Mormonism is a cult

[Physics Guy]

"Cult" is probably a fuzzy concept, like "heap". Enough grains of sand gathered together definitely count as a heap; just a few grains definitely don't; in between are samples of sand with varying degrees of heapness. In the case of sand heaps, the issue isn't quite just a matter of arbitrary definition. Friction and stacking geometry make heaps of sand behave differently from loose grains. Whether or not the "heap" label applies is an artificially binary distinction that we make for linguistic convenience, so exactly where the line falls is subjective, but there are objectively real things going on in sand heaps. There may likewise be debatable borderline cases of cults, but I think there are particular real things to which the "cult" label points.

My tentative guess, about what the active ingredient in cultness might be, is that it has something to do with how context and implicit/background/default assumptions work to shape people's thinking. When we decide what to think and what to do, nobody can sit down and rationally consider every possible alternative, because there are too many alternatives. Instead we inevitably assume some things without analysis, ignore other issues completely, and focus on a small range of intermediate questions. Reason normally only operates within this thin layer of conscious attention, sandwiched between the implicit and the invisible.

I don't think we can do otherwise. Our brains are pieces of meat. I do think that we can move the narrow spotlight of our conscious attention, to examine things that were previously assumed or ignored. This is hard for us, though. It has that bootstrapping awkwardness of trying to repair a ship while at sea. Practical and emotional factors are often involved in determining our assumptions and blind spots, so we might want to mix in a minefield metaphor, too.

Sometimes people have habits and beliefs that are based on a different set of background assumptions than most people's, and maybe also on a different selection of which issues to ignore or to highlight. When it seems that this is true to a significant degree for some people, and that it must be the main reason why they think and behave as they do, that's when I think one starts to reach for the "cult" label. Forces that are somewhat involved in all human thinking are playing an especially predominant role in this case.

[Kishkumen]

Sometimes people have habits and beliefs that are based on a different set of background assumptions than most people's, and maybe also on a different selection of which issues to ignore or to highlight. When it seems that this is true to a significant degree for some people, and that it must be the main reason why they think and behave as they do, that's when I think one starts to reach for the "cult" label. Forces that are somewhat involved in all human thinking are playing an especially predominant role in this case.

Nicely expressed. I couldn't have put it better, and I think you nailed it.

[Kishkumen]

As I acknowledged:

So it really comes down to individual members tying themselves in knots to bring on the spiritual experience; fasting excessively, praying all night long, and stuff like that.

"Tying themselves in knots"? Ugh. There are the tools used to invoke spiritual experiences and I don't know that they ought to be characterized as something so hyperbolic. I mean, I get the fact that we routinely ridicule people who have such experiences, but that doesn't mean that they aren't a fairly pervasive and normal aspect of human experience.

I would recommend a close read of what Physics Guy says above. In my view, he got it just right. People who choose a spiritual life do adopt a different, or are trained up in a different, set of epistemological tools and practices from those who do not involve themselves in that experience. And, I think it is fair to say that there are those who just aren't wired that way or for one reason or another don't catch on to it. I don't see the need to "other" people who are spiritually inclined. I would rather focus on my disagreement with them than poke fun at them for their religiosity.

It is possible that MG can have spiritual experiences and at the same time behave rudely toward us. One might question where those experiences come from and what their actual value is if they result in some of the behaviors MG exhibits here, but does that mean he doesn't have them? I would say that his ability both to have spiritual experiences and to behave in a way we don't like is about as remarkable as my ability to taste chocolate and punch someone in the face right afterward.

The question here, and I think this is supported by a more careful reading of canonized religious texts in the Christian tradition, is what one does with the spiritual experiences in becoming a better person. Having the experience is not enough in itself.

It's a numbers game. It might be sufficient, but more people would have such experiences if heavier psychological tools to invoke experiences were utilized. I never had an experience such that I was convinced it came from outside of myself. I know very few people who did claim such a thing outside of typical F&T rote. Even my mom, the most TBM person who ever walked the earth, told me she'd never felt the manifestation of the spirit that imprints certainty upon the individual.

