DiscussMormonism.com

Very interesting article about apostasy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/magazine/from-bible-belt-pastor-to-atheist-leader.html?pagewanted=all

He was 41 and had spent almost his entire life in or near DeRidder, a small town in the heart of the Bible Belt. All he had ever wanted was to be a comfort and a support to the people he grew up with, but now a divide stood between him and them. He could no longer hide his disbelief. He walked into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. “I remember thinking, Who on this planet has any idea what I’m going through?”

Quasimodo, Perhaps not a solution to all the questions but I found the article interesting. I was struck by this statement among others in the article.
" But equally, he told me, he found it unbearable to promote beliefs that only seemed to sow confusion and self-blame. He recalled how one middle-aged woman in his church who was suffering from heart disease asked him anxiously: “How am I going to believe for salvation when I can’t believe enough to heal?”

I believe God nurtures atheists in order to fight this sort of thing.

huckelberry wrote:Quasimodo, Perhaps not a solution to all the questions but I found the article interesting. I was struck by this statement among others in the article.
" But equally, he told me, he found it unbearable to promote beliefs that only seemed to sow confusion and self-blame. He recalled how one middle-aged woman in his church who was suffering from heart disease asked him anxiously: “How am I going to believe for salvation when I can’t believe enough to heal?”

I believe God nurtures atheists in order to fight this sort of thing.

I can't agree with you, huck, but I do appreciate the response. I can't believe that if there is a God, God would be so devious.

Quasimodo wrote:I can't agree with you, huck, but I do appreciate the response. I can't believe that if there is a God, God would be so devious.

Dear, perhaps I have grown overly comfortable in my own thought world. i cannot find deviousness in this. I thought it was straightforward and without guile. My thoughts run like this.People tend to distort ideas of god into things unworthy of God. It is more faithful to God to refuse belief in such.

I can see people using the idea of god to create big scare stories which provide people with emotional thrills but do nothing to further caring for each other and caring for the life we live in. The closest humans come to realizing the reality of God is within our concern for each other and our life. Disbelief in the pretend god of scare stories is a step in the direction of awareness of God.

In the article the son of Phelps, the prophet of god the monster, has become an apostle of atheism. Good for him. It is way closer to the real God than the molock his father utilizes.

I was struck by the image in the article of its subject moving from the solid fundamentalist god to a more ethereal loving god then to non belief. I find it a bit sad that the ghost story god of cheap thrills feels more solid than the one of loving each other. It can seem like that to people sometimes.

ps, I think it an interesting irony that early Christianity was attacked as being a form of atheism. People sometimes say that was a misunderstanding. Partially, but I think Christianity at its heart involves a serious criticism of God concepts. However lame god concepts have a lot of regenerative power it seems.