Another good question about exmos?

Why are so many young people leaving the church these days? At first it seems like a simple question, but if you think about it, it's not. the question started on the LDS blogs, but they didn't have the stomach to see it through to the end, so, naturally, we've picked up the slack at Main Street Plaza. :D

How I became an atheist

I've told the story of my deconversion from Mormonism here, here, and here, but I haven't quite explained yet how I got from there to atheism.

Before my deconversion, I'd already identified atheism as the main alternate possibility (as explained here: If the church weren't true I'd be an atheist, and other things I learned in seminary). Either the church is true or it isn't. Either the spiritual witness is right or it isn't. Since -- if we wipe away what we learned from the spirit -- what's left?

But I was plagued by self-doubt.

Mormonism had convinced me that spiritual witness was valid as evidence for deciding questions about the way the real-world universe functions. So I put a massive amount of heart and effort and prayer into trying to receive that spiritual witness. And several times I managed to generate an emotional/spiritual experience that I hoped was God talking to me.

But "the spirit" always felt sickly and off. Despite what I wrote in my journal about it, I never fully convinced myself that my spiritual experiences weren't wishful thinking and all in my head. That was why I continued to pray fervently for the "testimony" I didn't have, right up to the day of my deconversion epiphany.

But my doubts about my own spiritual experiences didn't extend to doubts about the reality of other people's spiritual experiences. I though my own were possibly just in my head, but I assumed that it was just because I was unworthy to have real spiritual experiences. I believed that other (more righteous) people were receiving actual communication from God.

That was why it threw me for such a loop when I heard from some faithful Mormons say that people in other religions had spiritual experiences similar to those Mormons have (see my deconversion, part 3). My belief in God was ultimately built on the bedrock of believing trusted friends and family when they said they'd talked to Him. When the same trusted individuals admitted that Mormons didn't necessarily have a monopoly on spiritual witness, I hardly knew what to think.

Then, when I had my grand epiphany that the claims of Mormonism are false, I didn't entirely stop believing in other people's spiritual claims. I merely determined that spiritual witness couldn't be used to answer real-world questions or questions about the nature of God. I immediately saw the parallels among all of the myths and miracles claimed by all of mankind's religions, and concluded that all of these details were inventions by people wishing to explain their experiences with the divine.

Thus I became a Deist. I believed that God or gods exist and created the universe and care about people (enough to commune with them), but that the divine powers don't actually intervene or explain anything specific to anyone. That's where I was at when I entered BYU as a freshman.

Sometime during my first year at BYU, I attended a devotional. My ward had invited one of the BYU religion professors to tell us the story of his conversion to Mormonism. He told an amazingly moving story that -- as far as I could tell -- touched everyone in the room, including me. That was the spirit for sure. Since I'd participated in the same spiritual experience with others whose spirituality wasn't in question, I concluded that that must be the real thing, if anything is. I took the experience as evidence of God's love and of the fact that God can communicate through Mormonism just as through any other religion.

But weirdly it was the beginning of the end. As long as I wasn't sure I'd ever received any spiritual witness, I didn't feel qualified to criticize that type of evidence. But once I had some spiritual evidence of my own, I had something concrete to question. And as soon as I started putting some weight on my evidence -- to rely on it for my belief -- the doubts started to squeeze out. That guy is a talented speaker. He's probably given that same devotional hundreds of times. He knows how to tell his story in such a way that it generates an emotional response in his audience. No supernatural explanation required...

Around the same time, someone had posted a cartoon on a door leading to some offices inside the BYU library. I passed the cartoon all the time because the door was along one of the main stairways leading to some of the lower floors of the library. The cartoon was of a stern-looking man (dressed as a scholar) walking down a staircase. I don't remember exactly what was written on the upper few steps -- I think it was a series of things like questioning the literal inerrancy of the Bible -- but I remember what was written on the last three steps: Deism, Agnosticism, Atheism.

