Bluebeard

From childhoodreading.com:

Once upon a time, in the fair land of France, there lived a very powerful lord, the owner of estates, farms and a great splendid castle, and his name was Bluebeard. This wasn’t his real name, it was a nickname, due to the fact he had a long shaggy black beard with glints of blue in it. He was very handsome and charming, but, if the truth be told, there was something about him that made you feel respect, and a little uneasy…

Bluebeard often went away to war, and when he did, he left his wife in charge of the castle. He had had lots of wives, all young, pretty and noble. As bad luck would have it, one after the other, they had all died, and so the noble lord was forever getting married again.

“Sire,” someone would ask now and again, “what did your wives die of?”

“Hah, my friend,” Bluebeard would reply, “one died of smallpox, one of a hidden sickness, another of a high fever, another of a terrible infection… Ah, I’m very unlucky, and they’re unlucky too! They’re all buried in the castle chapel,” he added. Nobody found anything strange about that. Nor did the sweet and beautiful young girl that Bluebeard took as a wife think it strange either.

She went to the castle accompanied by her sister Anna, who said: “Oh, aren’t you lucky marrying a lord like Bluebeard?”

“He really is very nice, and when you’re close, his beard doesn’t look as blue as folk say!” said the bride, and the two sisters giggled delightedly. Poor souls! They had no idea what lay in store for them!

A month or so later, Bluebeard had the carriage brought round and said to his wife, “Darling, I must leave you for a few weeks. But keep cheerful during that time, invite whoever you like and look after the castle. Here,” he added, handing his bride a bunch of keys, “you’ll need these, the keys of the safe, the armoury and the library keys, and this one, which opens all the room doors.

"Now, this little key here,” and he pointed to a key that was much smaller than the others, “opens the little room at the end of the great ground floor corridor. Take your friends where you want, open any door you like, but not this one! Is that quite clear?” repeated Bluebeard. “Not this one! Nobody at all is allowed to enter that little room. And if you ever did go into it, I would go into such a terrible rage that it’s better that you don’t!”

“Don’t worry, husband,” said Bluebeard’s wife as she took the keys, “I’ll do as you say.” After giving her a hug, Bluebeard got into his carriage, whipped up the horses and off he went.

The days went by. The young girl invited her friends to the castle and showed them round all the rooms except the one at the end of the corridor.

“Why shouldn’t I see inside the little room? Why? Why is it forbidden?” Well, she thought about it so much that she ended up bursting with curiosity, until one day she opened the door and walked into the little room… Of all ghastly horrors! Inside, hanging on the walls were the bodies of Bluebeard’s wives: he had strangled them all with his own hands!

Terror stricken, the girl ran out of the room, but the bunch of keys slipped from her grasp. She picked them up without a glance and hurried to her own room, her heart thumping wildly in her chest. Horrors! She was living in a castle of the dead! So that is what had happened to Bluebeard’s other wives!

The girl summoned up her courage and she noticed that one of the keys – the very key to the little room – was stained with blood.

“I must wipe it clean, before my husband comes back!” she said to herself. But try as she would, the blood stain wouldn’t wash away. She washed, she scrubbed and she rinsed it; all in vain, for the key was still red. That very evening, Bluebeard came home. Just imagine the state his poor wife was in!

Bluebeard did not ask his wife for the keys that same evening, but he remarked, “You look a little upset, darling. Has anything nasty happened?”

“Oh, no! No!”

“Are you sorry I came back so soon?”

“Oh, no! I’m delighted!” But that night, the bride didn’t sleep a wink. Next day, Bluebeard said:

“Darling, give me back the keys,” and his wife hurriedly did so. Bluebeard remarked, “There’s one missing, the key to the little room!”

“Is there?” said the young girl shaking,

“I must have left it in my room!”

“All right, go and get it.” But when Bluebeard’s wife put the key into his hand, Bluebeard turned white and in a deep hoarse voice demanded:

“Why is this key stained with blood?”

“I don’t know…” stammered his wife.

“You know very well!” he retorted. “You went into the little room, didn’t you? Well, you’ll go back again, this time for good, along with the other ladies in there. You must die!”

“Oh no! I pray you!”

“You must die!” he repeated. Just then, there was a knock at the door and Anna, Bluebeard’s wife’s sister, entered the castle.

“Good morning,” she said, “you seem rather pale.”

“Not at all, we’re quite well,” replied Bluebeard.

His wife whispered in his ear, “Please, please give me ten minutes to live!”

Bluebeard replied, “Not more than ten!”

The girl ran to her sister Anna who had gone up to one of the towers and asked her, "Anna, do you see our brothers coming? They promised they would come and see me today!”

But Anna replied, “No, I don’t see anyone. What’s wrong? You look agitated.”

