David Bokovoy and a Kuhnian Approach to Mormonism

[_Sethbag]

If a worldview is deemed to be absolutely true no matter what, then said worldview is unfalsifiable. As I just posted on MADB, this is an insight into LDS belief that I was, frankly, lacking until now. The fundamental worldview is simply unfalsifiable. It is not even possible that it is incorrect, fundamentally.

Well, you not "getting" this is not because it hasn't been said before, by many of us on the LDS and ex-LDS critic side, and I don't mean that with any disrespect at all. You had to "understand" it yourself before you could hear us saying it. I've said many times before that the turning point for me was when I allowed the church, finally, to even possibly not be true. It wasn't until I allowed the very possibility of the church not being true, to enter the equation, that I was able to start seeing the puzzle pieces go together to see the "big picture" that, in fact, the church isn't true. It took the better part of four decades in my life before I could even reach the point where I considered, seriously, the very possibility of the church's not being true.

And this is what you see in the diehard apologists, and with people like Charity. To Charity, the church's not being true is simply impossible. The very phrase "LDS church is not true" simply does not compute. It's like a null instruction in their brain, or something to be responded to with testimony, not seriously considered on its own merits. To a TBM, the church being true is absolute bedrock axiomatic truth, and any questions or aspects of reality are judged and viewed through that lens. Indeed, as I've said often in the past, the church's being true is the fundemental "Truth" upon which the entire LDS virtual reality is built. Within that virtual reality, all things are judged by reference to the fundemental truths of that reality, which include the church being true.

David is just publicly admitting that he lives in this particular LDS virtual reality, and that he is incapable of, or unwilling to, take seriously a worldview that doesn't assume that the LDS church is true.

This also explains some of Charity's more bizarrre statements and assumptions. We all need to be "charitable" enough to recognize that whatever she says is underpinned in her mind by the obvious truth of Mormonism, and that to her it all makes perfect sense.

It's apparently a privileged worldview that applies only to LDS thinking. No one else could think this way and possibly be a potential convert to Mormonism.

Well, probably every religion has its adherents who have their own particular version of this worldview. Even evangelical Christians. :-) But you are right that while Mormons accept this as normal for themselves, they absolutely abhor it in those they are trying to convert. To a Mormon, someone ought to be willing to consider that their religious beliefs aren't true, and that it's in fact the Mormon religion that's true, and be willing to walk away from their religion and embrace the Mormon religion instead. But it's entirely one-sided. As seriously as Mormons believe everyone else should take the possibility that their religion is not true, Mormons will not, and cannot, take seriously the possibility that Mormonism isn't true.

Everyone else does it too. The born-again Christians all assume, and know, that their religious beliefs are true and that the Mormon beliefs aren't true, and I bet that most die-hard EVs and born-agains simply cannot contemplate seriously the possibility that their religious beliefs aren't true either. And it's the same with the really strong TBMuslims, TBHindus, and TBeveryone else. A true believing Scientologist cannot really even comprehend the possibility that Scientology isn't true.

This is one of the things Dawkins talks about, actually, and some others. Religious belief is almost like a virus. It comes in, takes over, and then won't leave or even give up the remote for a few minutes.

If the LDS missionary endeavor is any indication, no one else in the world is allowed the possibility that his or her worldview is utterly and unassailably immune to any sort of contrary evidence.

I don't get it, frankly.

CKSalmon, how likely is it that your own religious beliefs are actually not true? Not very? Well there ya go. If you can understand that, you can "get it" with respect to the Mormons. If you admit the very real possibility that your religious beliefs might not actually be true, then good for you, and hopefully you know enough others who can't admit that, to be able to relate to the TBM phonomenon.

[_cksalmon]

I wouldn’t define my approach as making all things LDS irrefutable, but rather all things God defines as true irrefutable. As you know, I’m more than willing to refute a traditional understanding of LDS orthodoxy when the view does not concur with the evidence.

What is the practical difference?

You've already stated that you hold to the truth of LDS-ism no matter what. This is the unquestionable paradigm for you.

