Rejection of Evidence

     A few weeks ago I finished a book by Richard Dawkins called The God Delusion.  It's a fantastic book which covers scientific explanations for religion's existence and it also argues that religion isn't necessary for morality and that religion is actually more harmful than good, especially for children.  I highly recommend it!

     Also a few weeks ago my husband and I watched the 2015 film with Will Smith called "Concussion".  In it, Will Smith plays the real-life neurologist Dr. Bennet Omalu who in 2002 discovered that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the neurodegenerative disease that affects boxers which is brought on by concussions, also affects NFL players.  That movie inspired me to research concussions in the NFL, and I found three documentaries, all done recently: "The United States of Football" (2013), "League of Denial: the NFL's Concussion Crisis" (2013) and "Head Games: The Global Concussion Crisis" (2014) (which covered football, rugby, soccer, and ice hockey).  These documentaries show that concussions are a very serious problem and hardly anyone wants to address it or believe it.  Over the past two days or so I've also been watching some videos online featuring Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, all of whom are not only atheists but they go a step further and are actually anti-theism advocates.  After finishing The God Delusion I've almost constantly been mulling over the question of "what harm does religion do on a personal level?"  Not just the obvious problems that come with Islam, but also with other more benign religions like modern Christianity.  Is there harm on an individual level in being a moderate in whatever religion you belong to?  And I think the football concussion example is actually a very good example with which I can answer this question about religion.

     From a scientific point of view, one of the harms of believing in religion, even moderately, is that religion trains you to disregard any information, any evidence, any ideas that contradict your religion.  It teaches you to look at evidence and reason and logic right in front of you and reject them if they don't fit within your religion's current world view, and this is absolutely true for the LDS Church.  As I was watching these football documentaries, the leaders at the NFL and even the biased scientists who did studies on concussions but who were on the NFL payroll, looked at the evidence of concussions causing CTE and neurodegenerative diseases in ex-NFL players, and they flat-out rejected it.  They saw the evidence physically right in front of them and they completely disregarded it without for one second considering its validity.  And in watching those video clips, I was strongly reminded of many religious people who do the same thing: they see evidence right in front of them that their religion is untrue or harmful and they reject that evidence because they don't want to believe it.

     After watching these concussion documentaries my impulse was to tell my friends on Facebook about it, to say "Hey you guys, you won't believe what I just found out!" because, like Bennet Omalu, I thought people would want to know about it.  But as I thought more about the reactions Omalu received—disbelief, rejection, and even hostility—as well as remembering people's reactions to what Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins say about religion, I realized that average people don't want to hear it because they don't want to believe it's true.  Too many people who love football don't want to be shown evidence that the sport they love actually causes brain damage and horrible life-threatening outcomes for the players years after they retire.  They just don't want to know about it.  And it's the same with too many religious people: they're happy with their religion and they don't want to hear evidence that the religion they love and their God who "loves" them cause harm to others and even to themselves and that their religion holds them back intellectually and it stunts their critical thinking.  For many fans of football, they are more loyal to football and to their team than they are to their religion.  They watch football games as faithfully or more faithfully than they attend church.  Football is their religion (and for too many places like Nebraska, football is also the only entertaining thing to do).  And the harm of growing up in religion is that you're growing up being taught to reject evidence that goes against your current beliefs, even if the evidence is given in an effort to help people's well-being.

     The attitude for both religion and contact sports is, "Why are you attacking this?  You don't like it but others do, so why are you trying to take away their happiness?  No, I don't care about your evidence, I care about my sport/religion that makes me happy and I don't want it to change.  Leave it alone."

     But I'm not sure I can leave it alone.  I don't go out looking for problems, but when problems do come to my attention and it's something I care about, I don't want to ignore it.  I've spent too many years ignoring and refusing to see evidence because of my religious upbringing, and I'm no longer going to dismiss evidence before I evaluate it.

     I started being bothered by football last year when I watched the Super Bowl on TV: someone got a serious concussion, and that was the ONLY play the broadcasters did not replay.  They replayed all the other plays in the entire game, but they never replayed the play that caused the concussion.  Right then I knew the NFL and the broadcasters wanted to hide the concussion, to pretend it never happened and to make viewers forget about it.  Players and fans know the risks to other parts of the body like the shoulders and knees, but for the most part they don't know that the nature of the game of American football is a danger to the players' brain at all levels of play but especially to children who play tackle football.  I recently heard a sports commentator say that you can't take the danger out of football, and he's right.  There are no rules in American football that you can create to keep the players' brain safe because it's impossible without completely destroying the game itself.  Soccer is easier because all you have to do is say no headbutting the ball; the game of soccer is still very playable as it is without the option to headbutt the ball.  But rugby and American football are different, and what these documentaries have done is to show people that concussions are much more common and much more serious than players and fans are led to believe.  The NFL knows it, but until only about two years ago they denied it because they want to keep their billion-dollar business alive and raking in the money from fans and advertisers and the military (here's a short but informative video about how the military is involved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaW7cOJUt1A ).  And religions like the LDS Church and the Catholic Church want to keep people in the dark about many things because they also want to keep raking in the money and maintaining control over their members and their public image.