“Anna, please,” said the shaken girl, “look again! Are you sure you can’t see someone?”

“No,” said her sister, “only one or two peasants.”

Just then the voice of Bluebeard boomed up to them, “Wife, your time is up! Come here!”

“I’m coming!” she called, but then said to her sister: “Oh Anna, aren’t our brothers coming?…”

“No,” replied Anna. Again Bluebeard shouted up.

“Come down at once! Or I’ll come up!” Trembling like a leaf, his wife went downstairs. Bluebeard was clutching a big knife and he grabbed his bride by the hair…

“Sister, I can see two horsemen coming!” called out Anna from the tower that very moment.

Bluebeard made a horrible face, “They too will die!”

His wife knelt to implore, “Please, please don’t kill me. I’ll never tell anyone what I saw! I’ll never say a word!”

“Yes, you’ll never say a word for eternity!” snarled Bluebeard, raising his knife.

The poor girl screamed, “Have pity on me!”

But he fiercely replied, “No! You must die!” He was about to bring the knife down on the girl’s delicate neck, when two young men burst into the room: a dragon and a musketeer. They were his wife’s brothers.

Drawing their swords, they leapt towards Bluebeard, who tried to flee up some stairs, but was caught and killed. And that was the end of the sad story. Bluebeard’s poor wives were given a Christian burial, the castle was completely renovated and the young widow, some time later, married a good and honest young man, who helped her to forget the terrible adventure. And that young lady completely lost all her sense of curiosity.

*    *    *

The lot of a Mormon apostate is similar to that of Bluebeard's wife. We are told our whole lives that everything is fine and dandy, that the church is true, that Mormonism is the only way to happiness, when in reality there is an ever-growing stash of mutilated bodies in the closet. We are told never to question, never to look at "anti-Mormon literature," because then the Spirit will leave us, and we will become apostates. Those who do open the closet door find themselves shamed, villainized, and ostracized. In other words, their stories are hidden in Bluebeard's closet along with all the rest of the unpleasant facts about the Mormon church. 

When I first read the story of Bluebeard as a child, I thought that the wife was quite foolish for disobeying her husband and opening the forbidden room. She had a pleasant life in a fine castle full of treasures, with a husband who treated her well. If she had never opened the door, she likely would have gone on forever in happiness, never knowing about the morgue in her own house. 

Later I realized that, even though the results of opening the forbidden room were unpleasant, it would have been awful for Bluebeard's wife to live forever oblivious to the horrors in her own house. She was not foolish for disobeying her husband. The moral of the story isn't "wives should obey their husbands and check their curiosity." It's "don't marry a serial killer." And how are you to know if you are married to a serial killer if you take everything he says at face value and ignore the fact that all his previous wives have mysteriously disappeared? 

If you were married to a serial killer, wouldn't you rather know about it? 

Ennui

The fundamental problem of the human experience is that of satisfaction. It is in our nature to want things. But when our desires are satisfied, we always find ourselves desiring something else. It does not matter what the desire is; it could be a material object, or something more abstract like education or financial stability or a fulfilling relationship or political power. But each desire always seems to give way to a new one, and then we cannot be happy again until we have achieved our next desire.

It could be said that the ultimate human desire is to be freed from this seemingly inescapable cycle of desire, boredom, and desire. Religion, philosophy, and even consumerism are all attempts to find true happiness—to find release. But in every solution, the release is only temporary.

Perhaps what we call “spiritual experiences” are really only suspension of our desires and ennui. When we find ourselves in an altered state of mind, where we have no desires to be fulfilled or unfulfilled, no despair at the seeming futility of existence—this is our nirvana.

It is the lot of sentient beings to be aware of our own existence, and for the atheist, the inherent meaninglessness of existence. We’re born, we live, we die, and that’s all there is to it. This awareness causes us to reach for something more, because our unhappiness with the futility of existence is unsettling. It drives some to madness or suicide. So we lie to ourselves, tell ourselves that there is more to this life than there appears to be. That there is some part of us that does not depend upon the beating of our hearts and the breathing of our lungs. But this lie, although a comforting one, is still a lie. Our earnest desire for Something More does not mean that it exists.

Is it possible to find this release, fulfillment, nirvana, or whatever you’d like to call it—without relying on comforting lies and fairytales? I think so. I think that there’s something to meditation. I find release in music, in quiet evenings spent in reading and introspection, in conversation and laughter with friends. At these times, I find that although I am not pursuing any desire, I am happy. And, in the end, what more can I ask of life?

Is this really what I want?

