Getting Beyond the Lie: Historical Mythmaking

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Far from it. All Abrahamic faiths are founded on mythological narratives, not “real” history. To demand that Mormonism operate outside of the tradition it is founded upon is to betray the tradition. The Hebrew Bible is not secular history. The New Testament is not secular history. The Koran is not secular history. The Mormon tradition similarly will be founded on narratives of faith, not secular history.

Excellently put.

I find it foolish condemn people who choose to operate (or just naturally operate) within the realms of myth and tradition is really to condemn the human condition, because that's how we all operate. We're all products of the myths associated with whatever environment we find ourselves in. Each choosing when and where to suspend disbelief. Each basing decisions, even important ones, on myths we've created and stories we've told ourselves about what is "true."

Boy, it's a good thing Mormonism has always been taught as post-modern philosophy.

- Doc

[_Lemmie]

I'm not going to be dropping in much for a few days, but can respond to this:

There was discussion earlier about whether one can really call a myth good or bad without being subjective. I disagree that that is always the case, and this is a major example.

I'm thinking this refers to something I said, but I didn't say exactly this. I said that I reject a scholarly treatment of myth that allows one myth to be good and another one bad. I'm open to being proven wrong by the following: show me a contemporary reputable historian or anthropologist who ranks the moral content of mythology. Greek myths are good but Hopi myths are bad -- anything like that. (can send PM since I might not see it here).

Hi Gadianton, that's probably my fault for not being more clear. I wasn't referring to calling a myth good or bad in a global or moral sense, I was referring to whether one could define the effects of a myth on an individual as good or bad, or more properly, as positive or negative. If a myth has the potential to substantially and substantively damage a member of a group by limiting their life experiences and opportunites, based only on an attribute of that group that has no factual bearing on the limitation, then yes, I believe the myth can objectively be called bad for that person.

My comment was specifically about how women are limited by the aspect of the Mormon myth about homemaking, but you could include the issue of sexual orientation. The limitations placed upon a gay person by the Mormon myth have a similar potential to cause much damage to members of that group.

[_Symmachus]

I'm thinking this refers to something I said, but I didn't say exactly this. I said that I reject a scholarly treatment of myth that allows one myth to be good and another one bad. I'm open to being proven wrong by the following: show me a contemporary reputable historian or anthropologist who ranks the moral content of mythology. Greek myths are good but Hopi myths are bad -- anything like that. (can send PM since I might not see it here).

A significant distinction I should not have missed. I think your distinction also clarifies for me the main problem I have with the mythicist approach (if we can call it that): the projection of a scholarly mindset into other realms and the assumption that that mindset has primacy, even superiority.

A scholar's role is to understand, and consequently that goal will determine the kinds of question that scholars ask (or should be asking), influence the structure of those questions, and alter the terms they formulate in articulating answers to those questions. But people who are living in a community and facing issues about that community aren't doing so as scholars. They aren't trying to understand what a thing is but rather to determine what course of action they should take. The scholarly approach is investigative, the practioner's deliberative. A scholarly view should have full hearing, because it may be helpful if it is applicable—but it may be neither helpful nor applicable.

I don't think Kish has been arguing for a view that is substantially different from what you would get from any of the Religious Studies PhD types who dominate the pages of Dialogue and the new MI (apparently). Most of the time, I find these arguments annoying in the Mormon context not because I disagree with them but because they are misused by their practitioners who, while implicitly leaning on cultural relativity for their arguments, often abandon consistency and whatever self-awareness they have when they start insisting that their views are normative, usually intoning their scholarly authority. And in the end, they almost always do so insist.

I fear that many people see Kish as doing that here (maybe I'm misreading the room), but it seems to me his tack is slightly different because it's not about correcting a view or imposing (effectively what both classical FARMSian apologists and new MI scholars do) but rather offering it as a therapeutic alternative to a group of people who already know that, in terms of truth value, the Mormon myths are mostly, perhaps entirely, BS: you can view all those Mormons who still believe in the community myths as deceived or deceiving themselves at the behest of an evil cabal of geriatrics in Salt Lake City, Utah, if you want to, but maybe the scholarly view can create some space for a more sympathetic read of people that you were once a lot like, and maybe it can help explain why things are as they are and ease some frustration. I consider it an excellent example of how scholarship can be applicable and helpful.

But two things have to explained: 1) why the Stake President stays and 2) why Bill Reel and so many like him feel as they do. If we want to give as much sympathy as we can to all involved, I do not think it is as simple as just proclaiming something a myth, pointing out that every tradition has myths, and then letting certain things of the hook. I don't think Kish is doing that, but some are reading him that way, and then there are comments of this sort:

I find it foolish condemn people who choose to operate (or just naturally operate) within the realms of myth and tradition is really to condemn the human condition, because that's how we all operate. We're all products of the myths associated with whatever environment we find ourselves in. Each choosing when and where to suspend disbelief. Each basing decisions, even important ones, on myths we've created and stories we've told ourselves about what is "true."

