Sunday in Outer Blogness: Participation Edition!

This week there have been some great opportunities for all of us — reading at home — to join in the fun!!!

The funnest is, of course, boobquake! Mark your calendars for tomorrow because a Muslim cleric has blamed earthquakes on promiscuity and scantily-clad women — so Jen @ blag hag has proposed testing this theory out. (My favorite t-shirt is the “Modestly dressed women seldom make earthquakes” one.) And for everybody — with boobs or without — you can participate in “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” to diffuse the death threats against cartoonists who have drawn Mohammed. Naturally, this is related to the whole South Park thing. (See also this essay on Voluntary Censorship in the Comic Book Industry.) I’m tempted to participate in one or both of these… What do you think?

Now, I know you guys are probably going “What’s with all this Muslim-interest news? Isn’t this blog about Mormons?” The thing is that I was reading a blog entry by a well-known Muslim-origin activist: It is not “anti-Muslim” to oppose reaction and defend freedom of speech and belief, and that whole debate struck kind of close to home…

But that’s not all you can do! Our reddit friends have started an exit story archive where you can post your exit story. We’re very interested in this topic here at MSP, but we haven’t tried to organize them, so it’s nice to see the reddit folks doing it. I’ll post mine there sometime this week, plus try to track down the exit stories we’ve posted here to link them in. Also, you can join in the game over Jeffrey Holland’s crass attempt to get his testimony onto the front page of YouTube. And, if you’d like to just listen to some ex-Mormon stories, then check out this Exmo Radio Show!

In real life news, it looks like the recession or depression is starting to make itself felt. Meanwhile, the Evangelical Christians have decided to re-run a discussion from 2007, wringing their hands over the fact that Mormons who leave the LDS church seem to find atheism more attractive than Evangelical Christianity. Andrew has followed up, and I’d just as soon point you to the discussion from back then “How to deconvert em just enough” for those who missed it:

Evangelical beliefs are sufficiently distant from Mormon doctrine that when people question part and not all of Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity is not whats left.

*sigh* For more fun, check out this unusual discussion of evolution and this very surprising video of flying penguins!