I think that I've always been a feminist. By feminist, I don't mean the man-hating, bra-burning, reverse-chauvinistic kind of feminist. I think that kind of thing goes against what feminism is supposed to be-- the belief that all people are born free and equal, regardless of gender, race, religion, nationality, or anything else beyond the control of the individual. But from the time I was small, I've always had big plans and big ideas. I want to do things, know things, be something. When I learned that, throughout history, other women have been kept from their dreams simply because they were women, that knowledge ignited a passion in me for women's rights. No one should be kept from their dreams. No one should be forced into a prefabricated mold.

As a child, I was convinced that I was as good as any boy at anything I wanted to try. No one told me otherwise, to be sure. No one ever told me that I was less smart, less strong, or less anything than a boy. I was frequently even told that I was better than the boys-- see my previous post, "Pedestals and Prisons." But, as I described in that post, my self was circumscribed into a very limited, idealized role. I might have goals and dreams, but they had to be compatible with my divine calling as wife and mother. 

I was never told not to pursue dreams outside of being a wife and mother in Zion. But when I went to church on Sundays, the women who were held up to me as examples were not women like Susan B. Anthony, Mary Wollstonecraft, or Elizabeth I. Our role models were nurturers and helpmeets-- Florence Nightingale, Emma Smith, Ruth. (As a side note, I feel that the LDS church has committed an enormous travesty in its portrayal of Emma Smith. She is shown as a demure, compliant follower of her husband Joseph, when in fact she was a woman with intelligence and spunk. She threatened to leave Joseph multiple times because of his antics, and very nearly did on at least one occasion.) 

My patriarchal blessing told me that I would marry a priesthood holder in the temple, that we would build a home that glorified God, and that I would be charged with bringing up our children unto the Lord. In seminary, we had an "education day," where we watched a BYU video about college education. There was a special section for the girls-- it showed a pretty young women with an embroidery hoop in hand, telling the young women that "even though you probably won't need a career to support your family, it is still good to have an education so you can teach your children, and so you can work to support your family if your husband is incapacitated." No mention of intellectual development for its own sake. No mention of women pursuing careers for their own sake. We were encouraged to go to college, but with our divine roles in mind. 

I've always been a bit of a nerdy type. I would read nearly anything I could get my hands on, and my parents had a substantial collection of church books. I would spend hours poring over these. I developed a habit of looking up things like "women," "polygamy," and "plural marriage" in the index of nearly every historical book I read. I had become aware at an early age that most history books didn't say much about girls until modern times, and this bothered me. I felt left out. Surely the women deserved as much attention as the men when it came to telling the story of the human race. Slowly, I began to assemble a picture of what it meant to be a woman, and what it meant to be a woman in the LDS church. 

One of the ways I rationalized polygamy was that women in polygamous marriages could leave their children with their "sister-wives" and pursue education and careers. This did happen in a few cases, like that of Martha Hughes Cannon. But these cases were the exception, not the rule. Even Martha lived towards the end of the polygamy era in Utah, and received her medical degree before she became a plural wife. A woman's lot as a plural wife was not generally so rosy, particularly in the early years. Ann Eliza Young, one of Brigham Young's plural wives, wrote about her experiences in her memoir Wife no. 19. It was not pretty. 

In Mormonism, a woman's primary role is that of a wife and mother-- I hate to use such a blunt and perhaps clichéd term, but the ideal Mormon woman is a baby machine. I don't intend to belittle, marginalize, or otherwise disrespect women who choose to have children, perhaps even many children, and to stay at home to raise those children. Such women do, if they take their job seriously, contribute a great deal to society. But no woman should be forced, coerced, or pressured into motherhood. It must be her choice, a product of her genuine desire for motherhood. Motherhood isn't a "divine assignment." It is one of many equally valuable options available to women. 

This role of woman as baby-maker does not end with this life. According to the LDS view of God's great "Plan of Salvation," men may become gods. This is summarized in a couplet by Lorenzo Snow: "As man is God once was, as God is now man may be." In this vision of the universe, a god (who was once a man) creates a world, and populates it with his own spirit children, who are in turn tested for their worthiness to become gods themselves. 

And where do these spirit children come from? 

Why, a woman has to bear them. 

Think of how many people live, have lived, and will live on our earth alone. Think how many spirit children that is. Now, obviously one woman, no matter how perfect and eternal, couldn't bear that many children. The solution is simple: the gods practice polygamy. [Source: Discourses of Brigham Young, volume 11, page 313.]

This is the eternal destiny of the faithful LDS woman. An eternity spent sharing her husband with who-knows-how-many other women, perpetually producing spirit children to populate her husband's planets. Not planet. Planets. [Source: Moses 1:33] Women: know your place. 

