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I’m a Stage 4 person and I’m trying to understand Stage 5 to see if I can make it work for me. I’ve studied a bit on the Stages of Faith and I’ve created an analogy that expresses my understanding of it. Here is how a person at each of Stages 3-6 would answer a math question: Question: What is the cosine of 60 degrees?
Stage 3 answer: It’s one-half because my teacher said so.
Stage 4 answer: It’s one-half because a 30-60-90 triangle has sides with ratios 1:SQRT 3:2, and the ratio of the length of the adjacent leg to the length of the hypotenuse for the 60 degree angle is one-half.
Stage 5 answer: The cosine of 60 degrees is mysterious, paradoxical, and unknowable. To understand the triangle, we have to look beyond it. We can extract truth from the mysteries and paradoxes of triangles, but this truth is complex and individualistic because there is nothing about triangles that is true for everyone, and ultimately, no one can say anything for sure about triangles. Who can understand what the cosine of 60 degrees is?
Stage 6 answer: It doesn’t matter what the cosine of 60 degrees is because there is injustice that needs to be fought and suffering that needs to be relieved.
As a Stage 4 person, I’m trying to understand Stages 5 and 6. Stage 5 is particularly nonsensical to me, and the esoteric phrases that people use to describe it are far beyond my experience and comprehension- phrases like “finding truth in paradox” and “looking beyond the symbol” and “the sacrament of defeat.” Perhaps Fowler’s use of those kinds of phrases is more poetic than scientific. At the very least, they don’t correspond to anything in my personal experience.
To me, there either is an afterlife or there isn’t. There either is a God or there isn’t. But in the Stage 5 paradigm, one person can say that there is a God and an afterlife, and another can say that there is no God and no afterlife, and both people are completely correct. That’s utterly absurd to me.
The idea that religious truth is relative and individualistic is hard for me to accept because the natural world doesn’t work that way: the laws of physics are the same for everyone. That was Newton’s profound insight the day that he was “occasioned by the fall of an apple:” the force that made the apple fall was the same force that held the moon in place, and the laws of physics that govern the motion of celestial objects were the same as the laws that governed objects on earth. The speed of light is the same for everyone. An atom with 26 protons is always an iron atom, no matter who you are or what your life experiences are. If one person says that light travels at 3×10^8 m/s and another says that it travels at 7×10^9 m/s, they can’t both be right. And so I find it hard to believe that two people who make incompatible claims about the nature of God and the afterlife can both be right.
And the idea that truth is ultimately unknowable is at odds with our experience in science: there are truths about the natural world that we can know to a high degree of accuracy. We know the speed of light to nine significant figures (a very high degree of accuracy) and the speed of light is always the same for everyone. So if I can know the speed of light to nine significant figures and the speed of light is always the same for everyone, then why is it that religious truth is ultimately unknowable and is different for everyone?
It’s bizarre to me that what is certainly true in Stages 3 becomes certainly false in Stage 4, then becomes unknowable in Stage 5 and irrelevant in Stage 6.
I’m trying to see if I can make Stage 5 work for me, but the irrationality and nonsensicalness of it makes my blood boil. Perhaps I don’t understand it very well, and perhaps I can’t understand it unless I experience it. I want to find Truth with a capital “T,” but Stage 5 seems to assert that there is no such thing as Truth with a capital “T,” or if there is, it is unknowable. I’m a physics major in college, and I love the search for truth, which is what science is. I like to solve problems and answer questions. So it’s hard for me to buy into the idea that God is an unsolvable mystery and that religious truths are unknowable. I don’t like this “second naiveté” where one finds exhilaration in the concession that he will never know the answers to the most important questions. I like the idea that we can find truth by using our best tools and talents; I’m much less comfortable with the idea of worshipping a God who makes himself and his works unknowable.
It doesn’t seem like Stage 5 NOMs spent too much time worrying about what their worldview is. Actually, it doesn’t even seem that they have a definitive worldview at all. What is important to the Stage 5 person is their relationships with other people. But if there is an afterlife, it doesn’t seem that human relationships on earth have any power to improve our status in the afterlife.
Some people are able to go from Stage 3 directly to Stage 5. Perhaps I am not one of those people. Perhaps I will have to become an atheist for a few years (which seems to me to be the most plausible reality right now) and come to Stage 5 when I realize the limits of logic and grow tired of such a “flat” view of the world, as Fowler’s model suggests.
