3 Comment(s)

1. Hi Folks,

   I posted this another forum, and Dan asked me to put it up here too. A few thoughts on “Winter Light.”

   I have an online acquaintance who said that the single worst thing he ever did for his writing career was to go to a psychologist. And I think there’s some truth to that because essentially what this piece did was help me come to grips with what was happening inside me wittow head.

   The day before my family and I left for Alaska my dad gave me a father’s blessing, telling me that my move was a good thing, and that I’d grow up alot.

   Pretty vague, yes. But still true.

   Yet, true in ways I hadn’t really anticipated. I’d started into the paths of darkness a year earlier when I got to sit in on a series of seminars with scholars of Mormonism (some Mormon, some not). I started to see the complexity of Mormonism, and started wondering how I fit into the strange milieu.

   Voltaire once wrote that the only way to avoid suicide is to keep busy. Well, I love the guy, but I don’t quite agree. When I came up to Alaska, it was probably the first time that I wasn’t turbo-psycho busy. The cold in Alaska really slows life down here. It’s like the gravity here is heavier in the winter. Add to all that the beautiful blue light, and you’ve got a recipe for contemplation - or drunken binges, whichever you can afford. So even though both my wife and I were working on our degrees, I had a lot more time, and a lot better atmosphere in which to actually sit down and think.

   Verrry verrry dangerous.

   The story is long and arduous, but it eventually led to me upending everything I believe. I was Tristan in his oarless boat. My barn had burned down.

   But back at home, everything was still going as usual. People still had testimonies, and when I came around, they naturally wanted me to share mine. But I found that I really had no idea what my testimony was.

   I was really perplexed. It seems like when you come to a new understanding, you want to share it. You want to spell it out. But the nature of my situation was too ellusive for words. Metaphors were the closest tool at hand.

   So I started rummaging around, looking for stories, for metaphors that would point to what I was thinking. And lo…

   One of the fun things about putting the essay together was the structure I used. I’ve been neck deep in film theory lately. I love Eisenstien’s theory of montage: that you put two different pictures into juxtaposition in order to create third thought in the mind of the viewer. For example, a picture of new video game in a store window - a picture of a boy counting his change. Thought: the kid wants to buy the video game.

   Anyway. I had the essay written in three parts and tried to just construct it with one whole part following another whole part. But then I thought, What fun it would be to use the theory of montage! So I sliced up the stories and started putting them in different places in relation to each other until they started pointing to third ideas.

   I thought that was way cool, to have the actual text explaining some things, while their placement indirectly explained others.

   Another little piece of trivia. I put together a little chapbook of a few of my writings and in that book, Winter Light is about 1000 words longer. But the Sunstone contest required me to cut it down to 3500 words. So I got out the meat cleaver - and the essay got about 200 percent better. In fact, the connection between my mom’s spiritual understanding and the sun, and mine with the aurora didn’t surface until I’d cut everything down to the bone.

   As Stephen King recommends, write your story, put it away for at least six weeks, edit it, and then cut 20 percent out. That should be about right. However, I’m not as good a writer as Stephen King. So I have to cut out more.

   Comment # 1 by sugarbeetnik | Dec 22, 2005 | Reply

2. I just skimmed Mark Thomas’ “Where is Joseph Smith …” in the Nov. 05 Sunstone, and marvelled as usual at the limiting effect the acceptance of a particular theory (the LDS worldview in this case) has on the human ability to perceive the obvious.

   Nowhere in Thomas’ review of Bushman’s book did I find reference to Bushman’s tendency to create the Joseph Smith he wants out of thin air. Bushman would have us believe, for example, that the so-called “Alphabet and Grammar of The Egyptian Language” was the result Smith’s challenge to Cowdery and others that they take a crack at translating the Egyptian papyri, thus divorcing Smith from one of the most troubling aspects of his Book of Abraham “translation” debacle. There is no historical justification for this suggestion or many others Bushman makes. I have not read Vogel’s book but have seen many Mormon commentators (including Thomas) take him for task because he reads so much into Smith’s life. And no mention of Bushman’s tendency in the same direction? Thomas’ only real criticism of Bushman was that he tended to accept Smith’s statements about himself too easily. While this is true, it does not go near far enough.

