Regarding the “Authenticity Required” argument.

This started out as a reply to an old friend on my last post, but I think that it warrants a deeper look. Many friends, family, commenters, and the bishop who came to my house have said that the Mormon church needs to confirm the veracity of my request to remove my name from their records. On the surface this may sound like a reasonable argument, but when examined through the critical eye there are blatant holes that cause it to fall flat.

The argument mainly relies on the “what if” scenario of a fraudulent removal request, in this case some ne’er do well falsely resigns another person from the church. In this case the victim should have nothing to worry about, because first and foremost God wouldn’t fall for it (he is after all omniscient).

As for the local effects say that member records removes him/her, then passes that on to the Stake, then to the Ward, logically the individual’s continued attendance would be noticed and the bishop could easily ask for confirmation without being required to go to the person’s home. A quick e-mail/phone call and the matter is resolved. Alternately if this occurs as a member is moving, then it would be caught almost immediately since the members will ask to have their records transferred to the new Ward and/or Stake.

The church itself did not even acknowledge this as a reason in their official correspondence with me. They simply referred to the matter as ecclesiastical in nature, which required local priesthood leaders to contact me (see their response letter here). The bishop visited me 2 days after receiving their letter, I was out so he left his phone #, which I called about a half hour before my interview on Q Transmissions. I explained in no uncertain terms that I was to be removed from their records and that the letter was not an invitation for proselytization. A couple days after that he came to the house again acknowledging the receipt of my phone message (which call display would have confirmed it as coming from me) but still requiring a face to face. Once again I had to tell him to remove me, and expressed my displeasure at the hurdles being placed in my way. It wasn’t until this point that he mentioned authentication being required. I was not asked to sign any documents, my ID was not requested, and I did not have to confirm my last recorded address that the church had. A couple of days later the bishop dropped a letter off indicating that he had sent the paperwork to the member records. I have yet to receive confirmation from member records despite nearly 3 weeks passing since the last letter from the bishop.

I have found that it is easier to quit a job with a resignation letter than it has been to quit the church. I will be sending yet another letter to the church if I have not received confirmation of my removal by the first week of March. This new letter will not be as nice since this ordeal has been going on since the original letter was sent on December 12, 2008 and it is currently February 22, 2009 over 2 months later.

Returning to the original topic of authentication, as Janine said in the comments on my previous post that there may be some truth in this The Science Pundit did point out that there is a reasonable limit. What could have been a quick matter has been stretched out needlessly, I for one will be glad when this is finally over. Stay tuned as we await the final chapter to my resignation from the mormon church.

Thanks again to SP and Janine their comments on my last blog post inspired this one.

Wow where have I been? Mormon resignation update.

I know it has been a while since I last posted, and for that I do apologize to those who are reading. I just wanted to give an update to my ordeal with the Mormon church.

I did get a visit from the local bishop and made it absolutely clear to him my displeasure regarding the unnecessary hoops I was being made to jump through. I made sure my tone was polite but firm. A couple of days later he dropped off a letter confirming that my request was being processed, I am still waiting for the “official word” from member records but for now it looks like I will be getting my wish.

To those of you who have supported me through this as it has been a far more emotional ride than I anticipated, and my good friends in the skeptical community at large were integral to the process. I eagerly look forward to having a celebration once I get the final notice from the church.

Mormon Response to My Resignation Letter

Today I received the long awaited response letter to my resignation from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Needless to say I am not happy with their response. Not only did they refuse to process my request, they sent my letter to the local stake president so that he in turn can send the bishop that covers my area to me.

I will be using Mormon No More again to help set these guys straight. In the meantime I’m including scans of the letter and the pamphlet for your amusement (minus my return address for my roommates sake) and my obligatory dramatic reading from YouTube

Q Transmissions: This Week

This week Heather and Desiree are going to be discussing losing your religion with a very special guest….ME!

I’m going to be talking about my life and background and what brought me from devout mormon to skeptical atheist activist.

Please tune in to hear my story and call if you wish to ask me questions about my life.

Resignation Letter Update.

I recieved confirmation that my letter was recieved on December 22 in Utah (it paid to use registered mail), now I am merely waiting for their reply.

My Resignation Letter

For those who are curious below is the text of the resignation letter I will be sending in this week.  The bulk of this came from a sample letter on http://www.mormonnomore.com

This letter is my formal resignation from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and it is effective immediately. I hereby withdraw my consent to being treated as a member and I withdraw my consent to being subject to church rules, policies, beliefs and ‘discipline’. As I am no longer a member, I want my name permanently and completely removed from the membership rolls of the church.

I have given this matter considerable thought. I understand what you consider the ‘seriousness’ and the ‘consequences’ of my actions. I am aware that the church handbook says that my resignation “cancels the effects of baptism and confirmation, withdraws the priesthood held by a male member and revokes temple blessings” I also understand that I will be “readmitted to the church by baptism only after a thorough interview”. (quotes from the current Church Handbook of Instructions)

My resignation should be processed immediately, without any ‘waiting periods’. I am not going to be dissuaded and I am not going to change my mind.

I expect this matter to be handled promptly, with respect and with full confidentiality.

After today, the only contact I want from the church is a single letter of confirmation to let me know that I am no longer listed as a member of the church.