I don’t have time enough to respond well, but I’ll just say that, to me, the definition of the stages and the analogy are fundamentally flawed. That’s just not how I see it. I’ll try to get back to a much better answer when I have more time.
I think every paradigm has natural limits beyond which it ceases to make sense, including Fowler’s stages. Categorizing development is innately reductionist so elaborating on the paradigm is going to create outlandish distortions in short order. In other words, keep it simple.
Stage 1: Where am I? Maybe if I watch those people, I can figure out where we are and why we are here.
Stage 2: Hmm. Corners and walls. I must be in a box. (To parent) “Excuse me, is this a box?” (To child) “Absolutely, and you must never scale the walls of the box or poke your head out through the top. Outside the box is a dangerous place.”
Stage 3: This box is the world. Everything good and true in the world is right here in my box. Those people who don’t appreciate this box just need to be taught the goodness of the box and feel the spirit of the life inside. It’s easy to live within the safety of the box.
Stage 4: (after scaling the walls and poking his head outside the box) What the hell? There’s a whole world outside this stupid box. This box isn’t good and true. It’s a sham of an existence. Why, there are a million boxes to choose from. How could I or anyone even know which box is good? All we know is what we’ve been taught. Ugh. I hate my old box.
Stage 5: You know, even if that box isn’t the only good and true existence as I once thought, even if there is more outside the box that is worth investigating, there were beautiful aspects of the box that brought me a level of peace, joy, meaning and understanding. If I’d never discovered the limits of the box, I might never have discovered life outside the box. The box has its good points and many of the other boxes share common attributes. Perhaps there are universal truths I can learn inside this box with which I am already intimately familiar.
Stage 6: If I can inspire others to scale the walls and glimpse outside their boxes, they might realize what I realized, see that we are all brothers, boxes notwithstanding. Perhaps then, we can tear down some unnecessary walls, expand the corners, and do some real good. We might even find that the world isn’t even square. (smiles mysteriously)
That’s my take on Fowler anyway…
I understand in part where you are coming from. I am not in college but do a lot of self learning and 1st hand experience with cosmology and Neuro science for the past 2 years. As I try to understand the worid around me and how I and others interpret it. I love science, in as much as science can prove something I except and embrace it. For everything else that science hasn’t proven accept faith in things which I hope are true that I see a positive effect on the world and and those around me.
I do not place faith in things that have shown to be harmful phyisiclly and emotionally or where science proven something else. Apparently neither did BY.
We differ very much with Christendom in regard to the sciences of religion. Our religion embraces all truth and every fact in existence, no matter whether in heaven, earth, or hell. A fact is a fact, all truth issues forth from the Fountain of truth, and the sciences are facts as far as men have proved them. In talking to a gentleman not long ago, I said, “The Lord is one of the most scientific men that ever lived; you have no idea of the knowledge that he has with regard to the sciences. If you did but know it, every truth that you and all men have acquired a knowledge of through study and research, has come from him—he is the fountain whence all truth and wisdom flow; he is the fountain of all knowledge, and of every true principle that exists in heaven or on earth.” The gentleman said that such ideas conflicted with his traditions; but said he, “I like to hear such talk and such principles taught, for we do know, from scientific research and investigation, that certain facts exist in nature which those called Christians discard or throw away; they do not want anything to do with them; they say this has nothing to do with religion; but you talk very different to this.”. Journal of discourses 14:117
With regard to the mathematical thinking. That is left brain hemisphere thinking(serial processing). The right brain interprets things in a more religious like interpretation because it process (parallel processing). They are 2 halfs of a brain that are I fact not connected and unpretentious the same things differently. See TedTalks : Brave Neuro world “Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight” for a much better explanation. Basically our brain each halves of the brain interpret the same thing differently and both are valid. I reach stage 5 and 6 by using both the right and left part of the brain to come to a understanding of things. They will never agree with each other and thats ok. Both are valid and both make up my whole brain. I don’t let either of them drive me crazy. Just combine what each says into a whole.
You are correct IM, there either is an afterlife or there isn’t. Unfortunately, I challenge you to prove or disprove the existence of an afterlife. I do not believe it can be done. I would caution you not to disbelieve anything that you can’t prove. While this may do very well for you in physics, it also assumes that anything that you can’t prove doesn’t exist and by extension that the universe revolves around your ability to figure it out. (ie my box is limited to my understanding now or in the future, nothing exists beyond my box.)
