postmormongirl here, filling in for chanson as she prepares to go to the Sunstone convention. It was a good week in Outer Blogness with a lot of very spirited and varied conversations. There was quite a lot going on today in Outer Blogness this week, some of which hit the…
Category: Testimony
Symbolic beliefs can counter cognitive dissonance, but at a cost
A Frugal Education
I am a rare specimen; I am a person that graduated from college without receiving financial assistance from my parents and without taking out student loans. When my classmates were taking out loans to afford on-campus housing and meal plans, I was living in the sketchier area of town, wearing…
Sunstone and safe zones!!
The discussion has already started on one of the two panels I’m organizing at the Sunstone Symposium!! Have a look at the description and see if you can guess the problem: Do Good Online Fences Make Good LDS Neighbors? LDS-interest blogspace is divided into a number of different communities: the…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: SLC Gay Pride Parade Edition!
So the big topic of the week was the SLC Gay Pride Parade, which happened last Sunday. The big news-line was a group of 300 active LDS members that chose to skip church and march in the parade. Outerblogness this week was full of accounts of the parade, as well…
Brother Selected For The “I’m A Mormon” Campaign
A couple months ago, the Mormon church decided to profile my brother for their Im A Mormon campaign. A camera crew came to his house for an interview; now his profile and testimony are listed on the www.mormon.org website. My brother was thrilled about the opportunity — he saw…
A Child And The Big Scary Apostate
As a kid, most of the General Conference talks didnt make much of an impression on me. I was sitting in the pews listening, but I was also a kid with a short attention span. Beyond feeling a sense of reverence for the guys on the screen, most of the…
An example of Book of Mormon evidences and the scientific method
One of the goals of science is not to prove theories right, but to prove them wrong. When this happens, a theory must be changed or thrown away. It is important to report the results even if the outcome proved the theory wrong. If someone does not want everyone to…
Personal Apostasy Research from LDS.org
Below I have compiled a list of references, along with samples (some very lengthy…OK, this entire post is VERY long – that’s why I have highlighted the good stuff) from those references, of talks and lessons that refer to personal apostasy from the LDS.org website. My primary purpose in collecting…
The Emotional Apostate: The Case for Leaving to Sin and Offense.
Within the ex-Mormon community…or at least, the ex-Mormon community as it thrives online, on websites, blogs throughout Outer Blogness, forums, etc., there seems to be this common exit narrative. (Daymon Smith has a post deconstructing the synthesis of this new identity, but I couldn’t decipher his blog post well enough…
Shout It to the Universe
I spent years worrying about what people would think if I finished and published my memoir, Hippie Boy: A Girls Story. I didnt want to hurt anyone, particularly my mom, a devout Mormon who credits the LDS Church with saving her life. And yet it was her obsession and absolute…