Reintroduction to the exmormon community:
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It's been a while since I've introduced myself.
Jonathan - name removed in 1994 [from the Mormon Church - the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints cult]
Temple worker. Missionary to Alaska. Sunday School President. Ricks & BYU attendee. Graduated from Weber. Basic naive sensitive chump who believed everything - way too much & more than others.
Exit journal: http://corvus.freeshell.org/corvus_corax/two/life_path/life_path.htm#history
Upon leaving found science to be more valuable than the bullcrap of Mormonism.
Also appreciated the works of Betty Dodson & Shere Hite.
Carl Sagan was a influence even when I was a Mormon God believer. But he was even more so after I left. His book "The Demon Haunted Word" was one key book, especially with regard to other issues at play nowadays and the corrosion & errosion of secularism, science, public universities, and science education. Also his book "Contact" was good, and his TV series "Cosmos" was life changing for me & many others.
After Carl Sagan died I then found other key authors, as follows:
Steven Pinker
Daniel Dennett
Richard Dawkins
Sam Harris
I also developed a strong interest in animal cognition, and enjoyed the work of Dr. Irene Pepperberg about her African Grey parrot named Alex.
In recent years I've also discovered Harry Kroto, Anthony Grayling, Victor Stenger, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (a key woman who came from Somalia, and ex-Muslim who has to live with round the clock security). And also the ex-Muslims on the Center for Inquiry website in the digital media section have been excellent.
Also I enjoy Pat Condell's videos. Oh and Christopher Hitchens is excellent in most cases.
Books of interest:
Cosmos, Dragons of Eden, Demon Haunted World, & Contact by Carl Sagan
books by Hite & Dodson
The God Delusion, The Ancestor's Tale, A Devil's Chaplain, and Climbing Mount Improbable, all by Dawkins
The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris
Pinker, Dennett, Dawkins, and Harris also have a lot of online videos and audio podcasts and quotes readily findable.
The videos at http://thesciencenetwork.org/programgroup/beyond-belief
Films listed at http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=5785905&s=reverse_uservote
...many of which are rentable at the Tower Theater in Salt Lake.
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My current S list (crap list):
Mormon bishops who micromanage the sex lives of children & adults in Mormonism, even though Joseph & Brigham slept with adolescents and the wives of other men, and even though the Mormon God slept with Mary the mother of the mythical Jesus.
Catholic Priests who rape children en masse, and who cover up such rape.
Muslims / Islamists who advocate gender apartheid & the veil, and the killing of cartoonists, authors, and heathens.
Cultural & moral relativists who maintain the hugely dangerous lie that everything is equal.
Micromanagers of all types and in all venues.
Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm style lazy shallow pouncers, who as far as I'm concerned are no better than dead wood or bumps in the road worthy of very fast driving over. Hitchens & Pat Condell are excellent examples of how to deal with people too lazy to care about what a person says or to do proper research. Since I've been on the net since 1991 I've engaged in plenty of debates. But more recently I've grown weary of people who really don't deserve my time to respond to. Figure it out yourself or get out of the way - this is the path Condell & Hitchens have shown and as far as I'm concerned it's a good one. You can be the cordial one 100% of the time. But I guess my patience wears more thin these days. It takes a village.
My current heros list:
Sagan, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, Dodson, Hite, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Douglas Adams, and the Monty Python group & creators. Geert Wilders & Pat Condell are also worthy of honorable mention. In the general greater exmo world Simon Southerton is good. The people who helped found the Salt Lake based exmo conferences are good also. Relative to those conferences I'm one of the few people who still goes on a regular basis who also was around for the founding of the Salt Lake based conferences. Also I'm a long time attendee of the atheist coffee chat things that happen every Thursday in Salt Lake.
My web site & blog:
http://corvus.freeshell.org
http://jonathanshome.blogspot.com/
Current endeavor: Dating. Six years ago I lost 110 pounds using a weight loss program of my own design. The weight loss was to facilitate dating.
Outside of Utah I've lived in Texas (Austin & south of San Antonio) and Oregon (Portland). I recently moved back to Salt Lake from Portland to find more sun.
Favorite beer: The darker the better.
Favorite wine: red pinos are good but I'm also experimenting with others.
Music: Raindrop Prelude by Chopin and other excellent classical. Rammstein. Prince. John Denver. Simon & Garfunkel. Neil Young. Selected Cat Stevens, Madonna, and Lady Gaga, selected New Age genre instrumental.
Favorite websites:
BBC
google
plentyoffish
and sites dealing with what the Internet is for:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-TA57L0kuc
The freedom to see and to be free from the coercive abusive S of Mormonism has led to the quiet realization that the most important things happen in real life with other people in the "first life." Also that what you "get" from exposure to the totality of positive human interaction is not what they say. Not pollution. Not filth. But rather the simple quiet realization of the great majesty & beauty of life, and the value of preserving the garden we've been given by evolution, natural selection, and a Universe we were lucky enough to have as it is.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080710215703/http://www.getafirstlife.com/
There's a reason preachers want you to avoid a positive approach to human sexuality: Because if you embrace such an approach you'll quickly find no reason whatsoever to suck up to a-hole preachers who tell you such crap in the first place. Move on from their dross & drivel & be a lot happier.
The pale blue dot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M
There may not be gods now, but science may allow us to become as such.
We may transcend our little home & survive after our home is destroyed. Or we may develop the science & technology to prevent the destruction, but only if we can transcend wasteful delusion.
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