     For the past two years or so I've been an atheist.  I used to think I was an agnostic, but in The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins addresses the difference between agnosticism and atheism, and I realized by his definition I'm an atheist, and I'm okay with that.  It's only until recently, perhaps two months ago, that I've started leaning toward anti-theism, the view that religion is not only unnecessary for human existence and human morality but there's a good chance that we as a species would be better off if we rejected religion with all its superstitions and myths, and embraced modern science instead.  Last week one of my friends linked a news article on Facebook that told about a life-sized ark (of the Noah variety) that was completed in Kentucky in July of this past year.  According to this article, it took over $100 million to make!  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/07/10/bill-nye-visited-a-noahs-ark-he-doesnt-believe-should-exist/  What a huge waste of money!!  Think of what that money could do if it was given to scientific research facilities, like the ones that are studying CTE in NFL players.  I can't get over what a huge waste of money that ark is, and that it's a huge tourist trap that spreads false science.  (Also, if you want to watch the debate that the article talked about between Bill Nye and Ken Ham from 2014, here it is:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvO3zJaNBjs  It's worth the time, especially to see the sharp contrast between modern science and modern Christianity in America.)

     So American football is one example of what I believe is a harm of a religious upbringing: being trained to reject evidence that may be unpleasant to hear but if listened to can improve the well-being of contact sports players.  And this is one of the reasons why I will never return to the LDS Church specifically, but also to religion in general: religion brainwashes people into believing that their religion is the only true one, and that not even science can provide a good answer to life's questions about our world or ourselves, but oh, our specific religion has the answers for everything we need to know, and for the things we don't know that's because God decided it wasn't necessary for our salvation.  No, I will never rejoin an organization that teaches and trains its members to look at evidence right in front of them and reject it without a second thought if it doesn't mesh with the teachings of that religion.  The practice in religion of rejecting evidence also spills over into other areas of life, and in my opinion the public's reaction to and denial of concussions is a good example.

(And I finally decided to pitch these documentaries on Facebook.  Important issues like this need to get out there, and I realized that not everyone will reject the message even if they like contact sports; there are people out there who care more about the well-being of players than their romanticized view of the sport and their personal attachment to it).

Bible Problems

     At the beginning of the year I had set out to find out for myself what the Bible—Old Testament (a.k.a. the Jewish Bible) and New Testament—had to say.  I stopped after about two months because I got too frustrated.

     The God of the Old Testament is a god of war.  He's a jealous god in the very literal sense of the word (and there are many instances of other gods being mentioned); he's demanding of the Israelites' loyalty, having claimed them as his own so they can worship him, and in exchange for their unwavering faith and devotion he promises to protect them and fight for them.  But the things he had to say, the laws he gave to the Israelites through Moses, were harsh and often times didn't make much sense.

     So I had gotten to Deuteronomy and stopped there; I really didn't like their god and I didn't want to read any more about him and what he commanded the Israelites to do.  But one thing was certain: the god of the Israelites is only their god.  People can take stories of inspiration from the Old Testament and apply them to their own life if they want to, but the Israelite god's commandments to them were not intended for everyone in our day—they were specific to those people at that time.

     Earlier this year one of my uncles recommended a book to me called Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman.  It sounded very interesting and I bought it right away, but it had been sitting on my bookshelf for a while because there were other books I wanted to get to first.  But then my parents came to visit for a few days, and my father saw the book and borrowed it.  He read it from cover to cover, which surprised me, and so I wanted to read it right afterward so I could talk to him about it.  I finished it a couple of weeks ago, and it's an excellent book; I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Bible study and the history of the manuscripts (and who changed them and why).

     The main, overarching messages of this book are 1) the Bible is not the fully inspired, inerrant word of God that the author used to believe it was—it is a very human book; and 2) the Bible we have now is NOT translated from the original manuscripts.  No original manuscripts exist; the earliest ones we've found come from, I believe Ehrman said the second century CE (Common Era).