The point is that you've stated that, fundamentally, the LDS cannot be false. Period.

Again, all other points are secondary. Your underlying paradigm seems to be that no evidence against the truthfulness of the LDS Church is allowed more than revisionistic weight, as your fundamental paradigm, that your spiritual witness is definitive, is unassailable.

That is the point.

No view that doesn't concur with your view will be more than provisionally accommodated; rather, all evidence against your position will not be accorded its own independent, objective weight; instead, it will be filtered through your own prism of unassailable allegiance to fundamental LDS truth claims. No evidence will be allowed to count against those fundamental claims.

CKS

[_evolving]

Sorry, evolving, your related experience doesn't fit the criteria. Sleep deprivation by setting one's alarm clock is not anywhere near close. Positive reinforcement techniques aren't in the playbook either. And public ridicule? Shame on you if you participated in such. I know a several former misison presidents. They are not told to engage in any public humiliations of anyone. And special training? Whoopee! Sounds like rank mistreatment to me.

If you publicly humiiliated anyone you were poor Christian and a lousy AP.

I was a great AP - I was a great missionary -I baptized many people - and for most of my life I have been a exemplar Christian - today, I only adhere to the principles that make me a better Husband, Father, neighbor, and Friend - I don't need the example of a 2000 year old Jewish zombie to provide that example for me.. If I were to serve a mission today, I would do things very different -- Yes ! but I only had the example of my MP, who I Idolized - his practices and techniques were developed during a 35 year military career as an officer on a Sub -- and more instruction passed down from Elder Dunn - I thought these guys were as close to Christ as anyone got - the whole calling and election thing --

You have no Idea what or who I was, and no idea what I am today - You seem to have very little idea in general - but stupidity is not against the law, so have at it --

[_Sethbag]

It's a subjective judgment by a person experiencing something internally which they interpret as some cosmic confirmation of eternal truth.

I can only half agree with this statement by Sethbag. I don't believe Mormons generally are experiencing much internally beyond general "being at home" feelings. I think a "testimony" is something most Mormons have been trained to report through simple brainwashing techniques, like repetition in F&T meetings and pressure to "gain" one. A testimony, for most, represents little more than the mental content of a child while she's reciting a nightly prayer she's memorized from mom and dad.

I have to disagree with you here. You may be going on your own experience, and that's fine, but I've had experiences that I interpreted at the time as a witness from the Holy Ghost which were very powerful indeed. I'm convinced that things like this happen with some of the TBMs who claim a powerful spiritual witness.

A mission companion of mine was sick for a couple of days in my third area. I'd been working on the Book of Mormon in German since the MTC, and I'd been out in the field now for 4 or 5 months, and was like 1/3 of the way through it. When my comp got sick I just kept reading it, and reading it, and reading it, and over the course of like a day or so I plowed through the whole rest of the book.

My German reading accelerated significantly just through that experience, and I had an experience at the end of that, when I finished the Book of Mormon, that was probably like being high (I've never been high so I don't know, but it was definitely "up there"). I felt an actual burning in the bosom, so much so that the observant part of my brain said hmm, that's interesting, so that's what the burning of the bosom feels like. I hadn't eaten much, or maybe drunk enough, and with the absolutely intense concentration that I'd exerted to finish up the Book of Mormon in that day or so, along with the excitement of seeing my German reading speed ratchet up a few notches, and believing in the Holy Ghost and the church and all of that (which I very deeply did at that time), I experienced what I now interpret as an induced state of euphoria.

Here's a quote from Wikipedia on euphoria:

Euphoria (Greek εὐφορία) is a medically recognized emotional state related to happiness. Technically, euphoria is an affect,[1] but colloquially the term is often used as a standard term of emotion to mean intense, transcendent happiness combined with an overwhelming sense of well being. Euphoria is considered to be an exaggerated state, resulting from psychological or pharmacological stressors and not typically achieved during the normal course of human experience.[1] A common theme among a subset of drugs used recreationally is their ability to induce a state of euphoria.[2] The classification of episodic mania by Emil Kraepelin recognized the degree of euphoric affect among the classifier axes. Drugs such as heroin and MDMA induce chemically intense euphoria[3] Other types of euphoria are sexual climax.