And that may mean that, like red/green colorblindness, which is nothing to stigmatize anyone for, you do not have that particular wiring. Or you may have just internalized a rubric for interpreting such experiences that resulted in you categorizing them as you did. For example, and this may seem silly but stick with me here, if I were to catch a cold and not know what one was, I could certainly conclude that something inside me caused my illness. In fact, there was a whole, long-lived medical theory called "humoral medicine" that did precisely that. Now, we did eventually discover viruses, and now we know the actual cause of the common cold, but it is possible to believe something is caused internally when it is in fact not.

Before you go after me for making the silly claim that this "proves" spirituality comes from outside sources that are as yet scientifically unidentified, that is not why I wrote the above. I wrote the above to suggest that humans are capable of placing the causes of personal experiences inside or outside of themselves with a low degree of accuracy. What makes a difference here, I would submit, is something more subtle about how individuals assess and ascribe causes to their experiences.

But as I'm contemplating cults, I don't think it's material or even advantageous to the cult to manipulate its followers like this, except for in the short term. Look at MG 2.0. He's a literal antenna for SLC's broadcasts and he's not very spiritual. The experiences obviously didn't work for you long term. My best story about this one is from my mission. We were doing "less active" work. We had this long conversation with a woman whose family was now inactive, but she still believed and sorta wanted to come back. Super elegant lady, beautiful family; wealthy. They were Greek and so Greek Orthodox prior, and the missionaries knocked on their door. The father invited them in and gave them a hard time. No-nonsense business guy that she was afraid would come home while we were there. He took the Book of Mormon from the missionaries and prayed about it intensely, for days, apparently. And he was granted the full manifestation. Wouldn't talk about it, but the implication was that it may have involved a literal angel. So powerful, that she still believed in the Church because of his experience that he never fully shared with anybody. So, he cuts ties with family and all their tradition and becomes Mormon and the whole family becomes Mormon. He quickly becomes branch president and then a couple years down the road it's all over. He goes inactive and nobody from the Church is welcome in his home, though no denial of his experience. What happened? Easy, he got into business with a couple fellow branch members, whatever it was fell through and they all blamed each other, and that was that.

I think profound experiences can be important in motivating people to make big changes in their lives. But I don't think they are absolutely necessary to bind everyone to a faith community. Conversion, as I have discovered through some scholarly discussions, is now seen as much more complicated and not to be pigeon-holed into the Protestant spiritual experience framework, which does not even consistently apply within Protestant communities anyway. People join up for all kinds of reasons, and they stay for all kinds of reasons. They also do not join or leave after having joined for all kinds of reasons, as you demonstrate above. The New Testament argues through its narratives that even the profoundest experiences are not sufficient to glue a person in their conversion for good. Remember the Parable of the Sower?

Listen, I am, as much as I may be viewed as quaint for saying this, a spiritually oriented person. And yet, I agree with you that there is not a tight correspondence between this personal quality and lasting faith commitments. Some people are disturbed when their experiences do not correspond with other parts of their lives and they dismiss the experiences. Happens all the time. Or they question the conclusions that can be drawn from those experiences. I fit into the latter category. It is obvious to me that people have these experiences, but that they certainly don't necessarily lead to simple, reliable answers. That said, I don't think they are negligible and unimportant either. At the end of the day, people will make their own decisions about what to do with these things. One can choose to associate it with their belonging to a particular group, and one may even be able to sustain that association to the end of their lives. Others will ultimately reject those experiences as "an undigested bit of beef" or an "elevation experience" and move on.

I made a conscious choice to accept my experiences as spiritual experiences and to maintain them more or less within my own spiritual biography as a kid who was raised Mormon. I just don't think that means that the LDS Church is the only true church, or that there is an only true church, or religion, or that I have to follow the dictates of a particular authority as a result.

[Morley]

<delete overshare>

I concluded that, though I may have once felt transcendence as a teenager in some religious settings, I couldn't be sure that I had. At any rate, I was no longer able to assign any such feeling of touching the divine to religion, or, more especially, Mormon religion.

[Marcus]

...I concluded that, though I may have once felt transcendence as a teenager in some religious settings, I couldn't be sure that I had. At any rate, I was no longer able to assign any such feeling of touching the divine to religion, or, more especially, Mormon religion.

Well said.

I would imagine that the hallucinations a schizophrenic experiences can also be properly defined as 'profound' experiences, even 'transcendant.'

As for determining whether these types of experiences come from inside or outside of ourselves, it seems facile to talk about a person's inability to determine that accurately --In other words, somehow concluding it came from something outside, is meaningless, as though using feelings to source feelings is anything other than a tautology. Looking at our scientific understanding of how the brain functions is a much better indicator.