     A couple of things in the book made me think of the Mormon church in particular.  The first thing is that the LDS church uses the King James version of the Bible from the early 1600s, and in August of 1992 the First Presidency had this to say about that version, "While other Bible versions may be easier to read than the King James Version, in doctrinal matters latter-day revelation supports the King James Version in preference to other English translations. All of the Presidents of the Church, beginning with the Prophet Joseph Smith, have supported the King James Version by encouraging its continued use in the Church."  https://www.lds.org/ensign/1992/08/news-of-the-church/first-presidency-statement-on-the-king-james-version-of-the-bible.p1?lang=eng
 
     The problem with this version, as I found out in Misquoting Jesus, is that "The King James Version is filled with places in which the translators rendered a Greek text derived ultimately from Erasmus's edition, which was based on a single twelfth-century manuscript that is one of the worst of the manuscripts that we now have available to us!" (p. 209).  There are better manuscripts out there, but the Church maintains its stance that the King James Bible is the one that is the most correct.

     The second thing that reminded me of the LDS church in particular was that Ehrman went into great detail about the scribes who made changes to the manuscripts on purpose to settle some political, social, and theological debates going on around them.  The LDS church's edition of the KJV of the Bible has footnotes where Joseph Smith made changes (if you want to read about the history of that edition, here you go: https://www.lds.org/ensign/1979/10/church-publishes-first-lds-edition-of-the-bible?lang=eng ).  When I was a young adult I got sick with the flu for a few days, and to pass the time while I got well again, I took out my Bible and circled all the places where there was a Joseph Smith Translation of a passage of scripture, for future reference in my studies.  And of course, looking through them again, I see now more than ever that all the JST footnotes make the scripture fall in line more with LDS doctrine.  Joseph Smith claims that these changes are the "plain and precious parts" that were either taken away from the Bible or changed within it, and that he's getting revelation from the Lord on what the passages should really say ( https://history.lds.org/article/revelations-in-context-doctrine-and-covenants-joseph-smith-translation-bible?lang=eng ).  But that's what scribes did in the first few centuries CE: they changed the wording of the manuscripts they were copying to settle theological, political, and social issues surrounding them.  Joseph Smith is no better than any of those ancient people who changed the wording to fit their agenda.

     For regular Christians, Misquoting Jesus will be hard to handle because it leaves the reader with no doubt that what we know of the New Testament and what we know of Jesus isn't 100% reliable.  Mormons who read Misquoting Jesus, like my father, still have the Book of Mormon to fall back on and hold onto as something to uphold their faith; Bible-only Christians don't have that safety net.  But really, the Book of Mormon was written by a guy who knew the King James version of the Bible (which is why the Book of Mormon was written in 1600's English instead of 1820's English, to make it sound more authentic), and we know now that the KJV isn't a very good version, so how much can the Church members really rely on the Book of Mormon as an authentic book of God-inspired scripture, either?

     So after reading Misquoting Jesus, I've decided to officially end my previous Bible projects.  The Old Testament is the Israelites' scripture, and its words and commandments have no bearing on anyone not of that lineage.  And as far as the New Testament is concerned, I simply do not have enough knowledge about what the oldest and best manuscripts say when translated into English, and so in my mind nothing in the New Testament as far as Jesus is concerned can be counted on as fact.  And as far as the LDS doctrine that says the Old Testament god is Jesus Christ himself: I say no.  Ehrman discusses the nature of Jesus since that was one of the hot topics in the early days of Christianity, and there are interesting points of view that different people back in the day preached.  I suggest you read Misquoting Jesus and decide for yourself what you want to believe regarding Jesus.  But as far as reading the New Testament, I see it as a waste of time for me since there's a very good chance that the words attributed to Jesus hadn't actually been said by him.

     I admire Erhman's knowledge and his hunger and passion for truth, and I'll likely read some of his other books as well to see what else he's found in his studies.  That, for me, would be a much better use of my time.

Good Stuff For All Women

     A few months ago when I was visiting my parents for a couple of days, my mother gave me a book to read.  It's called Sisters, arise!  Becoming the Woman God Intends You to Be by Lynne Perry Christofferson.  Right away from the title I knew it was an LDS book, and I really don't know why she suggested that I read it.  She suggested I read the last chapter first which is all about being "perfect" and she knows I've had struggles in the past with the Church's stance on "perfection", so perhaps she was trying to help me with that somehow?  She knows that I left the Church three years ago, and I don't know why she doesn't realize that an LDS book isn't going to help me.  Ah well.  I decided I would do her the courtesy of reading it, since she seemed to really like it and for some reason she thought I would, too.

     I didn't read the last chapter first, I started from the beginning.  I knew it was an LDS book, but I wasn't prepared for just how much of an LDS book it was.  Almost every paragraph had something to do with the Church's teachings and doctrine.  Not only that, but this book is from a Utah woman's perspective, so not only is it pretty much just for American women, but her examples apply largely to Utah Mormons (for instance, the guilt she felt for not attending the temple regularly when there were many of them readily available to her).  But I did find a few things here and there that I felt like I could identify with as a non-religious woman, and so about 30 pages in I decided to start from the beginning again and this time make note of the things that could apply to all women in our culture, regardless of religious beliefs or the lack thereof.  Unfortunately there are only a handful of things in the 111-page book; I'll type out the quotes here.

