I was raised by devout Mormons, AMA [&|] Soliciting Advice
I was raised by devout Mormons in Mormon central (Northern Utah). It’s hard to accurately capture the scope of the conditioning via writing.
Standard tenets of Mormon doctrine include:
No tea/coffee/alcohol
No premarital sex
Keep the sabbath (Sunday) holy
Mandatory 10% tithe
Book of Mormon as “most correct of any book”
Follow (i.e. obey) Church leaders
The Church is the only one with the Truth, all others are wrong
Read scriptures every day, pray several times a day (guilt enforced)
You should gain a Spiritual Witness of the Truth by praying about it
In my case my parents are True Believers and devout even in comparison to the other Mormon families around. There’s no official list of “Things okay/not okay to do on Sunday”, and so different families have different opinions. For my family, that meant “No shopping/work/activities-of-any-kind-not- directly-related-to-worship” I wasn’t even allowed to do homework on Sundays, nor read non-religious books, etc.
Strangely enough, they did emphasize the importance of education and both my parents were college graduates. You would think that would increase the risk of learning dangerous critical thinking skills, but when you’ve brainwashed the victims to assume a priori that emotional/spiritual experiences >= empirical evidence they do all the compartmentalization themselves.
Nobody ever *said* the term “separate magisteria”, but that’s what it was held to be.
I had just enough critical thinking as a child that some things always bothered me, but I didn’t have the necessary knowledge to pin down why that was, and everyone around me regularly emphasized the Truth of our beliefs.
The most egregious of these ‘bothers’ being “Pray until you get a spiritual witness”, which in retrospect was flagrant disregard of Conservation of Expected Evidence. (No answer? You haven’t prayed enough. And even if it doesn’t happen for years, it just ‘wasn’t the right time’. No amount of failed experiments will ever be allowed to be considered counter evidence. Very convenient.)
I wish I could say that once I became a teenager I shook off the conditioning and declared myself an atheist, but that’s not how it happened. I *wanted* it to be true, in part because I love my parents and trusted them more than was healthy. Compartmentalization is a helluva drug ala Robert Aumann.
It was only after moving out and spending a few months living on my own that I slowly dragged myself kicking and screaming into acknowledging that it doesn’t make sense to require evidence for all claims *except* those of the one-true-religion-that-I-happened-to-be-born-into, which for *some reason* gets a free pass for emotion-counting-as-evidence.
I’m still somewhat in process of recovering, there’s a lot of conditioning to unravel and it’s only been a couple years since I finally admitted to myself that I didn’t believe anymore.
I’m happy to answer any questions about my perspective/former beliefs!
Also, I’m aware many of you have had similar experiences, so if you have helpful advice to give me please do so!
I have been out for about 8 years. I imagine this has been and will be a very hard time for you, it certainly was for me, but I really think it is worth it.
Telling my parents, and the period of troubles that our relationship had after was especially difficult for me. It did eventually get better though.
WARNING, the following is a bit of a trauma dump of my experience leavingthe Mormon church. I got more than a little carried away, but I thought I would share so that any one else who id having doubts, or has been through similar experiences can know that they are not alone.
To share a little of my own experience in the spirit of camaraderie, I was a mormon golden boy, raised mostly in Arizona but my family moved to happy valley during my sophomore year of high school. I was really devout, it sounds like your family is pretty similar to mine. I was Deacons, Teachers, and Priest president. I never so much as kissed a girl in high school, despite having multiple “girlfriends” because I was so afraid it would escalate into something forbidden.
I got really lucky, and during my senior year of high school, my cousin who was a huge harry potter nerd introduced me (also a fan of Harry Potter) to ‘Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality’. This was well timed, as I had been enjoying many of my science related classes my senior year and was beginning to really consider a career in chemistry or biology. That winter, after I had finished the book, I was beginning to go through the motions of preparing for a mission. The crisis point was when my bishop assigned me to give a talk on “the importance of sharing what you believe,” and while preparing for the talk, I was forced to consciously consider the question of why I believe what I believe. Everything I had been learning from methods crystalized for me. I realized the main reason I was in the church, and was planning on going on a mission, was simply because it was what was expected of me. I hadn’t really thought much about why I “believed” what I believed.
I didn’t exactly immediately drop out or anything, but I realized I was certainly not comfortable going and trying to convince other people to join the Mormon church, when I couldn’t explain why I was in it. I remember feeling extremely guilty about my doubts. I started doing additional research, and began reading Yudkowsky’s “Rationality: From A.I. to zombies.”, and Robert Caldini’s “Influence”. The more I read, the more I started to recognize patterns in fast and testimony meeting. I was able to start recognizing the absurdity of the things some people would claim in their testimonies.
I told my parents, in fearful one on one conversations, that I was having “doubts” and didn’t feel worthy to go on a mission. I remember on Sundays, sometimes I would sneak out early, rather than go to Sunday school, and started to realize how much happier and “spiritual” I felt spending my Sunday out in nature, or looking out over the valley from a favorite park.
