God without Religion? A Response
September 11th, 2006
I've really appreciated the posts of my friend Jared on this site, and one of his comments made me think a lot about the connection between my belief in organized religion and my belief in God. Also, I had a wonderful late-night conversation with my oldest brother a couple of weeks ago where we reopened the topic of my "de-conversion" from Mormonism, something I haven't been able to really discuss with anyone else in the family in the five years since I began this journey.
I've spent a couple of years now thinking, retracing my steps, trying to decipher my motivations for leaving Mormonism at a time in my life when doing so meant giving up so much I had hoped and dreamed of since childhood. I've come up with quite a list of "push" and "pull" factors (which I hope to detail in a later post). However, never along that path of introspection did I stop to consider how the demise of my belief in the LDS church was related to my subsequent rejection of belief in God. In the wreckage of my failed faith, I found no room for a divine purpose, and hence, no room for God.
The question Jared posed to me was:
My response to Jared is that yes, Mormonism and God were so intricately intertwined in my mind prior to 2001 that to reject one was to reject the other. I remember briefly believing that although the church was "not true", surely Jesus and God were still there, waiting in the background to receive me after my fall from organized religion (my bishop at the time counselled me not to "throw out the baby with the bathwater.") I found it nearly impossible to follow this advice. I had been so faithful, so believing, that the emotional blow of leaving Mormonism shattered my entire spiritual universe into a thousand pieces. I've spent the last five years trying to reconstruct my moral and spiritual life, all the while trying to peer back into those turbulent times to understand my true motivations for doing what I did.
I found the following post extremely helpful in articulating a central piece in this puzzle. This was posted by a user named Janey at Nauvoo.com, an informal bulletin board for Mormons. The subject of the thread is "people who study their way out of the church".
I think some people run into difficulties when religion starts making factual claims. Suddenly, the religion isn't entirely based on "faith". It's based on facts that ought to be scientifically verifiable - such as DNA or geography. If the church quit claiming that certain "facts" also needed to be taken on faith, then maybe you wouldn't see so many people studying their way out of the Church. The thinking goes that if the Church claimed the facts were true, and it turns out the facts are false, then why wouldn't some of the other claims (spiritual claims) be false too?
Not that I think anyone should leave the Church over unproven facts, but you did ask how people could have their faith shaken by facts, and I think that may be the thought process - that some people can't take what appear to be scientific facts on faith.
And one other idea. I've heard talks on testimony where the speaker claims that every true principle in the Church is inter-connected. For example, if you have a testimony of the Book of Mormon, then that means you also know Joseph Smith was a prophet because he translated the BOM, and so you also have a testimony of the priesthood restoration because Joseph Smith experienced that as well. This inter-connectedness may backfire when someone starts experiencing doubts or uncertainty. If one thing being true means everything is true, then one thing being false means everything is false.
You understand I'm not advocating that these are good ways to think. But you did ask how someone could "study" their way out of the Church, and these are a few thought processes that could plausibly lead a well-meaning person to serious problems with a testimony.
I found Janey's comment to be very helpful, as both of these reasons were central to my move toward atheism. Because my faith had been so strong in Mormonism, I had invested my entire spiritual bank account in the doctrines, teachings and leadership of the LDS church. I had no room in my beliefs for other viewpoints on the fundamental "facts" of existence. I believed that what the church taught was all literally true, both things "factual" and things spiritual. When questions on Biblical authenticity arose, I always took the literal view: Noah did indeed carry a genetic sample of every land-based creature in a boat constructed and maintained by no more than eight people. Adam and Eve were placed on this earth 6,000 years ago, prior to which no evolution or death occurred. Joseph Smith received and translated golden plates, then founded a church at the behest of God and Jesus.
I see now that my reliance on Mormonism for facts about science, history, geology, and culture began to cause big problems when I discovered conflicting explanations for these facts. When I began reading original Mormon documents from the 1800's in BYU's archives, I was confronted with a mass of historical contradiction, mostly related to Joseph Smith and the difference between the sanitized Sunday school version of church history and the view one gets from reading unedited first-hand accounts. My classes in comparative religion debunked my view of the origin of various religious traditions as explained in common church dogma. My biology professor frankly stated that evolution was an accepted fact of life, without giving any guidance as to how this would fit into the creation story as promulgated in Mormon scripture.