1) "The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender.  There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind.  There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. ... We have enough greed; we need more goodness.  We have enough vanity; we need more virtue.  We have enough popularity; we need more purity." (p. 2-3)

2) The next quote covers an entire page, so I won't quote it.  But basically it talks about the prevalence of makeovers in our culture, whether it's personal makeovers or house makeovers, and that we would be much better served making over our inner selves rather than just focusing on outer appearances. (p. 21-22)

3) "TRUTH #1 [about beauty]: THERE IS NO SINGLE STANDARD FOR PHYSICAL BEAUTY.  The definition of physical beauty is so subjective that every culture, even every individual, has their own ideas about the physical ideal.  So when we spend enormous amounts of time and money on beauty products and procedures, exactly who are we trying to please?  American pop culture is fixated on skinny females, yet many other cultures prefer women with a bit more meat on their bones.  The fact that different cultures disagree about the ideal skin color and body type is proof that there isn't one true standard for physical beauty."  (p. 30)

4) The next passage is long, but it's too good not to quote the whole thing.  This is actually the author quoting a woman named Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

"We Americans, with our terrific emphasis on youth . . . tend to belittle the afternoon of life and even to pretend it never comes.  We push the clock back and try to prolong the morning, overreaching and overstraining ourselves in the unnatural effort. . . . In our breathless attempts, we often miss the flowering that waits for afternoon.

"For is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence?  It is true that society in general does not help one accept this interpretation of the second half of life.  And therefore this period of expanding is often tragically misunderstood.

"Many people never climb above the plateau of forty-to-fifty.  The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay.  In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them quite rightly, as growing pains.  One takes them seriously, listens to them, follows where they lead.

"But in middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs paradoxically, as signs of approaching death. . . .  Anything, rather than stand still and learn from them.  One tries to cure the signs of growth, to exorcise them, as if they were devils, when really they might be angels of annunciation . . . of a new stage of living."  (p. 33)

5) "I've yet to meet the woman, no matter how attractive, who appreciates another female parading sexy dress or attitudes around her husband, fiancé, boyfriend, brothers, nephews, or sons.  While we're being completely honest here, let's not forget that no self-respecting husband, fiancé, or boyfriend wants their significant other intentionally turning another man's head.  Any woman purposely seeking another man's attention in order to make her husband jealous is playing a very dangerous game." (p. 40)

6) "The way we dress and act sends definite signals to those around us.  'What you put on your body "talks", and everyone who sees you "hears" what you are saying.'" (p. 41)

7) "Who am I trying to impress by the way I dress?  What kind of signals am I trying to send to the people around me?"  (p. 46)

8) The next part is too long to quote again, but she's recalling the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "The Game" (she doesn't name the show specifically but that's what it is, and I know because I saw the same episode and had the same unnerving feeling when I watched it).  In the episode, the crew gets hooked on a game and they neglect all else in order to play it, and it turns out it was planted by a race of people who wanted to take over the ship while everyone was too addicted to the game to notice or stop them.  She brought up that episode because many years later she was in line with her family at a crowded movie theater, and she recalled that Star Trek episode when she saw "fully 75 percent of the people were talking on cell phones, texting, playing games, listening to music, e-mailing, or viewing images on their phones.  Most surprising to me was the number of young children with gaming devices.  For such a large crowd, there was relatively little social interaction."  (p. 61-62)

9) Another long quote, but this one is a story she's quoting about digital distractions.  A man and woman go into a diner and he spends the whole time talking on his cell phone, leaving the woman to just sit there and eat.  And near the end, she writes, "But consider what was lost. . . .  There was likely a time when the couple at the diner counted down the hours between meals together.  But that enthusiasm for the other's undivided and deserved attention had cooled—a victim of life's minutia and, on this day, a single cell phone call.  One thing is certain: a busy man passed on an opportunity to enjoy a few quiet moments with his mate."  (p. 63)

10) This next quote covers two pages, so I'll summarize.  Blogging can be a great way to keep in touch with family and friends and to share parts of our lives with them, but too much time reading others' blogs (or writing our own) can take time away from our children, our spouse, and our household duties.  Make sure your children do not have unrestricted access to social media, cell phones, and the Internet in general until they are old enough to use them responsibly.  (p. 64-65)

11) "If we feel the need to hide our actions from family and respected friends, there is a problem.  Period."  (p. 66)

