NOM

This might not be exactly what you are looking for, but it's a passage from Quinn's The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power (p. 363): By the mid-1950s a change was underway in Mormonism that profoundly affected its political influence. The hierarchy and church publications encouraged an unpreceden...

I've found myself learning to accept uncertainty while also using it as a shield at times. By that I mean that I'm able to push off coming to an uncomfortable conclusion by escaping into uncertainty. Maybe those religious traditions have some truth to them after all, even if the evidence doesn't see...

I might have mentioned this in another thread in the past, but one of the very few times I've had the opportunity to discuss my faith transition and questioning freely was with a co-worker, whom I had learned had once been in school to become a preacher but had lost his faith during the process. He'...

I barely had a faith crisis before it became an existential crisis. (I don't really like using the word "crisis" here but it's the common term.) While I find the issues specific to Mormonism interesting, I think the more serious issues lie a few layers deeper. What Joseph Smith did or didn't do lose...

Welcome. It's tough to decide what to do when confronted with a deluge of new information that makes you reconsider things that you might have never even thought to question. And as Corsair said, you can just keep digging and finding more layers if you're so inclined. It continues to be unsettling b...

I didn't read the article, but I couldn't help noticing the abundance of safety devices on their trampoline. They must spend as much time preparing to jump as they do actually jumping. One time I got a ride home from church with a friend as a kid and I was surprised that they played the radio in the...

I don't know about skin color, but I always liked this tangential story. A WILY PROPHET. In the days when Brigham Young was directing the theocratic government of Utah, the Mormon missionaries in England converted a one-legged man near Dulwich. This man, now strong in faith, con- ceived the idea tha...

Welcome to the site. I am having doubts about pretty much everything I've ever believed in which is hard to just breathe and stay calm about it but I think I'm doing an ok job for now. A funny thing about this, in my experience, is that every time you think that surely you've reached the bottom of t...

This is a very good summary. Thanks for sharing it.

This is an interesting way to look at things. I've never consciously developed a checklist of behaviors I'd like to change. It's been more the opposite for me, resisting change but experiencing it all the same. Like Richard Dutcher's analogy in his old Mormon Stories interview of drifting slowly but...

I saw this a few years ago during a quick trip to Seattle. That also happened to be the one and only time that I've had a chance to meet up with some NOM posters in person--a few of us went out to dinner. The show is very clever but pretty vulgar in places. The music is catchy (and surprisingly clea...

I read this recently, and it's quite engaging even if you don't really relate to her situation.

Her Mormon Stories interview is also worth a listen:
https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/tara-westover/

It's hard for me to imagine some of my family members going through a faith transition. The idea of my having a part in kicking such a transition off has always made me nervous. But I also wonder whether one or more of them have already reached that point but, like me, don't ever bring it up due to ...

At this point, it may be mostly because I am resistant to change and I can't imagine not identifying as Mormon (at least in an abstract/tribal sense). Also, not wanting to deal with the potential consequences of drifting any further than I have outwardly (damage to relationships that I value). That ...

My favorite of Haidt's books is The Righteous Mind, though I also enjoyed this one and The Coddling of the American Mind. The latter primarily for its discussion of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which I was not really familiar with.

In short, I would recommend all three books.

Those books culminating with Urth of the New Sun would make for nice twenty episode HBO series, eh? I've thought about what a potential film adaptation might look like, and it's hard for me to imagine anyone taking a chance on it without seriously compromising the story to make it more accessible t...

moksha wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 07, 2019 3:33 am

Favorite sci-fi/fantasy author - Gene Wolfe.

I'm with you on this one. Book of the New Sun is amazing. I can only assume that you've also read some Jack Vance.

I don't suppose the jaguars are "useful" enough to be cumoms.

I've been under the radar for so long that I don't even know how I'd handle a confrontation anymore, though I still suspect I will find myself in that situation one day. Since it wasn't the laundry list of LDS issues that really got to me, I don't think I'd even bother bringing those up. It's possib...

Good discussion. I suppose truth matters if you can manage to convince yourself that it's a valid concept, that it's something you can identify when you find it, and that you care. One of my favorite LDS talks before I started going astray was President Kimball's Absolute Truth . That type of certai...