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It's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to stay wrong.

Category: Mormonism (page 10 of 12)

The world is a confusing place sometimes.

1 December 2009 / / 4 Comments

There are times when the news throws up some story just ambiguous enough that I don’t know what to think. Here are my current sources of mental torsion.

Switzerland’s War on Architecture

You know what? Minarets are annoying. About as annoying as church bells. First off, minarets tend to have either a muezzin or loudspeakers, either of which is noisy (though the Swiss minarets are supposed to be the quiet kind). Also, if we allow minarets today, we’ll have a caliphate tomorrow, and then falls Europe, or something like that.

But I can’t get behind the Swiss ban on minarets. As long as zoning and noise ordinances are obeyed, I think people should be allowed to be as big of idiots as they want, including practicing their religion and building buildings. Yes, churches are stupid, but if they’re not free to get their religious groove on, I’m not free to get my anti-religious groove on.

No, I’m not going soft on Islam. I still think Islam is currently the worst religion in the world, though other religions could easily pass Islam up. I mean, think of what you could accomplish if you had two million people working together. You might be able to stop the murder and violence against women that your religion engenders. Instead, they just do stupid shit like this.

Two Million Muslims to Stone Devil at Hajj

Two million Muslims are headed to Muzdalifa, Saudi Arabia, to cast stones at the devil in the most dangerous part of the annual hajj pilgrimage, Reuters reported.

Once the Muslim pilgrims get there, they will collect pebbles to throw at walls of the Jamarat Bridge to symbolize the rejection of the devil’s temptations.

Friggin’ jerks.

But towers aren’t where the fight is. We should be fighting to stop the formation of parallel justice systems based on what religion you are. We need to fight laws intended to punish criticism of religion. The minarets are only scary for people who are easily scared.

Meat in a vat

I already blogged about this when it was an idea, but now it seems they’ve gone and done it.

SCIENTISTS have grown meat in the laboratory for the first time. Experts in Holland used cells from a live pig to replicate growth in a petri dish.

The advent of so-called “in-vitro” or cultured meat could reduce the billions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted each year by farm animals — if people are willing to eat it.

Would I eat meat if no one has to die to make it? Is the image of muscle growing by itself in a vat of fluid too offputting? Why won’t the scientists try eating it? Will it taste like chicken? This is confusing on many levels.

Australian Liberal party changes drivers

They’ve dumped their leader Whatsisname. You know, the one who wanted to work to prevent climate change. Now they’ve guaranteed their irrelevance for the next ten years. This would normally be good, but I have nagging fears. What happens if the Liberal party does manage to sink climate change legislation and the Australian public isn’t pissed off at them?

Hot Mormon Muffins!

You’ve seen young Mormon hunks in the Men on a Mission calendar, but you’ve also thought, “What about the ladies? Will there be a cheesecake calendar full of sister missionaries?” Sadly for you, a calendar of sexy sisters was just a little too hot. They’ve decided to send up an image that’s equally ripe for satire, Mormon motherhood. It’s messing with my head because I’m imagining ladies from the old ward in Cheney, in vintage poses. With doilies.

Ta to Snowqueen.

When a loved one can’t accept your non-acceptance of god

7 September 2009 / / 8 Comments

It’s not often that I bother with proto-arch-evangelist Billy Graham, but on this particular Sunday his article seemed appropriate:

What to Do When a Loved One Rejects God

The correct answer is, of course, to congratulate them on their clear-headed reasoning skills, and offer support for the sometimes tough deconversion process that follows. And thank Zeus that they’ll no longer be trying to evangelise you, with that hopeful but concerned expression that loved ones often wear when they consider the state of your hypothetical soul.

But that’s not Billy’s answer.

Q: Our college-age son says he doesn’t believe in God anymore. We talk about it some (mainly when we’re trying to get him to go to church), but we always end up arguing. How can we convince him that he’s wrong? – Mrs. A. McC.

Gotta love those assumptions. I suppose a bit of evidence is out of the question.

A: In all honesty, you probably can’t convince your son that he’s wrong right now – because he’s probably not willing to admit that he might be. Hopefully, some day, he will be open to changing his beliefs – but right now, he isn’t.

Well, not willing to admit you might be wrong isn’t a good thing, that’s true. This ad appeared on the same web page, which gives you some idea as to how eager these folks are to allow that their beliefs could be mistaken.


