Post Mormon Ethical Frameworks

[drumdude]

Adapted from the following interesting YouTube video:

https://youtu.be/iDqIi2pAedo

What do ex-Mormons do when their religious ethical framework falls away? What’s wrong with living without a rigid self imposed ethical framework? Are most ex-Mormons just living with an ad-hoc, flexible framework based loosely on the old Mormon one?

Any new ethical framework for post-Mormon atheists needs to be self-imposed, as we aren’t getting the rules from a religious authority any longer. And it needs to be rigid, planned, and deliberate, it can’t be just made up as we go along.

Why is thinking about this even worth the trouble? For better or worse the vast majority of modern people out there have not chosen to surrender to a specific philosophical or religious framework. When the framework is inconvenient, they break the rules or ignore them and live as if the framework doesn’t exist. Surrendering to the framework means following those rules even when you don’t want to. Should I cheat on my wife, now that I have left the Mormon framework? Why or why not?

Many ethical frameworks come from religious traditions with thousands of years of accumulated wisdom behind them. When you place yourself above them by picking and choosing unbound by any framework, then you are actually depriving yourself of that wisdom. It's better to completely surrender to a framework for as long as you can and then to leave the framework entirely when you can no longer do so. Just like we left Mormonism. But without any ethical framework people are more or less just making it up as they go along.

Without any rigidly followed ethical framework, every decision is essentially just based on emotion and short term self-interest. I like X, so it's good. I don’t like Y, so it's bad. This is how infants navigate reality. Many people have not matured past this stage because doing so takes effort and discipline.

The consequences of not surrendering to an ethical framework are considerable. Modern life is a constantly shifting chaos of inconsistency. What is wrong today might have been right just a year ago, which is an absolutely insane way of going through the world. The limitations of an ethical framework ground our choices in something more permanent, deliberate, and intentional.

So what can our framework look like? It could look like a chimera. You can take something from the Stoics, and something from the Buddhists, and something from the Christians and something from the existentialists, and so on.

Wherever you end up, eventually you're going to want to create a system that you'll be willing and able to surrender to wholeheartedly and this will require you to set limits on yourself. Limitations are necessary. They're like a skeleton which not only protects but facilitates locomotion, as it allows us to move through the world with some degree of confidence and integrity.

All of this is fairly abstract. What’s a real-world example of the pitfalls of ex-Mormons losing their ethical framework?

John Dehlin and John Larson have both noticed that ex-Mormons usually go through a crazy phase after leaving Mormonism. Many times they do unethical things that they would never have done before, like cheat on their wives. John Dehlin himself did this. It was likely easier to convince himself that it was acceptable behavior once he had lost the externally imposed ethical framework, and switched to just doing whatever felt good at the time.

Thoughts? Ideas? Do you have an ethical framework in your post Mormon life? Or do you just wing it and make it up as you go along? It’s easy to say you don’t murder, because most of us aren’t tempted to murder, but what about acting unethically when you know you can get away with it and there is no longer any external framework guilting you into acting ethically? Do you still just follow Mormon ethics without the Mormon belief?

[Gadianton]

First of all, let's be clear, Mormonism has no "ethical framework". An ethical framework is systematic, and Mormonism has nothing like that. I'm not even sure it has a moral framework. It certainly believes in morals or obligations, but it's an odd collection that begins with "pay your tithing" and extends to how many earrings a woman can wear. In terms of a kind of foundation that establishes the validity of morals -- it don't have that.

Mormonism often seems consequentialist, (teleological ethics), and even Da{} rides this horse at least a day or two a week when he focuses on right and wrong as bound to an afterlife -- there can't be goodness unless there is an afterlife with good things. And I'm not conflating the motive to be good with good itself; sure, he harps on that one also. But he's argued plain as day that in order for something to have any value, it must last forever.

On other days he wants it all to go back to God, whatever God says. But maybe he isn't sure about that, maybe he's a consequentialist, but just thinks God has done the calculus and gives us the answers that we wouldn't be able to figure out. We just don't really know, as he's careful not to commit to anything and trades in platitudes, for fear his ignorance of the basic subject will reveal itself. It's pretty well established that the Old Testament doesn't have a well defined afterlife idea, yet that's the basis for DCT. It is certainly possible for God's word as moral law to co-exist with no reward in the next life. So which is he going to go with? Neither and both at the same time. In fact, DCT would make more sense if it doesn't pace Christian hedonism because otherwise it looks an awful lot like you're just being hedonist and then saying every bite of steak is good not because it tastes good, but because God ordained it so. So DCT would actually make more sense if it often contradicts what's best in material terms for believers.