I was annoyed by this cartoon because I felt like it was just an attempt to scare people away from doubting or interpreting the slightest thing for themselves. It looked like an obvious swipe against the "liberal" and "Sunstone" Mormons (today's "middle way" people). I thought "Oh, please!! Just because you don't buy the whole enchilada doesn't mean you're on the road to **shudder** atheism."

But the more I passed that cartoon -- and the more I thought about it -- the more I thought, "Well, actually... Maybe this path does lead to atheism..."

I didn't really have a moment of epiphany the way I did with my deconversion from Mormonism. I just gradually started calling myself an agnostic when I wasn't sure anymore. Meanwhile, the evidence for God's existence started looking weaker and weaker.

Then one day I was explaining to an atheist friend (probably my brother) about how I'm an agnostic because I don't claim to have a proof that God doesn't exist.

He then asked me "But which do you think it is? God exists or God doesn't exist?"

Without hesitation I said "I think God doesn't exist."

He laughed and said, "Then you're an atheist! Admit it!"

I thought about it a second and said, "You're right, I'm an atheist."

And I've been an atheist ever since.

My deconversion, part 3: the tipping point.

disclaimer: I will be recounting my own experiences in a direct and straight-forward manner. None of this is intended as disrespectful to those who believe differently, it is merely a statement of my personal conclusions and how I reached them.

Continued from here and here.

I was seventeen years old, a senior in high school. My beloved older brother was off on his freshman year at BYU, having a similar epiphany of his own.

In the back of my mind I was aware that in terms of physical evidence, the case for Mormonism looked pretty grim. But it didn't matter because the physical evidence was trumped by the spiritual evidence, namely the spiritual confirmation that the church is right and true.

I knew plenty of very intelligent people who knew more than I did about Mormon history, doctrine, evidence, and "issues," and their testimonies were none the worse for it.

On the other hand, I'd never known any believing Mormon to look at the evidence and be swayed by it to the point of leaving the church. I didn't even know any of those bitter, angry "anti-Mormons" who are so easily dismissed by the faithful. Like I said, it was a different time...

The only ex-Mormon I remember having met before I became one myself was one of my debate coaches. (I was in debate for about a year, around ninth and tenth grade, and wasn't terribly good at it...)

My exmo debate coach Tim didn't try to deconvert me. On one debate trip, when he heard I was Mormon, he kind of tried to use it as a point of common interest, to make a connection with me. (Remember this was in Minnesota where Mormonism is rare.) He told me he was raised Mormon, and said "I think I know who the current prophet is -- it's Ezra Taft Benson, right?" I said "Yeah," and was thinking What do you care who's the prophet if you don't believe in the church? He never mentioned religion again after that.

Tim was a nice guy, but I had never known him as a Mormon so I didn't know what his story was. I really never knew him that well, so I felt like he didn't influence me all that much. Yet I remember that tiny exchange to this day, so maybe he did...

But when it comes right down to it, every religion has to explain why different times and places all have completely different religions. The usual explanation is "We're right, they're wrong. But we'll save them by teaching them the truth." That's definitely the approach Mormonsim takes.

Although I found it pretty odd when learning about ancient mythology that God would have given the truth to the Hebrews and to the Americas and no one else, I couldn't bring myself to believe the other popular explanation: that all religions are different ways of communing with the same God. If God tells one set of people that he has the head of an elephant and they'll be reincarnated in better forms for not eating meat and then tells another group that the unique way to avoid being cast into a fiery pit of hell is to believe that Jesus died for their sins, then, well, God is a pretty schizophrenic guy...

Naturally I believed that since Mormonism was the only true church, non-Mormons all know -- deep down -- that they're still seeking and haven't found the truth yet. Why would a loving God tell them anything else? The fact that all of the various flavors of mainstream Christianity accept each other as part of the same "body of Christ" confirmed this view -- if the Presbyterians believed that one could be saved as a Baptist, and vice-versa, then they seemed to be acknowledging that they knew neither one had any ultimate truth that was vital to salvation.

