My Disaffection part 1 -from Atheist to Apostate.

 Previously, on Apostate Fokker, we met the protagonist, a NRBM (Never Really Believing Mormon) who had spent the last 191/2 years married to an amazing and wonderful woman who he deeply loves. For the sake of his wife and family, he has been 'pretending' or 'faking it 'til he makes it' in the "one and only true church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (COJCOLDS)." 

In this installment, I will explore the beginnings of my disaffection, and share with you the sources that I found on way.  It all started with a Book.

     In December I was strolling through the I.F. Public Library looking for some new books; maybe another Vince Flynn style thriller, full of political intrigue; perhaps another Rock Biography/Memoir. Wait a minute, what is this?

'God No!' -Amazon

     I like Penn and Teller, and this looked like just the book I needed to read.  It was.  I surreptitiously got his book home and began reading it at work and when I was alone.  I'll spare you the full review, but basically it is a fairly humorous look at how a loud mouthed, smart-alecky atheist came to be.  The phrase that is used over and over is simple and resonated with me.

I Don't Know.

"Being an atheist means you don't believe in God.  When someone asks if God exists and you humbly say "I don't know." you've answered the question honestly.  Once you've answered 'I don't know'  regarding the existence of a God, the answer to whether you believe in God pretty much has to be 'No.'  That doesn't mean that you are saying it's impossible for there to be a God or we couldn't have evidence of  a God  in the future.   It just means that right now, you don't know, and if you don't know, you can't believe.  Believing cannot rise out of  "I don't know."  -Penn Jillette

     It made a whole lot of sense.  Way more than this whacked out religion I was playing along with.  The book wasn't too deep, yet it definitely made me think as much as it made me laugh. I would recommend it as an intro level atheist book, and for the laughs.  It woke me up and cracked me up. More importantly, it led me to the BIG 3 of Atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris. 

    

      I put books on hold at the library, and while waiting for them to come in, I began watching  Hitchens' debates and 'Hitchslaps' on YouTube.  The man was a Genius.  Intelligent, well spoken, and firm in his convictions, he was a hero to me.  Hitchens was  an author, journalist, and world traveler.  He has been in war  zones all over the world and was called upon to testify before the Catholic Church on the canonization of Mother Theresa as a Saint.  Of course he liked to drink fine scotch and he smoked, so obviously, nothing he said should  mean anything to anyone.  Isn't that right Mr. Ad Hominem? 

     He is abrasive and in your face, unapologetic, frank and just plain awe inspiring in his intellect.

Finally the next book arrived:

God Is Not Great -Amazon

This book stayed in my car, in the back seat, under a jacket.  This was not a book that I wanted my wife to see me reading and start asking questions about.  I wasn't ready to answer them, for her, or for myself.  I just knew I wanted more of this thinking and frank discussion about the existence of God and the poison of religion.  By the time I was reading this, I had heard most of his arguments from all of the lectures, debates and compilation videos.  As brilliant a book as this is, reading Hitchens pales in comparison to hearing and seeing him in action.  Nonetheless, I eagerly devoured it.  Best of both worlds, I now have the audio book read by the author himself.

This was immediately followed by

'The God Delusion' -Amazon

    Richard Dawkins is the Sciencey Atheist, and a Brit by birth. It could just be that I'm a sucker for accents, but I loved this one too.  He does come across as Mr. Smarty-pants, and  his complete distaste for religion is palpable. Obviously, this shiny book was kept well out of sight as I was delving further into disbelief.

 

I also listened to the audio book of Sam Harris' 'Letter to a Christian Nation' -Amazon.  Harris also takes Religion to task and clearly states his position when it comes to God and believers.

    

     I had discovered a whole new world of thought that made complete sense to me, in every way that the Church and it's teachings did not.  Was I an Atheist?  Could I continue to pretend in something that I found completely untenable?  How would this affect my marriage and my family?

     This is where I really started feeling dishonest and sneaky.  I was hiding books and watching videos with InPrivate browsing and deleting my history.  This was worse than Porn, (and all Mormons know how bad porn is, one peek at a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Magazine and you are an addict!)  I started feeling guilty and I knew I needed to talk with my wife honestly about my doubts-but how?  I spoke before about promising myself I would be honest with my wife.  This was no cup of coffee.  This was A BIG DEAL!!!  And I was sneaking around, hiding books  and sneaking around the Internet.  I had to tell her about this stuff, we had to talk.  I couldn't completely say "I am an ATHEIST!" to me yet, let alone her, but I had to find a way to bridge the gap that I felt was growing between us.    But how do you approach such an important conversation? 

