I wanted to move your question here because I think its an important one and I don’t want it to get lost inside the other two conversations growing within the original thread about feminist Mormonism on Patheos. It may end up with just the two of us talking, but that’s fine. I’m intrigued by the question and interested in seeing where the conversation leads us.

Your question was about if it more important for us to engage in self-discovery or to engage self-transcendence? Forgive me if my paraphrase is inaccurate. It was longer and probably a little more complex than that, so please correct and clarify as needed.

I have already answered your question elsewhere, but let me expand upon that answer by providing some personal information, which I hope will serve as an anecdotal example to support my thesis.

I have had two wives and a brother tell me I am a narcissist. These are important people to me. They know me more intimately than most, and the accusation troubled me. I don’t have the personality that allows me to blithely reject their judgment, but I do nonetheless have the sense that their judgment is somehow flawed. Perhaps this is born of a natural desire to exonerate myself and stand innocent of the accusation, but I don’t think so. I don’t think so because I also have a sense that I may not be innocent and the sense that the question of my innocence depends upon what it means to be a narcissist.

So my mind naturally turned to examine what they might have meant by the accusation. The second wife wasn’t familiar with the word, but she read it in a journal the first wife had written in rehab and it stuck. They understand the term to refer to a self-love that prevents one from caring about others. The accusation was meant by both of them to hurt rather than to instruct, so I think it reasonable for me to see the accuracy of their accusation as damaged by the motivation behind it. My brother, on the other hand, understands the term differently than it is understood in popular parlance. Nevertheless, I don’t know if he is accusing me of being unconditionally selfish or if he is employing the term as metaphor, drawing an analogy between me and the Greek youth who fell in love not with himself, but with a mediated (and, therefore, inauthentic) image of himself. He gets cagey when I have tried to discuss the subject with him, so I am not certain as to the nature of his accusation. As to the intent behind it, I suspect it too was meant to hurt rather than instruct, but I cannot be sure.

Understanding human nature allows me to understand that I am genetically predisposed to be self-interested, but not just self-interested. I am, as all humans are, more complex than that in that I am also genetically predisposed to suspend my self-interest (at least temporarily) in the interest of another or to see my self-interest and conjoined with the interest of another. Am I selfish? I am. But am I selfish to an extent beyond that to which I am innately predisposed. I don’t think so. But if this denial is merely self-protection, if I am, in fact, selfish to an unnatural degree, to an unhealthy degree, then that would most likely a product of my environment. It would also be something with real moral weight and something I should struggle to transcend. But, let’s continue on to the other sense of narcissism.

After a great deal of painful introspection, I have come to the conclusion that I am a narcissist in the metaphorical sense of the word. I don’t, however, see myself as born this way, genetically predisposed to invent, adopt, and protect an inauthentic self-image. (I don’t think anyone is. I can’t see the evolutionary pay-off for such thing.) As I stated elsewhere, I grew up in the paradoxical nexus of feelings of inadequacy and delusions of grandeur, and what is the narcissist but one who doesn’t know who he is or what his place in the world might be? I suspect those questions of identity are answered for most of us by our environment, but I also believe there can exist simultaneously other environmental forces that interfere with the transmission of that hypnopaedic message of self-identification, producing sometimes the psychic dilemma: “Am I shit or am I God?”

I don’t see this as true for everyone. Sure, everyone suffers moments of self-doubt, but this doubt, I think, is more particular than universal, manifesting itself in questions like, “Am I doing the right thing?” not “Am I worthy of love and respect?” Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the people I know who seem to have a strong clear sense of themselves really don’t. But if everyone is plagued with the latter kind of self-doubt, then that would imply a nativist origin, and as I said before, I can’t see the evolutionary pay-off for a species to be born to such a predisposition. Of course, this psychic dilemma could be instead a social meme that is passed down generationally to one extent or another through social interaction and not through our DNA. Whatever the case may be, I don’t feel understanding the origin of the dilemma is all that important.

What is important is that I gained a valuable insight about myself that I don’t regret despite the fact that the acquisition and possession of it was painful in the extreme. I had thought of myself as someone with a strong, clear sense of self and I was ashamed to discover how much of that “self” was role-playing. I was also deeply embarrassed by the thought that others had seen it before I did. I didn’t want to be that guy. Not at my age.

