Why I Can Never Believe Again

I have grown quite comfortable with my post-Mormon life. It took many years to get past the frustration of having believers make insulting assumptions about why I stopped believing. There are only a few believing family members who I interact with, and while they may not be happy that I left, they no longer talk to me about it. I no longer participate in fringe Mormon message boards or listen to Mormon-themed podcasts produced by former believers.

So why am I once again writing about Mormonism when I have not written a Mormon-themed blog post in almost 3 years? It all has to do with a private message I received recently on Facebook Messenger from a relative.

You grubby little apostate! I always knew you were weak, abandoning your wife and 5 children for some internet bimbo. You must have a real high opinion yourself and your stupid ideas about the church. Be very careful that you don't try to lead others astray. You have nothing to offer since you lost the gift of the holy ghost. Very disappointed in how your life has been conducted.

I will not post my response to this message here. Suffice it to say that I used some direct and colorful language to dispute some of the assertions contained in the message. I did not deny being an apostate from the Mormon point of view, but I did not abandon my family. My believing ex-wife chose to divorce me, and I continued to support my kids and spend as much time with them as I could after the divorce. They are all grown now and I have a good relationship with them.

I outed this relative on my Facebook wall, but then later made the thread private after this relative apologized for the tone of the message and for the factual errors, while re-emphasizing the admonition that I not lead others astray. I have chosen not to post any personally identifiable information about this relative here except for the initial message itself. I just wanted to make a few observations and clarifications here.

I choose this forum because only interested parties who seek it out will read it. I have never intended to lead anyone out of the church if it is working for them and they are happy participating and believing. However, there are many people for whom the church does not work as well. I would like those people to know that there are alternatives that may work better for them and there are people who understand who will be there to support them.

My relative accused me of arrogance after reading a couple of my blog posts. I am not sure which ones, but I recommended my Book of Mormon Research Blog as the best explanation for why I can no longer believe in the foundational claims of Mormonism. The accusation of arrogance is a puzzling one to me. I never get accused of arrogance in real life. I think this accusation has more to do with the discomfort caused by having one's beliefs questioned than actual arrogance. According to dictionary.com, arrogance is "having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities." It seems to me, by this definition, that someone who stubbornly clings to beliefs that have been thoroughly refuted by the evidence is far more arrogant that someone who is willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads, even if it means giving up long-held, cherished beliefs. To the contrary, giving up ones beliefs because the evidence contradicts them is an act of the deepest humility.

My relative also admonished me not to lead others out of the church, which is something that my ex-wife also worried about. This is also very strange to me. When I was a believer it was quite a challenge to convince people to join the Mormon church as we were constantly asked to do. I never had much success at it. How did I suddenly become so persuasive when I am still basically the same person? I have never really tried to lead anyone out of the church, but only to tell my story and express my opinions. I have only done it in forums where interested parties have to seek it out. I rarely share my opinions about religion in real life unless I am asked. It is not that I would not like to, but I realize the the effort is useless for the unprepared. I would rather be supportive after someone has already come to their own conclusions.

Of course, I will not stop sharing my opinions with anyone who is interested. I have just as much right to share my opinions as any believing Mormon. Sometimes believing Mormons have big misconceptions about people who leave. Some of my believing relatives think that I still know the Mormon church is true, but I am being willful or obstinate or lying to myself to relieve the guilt of sinning. This is completely false. I acknowledge that I may be wrong about many things, but my lack of belief in Mormonism is quite sincere, and I believe the facts support me.

One problem with Mormonism is that it makes claims that are testable and that have been demonstrated to a very high probability to be false. Many more mature faiths have backed off from such claims. You cannot disprove the existence of God or an afterlife, but you can easily demonstrate that Mormons are wrong about ancient America, just as you can demonstrate that young-earth creationists are wrong about evolution and the age of the earth. Anyone who still believes in such claims are ignorant of the facts or are clinging to an emotional basis for this belief.

Because my lack of belief in Mormonism has a well-supported factual basis, I cannot choose to believe again without denying all the evidence I am aware of. The preponderance of evidence would have to swing to the church's favor for me to reconsider, and there is a long, long way to go for that to ever be the case. This is something that my believing relatives are afraid to acknowledge because it could become a threat to their own faith if they follow the evidence too far, but this is the main reason why so many people are leaving Mormonsm.

Most human decisions are based on emotion, not on facts, which is why most people stubbornly cling to the beliefs they have always held regardless of how much the evidence is stacked against them. It is possible to rise above this, but it is very difficult without at least some training in the methods of science, and a willingness to follow where ever the evidence leads. Which leads to the last point I would like to make about my relative's statement, "I always knew you were weak"

Leaving the church is not taking the easy way out. In her book "Willful Blindness," Margaret Heffernan argues that maintaining beliefs that we have always held is the easy way. The far more difficult cognitive path is to change our minds. This coupled with the high potential social costs of leaving Mormonism suggests that it is not the weak who leave, but the strong.

Bored With Mormonism

I have been thinking about Mormonism, participating on message boards, listening to fringe Mormon podcasts, and blogging about Mormonism off and on ever since I stopped believing in Mormon claims about 15 years ago. Much of this activity was therapeutic. It is traumatic to lose faith in something that requires such a huge sacrifice of time and money. It is especially difficult to have those I once called friends think I have lost my way and that I am being led around by Satan, when from my perspective I am the only sane and reasonable one when I am among true believers. I have already paid a high price for my intellectual integrity. My true-believing ex-wife divorced me and succeeded in alienating at least one of my children from me. My true-believing oldest sister mourns the loss of my soul while my return-missionary son, perhaps the only true believer among my five children, holds out hope that I may yet return to the fold.

So now, after all this, I am getting quite bored with Mormonism. This is much to the relief of my current wife, who is also a former Mormon who was traumatized by events surrounding her departure. My interest has waned previously, but I was always sucked back in by prominent events such as the release of the Gospel Topic essays, news conferences about LGBT issues, and the recent rash of excommunications. I was especially interested in watching whether the church would come clean about the deception they have practiced for so long and stop demonizing those who ask honest questions. I suppose that I was looking for some type of vindication. I have felt vindicated by others who share my views, but any admission of wrongdoing on the part of the church will likely never come. Dallin H. Oaks made it very clear in a recent press conference that the church will never apologize.

During the Swedish rescue, then assistant historian, Marlin K. Jensen, and apostle Jeffrey R. Holland told the Swedes who had questions and doubts that the church was launching a new initiative that would take care of them all. It turns out that this was the first hint about the essays the church was about to release on its website addressing problematic areas of history and doctrine. This new transparency was welcomed at first by the fringe Mormon community. It seemed to be a harbinger of new things to come. Many thought the final result would be a broader-tent version of Mormonism where honest doubters would be welcome. However, recent excommunications reveal that this was never their intent. Rather, they only wanted to leave doubters without excuses and deflect criticisms of non-transparency.

Well, guess what?  You can no longer count me among the doubters. I am now more certain than ever that many of the Mormon church's core claims are absolutely false. I am also now convinced that the Mormon church does not truly care about its people, but only about their strict conformity to outdated and increasingly irrelevant values, chief among which are blind obedience to authority and bigotry towards those who are different.

So the church has chosen to stay weird. They have chosen to keep themselves out of sync with evolving societal values of greater compassion towards and greater inclusion of those who are different. I admire the heroes who have fought a good fight from within trying to encourage the church to change. The church has chosen to retrench rather than evolve, no doubt a reflection of the ultra-conservative attitudes and over-sized egos of its gerontocracy. If they hold this course, they will continue to decline into ever-increasing irrelevancy, while my unplayed queue of Mormon-themed podcasts grows ever longer until I finally unsubscribe.

This is likely to be my last post about Mormonism, unless something interesting happens. I have heard it said that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. The church is quite adept at dealing with persecution, even seeing it where none is intended. How will they deal with indifference?  I just don't care enough to keep watching and wondering. I have too many audiobooks to listen to on topics totally unrelated to Mormonism. So finally I might do the unthinkable, at least for a while: leave the church AND leave it alone.