Religious truth is like poetry or art. Can you imagine arguing that one poem or one painting is true to the exclusion of all others? Or that because the poem or painting depicts a physical impossibility, it is false and should be destroyed lest it deceive someone else? Art and Poetry is true in that it is useful – it stirs our souls and brings us beauty, meaning, and wonder. (True like a ham sandwich)
In the end – I do not know what is true in the ultimate sense. I am trying to live my life in meaningful ways with people who see things differently than I do. This
mattersto me. People matter even if they live and die believing things that aren’t quite true in the “completely accurate” sense. Perhaps this puts me firmly in the following category: InquiringMind wrote:What is important to the Stage 5 person is their relationships with other people. But if there is an afterlife, it doesn’t seem that human relationships on earth have any power to improve our status in the afterlife.
I am also most interested in what you are basing that last sentence on? Mainstream Christians believe that our salvation is based on our relationship with Christ. Mormons believe that our potential to become Gods is based upon our relationship to the Father (parent/child relationship). Also Mormons believe that we can’t be exalted alone but need a companion and then we need to be tied back to our ancestry and forward to our posterity. Then there is the whole Zion stuff which seems to be about relationships with people that we aren’t even in our family. If one’s relationships do not determine one’s status in the afterlife, what is one’s status in the afterlife based on? From my perspective, we all need each other, now and in the hereafter.
M&G is wonderful in her assessment. As an out-of-the-box kind of guy, I realize that in teaching our priesthood quorum regularly, this is what I do — I encourage people to go outside the box and find new truths, to look at what they already believe in new ways, without tearing down anything in a way that is offensive to them. Roy said half of what I was going to say — we don’t know for sure if there is an afterlife.
To deal with uncertainty, use the min-max regret approach (a decision-making technique). This technique has you look at the alternatives in front of you. Then you determine the “cost” of being wrong for each alternative. These costs are called Maximum Regrets. Then, you pick the alternative with the smallest Maximum Regret.
So, in this instance, this is how it could work:
Alternative 1: Believe in an afterlife, do the Church program: If you are wrong, you are out several hundred thousand in tithing, and several man hours.
Alternative 2: Believe in no afterlife. If you are wrong, then you might find yourself disadvantaged at judgment day, assuming there is one, and may have denied yourselves opportunities to serve others in extraordinary ways.
In this case, the smallest regret is found in believing in the afterlife. The consequences of being wrong are smaller compared to not believing in it, when you should.
It’s kind of a cautionary way of living your life, but it’s one that I use when facing conditions of uncertainty. It’s been a help to indecisive people or people who are afraid of the future.
M&G, I like the box analogy. My trouble with Stage 5 was that it didn’t seem to believe that there were any universal truths that were true for everyone, but it seems that Stage 5 is open to that possibility. I’m looking for THE box, the Box of Universal Truth. But perhaps THE box doesn’t exist, and there are only millions of little boxes with truths and falsehoods. Roy, I’m careful with the word “proof.” “Proof” is for mathematicians and lawyers; scientists prefer to think in terms of evidence. Any thoughtful atheist knows that it is impossible to prove that there is no God and no afterlife, but good evidence can be presented to support the case that human consciousness ends at the death of the brain. And I’m cautious about believing things for which there is simply no evidence. For example, if I were to start telling people that there were leprechauns in the forest just outside of town, I wouldn’t expect anyone to believe me because there is no good evidence that leprechauns exist. And we don’t have any more evidence for the existence of an afterlife than we do for the existence of leprechauns, so I’m not sure of the grounds on which I can believe in the existence of an afterlife, but not in the existence of leprechauns. I like the evidence-based approach to beliefs about God and the afterlife, because in the past I’ve held some overly-optimistic beliefs about God and the Church that I had no evidence to support and that turned out to be wrong.
Quote:I am also most interested in what you are basing that last sentence on?
I was talking about our relationships with other humans, not necessarily our relationship with any divine beings. I meant that I don’t think we’ll get into the hottest social club in the afterlife because we made the right connections here, or be raised to a higher status with greater authority over others in the afterlife because we knew the right people here. If there is an afterlife, it seems reasonable to believe that we’d take our relationships there, but I don’t think it would give us any advantages over others, because that would put people who didn’t live long enough to form such relationships at a disadvantage.