   Equally troubling is Bushman’s tendency not to acknowledge obvious and probable explanations for Smith’s behaviour. These do not require any psycho-analyzing. In fact, to ignore them requires that we take the position that wide spread human behavioural tendencies that are known to apply in precisely the situation Smith was in did not apply to him. The way in which Bushman deals with polygamy and polyandry is a case in point. It is well known that the alpha males in many human groups exercise their power in part by enjoying unusual sexual access to the group’s females, and that these females are often not that hard to persuade because of the sexual attractiveness that goes along with the alpha male position in most human groups. Evolutionary theory has compelling explanations for these behaviors. And, religious groups are not immune from evolutionary forces. So it is not surprising that within religious groups, and particularly small groups that depend heavily on the personality of a powerful leader (ie. a super alpha male), that this kind of preferred sexual access has been documented in many cases. Given the religious nature of these groups, should we be surprised that the behavioural justification usually provided is that God has commanded this behaviour?

   This theory fits Joseph Smith and early Mormonism like a glove. Does Bushman mention it? No. Does Thomas mention this glaring omission? No.

   But Thomas does mention Emile Durkheim and his idea that at some level all religions are true. What about Durkheim’s penetrating analysis of the power dynamics that underlie religious groups, and the work of the many scholars such as Pierre Bourdieu who have extended Durkheim’s theory? Though this is deeply explanatory of Mormonism from start to finish, and of Joseph Smith in particular, Thomas did not take so much as a step in that direction. Durkheim, for example, taught that:

   “Religion … is not only a social creation, but it is in fact society divinized. … the deities which men worship together are only projections of the power of society. Religion is eminently social: it occurs in a social context, and, more importantly, when men celebrate sacred things, they unwittingly celebrate the power of their society. This power so transcends their own existence that they have to give it sacred significance in order to visualize it.” (see http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Durkheim/DURKW3.HTML)

   The responsible thing to do, at a minimum regarding Joseph Smith and polygamy would be to outline the theory and evidence related to religious alpha males and sexual behaviour; explain how common the behaviour in question is in the kind of circumstance Smith et al found themselves; explain the reasons others tend to give for this kind of sexual behaviour (“God commands it”; “sexual union is part of spiritual union”; “this is an important form of purifying sacrifice for all involved” etc.); consider the historical evidence pro and con relative to Smith in this regard; and explain that there is good reason to believe that whether Smith et al. knew it or not, basic sexual urges drove Mormon polygamy as well as any perceptions of God’s will that came along with it. Or maybe all of those other alpha males who thought they were doing God’s will were mistaken, and Joseph Smith was the only who really did hear God tell him to have sex with the women he happened to bump into and found attractive?

   The faithful Mormon response, which I would also expect to hear from people like Bushman or Thomas, is that while anyone without a social, family or ego investment in the Mormon belief system should be expected to accept as the most likely explanation for Smith’s sexual behavior what I just outlined, that this cannot be proven with certainty and that Mormons believe, against the objective odds as a matter of faith, that God commanded Smith to do as he did. This is then on par with the case for the historicity of the Book of Mormon, which is where in my view it belongs. The more data comes in the less likely the book’s historicity seems, but the faithful will against the odds believe in any event.

   Religious believers can be forgiven for ignoring the objective odds against their beliefs. That is the nature of the beast. But scholars do not get off that easy as far as I am concerned. They should either check their credentials at the door and simply proclaim their belief as a matter of faith, or they should act as scholars which means playing fairly with the evidence and the probabilities to be drawn from them. Neither Bushman nor Thomas did this, as far as I can tell, while wrapping themselves in the trappings of academia. And hence, they both discredit scholarship when it comes to Mormon studies, regardless of their accomplishments in other fields.

   Both Bushman and Thomas are mere Mormon apologists.

   Best regards,

   bob mccue

   Comment # 2 by bob mccue | Feb 22, 2006 | Reply

3. The following is a lightly edited email that I sent to a science list on which I participate that has nothing to do with Mormonism. It addresses the fog often found around religious intellectuals. Since I mention R. Dennis Potter’s article (page 71 of November’s Sunstone Magazine - “Yea, Yea, Nay, Nay: Determining What is Real”) in this message, I share it here.

   best,

   bob

   I am going to have to restrain myself from overusing the word “mystagogery”. How I have managed to miss that one, I don’t know. What a wonderful word. If you could pass me the cite for Rahner’s coinage of it, I would be most appreciative.

   I have wanted to respond to Michael’s post re. the various usages of postmodern thought in the religious community since reading it, but have not been able to. And since things at work are getting hot and hence I may lose the ideas he prompted and your recent posts have pushed along, I am going to blurt something out now that will capture at least the essence of what deserves (and will hopefully eventually get) better treatment.

