If there is anyone here who has worked at a church school in recent years or knows people who have been kicked out of church schools, what kinds of things are likely to get a person expelled?
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My wife's families had one that lasted over 3 hours during a family reunion. My wife's grandfather and her uncle got into a competition to see who could come up with the most "faith inspiring" story and a few others would occasionally pitch in. Each person insisted on having to have the last word. We decided it was time to put our son to bed an hour and a half into it, and we expected i
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OK... LOL.
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I refuse to believe in a God that can magically fit 12,000 mammals, 20,000 reptiles, 20,000 birds, 14,000 amphibians, and 1.6 million insects onto a boat the size of a football field and yet can't help a 15 year old boy get a set of scriptures without forcing him to brutally murder a drunken man passed out in the street.
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Bednar had been the president of BYU-I when I first got there and he was hired on to be an apostle during my first term. He had been in the habit of having firesides with one ward for FHE every week and my ward was scheduled for it right after he was called as an apostle. I had heard a lot of people say that Bednar had issues with having a nasty temper and being incredibly impatient and rude to p
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The Freemason ceremony dates back to the 1300s. Copyrights have a limited life span (hence why you can get millions of books on e-readers for free), and most expire after around 80 years, so it could safely be labeled public domain material that the Freemasons couldn't claim infringement against.
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Great stuff, Anagrammy! Thanks!
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For me, it was a five. Having come to the realization that the reason that I couldn't make sense of the doctrines was because the church was a continuation of Joseph Smith's money digging fraud was very liberating. Not torturing myself over why I couldn't make sense of doctrines even though I felt like it was true was a huge emotional relief for me. However, dealing with family members since leav
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I always hated that people in our ward would stop in without calling first. We'd be in the shower, about to engage in romantic activities, or our house would be a mess, and people would just drop in and expect that we would let them in and talk for an hour or two. And the worst thing was that none of them seemed to like us at all, so their visits seemed highly hypocritical. And even more a proble
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Mine too.
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I didn't say it was a primary reason for this instance. I said that the problems leading to the practice were ignorance and poverty. Read my last note to Cheryl for my reasons for saying it. I'd appreciate a response that is more than simple, condescending contradiction, as your other responses have been so far.
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Telling me to go read something without offering any sort of a source is worthless as support for your beliefs. I could just as easily say "go read anything in a college library on child marriage and you'll find that it only happens in cultures surrounding the Mediterranean." That doesn't make it true (because it's not) nor does it help you verify my claim. Are you intending to say t
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I edited my above statement. However, the subject was not child sexual torture and murder when I started discussing it, so don't change the subject and then hold it against me when I continue discussing the subject that I intended to discuss in the post that you responded to.
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As I said above, if you feel that this sort of thing doesn't happen at least in part because of poverty or ignorance, find me a middle class or wealthier, educated family that has sold their daughter for marriage like this. It has to have happened in the last 20 years. If you really feel that this couldn't be prevented by eliminating poverty and educating people, why don't you explain why you
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Alright, Cheryl, find me an example of this happening in a middle class or wealthier, educated family. It needs to have happened in the last 20 years.
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I'm not sure what you're saying here. I didn't discuss motivations, only problems that are leading to the practice. I was pointing that out as a way of saying, "we need to worry about poverty and ignorance as well as religion if we are going to prevent things like this from happening." Perhaps I should have made my point a little more obvious, but I said nothing that should have been ta
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Wow. I had forgotten how quickly people here, under the cover of anonymity, will turn to insults to make a point and yet never make their point. Jacob, thanks for the reminder of why I usually stick to Facebook forums for discussing Mormonism. Addressing your "argument," first, I didn't say that every impoverished nation would do that if their religion permitted it. I stated that rel
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I'll throw my two bits in here: My mission exposed me to the fact that there are some LDS doctrines that can't be justified logically. Then, I saw a complete lack of inspiration from leaders, I saw joining the church lead a young woman to the brink of suicide, and I saw numerous zone leaders who were supposed to be inspired and chosen by God use their authority to go on mad power trips. I came ho
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I read that too. It is sad and disgusting beyond words. The problem with the practices that led to this, though, isn't as much religion as it is poverty and ignorance. Religion is the enabler, but not the instigator.
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Much happier now. As a TBM, I had too many things that I couldn't explain or make sense of and that bothered me a lot.
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Penn and Teller are awesome. Their "Bullshit" show actually played a minor role in helping us leave.
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I like the analogy. Did you know that Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975? They failed to predict that such cameras would become relevant and it ended up virtually running them out of business. So inability to predict the future in ways that make it so their actions today do them serious harm in the future is another element that I think is relevant to your metaphor.
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Just remembered another one - in True Grit (the new one), Rooster Cogburn refers to a friend who tried to hide from the law in Utah, but the Mormons ran him out of Utah.
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I can't believe I forgot that. I've even seen that one. Although you're the first person I've ever interacted with who has seen it. It is a completely mediocre movie, but the parts when they're playing D&D are really funny and make the whole thing worthwhile.
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I don't know how much this counts since it's from a TV show, but in Entourage, Vince's most recent movie has been accepted into Sundance and his agent tells him that it's a good thing, but won't likely result in any big help for his career saying, "Sundance is a big chance for a select few people. For everyone else, it's just a chance to fuck a Mormon." In the following episode, when
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Ocean's 11 has the "Mormon Brothers" as a pair of characters. They are introduced in Provo Utah. In Vicky Christina Barcelona, the main character is in a sexual relationship with a man and his wife. Her friend tells her that she is like a Mormon wife. Orgazmo (by Parker and Stone) is about a LDS missionary who becomes a porn star, but it really doesn't understand Mormonism at all.
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This could be especially effective if the protests were well publicized. Since it regards sex and religion, the news outlets would love it. It also makes the church look very creepy and abusive (rightfully so). If the media got involved, it would create a public outcry against the church and would seriously embarrass it. A few months later the leaders would "receive a revelation" that i
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My wife and I took a trip to the San Juan Islands and spent three days exploring Orcas Island, snorkeling, and hiking. I could spend my entire life like that.
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I feel that the church's doom is still a long way off. It is inevitable, but so long as there are people who will deny facts in favor of feelings that they acknowledge are severely flawed, the church will have followers. So long as stupid gullible people exist and so long as people would rather live in an absurd fantasy rather than admit that they've been wrong, the church will eek out an existen
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The school I graduated from accepted all of my BYU-I credits (including religion), but required that a certain percent of my credits were received at the school from which I graduated. So, you may be able to get a school to transfer them all over, but finding a reputable school that will transfer them all over AND let you graduate without having to do a lot of studying with them will probably be
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