Something in hawkgrrrl’s post yesterday bothered me. Here it is: “Based on Cragun’s data, that’s the group [the “Nones”] that is really gaining ground. It’s a national trend, but particularly true for those who leave the Mormon church, most of whom do not convert to other faiths, instead leaving religion altogether.” Let’s talk about it.

Think of the Church as a very big room, maybe the Conference Center, with a variety of exits. There’s a door marked “Catholic,” there’s a door marked “Lutheran,” there’s a door marked “my local Evangelical mega-church,” there’s a door marked “None, nada, nothing, it’s just a big empty Universe, no God, no Force.” And then there are the specifically Mormon doors, one marked “Anti, and proud of it” one marked “formally but quietly disaffiliated,” another marked “quietly went inactive,” one marked “PIMO” (you don’t really go through that door, you just look at it wistfully), one marked “they exed me” (that’s the door you get pushed through, whether you want to or not). There’s even one labeled “generic Ex-Mormon, I don’t know what the hell I am now, but it’s sure easier to shop on Sunday than on Saturday.” Now and then a person or family from the large crowd goes through one of those doors. On the other side of the building, there are entrance doors with a variety of labels as well. Overall, the large crowd seems to be thinning a bit maybe.

So the quote suggests that most Mormons who leave through one of the doors tend to leave through the “Nones” door, or maybe the “I don’t know what I am but it’s nice to shop on Sunday” door. Why is that? I’m sure most exiting Mormons would be welcomed, even celebrated, as new attenders at another Christian congregation. Question: If you went through the None door, what made you exit not just the LDS Church but religion entirely? My sense is that if most exiting Mormons just give up on Christianity or religion completely, that is a failure of some sort by the Church, but I haven’t really thought it through enough to pinpoint what that failure would be.

Then there are those who go through a door to another denomination or faith. That gets interesting. How do you choose a successor church? Did a Lutheran missionary knock on your door? Did a Catholic neighbor ask you, “What do you know about Catholicism, and would you like to know more?” Did you see a commercial or web ad? Did you shop around and visit a few local churches to pick a winner? So next question: If you went through a door to another church, which did you choose and why? How is your experience there? Are they happy to have a former Mormon in the congregation, or are they a still a little suspicious of you?

Then there are the uniquely Mormon doors. There are Ex-Catholics in the sense of former Catholics or entirely inactive Catholics, but I doubt there are many who self-identify that way, who shake hands with someone at a meet-up and say, “Hi, I’m George, I’m an Ex-Catholic.” The sense of Mormon identity is so strong, it lingers a long while. If your exit is traumatic or you are a do-gooder who needs to save those Mormons from false belief, as you have saved yourself, maybe you go through the Anti door (which you probably have a different label for). But the choice for most who don’t have a specific plan (as in “I want to be a Lutheran”) is between the “formally disaffiliate” (in Mormonspeak, that’s name removal) or “quietly go inactive” (like millions of others have done, choosing to live with the annoying fact that the Church will count you as a member until you reach the age of 110). Next question: If that was your choice, how did you choose between formally disaffiliating versus just quietly going inactive?

Now let’s talk for a paragraph about the Nones. That’s a catch-all category that emerged from polling statistics — it’s not a well-defined sociological or religious category. It is not equivalent to “atheist” or “atheist or agnostic.” You can’t ask someone, “So explain to me why you are a None?” because no one really self-identifies as a None. There are a variety of perspectives, some well considered and some merely reflexive, that drop out of polling results into the “None” category. It’s a mistake (albeit one that a lot of media and online discussions adopt) to think of Nones as a well-defined category. “None of the above” is not a philosophy of life or a perspective on the meaning of Life and the Universe. Anyone who thinks they are a None just hasn’t thought very seriously about the issue.

Now let’s talk for a paragraph or two about atheism, a sub-category of Nones (that is, I imagine a full-blooded atheist who responds to a poll checks “None of the above” if there isn’t a separate “atheist” category). I think some or many Ex-Mormons who exit the Church and who don’t join up to some degree with another church might think of themselves as atheist but haven’t really thought it through. If they have, they probably point to that old college physics book and college biology book on their bookshelf, particularly the chapters on evolution, and say, “Science, Big Bang, evolution, we’re just rational human animals, and that’s that. What’s on TV tonight?” Let me push back on that a bit, suggesting that if you leave the Church, you shouldn’t just wash your hands of religion and thereafter dismiss ultimate questions about Life and the Universe.

The problem with the “Science, Big Bang, etc.” response is that, well, here we are — rational, reflective, moral (to some degree) beings. We think not just in terms of our next meal and having a roof over our heads, but also of the well-being of family members and friends. We make sacrifices for them, sometimes substantial, some that clearly don’t emerge from a rational self-interest calculation that your economist friend endorses or even the kin selection story your biologist friend endorses. We think in terms of the ideal, not just the practical. We don’t just tend our gardens and pay the bills, we write poetry, do art, write novels, watch movies. We are aware of our impending death (in a year, a decade, or a century, just the blink of an eye in the cosmic timescale) and wonder about the meaning of life. All of that is an awful lot to ask of a Universe that flashed into existence 14.7 billion years ago, spewing energy and particles outward in a burst that is still expanding. If our galaxy and our Universe were nothing more than a tremendous array of dust clouds and stars, some shining and some dead, it would be a lot easier to point to those textbooks and say, “Science, it’s all science.” Of course, in that scenario there wouldn’t be textbooks and there wouldn’t be you. There would be nothing to explain because there would be no minds capable of even asking the questions.

Now it is too glib to simply point to humans and human life, and say “watches, there must be a Watchmaker, that’s God, voila.” The Universe is capable of generating a great deal of complexity through natural processes. It is truly amazing the extent to which modern science has theorized and documented those processes, with new wrinkles and even entirely new fields being discovered all the time. It’s just that, subjectively, I can’t quite connect the many dots between primordial blast of energy and particles 14.7 billion years ago and me (along with billions of other human minds).

It’s like if you take a coin out of your pocket and flip it onto your hardwood floor. It can be heads or tails or, maybe once in a million times, it can end up on its edge. So if you flip it a million times, maybe you get one edge result. But honestly, if you take a nickel out of your pocket just once, flip it, and it ends up on its edge, you don’t just shrug your shoulders and say, “Huh, it just happens sometimes.” No, it is so vastly improbable you pull out your phone and take a picture. You search Google to see if anyone else has done this. You go out and buy 20 lottery tickets, figuring this just might be your lucky day. Take another example. You pull a deck of cards out of your drawer and shuffle it 10 times. Then you flip it over and find the deck not “sufficiently randomized” (as Data would say) but fully sorted into suits and order by suit. You say something like, “My God, what is going on here?” You don’t say, “meh, it happens.”

That’s not a watchmaker argument for God and devoted membership in the local Christian congregation of your choice. That’s an argument for giving serious consideration to ultimate questions rather than checking the Nones or Atheist box on a questionnaire, as if that is an adequate response to the story of your life. Maybe in a roundabout way that’s an argument for an exiting Mormon who just can’t do the Mormon thing anymore to try another church and see if a different Christian perspective offers a more satisfying set of answers and community. That’s my take on how to be a good Ex-Mormon.

So, last question to consider: What’s your take on how to be a good Ex-Mormon?