Chapter 1: Huh?

Now, I'm not so presumptuous to think that I am some sort of great writer, or even that anyone will care about anything I have to say. I have created this blog mostly as a therapeutic tool for myself. If anyone else ever reads it and gets anything out of it, then I guess that's cool too.

You might ask what exactly is a Mormon Atheist...well, let me first explain that I am not a practicing Mormon. I haven't been to church in over a year and a half and I have absolutely no plans on ever going back. I think the Book of Mormon is a 19th century con job and Joseph Smith was a philandering sociopath who was far more concerned with his own power and control over others than in any sort of restoration of "the good news". If there is any sort of god out there I absolutely cannot believe she would choose someone as her "prophet" who would coerce 14 year-old girls and other men's wives to have secret (oh, sorry...sacred) sex with him under threat of eternal damnation for her and her entire family. I could be wrong about that but I highly doubt it.

The thing is...I will always be a Mormon. No matter how hard I try I just can't seem to escape it. My upbringing, and my subsequent escape from Mormondumb, colors everything I do, say, or see. Being a Mormon is much like being a separate race, and no longer going to church doesn't change the fact that in several ways, both large and small, I will always be different from the rest of society, at least that's the way it is for me. Mormons pride themselves on being a "peculiar people" and let me tell you: once you get out, that title follows you around like a child with snot covered fingers. You don't want it to touch you but you can't just tell it to fuck off.

I don't necessarily think this is all a bad thing. Sometimes I really would like to just leave Mormonism behind me and never think about it ever again. It would be so nice to be able to just be comfortable around people and not feel like some sort of alien on a strange planet. On the other hand, being Mormon has made me who I am. It has taught me so much about what it is to be manipulated by people who sincerely love you and believe they are doing the best thing for you. I am a much more critically minded person and I am hopefully a lot less likely to get sucked in to something like that again. I've also learned a lot about what it means to have true integrity, and to follow what you believe is right even when the cost of that is almost unbearable.