It didn't take long for me to put these pieces of the puzzle together. On this issue, I never read a single anti-Mormon source until after I stopped believing altogether. I learned all this doctrine while I was a teenager. I learned it in bits and pieces-- a comment from a seminary teacher here, a passage in a church publication there-- and when I opened the door to questioning my religion, the obvious picture of eternity that I had been hiding from was staring me in the face. A woman's divine calling was nothing more than sexual slavery.

I would sit in church on Sunday and watch the men pass the sacrament. I had never been treated badly by a man at church-- oh, sure, I had been harassed as a Beehive by immature deacons, but that hardly counted. All the Mormon men I knew were good, kind, caring men who treated their wives and daughters with love and respect. But, no matter how good of a man my future husband might be, did I really want to spend eternity as one of his many wives, eternally bearing his spirit children? 

The pieces snapped together, and I realized what awaited me. And I wanted nothing to do with it. 

Pedestals and Prisons

A pedestal is as much a prison as any other small, confined space. -Gloria Steinem


If you ask a Mormon if women are suppressed, second-class citizens, they will tell you no. Women are not limited in the Mormon religion, or considered to be less than men; if anything, they are greater than men because of their greater spirituality and divine roles as mothers. Virtually any Mormon will tell you that they believe that husbands and wives are equal partners. And these Mormons won't be lying to you; they really do believe these things. Women are not subjugated in the Mormon church in the same sense as a chattel wife in the eighteenth century. But they are still prisoners to their prescribed roles.

Subjugation of women in the Mormon church is much more subtle than it once was, but that makes it no less real. Mormonism is very restrictive in the sense that it prescribes virtually every stage of a person's life for them, from cradle to grave. This prescription varies according to one's gender. The place of a woman is in the home.

As a child growing up in the Mormon religion, I was aware at a very early age that girls were treated differently from boys at church. The boys got to pass the sacrament on Sundays. The boys got to go to Cub Scouts, where they had camping trips and hikes and Pinewood Derbies. The girls got Achievement Days, which met half as often as Cub Scouts did, never had camping trips (although we did have hikes sometimes), and typically did things like painting wooden snowmen, baking cookies, and learning how to sew. I recall one activity where we learned how to be "ladylike"-- how to sit, walk, stand, and bend over like a lady.

It wasn't long before I learned about the priesthood, and learned that only boys got it. When I asked why, the response was memorable. I was fairly young at the time, perhaps seven or eight years old. The teacher made all the boys cover their ears, because she was going to tell the girls a great secret. Then she whispered to us, "You can't tell any of the boys this, because it's a secret-- but girls are special because they get to have babies. So God let men have the priesthood so they wouldn't feel bad."

I remember cocking my head to the side and thinking, "that doesn't make sense. Isn't having babies supposed to hurt a lot?" That explanation was so ridiculous, even when I was a brainwashed seven-year-old. It didn't seem fair. Besides, boys got to have the priesthood when they were twelve, and girls couldn't have babies until they were all grown up and married. That didn't seem fair at all.

Later on, when I was sixteen or seventeen, I was spending a Sunday afternoon reading some church books from my mom's large collection. One in particular was written for women, and this book talked about how bad it was for women to have careers, how it was vitally important that they stay at home with their children-- because their divine callings as mothers trumped all else. By this point, I had begun to amass a store of dreams for my future. I wanted to go to college and learn as much as I could. I wanted to write a book. At this point in my life, I was thinking about becoming a lawyer, or maybe a politician or journalist. I had ideas, and I had plans. I wanted children, because I had been taught to want them, but I did not plan on my children being my only contribution to the world.

What this book had said upset me. I thought, men get to be fathers and have careers at the same time. They get to go out into the world and engage with other people and make a difference in the public sphere. Why can't women be mothers and do the same thing?

At this point, I still had another two years of the Young Womens program ahead of me. And by the time I had finished with those two years, I was convinced that I didn't really want a career after all. I was enamored with my "divine calling" of motherhood. Shortly before I turned eighteen, I wrote in my journal that I had been so foolish for worrying about what I was going to do with my life. God, in his wisdom, had already planned that out for me. He knew what would make me happy, and I would follow that plan.

This change was a direct result of my time in the Young Womens program. About half of the lessons I had on Sundays were about women's divine roles. They had titles like "Preparing to Become an Eternal Companion," "Eternal Families," and "Obeying Commandments Helps Us Fulfill Our Divine Roles." I recall leaders regularly having the young women make lists of ways that Satan might try to keep us from fulfilling our divine roles. I want to make clear that I have no ill feelings towards my Young Women leaders; all of them were wonderful women, for the most part highly intelligent and genuinely caring. They were just as brainwashed as I was, and it wasn't their fault. But the organization that I was a part of attempted to steal my identity and replace it with pink pastel conformity.

