Becoming Atheist

After I rejected Mormonism, I wasn't sure what I believed anymore. It wasn't like I had a Plan B for my religious beliefs. For the first few weeks I avoided the subject. I had strong suspicions that no true church existed, but I knew that I'd just gone through a long and complex process of giving up my childhood faith. I didn't want to be reckless and reject all religion out of hand. However, after spending so much time in a religion that claimed to be the One True Church, I had difficulty with the idea that there was a single true church. The whole idea of faith was suspect to me.

I remember one day in particular. It was a Sunday afternoon in early November, about a week after the final remnants of my testimony shattered. My roommates were all taking their Sunday afternoon naps and everything was quiet. I wrapped myself in a blanket and stood on the balcony outside my apartment like I had the night I lost my testimony, only this time the sun was out and it was almost warm. I looked at the grass, the trees, the sky, and I asked myself if all of it could be just chance. If it was possible that there was no God at all. I didn't like that idea. It was nearly incomprehensible to me. I wanted there to be a God. If there wasn't one, what was the meaning of life? What was the point of doing anything, of existing at all? In spite of my these thoughts and feelings, however, I strongly suspected that there was no God. I'd already rejected the Mormon concept of "The Holy Ghost" as a manipulative hijacking of my own feelings. Besides the Holy Ghost, I had absolutely no experience with God. I had absolutely no basis for believing in him.

I stood out there just thinking for a long time. I think I knew, even then, that I had no real reason to believe in God, but I didn't want to admit that to myself. My internal conversation went nowhere. I didn't come to any kind of conscious conclusion that day.

I wasn't comfortable declaring myself an atheist, even to myself. I didn't actually talk to anyone else about my redefinition process. It something I did purely for my own benefit. I told myself that I was agnostic, and that was true, more or less. I wasn't comfortable with taking a position one way or the other yet. For a few weeks I let the issue rest.

Several months later, I started talking with a friend of mine who had left the Mormon church for Christianity. We had several long conversations about Christianity and I explained many of my reservations about it. My friend did clear up some of these for me and gave me some resources to research Christianity some more. I realized that after my testimony shattered, I hadn't really given Christianity a fair shake. I didn't know much about traditional Christianity except what the Mormon church had taught me about it, and that could hardly be fair. So I researched.

For about a month I was very close to becoming a Christian-- albeit a much more liberal Christian than most. I prayed nearly every night. I read the Bible and Christian apologetic literature. But I never felt totally comfortable with Christianity. Sure, it seemed to have a lot more internal consistency than Mormonism, but that still didn't make it true. It still made absurd, unprovable claims. And the more I read and researched, the less I was satisfied with it intellectually.

Emotionally, I liked Christianity very much. I was very depressed at this time, and I was really desperate for something to hold onto. I'd lost Mormonism; what was left? I prayed to God and asked for comfort, but I knew I wasn't being completely honest with myself. I was taking a totally emotional approach. My conscience wouldn't let me accept Christianity without adequate evidence. When I prayed, I would say something like this: "Dear God, you know I'm looking for the truth. You know I'm doing the best I can with what you gave me. If you're really there, if you really exist, then show me somehow. Help me find the evidence of your existence. If you're real and if you are what they say you are, you'll understand that my integrity won't let me accept an unsubstantiated proposition. So if you're really there, I ask that you not play mind games with me. Just show me that you actually exist."

My answer?

Nothing.

It was the same as with Mormonism. I found lots of apologetic stuff that looked pretty convincing on the surface but fell apart on close scrutiny. I found a lot of stuff that I considered complete hogwash-- the doctrine that all non-Christians go to hell, for instance. I found the whole concept of heaven and hell to be utterly ridiculous. What kind of a psychopathic god would create a giant lake of brimstone for everyone who didn't join a particular sect? What kind of god would hide his own existence from the world, demand that everyone accept his existence on "faith", and then throw everyone who didn't believe into said lake of fire and brimstone? I found this and many other Christian doctrines to be untenable.

So I got no emotional or spiritual confirmation of any kind, and the more I looked at the evidence, the less likely Christianity looked. I can't pinpoint a specific moment when I finally concluded that it was false like I can with the loss of my Mormon testimony. It was a more gradual process, and the emotional stakes were much lower. I wasn't holding myself hostage, so to speak, torturing myself for not getting the "right" answer.

After that, I toyed briefly with a few other ideologies, primarily paganism and Buddhism. I wasn't so much looking for the "one true religion" anymore as I was trying to create my own religion. I still felt like I needed some kind of organized religious creed and practice, some set of rituals and beliefs. So I went through a brief "Build Your Own Religion" phase. It didn't last long, however. I was coming out of my depression, and realizing that I didn't need religion to be happy; that I was happier without it, in fact.