I hope I am not misunderstood here as spouting New Age, self-help bullshit. I don’t expect to know my authentic, original kernel-self before I die. No one can do that. I also don’t care about discovering what the forces were that prevented me from organically acquiring a strong, clear sense of myself. I simply care about examining each aspect of me I have carried with me for so many years, determining if it is authentic, and casting it aside if it is not.

My leaving the church was in some sense part of this process. I am not saying that the church made me inauthentic, but I was inauthentic while I was in the church. And that fact makes irrelevant, at least for me, the discussions we have had about staying engaged with the church in order to exert change from within. That’s not me. I am not an agent for social or moral change. I liked the costume once, but I took it off. It didn’t fit. I know there are people who are sincere and effective agents for social and moral change. I’m just not one of them and I value that discovery about myself.

The comments I made about Mormon feminism specifically and feminism generally are in some sense part of this process. In years past, I would have bent over backwards to be seen as fair-minded about the repression of women by men. It wouldn’t have felt like an act to me. It would have felt like a true display of my fair-mindedness, or rather of what I perceived others to define as fair-mindedness. My opinions on the subject today may be flawed, but I am no longer going to measure my words in order to be socially acceptable. I am instead energized by the argument the expression of those opinions produced. It is a valuable argument that offers to persuade me to refine my opinions. I would be a fool to avoid it for the sake of maintaining “polite discourse.” Those who know me and love me will continue to love me despite my boorishness. Those who can’t get past it, didn’t love me to begin with, so fuck ‘em.

I have spoken of the compensatory habit I have of speaking my thoughts out loud so I could hear how they sounded and in hearing, discovering if they are rationally sufficient. This habit is in a weird way helpful to this process of self-discovery. My writing this now is also my way of hearing my own thoughts about having been accused of narcissism, and thus, in some strange and ironic sense, a part of this process.

I keep speaking of these activities as being only “in some sense” a part of this process because I don’t want to over-determine the origin, nature, and purpose of these activities.

So back to your question: “Is it more important that we seek to understand ourselves or that we seek to transcend ourselves?” It seems to me this question poses a false dichotomy. I do not see these two struggles as mutually exclusive. I see them instead as roughly sequential, while also being recursive rather than linear.

At first, I have felt angry, ashamed, and depressed by the discovery that I am not the cinematic image I had created for myself. I think it took me a few years to get past it, but now I feel liberated and something close to exultant. The opportunity to unpack the authentic “me” by divesting the inauthentic could end up being both a gift of self-discovery and of self-transcendence.

How could it ever be an either/or proposition?

Nahum

Even in the days before television and the internet, Church leaders have struggled with the problem of speaking plainly to Church members, while at the same time knowing that words spoken in General Conference and other formal settings would be recorded and broadcast to non-members around the world.  President Brigham Young discussed this problem in 1857 when addressing a group of Saints in Salt Lake City’s “Bowery”:

“Our Sermons are read by tens of thousands outside of Utah.  Members of the British Parliament have those Journal of Discourses, published by brother Watt; they have them locked up, they secrete them, and go to their rooms to study them, and they know all about us” (JD 5:99).

This recognition presented a problem to Church leaders — how to speak freely to Church members, while avoiding the controversy that would come from those outside the Church, who may not be familiar with Church doctrine and practices, and thus misunderstand what was being taught?  And how to speak the “hard doctrines” to members, while avoiding the ridicule from those unaccustomed and unfamiliar with these deep theological ideas?

Brigham Young solved the problem by maintaining tight control over what was published outside Utah.

“Brother Heber says that the music is taken out of his sermons when brother Carrington clips out words here and there; and I have taken out the music from mine, for I know the traditions and false notions of the people.  . . . In printing my remarks, I often omit the sharp words, though they are perfectly understood and applicable here: for I do not wish to spoil the good I desire to do [abroad].  Let my remarks go to the world in a way the prejudices of the people can bear, that they may read them, and ask God whether they are true” (JD 5:99-100).

Brigham Young thus employed editorial license to walk the balance between speaking to Church members while simultaneously knowing that his words, his “sharp words”, might be misunderstood or cause more harm than good among non-members.  By altering the sermons before publication, he watered down the passages that might create controversy and ill-will.