[Gadianton]

I've read your response carefully, Reverend, and I agree with much of it. I've also read PG's response, and I'll get back to that in another post, I agree partially with what he's saying; I mean, I think he's dead on with a few adjustments.

If you thought what I've said so far is offensive, I'll be upfront, you're really not going to like what I say next. I'm going to response to your comments out of order.

Listen, I am, as much as I may be viewed as quaint for saying this, a spiritually oriented person...I made a conscious choice to accept my experiences as spiritual experiences

What I'm really talking about is the incongruency between Mormon culture's narrative, and the lived reality of members. The Mormon narrative insists on a thunderous conversion experience even though everyone is always giving talks on how its okay if you didn't get that yet, or there are other ways of looking at feeling the spirit, and all that, but deep down everybody believes there's a Bruce R. McConkie walking around who has experienced the full revelation of the Son.

Missionaries insist on reading and praying and identifying the spirit. I'm not making this up. You read with an investigator and then pray, and then you ask how they feel, and they say "okay I guess" and you wrangle that into a "sure, peaceful, pretty good actually", then you tell them that's the Holy Ghost testifying the truth to them. This is the standard model -- you read and pray, and the spirit testifies through emotions (love, peace, joy...)

Given this is their model, they could get more emotional output by intensifying the input. The happy-clappy church down the road is more likely to get the investigator to feel the emotions Mormon missionaries are trying to evoke in order then identify as the spirit testifying of the truth.

/begin This is the bad part that you really won't like: When most people get up and say they know the Church is true and have had confirmation etc., I believe in their hearts they are lying. They are playing to the expectation. And the rule of the game is, if you stand and lie, and others are willing to embrace you, independent of whether they really believe you or not, then you must do the same for them. It's pretty close to people saying the election was stolen for buy-in to their group. And again, I think in evolutionary terms, a cult that can master control without delivering results has the upper hand as it's very likely most cult leaders aren't capable of delivering results. Lying is important: if you stand by the Church because you had some mega experience, then it's transactional. If you're willing to lie and say you know the Church is true when you really aren't sure, and when you're really suffering, hoping for that big experience, then better chance you'll continue to remain faithful while the Church walks all over you.

So now let me be really clear, in terms of long-lasting cult power: You need a lot of folks who bat a .250, not a few Babe Ruth's that hit it out of the park on occasion. When a missionary reads and prays with an investigator, and the investigator hesitates but eventually says they felt good, and then the missionaries reward the investigator with acceptance, that is the real lesson, and ultimately has more staying power, in my opinion, then if the the investigator who really did feel something extraordinary, but then maybe next time it doesn't work like that. The real foot-shooting in Mormonism isn't the inability to make good on consistent spiritual experiences, but the inability to reward new members with acceptance for long enough that inductee transitions from from primarily a rewardee to primarily a rewarder. Being able to consistently lie to others holds a lot more staying power than being consistently rewarded for accepting a lie. /end the part you really won't like

"Tying themselves in knots"? Ugh. There are the tools used to invoke spiritual experiences and I don't know that they ought to be characterized as something so hyperbolic. I mean, I get the fact that we routinely ridicule people who have such experiences, but that doesn't mean that they aren't a fairly pervasive and normal aspect of human experience.

Wherever you are on the spirituality spectrum, the Mormon narrative makes it clear that it's possible to achieve absolute metaphysical certitude about the truthfulness of the Church through some kind of manifestation up to and including the visitation of the Father and the Son, like Joseph Smith. People strive for that. People who are naturally spiritual will discount what they've experienced as counting toward that, and observers will also discount it. People are impressed when a matter-of-fact type who doesn't claim much in the usual way of spiritual experiences and doesn't strike people as very emotional reveals some extraordinary experience. Like, lol, this guy in my ward, a total dick. Hard-nosed, closed off, abrupt. Yelled at me more than once to get out of his yard when we crossed over one tiny part just to get from the foothills to the street. Got up one F&T and revealed his experience encountering Satan in his basement one night. Electrified everyone, including me.