At this point I was back to agnosticism again, mostly because I still didn't want to admit to myself that I was an atheist. But I dropped the issue. I was at peace with not having all the answers. In short, I moved on. However, I eventually realized that there probably isn't a god, and that until and unless I see some good evidence for one, I'm not obligated to give equal weight to the proposition that there is one. I had chosen agnosticism because it seemed to me to be the most intellectually honest position. However, I now think that the existence of a god of any kind is highly unlikely, and I don't have to reserve judgment on the subject any more than I have to reserve judgment on the existence of unicorns.

Oh Say, What Is Truth?

"I'd like to bear my testimony that I know this church is true. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet, that my Heavenly Father loves me, and I am thankful that we have a living prophet, Thomas S. Monson, to guide us through these latter days. I have a testimony of the Book of Mormon, and I know that God hears and answers my prayers. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

Fast and Testimony meetings are among the more interesting of Mormon practices. On the first Sunday of every month, Mormons fast for the first two meals of the day, and donate the money that they would have spent on food to the church to be used to help the poor. In church on this day, instead of the usual sacrament meeting with prepared talks by pre-assigned speakers, the pulpit is opened up to all the members-- to anyone who wishes to speak. At these meetings, Mormons do what is called "bearing one's testimony."

What is a testimony? I've used the word on this blog a few times already. Mormons talk a lot about testimonies, but looking back, it's difficult for me to put my finger on exactly what the word means. As best I can tell, a testimony is a sense of the truth of the LDS church-- a feeling, really, a "burning in the bosom" that tells you that this is the truth. To bear that testimony is to share it.

Here's the thing. It's often said in the church that one's testimony is found in the bearing of it. As I look back, that disturbs me. In testimony meetings, the vast majority of testimonies given are variations on the same theme, which I used as the opening of this post. Everyone says more or less the same thing, often with personal anecdotes or a focus on a specific principle, such as faith or prayer. The phrase, "a testimony is found in the bearing of it", sounds a lot to me like, "if you tell a lie often enough you start to believe it yourself." The church openly encourages people to get up in front of the congregation and say things that they don't necessarily believe, because if you say it, you will start to believe it.

How does one know if the LDS church is true? If you ask a member, they will tell you to pray about it. They say that God will tell you, by way of the Holy Ghost, that it's true. What does the Holy Ghost feel like? It's said to feel different to everyone. Some people get goose bumps, some feel a burning in the bosom, and others just feel a sense of peace. According to members, you know the church is true if the spirit tells you in your heart.

I always had difficulty with this concept as a member. How do you tell what's supposed to be the Holy Ghost, or the Spirit, from your own feelings? Feelings are great things that serve several functions, but identifying truth isn't one of those functions. I might feel all warm and fuzzy about the car I'm buying, but that doesn't mean that it's a good car. Only a naive fool would buy a car without taking it for a test drive, checking the engine, and generally making sure that they were getting a fair deal on it. Would you buy a car that sounded funny when you drove it, just because you had a good feeling about that car? Of course not! Your feelings can tell you whether or not you like the car, but whether or not the car runs well is independent of your feelings.

The gap between feelings and evidence is a difficult problem in Mormonism. Sometimes what the evidence tells you is different from what the church tells you. How does one reconcile these things? The answer, in Mormonism, is faith.

Faith-- that's enough of a topic to merit a blog post of its very own, but I'll try to address it here. When I have shared my concerns about the LDS church with friends, family, and ecclesiastical leaders, the people I talk to do not have any logical answers for me. They often try, but ultimately we come to a dead end. They-- and I-- cannot reconcile the facts. When we reach this point, we invariably return to the concept of faith. I've spent hours trying to get some of these people to tell me what, exactly, "faith" means. From these conversations, the best definition I've been able to come up with is the ability to set aside your rational concerns and objections and just believe in something regardless.

I don't see any merit in this. To quote Sigmund Freud, "Am I to believe every absurdity? If not, why this one in particular?" There are hundreds of thousands of unfounded propositions that one could make. I could propose that the sky is purple, but all the faith in the world won't turn the sky purple. Mormonism has unfounded claims. Why should I believe them without evidence, while rejecting the unfounded claims of Catholicism or Buddhism or Islam? At this point we come to the Holy Ghost. But the way the Holy Ghost manifests itself is supposed to be through feelings. In my own personal experience, the feelings that I or others have attributed the Holy Ghost have been indistinguishable from my own feelings. I have felt the "Spirit" in church; this is true. But I have felt those exact same feelings in movie theaters, libraries, and practice rooms. The feelings that I have experienced while reading the Book of Mormon have been indistinguishable from the feelings I felt while reading the Lord of the Rings, watching Ever After, or playing Beethoven's Pathetique, Opus 13. Does the fact that I felt those things mean that a hobbit named Frodo really traveled across Middle Earth to throw a ring into a volcano? No, of course not! So why should the fact that I felt those things mean that a guy named Nephi and his posterity really did the things that the Book of Mormon says that they did, in spite of evidence to the contrary? I could go into the anachronisms and other problems in the Book of Mormon, and I probably will in a future blog post, but that isn't my point here. My point is that my feelings about the Book of Mormon-- or anything else in the church-- don't make anything true. Certainly those feelings have value, but they are not indicators of truth. Furthermore, members of other faiths feel just as strongly about their beliefs as Mormons do about their own. Who is to say who is right? The only person who can comprehend a person's feelings is the person who felt them. What right do I have to say that another person's experience regarding their faith is invalid? The only conclusion that I can accept in good conscience is that feelings, while valuable and valid, are not indicators of truth.