I’d like to pose the question from the opposite perspective: what to do when a loved one accepts God, but won’t leave you alone about it? In which case, my answer would match Mr Graham’s answer to the letter.

I don’t mind if my family stays religious. I’m certainly not trying to deconvert anyone — I’m happy for them to do as they please. (If someone finds themselves not believing any more, but they don’t know what to do about it, that’s another story.) I don’t even mind if people in my family (or anyone else) want to talk about religion to me; it’s actually one of my favourite topics. I wish they’d bring it up more! Just as long as they know that when they do, they know they can expect a factual and straightforward response.

I’ve just received a message from a loved one who I’ve known for years, who’s still in the LDS Church. Here’s an excerpt, emphasis in original:

I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true church.

No, you’re merely certain.

I also know that you and Miss Perfect love one another and would want to be married and sealed for all eternity.

That would be lovely, if eternity were on offer. I wonder if anyone else can offer eternity on slightly better terms, perhaps without threatening me with eternal consequences if I don’t obey commandments involving (say) giving them lots of time and money.

In order to do this you need to come back into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Sounds simple. So what’s the problem? Equally simple. The LDS Church is untrue — a fact which every non-Mormon already knows. Like all religions, it teaches untrue things. All I ask is that a religion live up to its own hype, and this one doesn’t.

To put a finer point on it, the doctrines of the LDS Church (and every religion I’ve ever run across, which are myriad) fall into exactly three categories:

  1. Teachings that are unconfirmed by evidence, like the existence of supernatural beings, an afterlife, and so on
  2. Teachings that have been refuted by evidence, e.g. ancient Americans are Hebrews who spoke a form of Egyptian, rode horses, and smelted steel
  3. Teachings that are more or less true, but which were already known by people without any revelation being necessary. For example, Mormons are fond of claiming that the Word of Wisdom is revolutionary, especially about smoking. But the anti-tobacco movement was getting started around the 1830’s, about the same time as the temperance movement, and could have been familiar to people in that area.

(Naturally, if anyone thinks I’m wrong, and knows of a religion with doctrines that do not fit into these three categories, please mention them in comments.)

It’s especially hard for family members to deal with your deconversion. Spouses, parents, siblings — they all want you to be happy, and they’ve been told you can’t be if you’re outside the religion. My old religion pretended to be able to keep families together after death, dependent on you staying in the system. Which basically means that you’re threatened with eternal isolation if you leave. This is a despicable tactic for religions to use. If I were feeling nasty, I might call it emotional hostage-taking. It makes it impossible for family members to have emotional boundaries — they think your choices will affect them for eternity.

So it’s hard for me to feel upset with caring people who try to evangelise me. I’m just glad that, as someone who accepts rationality, I’m no longer prone to the kind of worry that they feel.

Mormons v JW’s: Thinking of the children

11 August 2009 / / 5 Comments

Now that I have a bit of time to relax, I’m going through that Pew Report again. One thing that really stood out for me is how closely Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses show the same kinds of attitudes. They both take the Bible literally, they’re just as likely to attend weekly services, they don’t like evolution or gay people, and they both feel irrationally threatened by ‘Hollywood’.

But one difference is striking: Mormons are retaining their young people, while Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t.

Mormons have a relatively high retention rate of childhood members compared with other major religious traditions. Seven-in-ten of those raised Mormon (70%) still identify as Mormon, a figure roughly comparable to that seen among those raised Catholic (68% are still Catholic) but somewhat lower than among those raised Protestant (80% are still Protestant and 52% are still in the same Protestant family). Jehovah’s Witnesses, by contrast, have a relatively low retention rate (only 37% are still Jehovah’s Witnesses).

That’s really low for the Witnesses, especially when you consider how important kids are for the growth of the movement. (Just look at the Shakers. If you can find them, that is.)

So why is there such a difference between Mormons and JW’s on this score? It can’t be because LDS youth just love church so much. Religion’s kind of a boring and depressing pain in the ass either way.

Is it the door-to-door stuff? Tracting was bad enough as a 20-year-old; it would have been infinitely worse as a teenager in my own town. With my parents.

But I don’t know if that’s it. Someone help me out here.

Mormons the most Republican religious group

27 July 2009 / / 1 Comment

In a piece of news that surprised precisely no one, the Pew Report has revealed that Mormons are the most conservative religious group in America.

