This summer, when I posted on X about my lifelong conviction that the god of Mormonism is a moral monster, someone told me, very helpfully and completely accurately, that I would love God’s Monsters by Esther Hamori. God’s Monsters is the first work of religious scholarship that has made me…
Category: Theology
Eyes in the Back of My Head
by Johnny Townsend In the life of every atheist raised in a religious household, there comes a moment when we encounter our first question that can’t be answered. For me, it was when as a young Mormon teen reading lots of science fiction novels, I encountered aliens with amazing abilities….
The Final post from my notes: Spaulding Rigdon Timeline and details
6 years in the making, and crosslinking to almost every other timeline I’ve made, this post comprises everything I have found that ties together Smith, Rigdon and Spaulding. It includes quotes by Oliver Cowdery’s partner claiming he confessed to the Spaulding-Rigdon theory, as well as preachers saying that they saw…
The Contradiction of God: Brett Cottrell’s “The Valley of Fire”
Theology can be confusing and contradictory. If God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence can be reconciled with the existence of evil, it kinds makes you wonder what’s going on in God’s head. Even if it doesn’t make sense, it makes a great premise for a fantasy-adventure novel!! In The Valley of Fire…
Mormonism 101: FAQ
The LDS Newsroom’s new FAQ has a somewhat defensive tone. This is probably due to scandals as of late for the Church, an annoyance that certain issues won’t go away. The Newsroom has created paragraphs of text perhaps in hopes to roundly cut off future scandals at the pass, but…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: What do Mormons believe? edition!
First and foremost — Outer Blogness has gotten a major technical upgrade!!! This is such a huge and vibrant community that it deserves its own page where you can get a clear view of what’s up. It also means faster loading of our main page and more space in our…
Johnny Townsend’s Mormons in life and imagination!
Have you ever wondered what spirit prison would be like? Mormons believe that when people die, their spirits go to either “spirit paradise” or “spirit prison” to await Judgment Day. They also believe that missionaries from spirit prison can teach the gospel to spirits in spirit prison (who can be…
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…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Theology and Doctrine Edition!
What do Mormons believe? Seems like nobody really knows. I could swear they were once the church of modern-prophets-filling-in-the-Bible-gaps-with-concrete-answers. Then “correlation” came along and stamped out all of those (controversial!) specifics, and replaced them with a short list of vague warm-fuzzies like “faith” and “tithing”. But that hasn’t stopped the…
“These beautifully flawed vessels”: The Conclusion of ExMormon!
I love to joke around. I’ve got the perfect joke for just this occasion. It’s an oldie, so stop Me if you’ve heard it: Way back when Jesus and I were creating the world, I turned to Him and said “Hey Jesus, let’s create a really gorgeous mountainous region, with…