Given this, I see the LDS church's approach to epistemology as dishonest and harmful. Encouraging people to say things until they believe them and insisting that feelings are a firm basis for decision-making is not honest. I have never, in all my time as a Mormon, been encouraged to look at actual evidence for and against the church. Historical documents, the archaeological record, and logical processes are not seen as valid methods for finding out if the church is true. The way you're supposed to find out is by praying and getting a "spiritual confirmation" in the form of a feeling.

There is another problem in the Mormon church's approach to finding truth-- one is expected to start with the answer predetermined. To consider the possibility that the church might be wrong is considered a bad thing, a road to apostasy, a thoughtcrime. Honest intellectualism doesn't work this way. A true seeker of truth will welcome doubts and questions. If something is true, then it can withstand whatever questions or evidence I can throw at it. One should never be afraid to ask hard questions. If you feel uncomfortable asking difficult questions of your belief system, then something is terribly wrong. You should never, ever be afraid to think.

Out of all the different problems with the LDS church-- the history, the doctrine, the culture-- its attitude toward truth and the search for truth is the one that disturbs me the most. When I was getting ready to go to college, I mentioned to an adult friend that I was considering studying philosophy. This friend warned me against doing that, as she had known a girl who had studied philosophy at BYU and then apostatized. This bothered me. Philosophy, when you break it down to its Latin roots, literally means the love of truth. I love truth; why should I be afraid of it? There are times when I wish that the LDS church was true and that I could believe it-- but wanting doesn't make it so. As a humble seeker of truth, I am morally obligated to follow wherever the facts, the evidence, and logic may lead me. I may be wrong sometimes. People who look for truth often revise their views. Einstein's Theory of Relativity supplanted much of Newton's work. Does that make Newton's work invalid? Most of what Newton discovered was "true", in a limited sense. But it was incomplete. Similarly, I may be wrong about some things; in fact, I most certainly am wrong about many things. But I am aware of that possibility. I do not get up the first Sunday of every month-- or any other time-- and proclaim that I "know" that mass is attracted to mass. I have no need to keep reminding myself to believe in that. If I stopped believing it without evidence, that wouldn't make me bad (although it would make me gullible and intellectually irresponsible). On the other hand, Mormons-- and members of many other religions-- have to constantly remind themselves to believe, lest they "lose their testimony." The way I see it, truth stands on its own. I don't have to keep reminding myself and bearing my testimony of gravity. That would be silly.

Religious people sometimes speak as if accepting something without evidence is a virtue. I see that as a heinous crime against sanity. Evidence is vital when one is attempting to form a worldview that is anywhere near reality. Without evidence, one would be subject to believing any irrational proposition that might come one's way, regardless of its truth or falsity.

I am reminded of a video clip that I saw in one of my college history classes about Galileo. Galileo Galilei's work supplanted much of what Aristotle had said. One of those things that he supplanted was the idea that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects. In the video that I saw, Galileo was sitting at dinner with some church and political figures, discussing his theories with them. He told them what he had discovered-- that objects fall at the same rate, regardless of weight. His dinner companions asserted that this was not possible, as Aristotle

had told us that Galileo's assertion could not be true. Galileo proposed that they test the idea, but his dinner companions objected, saying that that was not necessary. Aristotle had already told us what was so, and there was no need to test the matter any further. But Galileo proposed that they test it, just for fun. He picked up a grape and an orange from the table, and he dropped them. Each hit the table at the same time. His dinner companions were astonished, but still refused to accept what was right in front of their eyes.

The Mormon approach to spiritual truth is a lot like that, in my view. Once you've had that spiritual witness, once you've felt good about the church, you don't need to test it anymore. Once the prophet has spoken on something, there's no need to debate the issue further. A real seeker of truth, once they think they have found the truth, will always keep the caveat, "but I could be wrong." A real truth seeker will welcome the opportunity to be proved wrong, because if you are wrong, wouldn't you want to know about it?

So this is why I'm a Mormon heretic. Everything I've written on this blog is subject to review. All the evidence I've seen against Mormonism is subject to reevaluation in the face of new information; I'll gladly reconsider in the face of new evidence. But I cannot in good conscience accept a certain set of feelings about a given proposition as evidence that said proposition is true.