A similar situation occurred with President Gordon B. Hinckley when he was asked by a San Francisco Chronicle reporter if he believed that man could become like God:

Q: There are some significant differences in your beliefs. For instance, don’t Mormons believe that God was once a man?
A: I wouldn’t say that. There was a little couplet coined, “As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.” Now that’s more of a couplet than anything else. That gets into some pretty deep theology that we don’t know very much about.
Q: So you’re saying the church is still struggling to understand this?
A: Well, as God is, man may become. We believe in eternal progression. Very strongly. We believe that the glory of God is intelligence and whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the Resurrection. Knowledge, learning, is an eternal thing. And for that reason, we stress education. We’re trying to do all we can to make of our people the ablest, best, brightest people that we can.

President Hinckley realized that his words would create ill-will among the non-Mormon community if he forthrightly (and honestly) admitted that the LDS Church has, as one of its core doctrines, the idea that man can become gods.  So, he soft-pedaled his answer in order to avoid that controversy.

But as a result of President Hinckley’s de-emphasis of this important doctrine in this interview and others (TIME magazine published a similar interview with a similar response to the same question), he responded to members of the Church who had read his interview and were confused as to the understanding they had of this important doctrine.  In the following October’s General Conference, President Hinckley addressed these concerns with this statement:

The media have been kind and generous to us. This past year of pioneer celebrations has resulted in very extensive, favorable press coverage. There have been a few things we wish might have been different. I personally have been much quoted, and in a few instances misquoted and misunderstood. I think that’s to be expected. None of you need worry because you read something that was incompletely reported. You need not worry that I do not understand some matters of doctrine. I think I understand them thoroughly, and it is unfortunate that the reporting may not make this clear. I hope you will never look to the public press as the authority on the doctrines of the Church.
It is in the light of these two examples of how previous Church leaders have “controlled the message” that the editing to Elder Packer’s conference talk on homosexuality should be seen.  While it is possible that the edits made to the official version were a signal that Church leadership felt that Elder Packer crossed the line and mis-spoke, more likely is that they were simply employing a technique that has been used since the earliest days of the Church: speak the “sharp words” to the members being addressed, and then omitting them when the same sermons are presented to the world so that the Church’s hard-fought good will can be preserved.

But why is porn consumption so high in Utah?  With its predominantly Mormon culture, one would expect that overall usage would be fairly benign, on par perhaps with Utah’s neighbors.  What is behind this high demand?  Certainly the Mormon Church itself is concerned, having addressed the use of pornography in most General Conferences over the past ten years, as well as numerous Priesthood and Relief Society lesson manuals.  Most discussions of pornography use by Church leaders refer to it as an “addiction”, used primarily by men, and Sunday’s upcoming documentary will frame it in similar terms.

With such states as Utah, Alaska, and Mississippi among the highest consumers of porn, some see a political divide at play, with politically conservative states consuming higher amounts of porn than more liberal states such as New Jersey, Oregon and Connecticut, which are among the lowest users.  But such correlations are seen only when data from the 2008 general election is used, and the hypothesis is not confirmed by 2004 election results.

A closer correlation can be seen when one looks at the religiosity of the states (which also tend to be more politically conservative).  One measure of religious commitment is the passing of laws defending traditional marriage.  Thirty-seven states currently have “Defense of Marriage” acts in their Constitutions or passed through legislative action.  The top ten consuming states are all among those thirty-seven states, while Wyoming and Connecticut, two states with no DOMA legislation, are among the lowest consumers.  States where a high percentage of residents agree with the statement, “I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage,” bought 3.60 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed.  States where the majority agreed with the statement, “AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behavior,” bought 3.56 more subscriptions per thousand people.  Of all the variables tested by Benjamin Edelman in his study, religiosity had the highest correlation factor — the more religious a state’s residents, the higher the rate of subscription to porn sites.

There is little doubt that the prohibitions against pre-marital sex among religious states plays into porn consumption by young adults, including those in Utah.  But consumer data shows that a majority of users in the U.S. are over thirty-five years old (65%), and only 14% of porn is consumed by individuals younger than 25 years old.  Thus, one can assume that the majority of pornography is viewed by married, older individuals, including in Utah.  A Deseret News report on Edelman’s study detailed that the highest usage within Utah were in the 84766 zipcode in Sever County, 84112 in Salt Lake (encompassing the University of Utah), 84018 in Morgan County, 84006 in south-western Salt Lake County (Bingham Canyon), and 84536 in southern Utah near the Arizona border.  With the exception of the zipcode containing the University of Utah, none of the others contain a significantly higher percentage of unmarried young people.  Additionally, the higher than average subscription rates of these counties is unlikely to account for the high usage across the entire State.

