The Euthyphro dilemma

"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" In other words, does righteousness exist outside of God or does God define what it is?

The Mormon answer has to be that righteousness predates God because Mormons believe that he learned to be righteous while living as a man. God became God heaven knows how long ago and continues to acquire glory and intelligence to this day.

What this means for most Christians is that Mormons are heretical impostors who obviously must deny God's eternal, unchanging status, his omnipotence (how can God be the all-powerful GOD if he is a son of yet another god, and the exact number of gods out there is completely unknown? which god is the most powerful in the end?), his omniscience (does God really know everything if he's just another little scholar in a sort of divinity school?), and his omnipresence (God has a physical body, remember?)

What this means to most Mormons is that they too will one day be gods if they "endure to the end" by continuing to keep the commandments as laid out by the general authorities.

Accepting a god who must abide certain standards of righteousness means God can be measured against those standards, all we have to do is learn them. What Mormons like to ignore is that God very often fails to live up to very basic standards of righteousness. So not only do Mormons end up worshiping a minor god (while Christians claim to worship THE God), they also find themselves with a rebellious god who loves breaking the rules.

The situation is no more tidy for Christians who maintain that God defines and emanates righteousness. The problem here is that righteousness becomes relative - relative to whatever kind of character God is. And what if he's actually evil? What evidence do we have that he's not twisted and malicious?

2014 Brodie Awards

If you're not familiar with the Brodie Awards, it's time you get yourself acquainted. Enjoy.

Johnny Rotten's thrown overboard

John Dehlin didn't make it. His court of love has sentenced him to spiritual death. He's been amputated from the body of Christ. He's finished. An apostate. Illegitimate.

If only he had doubted his doubts harder. He succumbed to the wiles of the Devil. He became prideful. He waved his dick in God's face and got fucked. Sorry, John, but because of you so many of us now have full faith in everything again.

God is great, Jesus saves, Mary was a chosen vessel, Joseph was a chosen instrument, Tommy's got the direct connection, in the holy name of Unctuous Josh, amen!

Gay Mormon Husbands on TV

The Daily Beast had a good article the other day questioning the ethics of a new reality TV show featuring gay men married to straight women. Read it up. The brief summary of homosexuality in Mormonism is worth it.

Tetris

Dear Dieter,

Thanks for reading my blog and considering my doubts. I hope I've made it clear that I made a lot of effort to doubt each and every one of my doubts as best I could for as long as I could. My years of living the Mormon life were perhaps not unlike a game of Tetris. It was so easy to keep the board clear of obstacles at first. I got really efficient at playing the game the way the Church had taught me to. I knew all the answers. I knew how the Gospel worked. I knew I was in the right place. Then things started speeding up. I was learning more and more interesting things about the world. Education and experience opened floodgates of sorts and before I knew what was going on I found myself with an avalanche of pieces to fit together. I worked really hard at it but I inevitably ended up at that point in the game where your only hope of staying in the game is to get a long piece so you can eliminate four full rows and gain a little breathing room. In that moment, when the game board is piled up to the top with pieces, all you have is prayer.

So I prayed. It was the last time in my life that I prayed sincerely (I prayed once more after that). I saw the end coming and wanted to avoid it if at all possible - "let this cup pass from me" and all that. I mentally prepared to ask Heavenly Father for a real witness, to ask God to reveal Himself even if He weren't Mormon at all. I was open to any god even though in my mind the Mormon one was clearly the most plausible. And when I prayed I stayed on my knees and listened. I prayed again and again. I told Heaven Father where I was at and what was going on, even though He already knew it all, and I asked for something real, something that would keep me in the game. At the very least I needed that long piece, but I would have loved to have seen the game board miraculously clear so I could start totally afresh. A loving, all-powerful father would, I assumed, do something like that.

I got nothing all night. Not a whisper, not a burning, not an epiphany, not a sign. Nothing. I realized what I had feared was true: I had been talking to the ceiling my whole life, to bare and earless walls, to the wind, to a Monster in the clouds, a complete fantasy. There was no personal god on the receiving end of my prayers.

I climbed in bed and contemplated what this meant for me. Was I now going to start smoking? No, of course not, smoking's idiotic, and besides the Word of Wisdom still made plenty of sense. Was I going to start stealing and taking as much advantage of others as possible? No, everyone hates those people. Was I going to start having sex with prostitutes? No, but the thought of having sex with someone I admired and cared for sounded pretty reasonable. Was I going to start taking the Lord's name in vain? No, I wouldn't want to offend those who believe, besides who's "the Lord" anyway? Why should I ever pay him lip service again in any form?

That was the end for me, Dieter. No more believing after that. I've never relapsed. Not believing has never been difficult probably because everything started fitting together without me turning it into a game of Tetris. No pile ups ever. Even before learning about Joseph Smith's scryer years, the evolution of his conversion story, the various sources he used in creating The Book of Mormon, the inconsistencies in his "restoration" of the Priesthood, his affairs, his schemes, his opportunism, his plagiarism of the Freemasons, his ambitions to military glory and world rule. My theory after that last prayer was that Joseph was both very intelligent and very delusional. I assumed he had had all of those visions but they were all born of fantasy. I still believed then that Joseph had wanted to do right by God and do good in the world. I didn't realize at the time that there were so many other doubts to doubt.

Dieter, don't think for a moment that I and others like me didn't doubt our doubts. The very first thing we do with doubts is doubt them.

Thanks again for reading.

My testimony moments

I experienced the testimony-making moments of Mormonism. I felt the burning, I felt the tingles, I felt the rush, I cried the tears, I found the relief, I found my answers, I was overcome with love, I was truly converted to the Jesus and his One True Church. At least I was pretty sure.

The fact is it was always a little hard to tell what was going on in those moments. Was I sweating profusely because I feeling the Spirit or because I was standing in front of a large crowd of judgmental peers? Was my heart racing because I was in tune with the Spirit or because I was embarrassed that the only thing I could think to say were those same pronouncements everyone else has said when they've stood to bear their testimony? Was the relief I felt after prayer due to the Spirit  offering me celestial support or was it due to not hearing God tell me 'no'? (Hearing nothing is better than hearing 'no'!) When I prayed to feel God's love, did I feel it finally descend upon me or was I overwhelmed from asking?

I really really wanted to have these moments. I wanted to have my conversion story. I needed one to be an effective missionary. More importantly, I wanted to be a true convert. My point here is that my interpretive approach involved a whole lot of DESIRE.

Conditioning EXPECTATIONS also played heavily into my interpretations of testimony moments. I was taught that the Spirit communicates differently for everyone and that essentially anything could count. Once someone told me that they had experienced a sensation similar to an orgasm while praying and wanted to know if that was the Holy Ghost telling him the Book of Mormon was true. My companion wasn't so sure but I said it absolutely was an answer. The thing is that essentially any emotional response should be considered an answer in the affirmative by most Mormons' standard.

I however started to consider my answers a little more carefully. Were the emotions I felt coming from psychological stress? Were they generated within myself or did they feel like they had come from outside my body? Was what I had felt more than mere emotion? Was another personage, spirit, or presence involved, or was it all just me? Why was it the answers always felt so vague? Does God want me to be sure but not too sure? Were they really answers or did I make them answers? How would I have viewed those experiences had I not felt any cultural pressure?

Then again, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I needed more faith. Maybe God was answering my prayers and I wasn't recognizing them. Of all the doubts I had, the strongest were about myself.