Find out how I did it in the next installment of  'My Disaffection.'

  

Rant No 01- The Name of this Fokking blog.

     Let it be know to all nations, tongues and kindreds that I am not a fan of those Ben Stiller movies.  I saw the 1st one years ago, and that was enough.  This blog will have no relation to those films.  They spell it 'Focker' anyway. 

     I am new to the blogotubes, and I'm learning as I go here.  I have been taken under the wing of a charming and fabulous yet mysterious and anonymous benefactor, and I am  sub-letting her spare domain name.  She 'owns' the Apostate Fokker name.  I am just lucky enough to have a place to stumble around the interblogs and I am truly Thankful to her for this opportunity. 

     The problem is this, the nasty old landlady of this blog stuck me with this name.   (Apostate Fokker, it sounds like some lame church superhero: "You apostates better look out, or the Apostate Fokker will get you!"  Or maybe some kind of kinky ex-mormon, S&M swinger site.)  Now she won't let me change it.  I hate her!!  Oh sure, she passes off  the blame to some lame, old story about how her hands are tied by trademarked, copywrited legalese, but I know she just secretly wants to offend those earnest seekers of truth who come to my blog to be inspired and enlightened by my heartwarming stories about grandmas making quilts and fluffy kittens by shocking them with such crude language.  I vow to destroy her.

What shall I do?
     I shall  rise above the pseudo-pottyword and embrace the reference to the Red Baron's Plane, the Fokker Dr.I.   Like Baron von Richthofen, I will take to the air and rain down fire from the skies upon all those who dare to oppose me.  The Evil Landlady will taste the cold steel of my  Spandau MG08s. 

     I'm sure the kind, anonymous benefactor would spring for a plane, she's cool like that.

     So, just in case you were getting prepared to  get all huffy because your dirty mind  can't read Fokker without thinking of what Ralphie Parker refers to as "the queen-mother of dirty words,"  You can relax.  It's just a plane.  There will be no fokking profanity here.  Well, maybe a little tiny bit.  Mostly in the rants.  But it will be very tastefully used in a colorful and colloquial way to provide emphasis,  hammer home points and to piss off uptight Fokkers.

A Welcome and a Warning to the readers of this blog

NOTE-I imagine that there are 2 types of readers of this blog,

1-My new disaffected friends from the interwebs and the facebooks who have had, and in some cases, shared with me, similar tales of how they came face to face with a crisis of faith (say that 3x fast!). These dear new friends will laugh (hopefully) and maybe cry (we'll see how mushy I get) and mumble "I've been there." To you I say welcome, and enjoy.

2-The second type of reader of this blog will be old friends and family members who, at some point, have expressed a sincere desire to know what it is that I do and do not believe, and why. If you fall into this category, I have invited you here to share with you that which you profess to desire. If you follow me down this rabbit hole you will probably have one of two reactions:

• Reaction A: You will start with the unshakable "knowledge" that the church is TRUE and I am wrong. You will think I am under Satan's influence, preaching false doctrine and run screaming, never to go beyond these first few posts. You will disregard any evidence that I may present, judge me unrighteous and shun me or rage against me and condemn me. If this is you, you should go ahead and fuck off now.

or

• Reaction B: You REALLY want to know those things that led to my turning away from the Mormon Church.  You will continue to read the blog posts, possibly go on to read some of the books I list, listen to the Podcasts I link to, watch the YouTube videos I share , and check out the websites I reference. If, dear reader, this is you, go forth with caution and this warning, This could rock your testimony. You could be presented with enough cognitive dissonance provoking information to severely damage your belief in the Church Of Latter-day Saints, Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon and the Easter Bunny. Take your time and carefully investigate the claims I make, the sources I provide and evidence you find. I ask you only to have an open mind and be willing, just for a little while, to allow yourself to ask, "What if he is right? What if the Church isn't what I believed it was?

I know that it isn't realistic to expect people to read all the books that I did, listen to the hours upon hours of podcasts and watch all the videos.  I know it isn't realistic to expect some of you to read anything. 
    
  What it comes down to is this; 
     I spent a lot of time and energy looking into my beliefs and the history and doctrines of the LDS church.
     I found out A LOT of facts that made me realize that the LDS Church is not what it claims to be and  I cannot be a person of any kind of integrity if I  continued to pretend that I believed in any of it. 