Religious Liberty

The reaction of some conservative religious people to the recent Supreme Court decision has me a bit perplexed. This article from the Witherspoon Institute by Carl Esbeck claims that the Supreme Court's decision has the effect of redefining marriage, which erodes religious freedom and freedom of speech. The article has links to three briefs filed with the court to argue against striking down state laws forbidding same-sex marriage. This brief was written and filed with the Supreme Court by lawyers, including Esbeck, representing the Mormon church and several conservative Christian churches.

On the point of redefining marriage, since marriage is a legal contract it seems appropriate that it should be legally defined. No particular religion owns the definition of marriage. Since it is a legal matter, it seems appropriate to be decided within the legal sphere, not the religious sphere. Furthermore, broadening the definition of marriage takes nothing away from any religion for whom the marriage of one man with one woman is important. Those who hold this view are still free to practice "traditional" marriage and deem it important, even to do that exclusively if they choose. The only freedom they have lost is the freedom to force their views on the rest of society, which is not a right guaranteed by the constitution and in fact violates the constitutional rights of others.

Esbeck asserts, "Support for marriage is not founded on bigotry, hatred, or irrational prejudice." "Support for marriage" in this sentence is a euphemism for opposition to legally recognized same-sex marriage. In other words, what Esbeck and other religious conservatives really want is to deny a right to others that in no way affects any of their rights. Legalized same-sex marriage takes no rights away from anyone. It only grants new rights to a class of people who did not previously enjoy them. If opposition is not founded on bigotry, hatred, or irrational prejudice, I have no idea what else it could be founded on.

Religious conservatives are disingenuous about the reasons they oppose same-sex marriage. I say this because the reasons keep shifting. For years, opponents of same-sex marriage claimed that it would destroy traditional families. Then the data came in when some states legalized same-sex marriage and were subsequently found to have a lower divorce rate than states where same-sex marriage was still banned. Objective data showed that legalized same-sex marriage did not destroy traditional families. Opponents of same-sex marriage merely switched to using different arguments, because the real reason for opposition probably lay much deeper in the psyche and had more to do with natural disgust and a tribal mentality.

The main arguments in the court brief in the link above include assertions that legalizing same-sex marriage violates religious freedom, and that deciding the issue on a national basis violates state's rights.  I believe these arguments were chosen for pragmatic considerations because the Supreme Court is only authorized to determine constitutionality, not because these are necessarily the real reasons for opposition.

At least two arguments in the brief seem motivated by fear of marginalization. The brief's authors urge the court not to determine that traditional marriage laws are founded in animus, and not to determine that sexual orientation is a suspect class. These concerns basically mean that the brief authors do not want ulterior motives assigned to their opposition to same-marriage, and they do not want the LGBTQ community to be granted special rights because of historical discrimination. These arguments seem motivated to make those who oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds immune from criticism. This concern is at the heart of the claim that legalizing same-sex marriage violates the religious freedom and free-speech rights of its opponents.

The idea that anyone can introduce ideas into the public arena and be guaranteed to be free from criticism is ludicrous, and it conflicts with the free speech rights of those who have valid criticisms of these views. It seems to me that the crux of the matter is that opponents of same-sex marriage want to be bigots, but not to be labeled and criticized as such. The first amendment is intended to limit the power of the government to pass laws abridging our rights, not the power of fellow citizens to express opposition to bad or maliciously-motivated ideas. When opponents of same-sex marriage have failed to provide convincing evidence that their views are based on anything other than bigotry and a mean-spirited desire to control the freedoms of others, they ought to be criticized. Of course, they have a right to their bigoted views, but the rest of us have an equally valid right to criticize them and expose them for what they really are. This is all part of letting "truth and falsehood grapple in the free marketplace of ideas," as John Milton put it.

What It All Means

Former church historian Marlin K. Jensen said the following during the question and answer session of a fireside at the University of Utah on November 2011.

We are aware. Maybe I’ll just say this: You know what, I often get this question, “Do the brethren really know?” They do.

And I’m not speaking of me; I’m speaking of the fifteen men that are above me in the hierarchy of the Church. They really do know. And they really care. And they realize that, maybe, since Kirtland we’ve never had a period of—I’ll call it apostasy—like we’re having right now, largely over these issues.

So we do have another initiative that we’ve called “Answers to Gospel Questions.” We’re trying to figure out exactly what channels to deliver it in and exactly what format to put it in, but we want to have a place where people can go.

We’ve hired someone that’s in charge of “search engine optimization.” The Church is very tuned in to the world that we’re living in, and we realize that people basically get their information through Googling. They don’t come to LDS.org; if they get there, it’s through Google.

The initiative Jensen referred to is by now well known, if not to the membership at large, to members of the fringe Mormon community.  The church has published a series of essays to address problematic issues from a believing perspective and posted them on the official church website here.  The release of these essays inaugurated a period of optimism among Mormon doubters.  I discussed my take on these essays in my previous post, About the Essays.

One segment of the fringe Mormon community consists of unbelievers who still attend church, sometimes hiding their unbelief from believing family members to keep peace.  These are known online as New Order Mormons or NOMs.  Many NOMs celebrated the publication of these essays.  Finally they had a vehicle through which to introduce their issues to believing loved ones without being accused of reading anti-Mormon material.  This initial optimism, however, was short lived.  Most believing Mormons did not want to delve into the actual contents of these essays, but were content that their mere existence indicated that all was well in Zion.  NOMs who at first felt vindicated became frustrated that the essays had little impact on their loved ones.

The essays were not completely without impact among believers.  Some, learning of the problematic issues for the first time, became disaffected themselves and joined the ranks of the fringe community.  This helped maintain at least a degree of cautious optimism that the church might be forced to enlarge the tent of Mormonism and welcome greater diversity within the ranks of Mormons considered to be in good standing.  However, subsequent events beginning on June 23, 2014 have dashed such hopes.

On June 23, 2014 Kate Kelly, founder of the Ordain Women movement, was excommunicated for her role in the movement.  She had been informed of the pending court two weeks prior, coincidentally (or by plan as some have speculated) the same week John Dehlin was informed by his stake president that he was under investigation for apostasy for the content of some of his Mormon Stories podcasts, and for his support of gay marriage and Ordain Women.  The church PR department has since denied that this action had anything to do with John's support of LGBT rights.

Action against John was postponed, possibly to avoid having two such high profile cases hit the media simultaneously.  John's stake president outlined the conditions he would have to meet to maintain membership.  This included taking down certain podcast episodes that were critical of the church and discontinuing his support for Ordain Women and gay marriage.  The only thing John agreed to do was to work on maintaining a positive respectful tone in his podcast.  He did not agree to take down any podcast episodes or withdraw his support of Ordain Women and gay marriage.  A transcript of John's initial meeting with his stake president, which he secretly recorded, can be found here.  John did not release this transcript until he was finally excommunicated on February 9, 2015.  A day after John's excommunication he released this press release.

Not since September 1993, when the church excommunicated six scholars, have such prominent members been excommunicated for apostasy, drawing national media attention.  In this case it was more for activism than scholarship, but in both cases members were excommunicated for holding to and publishing the wrong views from the church's perspective.  In the case of the 1993 scholars, much of what they published has been subsequently vindicated in the recent essays.  In the case of John and Kate, it is quite probably that they too will be vindicated at some point given how much the church is rowing against the current of the larger society.

The church has consistently been about 20-30 years behind positive societal change, owing to probably the most unenlightened leadership succession policy ever devised.  The most senior apostle automatically becomes the new president ensuring that the top leader will always be quite elderly, if not, as is frequently the case, incapacitated.  This has been consistently followed by tradition and precedent since Brigham Young, rather than being officially spelled out in any document.  It is uncertain that church founder Joseph Smith ever intended the current succession policy.  The policy virtually ensures that the LDS church will never have dynamic, forward-thinking leadership at the highest levels.  It is doubtful that they could ever have their own version of Pope Francis, for example.  Catholic Popes are chosen by vote and only Cardinals under 80 are allowed to vote.

