On August 11th, 2013 I posted a compilation on the exmormon subreddit. I worked every day for many hours during a 3-4 week period. The compilation consisted of responses from university professors who specialize in the fields of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica Archaeology, Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica Anthropology, and Egyptology. Their responses were directed…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Doctrinal Jello Edition!
I learned an interesting thing this past week in the comments of Reddit: Apparently the General Authorities of the CoJCoL-dS are discouraged from keeping journals. Why? Well maybe this tale of one of Joseph Smith’s revelations getting edited before canonization may shed some light on it. In other news of…
My Favorite Rules!
Ever since Donna Banta posted this old LDS Living article to facebook a few weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about all the rules that define the LDS lifestyle, and how they change. Specifically, the article is about how Mormon families should forbid their kids from sleeping over at friends’ houses….
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Mixed-messages edition!
What happens when you devote your life to following authority — and then that authority announces that your hard-lined authoritarian approach isn’t the right way to go? This is the sound of brains exploding. Of course only the Catholics have this problem — the CoJCoL-dS has found a clever way…
Woman Suffrage and Ordaining Women
We acknowledge no inferiority to men. We claim to have no less ability to perform the duties which God has imposed upon us than they have to perform those imposed upon them. We believe that God has wisely and well adapted each sex to the proper performance of the duties…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: More Equal Edition!
Now that Mormon presidential aspirations are a distant memory, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has rediscovered the fun of anti-gay-marriage political activism — this time in one of their old haunts: Hawaii! (see this timeline.) In other unsurprising news, criticism of their lame arguments is persecution —…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Judging each other edition!!
This week hosted two big kerfluffles! First there was Joni Hilton’s piece in Meridian Magazine on “Liberal Mormons”! It was so offensive that Meridian Magazine actually took it down, but John Dehlin came to the rescue and posed a cached version so that you, too, can personally experience the outrage,…
The Watermelon Analogy
My father knew how to choose a good watermelon. First of all, he would put his thumbnail into the skin. If it went in easily it was ripe. Another test was to heft it. A heavy melon is usually a ripe melon. Then he would look at the light-colored patch…
Dragons of the Book of Mormon by Johnny Townsend
In his new collection of short stories, Dragons of the Book of Mormon, Johnny Townsend introduces compelling, sympathetic, and at times, hilarious characters struggling to live simultaneously within the rigid structure of Mormonism, the real world, and, in some cases, the magical world inspired by Mormon doctrine. In “Going Home, 
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Scary stuff coming up edition!
With Halloween coming up this week, please enjoy the firs batch of tales of this holiday’s history including its tragic devolution into “Trunk-or-Treat”. Also, the missionary costume pictures have already started appearing — and I hope there’ll be plenty more of them between now and next week! (If anyone’s up…