12) "Much of what we do with our time will be dictated by the seasons of our lives.  For instance, a mother raising young children will, of necessity, spend countless hours feeding, bathing, changing diapers for, doing laundry for, cleaning up after, entertaining, and teaching her children.  There will be countless trips to the doctor and dentist, the grocery store and school.  Without a doubt there will be long hours in the night, rocking babies and caring for sick children, comforting little ones who had a nightmare, and changing the sheets of a bed wetter.  Many of these tasks seem menial, unfulfilling, and even downright unpleasant—but if it is our 'season' to raise children, these activities can qualify for the best uses of our time.  We need to be certain that all of our activities—whether related to work or leisure—are at least classified in the 'good' category [referring to good things being categorized into "good", "better", or "best" groups]." (p. 83)

13) "The word mother is not only a noun but also a verb, meaning 'to watch over, nourish, and protect.'  Many women come to motherhood in less traditional ways than bearing and raising children.  Those who teach children in schools and at church, those to take a lonely teenager under their wing, those who model modesty and excellence and who watch over their neighbors---they are mothers indeed."  Then she goes on to talk about some of the challenges of motherhood because "a significant portion of the trials we experience in this life center around our families and motherhood." (p. 89-90).  It's nice to read that motherhood is not easy no matter how it has turned out for us, and that I needn't feel alone in my personal trials as a mother.

14) "The world would tell me that pregnancy will change my figure.  No kidding.  But must I be ashamed of the stretch marks that formed as my body made room to carry my beautiful babies?  Would I really trade my children for a firmer tummy?"  (p. 91)

15) "Motherhood can seem unrewarding if we're used to measuring progress on a daily basis or expecting kudos for a job well done.  Our little ones don't generally compliment us on the way we fixed the macaroni and cheese or notice our impressive skills when we're juggling car seats, diaper bags, groceries, and uncooperative offspring simultaneously.  Perhaps the most frustrating realization of motherhood is that you can't close up shop each night, putting thoughts of work out of mind until it's time to clock in the next morning.  Truly, a mother's work is never done.  It's also difficult to feel we have skills and talents that seem to be set aside for a season. . . .  I remember how frustrating it is to feel like you have no outlet for your talents—at least not in the way you've used them before. . . .  What I know now that I didn't understand in the middle of the diaper years was that every time I put my children first I was learning patience and unselfishness."  (p. 96)

16) "'I know that your quest to improve may seem overwhelming at times.  Please do not become discouraged with your progress.  I think back on my experience hiking with my children.  We agreed that every time we stopped to catch our breath, rather than focusing exclusively on how much farther we needed to go, we would immediately turn around and look down the mountain.  We would take in the scenery and say to each other, "Look how far we've come."  Then we would take a deep breath, quickly turn, face uphill, and start climbing again one step at a time.'  Allowing ourselves the small victory phrase 'look how far we've come' is a healthy way of acknowledging our progress, no matter how small, and strengthening our belief that we can ... scale the next slope of our current mountain."  (p. 110)

     That's it.  Those are the things I found out of the whole book that can apply to all women in our culture.  There is a lot about the LDS church that is bad, but there are still a few things that are good.  This book is mostly LDS-centered, and I will admit that it was hard getting through the heavily LDS parts (so, most of it), but there were a few good things in it that I could identify with and use in my own life.

     Nothing in it was life-changing, and so if I was given the chance to read it again or recommend it to someone, I wouldn't do it.  But it was nice of my mom to think of me, and I'm glad she cares.

My Bible Projects

Last year I wanted to read the Bible to see what Jesus actually said and did, and now I've started to do so.  This was around the time I stopped believing in Christianity, in Jesus as the Savior of the World.  I'd been hearing people say they pattern their lives after Jesus and that his life was a model to follow.  I remember thinking, "Wait a minute, we know hardly anything about his life."

I will admit that I've never read the whole Bible before, and not even the entire New Testament.  The majority of Mormons haven't.  This, I believe, is for a couple of reasons.  First, there's the Church's Article of Faith #8 which says: "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God."  In Mormons' minds, the Book of Mormon is most certainly correct because Joseph Smith translated it himself from reformed Egyptian into [16th century] English, with no in-between translations.  The Bible has been through so many translations that it's impossible to know which one is correct (the Church has said the King James version is the closest to being accurate, and their copies of the KJ version have Joseph Smith's translation of some of its verses in the footnotes), so it's always open to interpretation and incorrect text and can't be counted on to be 100% the true word of God.  And second, the introduction page of the Book of Mormon says, "Concerning this record the Prophet Joseph Smith said: “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”"  So Mormons spend their time reading and "gaining a testimony" of the Book of Mormon while treating the Bible as supplemental scripture.