My parents were completely shocked. I was probably the last person anyone expected out of my entire (quite extensive) extended family to doubt the church. My dad would try to talk through the logic of why he believed what he did, we would spend HOURS, one discussion I remember in particular lasted 8 hours, from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. one Sunday afternoon, where my Dad tried to convince me that he could logically prove the church was true. The moe we argued though, the more obvious it became to me that he hadn’t really thought about it before. Heinsisted on refuting the idea of “probability” and “uncertainty”, and particularly the idea that Faith might not actually be a valid component to quality reasoning.
For me, the nail in the coffin was getting my “Patriarchal blessing.” If you are not familiar, a patriarchal blessing is a special blessing that you can request once in your life. Most people receive it in their late teen years. The patriarchal blessing is supposed to be direct from God, through a specially appointed high elder of your local Stake. The patriarchal blessing is supposed to be oracular. It is a prediction and blessing from god of things that will happen in your life. Long had I been told of the predictive power of these blessings, I had been told of my aunts and uncles who had received particular promises pertaining to the second coming, or how it had told them how to find their husband/wife.
When I was younger, I had always been very excited at the idea of getting a patriarchal blessing. Now, it was the final experiment. I decided that if the patriarchal blessing could make a useful prediction, and it came true, than I could at least give the church another chance. I didn’t need to bother with waiting to see if the predictions came true. Contrary to the expectations I was raised with, when I met the elder he did not immediately give me the blessing; instead he spent 30 minutes “getting to know me”, and “feeling the spirit”, which specifically involved talking about my interests, what I wanted to do with my life, what my hobbies were, etc. It became abundantly clear during the blessing, that anything that was even slightly specific from the blessing was derived from the conversation we just had. I had up-sold my academic interests during the discussion, and the most specific predictions I got were that I would obtain “multiple degrees”, “marry a faithful daughter of god in the temple”, and “serve a mission in a far away land. It was the straw that broke the camels back, at least in comparison to all the other doubts, concerns, and reasoning I had.
I knew my parents would not be supportive, so I planned things so that as soon as I graduated high school, I could move out on my own, start college, and be 100% independent. I did not want my parents to have a single hold over me, as I knew they would leverage it to make me feel guilty about leaving the church, and “being a bad example to my siblings” (I am the oldest of many children, if you couldn’t guess from my parents initial handling of the situation.) I moved out, took no car, no money, or any support of any kind, even if my parents offered it. I was out to prove that I did not need support of any kind, and that I could succeed without my family or the church. I did ok for myself, and for the first year my relationship with my parents was rally bad. I would go many months at a time without seeing them, despite living less than 20 miles away. Every time I did visit, it usually ended with a vehement argument between me and my dad. I was the first male on my Dad’s side of the family in living memory to not go on a mission. In fact, at (low) risk of identifying myself, my dad’s family holds the record for having the most family members out on a Mormon mission simultaneously. I have many uncles haha.
Eventually though, my parents started to recongize the boundaries. If we got in arguments, I didn’t want to visit, and despite everything.… my parents and myself started to realize that we valued having a relationship over necessarily sharing the same beliefs. It was a gradual process, but our relationship did heal.
For me, overcoming my conditioning was and still is a very painful process. I had endless shame around sex for a long time. Mormonism played a major role in the formation, and end of my first marriage. I still to this day rarely drink alcohol, only in low amounts socially, and I can’t bring myself to really enjoy weed. I do love tea, it turns out, but don’t like coffee much.
I have become a passionate student of rationality, scout mindset, all of it. I ended up going into biotechnology since I truly want to work on the problem of aging, and I see working toward the end of death as the most important thing anyone can work on. It is very probable that my mindset around this was shaped by my upbringing in a culture where surviving death was assumed.
There are many more tales I would be happy to share, but this has gone on WAY too long. If anyone wants to ask any questions, or share their own stories I would be so happy to oblige them.
Thanks for that! You’re fortunate you got out before going on a mission. I lasted only a few months before I became bored out of my mind and couldn’t do it any more.
I’m not even going to attempt to convince my parents. I know them well enough that if I prepared a good enough strategy I’d estimate a >40% chance of convincing at least one of them, but their lives and personalities are so enmeshed with the church that losing it would likely do them more harm than good at this point.
How did you approach dating after leaving? I don’t have much of a friend group now (not specifically because I left, I just drifted away from my friends from HS after a few years) so it’s really tough to meet women.
I’m sorry you were put in that position, but I really admire your willingness to leave mid-mission. I imagine the social pressure to stay was immense, and people probably talked a lot about the financial resources they were committing, etc.
I was definitely lucky I dodged a mission. A LOT of people insisted if I went on a mission, I would discover the “truth of the church”, but fortunately, I had read enough about sunk cost fallacy and the way identity affects decision-making (thank you, Robert Caldini) to recognize that the true purpose of a mission is to get people to commit resources to the belief system before they can really evaluate if they should do so.