Logan psychotherapist Todd Freestone, in the Deseret News article, suggests that Utah’s prohibitions against public purveying of adult magazines, videos, etc., makes on-line viewing more tempting for Utahns — Utah residents simply have fewer places to access pornography in other ways.  But this hypothesis is not supported by the subscription data — states with easy access to pornography such as Nevada and Florida also rank high in subscription rates.  While there is little question that Utah’s access restrictions drive more residents to consume pornography through the internet (and thus to rank higher in Edelman’s data), I suspect that this only partially accounts for Utah’s high ranking.

The LDS Church frames the consumption of pornography much as it does the other problems seen within Utah — high anti-depressant usage by Utahns and high suicide among Utah teens  — as problems in themselves to be addressed.  But I suspect that these issues, including pornography use, find their roots in the Mormon culture.

The problem, I believe, begins with the Mormon marriage ceremony itself.  While being endowed preparatory to being sealed, Mormons are given a pair of “temple garments” and told to wear them both “night and day”.  These garments share characteristics of the nineteenth century Victorian clothing styles they sprang from — solid fabric modestly covering the body from the knees to the shoulders.  The garment is, in my experience, the antithesis of sexy lingerie.   Couples are counseled, through anecdotes and command, to wear the garments “at all times and in all places.”  For most Mormon couples, this includes bed.

Additionally, there was the formal and informal restrictions on the sex act itself.  In an announcement on January 5, 1982, the Church’s First Presidency stated that it “has interpreted oral sex as constituting an unnatural, impure, or unholy practice.”   In answer to the question of how a spouse should respond if their partner wants to try new things, Apostle Boyd K. Packer answered:  “A married couple may be tempted to introduce things into their relationship which are unworthy. Do not, as the scriptures warn, ‘change the natural use into that which is against nature’ (Romans 1:26). If you do, the tempter will drive a wedge between you” (“The Things of My Soul”, Bookcraft; 1st Printing edition (January 1996) ).  Apostle M. Russell Nelson, in a General Conference address, advised against even “talking dirty” in bed with one’s spouse:  “Because it is ordained of God, the intimate physical expressions of married love are sacred. Yet all too commonly, these divine gifts are desecrated. If a couple allows lewd language or pornography to corrupt their intimacy, they offend their Creator while they degrade and diminish their own divine gifts.”

Addresses by Church leaders are filled with admonitions to avoid “unnatural” acts during love-making.  “Who does it hurt? Why not a little freedom? ‘Flee fornication,’ Paul cries, and flee ‘anything like unto it,’ the Doctrine and Covenants adds. The body is something to be kept pure and holy. Do not be afraid of soiling its hands in honest labor. Do not be afraid of scars that may come in defending the truth or fighting for the right, but beware scars that spiritually disfigure, that come to you in activities you should not have undertaken” (Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland, “Personal Purity”, October 1998 General Conference).  Thus, the emphasis in Mormon culture is on traditional, non-exploratory sexual expression.  Use of stimulants such as movies, Victoria Secret outfits, verbal fantasies, toys, etc., are officially and culturally discouraged.  Activities such as couple masturbation, oral and anal sex, role playing, etc., are also frowned upon.  The understanding of the average member is best summarized by “Pinkadot”, in response to a Yahoo question about oral sex:  “We are getting counsel from our leaders. We aren’t “forbidden” to do the things we want. They are trying to help us… maybe people who push the boundaries are going to go further and further and further. Who knows… some people start with something small, then more and more and it’s never enough… it can lead to bad things.”

“Bad things.”  Given the conservative and restricting cultural understanding of sexual expression within Mormonism, is there any question why one or the other (nearly 30% of porn viewers are female) in a Mormon marriage might seek excitement and sexual fulfillment through porn?  The narrow parameters of approved sexual expression within an LDS marriage practically insures it.

If the Church wants to make inroads into Utah’s pornography “addiction”, it should start by changing the norms of expected sexual expression within marriage.  The Church could start by encouraging its members to freely explore mutually agreed upon avenues of expression and satisfaction.  It could change its restrictions on garment use.  It could introduce lessons in Priesthood and Relief Society that celebrate the joy and closeness that results from an open and honest sexual relationship between spouses.  Rather than result in “bad things” happening, I think such a strategy would result in only “good things” happening — better communication between spouses, closer and more fulfilling relationships, and lower pornography consumption.  By removing the many barriers to sexual expression, the Church would relieve most of the natural pressure men and women experience when it comes to sexual urges.  A rational approach must acknowledge that these urges are natural and normal.  By allowing Mormons to feel comfortable focusing that energy towards their spouses in a loving and passionate relationship, fewer members will be forced by spousal and cultural disapproval (shame) to seek fulfillment for those urges elsewhere.