Church is at a crossroads.  They have opted to retrench rather than modernize.  They have made their position known.  Doubters are not welcome.  Hopes for a broader tent, more compassion, and more understanding as suggested by Marlin K. Jensen have been dashed.  At the highest level's of leadership, the church's attitude to those with questions and doubts is better exemplified by Jeffrey Holland's angry tirade starting at minute 50 of this talk.  Doubters are left with two alternatives: shut up, or get out.

About the Essays

The Mormon church's publication of a series of essays on problematic areas of history and doctrine provides a disturbing picture if you look beyond the surface.  Links to these essays along with critical analyses can be found on the MormonThink website.  The essays are part of a trend toward greater transparency and have been welcomed by many Mormon critics.  However an obvious question is, why was a church that claims devotion to truth not being transparent all along?  That the information in these essays has been widely available elsewhere online forced the church to address the issues from their perspective.  This has forever robbed them of the opportunity to demonstrate that they would have been transparent of their own volition.  All indications from past history indicate that they would have continued to obfuscate and mislead if they had not been caught doing it.  This is hardly what one would expect from a church claiming to be the one true church.

While it would be difficult to prove that the church has outright lied, examples of purposefully hiding embarrassing information or at least making it very difficult to find are quite easy to demonstrate.  For example, the first manual in the "Teachings of the Presidents of the Church" series covering Brigham Young, first published in 1997, made no mention at all of any of his wives but the first.  Another example involves the Book of Abraham papyrus.  I first heard from an Evangelical Christian coworker around the year 2001 that the papyrus from which the Book of Abraham had been "translated" was found in the New York Metropolitan Museum and sold to the church in 1967.  After examination by Egyptologists, it was found to be a common Egyptian funerary text that had nothing to do with Abraham.  As a senior in high school in 1981, I was taught in seminary that this papyrus had been destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire.  I was certain that my coworker was wrong about the 1967 discovery until I confirmed this information on pro-Mormon apologetic websites.  The information itself did not bother me nearly as much as the cover up.  At some level someone who knew better chose to keep this information out of the seminary curriculum.  I do not think my seminary teacher was the one being dishonest in this case.

I learned about another instance of a cover up at a high level while listening to John Dehlin interview Sandra Tanner on Episode 473 of the Mormon Stories Podcast.  Sandra and her husband Jerald met with the Apostle LeGrande Richards to explore his grandfather's journal entries that supposedly contemporaneously verified certain aspects of Joseph Smith's First Vision story.  All Richards produced was a page of typed quotes that he could have just typed himself.  They asked to see the original documents and he reluctantly showed them the microfiche in the library so quickly that they could not see the context.  Later they went back to the library on their own and found that the card catalog entry for this microfiche had been removed.  Fortunately, a helpful librarian remembered how to find it.  When they found the relevant entries they discovered that they were from 1875, some 55 years after the First Vision is purported to have happened and 31 years after the death of Joseph Smith.  Richards' obvious impatience and irritation with them indicates that he likely knew full well the context of these entries, but chose deliberately to hide this information.

Perhaps the publication of these essays is a step in the right direction, but they fall far short of undoing the damage that has already been done.  Regardless of how open the church becomes now, it cannot make up for the excommunications and broken families that resulted from members holding views and revealing information that the church now admits was true all along.  The church offers no apologies for past coverups or for excommunicating many of the scholars who first brought this information to light.  The essays are anonymous compositions produced by committee, as revealed by assistant church historian, Richard Turley, in a recent RadioWest show hosted by Doug Fabrizio.  Turley also admitted that the essays were deliberately made difficult to find for the casual browser of the church's website.  The idea is to address these issues for those already aware of them while not creating an issue for those currently unaware.  The essays seem to be as much an attempt to deflect criticism about lack of transparency as to address the specific issues.  Some of the wording is misleading, such as stating that Joseph Smith was married to Helen Mar Kimball "several months before her 15th birthday" rather than just saying she was 14.  Turley stated that he was not in favor of this particular wording, but it was inserted during the committee editing process.

There are various opinions about whether these essays address the issues effectively.  They do seem to satisfy some believers, while critics have expressed both vindication that this information is finally out there from an official source and disappointment about the particular slant and omissions.  Another reaction has been disillusionment on the part of believers who were completely unaware of some of the information contained in the essays, especially Joseph Smith's marriage to a 14-year-old girl and his practice of polyandry (marrying other men's wives).  For those in this category, some apologists have blamed the victims saying that it is their own fault that they were not better informed before now.  However, the disillusioned members previous ignorance may only indicate that they were particularly good at following the counsel of their church leaders to avoid reading things about the church from unofficial sources.  Blaming them for not knowing is rather calloused and uncharitable.

The anonymity of the essays follows the recent pattern of the highest church leaders' unwillingness to address issues directly and authoritatively.  There has been no comment at all to the general membership or the media by any one in the First Presidency or Quorum of the Twelve.  This is similar to other recent events, such as the excommunication of Kate Kelly where communication came only from a young representative of the PR department.  The highest authorities have been unwilling to give these essays their official stamp of approval.  This contrasts sharply with recent statements by Pope Francis who has acknowledged Catholic acceptance of evolution and the Big Bang Theory, and advocated for fair and compassionate treatment of gays.

For me, these essays are too little, too late.  My former bishop helped to break up my family, and also made it clear that I was not welcome as a fully participating member given my unorthodox views, even though I kept these views to myself.  These essays do nothing to heal the wounds the church has already inflicted on so many.  Furthermore, they do not go far enough.  While they do acknowledge that some of the criticism of the detractors has been valid, they seldom admit that the church or its leaders have ever been at fault.  The essays are not dated, I think deliberately so.  Once all the attention over their release from the fringe Mormon community dies down, I am guessing that they will conveniently forget their release dates and claim that the church has always been transparent.  As Gordon B. Hinckley would say, "That's all behind us now."

What Would Jesus's Church Do?

Two days ago news broke that two prominent Mormon church activists were facing excommunication: Kate Kelly for her roll in founding the Ordain Women movement that has drawn attention to gender inequality with their peaceful protests during General Conference, and John Dehlin, founder of Mormon Stories, for speaking out on issues facing the LGBT community.  This news has quickly gone viral in several online communities.  Dehlin posted the following quote on Facebook from Mormon founder, Joseph Smith.

"I did not like the old man being called up for erring in doctrine. It looks too much like the Methodist, and not like the Latter-day Saints. Methodists have creeds which a man must believe or be asked out of their church. I want the liberty of thinking and believing as I please. It feels so good not to be trammeled. It does not prove that a man is not a good man because he errs in doctrine."
-- Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, ed. B. H. Roberts, 2nd ed. rev. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957), 5:340.

In taking these actions, not only is the Mormon church at odds with its founder, but it is also at odds with Jesus himself who was far more inclusive in who he invited to be part of his movement than the modern Mormon church.  In standing up for equal treatment of women and inclusion of the LGTB community Kelly and Dehlin are being called to task for behaving in a more Christlike way than the church itself.

Thirty-six years after the church belatedly revoked their racist priesthood policy by extending the priesthood to men of African descent they once again find themselves on the wrong side of history.  Recently the church published this essay as one in a series to explain controversial or difficult issues.  The essay admits that denying the priesthood to those of African descent was not doctrine, but due to the racist climate that prevailed when the policy went into effect.  Once again the church has a chance to be proactive in extending equal rights more broadly, but once again they are failing and will have to be reactive when their current policies are no longer tolerable in the society at large.