Oh, haha, ya, I didn’t try to convince my parents either, they (particularly my dad) just insisted on arguing as thoroughly as possible about why I didn’t believe in the church/god. Exactly. It says everything about the belief system, when if you ask your parents (which I did) what evidence would convince them to leave, and they say literally no evidence would convince them. I asked, even if God appeared in front of you and said everything except baptism for the dead is true, you wouldn’t believe him? And he insists God would only do that through his prophet, so he would dismiss it as a hallucination lol.
At least for me, dating was a very rocky road after initially leaving the church. Dating in Utah was really rough, and because I was halfway through my undergraduate degree, I wasn’t yet willing to leave. There are a lot of really bad habits of thought and social interaction that the church engrains in you, around social roles and especially shame around sex. Personally, I oscillated heavily between periods of being extremely promiscuous and dating/sleeping with as many people as possible and periods of over-romanticizing and over-committing to a relationship. I think this is normal, but the absence of any sort of sex in my relationships until I was 18 kind of gave me a late start, and my conflicting habits and feelings made things a little crazy.
I did end up getting married very young, in an ill-advised relationship, where the truth is I was trying to please my parents and extended family. I had been dating her for a couple of years and had lived together for more than a year, and the truth is I had a lot of shame about that and wasn’t willing to tell my extended family because my parents were so embarrassed and thought it was such a dark and terrible secret. In the end we divorced after a very short period of time, with my only regret being that we didn’t end things much sooner.
I eventually met someone who was a much better person and who I see as a likely life partner. We have been together for three years now, and our relationship is the best I have ever had and is considerably better than my previous estimates of how fulfilling, enjoyable, and stable a relationship could be. It helps that she is much smarter than me, and we have both learned a lot of lessons the hard way.
My advice as far as dating goes is to not rush into anything. It is so easy because of the social norms in Utah, and the expectations we were raised with within mormonism to feel pressure to get into a relationship, and push that relationship to a very high level of commitment very quickly. In my opinion, the relationship will be healthier, and you are more likely to find a correct one if you tap the breaks as frequently as possible, since you are likely to tend too far in the accelerationist side of the spectrum, especially if you are new to dating. Personally I thought I did a lot of casual dating, but there is a big difference between casual hook ups and actually dating to find a partner, and I think it is important to not conflate what you are really after when you go on dates. I definitely struggled with this.
As far as actually meeting people, this is the main reason it is so important to be slow to form commitments…. I like Scott Alexander’s idea of “micromarriages” as a way to gauge how effective different activities might be at helping you find a good long term relationship. The simple advice though is too avoid dating apps altogether, unless you are just looking to hook up, in which case they are fine, but meeting people in person will still probably lead to a higher quality experience. My own experience, meeting my partner on campus by chance, may skew my perception about what the best way to meet people is, but I really feel that generally people I met in person resulted in better outcomes for my dating life.
The best method is probably to find social events/spaces where people who share your values are likely to attend. Classes can be fine, depending on where you are in Utah, but better are specific social events or clubs that might reflect your values. I am all too aware that those are limited in Utah Valley, but they do exist. Concerts, parties, and mutual friends are some off the cuff ideas for trying to network to potential dating partners. I really feel like Dating apps are a trap though… they make you feel like you are making progress, and seem convenient, but in truth the energy you invest in them is very low yield in my experience.
Sorry if that got a bit rambly.… writing on the way home from class for my masters and it is very late and I am fairly tired, but if I don’t respond now I will probably never get around to it. I sincerely wish you the best of luck, and if you want any other advice or just need someone to talk to with common experience, I am really happy to help. Just send me a DM or whatever.
I have the vague impression that in spite of getting some obvious (to the outsider) things wrong (fervently believing the preposterous), Mormons or LDS culture get some less-obvious things unusually right (relative to non-Mormons/LDS culture generally). I’m curious about those things, how they felt from the inside, and how the rest of us look in comparison from inside that culture. What are some things you think LDS culture does well that the rest of us might be able to emulate?
When you grow up knowing nothing else, it just feels normal[1] (except for occasional twinge of cognitive dissonance when evidence contradicts something you believe[2])
A culture of strong neighborhood communities and tight-knit extended families which provide a social support system and financial and physical safety net. Growing up, if my family had a crisis[3] or even some mundane need like running out of eggs for a recipe[4] we knew 10+ people living on the same block we could call or walk over to on a moments notice.
Despite my disenfranchisement with the LDS church as a whole, individual members and local leaders are generally nice[5] people who fulfill useful and productive roles in society.
There’s also a admirable emphasis on education for the sake of becoming better/more effective as opposed to education for it’s own sake[6].
being wrong feels just like being right
Or believe you believe
assuming it wasn’t the type of emergency to necessitate calling 911
which can become a particularly serious problem if you don’t believe in shopping on Sunday
As with many things, mileage may vary. Some Mormons are more insular than others. A few years ago a General Authority (Basically somebody who’s high up in the leadership of the entire church) chastised “members of the church who forbid their kids from playing with the children of non-members”[paraphrased]
As with most metrics, it’s easy to Goodhart.
On a completely unrelated note, footnotes can be used to enhance communication, so why shouldn’t I start evaluating my comments by how many footnotes I can cram in?