Women are indeed placed on pedestals in the Mormon religion. They are supposed to be ever-faithful spiritual bastions and pure Madonnas. All our efforts were supposed to be ultimately focused on raising up a righteous generation. Our goals, our dreams, our intelligence, our creativity, and our sexuality were all subverted to this end. We were raised up on high pedestals, and our identities were circumscribed into the square foot of standing space on that pedestal. Our humanity was ignored in favor of our supposed perfection. In this way, we were placed in an elevated prison by an organization that wished to use us for its own ends.

What do I believe in?

"Atheists don't believe in anything."

"Atheists believe that life has no meaning."

"Atheists have no values."

I'm an atheist. The word atheist literally means "one who does not believe in God." And that is quite accurate; I do not believe in God. But I also find the word to be unsatisfactory. I may not believe in God, but there are many things that I do believe in, and those things have a much more profound impact on my life than the mere fact that I don't believe in God, souls, or afterlife.

What do I believe?

I believe in truth. I'm not entirely certain that humans can ever reach certain truth, because our limited faculties of knowledge and perception can be, and often are, mistaken and deceived. Science is always changing, because what we know is always changing. But really, this is the strength of science-- that it changes in accordance with the known facts. You can't say that about religion. Religion claims to know truths about the universe a priori, and it refuses to alter itself.

Have you ever respected someone less because they admitted that they were wrong?

The search for truth is not for the weak of mind or the faint of heart. If you really want to find the truth, then no belief must be too sacred to challenge. If you don't challenge your beliefs, how can you know that they are true?

I believe in integrity. Atheists are often accused of arrogance. In my case, becoming an atheist was easily the most humbling thing that I have experienced. I had to come to terms with the non-existence of god, the soul, or an afterlife. I had to let go of my self-centered beliefs in my eternal nature and eventual apotheosis. And I had to admit that I was wrong. It was the hardest thing that I ever did. Why would anyone want to believe that when the people you love die, they're gone for good and you'll never see them again? Why would anyone want to believe that humanity is nothing special, that the universe does not revolve around the earth? An honest person does not believe something out of choice. An honest person follows where the facts, evidence, and logic lead. Even if it leads into the seeming abyss of atheism, my integrity demands that I follow.

I believe in individual initiative. Perhaps the most apparently depressing aspect of atheism is the fact that it implies a lack of inherent meaning to human existence. There is no God in heaven observing your actions, totting up the good and the bad like some kind of divine cosmic banker. There is no afterlife where you will be judged for your actions. And there is no prescribed meaning to your life.

This was shattering to me. I was like a child presented with a sheet of blank paper after becoming accustomed to coloring books. There was no plan for me to follow; there were no lines for me to color in. I had to make my life my own instead of painting by the numbers of religion. My life is now mine, and I create its meaning myself.

I believe in beauty. My appreciation of beautiful things has greatly increased since I gave up religion. In the ubiquitous words of Douglas Adams, "isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it?"

As a theist, I believed that the world existed only to be exploited. God had created all things for the use of humanity. Animals were not full beings. The earth's resources existed only for my use. Now, I see myself as no different from the rest of the world. I have no more "soul" than an animal does. A cat's, dog's, or dolphin's pain is no less distressing than my own. I believe that I have a responsibility to treat other living things well, because they are really not all that different from me.

I believe in love. The problem of evil in the world is vexing. Why do innocent people suffer? Because the world itself is amoral. There is no god, benevolent or otherwise. No god is going to help a starving child or a captive woman. If these people are to be relieved of their suffering, then I and people like me must do it. And I believe that I should do this, not out of any desire for eternal reward, but because I am genuinely distressed by the suffering of others. Do I need any more motive than that?

My lack of belief in gods does not mean that I don't believe in anything. On the contrary, I find that I am a better person because of my atheism. I judge not-- not because I fear the judgment of God, but because I have no reason to judge. If I can help even one person, then I am glad-- not because I desire a great reward in heaven, but because I genuinely care for the rest of humanity.

I am an atheist, but that does not define me. I am not defined by what I am not, but by what I am.

Affirming the consequent

I had an epiphany recently. Alma 32 affirms the consequent.

Allow me to explain. A very popular passage in the Book of Mormon, Alma 32:28-33, compares the gospel to a seed. The passage is as follows:

28 Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my funderstanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.

29 Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea; nevertheless it hath not grown up to a perfect knowledge.

30 But behold, as the seed swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, then you must needs say that the seed is good; for behold it swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow. And now, behold, will not this strengthen your faith? Yea, it will strengthen your faith: for ye will say I know that this is a good seed; for behold it sprouteth and beginneth to grow.

31 And now, behold, are ye sure that this is a good seed? I say unto you, Yea; for every seed bringeth forth unto its own alikeness.

32 Therefore, if a seed groweth it is good, but if it groweth not, behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away.

