NOM

I just watched a great episode of Crash Course Philosophy on Divine Command Theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRHBwxC8b8I Divine Command Theory states that morality is defined by God, so whatever God says is good is good. After reading through the Old Testament it is difficult to have any othe...

A NOMish friend of mine recently saw a painting of Adam and Eve where they were painted as black people. He isn't familiar with the latest scientific discoveries on the subject so his understanding of race was shaped by church and he thought that the first people were white, and that they were later...

Interesting write up Oliver. Can you do these daily? :) Personally my Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating and Liberty/Oppression triggers are very powerful. I was the one who got in trouble fighting for the rights of a lizard that was being tortured at Scout camp. And my Loyalty/Betrayel, Authority/Subvers...

Coffee doesn't like me very much, so I don't drink it that much. Mormons have a hard time grasping that it's okay to just show up and NOT drink coffee. "Would you like a coffee?" Weird: I don't drink coffee (or wine or beer) because (religious superiority reasons. Normal: No, but some water would b...

Ouch. That is a lot of money that should be in my retirement account. Tithing is one of my biggest issues with the church. The ONLY thing that anyone can testify is absolutely true about tithing is that if you pay it, the church has your money and you don't. Period. Anything beyond that is speculati...

This is something that Haidt also addresses in his chapters about group selection. He argues that that natural selection is multi-level, and that any traits which helped one group of humans survive over other groups would become adaptive within the population. Religion, it seems, was very good at c...

Thanks for the writeup Oliver. Very interesting subject. In the book Sapiens the author posits that primate communities larger than 150 individuals don't hold together because the members can't have a personal relationship with more people than that. He says that early humans had similar community s...

\My brother is sad, but it seemed that he was more frustrated than sad. He spoke of "dumping" his son several times.(My brother is a good guy, a little rough sometimes, but I don't think he really meant he wants to abandon his son, just that he is frustrated and life would be easier if he didn't ha...

Now I am not sure what to do. I could come out in solidarity with my disaffecting nephew. I could continue to play the part and possibly have greater influence. I could realize that not much has changed since yesterday and do nothing different. Any suggestions? Just be the cool uncle -- the one who...

Korihor wrote:Sorry to hear the nephew is the center of unwanted attention. Just be the friend he can't find elsewhere.

Thanks. We share some interests, so I hope we can make that happen. We built a computer together last weekend, so that's a good start I think.

I love your story because I have my own story of an atheist nephew that starts out nearly identically (believing family, me as closeted unbeliever, lament over mouthy atheist nephew). The story diverges when the priesthood holders of the family decided to gather and discuss the best way to get the ...

TL;DR - Nephew told his parents he is an Athiest. Parents are TBM along with all extended family except for closeted me. I tried to give good advice, and now I'm not sure if I should do more or what more I can do. We had a family get together and my brother seemed distracted. After a few minutes of ...

SIWL
EMC

and I second AZflyer

I am still in the process of re-defining my relationship with the church, but for now I get through SM by playing with my kids or getting mad at the talks and taking notes on how ridiculous some of the things said are. I teach the Sunbeams, so that keeps me busy for the rest of church and I get to b...

I found it on Reddit and MDB. It's good to see all of you again!