All Articles

One side of the creation debate has rocks, fossils and DNA. The other has a feeling. Here's why that mattered to me, and why Christmas survives it.

Mormon children are buried in water at eight. Rebirth is the oldest story we tell, and it always starts with something in us having to die.

"Is it true?" is the wrong question to ask about scripture. Two better questions, and better words, for sorting history from legend.

Erich Neumann argued that each of us relives humanity's oldest myths as we grow up. One idea of his changed how I think about God.

A ward will carry your couch and feed your family. Those strong ties are a real gift, and they cut both ways. Here's how I hold both.

I didn't stop being spiritual when I stopped believing. My spiritual experiences just don't have to fit a story anymore.

Why I use the plain word "magic" for supernatural claims, how our beliefs sound in plain words, and why wonder doesn't need a magician.

Norse giants, a cosmic egg, a sky father pushed off the earth. We call those myths. Why do we exempt our own, and is the Big Bang any different?

When the plan of salvation stopped holding my life's meaning, nihilism moved in for a while. Here's what I found on the other side of it.

Sacrifice, baptism, a god fathering a son with a mortal woman: all older than Christianity. What Tom Holland's Dominion helped me see about what was new.

The church is changing, quietly, one shifting baseline at a time. I welcome most of it. But I don't think it can stop where it is.

I've felt the burning in the bosom too. The feeling is real. What I no longer accept is that it proves a doctrine is true.

Personal revelation is ordinary, and it was never meant to replace thinking. Why emotion-based decisions go wrong, and what scripture says instead.

Fallen. Lost. Struggling. The words we use about people who leave carry a verdict. Changing a few of them is where dignified dissent begins.

My short list of the CES Letter's strongest points: the ones the church's own essays now acknowledge. Honest about the facts, fair to the faithful.

The Book of Mormon world keeps getting smaller: from two continents to a few hundred miles. Here's why I think that matters more than it seems to.

Nietzsche's most famous line isn't a victory chant. Here's what I think it means, and why I outgrew God as the church taught him without becoming anti-god.

I'm not anti-God and I'm not anti-religion. I've just loosened my grip on dogma, and kept the stories as something to live with, not argue over.

A story can be untrue as history and still ring true in us. That isn't a dodge. It's how Jung's archetypes help me keep scripture without the literalism.

Videos I recommend on spiritual experiences, Mormon stories and the psychology of belief. If you watch only one, watch the first.

The books I point people to on the big questions about God and religion. Fair warning: some are hard on faith.

For people who've outgrown Mormonism but don't fit either camp, and the believing family who love them. What this site is, what it isn't, where to start.

Where I stand with the church today, answered one honest question at a time for the Mormon family and friends I love. Please, don't be afraid of me.