When I left the mormon church, this was one of the most common challenges I would get from family and church leaders. “Don’t you think family is important? Look at all the good things our ward does for each other? You disagree with X good thing the church teaches?” I think one of the most important steps to being able to walk away was realizing that I could take the things I thought were good with me, while leaving out the things that I thought were false or wrong. This might seem really obvious to an outsider, but when you are raised within a culture, it can actually be pretty difficult to disentangle parts of a belief system like that.
I second this, thanks!
In my opinion, the main thing the Mormon church gets right that should be adopted almost universally is the Ward system. The Mormon church is organized into a system of “stakes” and “wards”, with each ward being the local group of people you meet with for church meetings. A ward is supposed to be about 100-200 people. While the main purpose is people you are meant to attend church with, it is the main way people build communities within Mormonism, and it is very good at that. People are assigned various roles within the ward, and while the quality of the ward and its leadership varies DRAMATICALLY, when you have a really good ward it can be a lifechanging force for good. My old ward in Arizona was amazing. We had several tragedies occur, where in the space of a year three people died unexpectedly, and unrelatedly. The ward banded together very tightly to support their families, and it is still one of the best memories I have of humanity.
While if I were to set up a secular ward system there are many changes I would make to put checks on the leadership, and it could probably be improved in other ways, I think most of humanity could very much benefit from a secular ward system.
I am convinced that humans evolved to live in communities of around 100 people and that our social needs have been monstrously neglected by our modern lifestyles.
The other thing is the emphasis on prioritizing familial relationships. While it is a double sided coin that can lead to some bad situations, I still hold to most of my Mormon originated values of prioritizing taking care of my family members and it is very rewarding.
I think one thing that’s pretty cool is “home teaching.” Mormon congregation members who are able are assigned various other members of the congregation to check in on. This often involves a monthly visit to their house, talking for a bit, sharing some spiritual thoughts, etc. The nice thing about it is that home teaching sometimes really benefits people who need it. Especially for old or disabled people, they get nice visits, and home teachers often help them with stuff. In my experience, Mormons within a congregation are pretty good at helping each other with misc. things in life (e.g. fixing a broken water heater), and this is largely done through home teaching.
Are there any elements that you still find value in, even having left the religion?
Strong neighborhood communities called “wards” are a very nice thing to have. The one where I grew up was full of nice people who would watch out for each other, help elderly people with yard maintenance, etc. IIRC Cities in Utah county have some of the lowest crime rates in the USA, despite having a moderate (~600k within 5,550 sq.km) population.
Not all Mormon neighborhoods are equal, but the good ones are excellent places to live. I definitely miss the instant community connection that (good) wards have. (They don’t exclude non-members from neighborhood events, but a lot of the ‘structural’ social interaction happens at church and church-related activities)
100% this. While some of the wards I grew up in were not great, some of them were essentially family, and I would still go to enormous lengths to help anybody from the Vail ward. I wish dearly there were some sort of secular ward system.
I recently heard of the book How to leave the Mormon church by Alyssa Grenfell, which might be good. Based on an interview with the author, it seemed like it was focussed on nuts-and-bolts stuff (e.g. “practically how do you explore alcohol in a way that isn’t dangerous”) and explicitly avoiding a permanent state of having an “ex-mormon” identity, which strikes me as healthy (altho I think some doubt is warranted on how good the advice is, given that the author’s social media presence is primarily focussed on being ex-mormon). The book is associated with a website.
NB: I have a casual interest in high-demand religions, but have never been a part of one (with the arguable exception of the rationality/EA community).
Yeah, that’s the sort of thing that could be useful. I still have never tried alcohol. I know in theory it would be fine when used responsibly and in moderation, but lack of knowledge/deep conditioning are hard to overcome. I could go to a bar, but I wouldn’t even know the approximate ‘strength’ of various types of drinks or how fast alcohol takes effect/wears off/how soon it would be safe to drive again.
Not to mention I don’t have any idea how sensitive I am personally to alcohol, so I wouldn’t go try a drink without a trusted friend with me to stop me from doing anything really stupid.
Yeah, I agree. I avoid dedicated ex-mormon communities. In my answer to Joseph_C I said:
”...r/exmormon is quite a bad environment IMHO. While there are some nice and reasonable folks, they seem to be either a minority or simply less vocal than those who are not. A significant portion of those who frequent exmo-specific groups (or at least post often) tend to be those who are angry and bitter. As far as I can tell some of them still blame the church for everything bad in their life even decades after leaving.
Those with a more healthy outlook tend to move on and find better things to do.”
From what I can tell, the rationality/EA community is lacking many ‘tells’ that tend to be present in high demand religions. For example:
There’s no taboo against criticizing leadership
There’s no intrusive way to extort monetary contributions (occasional requests for donations are a lot less intrusive than “pay your tithing or lose out on privileges/go on guilt trip”
Ideas are just ideas, not some unified one-size-fits-all this-is-how-to-live-your-life-or-consequences (social or otherwise).