More Mormons (60 percent) identify themselves as conservatives than any other religious group; they also lead every other group in GOP party identification (at 65 percent)–much higher than the general population in both categories.

Actually, I was a bit surprised. Only 65 percent Republican? Back in my Utah days, it felt like 95 percent. I’ll bet the Republican numbers are low because there’s a further 25 percent comprised of John-Birch-birther-Ron-Paul Independents who think the Republican party isn’t Constitutional enough.

Out of the remaining 10 percent, subtract the usual 8 percent Unaffiliated/Don’t Know, and you’ll have 2 percent left. That’s the elusive Liberal Mormon.

You’ll find more than a few liberal Mormons behind this effort to reconcile LDS Church leadership with gay people. As of today, it has — wow — all of 1,360 signatories. (For comparison, this is an order of magnitude less than this petition to consider Michael Jackson for a Nobel Peace Prize.)

We the undersigned, in the spirit of love and peace, earnestly seek to create a climate for reconciliation between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and gays and lesbians who have been affected by the policies, practices and politics of the Church. We recognize that issues surrounding sexuality and gender orientation are complex; that understanding of these matters has evolved, especially over the past several decades, and are continuing to evolve as scientists, therapists, theologians and others continue to explore and ponder their meaning and significance; We believe that people of good will may have differing views about homosexuality, while maintaining amicable relationships.

Lovely sentiments, a noble goal, and a complete waste of time. Why would church leadership want to reconcile with gay people? Their fiercely conservative membership is convinced they speak for god, and when god’s on your side, negotiation is impossible. Enter a dialogue with gay people, seriously? Those people want to destroy society. Oh, sure, the church will have to walk back all that homophobia someday, but that’ll be a long time from now, and Mormons will claim it was never official church policy anyway.

You have to love Mormon liberals, but you have to feel sad for them. True, they haven’t completely off-loaded their conscience onto church leadership. But that only means that their post-Dark-Ages political leanings puts them at odds with other Mormons, including church leaders, who wonder why they’re not ‘following the prophet’. So they have an uneasy relationship with a church that distrusts them for their intellectual independence.

I want to see a better relationship between the LDS Church and gay people too, but it’s not going to happen by church members politely petitioning for it. It will happen when Mormons with a conscience refuse to support the church financially or numerically with their membership.

Why sue a genie? He’ll just conjure up a really good lawyer.

15 July 2009 / / 5 Comments

Back in my Mormon days, I believed in angels. By that I mean, I believed the stories about angels visiting Joseph Smith, and I agreed that angels could probably exist in theory somewhere. If someone claimed they’d actually seen an angel, I’d have been extremely skeptical. But they were characters in scripture, which I believed, so how skeptical could I have been.

But I never believed in genies — that was just storybook stuff. (At the time I saw no contradiction.)

Imagine my surprise to find genies treated as real beings in the Qu’ran. And now it would appear that someone is trying to sue one.

A family in Saudi Arabia has taken a genie to court, alleging theft and harassment, according to local media.

The lawsuit filed in Shariah court accuses the genie of leaving them threatening voicemails, stealing their cell phones and hurling rocks at them when they leave their house at night, said Al-Watan newspaper.

Cell phones. Voice mail. I’m tempted to say that these people don’t deserve the technology that they have. And the same goes for some Christians — today I saw someone smear a woman with cooking oil in an attempt to convince a supernatural being to heal her. That these people can even use a phone is amazing to me.

Pre-deconversion, I’d have thought that suing an angel was crazy, so I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that some Muslims think that suing a genie is equally crazy. Then again, if you think that angels and genies are real beings, it makes perfect sense to sue them like anyone else. This family’s unquestioning faith in their scriptures looks like insanity. Doesn’t it?

So here’s an interesting continuum. On the one side are people who are rational, don’t believe in supernatural beings, and live in the real world. On the other side, you have people who believe in angels and genies, and may try to sue them. They’re the ones who really believe their religion, but they’re (quite frankly) nuts. Someone in the middle of the continuum, like me back then, claims to believe in those things, but doesn’t really. These people can exist in the real world, but that means they believe in their religion somewhat less. This suggests that one is insane to the extent that they believe in the unreal beings presupposed by their religion.