   Postmodernism (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism) is primarily a set of tools used to question the validity of a worldview. It started out in the aftermath of World War I as part of the existential crisis that disaster provoked, and played a useful role in critiquing the rickety assumptions on which many sources of social authority rested. However, it was quickly fashioned into a shield by those who were attacked by it, and from there it mushroomed into so many things that it is now hard to define. Some aspects of postmodernism are still profoundly helpful. It has sharpened many aspects of the social sciences. However, other aspects of what is now called postmodernism are worse then nonsense. And I suggest that it is the use of the basic postmodern critique to defend the indefensible that is largely responsible for its bastardization.

   Postmodernism has been used in more ways that we can now count in different communities. Its use in the religious context is among the less prominent of these. Extreme cases are often useful in highlighting the operation of principles. These are like caricatures in both functional and dysfunctional ways. That is, they can get us right to the point, or mislead, and which of these is accomplished is mostly a matter of perspective. So with that caveat, I will summarize an extreme case - how postmodern theory is used in the literalist religious community. I don’t know the liberal religious community as well and would be interested in hearing others on that point.

   If I am Biblical literalist and you attack my religious beliefs by “deconstructing” them using science, I will deconstruct your scientific beliefs using the philosophy of science, semiotics and any number of other academic disciplines that are at least vaguely postmodern. And, I will accuse you of “scientism”, “reductionism” and “idolatry” for good measure. I will insist that you are trying to use a tape measure and magnifying glass to understand quarks; you are tilting at windmills; you should stop being so “simplistic”; you should leave the “flatland” and open yourself to the “mystery of being”; and you should allow god to communicate to your soul.

   I will tell you to read some Heidegger (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger) and get a grip on the primacy of the experienced moment and how little we can posit with confidence about “reality” (what a lame word!) beyond that; etc. And perhaps most of all, I will tell you to stop playing with the most sacred aspect of other people’s lives. This is ground that you should step onto with the greatest care because of its importance to other people’s lives. This is their ground of meaning. If they lose it, their lives may well spin out of control – into divorce, promiscuous sex, drug and alcohol abuse, etc. and it will be your fault. Many of these people are innocent and relatively ignorant. You, as a scientist, have credibility with them even though you really have no credentials regarding what you pompously and unjustifiably have chosen as your topic. You don’t venture opinions regarding scientific topics on which you are unqualified to speak. Hence, you should keep your views to yourself regarding the religious beliefs of other people since these are by definition private, subjective experiences that are not susceptible to your analysis. Hence, what you are doing is profoundly immoral and you need to go look hard in the mirror and think about that.

   I will also remind you that science purports to provide the framework within which religious belief can be understood, and that this is unjustified in scientific terms because the most important part of religious experience is outside the scientific realm. You can no more analyze religion and justify your analysis as reliable than you can analyze the nature of life in other galaxies. This analysis is simply not possible, and hence no conclusions drawn from it are justified.

   For a great example of this genre, see R. Dennis Potter’s article at page 71 of November’s Sunstone Magazine (”Yea, Yea, Nay, Nay: Determining What is Real”). I won’t outline the scientific response, but you can imagine it.

   Once the issue has been joined between intellectually oriented religious people and the scientific community over the philosophy of science, it rockets into the definitional stratosphere within moments. Hence, for all but the few who understand the complex philosophical terrain being surveyed, the conclusion will likely be that the scientific critique of any particular religious belief is nowhere near as solid as it first sounded. Hence, continuing to adhere to whatever belief system was being questioned becomes more justifiable.

   This is a profoundly relieving conclusion for the few faithful who have cared enough to follow the debate as far as they could. They, being trusted members of the religious community in question and often opinion leaders because they have the intellectual legs to follow things like a debate on the philosophy of science past the first sentence, convey that message back to anyone else in their community who noticed the brouhaha. “Don’t worry. We have been to the frontier and everything is fine.” These words will be warehoused within the community and pulled out whenever one of the faithful runs across these issues and is troubled by them. And this is precisely the conscious or unconscious objective of those who apologize for any faith based position using postmodern theory or any of its variants.

   I note that the word “postmodern” usually does not show up in these defenses. My father was surprised when I took his defense of Mormonism and lined it up with a typical postmodern argument in defense of a non-religious matter. He is thoroughly postmodern with regard to anything critical of Mormonism, while being a hard-headed, literalist, regarding his Mormon beliefs, and a skeptical, rational thinker regarding just about everything else. This is a pretty standard package within the well-educated corps of the literalist religious community.