Well, if I recall correctly from Church and Seminary lessons, what we know of Jesus from the Bible are second-hand accounts of his birth, of when he was twelve years old talking with the elders near the temple, and then when he was in his 30s and began actively preaching.  From the Bible we know almost nothing about his entire life.  We don't know how he lived, how he treated people, or what he did.

In the LDS Church there's a song the Primary children sing called "Jesus Once Was a Little Child"; here are the lyrics:

Jesus once was a little child,
A little child like me;
And he was pure and meek and mild,
As a little child should be.

[Chorus]
So, little children,
Let's you and I
Try to be like him
Try, try, try.

He played as little children play
The pleasant games of youth;
But he never got vexed if the game went wrong,
And he always spoke the truth.

[Chorus]

This song is clearly teaching little kids how to behave.  And yeah, being truthful is always very important.  But for this song to be true, we have to start with the assumption that Jesus was in fact a half-god and that he was perfect in every way.  Countless General Conference talks mention that Jesus led a perfect life.  But there is absolutely no proof that he did.  It's an assumption based on the idea that he was perfect, that he had to be perfect in order to atone for our sins, which he had to have done.

Last year as I was considering if Christianity in general was for me and just not the branch of Mormonism, I realized that in the scriptures there's always a bad guy.  In the Book of Mormon, the first bad guys were Laman and Lemuel, two of Nephi's older brothers.  If you start with the assumption that Lehi was really being led by the Lord, then Laman and Lemuel are in the wrong.  But if you look at it from Laman and Lemuel's point of view—and if you start with the assumption that Lehi was not being led by God but that he just had a really vivid dream that freaked him out—then Laman and Lemuel are justified in their feelings, words, and actions (all except attempted murder).  The outlook of the story changes a lot when you look at it from a different point of view.

In the New Testament, it's the Pharisees.  I realized that this group of people was considered the bad guys, but why?  Their actions have made the Jews scapegoats around the world for centuries, but were their actions justified?  Were their suspicions of Jesus valid?  So that got me thinking about it.  I searched the internet for "What do the Jews think of Jesus?" There were many results but I found a brief summary on this page: http://www.beingjewish.com/toshuv/whynotbrief.html  Here is also a Wikipedia article that I liked, which goes into more detail:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism's_view_of_Jesus

Based on what the Jews understood about a coming Messiah, and based on what Jesus did and didn't do to fulfill those prophesies, I came to the conclusion that Jesus was a false Messiah, that he was not who he claimed to be.  The articles I linked explain why the Jews think that way, and I'll explain my reasoning for believing the same.

We can't start with the assumption that Jesus led a perfect life because there simply is no proof of it.  He must have been charismatic because so many people followed him and listened to him.  But what did he do with the rest of his life?  He performed what looked like miracles, but street performers and magicians can perform similar illusions.  Who's to say Jesus didn't spend a few years learning to be a street magician, to fool gullible people?  When you think about it, the idea isn't that far-fetched.  And what if he really did have a special ability to heal people?  It's possible, I suppose (then again, there's also the placebo effect to consider).  But does that in itself mean he's a half-god, that he's the savior of the world?  No, it doesn't.

I thought of all this last year, and this is what led me away from Christianity.  Fast-forward to a few months ago with the LDS policies on homosexuality and its gay members.  On the one hand you have Christians saying, "Love one another!  Treat others the way you would want to be treated!  That's what Jesus would do!"  And yet all of a sudden you have Christians saying, "Jesus was against homosexuality!  He doesn't accept it, he didn't tolerate it!  It's the sin that got Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed!  It's a sin that must not be tolerated now!"  But did Jesus really say those things?  Did those words, did the intent to prevent loving monogamous homosexual relationships from being allowed, actually come from the mouth of Jesus or God?  Now I don't think they did.  Christians on both sides are using the Bible to defend their position on the issue, but which side is right?

So this brings me to my two Bible projects.  I am going to read the Bible—the Old and New Testaments—in their entirety.  And while I read, here is what I'm going to do:

Project 1:  Find out the nature of God/Jesus
I will go with the LDS theology that the God/Lord of the Old Testament was Jesus Christ.  I am going to underline every passage of scripture where God (Jesus) says or does something, as well as what is being attributed to him by other people (i.e. in Genesis 5:29 when Lemech said the Lord cursed the ground, and in Genesis 16:2 when Sarai said "The Lord hath restrained me from bearing [children]").  Then on a separate piece of paper I will write in my own words what these things say about Jesus' character, of who he is.