If you want to experiment with alcohol, I would recommend trying it at home, with a trusted friend. Less social pressure, more pleasant environment, no need to solve the logistics of driving home, no problem if you e.g. start vomiting.
Decide in advance how much you want to try. Do not change your decision after you started drinking. For example, if you choose that today you want to try one glass of wine, do that, but if after drinking the first glass you decide that it was okay and you can try another… don’t! (Ask your friend to help you keep your commitments, and evaluate their reliability based on if they actually do that.) The reason is that if you actually happen to be not okay, then you reasoning is untrustworthy. Sometimes, the more drunk people get, the more loudly they insist they are sober. (This is not a general rule, for example I am quite aware how drunk I am, but… I have seen other people do exactly this, and they just can’t be convinced.)
Keep some records for your future self? Ask your friend to record you doing some tasks, such as walking along a straight line, juggling, singing, explaining a math problem, doing some introspection about how you feel. So that you can compare how you felt at the moment, vs how it seemed from outside. (Sometimes people feel very creative or smart when they are drunk, but to those around them they are not.)
Do not drink too late in the evening; give yourself some time to get sober before you go to bed, maybe at least three hours. I don’t have a car, so I don’t know how much time it takes after drinking to be able to drive; I think 24 hours should be safe.
Alcohol strength from low to high:
American beer
non-American beer
wine
distillates (vodka)
Your reaction to alcohol probably depends on the kind of alcohol, on its amount, on your genetics, and on your previous exposure (exposure increases tolerance, but it you become a heavy drinker, it might also decrease it). As an American with no previous exposure, perhaps start with the American beer.
(My guess would be that the amount that obviously does something noticeable to you, but doesn’t result in anything bad, could be 1 bottle of beer, 2 deciliters of wine, or 1⁄2 deciliter of vodka.)
Many alcoholic drinks are basically a mix of a distillate, water, and flavor. So their strength depends on the amount of alcohol, which can range from very low to very high. You can’t guess the strength by the taste, because the taste mostly depends on the non-alcoholic parts of the drink. For example a mix of vodka and the right kind/amount of fruit juice can result in a drink that tastes completely innocent and will knock you out before you even realize you were drinking something alcoholic.
Keep some water or other non-alcoholic drink at hand, so you won’t drink more alcohol merely because you got thirsty (and too lazy/drunk to walk to the nearest water source).
It is generally recommended not to drink different types of alcohol at the same event. Not sure why, but it is one of those “it is known” things that most people follow. (My guess is that drinking different kinds of alcohol makes it more difficult to track intuitively how much you had? Like, a bottle of wine sounds like too much, but if you had a bottle of beer and a glass of wine and a little glass of vodka, then is still kinda sounds safe… or maybe it is not… and you do not have the mental capacity to figure it out at the moment.)
It takes maybe 5-30 minutes after drinking for the effect to appear at full strength. The effect is stronger on empty stomach; weaker if you eat e.g. bacon before drinking vodka. Physically demanding activity, such as dancing, helps metabolize the alcohol faster. (If you drink alcohol and do a physically demanding activity, remember to also drink enough water.)
Different people react differently to alcohol. Some get aggressive, others get cuddly; some feel full of energy, others feel sleepy; some forget what happened, others remember everything perfectly. Some get addicted, others don’t, not sure what makes the difference. Alcohol addiction is really bad!
As usual with drugs, most people who volunteer the advice are the ones you should not listen to (yes, I am aware of the irony), because obviously the ones with most experience are the addicts, and you do not want to do the things they consider okay. Also, people are fucking hypocrites about the drugs they like vs don’t like, mostly based on peer pressure; for example most rationalists consider drinking alcohol stupid and low-status… and then they overdose on some drug that happened to be popular in the Bay Area, because someone told them it was high-status and expanding their intellectual experience or whatever. I prefer alcohol, but I can also go for months without it, so I guess I am okay.
How would you rate the Book of Mormon as a book? What’s your favourite part?
About the same way many non-religious people rate the bible: It has many consistency and continuity issues, with a few potentially insightful things mixed in that you could find elsewhere more efficiently.
Growing up being expected to read every day to search for ‘personal revelation’ somewhat puts a sour taste in my mouth when I think about it now. I certainly have better things to read when I have a choice in the matter.
My favorite part these days is the amusingly flagrant disregard of archeological plausibility. (A civilization called the ‘Jaredites’ allegedly numbered in the millions on the American continents before wiping themselves out in a series of wars. Archaeological evidence? Very little if any.
Was there any specific moment where you went from Mormon to not Mormon or was it gradual? If it was sudden, what triggered it?
It was a gradual process over several years. Eventually one or two relatively small things became the metaphorical straws that broke the camel’s back.
Especially after beginning to study science and statistics in earnest, I became increasingly aware of how inconsistent it was to have different standards of evidence for religion vs science. Once I could no longer fool myself into arbitrarily moving the goalposts my beliefs collapsed very quickly.
Something else that helped me was the good ol’ Sagan standard of “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
How did you find LessWrong?