So when I heard Mormons admitting that people in religions other than Mormonism had spiritual experiences like Mormons, it seemed very wrong. There was no reason that Heavenly Father would be in the business of confirming anything other than the truth instead of prompting people to get out and seek the truth.

That's the place where I was at when I started up a theological correspondence with my best friend in high school, a devout Lutheran named Kim. The whole thing was in the form of notes exchanged in a spiral notebook, consisting of a rather rudimentary "We believe this," followed by "Oh, really? We believe this other thing..."

The thing that struck me was that these random absurdities about the trinity and whatnot -- it was clear that she believed them as fervently as any Mormon believes in Mormon doctrine. She wasn't seeking and wasn't unsure as those who don't have the truth ought to be. She believed the stories her parents taught her with all her heart.

And her parents' stories and my parents' stories couldn't both be right.

That was what made me ask myself "Why do I believe what I believe?"

I remember my moment of epiphany. It hit me that I'd been taught from the cradle by loving parents that the sky is blue, one plus one is two, and Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. It was for that reason that I believed in my religion, not because of any evidence.

And that was it. That moment was the end of my belief in Mormonism.

And though I hung on to a vague non-denominational theism for a few years after that, I dismissed Jesus' miraculous claims within seconds of rejecting Joseph Smith's.

My fictional version of this scene (in my novel Exmormon) captures pretty well the thoughts that went through my head on that day. The main difference was that in the fictionalization, the primary catalyst was meeting a desirable exmo/apostate guy whom the main character later gets to have passionate sex with. In real life that did not happen. That's just what I wished would have happened. That would have been cool. In real life, the catalyst was just that discussion with a fellow nerdy girl.

However, in real life I did have a few non-member boyfriends at the time that I was in the process of trying to hustle into the bedroom as quickly as I could, with varying degrees of success. So if you'd like to tell yourself that my epiphany was motivated by my ferocious teenage hormones that wanted an open field to "sin," go ahead.

In reality, if anything my horniness slowed my epiphany because I believed -- as I was taught -- that Satan was using my "weakness" to keep me from righteousness and a real testimony. That Heavenly Father's failure to to give any sort of evidence of His existence was my fault, not His.

My deconversion, part 2: the evidence

disclaimer: I will be recounting my own experiences in a direct and straight-forward manner. None of this is intended as disrespectful to those who believe differently, it is merely a statement of my personal conclusions and how I reached them.

Continued from this post.

The last straw that pushed me out of Mormonism was the question of whether this religion -- or any other -- could have the true and final word on the nature of God and the afterlife.

Before getting there, however, there were a few glaring sign-posts along the road. The first one was the evidence -- or lack thereof -- for the Book of Mormon.

Where did the Native Americans come from?

I knew that the "true" answer was written by Nephi and Moroni and all the rest in the pages of the Book of Mormon. I also knew that no one -- outside of Mormonism -- proposed that the Native Americans had arrived by boat from the Middle East.

I remember sitting in American History class -- probably in the seventh grade -- watching a film showing how the Americas were populated by migrations across a land bridge from Asia.

I thought to myself If only they knew the truth. If only they had the idea to look for evidence that these people arrived by boat, they would find it.

Another part of me said These researchers promoting these theories of Native American origins -- they aren't bitter anti-Mormons out to destroy the church. The church probably doesn't even show up on their radar. They say the Native Americans migrated on foot from Asia because they dug up evidence out of the ground and that's the conclusion it pointed to. If the same types of researchers used the same types of evidence to piece together the history of some unknown tribe in Africa or an island somewhere, I would believe them.

But some incompetent and mistaken archaeologists and anthropologists weren't sufficient to dissuade me from the truth.

