Gordon Stinky had a great post about BS faith promoting stories, but I would like to take a different angle.

All faith promoting stories prove nothing, even if they are entirely true. That's because they seek to affirm the meaning of an event, not disprove a proposed explanation for it.

For example, a person in business does the right thing and is rewarded. So what about a person who does the right thing and is not rewarded or is punished? What about a person who does the wrong thing yet gets rewarded?

Faith promoting stories prove nothing and should not be used as a basis for making decisions about life. Yet we know they are misused that way. Why are they so appealing?

This is a tendency which is often very helpful. It is the origin and foundational premise of the scientific method: some things which appear to be random events are actually the result of unknown processes or actors.

Religious thinking is based on the same method but instead of supposing that unknown physical forces or actors create phenomena, it supposes that invisible powerful beings create them.

In ancient times, everything was attributed to gods. People were obsessed with the idea of appeasing them and avoiding their wrath.

In the modern world, people have decided that the invisible being is all loving. Thus, the method is altered so that only positive events are attributed to God. Undesired events are the product of Satan, or simply of random chance.

It's a heads God wins, tails God wins arrangement.

A Mormon mommy tearfully recounts in fast and testimony meeting how she was driving with her three children and somehow passed some barricades across the road warning that the road is closed because of a forest fire ahead. When the family realizes that they are driving into an inferno, she pulls to the side of the road and little Meagan says a prayer asking the Lord to save tbem. The mom then turns the car around and they escape unharmed. Heavenly Father answers prayers and the church is true!

Most of the congregation is in tears but Shinehah sits there thinking, " Why the hell did she ignore the barricades in the first place? "

I remember a few years ago Asshat Holland ballyhooed as story about a little league footballer who was struck by lightning, knocked unconscious and the purportedly brought back to life with a priesthood blessing. Nobody asked the question of why were these kids playing football in a lightning storm. God protects the stupid I suppose.

Well, hell, remember last year when RMN visited a dying girl in the hospital? He's a doctor, he knew she was going to die, but they still made it faith-promoting!

first he told me off in a horrible fashion and then my bishop was sent some info about a gay man who had been involved in the "gay lifestyle" for a long time and came back to church and gave talks about his miracle and how he was living his life in order to not be "tempted."

We read the whole story, which was long.

So I was still not sure what to think. No one was able to give me a FOR SURE answer. We got married more to get them out of our lives than anything. They threw us in this together depending on each other and we needed each other. I had nobody to talk to because the leaders told me not to tell my parents or friends.

So what did my dad say to me when he figured out my husband is gay? "I knew you were far too intelligent to marry someone gay. They are born that way." This was YEARS later after my marriage had failed. In fact, it was a year before he died.

I left the lds church from my life experience. As my therapist says, "We tested mormonism to its limits and it failed us." Why should we have to test it? It is either true or it is not. If you watch and listen, you should be able to see, but there my little daughter is being a TBM trying to prove it to herself that we just failed and she can prove to everyone it is true.