Spirituality - Post-Mormon

If this is the first page of this website that you have seen, I suggest that you read the summary on the Spirituality page to gain an understanding of why this website exists, and for some assistance in deciding what to read.

If you are tired of the usual ex-mormon rants (I hope that is not what I am doing, but some may perceive it that way), you might find "Out of My Faith" an interesting read. Also, some of the shorter, more creative pieces (found in the "Creative Writing, Short Stories and Poetry" section) and the essays respecting "renaissance", "metaphor games" and "perspective" may be more appealing to those who are still firmly connected to Mormonism.

I am told that, in particular, the "First Letter to Elder Holland" and the essays titled "Religious Belief: Enlightening or Blinding?", "Out of My Faith" and "Do Smart Mormons Make Mormonism True?" have been helpful to many people who have visited here. And, in the various pieces titled "Dialogue with My Daughter" I have attempted to summarize in more accessible form some of the concepts that are developed in greater detail in some of my longer essays. The long essays were, as noted above, mostly learning or therapeutic exercises for me that I have preserved. A friend who edits a newspaper calls my long essays "scaffolding" - the kind of notes writers make to themselves as they are getting ready to publish something. That, in my view, is a fair description. And perhaps some day I will be prepared to do the extra work required to publish something. For the time being, this will have to do.

Medium (6-15 pages)

A Few Thoughts About Mormon Marriage (15 pages; no abstract) - I recently attended a Mormon wedding reception. It's unusual feature was a ring ceremony likely included because one of the newlyweds is a recent convert to Mormonism and had many non-LDS family members in attendance. This ceremony caused me for the first time in a while to think about the basics of Mormon marriage. I deal with this at length in an essay at http://mccue.cc/documents/temple%20marriage.pdf Here, I will look at the topic from a different angle, including a summary of recent divorce related research and a comparison of Mormon marriage to both typical North American marriages and those of more traditional social groups such as the Hindus.

Undeception and the Second Birth (15 pages) – The idea that finding the truth is often painful – so much so that we hide from it – and the wonders that can be available to us if we submit to that pain and allowed ourselves to be "reborn", are the staples of mythologies of all types. In this essay I consider these concepts in general terms, and then apply them to certain historical questions related to the relationship between the Mormon Church, and the Communities of Christ (former known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or RLDS), which were created at about the same time. The CC has come to grips more effectively with its history, and is trying to re-invent itself.

A Conversation with a Mormon Leader (15 pages; no abstract) – This is a lightly edited transcript of part of an email exchange in which I recently engaged with an old friend who is a Mormon leader. I generally resist the temptation to use my time for this kind of thing, but for a variety of reasons that I will not go into here, I did not resist in this case. My friend's initial letter to me, among other things, took me to task for not leaving people alone to walk their path as I walk mine; for persecuting the Saints; for being too sure of myself; and he expressed the hope that we would continue to be friends.

A Message For Mormon Apologists (14 page; no abstract) - For the most part, when I re-enter the Mormon world (or even its fringes) I experience vertigo. This is the world Lewis Carroll wrote about - a postmodern place where words mean what anyone wants, we must pretend nonsense is sense, and probabilities are ignored. Hence, we can prove anything, and nothing, to those who've passed through this looking glass. This essay describes the apologetic encounter and how it makes me feel.

The Springbank Middle School Grade Seven Band at Camp Caroline: A Few Reasons to Introspect and Meditate (14 pages; no abstract) - The following is a stream of consciousness that emerged when I sat down to write this morning about a simple walk in the woods. It deals with the way in which life seems to open up to introspection and why that may be, and some insights recently gained by someone who is just learning the joys of meditation.