A recent episode of the Point of Inquiry podcast mentioned a book that instantly colored me intrigued. The title, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions About Human Behavior, practically begged my inner-skeptic to read it. All the delicious psych topics are here—memory, recall, perception, intelligence, dreams, behavior, the subconscious, human development, even ESP. But one curious theme unintentionally keeps emerging: the unreliability of memory and personal experience.

Consider: Anyone old enough to have seen Dazed and Confused in the theater has had a wild experience, even sans LSD, we deem too trippy to be coincidence. We can’t explain it, we can’t tell you the meaning, but whoa, man, it was just unreal. Then out comes the supernatural explanations. But the bummer is we almost always underestimate the chances of strange coincidences happening. I still can’t work out in my mathphobic brain how if I’m in a room with twenty-two random people, the odds that two of us share the exact same birthday is…50%. But it’s true. (If you feel up to it, check out the Birthday Problem.)

Yep, the book is full of fun little facts. But it’s also chock full of disturbing information. A woman testified that her father had brutally murdered her best friend some twenty years prior. The guilty verdict was read, the gavel was banged, and right on cue the community was outraged. Fast-forward six years and this poor soul is shuffling out of prison after an exoneration courtesy of DNA testing. How on earth did his daughter come to believe twenty years later he was guilty? Under hypnosis, a therapist helped her “recover” the memory. It was mighty kind of the therapist to do that for a hefty fee and all, the only hiccup was the memory wasn’t real.

If that were the only story. You don’t need hypnosis for someone to be certain that a person is guilty of a crime they didn’t commit. There are countless stories of eyewitnesses swearing up and down and back up again that they saw that shady-looking defendant commit the crime. Some are later released thanks to the tireless efforts of the Innocence Project—an organization well worth your support. But I shudder to think how many terrified people keep on sharing a cell with the truly guilty; violent, disturbed inmates who need and deserve to be locked up. I’m long since past the naïve thinking of my youth that the innocent have nothing to fear. The innocent have much to fear, including the flawed human mind of otherwise well-meaning witnesses and victims. What’s more, many of these eyewitnesses refuse to say they made a mistake even with the light of DNA shining in their face. Unruffle the paper, dive into that story on the just-released accused, and you’re bound to see that inevitable declaration: “I don’t care what they say, I know what I saw!”

People know what we saw; we trust our eyes and our brains. And why on earth wouldn’t we? It’s quite literally our only means of experiencing the world. But few of us really think about the process of seeing something—light enters our eye, travels to our brain, and an image is formed. And then, within a millisecond, that image is a memory. Most images come and go without much thought. But some we remember. Some we know we’ll never forget. But we don’t really remember them. We re-remember them. Our brain recreates the memory and it’s highly influenced by our current worldview and life experiences. It’s telling that most scientists who study eyesight don’t call it eyesight; they call it “visual perception.”

All of which finally brings me around to my point: Given the limitations and what we know about the mind, how are we to navigate the very thorny world of spiritual experiences, visions, impressions, and insights? If we can’t rely on the human mind to not convict an innocent man, what business do we have trusting it on these other, even slippier points?

“Ahh…” we’re told, “That’s just the beauty of spiritual experiences. They transcend the mind and the five traditional senses.” Let’s politely pretend like this isn’t extremely convenient and assume it’s true. Instantly after the experience—the vision, the impression, the “other”—don’t we then rely on our mind to remember it, interpret it, understand it, or otherwise catalogue it away for us? Doesn’t this experience, if real, instantly fall victim to all the baggage cramping our brain?

And all that assumes that a spiritual experience was real—that something outside of us did happen. That’s one big, fat, giant assumption given what we know about the mind’s ability to create false images or memories, to create illusory correlations (find patterns that aren’t really patterns), justify our choices (cognitive dissonance), and to otherwise help confirm what we already believe, whether true or not. (I don’t care what the DNA says, I know what I saw!)

