Hello fellow Less Wrongians!
Given your comments on my organizing communities series, I get the feeling that many of you are wondering why:
- a returned Mormon missionary would even come to Less Wrong in the first place.
- why I find religion plausible at all
- why I would identify with Mormonism in particular (several people have used the word 'cult')
I'm happy to hold discussions about any of these questions or related ones. However, I haven't responded to many comments on the main series of posts because:
- they could eat up each thread
- the threads aren't supposed to be about Mormonism. They're supposed to be about about making a movement work effectively. But being a missionary is where I got my experience.
I wanted to created this thread as a center for questions you might have about my faith. This is not an attempt to preach -- I would be perfectly happy not having a discussion purely about religion at all. But since there seem to be many comments, well, fire away.
Some basic facts: I am a student at Stanford. I am 22. I converted to Mormonism when I was 19. I used to be atheist/agnostic. I am very much a believer, not just in it for the social perks.
Well, as it is written, AMA (= Ask Me Anything)
(Thanks Kevin for the suggestion.)
Edit: Wow, there are a lot of comments. This has been a helpful chance to clarify my thinking. I hope you have learned something useful -- perhaps using the question is 'Is there anything surprising here that he said?'.
Edit 2: Here are some answers to repeated questions. Again, this really helped me distill and clarify myself and I've enjoyed the discussion.
Why do you believe? It's a combination of
- "wow, this seems to be a really functional community in producing good people."
- "wow, these doctrines are really amazing."[1]
- personal spiritual experiences (experiences-which-I-interpret as spiritual if you prefer) and other positive experiences from doing church things, like emotional growth from going on a mission.
I would estimate that before this all happened, my odds ratio was about 2000:1, and now it's about 1:10. I would ballpark the odds ratios of each of the above 3 events as ~12.5:1, ~25:1, and ~62.5:1. (I was considering likelihood but didn't think in that precise of terms at the time, so any concretization is open to charges of ex post facto. And these are still ballparks.)
There are lots of arguments against Mormonism on factual and historical grounds; there are also counterarguments which I feel pretty much balance them out. (The feeling of balancing each other out was contemporaneous.)
What things could make you consider leaving the faith?
- Undermining any of the above: negative experiences from doing church things, better arguments against Mormonism, the church repudiating the doctrines I love, experiencing it as much less functional, etc.
Why do you think your conversion story is disappointing to many of us?
Several possible reasons:
- You might have been looking for a more rationalist narrative.
- Your priors are like (say) 100,000:1 on this. So maybe something I say sounds plausible (1:2). But you're still at 50,000:1 and extremely skeptical.
- It took a lot of experiences and arguments to persuade me; this is just the tip of the iceberg.
- A lot of my conversion was experiential. An analogy would be that I ate a certain fruit which others haven't. We are discussing descriptions of the fruit; the only way to be truly convinced (or unconvinced) would be to taste it. [2]
[1] Specifically:
- I felt the doctrines were coherent both with my experience of the world -- for example, how faith is introduced as an experiment and described empirically.
- I felt they offered solutions to central human problems like the feeling of aloneness; the sometimes-destructive yet still necessary nature of guilt.
- Finally, certain doctrines, like the "weeping God of Mormonism" or deification, struck me with a reaction which I can only describe as "it tasted good." I felt something like, "if there is a God, it just makes sense he would be this.
This is possibly the best question in the thread. Thank you.
All of my anticipations seem to be driven by stuff. I expect stuff to happen as I, or other people, do, or don't do, things.
When I pray, I expect to feel a greater sense of clarity in my thoughts. I will expect to occasionally feel a great sense of inner peace. This feeling has been described as “A small voice that pierces to the very soul.” “It causes the heart to burn.” “Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness.”
As I follow basic Church lifestyle and standards, such as reading the scriptures daily, praying often, attending church and serving therein, avoiding alcohol tobacco, etc, waiting until marriage for sex, and so forth, I expect to develop “Christlike attributes.” I expect to become more patient and loving; I expect to be able to keep clean thoughts and to be humility. I expect to develop related social skills: projecting love through genuine enthusiasm about other people. I expect to be able to maintain a vision of the future motivated by my faith that translates into happiness and an optimistic attitude.
I expect that these things will operate not only in me but in others. I expected that these things would happen to the people I taught in India, for example. I expect to marry another Latter-day Saint; if she continues faithful, I expect these things will similarly help my future wife. I expect that doing these things will help me to have a happy, successful family.
I anticipate that others’ actions not in harmony with these principles will make them less happy in the medium-to-long run (and sometimes the short run). For example, when my fraternity brothers go and watch their porn, I anticipate that they will slowly extinguish their consciences and find difficulty taking joy in the simple, innocent pleasures of life. I anticipate them having greater difficulties having successful relationships and marriages.
I could go on in this vein, but I think that should be enough.
My conclusion: You're here to answer questions, not to debate. But at some point I'd enjoy talking with you about your beliefs with respect to Bayes' Theorem, and about breaking "Mormonism" into multiple hypotheses.