NOM

My ward had been meeting in person and also broadcasting for a while, but a few weeks ago the virus was actually spread at church despite precautions and they moved back to video only. (I haven't been attending or watching, personally.) We have several ward members with the virus right now, includin...

Oh sure, some of us feel dumb about entertaining the idea. It's convenient to allow others to look stupid as they explore this crazy idea that we are children of the stars. But if every believer suddenly disappeared then plenty atheists would take up the cause. I wonder if this might be one thing t...

To base your identity on the idea that another word/idea lacks definition, seems rather vague. That's fair, and I personally gravitate toward the "ignostic" label primarily in avoidance of two other terms that I don't care for: agnostic and atheist. I've never applied either of those terms to my ow...

I wonder sometimes whether civilization needs religion to remain stable. Civilizations obviously "want" religion, since it always pops up. It probably doesn't matter which religion or how accurate any of the supernatural beliefs are, as long as it provides people with some combination of community, ...

That's much better than many of the things your subject line could have been referring to. Good luck with this transition.

Sounds like AI provides as coherent an answer as anyone else. I've long thought that even within a church congregation there are probably no two people with identical definitions of who and what God is, despite the assumption of shared beliefs. If pressed to provide a label for my own views, I would...

Welcome to the site. Unfortunately, it can feel fraught to have an honest and open discussion these days about nearly anything of significance. I also have never lived around a lot of Mormons. I don't know whether that makes it easier or harder to navigate reconsidering one's beliefs. I listen to vi...

Thanks for sharing your story, Five. I can relate strongly to many of the things you've said, such as the excitement of researching everything even if you're actively tearing apart fundamental parts of your world in doing said research. It's easy to feel alone in this, and in some ways it is somethi...

Update The closest thing I have to a written journal about personal/spiritual things in recent decades is my posts on various incarnations of NOM. And so, here's another one. Because one of the best things about NOM is reading the stories of others and relating to them, maybe pieces of this will me...

Can there really be any eternal truths or anything that really matters if reality itself dies someday? I've been trying for years now to come to terms with the idea that our morality is all arbitrary and made-up. I still follow and even care about a lot of the principles that I learned in Mormonism...

I like something Richard Dawkins once said, that it's conceivable that there are beings in the universe that are sufficiently evolved that we'd consider them gods. I believe he said that this is the only type of god he would consider remotely likely to exist. When I read this, years ago, I wasn't ye...

A supermarket that I drive by frequently has an electronic sign that rotates through specials on produce and inspirational quotes. A few years ago, there was a Neal A. Maxwell quote in the rotation. I don't remember what it was. Some kind of general encouraging sentiment. Editing to add that I just ...

My two favorite questions: When you look at the sky, does space go on forever? Any possible answer is hard to even think about. Why is there anything instead of nothing? Citing God as an explanation for complexity is fine, but it doesn't answer the question at all. All you're doing is introducing so...

In my area, the message has been similar to what Linked described. There are some dates starting next month when partial wards can begin to meet occasionally (though at this point I'll be surprised if those dates aren't pushed back), but they started out by saying that you can't come if you're over ...

I'm always impressed with the responses to natural disasters. There's quick mobilization and significant expense that goes into those projects, on top of the volunteer labor. And I also appreciate the opportunity to jump in and provide meaningful service in those situations when I wouldn't know wher...

[Redacted] was my favorite of the speakers that I heard from as a missionary. I still remember some of the things he said because they were a little different from what I was accustomed to hearing and in some cases refreshingly less vague (but still entirely faithful).

Years ago, a guy in my ward lent me Bruck R. McConkie's biography. I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about reading it because at that point I was already leaning NOM (more than I admitted to myself, even) and preferred more nuanced approaches to things. But I ended up enjoying that book. I'm with you i...

Thanks for putting this together. I always enjoy reading this type of thing. It's too bad we don't seem to have anyone in leadership in modern times who really takes the doctrines and their implications seriously like this. At least not publicly. I remember reading Doctrines of Salvation (Joseph Fie...

Maybe some of these arguments don't come up as much as others because the Book of Mormon becomes less relevant when you've reevaluated the Bible itself. By the time you reach the point of acknowledging some of these issues, your view of the Bible has probably evolved to some degree. And, similar to ...