If you need to put down a reason you may indicate that I no longer wish to be associated with an organization that would visit the same discrimination upon another group that was visited upon it. More specifically as history will show the church practiced non-traditional marriage polygamy (which was considered vital to the plan of salvation), other religions forced the government to put pressure on the church to remove that right. Now the church has acted in the same way by seeking to outlaw a marriage that it deems offensive.

Sincerely,

Nathan Hinman

Who is the Northern Skeptic?

It is funny, I write this post to launch a blog, yet I don’t know the answer to the question.   My life and ideology has taken many winding turns to arrive where I am now, the number of adjectives I have used to describe myself covers a large range.

Redneck, Capitalist, Fundamentalist, Mormon, Christian, Right-Wing, Faithful, Saved, Chaste, for my youth these are some of the words that defined me.

Unsure, Agnostic, Doubting, Lost, Aimless, Searching, Incomplete, Gullible, Ignorant, these words covered a time after I lost my faith but still couldn’t define myself.

Conservative, Libertarian, Liberal, Socialist, the range of political ideologies I have entirely embraced at one time or another.

Then a few years ago I was poking around websites that had information about space, and space phenomena.  As a kid I loved Sci-Fi, and I loved hearing about the manned space program, so every so often I poked into a website that talked about misconceptions, myths and outright lies about the space program.  For those who are in the skeptical community you should already have figured out that I discovered the website of astronomer Phil Plait http://www.badastronomy.com .  I couldn’t stop reading the site, I absorbed everything there from Phil’s debunking of Nancy Leiber’s ridiculous Planet-X claims, to Richard Hoaglands paranoid ramblings about aliens on mars and NASA covering it up.  It was amazing.

For a while it was enough to just read the debunkings over and over again, however that all changed when I began to read his blog.  Phil talked about more than just space and science, he talked about creationism and schools and critical thinking.   I started to see that there was more going on in the world that just my floundering on the internet absorbing random websites.  This was the beginning of a new chapter in my life.

Phil started a brief series of educational videos that he posted to YouTube, this placed me on an unalterable course.  From Phil’s small YouTube channel I followed links to other youtubers and they linked to yet other youtubers, for example from the channel of Skepchick Rebecca Watson I found the “Blasphemy Challenge”.  What this led me to was the YouTube Atheist Community.   I discovered that people like me were talking about their lives and others were listening and commenting.  I felt the need to speak and so I registered a username http://www.youtube.com/truenorth15.

Again it was an amazing paradigm shift for me, this did lead to one of the biggest realizations in my life.  I am an atheist, those words were terrifying to me for many years I thought atheists were to be despised, ridiculed, mocked and now I realized I was one as well.  I put out a couple of videos as an ardent agnostic before my self realization, by that point my new course was set.

I began participating in video chains, and projects.  I logged into Stickam and spoke with other atheists live, but there was always something in the background that was calling to me.  I realized not all atheists were there via the same path I took, I continued to read Phil’s blog but added others to my list too including PZ Meyers, Orac, Skeptico, and most notably James Randi’s Swift blog.

I was still an atheist but I found that I was identifying with the skeptic community too.  I coasted along in this state for some time, until I was laid off from my job.  I suddenly had loads of free time between job hunting and found something to do with it.  I joined the local atheist society http://www.edmontonatheists.ca.   Regular events kept me busy, and I enjoyed the company however something was missing, and that fortuitously came along in the form of a new local skeptical society edmontonskeptics.org.   Little did I realize this was another major shift in my life.

In my unemployment I began to listen to podcasts, lots of podcasts.  I listened to months worth of Skepticality, Non-Prophets, Atheist Experience, Skeptoid, and the venerable Skeptics Guide.  I wanted more, so imagine my suprise when I found out that there was a local skeptical call in radio show qtransmissions.wordpress.com.  I was hooked on the first episode I heard, and I had to call in.  Pretty soon it became apparent that I had called in every single episode since I first started listening.  You could say that I became the official fanclub for the show, in fact I purchased a small AM/FM radio so that if I was out I could listen to the show no matter what.

While this excitement was carrying on there was great political upheaval going on south of the border.  We were about to see which direction our powerful neighbor to the south would take after 8 years of disasterous leadership.  In the end the canidate I was hoping for won without question, but somebody lost.  The loss that occured was to same-sex couples and their right to marriage.   I remember thinking that they didn’t deserve rights that they were an abberation, I remember thinking they should be happy with civil-unions and no more.  What changed? Me.  I got to know a couple of gays and lesbians, and it got harder….no impossible for me not to see that they were people too deserving of the same equal rights that everybody else was.  I started to empathize to the point that I could imagine the heartache that these fellow human beings were feeling.

It turns out I took this violation even more personally that just the frienships I had made, I also felt guilt.  No I didn’t vote for the proposition, I didn’t campaign to remove their rights, but I had indirectly allowed my name to be associated with this campaign of hatred.  At this time I am still listed as a member of the mormon church, this same church from the pulpit mobilized to abolish gay marriage completely in California.  This was a violation of the separation between church and state and I was a quiet accomplice because I did not take the time to remove myself from the member records of this church.  This is where I define myself again.

I have written a letter to member records in Utah using resources from http://www.mormonnomore.com, and timely input from my favorite activist Desiree.   I will be mailing it within the next few days.  With this act I become an activist.

So Who am I?  I am an Atheist.  I am a Skeptic. I am an Activist.

Take me as I am for I am Nathan Hinman.