SD, what you’ve described in your min-max regret technique is similar to Pascal’s Wager, which is this: If the existence of God is uncertain, it makes sense to believe in God and live a pious life, because a person has everything to gain and little to lose by believing in God and living a pious life. Check out the wikipedia article for a more in-depth treatment. I might eventually end up taking Pascal’s Wager, but I’m not sure. One difficulty with it is that it will do little good to believe in and serve the wrong God: if the one true religion actually turns out to be Sikhism (a religion with about 30 million members) I may or may not receive any brownie points from the God of Sikhism for being a devout Mormon or Christian or general do-gooder in the community. I’d not only be taking the wager that God and the afterlife existed, but that I’d picked the right way to worship the right God, and that’s a lower probability.
People don’t separate the existence of God and the existence of an afterlife; there could be a God but no afterlife, and there could be an afterlife but no God.
Quote:I’m looking for THE box, the Box of Universal Truth. But perhaps THE box doesn’t exist, and there are only millions of little boxes with truths and falsehoods.
I believe in Universal Truth. I just don’t believe we see directly and clearly enough to comprehend it, except for the general outlines of fundamental principles.
faith, hope, charity, with the greatest being charity – faith, repentance, baptism, holy ghost, enduring to the end (as defined in my signature line) – love as the foundation of all – immortality – eternal progression
It isn’t more complicated than that, for me.
The math analogy is super nerdy. I love it! As far as the paradox thing goes…. you’ll get used to it.
😆 Coming from a physics background you’ve probably been exposed to all sorts of paradox, like how light can act as both a wave and a particle. Or pick pretty much any concept from quantum mechanics. I won’t pretend to understand that stuff. It is completely counter-intuitive. But all the observations that we have been able to make seem to say that that’s simply how the universe is.
I’ll agree with you that it is absurd to think that God can both exist and not exist at the same time. (Sounds a little like Schrodinger’s cat to me). There are some things that are binary; like the gold plates either physically existed or didn’t. When it comes to more metaphysical things like the nature of God though… I think it is very possible for contradicting view points to be equally correct; every one is trying to describe an experience with the divine that they don’t fully understand themselves, and each individual will bring out different qualities.
Quote:I believe in Universal Truth. I just don’t believe we see directly and clearly enough to comprehend it, except for the general outlines of fundamental principles.
I like what Ray had to say on this one. I think that about covers it.IM, Lots of little boxes, each with some truth, most riddled with error, is what I see. But most of the time, I can also see the truths I find in other boxes within my own box, sometimes it just takes a more careful study of my own box to see the similarities.
On another board, an interesting reply to a topic was posted by Kevin Christensen which I found relevant to the idea of truth in many boxes.
Someone raised a question about the “only true and living” characterization in D&C 1:30 where it’s written, “… and to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness, the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord,”.
Kevin wrote this:
Quote:I presented on this at Sunstone years ago, and periodically offer my reading here.
the word “only” is modified by “with which I the Lord am well pleased.” The distinction that makes for this church as the only well pleasing one
is not exclusive truth(“I the Lord am willing make these things known unto all flesh”, D&C 1:34), nor exclusive revelation (Besides revealing himself to Joseph Smith (D&C 1:17), he also gave commandments to unspecified “others that they should proclaim these things to the world” (D&C 1:18). D&C 1 does not even suggest that we have all truth, since it promises “knowledge from time to time” (D&C 1:28), and it expressly says our leaders that “inasmuch as they erred it might be may known,” and “inasmuch as they sinned they might repent.” I looked all through the Bible at the uses of both “true” and “living” and the occasional paired use. Things like true vine, living bread, true bread, truth and life, lving waters, “true God, living God” “tree of life” “living way” and “living stones” etc. In context these passages refer to revelation, priesthood, ordinances and covenants, and center on Temple. What I found is that the context of the Biblical passages match the themes of D&C 1 verse for verse, point for point. I think “true and living” functions as a merism that together express themes of D&C 1 as a coherent whole.
And it turns out that revelation (Including the Book of Mormon, and the priesthood, ordinances, and covenants and temple) are exactly what in actual practice distinguishes the LDS faith from others, not in exclusive terms, but in relative well pleasing terms. It is a far more tolerant and robust model than something like exclusive truth.
For the actual source of the common misreading, see stage 1 and 2 of the Perry Scheme for Cognitive and Ethical Growth.
FWIW
Kevin Christensen
Bethel Park, PA
Thought you might find that interesting.