     If you REALLY want to know why I left the church, it's not the kind of thing I can just explain in a 5 minute speech.  It requires a serious commitement of time and energy to seek out and find the truth for yourself.  Your truth may not be the same as mine, and that's  A-OK, but if you just blindly follow what you have been told since you were a sunbeam and never really explore everything that the church DOESN'T tell you, you will never find your own TRUTH!

What is this ridiculous blog about?

Oh Boy!!

 Another Disaffected Mormon with a blog!!!

Why the hell should we care what this blowhard has to say?

You probably shouldn't.  I'm one of those abrasive jerks who has an axe to grind and a foul mouth.  If you are a TBM or a sensitive NOM or just have a problem with the word Fuck, you should probably stop reading. 

 This blog is my place to rant and rave and express my disaffection through writing.  I have 3 distinct purposes in writing this and they will be expressed in 3 types of posts.

1-Rants. 
These will be the most raw and snarky posts, I will bitch and moan about day to day things that piss me off as well as historical and doctrinal issues that chap my ass.  Random, rambling and raunchy, these will be the ones most likely to offend.

2-Why I Left.
Basically a Post-mortem on my relationship with the LDS church.  Here I will try to explain in my own words and with the help of a variety of links to videos, pod casts, and documents, why I find the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be a fraud based on a lie and smothered in incongruous deception.  When people ask "Why did you leave the Church?"  This will be where I send them.  To find my answers.  Here I will try to refrain from snark and profanity, and simply present my case.

 My wonderful wife is still an active believer, Primary president and wonderful woman.  She has been so incredibly accepting of me and supportive as I have been going through my disaffection.  She likes the church for what it is currently in her life.   She was raised in it and her family are all very active TBMs.  She has said that she doesn't want to know  and doesn't care about the historical issues that I have learned through reading and studying the church.  I respect and love her and would never want to destroy her cherished beliefs.  Yet,  I  feel that deep down she knows that if she was to be presented with some of this historical evidence she would see that she is putting her faith in a corrupt institution based on the made up stories of a liar. 

If, in time she decides that she does want to know how the sausage was made, and is ready to look at the historical and doctrinal issues that I find so troubling,  these posts will be the way that I share those things with her.  In these posts I will try to be more respectful, clear and loaded with links to outside sources (Mormon Expression Podcast, YouTube videos and documents like the Nauvoo Expositor, Joseph Smith Papers, and the Journal Of Discourses.)  These will also help me to clearly understand these issues myself and why they are so problematic for me.

3-Where I Came From and Where I am Going.  (I could call it "My Journey", but I always hated that term and think it sounds pretentious)
These posts will be where I share the adventures and mistakes of my past that led to who I am, and my struggle with the questions of how I go on after this 'crisis of faith' and deal with the day to day issues of Life, the Universe, and Everything.  I will share with you my thoughts and feelings as I attempt to find out who, or what God is to me, or whether or not I am an Agnostic or an Atheist, or just an Asshole.

This post is one of the latter

I greww up on the periphery of the church,  living in the Mormon Corridor, I was baptised at 8,   and I got enough of the basics as a child in Primary that my concept of God was based in Mormonism.  I was not very active as a youth and eventually began seeking other ideas.  I was looking for something that wouldn't be as oppressive, restrictive and ridiculous and the Mormon God I grew up resenting. 

 My idea of God was Gordon B Hinckley,  A corporate lackey from the mail room who eventually worked his way up to be the Capo di tutti capi,  Boss of all Bosses,  the God of this planet.  If the idea that faithful Mormons can eventually be as gods of their own planet, the circular reasoning leads to and endless regression as was done on other worlds.  It's Gordon B Turtles all the way down.  I used to think that maybe there were other planets with cooler gods, gods  without so many stupid rules and more rockin' party planets, but I got stuck on the planet of the boring, uptight old fart.  I wanted better.

I have always been somewhat of a seeker. I read what would be called 'Anti-Mormon' books from the library.  I read books of magic, myths and the occult.   I read the Bhagavad Gita, The  Tao Te Ching and books on Zen and other Eastern religions.  I eventually moved outside of the Mormon corridor, living in Hollywood and sewing wild oats in sin city.  I found the famous New Age bookstore, the Bhodi Tree and began reading new age books and explored a few New Age religions in the area.   I  was shakabuku-ed and went to a Buddhist Temple in Ranch Cucamonga and received my Gohonzon and tried chanting" Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo"  I explored "They Psychedelic Experience" and other writings by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson.  When I was 'seeing at a cellular level' I came up with the theory of the Big Pink Everything (the nuclei were pink, floating in a green protoplasm).  I delved into the writings of Aleister Crowley and MacGregor Mathers, exploring Magick and Khabblah.  All of this was interesting, but none of it filled the void that I was trying to fill.  I knew the Mormon Church was wrong, but I wanted to find what was right, and I never did. 