I do believe in knowable reality; I preach it on a near-daily basis in the face of increasing truthiness and incuriosity from my fellow citizens, many of whom are too busy admiring the emperor’s new clothes to be bothered with facts. And I maintain that it’s quite possible that at least some of these professed spiritual experiences are real and external. But I also maintain that they hold no recognizable value beyond “there might be something else out there.” Even that requires a leap of faith that it wasn’t all “in our head.” After that, it’s less faith than guesswork and wishful thinking. Given this reality, skepticism seems to me the most reasonable, rational perspective.

For those of us affected at a distance, it’s a sobering reminder of how fragile this life is, and how quickly it can change.

For me, this news comes at a time when I have been deliberately separating myself from many of the activities and communities that have made demands on my time for well over a decade. It mostly revolves around Mormonism, whether it be the demands of various callings or the time spent writing for various blogs of the Bloggernacle, or even the time and energy spent working to help sustain various independent communities. I’ve given them up. I have neither the passion nor the energy to engage them any longer.

It almost sounds defeatist, but I am significantly happier now than I have been in a long, long time. Ideas, conversations, the wrestling with theology and religion – at one time these things animated my life. But my interest has completely dissipated. In their place I have found joy and happiness in just experiencing life with those I love. Even my time spent with the Monsters has changed – I tend to withdraw and listen when our discussions center around our religion and faith, while I find the time we spend just enjoying each others company – laughing, bantering, sharing – to be the moments I most cherish.

And my family. I’ve always spent a great deal of time with them, doing what I can to relate and to provide. But things have shifted recently – I am doing better at reflecting on and appreciating each moment. This past weekend, while Sunstone was in full swing, I disengaged from the community even more – turning off my phone, my email, my tethers, and escaping for a weekend focusing on my marriage and children. It was wonderful! From quiet moments with my wife over dinner to time playing with my children, it was a splendid weekend recalibrating and connecting.

There isn’t a clear point for this post. It’s simply reflective.

So tonight, as I explain to my son what happened to his friend, I’ll be thinking about the meaningful relationships in my life. I’ll be looking for ways to build even more memories and moments with my children. I’ll be appreciating the small things in life.

My heart is breaking for this family; even as my heart is filled with gratitude for the time I have to continue to make memories, enjoy experiences, and share this life with those I love.

Rees, like those who have come before, prefers to ignore the criticisms being made and instead focuses on the rudeness of the one making it. As Rees points out, even non-believers have adopted this attitude. I find this problematic not only for its intellectual shallowness, but also because it seems so self-serving. There is less concern about whether or not someone like Maher is actually right as there is about him ruining the party. Progressive critics of anti-theists often treat the Mahers of the world as if they are grumpy spoilsports.

The attitude is somewhat understandable. Scholars—including non-believers—have spent entire lifetimes and careers studying, writing, and talking about religion, and then Maher has the nerve to come along and tell them it’s all nonsense. I’m reminded of the famous Saturday Night Live sketch when William Shatner appears at a Star Trek convention and berates the fans. “I’d just like to say…get a life will you people? I mean, for crying out loud, it’s just a TV show! … You’ve turned an enjoyable little job that I did as a lark for a few years into a colossal waste of time!” It’s as if progressive critics of anti-theists hear Maher telling them, “You’re wasting your time—get a life!” This approach either hurts them or frustrates them, so rather than respond to Maher’s points, they simply say, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

Personally, I prefer the bluntness of Maher, Dawkins, et al, even with their flaws (and there are flaws) over the political correctness of others. In reality, their bluntness comes no where close to matching the bluntness of religion, but we’re so accustomed to religion critiquing everything but itself, we barely take notice. While Maher does say that religious belief is foolish, he only claims his mind and his opinion as an authority. Mormonism, on the other hand, has claimed God himself as an authority against believers of other faiths and non-believers. And God goes well beyond mocking or calling people fools; if the Bible is to be believed, He summarily executes entire populations who dare oppose his people.

Yes, I’m well aware that Mormonism and other exclusive faiths have tried a kinder approach in the past few decades. However, the canonized disapproval of any belief that is not theirs remains firmly intact: “I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: ‘they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.’” (The Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith History 1:19) Is this sacred scripture really any different than the derision provided by Bill Maher?

And what of the claim that Maher is somehow just responding to the worst of religion, conveniently ignoring all the good? This reminds me of the frantic efforts following 9/11 to portray Islam as a religion of peace. Certainly there are millions of peaceful, non-violent Muslims. But the effort to portray extremists as if they were merely a few dozen people living in caves was absurd. And so it is here.