   Ironically, the body of the faithful who are comforted by the postmodern critique of science (and the same is done with history) hardly pause in their pursuit of life within a worldview that posits certainty regarding many things that are well within the competence of science to critique. So, the postmodern critique of science by a few intellectuals at the fringe of a faith based social organism blocks an easily justifiable postmodern attack on that organism’s certain ideological premises, which in most cases the intellectual defenders of the faith do not accept in the certain, orthodox fashion.

   I think the mystagogery concept can be usefully employed to describe this phenomenon. Without knowing it, the dogmatically certain are defended by a few mystagogues at the fringes of their faith who are encouraged in this by literalist religious leaders simply because the defense works. Ironically, not long ago the mystagogues would have been thrown out of the religious community. Now they are encouraged, as long as they continue to profess faith and obey the leaders, because they are more useful than disruptive.

   In many cases, the mystagogues believe that a continuation of the faith community is so important that it does not matter if the faithful really “get it” or not. The literalist leaders generally believe that this is the case. So as the mystagogues summarize to the faithful how they dealt with the scientific barbarians at the border and watch eyes around them glaze over, they are satisfied – they have done their job. All is well.

   The religious leaders don’t talk about the mystagogues, and don’t want their views to be widely known. They tell the faithful that these things are “mysteries” that it is best to leave alone. But when one of the faithful is troubled by science, the mystagogues (I am badly overusing this wonderful word) are trotted out, the waters are calmed, and the new potential mystagogue is cautioned as to how this sacred, powerful knowledge is to be used. It should not be spoken of to those among the faithful who “would not understand”.

   The practical approach that eventually brought me through the morass I just described (which I later found is common to most literalist religious groups), is as follows:

   We have myriad decisions to make each day. We make these, generally speaking, on the basis of what we wish to happen in the future (our objectives) and what we perceive to be the most reliable evidence as to what is real and how cause and effect relationships work between real entities.

   Science provides that best evidence as to what is likely to be real, and how cause and effect relationships between real entities work. The continued creation of technology, medicines, etc. on the basis of scientific work supports this position.

   The opinion of the majority of the scientific community on any topic within the competence of science (including where the boundaries of scientific competence reside) is the most reliable evidence available to us of what is real, and how reality works. This is not guaranteed to be “truth”, but it is the best we have.

   Science eloquently explains the power of the social group to influence perception.

   Beliefs that are well outside the realm of science often slop back into our scientific beliefs, and because of the power of the social group to control perception, will overcome our scientific worldview. Many scientifically thinking Mormons, for example, are strikingly ignorant of the world’s population and ecological problems because of the Mormon belief that each woman should bear as many children as she is physically able and can support financially and emotionally.

   Anyone who attempts to use a tiny minority position with regard to science (like “scientific realism should not be trusted to the extent it questions religious faith”) to overturn a majority view that questions the premises of a social group of which they are a member should generally not be taken seriously because they are highly probable to be within the grip of the perception distorting influence of their group, regardless of how well qualified they may be in other ways.

   We should take the lessons of postmodernism to heart, and particularly so when considering the ideological premises of our own social groups. A great deal of empirical evidence in support of the basic postmodern principle has been produced by psychologists. See for example, Arie Kruglanski’s “The Psychology of Closedmindedness” which I am told by one of my psychology professor friends is the leading book in this area. Kruglanski says, basically, that in order to survive we must truncate the information gathering and assessment process, decide what is real, and act. And it is more important to our continued survival that we be able to trust our own judgment than be accurate in many of our observations. Moment by moment, day to day, these imperatives shape our basic epistemic habits. Add to this to the importance of the social group to human survival and prosperity, and it is not hard to understand why we would tend toward accepting and feeling certain about interpretations of reality on the basis of “social proofs” even in the face of powerfully disconfirming evidence of other kinds. This emphasizes the importance of questioning our tendency towards certainty.

   On the other hand, when our foundational beliefs are questioned, we should not be surprised that we will instinctively use whatever is at hand to defend them. The confirmation and other biases make this human trait clear.

   The best way through thicket is to rely on the best of the collective wisdom that humanity has created and will create from time to time to determine what is real. This is particularly hard to do when it comes to personal, emotional choices, and perhaps most important in those cases. For example, medical doctors are counseled not to treat their family members because their judgment is probable to be compromised in such cases. Likewise, in determining the reliability of any religious truth claim, it is likely best to rely upon the most knowledgeable outsiders available.

   In light of the best evidence available regarding the reliability of religious truth claims, we can make more clear headed choices as to which social groups (religious and other) we will associate with, and on what terms.

   Best,

   bob

   Comment # 3 by bob mccue | Mar 7, 2006 | Reply

Post a Comment