Project 2: "Is the Bible a viable model of morality and a way to govern society in today's modern era?"
Twice recently I've watched the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham.  It's a really good one, I'll link it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI  Their topic was, "Is Creation a viable model for origins in today's modern, scientific era?" (my opinion is that no, it isn't), and I've decided to model the title of my project after that debate's topic.  For modern moral issues, Christians will turn to the Bible for guidance.  But then others will point out laws in books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy and say, "Would these laws ever be acceptable in today's society?  No way!  You can't take some parts of the Bible as doctrine from Jesus and ignore the parts you don't like."  I am not a scholar in early Christian history; I don't know which laws and points of view were acceptable back then and which ones were actually the guy being a jerk, like Paul in 1 Timothy 2:11 when he said, "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection".  Although context is important and very interesting to me, for this project of mine I am not taking into consideration the context of the times they were written.  I am looking at the Bible as a book that modern Christians use to live by and tout as the Word of God, and I'm going to determine if that book, which is around 2,000 years old, should be used as a model of morality or a way to govern society in today's modern era.  My prediction is that the Old Testament should absolutely not be used as a model for today, and that the New Testament will be about half viable and half better-left-in-the-past.

This will take me a few months to do since I plan to work on it every day (if I read a chapter a day it would take me over 3 years to finish).  I'm excited for these projects on an intellectual level!  I've never read the whole Bible before, and I'm sure I'll be in for many surprises.

Dealing With Death

Everyone dies.  What happens to us after we die is one of the questions humans have sought to know probably for as long as we've been on the Earth, and different groups of people have come up with their own theories.

All religions believe in a soul.  Christians and Muslims believe that when we die, our spirit or our soul will either go to Heaven to be with God or we'll go to Hell to be ruled by the Devil.  Catholics further believe in Purgatory, which is "an intermediate state after physical death in which those destined for heaven undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven." (quoted from Wikipedia).  Mormons believe in something similar: they believe that after we die, our spirit goes either to Spirit Paradise or to Spirit Prison (also known as Hell, where people have a chance to repent of their sins and go to Paradise), based on how you lived your life.  Once Christ comes back and the Millennium starts and everyone can be resurrected, then our spirits will be taken out of Paradise or Prison and reunited with our bodies and then assigned to one of the Three Kingdoms of Glory or to Outer Darkness for the really really bad people.

Buddhists believe that the spirit goes into another body, and which body that is depends on how good they were in their previous life: if you were good, then you came back as a healthy human again, but if you were bad, then you came back as a crippled or diseased person, or even an animal.

There are many other religions that I don't know enough about, or don't know about at all.  These I've listed are the main ones around the world right now.  But what all religions have in common is the belief in the soul, that we are more than our physical bodies.

I've been thinking about death for the past couple of days.  Yesterday David Bowie died.  Also yesterday I found out that the grandmother of one of my good friends died this past Sunday.

When you're not religious, or when you were but you don't believe in a God anymore, you look at death differently than a religious person does.  I'll take Christianity as an example since that's what I grew up with and that's the most widespread religion right now.

Christians will look at David Bowie and say, "He's probably in Heaven because he was a good person."  My friend's family will look at their grandmother and they'll be sad but they'll think, "She was a good person, and I know we'll see her again and be together forever, because we've been sealed in the temple to each other."  They have hope because they believe in an afterlife and in a just and fair God who will reward good deeds and good people with Heaven.

Then there are those of us who either never were religious or we've left our religions and/or our belief in a God.  When we look at death, we don't know what happens.  Some of these people are terrified of death because they don't know what happens to us.  Do we cease to exist?  Do we have a soul that goes up to Heaven or down to Hell?  Does our soul remain on Earth, walking around invisible where only a few people with the gift to see spirits can see us? (think the movies "Ghost" and "Heart and Souls").  Are we indeed reborn, our spirits put into a new body?

And finally, there are people who look at the physiology of the body and the brain, and they firmly believe that there is no soul, there is no spirit, that our brain is who we are.  We have a body, we have a brain, and that's it.  So when our brain stops working, when our brain dies, we're dead.  We're gone.  We cease to exist.

I am now an atheist, and until just recently I was in the second category.  I'm not scared of death because in my mind, when I die then I'll finally be able to know which of all the world's religious beliefs got it right.  I held on to the hope that I do have a spirit, that I will continue to exist after I die, and that I will get to see the spirits of my loved ones again.  But now after looking a little more into the sciences, I'm coming to grips with the ideas of the third category: that we are our brain.  Our memories, our thoughts, our senses, our feelings, and even our spiritual experiences—they are all the work of our brain.  And once our brain dies, we're gone.

I look at David Bowie.  According to my new line of thinking, he's gone forever.  But his influence will remain here because of his music and his movies.  People of my generation will always remember him as the Goblin King in "Labyrinth" with those suave mannerisms and those tight pants.  ;)  Others will remember him more for his music.  While he's not on my list of favorite musicians, I recognize that many people liked him and they will remember him and what he did.

