Category: Doctrine

  • I’m offended, I want to sin and I’m happy to admit it.

    I’m offended, I want to sin and I’m happy to admit it.

    I’m offend­ed: that LDS Inc. is more LDS Inc. than church. by racism by homo­pho­bia by misog­y­ny by sex­ism that’s harm­ful to both men and women by sex­u­al perversion that my son was taught to be a lit­er­al arm and head-chop­ping war­rior for a sup­pos­ed­ly all pow­er­ful being that JS, a wom­an­iz­er,…

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  • Unexpected Results

    Unexpected Results

    Three weeks ago, I was a true believ­er. I was­n’t the best at church atten­dance, but I would look for­ward to the days I could go and I would sit, rapt and eager, lis­ten­ing to the lessons and talks. I read the scrip­tures. I have a large library of Nib­ley,…

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  • Top Ten Quotes from the “Boise Rescue” Fireside

    Top Ten Quotes from the “Boise Rescue” Fireside

    On June 13th, Apos­tle Oaks and His­to­ri­an Tur­ley gave a fire­side at my stake in Ida­ho “to answer some faith­ful ques­tions and to min­is­ter to some dis­abling doubts.” In this fire­side, the cou­ple respond­ed to sev­er­al ques­tions that are most rel­e­vant to those that agree with Den­ver Snuffer and Rock…

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  • Response to “How Does Gay Marriage Hurt Us? Here’s How”

    Response to “How Does Gay Marriage Hurt Us? Here’s How”

    I have seen sev­er­al friends post the arti­cle “How Does Gay Mar­riage Hurt Us? Here’s How.” and found it ter­ri­bly lack­ing. Here are the key points it makes and some of my thoughts on these. “How does our mar­riage hurt you?” they ask. Well, I can think of one sig­nif­i­cant way…

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  • Going Clear correlaries to LDS teachings

    Going Clear correlaries to LDS teachings

    This last week­end I watched the doc­u­men­tary Going Clear. I have heard and read some about Sci­en­tol­ogy before the doc­u­men­tary, and so I knew to expect there to be some strong sim­i­lar­i­ties between Sci­en­tol­ogy and Mor­monism. I rec­om­mend every­one, faith­ful or not, see the doc­u­men­tary. It does a great job…

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  • Carson Calderwood’s Leave And Leave It Alone

    Carson Calderwood’s Leave And Leave It Alone

    I’ve been fol­low­ing Car­son Calder­wood’s sto­ry from a dis­tance, and I find it to be such a sad exam­ple of the Church push­ing out peo­ple who are try­ing hard to con­tribute in a pos­i­tive way. I rec­om­mend all go and lis­ten to the Mor­mon Sto­ries episodes with Car­son and Maris­sa,…

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  • Our Questions Aren’t the Problem

    Our Questions Aren’t the Problem

    It seems like every few weeks we hear about some­one being called to a dis­ci­pli­nary court for apos­ta­sy for dar­ing to speak out about their unbe­lief. Usu­al­ly, the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is that pub­licly ques­tion­ing the church’s teach­ings caus­es oth­ers to lose faith and to doubt, thus we are lead­ing peo­ple out of…

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  • D&C 132, polygamy and Harold B. Lee

    D&C 132, polygamy and Harold B. Lee

    Post­ed: 11 April 2015 Updat­ed: 9 May 15 (plus postscript) Harold B. Lee The recent Mor­mon Sto­ries Pod­cast inter­views of Kirk and Lind­say Van Allen by Gina Colvin and John Dehlin evoked my mem­o­ry of encoun­ter­ing Harold B. Lee in Sep­tem­ber 1965 regard­ing “The Prin­ci­ple”. When “Steven in Mil­creek” respond­ed to my…

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  • Leaving

    Leaving

    Writ­ten in Jan­u­ary, 2012: In Decem­ber of 2011, my hus­band, Justin, and I respect­ful­ly resigned from our call­ings and stopped going to church. It’s been a long, tir­ing, enlight­en­ing process. I’ll start with the day that real­ly got us going down this path. It was a Sun­day in May or June of…

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  • About The Author

    About The Author

    On a per­son­al lev­el, my life has been an ongo­ing search for the Truth. It has been the pri­ma­ry moti­va­tion­al force in my life, along with my love for my fam­i­ly. That search led me into the Church many years ago, and ulti­mate­ly it led me out. My heart is…

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  • Final Thoughts — Potential Harm

    Final Thoughts — Potential Harm

    Sev­er­al years back, I was dis­cussing some of these mat­ters with one of my daugh­ters, and she posed this ques­tion to me: Let’s just say you’re right, and that the Church’s claims aren’t true. What is the harm in stay­ing in it, and being involved with it? We’re hap­py, we’re…

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  • Examination Summary

    Examination Summary

    My intent here was to approach the Church’s claims about itself, its his­to­ry, and its mis­sion, from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, rather than rely­ing on a sin­gle dimen­sion. The con­clu­sion seems inescapable: the Church is not what it claims to be, and the claims that it makes are demon­stra­bly false. And…

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