Goodbye, Lenin! - A Review (13 page; 3 page abstract) - This is a review of the recent movie that is in large part about the effect of well intentioned falsehood, and the manner in which context conveys meaning. And, it is also a veritable clinic as to how cognitive dissonance functions. It is both funny and gut wrenching. It generates enough momentum to get past its weak spots, and ends with an intestinal twist. It feels low budget by Hollywood standards. But the acting looks good to this inexperienced movie goer. Leaves lots of unresolved questions and conflict. A great flick. I recognize that there is no "right" way to read a metaphor, and I make no attempt to the explore the length or breadth of this one. I will limit myself to an analysis of how it may shed light on the Mormon experience.

"How to Deal with Inherited Irrationality" (13 pages; no abstract) - Rational forces have consistently throughout human history overcome magical thinking and other forms of irrationality. However, it often takes a depressingly long time for the majority of even the best informed human groups to accept what with the benefit of hindsight appears to be an obvious best practise, and humans are particularly obtuse when it comes to seeing the irrationality in ideas or behaviors that are foundational to their own social groups. Both history and current social reality relative to this point provide eloquent testimony to how the individual perception of reality tends to bend to group opinion. Our evolutionary history as small group animals who were dependant on a safe place within a social group for our survival is likely responsible for this. The struggle between rational and irrational forces in the religious world has been nicely chronicled by many scholars, and we find in the Mormon group a microcosm of this conflict. Many Mormons are at a tipping point with regard to this issue as a result of the ongoing collision between irrational Mormon beliefs and the information rich perspective provided by the Internet. The experience of other groups throughout history suggests that the direction those who remain faithful to Mormonism take on this issue will largely determine the richness of life their descendants will enjoy for generations to come.
I will conclude that individual Mormons who become aware of these issues have a choice to make of unprecedented importance as a result of what we know about how individual decision making behaviour tends to be largely determined by the behaviour supported by our dominant social group, and how slowly the behaviour of social groups tend to upgrade toward best available practises in this regard.

Perspective Expansion - A Reading List (12 pages; no abstract) - Several people have asked me for my reading list and how I would use it were I doing this all over again. This is my attempt to provide what was requested.

First Letter to Elder Jeffrey Holland (11 pages; no abstract) – I was so upset by a few things Elder Holland and President Gordon Hinckley said at the LDS Church's April 2003 General Conference that I sent this letter to both of them. President Hinckley's only differed in terms of salutation and a few minor details. I did not expect a response, but am still connected enough to the LDS Church by virtue of my wife's membership that I hear what is going on, and felt that something needed to be said.

Dialogue with a Prophet (11 pages; no abstract) – This short piece works through my imaginary encounter with one of the larger than life authority figures that dominate the Mormon psyche. It responds to several things that members of the current slate of LDS prophets have either written to me, or said to others respecting my current circumstances.

An Agnostic in a Foxhole: The Story Behind "Heaven in My Hand" (11 pages; no abstract) - The following are posts I made to the Recovery from Mormonism and View from the Foyer bulletin boards on the dates indicated. They deal with the experience of having a child in intensive care and discovering the extent to which I missed my faith in God. As they say, "there are no atheists (or agnostics) in foxholes".

A Week on Star Island: An Overview of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science 2005 Conference on Spiritual Transformation (10 pages; no abstract) – This is the first of what will hopefully be a series of notes I made to myself with regard to a conference that I attended with some members of my family last week at Star Island (off the coast of New Hampshire – see www.starisland.org) hosted by the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS – see www.iras.org). The 2005 IRAS conference was, by far, the richest intellectual banquet to which this humble traveller has been invited. This note is an attempt to explain why my experience with this conference, and more importantly, the community of people who one generation after another have made it happen each year for over 50 years, was so moving. I have decided to post this aspect of my notes here because my experience in this regard will likely be relevant to many who read here and are also looking for communities and sources of information that will help them reframe their worldview and feel connected (as most of us seem to need) to groups of human beings who share our sense of reality and purpose. I do not suggest that Star Island or IRAS are the only (or even best) purveyors of this kind of experience. Rather, I hold them out as great examples of the kind of social groups and places that exist in abundance out there for those of us who are at the moment stumbling out of cloisters of various kinds.