Worse was later when I heard from some Mormons who were all excited about the research of Thor Heyerdahl and how it was such a boon to proving the Book of Mormon right. I pressed for details and found that he had constructed a boat using ancient techniques and had sailed it across the Atlantic. So he had shown that Nephi and Lehi's journey was not physically impossible. Do we have any evidence that it actually happened? No.

I was left forcing out of my mind the obvious question: That's the best you can do?

The point that was the most painful for me to try to rationalize was later -- when I was about fifteen or sixteen -- and I heard my parents talking about the Book of Abraham.

Like any good Mormon kid, I knew that Joseph Smith had translated some ancient Egyptian documents, found with a mummy, and that they had turned out to be a record written by Abraham of his time in Egypt. I had also learned that the original papyrus was lost, and was thought to have been destroyed in the great Chicago fire.

This story made perfect sense from a Mormon perspective. Like the golden plates that were taken back into heaven after Joseph Smith translated them, and like the Nauvoo Temple that was destroyed by fire after the Saints left for the promised land in the Salt Lake Valley, the Lord took Abraham's writings back once their purpose was fulfilled.

Then one day I heard my parents say that this story wasn't true, and that, in fact, the Book of Abraham papyrus had been found, and was in the possession of the church!!! Not only that, it had been in the possession of the church since before I was born!!!

This was very upsetting. I couldn't see why I would ever have been told this "Chicago fire" story unless... Unless the existence of the original was something that we needed to avoid talking about. The nail in the coffin was when I learned the rationalization in the very same conversation: "Maybe Joseph Smith didn't really translate the papyrus, maybe the papyrus inspired him to receive the Book of Abraham text as a revelation."

This was a terrible blow, to learn that the physical evidence had been hidden away as a shameful thing and to hear an upsetting hint as to why.

I know that today's modern, Internet-savvy Mormons all already know that the papyrus is in the possession of the church and that no scholar -- Mormon or otherwise -- claims that it is anything other than ordinary Egyptian funeral documents that have nothing to do with the Biblical patriarch Abraham nor are even remotely from the right time period to have been written by him. So one might claim that it was my own foolish ignorance or lack of study that led to me to be shocked by this information. I suppose that nowadays they're saying that they never really claimed that Joseph Smith literally translated a record that Abraham himself had written "by his own hand upon papyrus" and that information about it was never obscured or hidden away. But that's not what it was like back in the 1980's. People just didn't talk about such "deep doctrines."

For a teenager, I was actually relatively well-informed about the "meat" of Mormonism (as in "milk before meat"). I knew about polygamy and "celestial polygamy" (the fact that Mormons believe that there is polygamy in the afterlife even if polygamy is not currently practiced by the church).

I had learned in seminary about the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the "Vilate Kimball test of faith" story. That's the one where Joseph Smith has a revelation that he is to take Heber C. Kimball's wife Vilate as one of his own plural wives, Heber and Vilate are terribly distraught but finally agree because it's the will of God, and then Joseph Smith says that God was just testing their faith, and that in fact God would be okay with Heber keeping Vilate as long as they give Joseph their fourteen-year-old daughter Helen in her place...

For both of those stories, I remember thinking "Hmmm, that's pretty weird."

But as disturbing as those stories were, neither one struck at the root of my faith like the question of whether Joseph Smith really had the ability to miraculously translate ancient records.

to be continued...

My deconversion, part 1: background

disclaimer: I will be recounting my own experiences in a direct and straight-forward manner. None of this is intended as disrespectful to those who believe differently, it is merely a statement of my personal conclusions and how I reached them.

Ironically, growing up Mormon taught me to value non-conformity. This is ironic because Mormons are famed for lockstep conformity in action, dress, and thought.

But training Mormon kids to be like other Mormons necessarily requires training them to be unlike everyone else. And when you live in an area where Mormons are few and far between -- like Minnesota, where I grew up -- that means being unlike just about everybody.

As a kid, with or without Mormonism, there was no way I was going to fit in easily with other kids my age. I was a shy, socially awkward, late-bloomer-tomboy-bookworm, living in my own imaginary world, as likely to be talking to myself as to be talking to other people.