The Euphoric feelings associated with modern human beings are a natural occurrence. Although every person's euphoric trigger is different, they all stem from reactions to ideas or environment. [emphasis and italics added by Sethbag]

I'm quite convinced that when a TBM apologist says that he or she has experience the Holy Ghost, and they swear up and down that it's "way more than just an emotion", they are telling the truth, that they have in fact experienced an exaggerated emotional state associated with intense, transcendent happiness and an overwhelming sense of well being. They have experience euphoria, as a result of an emotional and mental state built up through various LDS practices, or intense concentration, fasting, or other mental stressors.

Once they have experienced this kind of thing, they know that they experienced it, and if they interpret it as the Holy Ghost they will say they know they know it, they can't deny it, etc. Well they shouldn't deny it. They really experienced the euphoria. The difference between me now and me as I was as a TBM back on my mission is that I now recognize that what I experienced was almost certainly not a cosmic confirmation of Truth by some sky God through the medium of his invisible right-hand man the Holy Ghost. It was bog-standard euphoria.

What's arrogant is not me saying that that's what TBMs have experienced. What's arrogant is them saying ok that may well be what all these other people out there are experiencing, but not me, I'm special, I really did feel the Holy Ghost, and it's not possible that what I experienced was just a euphoric state.

People will flounder around and come up with anything as a testimony, because it's nothing. Despite ward efforts to "stick to the program", no one really knows what the program is because unlike pain, it's not any real kind of internal state. The church leaders can't clarify further, because they're bluffing too. But with enough community peer pressure, they can all convince themselves and each other it's something real. At best, the church can try and get across a certain behavioral model that others can mimick. But it doesn't work very well so far, in practice.

Well, this may well be true for a lot of the plain emotional testiphony meeting crap, and the tear-jerker stories and whatnot. But that's not all there is. The euphoric psychological state is a very real phenomenon, and when a TBM, or an EV, or whoever, associates a euphoric state with God sending them confirmation of whatever they happen to believe, that's when the "testimony" becomes locked in concrete. At least with some people. With some people it's probably just what they're used to because the grew up with it.

[_charity]

Now on to charity:

For starters, you don't understand confirmation bias.

Oh, suddenly you want to discuss this after dodging me on the other thread? Fine.

I addressed your issue. I just didn't agree with your position. You think if you can't hammer someone into agreeing, they don't understnad. You really should figure out that we can understand what you are saying and absolutely disagree with it.

CB does not cause "good feelings."

I said an “individual’s hopes and desires induce good feelings,” and this is psychological fact.

Hopes and desires are not products of confirmation bias.

Don't pretend you have a grasp on CB because you clearly don't. And you do not have the means nor the argumentative capacity to distinguish between psychologically induced feelings, and the so called spirit of God. All you can do is argue circularly while begging the question.

I think someone who doesn't know what a spiritual witness is, is in a really poor position to tell someone else they don't know what it is, either. Your "scientific" argument appears to be "I have never had a spiritual experience, so nobody else ever has either." A way to make yourself feel better for your deficit. Do you also belong to the school that won't permit cochlear implants because being deaf is a valid experience and to do so would admit there was something wrong with the deaf person?

Confirmation bias is a phenomenon of perception, not emotion.

It is driven by emotions. Stop pretending you haven’t heard me say this already in the other thread. Emotional reward is integral to the processes of confirmation bias. Shermer said, “Now a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study shows where in the brain the confirmation bias arises and how it is unconscious and driven by emotions.” Drew Westen said that they witnessed, “a network of emotion circuits lighting up” during this process.

[b]You are getting the cart before the horse. The horse pulls the cart. The cart does not pull the horse. Causing and being caused by and two different things.

This has LDS testimony written all over it. It is entirely emotionally based and the LDS Church isn’t shy about admitting this. The Church is against reasoning and all for emotion.