Personal Renaissance and Angst - Can the "Centre Hold"? (10 pages; no abstract): A consideration of the wonderful process by which we individually and collectively renew ourselves, and the stress this produces.

Constructive Anger (9 pages; no abstract) - As a former Hugh Nibley fan, I am enjoying the writing career of his daughter, Martha Beck. She is publishing a book next spring entitled “Leaving the Saints – How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith”. Martha has written a couple of other books, has a PhD in sociology, used to teach at BYU, and is a regular columnist with The Oprah Magazine. Her article on anger and its uses in the October 2004 edition of "O" is likely based on the content of her forthcoming book, although she does not mention Mormonism. It was thought provoking enough that I will summarize and comment on a few of her key ideas.

The Metaphor Game and Depression (9 pages; 2 page abstract): A few examples of the wealth of useful information that can be gleaned from Mormon scripture stories and other mythological resources when they are considered metaphorically instead of literally.

How Do We Decide What to Believe? Who Should We Trust to Guide Us? (9 pages; no abstract): A review of the way in which we form basic beliefs and how humans often behave in ways that hide their beliefs and motives from others, and in many cases from themselves as well.

Cognitive Dissonance and Fear - A Case Study in Marital Miscommunication (9 pages; no abstract) - One of the fascinating, frustrating aspects of leaving a fundamentalist religious group such as Mormonism, and then having to deal with loved ones who remain behind, is the impossibility that those who have left will be able to communicate their new understanding of “reality” to most of those who have not. Those on the outside say that those who remain are in denial and have been deceived. Those on the inside say that those who have left are confused, deluded etc. and often attribute that to sin – either of the flesh or of pride, intellectualism, greed (not wanting to pay tithing) and what have you. Since the most common, and most difficult, situation in which this arises is between spouses, I will outline a few principles in summary form, provide a few graphic examples of extreme cognitive dissonance induced denial, and then walk through what might be called a typical spousal case study that works with those principles.

Mormon Relationships - It’s About Time (8 pages; no abstract) - I attended the funeral of a business associate the other day. At his funeral were members of his hockey and fast pitch teams as well as many other friends and business associates. But the sports guys were special.  He had played on the same teams with a core of the same guys for over 20 years, gradually drifting down through the divisions from “open” to “old fart” over the years with the athletic activity gradually being replaced by social relationships as the team’s focus. This made me ache for what might have been, and decide to pursue the same kind of relationships at my relatively advanced age (47).  Long term relationships of the kind my deceased friend had are more rare within Mormonism than in other contexts, unless your ward boundaries and callings don’t change for over 20 years. That is, personal relationships of all kinds are determined not by personality, what you like to do, etc., but by the way in which the Mormon Church functions. This is only one of countless ways in which the Mormon Church inserts itself into our most intimate relationships with the result if not the intent that our relationship to Mormonism remains primary and all other relationships subsidiary.   This social structure is not accidental.  It is derived from Mormonism’s primary objective – to create the strongest possible institution. Relationships are powerful personal and social forces.  They can either be aligned to strengthen, or weaken, institutions.  Mormonism goes out of its way to line up as much of this force as possible in its own interest.  And by so doing, it impoverishes many of the important relationships in the lives of its members.  This essay explores the matrix of issues around this concept.

“The Gospel is perfect but the people are not”: A Critique (8 pages; no abstract) – The theoretical bedrock of Mormonism is the perfect Gospel of Jesus Christ that Mormons presume Joseph Smith restored to Earth. Mormons freely admit that none of them are perfect, not even their prophets. Joseph Smith’s life puts an exclamation point behind the admission that Mormon prophets are imperfect. But that is not what this essay is about. Our most important assumptions are seldom questioned. So this essay questions the Mormon assumption that it is wise to embrace the imperfect nature of their organization and themselves as an important part of the “school” that will help them to learn to be perfect. And what about the assumption that “the Gospel is perfect”? We will find that Churchill was not far off when he said that. “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

Zen in the Zone (8 pages) – A summary of recent reading I have done respecting the athletic "zone" and how it connects to various currents of scientific and spiritual thought.