Old Testaments prophets frequently spoke hard truths to those in power.  As the moral voice of the people they put themselves at great risk to speak up for what they believed to be right regardless of the consequences.  In taking a stand, Kelly and Dehlin are behaving more like prophets than are the leaders of the church, who claim to be prophets.  The behavior of church leaders has been both immoral and cowardly.  Immoral because they are seeking to punish people for advocating for the disenfranchised, and cowardly for not addressing the issues openly and directly themselves.

Social Contribution to Disaffection

I am effectively an ex-Mormon, although I am not bitter or angry, nor have I officially resigned from the church.  I have always been a skeptic at my core, but I enjoyed church.  I enjoyed the community, and church was a very important part of my family life.  Then around the year 2000 I went from having many questions to becoming convinced that the foundational claims of Mormonism, particularly that the Book of Mormon represents genuine history, could not possibly be true.  I began interacting with online communities that shared these views, but I did not share my views with anyone in real life.

For a long time, I would drop hints to test the waters of my (now ex-) wife's receptivity to some of the ideas I had been contemplating for a while.  In every case I found that she was not ready and would have had a very difficult time accepting our differences of beliefs.  I elected to downplay or even hide my real views in order to keep the peace.  I think I could have done this indefinitely.  However, by around 2005 my views came boldly out into the open in the midst of a heated argument.  I still would have been happy to continue church activity, but my ex-wife insisted that I talk to the bishop, mostly to determine whether I could participate in the upcoming baptism and ordination of our children.

The bishop allowed me to baptize my daughter, which left my ex-wife thinking that I had not told him enough.  To satisfy her I wrote him a detailed letter outlining my views on the Book of Mormon and other aspects of Mormon belief.  Once this was more clear to him, he released me from my calling teaching the 15-year-old Sunday school class, did not allow me to ordain my son, and suggested that I resign from the church so that my children were not confused into thinking my views represented the church's views.  I refused his suggestion and assured him that my children are clear on that issue.  He said he would pass my information up to the stake president because he did not have the power to convene a church court.  The stake president never took any action.  About a year after my ex-wife found out about my disbelief in Mormonism, she divorced me.  I have since been remarried to another former Mormon and we are very happy in our new life, which started 7 years ago.

This is all by way of background.  I don't intend to get into my specific issues in detail in this post, but I want to explore the social contribution to my disaffection.  This is partly to make sense of how intelligent people confronted with the same information can come to such drastically different conclusions.  Prior to living in this Colorado ward, we lived in New Mexico where I was on the leadership track in a small ward.  I had already been called to be Elder's Quorum president, and the first bishop we had in the area predicted that I would likely serve as a Bishop some day.  Had we stayed there, I probably would have never had the time to look deeper into some of Mormonism's foundational claims.  I would have felt relevant and probably less inclined to question.  It is quite likely that I would still be in the church.

What set the ball rolling was moving back to Colorado in 1996.  In New Mexico I was a high school choir director and was fairly happy and successful in that position.  In Colorado I took a job as a middle-school choir director and general music teacher and it was a terrible fit for me.  Eventually I transitioned out of teaching and into a career as a software developer.  The transition required me to go back to school and work at jobs that a recent high-school graduate could have filled just as well.  This new situation did a couple of things for me.  First, it allowed me time at a very undemanding job monitoring automated equipment to research Mormonism.  Secondly, it decreased my social standing in the wards we attended that were filled with technical professionals, doctors, upper-level managers, and CEO's who occupied the highest levels of local church leadership.

So now I had time on my hands, was not burdened with a time-consuming calling, and was somewhat socially marginalized at church.  It was a recipe for being motivated to find problems with the church.  It is not that what I found were not real issues, but I may have never gone looking if had not felt socially marginalized at church.  If they were not real issues I would have found satisfactory answers, which I did not even from apologetic websites.  My case can be contrasted with that of one of our Colorado bishops.  It was apparent from some of his talks that he went through a period of intense doubt and questioning.  However, he stayed with the church and continued to serve in leadership positions.  He was much more socially connected.  His mother was on the general relief society board.  When he was out of work, he stayed unemployed until he found a job commensurate with his education and experience rather than taking menial jobs similar to the ones I took while in transition.  Somehow this allowed him to retain his social standing and the respect of the ward members.

Up to now I have only been talking about the social contribution to the beginning of my research and questioning.  Greater social marginalization came once my ex-wife and bishop knew what I thought.  They both assumed that I had committed a serious sin because in their world view that is the only thing that could lead to questioning.  The bishop wanted to exclude me from full Mormon fellowship when he asked me to resign.  The bishop and my ex-wife spent a year consulting and planning, without my knowledge, for her to divorce me.  The bishop never called us both in to counsel with both of us together.  If they had been more willing to accept me where I was at the time, there is a good chance that I may have found my way back to some sort of belief, albeit somewhat more liberal.  There are many faithful church members in this category.  At the very least I would have continued attending with my family.

My ex-wife notified me that she wanted a divorce by leaving me a note and taking the kids away for the weekend while I was out on my morning jog.  She wanted me to be out of the house when she returned.  During that time I made an appointment and went to talk with the bishop.  That is when I found out that he was both aware and supportive of her plans, and had known about them for some time.  I went to see him for help in talking some sense into her.  I brought up the scripture in 1 Corinthians 7:12-14 that encourages a believing spouse to stay with her unbelieving spouse.  He said that he did not believe this applied in my case, but only when the unbeliever was an unbeliever from the beginning of the marriage.  He did not say this directly, but I was worse than an unbeliever.  I was an apostate.  He also pointed out that I had broken my temple covenants.  This was completely untrue because they are all behavioral in nature and have nothing to do with personal belief.  Furthermore, I did not qualify as an apostate for church disciplinary reasons because I was not spreading my views.  I had only shared them with my ex-wife, and, at her insistence, with the bishop.

Even after having lost most of the social motivation to continue attending church, I still attended for a few months after the divorce.  My new ward accepted me because they knew nothing about my history or my true beliefs.  This was a community I had know my whole life and I was mostly comfortable with them.  However, I was still somewhat marginalized in the community as a new divorcee.  I attended back in my home town where many people had known me as a child.  I only stopped attending when I met the woman I later married and began to develop new social connections.  Even though I may have never gone back to full belief, I think I would have stayed connected and kept attending church had not circumstances led to my social marginalization.

I did not really leave the church so much as they made it clear to me that I was not welcome as a fully participating member.  Stories similar to mine have been repeated thousands of times.  Several groups of fringe Mormons have tried to make church work despite their changing beliefs.  They go under various names, one of which is New Order Mormon after the message board, form.newordermormon.org.  The staylds.org website was originally started to help people in a similar situation to mine to stay connected.  However, experience has shown that these groups tend to be transitional for most people.  Only a few are able to stay connected over the long term.  This trend is so pervasive that those at the top are starting to notice, but so far they are not really making much of an attempt to reach out to the disaffected or to make them feel welcome.  They have been losing some of their most intelligent, thoughtful, and dedicated members.

Why do I care?  I am out now and probably never going back, but I still have family in the church.  I want the church to be a better place for them if they ever find themselves in a similar position that I once found myself in.  I also want them to understand how it was for me, which is partly why I wrote this post.  I don't want to force it on them, but it is here for when they are ready.

Willful Blindness

I am currently reading the book "Willful Blindness" by Margaret Heffernan.  One subject Heffernan discusses is how we tend to cling to our beliefs no matter how much evidence is stacked against them.  This can apply to political views, religious beliefs, or our beliefs about ourselves.  Since this is a blog about religion I want to focus on the religious aspect of this phenomenon.

As I write this, there is a case pending before a British court wherein Thomas S. Monson is being charged with fraud under a new statute (as of 2006) for using false claims to benefit financially.  The false claims include certain Mormon beliefs that can be demonstrated scientifically to be false.  The financial benefit comes from tithing, which in the Mormon church constitutes 10 percent of gross income and is mandatory for baptism and temple attendance.  Monson has been named because he is the sole of a corporation sole that is responsible for collecting and managing the tithing funds of the church.  Thomas Phillips, who has filed this criminal case as a private British citizen, has documented cases where members had to go into debt to pay back tithing in order to qualify to attend their children's wedding in a Mormon temple.  The contrast between this method of extorting money out of its members, and freewill offerings collected in other churches is one of the main reasons that this case has been allowed to get this far.