Gosh, I wonder why it has been noted that the more educated an LDS person is, the stronger their committment to their beliefs, while just the opposite is true of other religions. Care to explain that in your put down of reason among LDS faithful?

It has established doctrinal clichés that attack reasoned based thinking. The “arm of the flesh,” the “reasoning of men” are always in contexts that suggest Satan is behind it.

It is faulty reasoning that is the tool of satan. Men can come up with some pretty cockamamie thinking. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." "All women secretly want to behave sexually with their fathers." "The earth is the center of the solar system." "Diseases are caused by 'bad air.' " Arm of flesh. Reasoning of men.

Whereas God is found in how you feel. You call it spiritual because you were told it was. And I understand that it is more appealing to think God is in control of your emotions but the fact is you’re the one guiding your own emotions and you’re using them to reinforce feelings you want to have.

God is found in truth. This is another one of your faulty assumptions.

All you have been able to say is that there is some challenge in evaluating subjective experience.

No, that isn’t what I have said at all. Thanks again for earning your reputation as the comprehensively challenged. The fact is you have no scientific basis to call your CB driven feelings “spirituality.” At least my explanation is grounded in science; yours is grounded in logical fallacies such as begging the question. We know this phenomena occurs naturally in humans. Yet, you take this aspect of human psychology and call it spiritual communication with nothing more than your say-so supported with your own need to believe and of course, your feelings.

Actually, if you read what I said, you would have noticed I said psychology CANNOT at this time explain spiritual communications. Talk about a comprehension deficit.

How do you know your feelings are from God?

I think my "feelings" come from the psychological and physiological processes of emotional response. My emotions don't come from God.

Because my feelings tell me so (this is a more forthright way of saying you have a spiritual testimony) This is circular reasoning, which is all you are left with at the end of the day.

You just set up the infamous straw man. I didn't make the original statement you attributed to me, so the rest of your argument doesn't work.

The processes of confirmation bias fit exactly what we see from apologists at MAD. It was eerie to see how Westen and Shermer explained it because it was like I was sitting through one of their ridiculous apologetic shows where data and logic are thrown out the window. And now David comes along and leaves no room for doubt about this connection, as he publicly encourages people to actually cling to their testimony premise at all costs. Facts ultimately don’t matter. If the facts point to speciousness of the Church, then the paradigm must be changed in a way so the Church can still be true. One must bury himself into his own mind where the subjective feelings of confirmation bias rule supreme. Outside, the rest of us are living in reality.

Only thing that ruins your little rant is that the Church, the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, anything else you care to name is being confirmed day by day by science. While the arguments against continue to fall.

Sorry, folks, for those of you who aren't familiar with the science, that is a big problem in psychology. For most of human experience, that is all we have to go on--what the subject reports his/her experience is. And then there is the problem of being able to determine if one person's report of his/her experience is the same as another person's report of the same type of experience.

Again, you are just perfecting the art of confirmation bias by rewarding yourself with more pleasant feelings. In this case you’re relying on the same apologetic that says we don’t know enough about Egyptian to prove conclusively Joseph Smith couldn’t translate the papyri.

And one of the most common problems among scientists and their wannabees, is arrogance and their absolute belief in their onw inerrancy. Pride goeth before a fall never applied so well as in this instance. And I don't think anyone who knows anything puts forth the premise that Joseph Smith "translated" the papyri, any more than he "translated" the Book of Mormon. Translated in the sense that a person fluent in two languages takes a document in one languages and transforms it into the other.

The spiritual witness cannot be measured with any measuring tool that psychology has come up with yet. But that isn't a unique problem in psychology.

It isn’t a problem in psychology at all since it doesn’t exist.

Aren't we glad Pasteur and Lister didn't listen to all those nay sayers that denied that any such thing as micro-organisms didn't exist. Your arrogance is certainly not worthy of real scientists.