Now I'm looking at my own life, wondering what I will leave behind.  When I die, my existence will only be missed by a few handfuls of people; what we've shared together will mean something to them, and I'm not dismissing that as unimportant.  But as far as society as a whole, I haven't done anything noteworthy.  I haven't written any great books like Tolkien or Carl Sagan or Darwin or Shakespeare did that are read and enjoyed by millions of people.  I am not a great singer like Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey, or a great musician like Mozart or Vivaldi.  I am not a great actress like Elizabeth Taylor or Katherine Hepburn whose names and legacies will live on in cinema history.  I am not a great philosopher like Aristotle or Confucius whose ideas will span the centuries.  I haven't written any papers in scholarly journals that others will read and cite for their research.  I am not a selfless person who is spending my life or a career serving the poor and needy and the sick.  I'm not someone who has inspired my society to greatness in any way.  I am an average person, a wife and a stay-at-home mother of two kids who's doing her best to raise them and not go crazy in the meantime.  ;)  I have my own interests and hobbies outside of being a mom, and I make a conscious effort to remember those things about myself so I don't lose who I am.  But those hobbies are pleasures of mine, they're not for the betterment of society.  My sphere of influence is so small that it is insignificant to all but a few people, those closest to me.

I've thought about it, and what I do have is this blog.  This is something I've written that anyone who comes across it can read and hopefully get something out of it for their own lives.  Perhaps some readers are LDS members who are struggling with issues in the Church, and here they can find someone who had the same issues they did.  Perhaps there are those who feel they aren't strong enough to leave the Church, or even to examine it with critical thinking.

I'm here to tell those people that you are strong enough.

Looking at the Church with critical thinking wasn't easy.  Developing critical thinking skills in the first place wasn't easy, since what is stressed in the Church is faith, obedience, to "first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith" (Pres. Uchtdorf, Oct. 2013) and to "lean not unto thine own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5).  Coming to my conclusions about the Church was hard for me because I was raised in it and I really believed it was true.  It influenced how I saw the world, how I saw the purpose of life, how I saw people's behavior and its consequences, and my definition of morality.  And to look at the Church honestly and factually with critical thinking wasn't something I'd ever done before.  Not only that, but all of my immediate family members are LDS, as are all the immediate family members of my husband's family.  Most of the friends I made in school were LDS because of the strong community the Church offers, so leaving the Church was to leave my circle of friends and the possibility of easily meeting new friends whenever we moved.

Leaving was mostly liberating, because I finally felt validated in the thoughts and doubts about the Church that had troubled me for years; everything suddenly fits together when you realize "the Church isn't true".

I will be honest: the hardest thing of all was looking at scientific evidence and realizing that in all likelihood there is no God.  It's hard because it feels like starting from scratch, and you have to look at the world differently and to look at morality differently.

But it gets easier.  Human brains are incredible organs, and through mine I've been able to adjust pretty well.  And you know what?  Life isn't so bad without a belief in God.  At first it was rough, but I don't feel a sense of hopelessness anymore.  I'm looking at death as final, and that life on this Earth is my one shot at existence, and it's helped me want to put forth more effort to make the most of it.  Not for the sake of a reward in Heaven, but for my own sake.

Sometimes there are things in life that really suck, and sometimes we're not sure how we can make it through the day or the week or the year.  But our brains are capable of incredible things, and we don't give ourselves enough credit.  I have a saying up on my wall that says, "She Believed She Could, So She Did."  We have as much inner strength as we allow ourselves to have.  Our bodies might fail us, or it might seem like our circumstances are too much for us to handle.  Sometimes we're right.  But our life and our existence have as much value as we decide they have, and it's up to us to decide what we do with them.

I'm hoping I don't die any time soon, because I have young children.  That's one of the reasons why I haven't bought a motorcycle yet, even though I got my license about six months ago.  Although going places on a motorcycle is something I would love to do and that would be very fulfilling for me, the chances of getting into a crash and being seriously injured or killed are high, and my kids are still very young and they need a mother around who loves and can care for them and who has taken on the job of raising them.  My job is to keep them healthy and to prepare them to survive in this world, and I still have a lot of work to do.  In the meantime I'm going to continue with my (safe) hobbies that give me pleasure and that make me feel fulfilled, and I'm going to continue to learn as much as I can about things that interest me.  Critical thinking is a skill we need to learn (and that we are NOT taught or encouraged to develop in the LDS church), and I'm hoping to continue to cultivate mine and to teach my kids critical thinking when they're old enough.

I'm still not afraid of death, even though I'm now thinking that death is the end of my existence.  I really hope my last days or minutes aren't filled with pain, but death is inevitable and probably final, and I'm still adjusting to that new line of thinking.  And I'm doing alright.  I'm not blissfully happy, but I'm not miserable either.  I'm accepting.  It feels good to face reality head-on.