Phillips has included 7 teachings of Mormonism that can most easily be demonstrated to be false.  Some of the items are the same things that caused me to lose faith in Mormonism.  One belief is that a group of Jews came to America in 600 BC as told in the Book of Mormon.  This can be proven false through archeological, DNA, linguistic, and cultural evidence.  Another belief is that the Book of Abraham is a literal translation of an ancient papyrus by Joseph Smith that contains the writings of Abraham.  This can be demonstrated to be false because this papyrus still exists and has been translated by Egyptologists, who found it to common funeral text.  Other beliefs include mankind descending from a single couple who lived about 6,000 years ago and a world-wide flood about 4,500 years ago that killed all but eight people.  These beliefs are incompatible with the natural history of the world as revealed through geology, biological evolution, and genetics.

My main purpose is not to debate these beliefs or to provide evidence for them.  The evidence is readily available and is overwhelming.  The question that interests me is the subject of Heffernan's book: how intelligent people can maintain beliefs despite overwhelming evidence against them.  According to Heffernan, belief takes much less energy and cognitive resources than skepticism and doubt.  This is not to say that doubters are smarter than believers, but only that they had the time, motivation, and available cognitive resources free from distractions to do the difficult mental work required by skepticism and doubt.  Maintaining belief is the default, easy, comfortable behavior while changing requires great effort.  This contrasts sharply with the idea of many believers that doubters have taken the easy way out.  Not only is doubt more difficult and less comfortable than belief, but doubters have also often paid high social costs as well.

When my ex wife learned of my doubts she accused me of arrogance and reminded me that lots of smart people at BYU knew about these issues and still believed.  Given Heffernan's insights this should not be surprising.  The easier, more comfortable path is maintaining belief.  This is what our minds want to do.  It is much more significant to change.  That so few are willing to change their beliefs speaks to our natural tendency and desire to maintain the status quo, not to the weakness of the evidence that created the doubt.

The reasons some maintain belief and some do not is a frequently discussed topic on support message boards.  An often discussed theory is that somehow skepticism correlates with intelligence.  However, this is an overly simplistic view.  Everyone knows some very smart people who believe all sorts of things that are not backed up by evidence.  It is not raw general intelligence that makes the difference, but applying that intelligence to grappling with the difficult questions and not being afraid of what we might find when we look into the forbidden box.

No Heaven for Me

I have had many conversations with Evangelical Christian friends.  One thing we have discussed is our differing views on heaven and hell.  As I understand it, the Evangelical view is that heaven and hell are very literal, the one being the ultimate joy the other being the worst imaginable pain and torture and that each lasts forever.  The only requirement to enjoy heaven rather than hell is to confess Jesus as your personal savior.  I am not exactly clear on what constitutes a valid confession, but it seems that it would be very important to get it right given the extreme difference of the two possible fates.

Every Evangelical I have spoken with is quite confident that they are "saved," and they speak of it in the past tense even though being saved is presumably something that happens in the future (i.e. going the heaven instead of hell).  This is something I do not understand at all.

Apparently, very few will actually be saved.  The vast majority of humanity is doomed to endure the fires of hell for eternity.  As some have explained it, we all deserve this fate, but God in his mercy chooses to save a few of us if we are lucky enough to know we must confess Jesus and then we actually do it.

I don't see how we all deserve such a horrible fate.  We did not choose to be created and we did not choose to be a part of such a seemingly arbitrary and extreme system of reward and punishment.  Since God basically put most of humanity into a no-win scenario, I think that he is the responsible party.  (I am only speaking about this hypothetical God as described to me, which is not the way I personally view God.)

If this system is true, then I am afraid that there can be no heaven for me.  Here is the problem.  I would never be able to enjoy heaven with the knowledge that so many were suffering in hell, including friends and family members.  How could parents enjoy heaven if even one of their children were not with them?  I would rather go be with them and stand beside them in their suffering, in solidarity and silent protest of such a cruel system.

Don't misunderstand me.  The Evangelicals I have known are very good people.  They are concerned with the fate of humanity, which is why they try so hard to convince others so they can save as many as possible from the fate of hell.  However, beliefs such as this can make people behave irrationally and even cruelly, doing things like flying planes into buildings, because no earthly suffering can compare with hell.  Therefore any means can be justified if it can only save some from this fate.

My own view is that hell is mostly self inflicted.  I would rather focus on alleviating suffering, if I can, here and now in the only world that I have any firsthand knowledge about.  Sometimes I wonder what it says about someone who is attracted to such a cruel and exclusive world view.  It probably plays right into the natural human tendencies to want to be unique, special, and right.

The Devil Incarnate

I am still officially a Mormon, but I do not practice nor do I believe in many of the unique tenets of Mormonism.  A while ago one of my children informed me that his former bishop warned him that I was miserable and that I wanted my children to be miserable like me.  Where did this come from?  How could anyone say this about a parent's desires for his children?  Not only is everything about this bishop's statement untrue, but it reveals something very disturbing about the Mormon mind set.  I do not believe that this man is the only Mormon who would make a statement like this.

I believe that this former bishop was highly influenced by this passage from the Book of Mormon.  "Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself." (2 Nephi 2:27, emphasis mine)

The italicized portion of the above passage is based on the idea that misery loves company.  That phrase appears nowhere else in the Mormon scriptures.  In other words, it only applies to the devil in Mormon scriptures.  The implications are quite clear.  This bishop was equating me with the devil.  His belief is that I am miserable because I have left the fold (an idea Mormons use to scare the faithful into obedience).  He also believes that I want to drag down as many people as I can to my level, even if that means causing suffering to my own children.

Happiness is very subjective, but I certainly perceive that I am happier now than I was when the Mormon church consumed a good portion of my time, money, and freedom.  Furthermore, if I actually was miserable, I would do everything I could to help my children avoid making the same mistakes I have made.  I would not wish my own suffering upon them, but I would only wish their health and happiness.  Normal parents are strongly influenced by their genetic makeup to sacrifice for their children's welfare, and I am no different.

I might find it alarming that someone with such a responsible position in the Mormon community actually believes this except for the fact that I thought this way too not that long ago.  Even more disturbing is that this bishop actually thought he was doing good by informing my son that his dad only wants him to be miserable.  Maybe Mormon leaders have not led their followers to an isolated island and given them cyanide-laced Kool-aid, but this tendency to demonize those who question or leave strikes me as rather cult like.  This bishop is not just some hayseed ignoramus.  He holds a PhD., he is the CEO of a large business, and he is well respected in his community.

Yes, most Mormons are nice people.  I believe that many of them are very good people, but they are the victims of in-bred thinking can be so far afield from reality as to be quite scary and even, at times, emotionally abusive.  Most Mormons have enough sense not to reveal everything they think to the uninitiated.  They are very good at putting up a front that is palatable to the general public.  This is all the more reason to beware of some of the underlying philosophies that they only share among themselves.

Families can be Forever

One of the biggest selling points of the Mormon religion is their belief that families can be forever.  This has been a frequent theme of their many ad campaigns and is featured in their proselytizing approach.  A closer examination of Mormon belief reveals a surprising twist where the deeper implied meaning of this slogan is far different from the surface meaning.

Nearly every religion that believes in an afterlife believes that social relationships will continue in the next life.  This includes relationships with family members.  When Mormons say that families are forever, they are not offering anything that other religious people do not already believe.  What they are really saying is that only Mormon families will be together forever.  According to Mormon doctrine, you have to be married in a Mormon temple to have your family with you forever.  In other words, the Mormon slogan actually declares that the vast majority of families will not be together forever.