Psychologists have no problems explaining the “spiritual” feelings as self-induced. There is no mystery here. We know now why LDS apologists and political connoisseurs act the way they do. We know their reasoning department shuts down and their emotional circuits light up like the fourth of July.

How many apologists have you observed during brain scans? In the scientific community, (as opposed to the wannabee circule) the scientist actually performs studies befoe he makes such pronouncements. I guess you really don't believe in the scientific method after all.

[_charity]

And this is what you see in the diehard apologists, and with people like Charity. To Charity, the church's not being true is simply impossible. The very phrase "LDS church is not true" simply does not compute. It's like a null instruction in their brain, or something to be responded to with testimony, not seriously considered on its own merits. To a TBM, the church being true is absolute bedrock axiomatic truth, and any questions or aspects of reality are judged and viewed through that lens. Indeed, as I've said often in the past, the church's being true is the fundemental "Truth" upon which the entire LDS virtual reality is built. Within that virtual reality, all things are judged by reference to the fundemental truths of that reality, which include the church being true.

David is just publicly admitting that he lives in this particular LDS virtual reality, and that he is incapable of, or unwilling to, take seriously a worldview that doesn't assume that the LDS church is true.

This also explains some of Charity's more bizarrre statements and assumptions. We all need to be "charitable" enough to recognize that whatever she says is underpinned in her mind by the obvious truth of Mormonism, and that to her it all makes perfect sense..

What you are ignoring here is my history. I started out with the idea that Church wasn't true. I joined at the age of 19, without having any previous experience with the Church or its doctrines. There was an intense time of study when I didn't know if the Church was true or not. That doesn't fit in with your little made up assessment of me.

[_charity]

Sorry, evolving, your related experience doesn't fit the criteria. Sleep deprivation by setting one's alarm clock is not anywhere near close. Positive reinforcement techniques aren't in the playbook either. And public ridicule? Shame on you if you participated in such. I know a several former misison presidents. They are not told to engage in any public humiliations of anyone. And special training? Whoopee! Sounds like rank mistreatment to me.

If you publicly humiiliated anyone you were poor Christian and a lousy AP.

I was a great AP - I was a great missionary -I baptized many people - and for most of my life I have been a exemplar Christian - today, I only adhere to the principles that make me a better Husband, Father, neighbor, and Friend - I don't need the example of a 2000 year old Jewish zombie to provide that example for me.. If I were to serve a mission today, I would do things very different -- Yes ! but I only had the example of my MP, who I Idolized - his practices and techniques were developed during a 35 year military career as an officer on a Sub -- and more instruction passed down from Elder Dunn - I thought these guys were as close to Christ as anyone got - the whole calling and election thing --

You have no Idea what or who I was, and no idea what I am today - You seem to have very little idea in general - but stupidity is not against the law, so have at it --

If you humiliated anyone, which you said was SOP in your mission, I stand by my assessment. People who humiiliate others have lousy interpersonal techniques. I don't know, maybe you were a great AP, with good numbers, etc. But what really makes a great anything?

[_Gadianton]

Well Seth, I think there may be some out there who fit your bill. Maybe more than I think. My mission experience, however, led me to believe that the heightened internal state that 8-balls the Book of Mormon as true was more an exception to the rule. I rarely met a missionary who claimed they'd felt the "burning in the bosom". I met quite a few who confided that they didn't know whether they had a testimony or not. I know some researchers believe that there is an area of the brain that accounts for religious experiences. That would support your theory. But I still feel like the Mormon testimony is something every Mormon claims to have but almost none can pin down.

[_Gazelam]

I can pin mine down.

[_Sethbag]

What you are ignoring here is my history. I started out with the idea that Church wasn't true. I joined at the age of 19, without having any previous experience with the Church or its doctrines. There was an intense time of study when I didn't know if the Church was true or not. That doesn't fit in with your little made up assessment of me.

I'm not ignoring your history.

Question, yes or no: is it possible that the LDS church is not true, and that Joseph Smith was a sexual predator who not only took advantage of women and young girls, but also invented scripture that he passed off as the ancient records of various people? Is this possible?