Is There a Modern Super or Meta-Myth? (8 pages) – This essay examines the nature of myth and its connection to religion, and considers the oft asked question as to whether there is an overarching mythological structure that would be used to unify all religious traditions, and could be expected to work for an indefinite period of time.

Does Religious Belief Affect Creativity? (8 pages; no abstract) - A consideration of an idea from James Joyce's book "The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". I suggest that those religious influences that employ the forces of fear or desire to elicit behaviour from us also stunt out creativity.

Mormon Polygamy, Chaos Theory and the Law of Unintended Consequences (8 pages; no abstract) - I suggest that Joseph Smith's classic alpha male behaviour within the early Mormon population resulted in his having sex with many women. His status as a religious leader necessitated an excuse for this behaviour that was consistent with that role. Polygamy was a creative response to this dilema, which set off a long chain of events that has shaped Mormonism ever since.

The Book of Mormon DNA Controversy: A Case Study in How Not to Think (8 pages; no abstract) - There is at the moment within the LDS community a debate respecting how much doubt the current evidence respecting DNA casts on the belief JS and most other Mormons have held that the American Indians descend from the House of Israel. I will provide its outline and then use it to illustrate what in my view is one of the primary ways in which Mormon and other religious thinking runs off the rails. This involves the neglect of the principle of parsimony which states that we should always choose the simplest explanation of a phenomenon – the one that requires the fewest leaps of logic. This is one of science's basic decision making rules. It is fair to say that there is much DNA based evidence to suggest that JS and all those who have followed him were incorrect respecting the ancestry of Native Americans. That is, it appears that they did not descend from the Israelites. The Church's response to recent summaries of the scientific evidence in this regard has been to indicate that "all is well" on its official website, followed by a reference to articles from the "Journal of Book of Mormon Studies" respecting DNA and the Book of Mormon. But those articles do not conclude that all is well with the Church's theory. If fact, the most reasonable scientific conclusion that can be drawn from them is that while the best evidence today indicates that the Church's theory is incorrect, it is still possible that at some future time more evidence will be found to support the Church's theory. This illustrates the most common Mormon response to evidence that seriously questions its position - if you can't prove with 100% certainty that Mormonism is wrong, then it is right. This "reasoning" is rooted in emotion, not reason.

Dialogue With My Daughter: Part I - Cognitive Dissonance; Institutional v. Individual Interests; The Refiner's Fire (8 pages; no abstract) - A few people have contacted me and indicated that while what I write is interesting and useful, it is far too long and uses language that is too technical. Accordingly, I am experimenting with recording some of the conversations I have with my kids and am as a result finding a more accessible presentation style. This piece deals with the basics of how cognitive dissonace works in the religious context to shape our perceptions of reality.

Dialogue With My Daughter: Part II - Personality Types; Institutional v. Personal Interests; Theocracy v. Democracy (8 pages; no abstract) - Another simple dialogue piece. This one summarizes some aspects of how personality type appears likely to affect an individual's probability of challenging her religious leadership, and how the interests of a religious institution are often placed by religious leaders ahead of the interests of individual members.

Mythology v. History (8 pages; no abstract) – The connection between history and myth is notoriously difficult to disentangle. And, this is particularly important to Mormonism because Mormonism is one of the few religions to which history is of foundational importance. This essay is an attempt to shed some light on the connection between myth and history in the Mormon context, and to propose a test for use in determining whether Mormons or other people are engaged in a mythic or historical exercise when they tell as about things they believe to have happened in the past.