Forever families can only be created in Mormon temples sealed by the Mormon priesthood, and this comes at a high cost.  You must first become a Mormon if you are not already one.  Then you must pass a temple recommend interview in order to qualify to enter the temple.  Among other things, this requires that you give 10 percent of your gross income (before taxes) to the Mormon church.  Depending on your tax bracket and paycheck deductions, this can in practice be as much as 40 percent of your take-home pay.

This is not all you will be expected to donate.  Once a month Mormons refrain from eating for 24 hours and donate the money they saved to the church.  In actual practice, church leaders counsel members to be generous and donate many times the actual cost of the food not eaten.  I actually think that this is a great idea because this money can be used at the discretion of the local bishop to help the needy in his own congregation and only the excess is sent to church headquarters, but the members are already giving 10 percent of their income, which goes directly to the central, corporate church.

Other requirements for entering a Mormon temple to make your family last forever include refraining from consumption of tobacco, alcohol, coffee, and tea.  Refraining from smoking tobacco is a good idea for a health conscious individual, and excessive alcohol consumption can have both health and social consequences.  However, moderate and responsible consumption of alcohol, coffee and tea have known health benefits.  The proscription of these items seems like a completely arbitrary obedience test rather than something that actually benefits anyone at all.

The financial costs and the following of arbitrary rules are only the beginning.  The Mormon church also requires a significant time investment.  Mormons attend three hours of church on Sunday with additional meetings occurring during the week that vary depending on a member's age, gender, and role.  Each member has one or more jobs, which they refer to as callings.  These are not voluntary.  Members are appointed to these callings and are expected to never refuse or resign from them.  A conscientious Mormon can easily spend 20 hour per week on church related activities and even more for those in leadership positions.  The church does not pay local leaders so all this time is in addition to their regular careers.  Ironically, meeting all the requirements of having your family forever means that you will have very little time for them now.

Even after meeting all the requirements to go to the temple and being sealed by the authority of the Mormon priesthood, there is still no guarantee that your family will be forever.  My "eternal marriage" lasted 19 years, and then it ended, against my wishes at the time.  Here is concrete evidence that, despite promises, some Mormon marriages fall quite short of the forever promise.  This is true for many Mormon marriages.  The divorce rate among Mormons is just as high as in the general population.  Mormons point to a divorce rate among Mormons married in the temple as low as 6 percent, but this article explains why this claim is very misleading.  The discrepancy is likely because not all divorced Mormon couples bother to have their temple sealing cancelled.

My divorce was supported and even encouraged by the local bishop.  This was not because there was any abuse or neglect of any kind, or because I no longer wanted to attend church.  I continued to attend church, support my family, and was kind and loving toward them.  It was simply because I did not believe that the Book of Mormon represents the record of an actual, historical people who lived in ancient America, a belief that I kept private until my ex insisted that I tell the bishop.  The evidence against this Mormon claim is so overwhelming that even the main offshoot of the Mormon Church, the Community of Christ, no longer requires its members to believe it.  My family was broken up because of a private belief of mine that is overwhelmingly supported by evidence.  See this blog for more details.

The Mormon proclamation that families can be forever is one of the many items that John Larsen, the creator of the Mormon Expression podcast, was referring to when he said, "The Mormon church takes away something you already have and then sells it back to you."  The Mormon church sells it back at a very high cost and then snatches it away if you get out of line.  The real Mormon belief is that very few families will get to be together forever because they will not do things just right.  This is very much a case where "Caveat Emptor" applies.  In the words of Paul Harvey, "Now you know the rest of the story."

I Still Remember What It's Like

Nearly every teenager feels misunderstood at times.  As parents, we sometimes like to point out that we have been teenagers once too, so we understand more than they think we do.  On the other hand, they have not yet been parents.  Consequently, our world view includes a memory of something like theirs, but transcends it because of all our subsequent experiences.

Similarly, I was once a sincere believer that Mormonism is the one and only religion that has the entire truth and the sole authority to perform ordinances that are acceptable to God.  I no longer hold those views, but I still remember what it was like to be a sincere believer.  I also remember nearly everything I was taught as a Mormon.  I am still learning about Mormonism from my new perspective.  I do not believe that my current views have anything at all to do with misunderstanding Mormonism.

Once, when I was participating in a father-son camp-out with my sons, the bishopric held a trivia contest with prizes.  My sons knew about my disbelief, but no one else at the camp-out knew except the bishop.  The contest asked questions about Mormon history, doctrine, and scriptures.  I was the only one at the camp-out who could answer every question correctly.  My sons and I won a couple of prizes for questions no one else could answer, and then we let others answer and win some of the other prizes.  It came somewhat as a surprise to my sons that I was a non-believer, and yet I knew the answers better than all of the believers present.

Before we met, my wife was visited by a well-meaning member of her stake presidency, a meeting that her son set up just before he left on his mission.  The stake presidency member outlined the Mormon plan of salvation, a lesson more appropriate for a child or an investigator than a life-long, well-informed member.  He labored under the misconception that anyone who disbelieves must not understand.  My wife also had an experience similar to my camp-out experience with a trivia contest at a ward Christmas party.  She answered every question correctly, or at least whispered the answer to her daughter.  Her daughter finally asked her, "Mom, how do you know all this."  She replied, "I left the church.  I did not turn stupid."

Believing Mormons can sometimes be by puzzled by how someone who once believed can later come to disbelieve.  Common beliefs include that the person wanted to sin without accountability or that they were offended.  A perusal of exit stories from sites such as exmormon.org and this research spearheaded by Mormon Stories founder John Dehlin reveals that this is seldom the case.  A typical active Mormon might be aware that there are attacks against the church on the internet, but they may not know much about the specific criticisms, nor do they know that the basic facts are not in dispute.  Apologists acknowledge the basic accuracy of most of the points that critics make.  What they argue is not that the criticisms are untrue, but that they do not matter.

A good example of this is the Book of Abraham.  Apologists acknowledge that the papyrus was discovered in the 60s, and that the actual translation has nothing to do with the Book of Abraham.  What they will argue is that these facts do not matter because maybe Joseph Smith received the text by revelation, or maybe we have the wrong papyrus (even though a careful examination of the facsimiles indicates that we do have the right one).  Another example is DNA and the Book of Mormon.  There is no dispute that DNA analysis of Native Americans does not support the Book of Mormon story of a 600 BC migration from Jerusalem to America.  Apologists instead argue that these facts do not matter because maybe the Lehite group was so small that their DNA was overwhelmed by that of other people who were already here.

It is not my intent in this post to argue these points.  They have been argued extensively elsewhere.  My point here is that there are legitimate reasons for someone to reject LDS claims that have to do with examining the available evidence rather than having anything to do with sin, being offended, or ignorance of Mormon teachings.

When I expressed my doubts to my ex-wife, her response was "who are you to think that you are smarter than the smart people at BYU who know about these issues and still believe?"  She said this without knowing that the basics facts are not in dispute, but only their interpretation.  She herself denies the basic facts that the apologists acknowledge, considering them "anti-Mormon lies."  In other words, if she were more informed, she would have discovered that she disagrees with those "smart people" who she believes have all the answers.  This phenomenon has been labeled "Internet vs. Chapel Mormons" and is described here and many other places.

When I expressed my doubts to my former bishop, he suggested that I read the Book of Mormon and pray.  I told him that I have been doing that for years, but it does not provide answers to the evidence that disputes the church's claims.  I told him that I have read the Book of Mormon over 30 times, but I would try once more to see if the next time might make the difference.  It didn't.

The issues I have been discussing here are issues of belief, not issues of active participation.  Many people no longer believe, but choose to continue participation for various reasons.  Some are open about their disbelief, and some keep it a secret.  In my case, I continued to participate for more than 6 years.  For 5 years, no one knew about my disbelief.  My reasons for leaving have less to do with my doubts than with how some people responded to my doubts, but that is a subject for another post.

