Category: Questioning

  • Riding the Wake of 60 Years of the Good Ship Zion

    Riding the Wake of 60 Years of the Good Ship Zion

    It’s Christ­mas­time 2015. I’m 61 years old, a lov­ing hus­band, father of four, grand­fa­ther of nine and — eight months into the Post-Mor­mon por­tion of my life. The past two years of tran­si­tion have been painful, ter­ri­fy­ing, embar­rass­ing, dis­ori­ent­ing but ulti­mate­ly liberating. I am an active, faith­ful, life­time mem­ber of the…

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  • An Evening with Zhenya

    An Evening with Zhenya

    For the LDS Ven­tu­ra Cal­i­for­nia stake Relief Soci­ety on 17 March 1992 In com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 150th anniver­sary of the Relief Society Writ­ten and per­formed by Eugene Kovalenko - Lis­ten to the record­ing of the event using the play but­ton below - https://​mor​mon​band​wag​on​.com/​w​p​-​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​u​p​l​o​a​d​s​/​m​p​3​/​A​n​E​v​e​n​i​n​g​w​i​t​h​Z​h​e​n​ya.mp3 Program notes for: A journey home to Liahonagrad In song, verse, and story [2015…

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  • FairMormon Inadvertently Discredits First Vision Accounts

    FairMormon Inadvertently Discredits First Vision Accounts

    A com­mon obser­va­tion of Mor­mon apolo­get­ics, and Fair­Mor­mon in par­tic­u­lar, is that their expla­na­tions are rarely inter­nal­ly con­sis­tent. The expla­na­tion for one issue con­tra­dicts or con­flicts with the expla­na­tion for anoth­er issue. Some­times, it does­n’t mat­ter much that they con­tra­dict each oth­er. Oth­er times, they real­ly do dam­age to their arguments. One case…

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  • Born to apostatize

    Born to apostatize

    From a very ear­ly time, every­one in our ward knew I was going to hell. I tried to live up to the teach­ings of the church, but peo­ple could just look at me and see I was a born apos­tate. It must have been my sense of humor. For years I thought…

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  • Bogus Justifications Behind Church’s New Policies

    Bogus Justifications Behind Church’s New Policies

    The LDS Church released changes to its Hand­book on Novem­ber 5, 2015 in rela­tion to same-sex cou­ples and chil­dren raised by same-sex cou­ples. Specif­i­cal­ly, the Church now pro­hibits chil­dren of same-sex cou­ples from being bap­tized until they are 18 – and only if they move out of their par­ents’ homes, dis­avow…

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  • What it’s Like to Leave…

    What it’s Like to Leave…

    Brown patch­es in the lawn. Gar­den weeds. Melt­ed bub­ble gum strings draped across my black car bumper. The nag­ging sting of a sun­burn on my shoul­ders. Chil­dren shriek­ing at the cold water erupt­ing from a sprin­kler placed strate­gi­cal­ly beneath a tram­po­line. Proof that life has moved on. Proof that a…

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  • Leaving the Church, Part 13 — Testimony, Truth, and the Holy Ghost

    Leaving the Church, Part 13 — Testimony, Truth, and the Holy Ghost

    1. Back­ground: Despite my doubts and con­cerns about var­i­ous aspects of LDS doc­trine and his­to­ry, I remained in the Church for sev­er­al years due to the spir­i­tu­al and uplift­ing expe­ri­ences I enjoyed as a mem­ber. But those spir­i­tu­al feel­ings and emo­tions have also been a mat­ter of study and inspection.…

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  • Leaving the Church: A Compilation of the Evidence Against the LDS Church

    Leaving the Church: A Compilation of the Evidence Against the LDS Church

    I hope those of you who read this document do not get the wrong idea: I am not leaving the Church out of anger, sin, or laziness. I am not leaving due to anti-Mormon literature or to pursue different lifestyle choices. And I am not leaving in hopes of bringing…

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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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  • 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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  • 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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  • Epistemological Considerations

    Epistemological Considerations

    (or how do we know what we think we know) I am by no means a Philoso­pher, but I think it is cru­cial to address this top­ic here. It can get quite com­pli­cat­ed, and peo­ple have spent life­times, writ­ten dis­ser­ta­tions and count­less books on this sub­ject. But basi­cal­ly, what is need­ed…

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