To get something an order of magnitude above your baseline will require some kind of extraordinary input, whether from outside, or from within. Except for in what I believe are rare exceptions.

is now seen as much more complicated and not to be pigeon-holed into the Protestant spiritual experience framework, which does not even consistently apply within Protestant communities anyway. People join up for all kinds of reasons, and they stay for all kinds of reasons.

Totally agree, people join and leave for all kinds of reasons, but the Mormon narrative has a well-defined story to explain belief and disbelief, and it doesn't match up with reality. I don't know about in history, but weirdly, Protestantism as I've experienced it, at least in the charismatic variety, is big on intense spiritual experiences, but not as "confirmation of truth" or anything like that. They'll tell you Mormons are wrong for thinking emotions can tell you the truth and that the Bible is true because it says so in the Bible, and the Book of Mormon is false because the Bible says no other books. Has nothing to do with reading and praying and getting experiences.

[Kishkumen]

I am not really put off by your explanation, Dean. I don’t agree with it, really, but I don’t find it off-putting. It is pretty much what I would expect, and I think it has a lot of purchase. In other words, most other skeptical types will find it easy to accept that people are lying when they testify. Everything you say is primarily aimed at a view of the individual acting in the community as an individual, and that the individual agent is the locus of legitimacy. What is missing here is the understanding of cognition as a community activity that involves more than the individual. People say that something is true as they commune with others who claim something is true, and that is what affirms their collective experience as true. Circular reasoning, but totally the case. Not totally the case that consensus makes truth, but it certainly is a group cognition reality. People do find what they perceive to be truth in consensus.

So is it a lie? I don’t think so. It is perceived to be a lie or the truth in direct proportion to whether the person is engaged in individualistic or group cognition on these points. If a person does not have an individual-oriented sense confirming the spiritual truth of Mormonism, they either lean on the group cognition or they reject the system, or think of themselves as lying. Cognitive dissonance. On the other hand, the strongly spiritual individual thinker does not need the group cognition to affirm the truth. They may in fact reject aspects of the group process. Even if they are at odds with the group, they will continue to see their experience as true, regardless of what others in the community say. A balance may exist wherein the person experiences a harmony between individual and group cognition on these matters and will stick with Mormonism when the other types will likely drop out.

[Gadianton]

I am not really put off by your explanation, Dean. I don’t agree with it, really, but I don’t find it off-putting. It is pretty much what I would expect, and I think it has a lot of purchase. In other words, most other skeptical types will find it easy to accept that people are lying when they testify

And yet, I find myself not agreed with among my fellow skeptics on this board, although it's been some years since it's been discussed. The typical view I've seen from skeptics agrees that Mormons have spiritual experiences, but that it's emotional manipulation. I think deep spiritual experiences are few and far between, and it's mostly fabrication to fit the community narrative. I've never really found myself agreed with by anyone on this topic, to be honest.

[Kishkumen]

And yet, I find myself not agreed with among my fellow skeptics on this board, although it's been some years since it's been discussed. The typical view I've seen from skeptics agrees that Mormons have spiritual experiences, but that it's emotional manipulation. I think deep spiritual experiences are few and far between, and it's mostly fabrication to fit the community narrative. I've never really found myself agreed with by anyone on this topic, to be honest.

I should have been more specific. I take issue with the part about lying. Not that I do not think that people will somewhere along the line say they were lying, but I think that what is going on is much more complicated than most people understand, even when they are the ones going through it. Most people seek to find some sort of resolution that puts them in one category or another. They don’t want to remain in limbo forever, so they settle on a narrative that provides them the resolution they seek. I think they are signaling their dispositional discomfort with relying on group cognition, which is increasingly the case in a highly individualistic society. Not surprising, but I don’t look at that as lying in some kind of absolute sense. I see that as trying on group cognition and ultimately rejecting it.

[Kishkumen]

And yet, I find myself not agreed with among my fellow skeptics on this board, although it's been some years since it's been discussed. The typical view I've seen from skeptics agrees that Mormons have spiritual experiences, but that it's emotional manipulation. I think deep spiritual experiences are few and far between, and it's mostly fabrication to fit the community narrative. I've never really found myself agreed with by anyone on this topic, to be honest.

Maybe many skeptics do say that they grant people the mistaken belief that they are having spiritual experiences, but I have seen numerous skeptics say, in the case of Mormonism, that there is a culture of testifying until the witness is received, which could be called a form of lying. So, I am surprised that you say you have received so much pushback from fellow skeptics.