33 And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good.

This passage essentially means that if you try out the gospel by living it, you will experience good effects in your life, and that will tell that the gospel is good (and, therefore, true).

There's one problem with this, though. It embodies a logical fallacy called affirming the consequent, which looks like this:

If A, then B.

B.

Therefore, A.

For example, suppose the following:

If it is raining, then the sidewalk is wet.

The sidewalk is wet.

Therefore, it is raining.

Obviously, that structure doesn't work. There are plenty of reasons why the sidewalk could be wet besides rain; maybe your neighbor has the sprinklers on. So, let's put Alma 32 into a syllogistic format:

If the gospel is true (the seed is good), then you will experience positive effects in your life when living the gospel (planting the seed and it begins to grow)

You experienced good effects

Therefore, the gospel is true

To make it even more straightforward, let's use letters instead. P = experiencing positive effects after trying the gospel (planting the seed and it begins to grow), and T = the gospel is true (it is a good seed). It looks like this:

If T, then P

P

Therefore, T.

This is a clear case of affirming the consequent, and therefore fallacious.

The Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet

At the last LDS General Conference, Elder Claudio R. M. Costa gave a talk entitled Obedience to the Prophets. This talk was basically a rehashing of an address that Ezra Taft Benson gave at BYU in 1980 and later republished in the Ensign [note: the link I provided is actually a Liahona article; the Liahona is the international version of the Ensign]. Benson's talk, The Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet, outlines in detail what members of the LDS church believe about prophets.

This post might require some background information for readers not familiar with Latter-Day-Saint theology. Belief in a modern prophet is a fundamental aspect of LDS faith. The structure of the religious organization and theology is very focused on the existence of a single person who speaks for God and holds all priesthood authority. In Latter-Day-Saint theology, Christ gave some of his authority to his apostles in the form of "priesthood keys." However, these keys died with the apostles (with the exception of John the Beloved, who is believed to have been given immortality). As a result, the world was plunged into an 1800-year "Great Apostasy", when the true church of God and the priesthood keys of authority were not on the earth.

Mormons believe that these keys of authority were restored in the 19th Century when Joseph Smith, under the direction of God, restored the true church to the earth. The LDS doctrine of the priesthood is very detailed, and I'm not going to go into much of that in this post. Suffice it to say that in Latter-Day-Saint theology, the full set of priesthood keys belong to the prophet and president of the church, passed down in a direct line from Joseph Smith to the present prophet,Thomas S. Monson.

Now, with that out of the way, I shall commence my analysis of the LDS conception of prophets as outlined by Benson and quoted by Costa.

1. The prophet is the only man who speaks for the Lord in everything.

This point is pretty self-explanatory. As I explained above, Mormons believe that the prophet is God's representative on earth, and that he is God's only official representative. Unlike most of the other fundamentals, this one doesn't really bother me. If there really were a prophet, of course he would speak for God in everything. The trouble is that if the Mormon prophet really does speak for God in everything, then God must be schizophrenic or something. Or else he just likes to play mind games. Either way.

2. The living prophet is more vital to us than the standard works.

Now things get more interesting. The living prophet is more vital to us than the standard works are? That's awfully convenient. By this reasoning, the prophet can say anything, even if it's contrary to canon, and expect to have his words treated as doctrine. I find this disturbing, as it essentially gives the prophet absolute spiritual authority. If the prophet came to a married woman in the church and said, "God told me that you are supposed to be my wife, and that an angel with a flaming sword would kill me if I didn't marry you," the woman's natural inclination would be to point out that Exodus 20:14 says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." However, under this doctrine-- the ability of the prophet to contradict the standard works-- the woman has no such recourse.

For those unfamiliar with Mormon history, this scenario sounds preposterous. But it is precisely what happened to Mary Rollins Lightner (married to Adam Lightner), Zina Huntington Jacobs(married to Henry Jacobs), and many other women. (Note: I will go into more detail on polygamy in a future blog post, as it was a huge conundrum for me during my time as a believer and one of the many things that led me out of the church. For now, the sources I've provided will do to make my point.)

Polygamy is just one of many instances in Mormon history where the prophet told members to do things that no moral person would ever do of their own accord. Steven Weinberg nailed it when he said, "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and bad people doing evil things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion." Danites . . . Mountain Meadows . . . blood atonement . . . the rabbit hole goes deeper and deeper the more you look. And everything in that rabbit hole has been condoned by a prophet at some point in the Mormon church's history.