Dialogue With My Daughter: Part III - Present v. Future Orientation (7 pages; no abstract) - Another simple dialogue piece. This one summarizes how religious believe influences people in different cultures along the "present v. future" orientation spectrum and how this process tends to operate in opposite directions in wealthy and poor countries.

Dialogue with My Daughter: Part IV - Emotion v. Reason (10 pages; no abstract) - Another simple dialogue piece. This one uses my recent experience with laser eye surgery to illustrate how those who seek to persuade us, or sell us things, use our primitive emotional forces to their advantage. It also summarizes a famous short story that shows how we often misinterpret the emotional experience other people have in order to justify our own actions and beliefs.

What the Bleep Do We Know - A Review (10 pages; no abstract) - What the Bleep? is a hybrid of documentary/melodrama. Marlee Matlin stars as an unhappy, divorced photographer wandering the streets of Portland who stumbles into a mind-bending Alice-in-Wonderland adventure. Her journey from mopey singleton to inspired human is intercut with documentary interviews with scientists sporting academic credits up the wazoo waxing eloquent on such matters as alternate reality, neuro-networks, and, as one interviewee puts it, "the wacky, weird world of quantum particles." The nature of God makes an appearance from time to time. I went to the movie on the recommendation of friends with high hopes, and am disappointed. While I learned a few useful things and was reminded of a few more, my dominant feeling is that I was tricked into subjecting myself to an exercise in propaganda on a scale comparable to many Mormon Church produced films I have seen. That is, a person who does not know quite a bit about the subject matter in question could reasonably draw a set of potentially influential and deeply misleading conclusions from that movie. And in fact, it seems clear that the intent of those who produced the movie was to cause precisely that.

A Conversation with a Faithful Mormon (9 pages; no abstract) – This is a lightly edited transcript of part of an email exchange in which I recently engaged with a faithful member of the Mormon Church. His questions concerned mostly why I was so sure of my own beliefs, and how I could be sure whether Satan or some other supernatural entity had not deceived me. I answered in both cases was that I was not certain, but had done my best to use evidence and probabilities to make my decisions as to how to proceed through life.

Dialogue with My Daughter: Part V - The Magical World and Weirdos (8 pages; no abstract) - Another simple dialogue piece. This one uses a modified version of a discussion I had with one of my daughters about an odd fellow she ran into to launch a discussion of the nature of charismatic religious leaders and the magical world they inhabit.

Chaos and Forging the Self: The Nature and Function of the "Recovery from Mormonism" Bulletin Board (7 pages; no abstract) - What follows is a lightly edited post I made at http://www.exmormon.org/boards/w-agora/w-agora.php3?site=exmobb&bn=exmobb_recovery around August 21, 2004. I dug this out of my archives after having forwarded to me recently the kind of complaint I regularly hear about that board from active Mormons. That is, the RFM board is perceived by Mormons as great evidence for the folly of anti-Mormonism. It allegedly shows anti-Mormons’ true colours: ignorant, angry, bigoted, sacrilegious, etc. My experience and views are quite different. As usual, perspective makes a huge difference in perception.

A Return to Plato's Cave (7 pages; no abstract) - This is a lightly edited note that I sent to my faithful Mormon father during an email exchange a little over a year ago. He had told me that he thought he understood my current experience and excitement about the world as I now see it and was glad I had discovered things he thought I had understood all along about the “real” world. I, on the other hand, was trying to explain what this discovery felt like to me.

Tithing - The Mormon Tax System (7 pages; no abstract) - Tithing has been paid off and on by members of the Mormon Church throughout its history. As is the case with most concepts related to LDS history, the perception of members is that things have always been as they are now perceived, whereas reality is much more interesting than that. This essay summarizes some of the ideas that I have had respecting what tithing is and how it should or could be calculated. I am recording here some advice I provided to members of my Ward near Vancouver, B.C., Canada while serving as Bishop a number of years ago, as well as things that occurred to me as I started to write essay.