Do still have any Mormon friends? Do you want to help them break away, do you think it’s something they should do on their own, or do you find whether they remain Mormon or not immaterial?
Do you think being a Mormon was not suited for you, or do you think it doesn’t work as a way of life in general? How do you think that your answer would change 50 years ago vs today?
Did you have contact/ongoing relationships with other Mormon communities while you were there? What is the variation between people/communities? How devout/lax are different people and different communities?
How much access to the internet and the wider world did you have growing up? Were local/state/international events routinely brought up in small talk?
I found LessWrong via HPMoR. I found HPMoR because it was mentioned offhand on an unrelated article as an example of a piece of fan-fiction that was actually good...and it was.
Many of my friends and most of my immediate and extended family are Mormon. I’ll happily discuss my opinions to any who seem like they want help/are searching for answers, but I’m not in the habit of proactively questioning their beliefs since bringing up info directly critical of the Church tends to make True Believers instantly defensive and suspicious. Social ‘immune systems’ are incredible in how they defend existing beliefs.
I do try to indirectly raise the sanity waterline in the hope that others will find their own way out of their own volition.
I’m more or less resigned to leave those who are content alone, it seems quite futile to try to rescue someone who doesn’t want to be rescued, and they might not appreciate it even if the ‘brute force logic’ solution did manage to convince them.
Anything that can be destroyed by the truth should be. 50 years ago would have been more difficult to find my way out of because the internet didn’t exist.
Even between households there’s a lot of variation in how certain rules and interpreted. My family was more on the extreme end of the Sabbath Observance spectrum, while most other kids I knew were allowed to play video games and generally do what they wanted on Sunday. It was very difficult to grow up dreading every Sunday, and even though I wasn’t all that ‘rebellious’ of a teenager necessity caused me to find a quiet spot to read sci-fi/fantasy novels or play video games when my parents weren’t looking.
Some other things my parents didn’t allow:
No Pg-13 movies, mostly because anything remotely sexually suggestive was considered ‘inappropriate’. This essentially was enforced only at home. They acknowledged there was nothing stopping us from watching whatever movies at our friends houses and they wouldn’t try to stop us, but they would passively disapprove. Most other Mormon families were far more lax about this and less prudish about media in general.
They discouraged caffeine, although that was more relaxed. I know there are some Mormon communities that consider ALL caffeinated drinks taboo instead of just Tea and Coffee.
Teenagers were not allowed to date at all until age 16 or older. Being a socially awkward early-teen boy this had the unfortunate consequence of me reasoning that “since I can’t date anyway what’s the point of getting to know girls?”...Which I would realize later was just an excuse to avoid doing things out of my comfort zone and I should have used that important time to develop my social skills in a safe environment.
I had a decent amount of internet access and quickly became better at computers than both of my parents. I taught myself coding by learning to mod games, and my skill with code eventually turned into a career. There wasn’t total isolation from current events, although everything I heard was filtered through the highly-conservative lens of the adults around me. (A few of my relatives are also members of the JBS and believe that 911 was an ‘inside job’ and similar things from the Q-Anon bingo chart.) My parents were very opposed to all attempts to build high-density housing[1] nearby because of traffic/infrastructure concerns.
(i.e. anything more dense than 1⁄3 acre lots with a yard)
I personally know at least 3 people, in addition to myself, who ended up leaving Mormonism because they were introduced to HPMOR. I don’t know if HPMOR has had a similar impact on other religious communities, or if the Utah/mormon community just particularly enjoys Harry Potter, but Eliezer has possibly unwittingly had a massively lifechanging impact on many, many people just by making his rationality teaching in the format of a harry potter fanfiction.
That’s neat! In my case I didn’t leave because of HPMOR specifically, although it certainly didn’t hurt.
The answer might be unhelpful due to selection bias, but I’m curious to learn your view of QAnon. Would you say it works like a fandom for people who think they aren’t allowed to read or watch fiction? I get the strong sense that half the appeal—aside from the fun of bearing false witness—is getting to invent your own version of how the conspiracy works. (In particular, the pseudoscientific FNAF-esque idea at the heart of it isn’t meant to be believed, but to inspire exegesis like that on the Kessel Run.) This would be called fanfic or “fanwank” if they admitted it was based on a fictional setting. Is there something vital you think I’m missing?
To clarify, I was allowed to read fiction[1], just not on Sundays. Although my mom did disapprove of Harry Potter for a long while because ‘something something glorifies occult beliefs something something’.
A couple of my own hypothesis to take with a grain of salt:
One big part of the problem is the tendency of some to vastly underestimate how difficult it is to cover up anything that a lot of people know. Also a lack of fact checking. (My friend/relative/trusted neighbor told me this, therefore it must be true)
I think QAnon theories appeal to much of the same crowd as cults. If someone is willing to believe <small niche group> has secret knowledge that has
failed peer reviewbeen suppressed by <Big Government/Forces of Ambiguous Evil>, they are more likely to accept the plausibility of other claims with similar appeal. So 911 conspiracy people are more likely to also believe that vaccines cause autism or <snake oil/homeopathy/fad treatment of the week> cures cancer but Big Pharma is keeping it secret, etc.I wonder if there’s any good data tracking the relative frequency of this sort of thing?