I remember very well what it was like to be a believer.  I can still talk the talk if I choose.  I can empathize with believers.  I don't think they are stupid, and I don't think they are bad people.  That part of me is still there.  I have friends and family still in the church.  If it makes their lives better, I am happy for that.  It just does not work for me any more.

Who is the Audience?

Mormons are one of the most active proselytizing of religions.  From the beginning, the Mormon message has been aimed at other Christians rather than non-Christians.  The same is true for most of the apologetics.  Mormons seem content to leave general Christian apologetics to other Christians.  Consequently, Mormon apologists are generally poorly equipped to handle challenges coming from a secular, agnostic, atheist, or non-Christian religious perspective.  The missionary discussions also suffer from this weakness, being presented with the assumption that potential investigators already accept Christ and the Bible.

The first missionary discussions I became familiar with in the early 80s were commonly referred to as the rainbow discussions.  It is difficult to find much information online about the specifics of past missionary approaches so most of this information is from my own memory of my experiences, although this article from Sunstone Magazine is helpful.  The rainbow discussion where so named because the printed discussions were kept in a binder with each discussion on paper of its own pastel color.  These discussions contained extensive text that was expected to be memorized and delivered word-for-word.

In 1981 when I was in high school, one of my friends listened to the first few missionary discussions with me sitting in.  These were from the rainbow discussions.  I remember that the first few discussions introduced Joseph Smith right away and told the story of the First Vision, Moroni's visit, and the Book of Mormon.  Material about Jesus was sprinkled in here and there and mostly focused on the unique aspects of Mormon theology where it differs from mainstream Christian beliefs.  Missionaries reasoned from the Bible, the assumption being that the investigator already accepted the Bible.  The focus was on trying to convince the investigator that the unique aspects of Mormon belief are at least in harmony with the Bible, even if they cannot all be completely derived from the Bible.

What happened when the missionaries encountered someone who did not already believe in the Bible?  Missionaries were poorly equipped to handle this case.  In contrast, some of the Catholic apologetic books I have read spend much of their effort on arguments for the existence of God, at least arguing that belief in God is reasonable.  Regardless of whether these arguments would convince a skeptic, it is significant that at least the attempt is made, which is hardly ever the case in the Mormon missionary approach and Mormon apologetics.

The missionary discussions changed sometime before I served a mission from 1983-85.  The discussions I learned did not contain nearly so much material to memorize, and we were more free to put some of it into our own words.  The order also changed.  The first discussion introduced the Mormon take on Jesus and the second introduced the Mormon plan of salvation.  The Joseph Smith story was not introduced until the third discussion.  This change was primarily made to answer the criticism that Mormons are not Christian rather than to introduce Christ to non-Christians.  Whether Mormons should be classified under the Christian umbrella is the subject for another post.  The main point here is that the Mormon approach was still generally inadequate and ineffective among non-Christians.

I served a mission in North Carolina where the majority of people we met were Bible believers.  The new approach actually worked rather well, as long as we used our own modified version of the first discussion that was unique to our mission.  The version we learned in the MTC was way too basic so we adapted it for our primary audience.  Postponing a discussion of Joseph Smith gave the impression that we could have been just another Christian church.  Then, once we had their trust, we would spring the Joseph Smith story on them, hoping that we had dispelled some of their previous prejudice against Mormons with the first two discussions.  Still, the approach fell flat with the occasional Jew, Muslim, or secularist we happened to encounter.  If we knew a household was not Christian, we would generally avoid it.  We had nothing to even get a conversation started.

The first anti-Mormon literature I encountered around this time was The God Makers by Ed Decker.  Ed Decker left the Mormon church to become an Evangelical Christian.  We were advised not to read books like this, but I bought the book and read most of it on my mission anyway.  While I found some of its contents disturbing as a sincere believer in Mormonism, it did not really effect my belief.  Its sensational, dark tone did not resemble my experience with the Mormon church. I threw away the book before I finished it.  When I returned from my mission, my institute director (teacher of off-campus college-level Mormon religion classes) gave me a book called, The Truth About the God Makers by Gilbert W. Scharffs, which is a refutation of Ed Decker's book.  I found Scharffs answers quite satisfactory at the time.

Another book I read on my mission and then re-read when I got home was The Day of Defense, by A. Melvin McDonald.  This book presents a mock trial where ministers of various Christian denominations accuse the Mormon missionaries of teaching false doctrines.  The judge is a Jewish Rabi.  The combatants make a series of arguments from the Bible with the missionaries getting the better of the ministers.  The judge rules in favor of the missionaries who defend themselves convincingly while the prosecution cannot even agree among themselves.  McDonald drew some of the material for this book from actual live debates in which he participated.

These two examples of '80s apologetic literature illustrate a Biblical-based approach to apologetics.  Just as in the missionary discussions, the focus is on demonstrating that Mormon beliefs are in harmony with the Bible.  These are defenses aimed at other Christians who accept the Bible.  One of the major flaws of this approach is that it uses a technique called proof-texting, where passages are taken out of context possibly obscuring the original intent of the author.  However, the main weakness is that this approach has no meaning at all to someone who approaches the Bible from a historical-critical point of view recognizing that each author has his own agenda and that the various Biblical authors do not speak with a uniform voice.

Recently, the Mormon church has begun to lose a significant number of members, not to other churches, but to a rational, skeptical, scientific world view.  Church apologetics are struggling to catch up with this trend.  A book that was influential for me and for many other skeptical-minded former Mormons is Demon Haunted World, by Carl Sagan.  Sagan debunks many paranormal and supernatural claims including UFOs, alien abductions, psychics, and religion.  The apologetic arm of the church is aware of this trend as evidenced by this review of Sagan's book on the Maxwell Institute website, published in 2005 by Allen R. Buskirk.

Given that the Buskirk review was not published until 10 years after Demon Haunted World, it is clear that the church did not view it as a threat at the time.  It was only after increasing numbers of disaffected Mormons mentioned the book that the Maxwell Institute decided that they better do some damage control.  The gist of the review is that Buskirk agrees with Sagan regarding pseudoscience, but does not agree that the same critical thinking can be applied to religion.  Buskirk is missing the whole point of the book.  It is less about the specific cases than about critical, skeptical thinking in general.  Sagan is trying to give people tools to think for themselves and recognize that confirmation bias, misunderstanding of probability, and the human propensity to find patterns in randomness often lead us to believe things that are not true.

The church is probably fighting a losing battle against rational skeptics, but they could probably do better among religious non-Christians.  When a new area is opened for missionary work, other denominations typically outperform Mormons in gaining converts to Christianity among non-Christians.  This blog post by a believing Mormon recognizes this need and provides some suggestions.  The problem is that grass roots efforts are very difficult in Mormonism because information typically flows only one direction: from the top down.

Emotional Epistemology

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies knowledge and how we know things.  A central belief of Mormonism is that we can know things through our emotions, which I have labeled "Emotional Epistemology," a phrase I first heard when John Larsen used it in a podcast on the Mormon Expression website.  While believing Mormons will express this in different words, I believe that the meaning is essentially the same.

In this post, I will argue that emotion-based knowledge is unreliable.  In other words, it is not really knowledge at all.  According to Epistemology, a proposition must actually be true for it to count as knowledge.  Just saying we know something does not make it knowledge.  If it turns out to be false, it was never knowledge.  Strength of conviction makes no difference.  It is the nature of our emotions to be convincing so we pay attention and perform a behavior that may be essential to our survival.  While emotions are useful, and even essential, they are not fool proof.  They are easily subject to manipulation if we do not understand where they come from and how they function.

In Mormon culture, it is common for a believer to say that they know some aspect of the faith to be true.  Once a month an entire worship service is devoted to allowing regular members to stand up in front of the congregation and express what they "know" to be true, a practice Mormons refer to as "bearing testimony."  Describing how they have acquired this knowledge, Mormons will typically say the "Spirit" or "Holy Ghost" revealed it to them.  This revelation comes through feelings, as summed up in this passage from the Doctrine and Covenants 9:8-9

...if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.  But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings...