I ended up moving back to Idaho and ended up marrying a wonderful young LDS girl.  I knew it would be easy to de-convert her and bring her around to my way of thinking.  15 months later I found myself in the Idaho Falls Temple. I had rebelled against the church so long and found no real answers, so, because I said I would, I took my beloved wife to the temple. I hated it.  This was supposed to be IT, the super duper, A number 1, Holiest of Holy.  It just seemed strange and silly.    We took the prep classes and I tried to cram the Big Pink Everything into this tiny Mormon box.  It wouldn't fit.  We struggled through those first years as I continued to rebel.

 In time we had a son, and and a few years later, a daughter. At this point my mom had begun telling me that one of her biggest regrets was not instilling us with a religious foundation and love of God and Jesus.  I didn't want my kids to grow up drifting about without some idea of God, and my wife's religion was as good as any, even if it was all made up.  I dutifully went to church on Sunday and eventually gave the temple another try.  I still didn't like it, but by then I was at the point where I had started thinking that there was just probably something wrong with me, I wasn't spiritual enough or too stiff-necked.

I am admittedly too damn intellectual,  I am all up in my head, and I over analyze, over think and over use  3 patterns.  I struggle to feel the spirit in any form.  I cannot sit and meditate without the constant intrusions of Monkey mind.  I know that.  I also know that you cannot intellectually understand the things of the spirit.  It is said that a testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not something to which  you can reason your way.  God must be in you heart as well as your head. I used to think it would be nice to just believe it all, to have that burning in the bosom testimony that I saw so many stand and profess.  If only I could get beyond all the cognitive dissonance and just knuckle under to the idea that a kind and loving Heavenly Father sent his beloved son to be nailed to a chunk of wood so that I could get away with masturbating or going to Taco Bell on Sunday. 

I basically have been "faking it until I make it," as the saying goes.   For the last 20 years I have been a quote 'Mormon' end quote.  Admittedly not a very good one, but a Mormon all the same.  I held callings-Primary Teacher, 4th Sunday EQ teacher, Activities Committee, I am still officially the assistant Membership Clerk. I wore the garments that I hated and found uncomfortable, ugly and stupid.  I failed to do my home teaching.   I watched football on mute while the in laws blasted conference.  I avoided volunteering to sort potatoes or work at the cannery.  I loved Funeral Potatoes served on my ham.

As my wife began serving in the YM program and then the Primary presidency, 1st as a counselor and now as president, it became harder and harder for me to stay at church.  I would go to sacrament with  her and the kids and then I would be alone to kill 2 hours.  I would use my clerk calling to hide in the office and avoid Sunday School and then sit through EQ meeting.  Soon I couldn't stay, and would just walk the mile home after Sacrament and my clerking.  By this time I had completed all 500 crosswords on the little handheld game my mom had bought me and I began using Sacrament meeting as my reading time.  I would pour through thrillers and mysteries as the High council reps droned on about tithing or temple work. 

I spent a lot of time at the YMCA and that was a good enough reason to wear my 'real' underwear whenever possible.  I would stay in bed until my wife left the room and then quickly dress for work so she wouldn't see me put on my BVDs.  I was living a lie and resented it. 

One day a year or so ago, my wife found out that I drank coffee at work.  It wasn't so much the coffee, as what she felt was the dishonesty.  I just never told her about it,  she drinks cocoa and tea all the time, so I didn't see it as a big deal.  I knew she wouldn't like it, but it wasn't like it was beer, it was just coffee.  (You guessed it, I never bought into the Wof W)  It was kind of a big todo over nothing as far as I saw it, but to her it was about trust and honesty.  I love my wife and didn't like hurting her, and vowed to myself  to be honest with her no matter what. 

This was the setting into which a monkey wrench was thrown, in the form of a book.  This book led to many more, and was the first straw on a very weary camel's back.  It was the spark that lit the fuse that led to my 'coming out' to my wife as an apostate. 

Next time: My Disaffection.