The part of the problem I have is the because part. It is foolish to condemn people for opinions because people can think and believe what they damn well want and will no matter what anyway. But everything after that is a misuse of a the scholarly articulation of the situation. It is also irrelevant. For a member of the community, this is about deliberation and not investigation ("what is to be done?" not "what is it?"). Knowing what it it is does not tell you what you should do.

It is true we all structure our reality through language and narratives, that myth is a natural bi-product of that, and that therefore, to some extent or other, we all operate in myth. So what? This is just a tu quoque fallacy universalized (let us call it the "nos omnes" fallacy). I don't think, from a scholarly perspective, one myth is any better than another, but if I have to decide to spend my money on my kid's college fund or tithing, "we all operate in myths" doesn't help me make that decision, even if it is true. I can take that scholarly articulation as a starting point, but I also have to use some criteria to help me allocate my time, labor, and emotion.

There is nothing wrong with evaluating myths; it is improper for scholars to do so in their capacity as scholars, but it is inevitably going to happen in other capacities. Myths arise from human communities and are abandoned by them. They don't deserve maintenance by natural right just because they exist. Zeus began life as a god at whose altars people sacrificed some of their most valuable possessions (their livestock), became a symbol of universal justice for certain segments of society, and then became a mere literary conceit forever after. Myths are born and die because people make decisions about them.

The question that confronts every member of the community who takes the written and irrefutable record of Mormon myth-making seriously is: why should I maintain this cluster of myths? Why should any of us? Unfortunately, that means a decision, and a decision means you have to start applying some judgment at some point. To retreat into what is merely a redefinition derived from a venue—scholarship—where very different goals obtain and where these decisions don't exist and where few a priori value judgments can be assumed is to use scholarship as a refuge from realityy—or as a bludgeon to attack it.

If anyone believes Mike Quinn's was on to something with his "magic world view", then Joseph Smith and co. at once are already mitigated somewhat in their "lying" by, namely, the magic worldview. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I agree: "somewhat" but not entirely.

And more generally, I think we should remember that no one in Salt Lake City shares Joseph Smith's magic world view. Joseph Fielding Smith knew exactly what he was doing when he mutilated a primary document and hid an account of the First Vision. Hugh Nibley had been in possession of that primary document (his grandfather's journal) before he handed it over to Joseph Fielding Smith, and he demonstrably lied about its contents. You can't just say "magic world view" as an out (not saying that you're doing that, Dean Robbers, but I think a lot of the Givens-types do that).

Myths from a premodern culture—what Quinn basically meant by "magic world view"—are wildly inconsistent with each other because they don't feel the need to impose consistency. It's not that people had trouble keeping their story straight about Zeus but that everybody recognized and were up front about the fact that Zeus had many different manifestations: Zeus Soterios, Zeus Lykaios, Zeus Chthonios, Zeus Olympios. In fact, Romans thought their Jupiter was Zeus, or was it Dis Pater? And the Celts had their equivalents (and let's not get started to on Irish mythology...), and Jesus Christ! we've got inscriptions bilingual inscriptions in Aramaic where Zeus is the gloss for Baal Shemin (himself a distant reflection of the Biblical Baal and the Baal of the Ugaratic mythological corpus). And of course there cycles of stories about this god (gods?) that are rife with inconsistencies and contradictions (was his nurse Amalthea a goat or a nymph?). Obviously, there are scholarly, historical explanations for this range of Zeuses, but we know about a lot of this range sometimes from the same author (e.g. Apollodorus). There was no imperative to craft one Zeus, impose that one view everywhere, and destroy or hide all the evidence that it was ever otherwise. Even when something like this did happen in a premodern culture (e.g. Akhenaten, to pick from another tradition whose inconsistency such that it is often incomprehensible), it was considered lying and deception by contemporaries, not just one more example of the myth-making we all do and thus to be brushed aside as no big deal. Consistency and uniformity is rarely a feature of myth. Even in the Bible, there are two creation counts, two law codes, four gospels, etc.

The things we call "lies" start to show up when there is an attempt to impose consistency—which is a very modern, very unmagical thing. So, yes, Mormonism has a myths, both in form and function, like any other religion does. But there remain copious documents from its myth-making and myth-maintenance that have ntersected with a very strong impulse in Church leaders and members to impose consistency—because these are modern people we're talking. Inconsistency was a fact of life for pre-modern people—are we gonna have food this winter? will my kid die tomorrow—but consistency is so deeply a part of modern life that nobody bats an eye when demographers give us the exact year that a certain population will reach a certain number or even asks how they know that.