Many believing Mormons will take issue with the statement that their beliefs, or what they would call knowledge, are based on emotions.  They claim to be able to distinguish between the Spirit and emotions.  However, I believe this distinction is merely an acknowledgement that we experience a wide array of emotions.  This website lists 147 different words that describe the complex and subtle range of emotions humans are capable of distinguishing.  Just because the feeling on which Mormons base their testimony may be different from the feeling they get when their favorite team wins the championship, this does not make it something different from an emotion, but merely a different emotion.

Emotions are essential to the survival of the human species or we would likely not have them.  Emotions encourage us to act without thinking.  Our subconscious mind has been refined through millions of years of evolution to act in ways that promote our personal survival and the survival of those closely related to us, or at least those who we perceive to be closely related.  Richard Dawkins book, The Selfish Gene, explains that our instinctive survival behavior is best understood as our genes trying to preserve copies of themselves, whether they exist in us or in those closely related to us.  The primary aim of the book is explain how altruism arises at the organism level when evolution seems to imply selfishness.  Dawkins proposal is that the selfishness occurs at the level of the gene, which can lead to altruism, or self-sacrifice for the benefit of another, at the organism level.

Evolutionary change also led to our conscious intelligence.  Our subconscious communicates to us through emotion so we can act quickly without thinking when speed is of the essence.  Our conscious mind is more deliberate.  It may ultimately lead to a more accurate view of the world, but it takes more time.  These two aspects of human thought are complimentary.  The combination has proved effective in the past or it would have been weeded out through natural selection.

This is an oversimplification.  Human intelligence and emotion are complex, subtle, and not completely understood.  What is understood is far too extensive for me to write about in detail here.  The essential point is that emotion, by its nature, is meant to convince us to act, and to do it quickly.  Without emotion, we would find it difficult to act at all.  People who have a disorder causing them to feel no emotion do not act like Spock on Star Trek.  They have difficulty making even the simplest of decisions, such as what to eat for dinner or which pair of shoes to wear.

As a fully believing and active Mormon I once made a comment on this subject in an Elder's Quorum meeting, which involves only adult men.  I said that knowing things through the Spirit is not exactly the same as knowing things from experience.  For example, I know that Denver, Colorado exists because I have been there many times.  I have driven through it and have walked around in it.  If I say I know I continue to live after I die, that is something different.  I have not yet experienced it.  When we say we "know" it we really means that we believe it or are convinced of it.  One of the members of the class took offense at my comment.  He told me I was wrong and that he really did "know" those things.  His reaction illustrates how deeply ingrained this idea is in the Mormon psyche.

In Episode 77 of the Mormon Expression podcast, one of the panelist described an experience very similar to the one I had in Elder's Quorum.  During a testimony meeting, his wife stood up and said, "Why do we say we know?  We don't know.  Nobody knows."  This led to a flood of fervent testimonies with people saying that they really do know.  One of the other panelists pointed out that this was much like the case of Shakespeare's woman protesting too much.  We do not usually talk this way about things we really know, such as our work expertise.  They fervency of these threatened testimonies seemed to be as much to convince the speaker as anyone else.  I wrote in more detail about this phenomenon in this blog post on the Power of Conviction

It is convenient that many of the elements of a Mormon testimony are not testable by other means.  However, some of them are.  One important belief is that the Book of Mormon is the word of God.  Essential to this point is that the Book of Mormon is genuine ancient American historical document.  This is a question that can be examined scientifically.  I have an entire blog devoted to this question here.  I am still adding entries as I continue to examine various aspects of this claim.  The sum of my personal investigations, and those of many others, is that the Book of Mormon is a 19th Century creation, not a translation of an ancient document.  This is one of many examples that discredits the idea that we can definitely know anything through our feelings.  Many of my own personal experiences have convinced me that feelings are not reliable truth detectors.  If emotions prove unreliable when we can verify by other means, I have little confidence in their ability to reveal the unknowable.

Bearing testimony in the Mormon style seems to be an attempt to preempt all rational arguments.  Once a Mormon bears his testimony, the argument is over.  Evidence-based examination is rendered meaningless in the face of a testimony. How do you argue with someone's strong conviction?  That is why an important starting point, for me, is to question the very idea that feelings can reveal knowledge.  Natural selection did not favor certain emotions because they reveal truth, but because they promote survival.  Truth may be an occasional byproduct, but not a guaranteed one.  Utility is more important than truth from an evolutionary stand point.

I am confident that these arguments will not persuade most people who hold strong convictions.  Perhaps some, however, will at least consider the idea that these feelings may not be the fool-proof truth detectors we sometimes take them to be.  After all, believers in many religions base their convictions mostly on feelings, even though their beliefs differ one from another.  They cannot all be right.

Why I am Writing this Blog

I started a blog about five months ago called Stuff I Think About.  I wanted to write about anything and everything that came to mind.  I found myself writing about religion quite a lot.  I started a series of posts about the Book of Mormon examining its claims of being a genuine ancient American document.  I am a former Mormon and this topic really interests me.  I decided that these post would be more appropriately placed in their own blog since the readership is likely to be different than for my other posts.  I placed them here.  Now I am finding myself wanting to write about more general topics related to Mormonism.  Thus this blog.

I am still a Mormon of record, but I do not attend nor do I believe in many aspects of Mormon doctrine.  So why do I still think and write about it so much?  Perhaps I am one of those church president Gordon B. Hickley referred to when he said, "They leave the church, but they cannot leave it alone."  However, I do not consider myself an anti-Mormon.  My goal is not to harm the church or its members.  My goal is primarily to tell my own story.

One reason leaving Mormonism is so difficult is that it requires so much of its members.  It is more than a religion.  It is a lifestyle.  Those who practice the religion as intended may find their lives consumed with church.  Mormons attend at least three hours of church on Sunday and more during the week.  Since Mormonism has an unpaid lay ministry at the local level, members may have unpaid church jobs that consume many hours per week.  Members do not volunteer for these jobs.  Their leaders assign them and the members are expected never to resign until released.

In addition to the time requirements, members are expected to give 10 percent of their gross income to the church, not including offerings for the poor which are in addition to the 10 percent.  Mormons live by a strict behavior code that includes refraining from alcohol, coffee, and tea.  Failure to do all these things results in being banned from the temple, which means among other things not being allowed to see your own child's wedding.

Because the Mormon lifestyle is so all-encompassing, leaving can be a difficult and traumatic experience.  Furthermore, Mormons who leave are likely to be demonized or shunned by believers.  Mormons generally believe that only the weak ones leave and that the primary reasons are being offended or wanting to sin.  This can add to the frustration and the pain of being misunderstood.  John Dehlin addresses this in this episode of the Mormon Stories podcast.

Dehlin conducted an extensive survey of Mormons who have left the church.  It turns out that the commonly believed stereotype is not true.  Many who are leaving now are very involved and fully committed, but they discover aspects of church history or church doctrine that they can no longer accept.  I will be discussing this much more in later posts.

The title of this blog comes from a Mormon passage of scripture in Doctrine and Covenants 93:36 that Mormons believe is a revelation given through Joseph Smith.  "The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth."  This happens to be an aspect of Mormon philosophy that I strongly agree with.  I was therefore never hesitant to submit Mormon beliefs to rigorous examination.  The end result was that I lost faith in Mormonism, and my believing ex-wife divorced me.  I will be telling many more details in later posts.

Enough time has past in my personal journey that I have worked through much of the pain involved in leaving.  I am in a very good place in my life now.  However, I am still interested in watching and studying Mormon culture as an unattached observer, somewhat like a sociologist.  I am interested in seeing how the church responds to the exodus of members caused by the free availability of information on the internet.  I also merely want to add my own story to those that have already been told.