Suddenly the basis for my factual approach to religious dogma disintegrated. I found myself stripped of any way to use religion as a method for approaching fact. Instead, religion was now relegated the sole task of explaining the supernatural (in the literal definition of that word). The omnipotent Creator was reduced to a "God of the gaps". This approach couldn't last, not at a place like BYU, where religious practice and education are one and the same. My mind achieved peace only when it threw out the whole structure, religion and God, which in my mind at the time were inseparable.
I think I've learned that belief and experience are the same thing. My beliefs today are a direct result of my experiences, good and bad, with religion. Hopefully those beliefs have been tempered somewhat by introspection and honest seeking, but at the end of the day, we believe certain things because of our experiences in the past. I don't believe that God exists, primarily because of my experience with Mormonism. Ironically, if I had not been as strong in my LDS faith prior to college, I may have come through those years with my belief in God intact. I'm willing now to admit that there are a lot of things I don't know, and I need help, lots of it. Everything around me serves to teach me about the nature of existence. If I'm lucky enough to be granted a long life, I hope to spend that life seeking to understand myself and the part humanity plays in the universe. Will I ever find something to call God? I don't know. I can only start with who I am today, and advance with the bravery spoken of by Bertrand Russell when he wrote:
7 Comments Add your own
1. onelegged jared | September 16th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
i appreciate your explanation linking belief and experience. my experiences, my gut, inform me of the existence of a Creative power, a higher unified Spirit, a collective Consciousness which I dub "God".
The question of whether some thing exists seems Objective though, so at what point does my experience and corresponding belief become persuasive to another who has dissimilar experiences, namely You?
Another question, if the existence of a thing is an Objective question, can the belief of others in that thing render it Existent in a more literal sense?
And an aside: James, do you believe in a soul / spirit, or is Man merely the sum of his component, scientifically provable, parts?
2. Monique | September 20th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
I, too, have struggled with these questions, and found it too consuming to figure out any answers. I was raised by a woman who dragged me (and my siblings) to an Episcopal church, even though we wanted little to do with it. Church, religion, God...it all became an inescapable part of life. I was shocked when I found friends who hadn`t heard the Bible stories I was required to know inside and out.
When I left for college, I rejected anything to do with religion. I got married in that same Episcopal church (the families would accept nothing less) though I now wish I would have had a secular ceremony.
My opinions of God and religion flucuate quite a bit. My brain is too science- and fact-based to completely understand faith. After reading Dan Brown`s _Angels and Demons_ (not classic literature, by any means, but a fun read and posed some interesting questions) I have a new perspective. The way I see it, God is not a being (as I always thought as a child). "God" is: a) the name people give to their conscience, and/or b) a name for our existence. The beginning of life, Earth, the Universe, etc. is too large a concept for most of us to handle. There are lots of factors involved and many questions that might never be answered. Some people can`t deal with that, and have to give it a name.
Organized religion, ANY organized religion, I see as a grand-scale book club. A bunch of people gather around and discuss parts of the Bible, Book of Mormon, whatever. The problem is that they hold meetings at least once a week, FOR YEARS. They continue talking about the symbolism, themes, concepts, characters, whatever in these stories again and again. What if I decided that _As I Lay Dying_ is the new gospel and Addie is my "Jesus"? (Don`t get me started on Jesus.) I could talk about the book once a week for years and years, but would any good come of it? Would it move beyond being a novel into something bigger?
I`ve taken on quite a laid back attitude about religion. Let the silly people have their churches and meetings and if they find happiness in it, great for them. I can`t help but feel a little sorry for them, as it seems they don`t understand what`s really going on in the world. Or do they? Maybe they know all these things, but they stick around because it makes them feel good?
Enjoy your quest.
3. ShiningStar | September 20th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
hahahahaaaa. I am very religious and follow a single faith. I love your comments on God and all the possibilities that could ever explain Him or unravel Him. What fascinates me is how confused you all are. You all prefer poems about stumbling around and being lost. How depressing. Also, you denounce God and say religion is for the weak or for the simple or for the mighty. While the whole time you cry that there can be no organized religion for the wise you but profess your religion. How can professing not to believe in a God any less of a religion than believing in one? Religion is defined as the belief in the Supernatural or powers that explain the supernatural and then mans behavior to this power. If you profess then that science explains the supernatural are you not worshiping science and the powers that science explains. Your just not organized about it. So what really needs to happen is an organized church that worships science and defines how man should behave in the presence of the powers that science explains. Oh and one other note. Not once in any of these discussions have I heard the true purpose of God or Christ be they whatever name you choose to call them. Science or Allah or God or whatever other names there are. I am not defined by what I am...but by what I do.