But the intersection of documented myth-making on the one hand and a cultural and institutional drive for consistency on their hand has naturally resulted in an abundance of lies. People can do with that what they want, but using scholarly constructs designed for a certain kind of intellectual activity doesn't erase the historical record, nor does it dictate what the best of course action should be for an individual or for the community with regard to Mormonism's myths.

I don't think we should condemn people who remain committed to the mythic system of Mormonism, but that doesn't mean we can't also admit that their myths are built on and sustained by a great deal of dishonesty—it's just in poor taste to do it in a Church setting. I think Bill Reel is guilty of poor judgment in terms of the social situation, then, and people leaning towards the "lie" camp are missing something essential about their own experience in Mormonism in not recognizing the mythic value of that system. They are also missing a chance to give other people and themselves a bit of break. But they're also not wrong in pointing out that there are a lot of lies behind the myths and practically no truth.

[_Meadowchik]

Hi Meadowchik,

I should point out that the discussion on value judgment is not fully in the domain of myth. Rather, it is the domain of objective evaluation, so it overlaps the discussion only when it comes to discussing how someone is evaluating the value of a myth or how well it is performing a function for an individual or culture. When I point out a value judgment in one of your statements, it isn't because the assumed person represented as believing a particular myth is making a value judgment, it's pointing out a place where you are inserting your values into the assessment which moves it closer to subjective and further from objective observation.

I do understand the conventional definition of the term, I was reaching there trying to figure out where you saw it in my statements.

...because she believed God would prosper her family in the land of her inheritance if she stayed home and made lots of babies.

We've assumed a perspective in this part of the statement where we are claiming a fictional but representation person made "bad" life decisions based on a belief that, "God would prosper her family in the land of her inheritance if she stayed home and made lots of babies." Sure, plenty of LDS women have made the decision to forego advanced education to start a family with the Church likely influencing that decision. But there is a legitimate difference between noting the parallel between the Church's teaching and the number of LDS women who do not earn degrees past a high school diploma despite significantly higher academic achievement in high school compared to the male peers, and the quoted statement. You've inserted something personal into this. That's not to say it's wrong to do so when making decisions or outside of claiming to be objective about a subject. But it's not being objective. In the examples you share, you often are lining up perfectly reasonable examples of observations, but then making value judgment conclusions from it in a way I tend to associate with folks like Rush Limbaugh. Stringing facts together to form a crowd around a disguised opinion that sounds kinda factish is normal, but one should be aware when it is happening or when one is doing so oneself.

Are you saying that my assumption that she made "bad" decisions by staying home is the value judgment here? Actually, what I am saying is that she made the decision to stay home because of belief in the myth, and that regardless of whether you want to call her decision good or bad, my claim is that her choice restricted her ability to be gainfully employed. I think that is a reasonable conclusion and not a value judgment. That is why I keep asking you to explain it like I'm five and identify the value judgment, I genuinely don't see it. I do appreciate your effort to show me what you mean, thank you.

[_JP]

Each basing decisions, even important ones, on myths we've created and stories we've told ourselves about what is "true."

I never told myself that the Mormon myth was true. I was duped into it, nothing more.

Pick any other myth.

Were you duped into believing Santa Claus was real?

Did you still believe he is real?

If not, do you still celebrate Christmas?

[_JP]

What if you let your children believe in Santa? One day, your oldest child learns that the Santa myth is not literal, but chooses to continue playing, and does so with the younger siblings. What if you maintain a Santa-is-real façade with your oldest child? You never let on that you know it is a game and you expect everyone in the family to treat Santa as a real person. If you've ever heard children argue about the existence of Santa, you might easily understand that maintaining such a façade can be oppressive, but also raining on the Santa game is not fun for the little ones.

Personally, I have taken this approach as soon as my young children learn that Santa might not be real: "No, Santa is not real, but it is fun to pretend sometimes." I want my children to know that we value objectivity, but that we can still enjoy fantasy. I do think that people who use myth oppressively do indeed make a lie out of it.

How is "Santa is not real, but it is fun to pretend sometimes" at its core any different from middle-way/NOMs taking a "I can throw out the literal nature of the church and still embrace the good about it" approach?

Because I see that approach lambasted almost daily around here.

Not to mention the fact that Christmas is steeped in the traditions of Christianity, a religion to which we can throughout history assign every single one of Mormonism's worst qualities. So why would you keep one foot in the door of such a heinous tradition?

[_JP]

Those pesky 3 year olds creating myths and stories and making their own minds up about what's true.

You're arguing a point I never made.

I never said we get to choose the myths we become a part of. It's actually the opposite. Part of living life is the discovery of what myths we've been exposed to we want to take forward with us, and what ones we want to abandon.