I was kind of a classic nerd, so Mormonism's "hip to be square" attitude fit my personality. There's a current in LDS culture that values tastes that outsiders might consider nerdy such as adults having fun by dressing up and doing silly skits for talent nights and Road Shows, or or teens and college students picking Disney movies as their favorite movies. This sort of fun nerdiness was something I could relate to, and I liked being part of a culture that said to me: "Every schmo tries to be cool by following the crowd. It takes guts to ignore the direction the crowd is going -- it's beyond cool."

"Beyond cool" was great for me because "cool"... Well, there was no way that was going to happen.

On the other hand, I never fit well into the role Mormonism had picked out for me (and for every other girl on the planet). I believed wholeheartedly that the LDS church was God's one true church, and -- motivated by the "how long will you be dead compared to how long you're alive?" argument -- I tried the best I could to "live the gospel." But my "question authority!" streak was too deep for me to fit neatly into God's divine, immovable hierarchy.

I'm not sure if my parents taught me skepticism or if it was just some sort of natural rebelliousness -- probably a combination of both -- but it limited my ability to be satisfied by learning from the examples of others rather than setting out to learn from my own experiences. So a lot of the time I was a sweet, righteous little Molly, and on the side I was testing the rules and boundaries with a vengeance.

The role of women was a big sticking point for me. But while the church taught me that a woman's divine role is to be a wife and mother period, my parents taught me something slightly different. They taught me in essence that of course your children come first -- especially when they're small -- but there's no reason that should stop you from being whatever else you want to be and from from following every dream. My mom was essentially a feminist at heart, and she had reconciled her faith with her feminist leanings in this way. Similarly, her example showed me how to deal with other church or doctrinal problems without immediately scrutinizing the church or gospel itself.

My mom falls into the category of what I would consider "Mormon intellectuals" even though she subscribed to Sunstone for only a very short time while we were growing up.

From my perspective, Mormon intellectuals are the following set of people: Their unquestionable axiom number one is that the church is true. They're educated and aware enough to know that the church has some pretty serious "issues" and intelligent enough to have the ability to warp the very fabric of time and space around the gospel so that any piece of seemingly contradictory real-world evidence can be reconciled with axiom number one.

Fixing reality to fit "the truth" is not an impossible task. Here's a simple illustration of how it works (not invented by Mormons, but this is an example of the sort of thing I'm talking about):

2 Chronicles 4:2
Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.

So the diameter of the circle is 10 cubits and its circumference is 30 cubits. Even if it's an approximation, why not say 31 cubits? Or 31-and-a-half?

The simplest explanation is that the passage is in error because whoever wrote this verse didn't know that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle is pi, which is not three.

I've heard people interpret this verse as indicating that the circumference was measured from the inside of the basin and that the diameter was measured all the way to the outside edge of the brim, and thus the passage cleverly gave thickness of the wall of the basin. There is nothing in the passage to suggest this interpretation except for one's prior knowledge that the Bible is not wrong.

By similar reasoning -- and granting that the Devil and his angels are doing everything in their power to destroy the church -- anything at all can be reconciled with the axiom that the church is true. Everything has an explanation. I learned many of the familiar ones, and learned to come up with them myself.

For a time.


to be continued...

Stories of leaving Mormonism

Noell (Agnostic Mom) has been posting a fascinating account of her journey out of Mormonism:

Leaving The Church Part 1
Leaving The Church Part 2
Leaving The Church Part 3
Leaving The Church Part 4

The thing that is most interesting to me is to see how different her path was from mine, despite some common elements. I've seen so much diversity in the experiences (and also in the personalities and temperaments) of the people I've met through RfM, exmo-social, and now Outer Blogness.

