fall 2011 issue of Dialogue (44:3), Gregory Prince interviews Shaun A. Casey about religion and presidential politics in light of his recently published book, “The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960.” Just one page in is this exchange: Prince: When was the religion of the candidate first an issue? Was it Al Smith? Casey: Well, I think it can go all the way back to 1800 when Thomas Jefferson ran. He was attacked as being an atheist. You see it crop up in American presidential Read more [...]
Posted in Atheism
Building on a Religious Background
The following is an article I wrote for the October / November 2011 issue of Free Inquiry (the magazine of the Council for Secular Humanism), reposted here with permission from the editors. The Oct/Nov issue is a special issue on Mormonism, and one other MSP regular also contributed to it. I am an atheist, but I grew up Mormon. My children have asked their grandparents and others about religious belief, about how it works, to try to understand it. But for all of their interest and curiosity, Read more [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheists, civil discourse, Free Inquiry Magazine, Humanism
In defense of religious ‘brainwashing’
Originally published at the USU SHAFT site. Ive enjoyed several of the videos produced by The Thinking Atheist. This video, however, should make them reconsider their (already rather smarmy) name. In the video, several atheists relate their Christian upbringing, which they now not-so-fondly remember as brainwashing. Dawkins has sometimes gone so far as to claim that religious education is a form of child abuse. It can be, but the complaints made by the atheists in the video struck me as Read more [...]
Posted in Atheism
the necessity of religion?
I’ve read a number of articles and book chapters over the last month or so that have started to change the way I think about religion. After leaving Mormonism and becoming a secular humanist and atheist, I thought the superiority of my new views would be self-evident to anyone who took the time to consider my views. That superiority led me to think that the world would also be a better place without religion – give everyone secular humanism and all superstition and irrationality would disappear, Read more [...]
LGBs and atheism
I just finished reading a two-volume set on atheism and secularity. There were a number of interesting findings in the books. I’ll probably post about a few more of them. But I’ll start with this one from p. 98: Whereas 62 percent of heterosexual respondents are believers, only 42 percent of LGB respondents are believers. The LGB respondents are more likely to be atheists than were heterosexuals: only 2.5 percent of the heterosexual respondents claim they do not believe in God, compared to 5.6 percent Read more [...]
What happens when journalists don theology hats?
You get arguments like Lane Williams’s in the MormonTimes this morning. Williams begins by lamenting the fact that atheists occasionally receive media attention: Reporters have provided a great deal of attention to these atheists, stoking the controversy over the existence of God. Even if reporters had no purpose to question religious faith, doubts have become more mainstream, or so it seems to me. Of course, he then has to claim that the media coverage is actually biased in favor of atheism and Read more [...]
Posted in Atheism, mormontimes.com, Theology
Afterlife? I’d rather not.
I was very sick when I converted to Mormonism. I like to joke that I wasn’t getting enough oxygen to the brain, but the more mundane truth is that I was confronted with the reality of my mortality, and like many people, I panicked. I couldn’t really die, right? I’m too solid, too complex to disappear completely. What a crime that would be, that someone so unique and essential could be gone forever. Religion offered me a respite from this fear. Church members answered my questions about death quite Read more [...]
Knowledge, Community, and Relationships
Over at the faithful Mormon blog Faith-Promoting Rumor is a discussion enticingly titled “Do Relationships Make the Church True and False?” This post is a short enough one that you should just go over there and read it, but I guess I will still highlight some points here…when I was reading it, I will say that one idea I was apprehensive about finding was the idea of trying to bottle ex-Mormons as those people who leave because “they’ve been offended.” Or maybe “the church is true but the people Read more [...]
MSP Exclusive: Russell M. Nelson disses atheists
http://newsroom.lds.org/blog/2010/06/apostle-talks-religious-freedom-to-boston-youth.html Note to Andrew S. et alia explaining this post: It looked as if the Newsroom Blog link to Nelson’s comments re atheists had gone dead and so I posted a screen grab of the post here. Since the link is live again, I’ve taken that down and left the link in its place. As far as the discussion below, it’s regarding a series of posts at Times & Seasons by BYU professor Ralph Hancock, who seems keen to become Read more [...]
Posted in Atheism, Russell M. Nelson
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