I keep coming back to Christmas. If you celebrate Christmas, at some point you had to make a few fundamental decisions:

1) Given the evidence available that Santa Claus is not real, will I continue to believe?

2) If I choose not to believe, can I still maintain enough of the traditions/practices/beliefs of Christmas to make it worthwhile for my life? Do I want to maintain them?

3) Or, alternatively, can I remake Christmas into something workable for me...hold on to the good stuff and discard the stuff that doesn't work for me, like putting out milk and cookies or visiting Santa at the mall?

Going through this process is normal for kids, who may feel upset, sad, disappointed about this new realization and transition. But eventually most of them emerge on the other side with a new, but different, appreciation for the holiday. Or some just move on.

This is no different from the process of myth breaking Mormonism itself.

1) Given the evidence available that Mormonism's truth claims aren't real, will I continue to believe them?

2) If I choose not to believe them, can I still maintain enough of the traditions/practices/beliefs of Mormonism to make it worthwhile for my life? Do I want to maintain them?

3) Or, alternatively, can I remake Mormonism into something workable for me...hold on to the good stuff and discard the stuff that doesn't work for me?

Going through a painful transition period in which you evaluate these questions about Mormonism is normal, healthy and important.

What is not healthy is spending years and years in a state of obsessing over Mormonism and all the ways it the myth continues to dupe all those people who aren't nearly as smart as you to have figured out that Santa Claus isn't real.

[_Meadowchik]

What if you let your children believe in Santa? One day, your oldest child learns that the Santa myth is not literal, but chooses to continue playing, and does so with the younger siblings. What if you maintain a Santa-is-real façade with your oldest child? You never let on that you know it is a game and you expect everyone in the family to treat Santa as a real person. If you've ever heard children argue about the existence of Santa, you might easily understand that maintaining such a façade can be oppressive, but also raining on the Santa game is not fun for the little ones.

Personally, I have taken this approach as soon as my young children learn that Santa might not be real: "No, Santa is not real, but it is fun to pretend sometimes." I want my children to know that we value objectivity, but that we can still enjoy fantasy. I do think that people who use myth oppressively do indeed make a lie out of it.

How is "Santa is not real, but it is fun to pretend sometimes" at its core any different from middle-way/NOMs taking a "I can throw out the literal nature of the church and still embrace the good about it" approach?

Because I see that approach lambasted almost daily around here.

Not to mention the fact that Christmas is steeped in the traditions of Christianity, a religion to which we can throughout history assign every single one of Mormonism's worst qualities. So why would you keep one foot in the door of such a heinous tradition?

I think the shorter answer would be to "how are they alike?"

Participating in a high-demand religion, going along with what other people say because of their position in it, viewing the entire world, peoples, and life and afterlife differently because it, it's a fundamentally different relationship to myth than is pretending the Santa game for one holiday of the year.

[_Holy Ghost]

Each basing decisions, even important ones, on myths we've created and stories we've told ourselves about what is "true."

I never told myself that the Mormon myth was true. I was duped into it, nothing more.

The Mormon claims separate the church from all other Abrahamic religions. The Mormon claims portend that the Mormon church is the ONLY TRUE church. The LDS very often and repeatedly beat the drum of their rose-colored version of the founding of Mormonism. A restoration of truth, all truth, the only ones with authority from God. The LDS line is not that it's just another religious myth that an individual might find more to his or her liking than any of the others. It is the truth. The restoration happened this way (A, D, E, G1, L, and R1). Primary historical documents fill in B, C, F, H, J, K, M, N and O, and evidence that G1 and R1 are incorrect, but G2 and R2 are the way it happened. A completely different picture emerges, leaving the LDS one (A, D, E, G1, L, and R1) deceptive both in its selective simplicity and in its inaccuracies. For example, Joseph Smith was not just your average, earnest 23 year old man in the spring of 1829, dimwitted and unable to concoct a Book of Mormon. Rather, by then he had become greatly influenced and an integral part of the Smith family black magic. He was a glass-looker for hire, dating back to at least March 1826.

As the primary historic documents now available on the internet are crumbling around and beginning to bury the LDS, their leaders are being intentionally naïve not to look or others outright lying to claim that they don't know (many have no doubt looked into the primary documents online), while they keep shoveling the manure of A, D, E, G1, L, and R1. That's deceptive. It is done in order to garner more fealty from the listeners, especially the unsuspecting youth. Some of us find the old 'myth' of Mormonism around which several communities rallied in generations past now exposed to be an insidious tool used by those in power to perpetuate the size of their fiefdoms. Or, as Bill Reel so aptly called them, "lies."

Yes, Dr. Shades, like you, I too was as I was growing up duped by those lies, and I now cheer on those who call them lies.

[_Symmachus]

I never told myself that the Mormon myth was true. I was duped into it, nothing more.

How old were you when you converted?