I think Domokun summed it up best in this post Looking Beyond the Mark:

I do know some apostates who were ultra-orthodox believing members. I also know many so-called "Liahona" mormons who became full-fledged apostates. There are jack-mormons who live heathen lifestyles who now no longer believe. There is an entire spectrum of belief and practice of those who finally come to the conclusion that the church is not for them, for whatever reason. In short, I think that the demographic of apostate mormons is orthogonal to orthodoxy in belief or practice.

Agnostic Mom's story inspired Tom Clark to post his story too: Born In The Cove.... (Tom is the same "TLC" who was a popular character on RfM and exmo-social, and who runs the Gay Mormon Stories site -- required reading for anyone who wants to understand the experiences of growing up gay and Mormon.)

Then these stories inspired JLO to post his deconversion story.

Plus I plan to post my own deconversion story as well in the coming weeks...

my excommunication

A lot of times people ask me why I haven't sent in my letter to resign from the LDS church. The main reason is they're not bothering me.

Plus, if fourteen years of non-participation on my part isn't sufficient for them to take a hint on their own and stop considering me a member, then all I can say to them is "Whatever, dude."

The other reason is that -- as entertaining as it must be to correspond with Greg Dodge's office -- I can't help but feel like it would be just that much funnier if they excommunicated me.

I can see it now...

*** screen goes all wavy as we cut to the imagination sequence ***

Judge of Love: Chanson, do you swear to be completely honest and truthful with this court?

chanson: I swear to be as truthful as Joseph Smith himself!!!

JoL: Is it true -- as you have posted to the Internet many times -- that you had sex in the library at BYU?

chanson: Duh, obviously. And if you guys are so interested in sex stories, there are plenty more where that one came from!!! Next question.

JoL: Is it true that you were already a closet non-believer when you started attending BYU?

chanson: Yes.

JoL: Yet you attended BYU and even graduated. Does this mean you lied on your ecclesiastical endorsement interviews?

chanson: That would be a logical conclusion, given the evidence.

JoL: But did you? Yes or no?

chanson: Funny story -- during each interview, an angel appeared and told the bishop I had been called to do an important work of writing racy stories involving BYU students, and hence the bish needed to sign my form without asking me any touchy questions. I remember thinking this was pretty cool but wondering why my patriarichal blessing said nothing about this calling if it was important enough for an angel to intervene. But, y'know, those patriarichal blessings are really hit-or-miss sometimes....

JoL: Is that a joke? Are you trying to be funny?

chanson: What do you mean? Are you saying that stories of angelic visitations are a priori absurd? I thought Mormons believed in angelic visitations...

JoL: We do, it's just that the now that the true gospel hierarchy has been restored, the Lord would have sent His message as a prompting to a priesthood holder with authority over you rather than sending an angel to appear to you in person.

chanson: Really? That's not what the angel told me. Maybe you can take it up with him. His name was Nephi.... No wait, Moroni.....


This was posted to Exmo-Social and RfM in July of 2005.

The Mishies and Me: The Rest of the Story

I posted yesterday's story to the Internet Infidels discussion boards here, and one of the regulars asked for more details about the conversation. So I wrote up the rest of the story over there, and I am reposting it for your convenience right here:

As I always do when talking with LDS missionaries, I started by asking them where they're from and what they think of France. I also like to ask them how they're coming along on learning French and what sorts of things they're studying to learn French.

Some missionaries have lots of interesting things to say on these subjects, but this particular pair was very intent on steering the conversation back to religion. Particularly the senior companion. It may have been partially because there was a another guy along to chaperone them, but I doubt it since the other guy didn't seeem even remotely interested in our conversation -- he just played with my two-year-old Leo.

So the missionaries asked me what religion my husband and I were, I told them the my husband is a former Catholic and I am a former Mormon.

Mishies: But you still believe in God, right?

Me (big smile :D ): No. I am an atheist.

This seemed to surprise them just a tiny bit but not very much. I imagine they run into atheists all the time here in France.