Multi-Level Marketing and Mormonism (7 pages; no abstract) - The vast majority of MLMs are disguised Ponzi schemes that use the same kind of pyschological tricks as does Mormonism to prey on the unsuspecting. The forces of cognitive dissonance are also at work in MLMs in ways similar to Mormonism. That is, those who benefit from their participation in MLMs are generally not fraudulent, but their personal stake in the MLM enterprise is so significant that they screen all kinds of evidence that may be put before as to what MLMs are not eithically sound business models.

Early Mormon Polyandry (7 pages; no abstract) – While preaching a sermon in 1844 in response to accusations that had been swirling around him for years with respect to his sexual practises, Joseph Smith said, "What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one." At the time, he had numerous wives – likely over thirty – and for that reason is thought of as a polygamist. While early Mormon polygamy is something most Mormons these days are aware of and have rationalized in one way or another, it is much more disturbing for them when they hear that Smith caused himself to be "married" to a number of women who were already married to other men. "Polyandry" is the correct term for this kind of relationship. That is the state of a woman who is married to more than one man. The purpose of this essay is to provide some basic background regarding Smith's sexual practises, to consider the best arguments that Mormon apologists mount in defence of those practises, and then to ask some questions to help bring this issue into focus for those who are still inclined toward acceptance of the Mormon justifcation for these events.

Conversations with My Kids: Food, Alcohol and Becoming More Aware of Present Experience Generally (7 pages) – This summarizes a conversation I had with our two youngest children about how the same kind of culture that encourages fast, thoughtless eating also encourages binge drinking and a host of other problematic behaviours that are all linked to an inadequate awareness of ourselves and our connection to what surrounds us.

Eternal Companions (7 pages; no abstract) - A recent visit with one of my cousins caused me to recall a number of things about my maternal grandparents, and re-evalulate some aspects of their relationship and my way of seeing them and their contribution to my life.

Lies and Self-Contradiction at www.fairwiki.org (6 pages; no abstract) - www.fairwiki.org is a wiki (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki) set up for the purpose of countering any information produced about Mormonism that Mormons don’t like. That includes a lot of what I write. So, the Mormon apologists who set up fairwiki have flattered me by dedicating some print to me. This essay is a partial response. The fairwiki title, when compared to the context of the article, shows a remarkable lack of appreciation for irony as well as an amazing capacity for self-parody.

Patriarchal Blessings - A Case Study Respecting Some of Those Who Would Guide Us (6 pages; no abstract): A review of some of the positive and negative aspects of Mormon patriarchal blessings.

Perspective and Mormon Testimony (6 pages; no abstract): A consideration of the manner in which beliefs are formed, and the fundamentally important role that perspective plays in this regard.

The Mormon Mask (6 pages; no abstract) - Joseph Campbell used the "mask metaphor", which he borrowed from Yeats, to elucidate the often difficult relationship between the individual and the group. I briefly sketch that, and then indicate how I see this drama playing out within Mormonism. Most of what follows is summarized from an essay titled "Out of My Faith" that can be found elsewhere on this website.

The Book of Mormon - A Review (6 pages; no abstract): This review was first posted on Amazon.com in November 2004, and then lightly edited for reproduction here. I gave The Book of Mormon two stars in Amazon’s five star system.

The Perils of “Social Mormonism” (6 pages; no abstract) – This is a lightly edited version of a post I made to a thread on to the Recovery from Mormonism board (see http://www.exmormon.org/boards/w-agora/w-agora.php3?site=exmobb&bn=exmobb_recovery) in reply to a fellow named “Maturin” who advocated remaining connected to Mormonism on a social basis because of the turmoil that it would case him as well as members of his family if he announced his state of disbelief. I suggest that while it is impossible to judge anyone else’s choice in this regard, those who go this route impose a heavy burden on their children and others. This makes social Mormonism hard to justify, though the desire to avoid the difficulties changing belief entails is understandable.