It’s difficult to quantify, but opinion polls can give us a reasonable gauge. Fifty percent or better of Americans routinely align themselves with fundamentalist beliefs. These are not merely a handful of irritating loud-mouths. They number well into the tens-of-millions (if not the hundreds-of-millions) and they wield disturbing power and influence. We learned that Karl Rove, as Bush’s right-hand man, held a weekly conference call in the White House with religious groups that argued for the invasion of Iran as a way to hasten the Second Coming. We saw religious leaders interfere in the Terri Schiavo debacle. American religious fundamentalists influence our world on a macro- and micro-scale.

There are issues in Religulous worthy of criticism. But these have been overlooked by Rees, and indeed most critics of the film. That’s because critics want to appear thoughtful, reflective—“deep.” They want to mine below the surface and tell us what’s really there. But that’s tricky with Maher’s film because he lays it all bare. It is a superficial film, but only because Maher believes his subject is superficial. He truly believes there is no depth, no layers to peel away, no hidden beauty to religious belief.

Scholars need not agree with the anti-theists. But to continue to treat them as if they don’t have a place at the table is a mistake. They are a legitimate movement with legitimate points and legitimate responses to legitimate problems. In short, they are as valid an area of religious studies as any group, and shooing them away to the kiddie table like it’s Thanksgiving only makes scholars and believers alike seem insecure. Maher and his kind are growing in popularity, and the time when religions like Mormonism could demand recognition without scrutiny are over.

In a 136 page ruling, Judge Walker ruled that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.

The Church issued its own response. Essentially:

California voters have twice been given the opportunity to vote on the definition of marriage in their state and both times have determined that marriage should be recognized as only between a man and a woman. We agree.

As one Facebook commenter opined:

So here’s the church’s take. No discussion of equal protection or due process rights; instead it’s all about prior votes at the ballot box. Apparently it takes about a century for the trouble with popular majorities to fade from institutional memory.

Indeed.

It boils down to this, from Judge Walker’s ruling:

That the majority of California voters supported Proposition 8 is irrelevant, as “fundamental rights may not be submitted to [a] vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”¹

Amen, and amen.

I rejoice with my brothers and sisters tonight. Those of all orientations.

1. Walker cites West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, 1943. The full paragraph is worth inclusion here: “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”

I recently became very frustrated in reading the back and forth between two friends in the Mormon History community. One is a believer; one isn’t. They were discussing a certain historical incident, the 1832 attack on Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, and Sidney Rigdon, his assistant, at the Johnson family farm near Kirtland, Ohio.

There is no reason to go into the specifics, but I noticed a certain dynamic at work and realized that it is a dynamic that is played out over and over again in the Mormon Studies arena.

Why is it so difficult for the historians, whether they are amateur or professional, to carry out a civil and respectful conversation and arrive together at a consensus or, at least, a near consensus?

Let me start by giving the answer, and then I’ll work my way through my reasoning.

The answer is: The stakes are too big.

Instead of approaching the subject dispassionately with a true interest in finding out what really happened, many in this community already have their final answers. They are looking to history to support their conclusions. They don’t want history to tell them a new story. They want history to tell them that they’re right.

They are trying to create history rather than allow history to lead them to the facts or an approximation of the facts.

The true-believing historian is out to support his belief that Mormonism is True (yes, the capital “T” is intentional). For this historian, who has made major life decisions based on this thesis and who perhaps belongs to a family that has been LDS for several generations, he’s looking for historical validation. He already knows the final answers: Joseph Smith was a Prophet, angels really did appear, the LDS Church is the only true and living church on the face of the earth, the Book of Mormon is a historical record, Thomas Monson is a Prophet, etc.

Any evidence, or even any theory that would appear to contradict this, is faulty or incomplete. Accepting the contradiction could throw his world view, his professional standing, his entire life into chaos and uncertainty.

The non-believing historian is out to support his position that Mormonism is not True. That it is not of divine origin. That Joseph Smith was not exactly what he said he was. Any theory that contradicts this position must be flawed. Because if it isn’t, then he’ll have to stop drinking coffee and start doing his home teaching.

In the spirit of full disclosure: I’m no longer a believer. In my mind, the long and great fight of Mormonism vs. Reality has come to a dramatic end. And Mormonism is lying face down on the mat. In my mind, angels didn’t appear, the Book of Mormon is of human origin, Thomas S. Monson is a nice man, but has no more privileged access to God than any of the rest of us.