Civil disobedience of the nicest sort

12 July 2009 / / 3 Comments

A lovely bit of protest over in Salt Lake City. Two guys get charged with trespassing for a peck on the cheek in Temple Square. Next thing you know…

About 100 people gathered near the Mormon church’s downtown temple to stage a “kiss-in” protesting the treatment of 2 gay men who were detained by security guards on a plaza owned by the church and later cited by police for trespassing.
…
The Salt Lake Tribune reported on its Web site that heterosexual and gay couples exchanged small kisses and pecks at the plaza’s south entrance, which faces downtown. Church security was present, but the Deseret News of Salt Lake City reported on its Web site that no altercations occurred.

This takes non-violent protest to a new level — it’s anti-violent.

It’s entirely fitting that this protest is happening in Salt Lake City. The search term “men kissing” is most googled in Utah, with SLC also showing a lot of curiosity. Now they get to see some for real.

That, or hostage negotiator.

13 June 2009 / / 2 Comments

Are you thinking of going on a mission for the LDS Church? Here’s an idea of what kind of job you’ll be qualified for afterward.

Six days a week, in fair weather and foul, two-dozen door-to-door salesmen, all of whom live clustered together in an apartment complex in this suburb west of Chicago, pile into S.U.V.’s and cars and head into the big city, bent on sales of home security systems.

And on Sunday, their one day off, they drive together to the nearest house of worship of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The salesmen are mostly former Mormon missionaries from Utah who cut their teeth — and learned their people-skill chops — cold-calling for their faith. In Chicago and in its suburbs where their employer, Pinnacle Security of Orem, Utah, has shipped them for the summer sales season, they are doing much the same thing, but as a job.

“It’s missionary work turned into a business,” said Cameron Treu, 30, who served his mission in Chile and was recruited into D2D (that is door-to-door in sales lingo) by another former missionary.

After the mish, I never wanted to tract again. Imagine going from that to sales. At least as a missionary, I had someone else to talk to.

However, it was during the mission that I realised I liked teaching, so maybe that was one positive. There would have been better ways to go about it, though, like getting into my program and teaching as a tutor or something. An LDS mission makes a lousy gap year. Or two.

Spell check madness at the Daily Looniverse

8 April 2009 / / 3 Comments

Can anyone at BYU score me a copy of the Daily Universe from a couple of days ago?

Thousands of issues of Brigham Young University’s student newspaper were pulled from newsstands because a front-page photo caption misidentified leaders of the Mormon church as apostates instead of apostles.

An apostate is a person who has abandoned religious faith, principles or a cause.

The photo in The Daily Universe on Monday was of members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a governing body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at the weekend general conference.

The caption called the group the “Quorum of the Twelve Apostates.” The mistake happened when a copy editor ran a computer spell check and apostate was suggested as the replacement for a misspelling of apostle.

Make sure you follow the Apostates. A message from the Crotch of Jesus Thrust in Leather-gay Pants.

Getting better

1 April 2009 / / 2 Comments






Lucky for me I was living in a country where medicine is easily available. If I were living somewhere else, I could have died. Donate to Médecins Sans Frontières so sick people can have access to medicine they need.

What’s the point?

18 March 2009 / / 10 Comments

During one of those browser free-association moments, I found myself staring at the Mormon.org website. That’s the focus for their proselyting efforts on the Web.

Here’s something that really curdled my cream.

What’s the Point of Having a Family If It All Ends at Death?

I wanted to have a family but wondered what would be the point of having one, if it all ended at death.

I wanted a sandwich, but wondered, “What’s the point of having a sandwich if it’s just going to end when I’ve eaten the sandwich?”

This is something I’ve heard from a number of believers: if life doesn’t go on forever, then life is just some cosmic joke with no purpose.

I harbour no illusions that my family relations will last forever, since no one’s ever provided evidence of a world beyond. Nevertheless, I see a great deal of point in having a family. I get to have good people in my life. I get to raise a couple of good men for the next generation of humankind. We have good talks. My beloved and I get to live together happily, right now. That’s worth something, even if it doesn’t last forever.

Life is cool. There’s so much to enjoy: get-togethers with people we love, good food, books, music. And sadness and frustration. A whole universe of wonder and discovery. And for this creep to sit there and say ‘What’s the point?’ is a kind of petulance bordering on ingratitude.

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