I was raised by devout Mormons, AMA [&|] Soliciting Advice

Thanks for that! You're fortunate you got out before going on a mission. I lasted only a few months before I became bored out of my mind and couldn't do it any more.

I'm not even going to attempt to convince my parents. I know them well enough that if I prepared a good enough strategy I'd estimate a >40% chance of convincing at least one of them, but their lives and personalities are so enmeshed with the church that losing it would likely do them more harm than good at this point.

How did you approach dating after leaving? I don't have much of a friend group now (not specifically because I left, I just drifted away from my friends from HS after a few years) so it's really tough to meet women.

When you grow up knowing nothing else, it just feels normal^[1] (except for occasional twinge of cognitive dissonance when evidence contradicts something you believe^[2])
A culture of strong neighborhood communities and tight-knit extended families which provide a social support system and financial and physical safety net. Growing up, if my family had a crisis^[3] or even some mundane need like running out of eggs for a recipe^[4] we knew 10+ people living on the same block we could call or walk over to on a moments notice.

Despite my disenfranchisement with the LDS church as a whole, individual members and local leaders are generally nice^[5] people who fulfill useful and productive roles in society.

There's also a admirable emphasis on education for the sake of becoming better/more effective as opposed to education for it's own sake^[6].

1. ^{^}

   being wrong feels just like being right [LW · GW]

2. ^{^}

   Or believe you believe [LW · GW]

3. ^{^}

   assuming it wasn't the type of emergency to necessitate calling 911

4. ^{^}

   which can become a particularly serious problem if you don't believe in shopping on Sunday

5. ^{^}

   As with many things, mileage may vary. Some Mormons are more insular than others. A few years ago a General Authority (Basically somebody who's high up in the leadership of the entire church) chastised "members of the church who forbid their kids from playing with the children of non-members"[paraphrased]

6. ^{^}

   As with most metrics, it's easy to Goodhart. 
   On a completely unrelated note, footnotes can be used to enhance communication, so why shouldn't I start evaluating my comments by how many footnotes I can cram in?

When I left the mormon church, this was one of the most common challenges I would get from family and church leaders. "Don't you think family is important? Look at all the good things our ward does for each other? You disagree with X good thing the church teaches?" I think one of the most important steps to being able to walk away was realizing that I could take the things I thought were good with me, while leaving out the things that I thought were false or wrong. This might seem really obvious to an outsider, but when you are raised within a culture, it can actually be pretty difficult to disentangle parts of a belief system like that.

In my opinion, the main thing the Mormon church gets right that should be adopted almost universally is the Ward system. The Mormon church is organized into a system of "stakes" and "wards", with each ward being the local group of people you meet with for church meetings. A ward is supposed to be about 100-200 people. While the main purpose is people you are meant to attend church with, it is the main way people build communities within Mormonism, and it is very good at that. People are assigned various roles within the ward, and while the quality of the ward and its leadership varies DRAMATICALLY, when you have a really good ward it can be a lifechanging force for good. My old ward in Arizona was amazing. We had several tragedies occur, where in the space of a year three people died unexpectedly, and unrelatedly. The ward banded together very tightly to support their families, and it is still one of the best memories I have of humanity.

While if I were to set up a secular ward system there are many changes I would make to put checks on the leadership, and it could probably be improved in other ways, I think most of humanity could very much benefit from a secular ward system. 

I am convinced that humans evolved to live in communities of around 100 people and that our social needs have been monstrously neglected by our modern lifestyles. 

The other thing is the emphasis on prioritizing familial relationships. While it is a double sided coin that can lead to some bad situations, I still hold to most of my Mormon originated values of prioritizing taking care of my family members and it is very rewarding. 

I think one thing that's pretty cool is "home teaching." Mormon congregation members who are able are assigned various other members of the congregation to check in on. This often involves a monthly visit to their house, talking for a bit, sharing some spiritual thoughts, etc. The nice thing about it is that home teaching sometimes really benefits people who need it. Especially for old or disabled people, they get nice visits, and home teachers often help them with stuff. In my experience, Mormons within a congregation are pretty good at helping each other with misc. things in life (e.g. fixing a broken water heater), and this is largely done through home teaching.

