In honor of Andrew’s question, this week I’ve decided to gather up just those posts where the good folks of Outer Blogness discuss a bit about where they’re at in their religious journeys this holiday season… Many are still dealing with the stress of living in a mixed-faith family. MoHoHawaii…
Where are you going?
Everyone’s talked about this idea of people leaving the church but not leaving it alone. And you can see, depending on which end of faith you stand, different outlooks at the issue. Some might think that it’s petty for people who no longer believe (or who never believed) to put…
Overlapping Cultural Mormon Perspectives
Faithful Mormons often imagine that those commenting on Mormonism from outside their circle form one monolithic block of “antis”. Mormon culture encourages this view, so people are often surprised when they read the discussion on the Internet and find that the people who disbelieve Mormonism occasionally agree with the Mormons…
Sidney Rigdon wrote the Book of Mormon?
So says a new computer-assisted authorship study out of Stanford: Jockers, Matthew L., Daniela M. Witten, and Craig S. Criddle. 2008. “Reassessing authorship of the Book of Mormon using delta and nearest shrunken centroid classification.†Literary and Linguistic Computing fqn040. I caught this as part of my HighWire Press…
Scripture Fights and Bible Bashing
One of the fun things about watching people try to argue religion *from an outside perspective* is that you can see the low blows people will make without feeling personally hurt anymore. Non-Mormon Christians will often point to the doubtful historicity of the Book of Mormon and then say, “Aha!”…
Self-expression in a society
Andrew pointed out the irony of Gary Lawrence’s advice to “just be yourself” (reported here): Gary’s son being himself (gay) + Gary being himself (raging homophobe) = family catastophe. As backwards as it is to call Proposition 8 “pro-family,” Lynnette explains that it’s disingenuous to pretend that gay marriage has…
Black White thinking
I left active mormonism when I was a teenager during a great deal of personal growth and change. Looking back on it, it’s hard to say what belief systems were part of mormonism, and what were just part of maturing (growing up). I would argue that there are many mormons…
in case you missed it: Prop 8 – The Musical
See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die
Now wait a minute…
From the Salt Lake Tribune: Sen. Chris Buttars wants Utah’s Legislature to declare its opposition to the “war on Christmas.” The West Jordan Republican is sponsoring a resolution encouraging retailers to embrace Christmas in their promotions rather than the generic “holidays.” “It would encourage the use of ‘Merry Christmas,’” Buttars…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Bad God Edition!
The big news this week was when God miraculously made someone shoot someone else, but the guy who was target of the malevolent God thwarted the evil miracle by keeping his cell phone in his pocket. Whew, close one! Reported here: God shoots, rescues man. Then we have reports of…