Am I a Mormon?

I want to be a Mormon. I just thought I would say that. I am no longer a member of the LDS church. I no longer even believe in God. But I love the ideas of Mormonism. I love the people. I love how they care so much about families. I love how they take care of each other and band together so well in emergencies. I love their ideas about thrift and self-reliance. I also love how they take care of the people who aren't good at implementing those ideas. I love their mythology, their cosmology, their music, sense of humor, and food, especially funeral potatoes. How can you not love funeral potatoes? I am sure I could think of more. But most of all, as I said before, I love the people. They are my people.
But yet I use the term "they" instead of "we". Despite how much I tried, I just could not ever get myself to believe in any of the truth claims of religion. It wasn't for lack of effort, I tried for 30 years, it just didn't work. And unfortunately Mormonism tends to be a fairly dogmatic community about believing it's truth claims. If you don't believe that, just imagine standing up in Sunday School and asking about other possible theories of Book of Mormon authorship. How well do you think that would go over? I want to stay part of Mormonism but I don't think Mormonism wants me.
There is one other possibility though. Couldn't I just attend and enjoy the social aspect and stay quiet about what I think about the beliefs? I certainly could do that. I know for a fact that many do. But it is a very hard thing to do. It is hard to listen to things you disagree with over and over and not be able to give your point of view. and I don't think I am the type of person that could pull it off.
So I try to stay part of the larger Mormon community by socializing as much as possible with people like me. But as awesome and great as those people are, I still feel like I am missing out on full participation in a community that I love.
Coming in my next post
What the church can do to fix this and get me back, seriously.
Preview....... MorCon. Better than DragonCon?