Strong neighborhood communities called "wards" are a very nice thing to have. The one where I grew up was full of nice people who would watch out for each other, help elderly people with yard maintenance, etc. IIRC Cities in Utah county have some of the lowest crime rates in the USA, despite having a moderate (~600k within 5,550 sq.km) population.
Not all Mormon neighborhoods are equal, but the good ones are excellent places to live. I definitely miss the instant community connection that (good) wards have. (They don't exclude non-members from neighborhood events, but a lot of the 'structural' social interaction happens at church and church-related activities)

e.g. "practically how do you explore alcohol in a way that isn't dangerous")

Yeah, that's the sort of thing that could be useful. I still have never tried alcohol. I know in theory it would be fine when used responsibly and in moderation, but lack of knowledge/deep conditioning are hard to overcome. I could go to a bar, but I wouldn't even know the approximate 'strength' of various types of drinks or how fast alcohol takes effect/wears off/how soon it would be safe to drive again.
Not to mention I don't have any idea how sensitive I am personally to alcohol, so I wouldn't go try a drink without a trusted friend with me to stop me from doing anything really stupid.

explicitly avoiding a permanent state of having an "ex-mormon" identity, which strikes me as healthy

Yeah, I agree. I avoid dedicated ex-mormon communities. In my answer to Joseph_C I said:

"...r/exmormon is quite a bad environment IMHO. While there are some nice and reasonable folks, they seem to be either a minority or simply less vocal than those who are not. A significant portion of those who frequent exmo-specific groups (or at least post often) tend to be those who are angry and bitter. As far as I can tell some of them still blame the church for everything bad in their life even decades after leaving.
Those with a more healthy outlook tend to move on and find better things to do."

NB: I have a casual interest in high-demand religions, but have never been a part of one (with the arguable exception of the rationality/EA community).

From what I can tell, the rationality/EA community is lacking many 'tells' that tend to be present in high demand religions. For example:

• There's no taboo against criticizing leadership
• There's no intrusive way to extort monetary contributions (occasional requests for donations are a lot less intrusive than "pay your tithing or lose out on privileges/go on guilt trip"
• Ideas are just ideas, not some unified one-size-fits-all this-is-how-to-live-your-life-or-consequences (social or otherwise).

About the same way many non-religious people rate the bible: It has many consistency and continuity issues, with a few potentially insightful things mixed in that you could find elsewhere more efficiently.

Growing up being expected to read every day to search for 'personal revelation' somewhat puts a sour taste in my mouth when I think about it now. I certainly have better things to read when I have a choice in the matter.

My favorite part these days is the amusingly flagrant disregard of archeological plausibility. (A civilization called the 'Jaredites' allegedly numbered in the millions on the American continents before wiping themselves out in a series of wars. Archaeological evidence? Very little if any.

It was a gradual process over several years. Eventually one or two relatively small things became the metaphorical straws that broke the camel's back.
Especially after beginning to study science and statistics in earnest, I became increasingly aware of how inconsistent it was to have different standards of evidence for religion vs science. Once I could no longer fool myself into arbitrarily moving the goalposts my beliefs collapsed very quickly.

Something else that helped me was the good ol' Sagan standard of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". 

1. I found LessWrong via HPMoR. I found HPMoR because it was mentioned offhand on an unrelated article as an example of a piece of fan-fiction that was actually good...and it was.
2. Many of my friends and most of my immediate and extended family are Mormon. I'll happily discuss my opinions to any who seem like they want help/are searching for answers, but I'm not in the habit of proactively questioning their beliefs since bringing up info directly critical of the Church tends to make True Believers instantly defensive and suspicious. Social 'immune systems' are incredible in how they defend existing beliefs.
   I do try to indirectly raise the sanity waterline [LW · GW] in the hope that others will find their own way out of their own volition.
   I'm more or less resigned to leave those who are content alone, it seems quite futile to try to rescue someone who doesn't want to be rescued, and they might not appreciate it even if the 'brute force logic' solution did manage to convince them.
3. Anything that can be destroyed by the truth should be. 50 years ago would have been more difficult to find my way out of because the internet didn't exist.
4. Even between households there's a lot of variation in how certain rules and interpreted. My family was more on the extreme end of the Sabbath Observance spectrum, while most other kids I knew were allowed to play video games and generally do what they wanted on Sunday. It was very difficult to grow up dreading every Sunday, and even though I wasn't all that 'rebellious' of a teenager necessity caused me to find a quiet spot to read sci-fi/fantasy novels or play video games when my parents weren't looking.
   Some other things my parents didn't allow:
   
   • No Pg-13 movies, mostly because anything remotely sexually suggestive was considered 'inappropriate'. This essentially was enforced only at home. They acknowledged there was nothing stopping us from watching whatever movies at our friends houses and they wouldn't try to stop us, but they would passively disapprove. Most other Mormon families were far more lax about this and less prudish about media in general.
   • They discouraged caffeine, although that was more relaxed. I know there are some Mormon communities that consider ALL caffeinated drinks taboo instead of just Tea and Coffee.
   • Teenagers were not allowed to date at all until age 16 or older. Being a socially awkward early-teen boy this had the unfortunate consequence of me reasoning that "since I can't date anyway what's the point of getting to know girls?"...Which I would realize later was just an excuse to avoid doing things out of my comfort zone and I should have used that important time to develop my social skills in a safe environment.
      