I think I've mentioned that I tend to be suspicious of authority. It's a well-known, documented fact that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Nowhere is this more true than with religion. When you have a person declaring that they are the ultimate authority on all matters temporal and spiritual, that their word is always final, and that neither individual reason, democratic process, nor canonical documents can overwrite his word, you have a dangerous tyrant on your hands. I don't care if he is religious, political, social, intellectual, or what-have-you. Power corrupts. And religious power is even more dangerous, because it claims to have authority over your mind, your soul, and your eternity. This problem is evident throughout European history in the struggles for the papacy, and the attempts by many popes to wield both secular and religious authority.

3. The living prophet is more important to us than a dead prophet.

This one strikes me as a clear case of the LDS leaders, to use the vernacular, covering their butts. If we accept the above concept as true, then all the contradictions in church leadership over the years are nicely glossed over. Brigham Young's Adam-God doctrine? We don't believe that anymore, and the fact that Brigham Young taught it is irrelevant. A living prophet is more important to us than a dead prophet.

Now, I'll concede that, practically speaking, it's a lot more valuable to have a living guy who speaks for God now than a dead one who spoke for God two hundred years ago. The concept of an open canon isn't what bothers me. What bothers me is the way this concept is used in the LDS church-- to deceive people and to downplay very real problems.

The way I see it, either truth does not change, or truth is relative. I find the idea of relative truth to be incomprehensible and repulsive. Truth does not change; only our perception of it does. So, when you have a prophet who expands on something an earlier prophet says, or who reveals new doctrine, that's all well and good. But what about when a later prophet blatantly contradicts an earlier one? Adam-God is a great example, but what about polygamy? What about blacks and the priesthood and the Curse of Cain? What about blood atonement? All these things were taught as doctrine-- vital doctrine, doctrine that was supposed to be universal and necessary for the salvation of all people. Yet all of them were later repealed. How does this square with Fundamental #4-- the doctrine that the prophet will never lead the church astray? Either the truth changed, and truth is therefore relative, or else one or both prophets were leading the church astray after all.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into this one; somehow, however, I don't think so. When I've brought up things like Adam-God, polygamy, Curse of Cain, etc., the people I have spoken to have been unable to disprove that earlier prophets did, in fact, teach those things. At this point, I am told one of two things. Option #1: A living prophet is more important than a dead one. Option #2: Even if the prophet is sometimes wrong, God will bless you for your obedience and punish the bad prophet for any crimes you may commit. I've already dealt with Option #1. Option #2 has two serious problems with it. Firstly, it directly contradicts Official Declaration #1, which is canonized scripture. (Oh, wait-- the prophet is more vital to us than the scriptures are. Never mind.) Secondly, and more importantly in my book, obedience does not negate individual responsibility. If someone tells me to do something that I know is wrong, and I do it, that does not absolve my moral responsibility. Option #2 is a total cop-out. It is an excuse to not think.

So-- back to "a living prophet is more important than a dead prophet." This concept is nothing but the Mormon version of the Memory Hole in Orwell's 1984.

4. The prophet will never lead the church astray.

The thing about absolutes is . . . they're kind of absolute. That "the prophet will NEVER lead the church astray" is a pretty big claim, especially when prophets have contradicted each other on major issues (as I've described above; I don't think I need to reiterate). The only way to reconcile this is to accept the concept of relative truth. Maybe that works for some people. I find it unconscionable.

Yet again, this gives members an excuse to turn off their brains. If the prophet says something that seems wrong, or just plain doesn't make sense, members aren't allowed to question. Oh, sure, they're supposed to go "pray for a witness." But they're not allowed to actually doubt the prophet. They're supposed to ask for confirmation. This, of course, invites confirmation bias and introduces the concept of thoughtcrime.

I'll say it right out-- I hold the human mind to be among the most sacred of all things. Independent reasoning is a priceless gift. Anyone or anything that tries to take that away is evil. I can't stress this enough. This is thought control, and it is evil.

5. The prophet is not required to have any particular earthly training or credentials to speak on any subject or act on any matter at any time.

I find this one interesting. It's what I'd expect from a real prophet. So here's my question. If the prophet can speak on any subject or act on any matter at any time, then why doesn't he? Why doesn't the Mormon church have an official position on evolution-- why do they defer to the experts? Evolution is a huge stumbling block for many members. You'd think that if the prophet had any real authority to speak on any matter, he would say something. You'd think that the LDS church would be way ahead of the rest of the world in scientific knowledge and social awareness. Yet they didn't let blacks have the priesthood until it was politically expedient for them to do so. They fought the Equal Rights Amendment tooth and nail. They have never been about progress. They have always placed paramount importance on maintenance of the status quo. I'm not saying that all change from the status quo is good, but it also seems absurd that the status quo should automatically be the "right" way. And it seems that something as basic as human rights should be right up the Mormon church's alley. If God as conceived by Mormons really does love all of his children regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, or any other factor, then why does it appear that he's a racist, chauvinistic businessman with something to lose from progress?