I came to these personal conclusions through my own reasoning, study, and introspection.

After more than 180 years there really is no physical evidence that any of Joseph Smith’s many stories actually occurred. Nephites, Lamanites, angels, Zelph, etc. True, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. But still…I mean, c’mon. Nothing?

There are, however, natural and common sense explanations for any of these things. And, in my mind, the natural and common sense explanations not only make a lot more sense, but they seem to come from the same universe that I inhabit on a daily basis.

So, in my mind and in the minds of many historians and students of Mormonism, the big question has been answered. I also believe that anyone with a clear mind, and nothing big at stake, would look at all the information and evidence and would come to the same conclusion.

But in order to avoid coming face to face with that final answer, we choose to fight little battles in a war that is long since over.

The Little Battles

Back to my friends: the non-believer believes that it is most likely that the attack on Joseph Smith was the result of his having some sort of inappropriate sexual contact with one of the Johnson daughters. Why does he think this? Because certain documents and statements from the time indicate that the Johnson brothers were a part of the mob, that a doctor was brought into the mob for the purpose of castrating Smith, and because Joseph’s later and well-established actions strongly suggest that this was a man who, shall we say, “wooed” many women whose names were not Emma Smith (his wife).

Now this is a problem for our believing historians. How could a Prophet be inspired by God while simultaneously making the beast with two backs with a luscious young beauty behind Emma’s back?

Well, obviously, this is problematic. Very problematic. So this information or, at least, this interpretation of this information must be false. The believing “apologist” must explain this away.

So maybe he can find some evidence that castration was a general punishment that had nothing to do with the victim’s stepping outside the accepted boundaries of sexual behavior.

Maybe the mob was after Rigdon. Maybe Rigdon was the one dipping his pen in Farmer Johnson’s ink.

I’m going off on a tangent here, and I realize this. The point being: these historians are also going to go off on all sorts of tangents (probably finding some really great information along the way) until the whole subject is just such a tangle of confusion and such a source of conflict that they will each take the high ground and “agree to disagree.”

And these little battles are played out over and over and over again, seemingly infinitely. Sub-subjects within Mountain Meadows, the First Vision, Polygamy, etc., occupy all of our attention so that we won’t look up and acknowledge that the war is over. The little battles rage on with no end in sight.

We’re like those recluses who lived in the mountains of Tennessee up until the turn of the 20^th century who still didn’t know, or wouldn’t acknowledge, that the Civil War ended in 1864.

Before I wrap this up, let me be clear: I don’t think that a study of what happened on the Johnson Farm in 1832 is a waste of time. It isn’t. It’s a fascinating bit of history about an important religious figure whose life has impacted millions of people.

But I’m starting to think that Mormons and ex-Mormons are not well suited to the research and study of Mormon history. They have too much at stake.

Unfortunately, no one else is interested.

It would be healthy for us all to step back and look at the forest – at what it really is – instead of fighting our turf wars over each individual tree.

Note: I really should make another few passes at this before I post it, but I don’t have the time right now. Instead of an iron-clad, exhaustive treatment of a subject, I’ve just thrown out an idea. Maybe the rest of you can help me flesh it out.

Most of us like to believe that our opinions have been formed over time by careful, rational consideration of facts and ideas, and that the decisions based on those opinions, therefore, have the ring of soundness and intelligence. In reality, we often base our opinions on our beliefs, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information.

This may absolutely be a coincidence but I doubt it. Historically the church has used its news outlets as a way to have its views heard. Officially the church has been cautious in its comments but has always emphasized compassion and understanding for “millions of people.” I think it’s safe to assume they aren’t referring to pissed off tea partiers angry that their lettuce-picking job went to an illegal immigrant.

After seeing the church on the wrong side of the Prop 8 issue (yup, I’m still devastated and I don’t think I’ll ever get over it) it’s so heartening to see them take the compassionate track on an issue with some of the most vulnerable in our society demonized, even called “mules” by the governor of Arizona recently. That said, I’m still disappointed over the church’s obsessive paranoia on speaking out on any issue except gay marriage. I don’t understand how a church with the name Jesus Christ in its title doesn’t have an “official position” on war, torture, healthcare, the environment, the death penalty, and yes, illegal immigration. Moral issues go beyond right-wing boilerplate like gays and abortion, and the church’s silence on these issues is perplexing. Then again, perhaps I’m foolish for thinking I know how the church would come down on these topics that strike me as morally important.