Wade Englund once said that there are an infinite number of moral imperatives that add up to situational ethics. In other words, there is no "framework" that makes sense of morals, "what ever is right in one circumstance may be wrong in another". The truth is whatever is good for the apologist or the Church in that moment, and all the contradictions are irrelevant because there is a decree from God for every circumstance, and the circumstances don't have to stitch together into a logical fabric. Again, if the thrust is DCT, he makes some sense because if right and wrong make too much sense logically, if you can logically see the pattern of the fabric, then you don't need God let alone Rusty the Tin Man.

What the Church does offer, which is definitely worth considering, is a community of people more or less trying to figure it out, who have experimented a great deal and landed upon a way of living that more or less works, even if there is no rational explanation for most of it. Mormonism offers zero, if not negative theoretical moral insight. It's a hot, laughable mess. However, once you break away and go it on your own, there are definitely some risks. Sometimes rules that make no logical sense still exist for a reason. Think about the Old Testament, and how it's often said commandments are motivated by disease. This kind of thinking is big in theorists like Paul Feyerabend. A tribe can persist in the Amazon for 10,000 years, and outlive all of us and our science, while rooted in outright wacky beliefs that make no sense.

So the problem isn't that you have to have your own moral compass, but that you have to hit the ground running rather than deal with a pre-packaged reality that you can mostly navigate by following traditions. It's one thing to discount religious institutions as basins of moral insight, but another to miss the fact that they are emergent institutions that have existed with a certain level of stability for a long time.

[drumdude]

First of all, let's be clear, Mormonism has no "ethical framework". An ethical framework is systematic, and Mormonism has nothing like that. I'm not even sure it has a moral framework. It certainly believes in morals or obligations, but it's an odd collection that begins with "pay your tithing" and extends to how many earrings a woman can wear. In terms of a kind of foundation that establishes the validity of morals -- it don't have that.

Mormonism often seems consequentialist, (teleological ethics), and even Da{} rides this horse at least a day or two a week when he focuses on right and wrong as bound to an afterlife -- there can't be goodness unless there is an afterlife with good things. And I'm not conflating the motive to be good with good itself; sure, he harps on that one also. But he's argued plain as day that in order for something to have any value, it must last forever.

On other days he wants it all to go back to God, whatever God says. But maybe he isn't sure about that, maybe he's a consequentialist, but just thinks God has done the calculus and gives us the answers that we wouldn't be able to figure out. We just don't really know, as he's careful not to commit to anything and trades in platitudes, for fear his ignorance of the basic subject will reveal itself. It's pretty well established that the Old Testament doesn't have a well defined afterlife idea, yet that's the basis for DCT. It is certainly possible for God's word as moral law to co-exist with no reward in the next life. So which is he going to go with? Neither and both at the same time. In fact, DCT would make more sense if it doesn't pace Christian hedonism because otherwise it looks an awful lot like you're just being hedonist and then saying every bite of steak is good not because it tastes good, but because God ordained it so. So DCT would actually make more sense if it often contradicts what's best in material terms for believers.

Wade Englund once said that there are an infinite number of moral imperatives that add up to situational ethics. In other words, there is no "framework" that makes sense of morals, "what ever is right in one circumstance may be wrong in another". The truth is whatever is good for the apologist or the Church in that moment, and all the contradictions are irrelevant because there is a decree from God for every circumstance, and the circumstances don't have to stitch together into a logical fabric. Again, if the thrust is DCT, he makes some sense because if right and wrong make too much sense logically, if you can logically see the pattern of the fabric, then you don't need God let alone Rusty the Tin Man.

What the Church does offer, which is definitely worth considering, is a community of people more or less trying to figure it out, who have experimented a great deal and landed upon a way of living that more or less works, even if there is no rational explanation for most of it. Mormonism offers zero, if not negative theoretical moral insight. It's a hot, laughable mess. However, once you break away and go it on your own, there are definitely some risks. Sometimes rules that make no logical sense still exist for a reason. Think about the Old Testament, and how it's often said commandments are motivated by disease. This kind of thinking is big in theorists like Paul Feyerabend. A tribe can persist in the Amazon for 10,000 years, and outlive all of us and our science, while rooted in outright wacky beliefs that make no sense.

So the problem isn't that you have to have your own moral compass, but that you have to hit the ground running rather than deal with a pre-packaged reality that you can mostly navigate by following traditions. It's one thing to discount religious institutions as basins of moral insight, but another to miss the fact that they are emergent institutions that have existed with a certain level of stability for a long time.

I do agree with you of course on the specifics of Mormonism. I think that in practice, though, generally Mormons follow the basic ethical framework of Christianity with some Mormon twists like tithing and wearing undergarments. And following whatever thought comes into Russell Nelson’s head that week.