If the prophet can speak on anything, why doesn't he tell us how to cure cancer? Why doesn't he tell us how to cure AIDS? Why does it seem that he doesn't use his pipeline to God to alleviate human suffering instead of as a political tool that often increases it??

6. The prophet does not have to say “Thus Saith the Lord” to give us scripture.

I'll admit, I got a chuckle out of this one. When I began my intellectual journey out of the church, I was directed to several LDS apologetic sources such as FAIR and FARMS. When it came to things like Brigham Young's Adam-God doctrine and Joseph Smith's false prophecies (e.g., temple in Missouri, second coming in 1890), the main argument that these apologetic sources employed was that these prophets were only "speaking as a man." This "fundamental"-- the prophet speaking as a prophet whenever he opens his mouth-- destroys that argument. Ironically, as I was writing this blog post, I went to look up some of the apologetic articles that employed this argument in order to link to them, but lo and behold! The "speaking as a man" argument had entirely vanished without a trace! The Mormon memory hole is alive and well. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia-- but I digress.

Aside from the resultant memory hole phenomenon, this fundamental brings up some interesting questions. If everything that comes out of the prophet's mouth is scripture, why doesn't the prophet give us more scripture? Why is it that when a prophet or an apostle publishes a book, the book contains a disclaimer stating that its contents are not official church doctrine? Why is it that General Conference contains little or no new information-- just the same old recycled messages on such dead horses as faith, obedience, tithing, and families? If the Mormon prophet is a real prophet, he sure doesn't act like these fourteen fundamentals say he should.

7. The prophet tells us what we need to know, not always what we want to know.

I suppose that this is where the doctrine of "true, but not useful" comes from. One question: does this justify lying for the Lord?

I imagine a believing Mormon would look at this fundamental and think, "oh, this just means that people don't like to be told that they're sinning." And that's fine. If Mormonism was true, and if I believed in sin, I'd expect the prophet to warn people against sin. And that does definitely go on in the church-- all those girls and women wearing flip-flops to church are sinners and must repent. Okay, fine. But that doesn't negate the fact that this concept gives church leaders an excuse to hide, manipulate, and obfuscate information that is not "useful" to the church. I guess honesty and transparency don't apply to prophets.

8. The prophet is not limited by men’s reasoning.

I suppose this renders my whole argument invalid, doesn't it? But wait-- I am no man! There's no mention of woman's reasoning! In that case, I shall proceed.

9. The prophet can receive revelation on any matter, temporal or spiritual.

I think things are starting to get redundant-- this is basically the same as #5. And it brings up the same question. Why doesn't he? It also, I think, gives one man way too much power. Even if you really believe that he's a prophet, the Old Testament example of Balaam shows that even prophets can be corrupted by power and money. The lack of checks and balances of power in the Mormon church concerns me.

10. The prophet may advise on civic matters.

Ah, here we come to another minefield. I don't want to bring up any politically charged issues-- I'd hate to bring Prop 8 into this-- but this concept comes uncomfortably close to theocracy. How is this different from the medieval popes and all the problems that their corruption caused?

11. The two groups who have the greatest difficulty in following the prophet are the proud who are learned and the proud who are rich.

I find it interesting that Benson specifically pointed out "the proud who are learned and the proud who are rich," instead of just saying "the prideful." "The proud who are rich" is an obvious reference to Christ and the rich young man-- a cliche, if you like. There are also numerous references throughout the Book of Mormon to the proud rich. I'm not going to say much about that; I think it's a two-dimensional dead horse, but I don't find it terribly interesting.

I suppose that many believing Mormon readers would say that I am among the "proud who are learned." I've certainly made it clear that I value the human mind more than so-called "spiritual witnesses," and any observer will note that I have a propensity to use such things as evidence and logical reasoning. I wouldn't say I'm proud-- I think that faith is the real pride (see "Oh Say What is Truth"). I'll take criticism, of course, but the jab at "the proud who are learned" just seems so obvious to me. But then again, it's true that intellectuals are one of the greatest threats to the church, along with feminists and homosexuals.

12. The prophet will not necessarily be popular with the world or the worldly.

I see this as a defense mechanism. The Mormon church's PR is awful, and this is an easy line for members and leaders to spout when the rest of the world starts criticizing-- I mean, persecuting them. I guess I'm just cynical about the LDS church at this point.

13. The prophet and his counselors make up the First Presidency—the highest quorum in the Church.

This is just a definition. Not terribly interesting. Whatever.

14. The prophet and the presidency—the living prophet and the First Presidency—follow them and be blessed—reject them and suffer.

You hear that? Be obedient and be blessed, or think for yourself and suffer! This is just hyperbole and fear tactics. And, unfortunately, it seems to work.