In a similar vein, Utah has more MLM schemes per capita than any other state.[2]
At least nobody I know believes in Flat Earth...as far as I know.
As long as it didn’t have objectionable content, like anything remotely sexual.
https://kutv.com/news/local/follow-the-profit-how-mormon-culture-made-utah-a-hotbed-for-multi-level-marketers
Well that’s disturbing in a different way. How often do they lose a significant fraction of their savings, though? How many are unvaccinated, which isn’t the same as loudly complaining about the shot’s supposed risks? The apparent lack of Flat Earthers could point to them actually expecting reality to conform to their words, and having a limit on the silliness of the claims they’ll believe. But if they aren’t losing real money, that could point to it being a game (or a cost of belonging).
I think they are genuinely unvaccinated. They believe (or profess to believe) in tons of quack medicine but AFAIK they don’t spend loads of money on it. If they had a health emergency they’d still go to an ER, so they’re not completely in denial of modern medicine.
Full disclosure: I’m not here to ask questions. I came here to look for rationalists who have deep Mormon backgrounds or heritage. I am looking for “post-post-Mormons.”
I doubted and stepped away from the Church almost 8 years ago. I was reading Moroni Chapter 7 and was exasperated at trying to fit everything in my expanding world into either a “all good things come of Christ” or a “that which persuadeth men to do evil and believe not in Christ is of the devil” box.
Access to the internet has provided me with enough takes, views, and tools to completely dismantle self, reality, sanity, and world. But thank Buddha for the dharma and for caring internet communities that have helped me find some groundless ground again, only after divorce after a 20+ year, multi-child temple marriage, which were and are both deeply precious to me, and also real-and-direct byproducts of Mormon faith and belief-practice.
I still live in a rural Utah community that is caring and supportive in all those Mormon ways, and I struggle to be ideologically isolated from so many people that are interacting with and caring for my children still at home, who are on track to follow the Mormon path and go to the temples and serve missions.
I am considering starting a podcast on super-deep dives into spirituality, community, human social reality creation, and human phenomenology. If anyone wants to chat, lmk.
Wait...your children are on the Mormon path? Oh boy.
As a non-parent, I have no idea how it is to be a parent. It must be exceptionally hard and require making difficult compromises. However, having realized that Mormonism is not the path to reason...aren’t you terrified that your children are headed toward a dead-end, believing irrational things and perpetuating those beliefs unto the next generation? How do you handle that? I would be looking for any signs that my kids wanted out...looking for them to send me an SOS so I would be justified in swooping in and telling them it’s all baloney and they don’t need to take any of it seriously. That would probably land me in family court and alienate me from my children, who, having grown up in the community and imbibed the teachings like mother’s milk, have become integrated into the hive mind, but the temptation to cry BS must be overwhelming, no?
Thanks for sharing your perspective. After years of anger, nihilism, midlife crises, etc., I suppose I’ve reached some equanimity, not all by choice. There’s only so much of that shit an individual soul or mind can harbor, perhaps.
To expand on my original comment, my exploration into the dharma, specifically it’s teaching on anatta or “no self,” has exploded fractally for me, making so much of my spiritual or inner landscape crystallize into something deeply powerful and meaningful to me, even to the point of finding a fair degree of peace with and forgiveness for the Mormon Church and its ways.
For now I’ll just say: I have a deep inner conviction that I am not an individual. That I am not the egoic “self” that my culture and society have trained me to be, and which they continue to pressure me to be. You could say that this is just another religious or spiritual delusion, similar to my experience of Mormonism. That would be completely fair, and I’m not really inclined to rebut it.
It’s strange, but I arrive at my current spirituality by way of dharmic insight into the workings of mind, as I think I observe within my own experience and practice, and also by a fair degree of rational reasoning. We are complex social primates, unable to process or even hold a fraction of our complex sociopolitical world within our individual organism. We are more like distributed processors with memory in real, fleshy social network and community. Others are no doubt more “individual” than I am, but in all my observation, I think I only see “self” arise phenomenologically according to relationship and conditions in community.
All of which is to say, this “I” is part of a much larger arc of humanity, angst, and consciousness than that which I can call “me.” Parts of me are both from and in my parents. Parts of my parents’ identities reside in me. Parts of me live within my children, in ways they don’t even understand yet. This massive chain extends far beyond just family, but seems to manifest most observably within these intimate ties.
Even my questioning and doubting of the Church was largely transmitted to me by my parents and forbears, I believe. I know I am sowing seeds and projecting world and meaning in ways that are affecting my children, and I consciously choose not to poison them against the Church. I’ve carried around anger and poison long enough. I’ve been a vessel for others’ poison and anger. I think I am deeply familiar now with this psychology or what I’d prefer to term “phenomenology of mind.”
Do you still live in Utah?
Did your family cut you off?
Do you know about [r/exmormon](https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/)?