Inevitably, they asked me why I stopped believing. I gave them some variant on my usual response, which is the following: "Look, I don't want to debate you on this. I've looked at the questions of god existing and the Book of Mormon being true and all that, and for me the evidence just isn't there. But I assume you've already heard all of the same arguments, so it's pointless for me to repeat them to you. I understand that these are hard questions, so it doesn't bother me if other people come up with a different solution than mine."

So they told me a story about how they had had doubts as well when they were younger, and the one was telling me about how his father encouraged him to doubt and question. I agreed with him that it's important to seriously analyze and question your beliefs. I told them that for that reason I was making a point to see to it my sons would be exposed to different religions so they could make informed decisions about the subject.

When they asked me if I had read the Book of Mormon, I told them that I had a degree from BYU (where two semesters of Book of Mormon class are required for graduation), plus that I was a believing Mormon until I was seventeen years old and graduated from seminary, etc.

They then started talking about how it's very common for people to grow up Mormon and just go along with what everybody else says and never really study it out for themselves. Obviously they followed up by asking me if I'd prayed about it.

Still friendly but firm, I replied "Of course I read the Book of Mormon. Of course I prayed about it."

I'm not sure this really impressed them since they were probably just thinking I must have done it wrong if I got the wrong answer!!! LOL

But seriously, I think it is beneficial for them to see an example of a nice, normal person who took the "challenge" they're pitching and didn't get the result that is supposed to always work...

Of course the senior comp countered by bearing his testimony and telling me that the spiritual experiences he'd had were so powerful that they couldn't possibly have just come from his own mind. I just smiled and said "okay." Really, this whole testimony-bearing thing is always to be expected. I usually just say something like "I know you believe in it, otherwise you wouldn't be here doing this, right?"

So they wrapped up by asking if they could do any service for us. The junior comp mentioned that one of their jobs is to do services (odd jobs, I guess) for the members.

I asked "Oh, you guys can put this visit down as 'fellowshipping an inactive', right?"

This seemed to annoy the senior comp, who said "It's not about the numbers."

Me: Yeah, but you guys have to turn in weekly stats, right?

Of course the senior comp confirmed that they do, but that it's just to make sure they're always improving. So I said I was sorry to have accidentally cynically suggested that they are obligated to focus on getting numbers for their weekly stats.

Then I told them I'd be sure to call if I needed anything, and said it was really nice meeting them, and wished them luck on their missions.

"If the church weren't true, I'd be an atheist" and other things I learned in seminary....

When I was a senior in high school, our early-morning seminary class was taught by three divorced ladies all living in one house with all their respecitve kids: Sister Intellectual, Sister Mystic, and Sister Homemaker [not their real names as you might guess... ;-) ]

I related best to Sister Intellectual.

One morning I awoke from my usual early-morning-seminary stupor to find that Sister Intellectual was talking about the lack of unbiased historical evidence for the existence of Jesus.

I remember vividly hearing her say "Good old Jospehus!" She explained how she had had a period of doubt, and the testimony of (non-Christian) Josephus served as evidence that Jesus lived and was the Christ, and that from there the first vision, the three witnesses, and all the rest fell into place, and if not for that she would doubt the whole thing.

(Note that I'm pretty sure she was talking about a passage that is commonly believed to be a forgery...)

Many Christians will find this ludicrously ironic that she felt that the weak spot in Mormonism was the evidence for the existence of Jesus, but I could see her point.

So as usual I took my best church friend to school (she was a sophomore, but was the only other LDS girl in my whole high school), and as usual we went to pick up my best friend who was a senior like me but was a devout Lutheran.

My LDS friend and I talked about what we had heard, and we agreed without hesitation that if the church were not true, the most logical alternative would be atheism.

The hilarious thing was that I was actually surprised that my Lutheran friend was annoyed at us for suggesting such a thing... lol

Of course at this point I was mere months (or perhaps even weeks or days) away from the epiphany of a lifetime......


Posted to RfM January 9, 2006.