NOM

What is more important than a large steeple?

The outlandish BS is used as cover to implement evil.

They apply real solutions to fake problems. And apply fake solutions to the real problems.

Mine was a BYU married student ward. In the single BYU student wards there were fewer over-zealous people, but in the married ward I was in it felt like a continuation of missionary life. Lot's of judgement and pressure from all sides. I was in the elder's quorum presidency and the pres was ...

**[Final Chorus]** *(big finish, heavy riffing)* Fetchin' in the name of! Fetchin’ in the name of! Fetchin’ in the name of! FETCHIN' IN THE NAME OF! **[Outro – (Shouted)**] Fetch! I’ll do what they tell me! Fetch! I’ll do what they tell me! Fetch! I’ll do what they tell me! Fetch! I’ll do what they ...

What a great idea! And a great title. I wish the Church the "Come Along With Me" instead of presuming a divine mandate & complete obedience with the "Come Follow Me" title. Would you mind if I adopted your idea? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. :D Hahaha, of course you can use it! But I ...

Linked, I am impressed that you at least are able to have your family stay home with you once a month. My wife is pretty strong-willed and so it's been hard to do much compromising with her. I am just hoping to at least let them them know of my beliefs before they decide to go on a mission and ...

As a compromise between non-believing me and my believing wife, once a month we stay home from church and have a little family lesson at home instead that we call Come Along With Me. Usually we just have a little discussion about stuff I think they should learn to be good humans. My lesson planning ...

It looks like the church has submitted notice of intent to sue Fairview Texas over the temple "for violating the Church’s rights to free exercise of religion and nondiscrimination in land use regulation." The church initially proposed building a large temple in a neighborhood zoned for smaller b ...

In other words, I haven't made that story up yet?

Church apologists argue in defense of the church. The role is inherently biased and not truth-seeking. Any discussion is had with the goal of convincing the other party; i.e. in bad faith.

I have little patience for any of that.

Happy New Year!

A get together sounds fun, let's do it.

Hagoth, is that a version of the stoic exercise of imagining the worst possible things so you are more grateful for your life?

Congrats sparky! Openly being your good, ATSSBUTOI, non-tithe paying self is quite satisfying. It's sad and amusing to see people try to fit you into their worldview. I occasionally bump into people in my ward at the corner convenience store when I get a morning coffee. At first it was very ...

And DCT is not a path I desire to participate in. What do you mean by "DCT"? Probably Divine Command Theory? Where anything God says is right, regardless of other moral frameworks. I.e. Nephi killing Laban to steal his stuff is good because Got told him to, even though murder and theft are ...

Here's another. Substituting the words "God" and "we/us" for "Church." Listen to just about any conference talk by one of the Q15. Every time they tell you what God wants you to do, or needs you to do, you can do that little word switch to make their statement more accurate. They obviously have ...

Sustaining callings in church. The sham of sustaining callings flips voting on it's head completely. Instead of private ballots everyone sees each other. Instead of votes meaning something, it doesn't matter if you vote opposed - the only possible action is that the person who voted opposed gets ...

Probably not the most harmful, but here are a couple lies that take my breath away when I think about them. Separating Joseph Smith's murder from polygamy. Somehow I didn't connect the dots from Joseph Smith's murder to the printing press destruction to polygamy for years after no longer believing ...

Man, what a night. It makes sense that the US wouldn't escape the incumbent backlash going around the world right now, but I was hoping. The post-COVID inflation shock was real and probably drove much of this, despite the US rebound significantly outperforming most other developed countries. I fear ...

I attended sacrament meeting yesterday and it was packed. For the believers there it seemed pretty special to have all the pews full again with the crowd filling half the gym. My DW had a 2 hour meeting as a primary presidency to review options because the number of children has tripled. It is nice ...

It looks like my ward and a neighboring ward are combining, in addition to my stake and a neighboring stake combining. Attendance has been pretty sparse since covid, so this is an overdue change. This is in Salt Lake County. I'm not looking forward to a bunch of new faces who may not know to just ...

I do miss the oneness I felt with my fellow mormons as a believer. I don't think you get that closeness without a significant amount of organization. And part of that organization requires demanding support from those within the organization so that they feel part of it. I get something similar from ...