5. I had a decent amount of internet access and quickly became better at computers than both of my parents. I taught myself coding by learning to mod games, and my skill with code eventually turned into a career. There wasn't total isolation from current events, although everything I heard was filtered through the highly-conservative lens of the adults around me. (A few of my relatives are also members of the JBS and believe that 911 was an 'inside job' and similar things from the Q-Anon bingo chart.) My parents were very opposed to all attempts to build high-density housing^[1] nearby because of traffic/infrastructure concerns.

1. ^{^}

   (i.e. anything more dense than 1/3 acre lots with a yard)

Wait...your children are on the Mormon path? Oh boy.

As a non-parent, I have no idea how it is to be a parent. It must be exceptionally hard and require making difficult compromises. However, having realized that Mormonism is not the path to reason...aren't you terrified that your children are headed toward a dead-end, believing irrational things and perpetuating those beliefs unto the next generation? How do you handle that? I would be looking for any signs that my kids wanted out...looking for them to send me an SOS so I would be justified in swooping in and telling them it's all baloney and they don't need to take any of it seriously. That would probably land me in family court and alienate me from my children, who, having grown up in the community and imbibed the teachings like mother's milk, have become integrated into the hive mind, but the temptation to cry BS must be overwhelming, no?

I do still live in Utah. I haven't told my family yet. One of my siblings already left the church and my family didn't cut them off, and I'm confident they wouldn't cut me off either. 
On the other hand, my sibling leaving broke my mom's heart so I don't see any reason to do that any sooner than I have to. In this case, what she doesn't know can actually hurt her once she does. In her perspective she sees a personal failure on her part if her children lose faith, which is obviously irrational and unfair to both herself and us.

r/exmormon is quite a bad environment IMHO. While there are some nice and reasonable folks, they seem to be either a minority or simply less vocal than those who are not. A significant portion of those who frequent exmo-specific groups (or at least post often) tend to be those who are angry and bitter. As far as I can tell some of them still blame the church for everything bad in their life even decades after leaving.
Those with a more healthy outlook tend to move on and find better things to do.

Back when I was a questioning-but-not-yet-disenfranchised member, encountering exmo groups was counter-productive because it only served to feed the confirmation bias of "wow, all these ex-mormons sure are miserable, just like I've been told!"

1/ when someone says they "believe in God" does this mean something like "I assign a ≥ 50% probability to there being an omnipotent omnipresent and omniscient intelligence?"

yes, that is what the prescribed belief means.

I'm doing decently well, thanks for asking!

1. I don't think any but the most rational/educated theists think in terms of probability to that degree. Many feel they are certain in their beliefs.

2. It doesn't make a huge difference. I know several Mormons who are likely smarter than I am (mathematicians & engineers, etc). Shaking off an entire upbringing of brainwashing is a test of critical thinking, not general intelligence. Intelligence only helps to solve problems once you apply it to the situation. Once you compartmentalize religion and surround it with mental caution tape, no amount of brilliance is likely to help unless you allow the tape to be removed.

This seems like bait but I'm answering anyway.

No, I think it's still a bad thing because (as with most religions) it fuels beliefs that prevent people from even considering trying to solve problems like aging and death because "heaven will be better than mortality", "God will make everything better", etc.

In addition, even while they have more children than the general population there's an estimated 46-60% retention rate of young adults staying in the church. If you factor that in, even assuming 60% retention the overall birthrate of ~3.4 * 0.6 = 2.04 birthrate of those who stay Mormon^[1], and so by that metric they are disappearing just like the majority of the developed world (this is not taking new converts into account).

That being said, population sustainability is a real economic and practical problem in the long-term. Any rationalist with a sufficiently stable economic situation should seriously consider having kids, if for no other reason so that more humans grow up in an intellectually healthy situation.

1. ^{^}

   Please correct me if this is the wrong way to estimate this.