The Amazing Meeting, and More about Mormons

Hi Everyone,

I missed last week’s post since I was as the Amazing Meeting and meeting some amazing people with amazing jobs talking about amazing stuff (not being sarcastic there). Much as I hate Las Vegas the city, I’m glad I went to TAM. I’m also proud of doing my stand-up act at the talent show. Even though I didn’t win, it was my best and most challenging act so far. Congratulations again to the winners and all the other contestants– I was up against some very stiff competition! I’m particularly proud that the bit I did about talent show judge Sean McCabe’s appearance on Jerry Springer inspired the TAM staff to air the clip to the audience, to Sean’s apparent displeasure. I made it happen.

I will post my act once it’s up. If you want to critique me, be gentle:)

About TAM: while I know that not all skeptics are atheists, it seems likely that all atheists are skeptics. Skepticism is an important part of atheism and the movement against religion’s damage in general.

To continue my previous post, I am interested in ex-Mormons these days. Naturally, extremist religions of all kinds are particularly difficult to break free from and the people who do break free are particularly brave and gutsy.

I’m not proud of myself for many things, but I am very proud to be an atheist. In a culture in which I was pressured from all sides (well, most of them, anyway) to practice religion, and in which I was strongly discouraged from being an atheist and a free-thinker, there was something inside me that was strong and smart enough to compel me to stand up and say, “I am not going to buy this. I am not going to do what you say.” (I don’t know where that came from, either.) I believe the same is true of many, if not all, atheists.

One correspondent, from whom I would like to get the whole story, left a comment on my blog last week, which I would like to repeat in full, since it is exactly the kind of narrative I’m looking for:

“Hey Sarah, I have recently discovered your site, and I really enjoy it. Posts like these are really weird for me when I read about them on atheist blogs, because the cult I grew up in, which seems so familiar to me, is so foreign and lacking details when I talk to other people.

Krakauer’s book was written about a wide swath of extremist Mormonism, but the faction he gave the most focus was the Warren Jeffs faction, the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints. That’s where I grew up, and those people are insane. The fact that their prophet is a pedophile is the least of their worries.

I guess I could most accurately say I left in 2003, when I was thirteen. But it feels weird to say that, since I never really drank their Kool-Aid. As far back as I can remember, at least, I thought they were bringing batshit to a whole new level. My whole family was excommunicated (de facto) for a long time before that. I myself have been an atheist-by-any-other-name for most of my life (although I did have the whole teenage epiphany thing going for a year or so).

Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for writing on a subject like this. It’s a bit tough to be an ex-polygamist living in Utah, since mainstream Mormons hate you on account of atheism AND on account of polygamy. Add to that, we pretty much haven’t got any good spokespeople, except a lady named Flora Jessop, who is as dumb as a Neolithic fire extinguisher. So I really appreciate it when people write about stuff like this. It lets people like me know the world isn’t completely deaf to the struggles we faced.”