4. James | September 20th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
ShiningStar, I appreciate your dissenting opinion regarding religion. I was once a very religious person as well, so I can understand your viewpoint.
Your argument about the religion of non-belief is interesting. In a sense I agree with you: my own personal philosophy (religion, if you will) does indeed depend upon much of what scientific discovery has revealed about human origins and motives. Without these "revealed truths" (or theories, anyway) I would be much more inclined toward supernatural explanations of the world.
I must disagree about your comment that being confused and lost in regards to religion is depressing. It may be depressing to you, but actually I have found my spiritual path very un-depressing: exactly the opposite in fact! My beliefs about the aloneness of humanity in fact have given me courage to face what might otherwise be overwhelming. Believing that everything depends upon us and our ability to create the world we want to live in imparts a certain optimism. I suppose it all depends upon your point of view.
5. James | September 20th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
Monique, I had to chuckle as I read your analogy comparing organized religion to a book club. I do respect those who sincerely practice their religion, but have often felt as you do about this singular devotion to a narrow set of religious literature. I am always amazed when people argue that all the basic truths of existence are contained within a set of writings derived from just one culture`s religious tradition. This strikes me as incredibly narrow given the diversity of religious writings (ancient and modern) and the powerful truths taught by literature of all types.
6. ShiningStar | September 20th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
and yet you quote poems that are sad and hopeless. you explain your thoughts at the time of your leaving your religion as a train wreck. yet at the time was not your purpose clear. your actions specific. now looking back they are a train wreck? was last year also a train wreck of your thoughts. was last month a train wreck of thoughts. how long does a train wreck place havoc on our thoughts? My purpose is by no means to entice you back to religion. in fact just the opposite. i love the journey you are experiencing. opens my eyes to the train wrecks i have avoided in my life and ones i have caused. no the grand adventure of life must be different for each different person. enjoy your journey and the rich rewards it will bring. However i am disappointed that you avoided my last question. i have never had it answered. someone who sees so clearly i would hope could help me. even i who profess religion does not know the answer completely. Who is God. not the God of spirit or God of heaven. If science is our God and we worship at its alter so be it. what are we worshiping. if God is a powerful being in place and time not our own what are we worshiping? worshiping merely means to give our time and thoughts to something. ourselves, others, supreme being. science. since we are always thinking does it not then stand to reason we must always be worshipping? devoting our thoughts. any insights would be greatly appreciated.
7. James | September 25th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
ShiningStar, to clarify about the "trainwreck" comment: for the first year or so of my questionings about religion, I struggled with a lot of feelings of anger and resentment toward the Mormon church. I think it is natural to feel somewhat cheated when the teachings you believed your whole life now appear to be false according to a new perspective. I wondered at the time if I had been intentionally misguided (which caused more anger). This emotional cycle was difficult to escape, but eventually I was able to lay to rest most of my ill feelings, recognizing that most of the religious teachers I had met were truly sincere in their beliefs, and that in fact most religious practitioners believe their faith to be justified. My ability to lay aside my anger allowed a much clearer view of my situation and the nature of religious belief.
Regarding your last question about the nature of God and worship: I too think that it is impossible not to worship, given your definition of worship as "to give our time and thoughts to something". I currently believe that thought and worship are very closely related, though not because our thoughts of God are directed at something outside ourselves. Rather, I believe that our thoughts constitute God--that conscious thought, abstract creativity, which appears to be the domain solely of humankind in our world--this constitutes God. To think is to worship (devote) ourselves to the method of conscious thought. Our ability to think at all, is God itself. If we wish to understand God, we must understand our own minds, our way of thinking, and how it is possible (if at all) to think about your mind when it is your mind that`s doing the thinking.
I don`t have a lot of answers. People have pondered these questions for thousands of years; I find insight in reading their words, but most of all, in trying to observe my mind`s workings objectively (again, if such a thing is even possible). I cannot yet conceive of a force outside of my own mind that deserves to be called God. Science, for instance, only exists insofar as its workings can be regularly organized by my rational mind.
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