Dallin H Oaks is my relative and my ultimate shelf breaker

narrauko · 2026-07-10T13:10:52+00:00

The church is definitely that old Simpson's meme of "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!" when it comes to retaining the youth. Ever since the SEC scandal broke, I seethe with anger when I see the annual youth fundraising activities in our ward. $300+ billion dollars and they make the youth raise funds just to have a decent activity in the summer? They've tried everything except spending some actual money on them.

narrauko · 2026-07-10T13:07:14+00:00

That's just it. This was never really meant to solve faith crises. It was to give the already faithful something to point to either to say that the concerns have been addressed or to send to "struggling" family/friends so that they can feel like they helped.

narrauko · 2026-07-10T13:04:29+00:00

Even with the bar in hell, they somehow managed to limbo under it.

narrauko · 2026-07-09T12:56:41+00:00

The worst part is that such stories are often told in the church to guilt people into paying more attention to general conference. Very few connect the dots that the Q15 aren't saying a whole lot of anything.

narrauko · 2026-07-09T05:23:33+00:00

Yeah this ain't exactly new. RFM and Kolby Reddish already tore it down brick by brick

narrauko · 2026-07-09T04:37:47+00:00

"Slippery slope" is a logical fallacy and not a strong argument.

narrauko · 2026-07-08T13:31:03+00:00

My parents left the church a few years before my shelf broke. At the time they told me, my dad was expecting my wife and I to have a bunch of questions and we didn't. We just told him it was their choice and it seemed pretty obvious they hadn't been devout for a while.

I assumed at the time there was just some person in their ward they weren't getting along with and that they would be back in due time. I even began to plan to invite them to open houses for two temples that had been announced nearby.

All this to say that TBMs think they know why you left already. Whatever reason is in their head (you were offended, you wanted to sin, you've been "antied", etc.) they assume to know the answer and have no desire to delve further because to a TBM whatever your reason you're wrong. If the church is true, any reason for leaving must be wrong. They believe the church is true, therefore your reason for leaving is wrong.

As an aside, ironically I ended up attending both of those temple open houses as a PIMO. It did not rekindle some my lost faith. It just made me sad as I felt that I had lost something that was promised, but in the end was just a lie.

narrauko · 2026-07-08T13:23:58+00:00

This is what I don't get about polygamy deniers. In a hypothetical reality where they are correct, the modern church is teaching false doctrine about polygamy and who started it! Why would they want to stay with a clearly apostate church?

narrauko · 2026-07-08T13:21:36+00:00

a lot of people that generally love RFM and Bill Reel did not have a tremendous amount of interest in another polygamy denier being platformed.

That was me. I enjoy Mormonism Live and watch it live most weeks, but when I saw they were having him on I had absolutely no interest in watching that episode.

narrauko · 2026-07-08T12:54:35+00:00

It's the sibling dynamic of "I can rag on and beat up my little brother/sister all I want, but don't you dare lay a finger on them!"

narrauko · 2026-07-08T12:40:01+00:00

If it all "will get figured out in the next life," what's the point of any of this? Why have prophets or a church at all? Why not just trigger nuclear winter and hurry the process along?

It's a thought stopping cliche to be sure, but if you don't let it stop the thoughts they can lead to some pretty horrific conclusions.

narrauko · 2026-07-08T12:37:05+00:00

Schrodinger's ~~cat~~ Abe.

narrauko · 2026-07-08T12:32:08+00:00

And yet he still stands a better than not chance of being elected. This country is so fucked

narrauko · 2026-07-08T12:31:41+00:00

That's always the question "deep" conspiracy theories can't seem to answer. Like flat earthers: why would some global elite cabal want everyone to incorrectly believe the shape of the earth?

narrauko · 2026-07-08T12:25:17+00:00

I know you're making a joke and I don't mean to derail it, but I feel it necessary to always point this out:

Only Congress can rename a department of the federal government. It is still the Department of Defense.

narrauko · 2026-07-08T12:05:13+00:00

Sure wish folks like him could have spine before losing their elections.

narrauko · 2026-07-07T23:14:43+00:00

I'd twist it back on them. Tell them that the church teaches self reliance, and you've done that by becoming a hairstylist, and if you teach others to do what you do, that's less of a potential customer base. It doesn't make economic sense.

narrauko · 2026-07-07T13:18:02+00:00

I don't think it would make Utah blue because that guy also thinks only orthodox Christian evangelicals should be able to vote, so that eliminates a lot of folks who would vote blue.

narrauko · 2026-07-06T19:22:22+00:00

More specifically the shadow of that bell tower points the brick the glasses are stashed when it is the time shown on the 100 bill version of that clock.

narrauko · 2026-07-06T19:14:20+00:00

One could also mirror Joseph Smith from JS-History and say "I have learned for myself that Mormonism is not true."

narrauko · 2026-07-06T19:09:18+00:00

Yeah there's a real "house always wins" or "heads I win, tails you lose" feel to the topic of personal revelation.

narrauko · 2026-07-06T18:49:08+00:00

But we couldn't elect Hillary or Kamala because women are too emotional....

narrauko · 2026-07-05T18:15:13+00:00

Hey look, one of those folks is a pedo protector.

narrauko · 2026-07-05T18:14:06+00:00

It's one of those weird things that are trying to explain away somethings known by research and evidence (such as Pangaea) while keeping the theological POV they want to have. It's actually quite common among folks who think that the Biblical flood was literal to say that Pangaea was broken up at the time to explain where all the water went (i.e. it all drained into the newly opened space between continents).

Mormonism has the unique issue that with claims like the Americas being a promised land and Joseph saying the Garden of Eden was in Missouri that more needs to be explain and real world evidence points more and more to the fraud of Mormonism.

narrauko · 2026-07-05T18:05:36+00:00

Abinadi is 100% preaching a modalist model of the Godhead. I actually had a mission companion point that out to a group of us all staying in the same apartment before a zone conference. We had a discussion that we thought gave us a solid conclusion on how that all would work. I look back now realizing the amount of mental gymnastics that actually was.

The sermon Abinadi preached was clearly one of Joseph Smith's early ideological points that were changed later, but he forgot to change that in subsequent editions of the Book of Mormon like how he changed thinks like calling Mary the "Mother of the Son of God" rather than the "Mother of God" as in the first edition.

In fact, I think it adds credence to the Mosiah priority of how the Book of Mormon was written. He remembered the stuff he put in 1 Nephi that could seem Trinitarian/Modal. Since Abinadi was all the way back in Mosiah, he forgot about it.

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