Before I discovered the Internet, I assumed that most people who stop believing in Mormonism had approximately the same issues I had. One of my biggest revelations upon discovering the exmo/DAMU community was the variety of experiences. Though everyone had reached approximately the same conclusion (about the truth of the…
What is/was your relationship with Mormonism?
This is a question I just had for everyone…because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this blogging, it’s that people have such widely differing relationships with Mormonism. I’ve taken for granted that people are looking for the same “things” from it as I was/am, but that is not…
The Rise and Fall of a Testimony
The following is an essay I’ve written on my journey out of Mormonism (originally posted on my personal blog here). My journey to atheism is another story. Perhaps I will post it in the future. Tell me about your testimony. I was 24 years old when my bishop asked me…
Christmas in Outer Blogness!
I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! My sources indicate that many people in Outer Blogness did! Just see for yourself!
LDS candidate announces Mormon-only male-only campaign rallies
From Rexburg’s Standard Journal : Idaho gubernatorial candidate Rex Rammell will be mixing what he calls doctrines from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints into his gubernatorial campaign in a series of meetings slated for LDS elders only. In January, Rammell will kick off a series of special…
things are bad for religion?
While some sociologists have been talking about the growing None population in the U.S. for a while now (see this report for an example), you know things have to be getting bad when researchers employed by the religions themselves are starting to worry about the health and vitality of religions…
Temple Marriage, Civil Marriage, and my marriage
When I got married — back in 2000 — the “gay marriage” issue was hardly on my radar. Ever since reading Stephen J. Gould’s Creation Myths of Cooperstown essay (back in my BYU days), I’ve tended to be wary of “just-so stories” that give an instantaneous creation point to something…
Making Peace with the Loss of Certainty
One of the more difficult things that came with recognizing that the Mormon Church wasn’t 100%, literally “True” was that this paradigm shift introduced incredible levels of uncertainty into my knowledge of God and the purpose of life.
Visited the stealth office of the NOM today
I was doing some Christmas shopping downtown and thought it might be amusing to swing by the office of the National Organization for Marriage — since it’s right there in the pedestrian-friendly shopping district of Princeton. According to an earlier post, it’s in the same building (20 Nassau Street) as…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: A Day Late and a Dollar Short Edition!
Well it’s a day late anyway, and it’s short in the sense that my pattern-seeking brain had a little trouble finding a theme to the posts of Outer Blogness this week. I finally found a couple of little themes. The first was people sharing their favorite holiday music. The Urban…