I do still live in Utah. I haven’t told my family yet. One of my siblings already left the church and my family didn’t cut them off, and I’m confident they wouldn’t cut me off either.
On the other hand, my sibling leaving broke my mom’s heart so I don’t see any reason to do that any sooner than I have to. In this case, what she doesn’t know can actually hurt her once she does. In her perspective she sees a personal failure on her part if her children lose faith, which is obviously irrational and unfair to both herself and us.
r/exmormon is quite a bad environment IMHO. While there are some nice and reasonable folks, they seem to be either a minority or simply less vocal than those who are not. A significant portion of those who frequent exmo-specific groups (or at least post often) tend to be those who are angry and bitter. As far as I can tell some of them still blame the church for everything bad in their life even decades after leaving.
Those with a more healthy outlook tend to move on and find better things to do.
Back when I was a questioning-but-not-yet-disenfranchised member, encountering exmo groups was counter-productive because it only served to feed the confirmation bias of “wow, all these ex-mormons sure are miserable, just like I’ve been told!”
Thanks for posting and I hope you’re doing ok!
I have two questions:
1/ when someone says they “believe in God” does this mean something like “I assign a ≥ 50% probability to there being an omnipotent omnipresent and omniscient intelligence?”
2/ how do you update on the non-religious-related views of someone (like Huberman) after they say they believe in God? Do they become less trustworthy on other topics?
yes, that is what the prescribed belief means.
Not for Mormons. They don’t believe in an omnipresent God.
ok, fair, that is true, but I interpreted the core of the query to be
> 1/ when someone says they “believe in God” does this mean something like “I assign a ≥ 50% probability to there being an [examples of attributes they may give] intelligence?”
the thing I was affirming is that yes, they really would verbally assign a high probability to that claim in any tractable way of querying their probabilities. I don’t know how many actually perceptually assign a high probability, in the sense of their perceptual system making direct predictions which are based on a high probability of the claim they would verbally endorse, but getting them to introspect enough to compare their perceptual anticipations to their verbal anticipations is generally extremely difficult.
While they don’t expect to literally see Jesus in person, there’s a lot of emphasis on ‘personal revelation’ which is for the most part just conditioning to get believers to interpret their own regular ol’ intuition/emotions as communication from the Holy Spirit. If someone believes that strongly enough, the brain provides whatever thoughts/feelings they subconsciously expect to ‘receive’. It’s both impressive and disturbing how well this cycle can work. Anticipation can easily function as a self-fulfilling prophecy as long as the anticipated experience is fully mental and emotional.
And because this ‘evidence’ has been accepted by them, they also expect their prayers to be able to miraculously heal sickness/disease (except for when it doesn’t of course; “God’s will” etc etc.)
I’m doing decently well, thanks for asking!
I don’t think any but the most rational/educated theists think in terms of probability to that degree. Many feel they are certain in their beliefs.
It doesn’t make a huge difference. I know several Mormons who are likely smarter than I am (mathematicians & engineers, etc). Shaking off an entire upbringing of brainwashing is a test of critical thinking, not general intelligence. Intelligence only helps to solve problems once you apply it to the situation. Once you compartmentalize religion and surround it with mental caution tape, no amount of brilliance is likely to help unless you allow the tape to be removed.
Currently the fertility rate is collapsing around the world. In most industrialized countries it is far below 2.1 children per woman. Which suggests that these societies will go extinct, if not some other magical AI solution appears. Even Mormon fertility rates are plummeting, but they are still higher than of most other people in the US. Which suggests Mormons are actually less misaligned with the “goal” of evolution than supposedly more rational people. Mormons are also less responsible for a potential future disappearance of the society they live in.
Do you think this gives Mormonism some practical, if not epistemic, justification?
This seems like bait but I’m answering anyway.
No, I think it’s still a bad thing because (as with most religions) it fuels beliefs that prevent people from even considering trying to solve problems like aging and death because “heaven will be better than mortality”, “God will make everything better”, etc.
In addition, even while they have more children than the general population there’s an estimated 46-60% retention rate of young adults staying in the church. If you factor that in, even assuming 60% retention the overall birthrate of ~3.4 * 0.6 = 2.04 birthrate of those who stay Mormon[1], and so by that metric they are disappearing just like the majority of the developed world (this is not taking new converts into account).
That being said, population sustainability is a real economic and practical problem in the long-term. Any rationalist with a sufficiently stable economic situation should seriously consider having kids, if for no other reason so that more humans grow up in an intellectually healthy situation.
Please correct me if this is the wrong way to estimate this.
Thanks. My question wasn’t bait. It comes from repurposing the innocent but (for a two-boxer) uncomfortable “why ain’tcha winning?” question, by applying it to the population level. As a population, South Korea (TFR=0.72 and falling) doesn’t look like it’s winning the Malthusian game. 2.04 sounds almost sustainable. And Africa has a TFR>4.
Yeah, fair enough. Something like that would be my response too. Though I would add that solving aging is not the quite the same as solving a low total fertility rate. There is also the broader issue of dysgenic trends, with a negative correlation between TFR and IQ, but that takes us too far here.