Welcome, I am a physics student as well, and I think there are useful parallels to be made with studying physics and spirituality. With experimental physics nothing is ever definitive, but the field has agreed on certain standards before something can be accepted as truth. The problem with applying similar standards to spirituality is duplicating the experimental conditions, which are to variable from person to person. However, looking at people across the world and surveying world religions has come up with many commonalities.
This is off the top of my head from my experience, so take it as an example.
There is a god, he loves people, he hears prayers and answers them. 68% (1 sigma)
There is a god 95% (2 sigma)
There is something in life greater than the individual 99.7% (3 sigma)
It can also be applied to behavior:
You should obey the 10 commandments 1 sigma
You should treat others how you want to be treated 2 sigma
You should consider the results of your actions on others 3 sigma
Because of the innate variables with the experimental conditions, you can’t expect the same certainty levels you do in physics, you have to look to other behavioral sciences for comparison (psychology etc.). Also, keep in mind that if you gave a classroom full of 6th graders a protractor and a ruler and told them to show what the cosine of 60 degrees is, you wouldn’t get a high level of certainty either.
You can also use Santa Clause as an analogy. I think you could make it fit. I’m not saying it facetiously at all.
There is actually a lot of “truth” to be found in the symbolism of Santa Clause and you progress through the stages of believing blindly, to getting suspicious, to finding out he isn’t real, to realizing the symbol is real, to understanding the value of the symbol, to doing an altruistic act for your children in the name of the symbol. Ultimately the ideal would essentially be to “become” Santa – where you are a truly unconditionally loving person who gives without expectation of receiving.
Something like that…
InquiringMind wrote:I like the evidence-based approach to beliefs about God and the afterlife, because in the past I’ve held some overly-optimistic beliefs about God and the Church that I had no evidence to support and that turned out to be wrong.
I understand. I have been in a similar place and I completely understand where that conclusion comes from. That might be the best approach for you and give you much more peace, comfort, and clarity than the rationales of “God works in mysterious ways,” and “Everything happens for a purpose” phrases that have likewise given me considerable grief.I believe that I have landed on a side of hope. There is something inside of me that gravitates to this position of hope. I am allowing a part of myself to hope for some things that I don’t know to be true/untrue and by so doing I believe that I am meeting that internal need of hope. Perhaps for you – the needs of logic, closure, and internal world view consistency are greater and more fundamental than hope. That is completely normal and understandable.
Since I am meeting an internal need with hope – I allow myself to view subjective evidence of the things I hope for as a form of evidence while also understanding that such evidence is never conclusive. It merely holds the door open to the possibility and allows me to continue to hope.
It is ok if we see things differently on that point.
I just first want to say InquiringMind I appreciate your energy and your questions here. It makes us think. I love to think! 
InquiringMind wrote:I’m a Stage 4 person and I’m trying to understand Stage 5 to see if I can make it work for me.
While I absolutely had the same type of thoughts when I first learned of Fowler, I’ve learned that you can’t simply will yourself to jump stages – you need to live and experience where you are. That being said I do think it is possible to accelerate personal growth, but like anything it takes a LOT of study, contemplation, application to personal experience, etc. I highly applaud the desire to “reach stage 5” for example, I have that desire myself – but it is looking for increased compatibility with the religious world I live in, as a secondary to personal growth for my own individual benefit.
I also like the analogy made with art. Along that line I feel the need so split my world: there is the 1) physical, in which you can know truth absolutely and without question. Math and science fall into this category, and this is why your mathmatical analogy doesn’t add up well against Fowler. Some things can be known absolutely, YES. Other things cannot. 2) the spiritual/personal realm is not so easily boiled down to universal “truth.” How do you put a number on subjective experiences? That is one of the grand errors of religion in my perspective, where it helps people think they “know” spiritual things in the same way that physical things can be known. “Equal but separate” comes to mind as valid in this case when it was NOT for civil rights.
InquiringMind wrote:…in the Stage 5 paradigm, one person can say that there is a God and an afterlife, and another can say that there is no God and no afterlife, and both people are completely correct. That’s utterly absurd to me.
I would say it obviously depends on the individual definitions — and some things simply cannot be proven. If two people are trying to prove/disprove completely different ideas, they can both be correct/wrong at the same time.
InquiringMind wrote:The idea that religious truth is relative and individualistic is hard for me to accept because the natural world doesn’t work that way: the laws of physics are the same for everyone.
This should make more sense to you with my above comments. I completely agree that physics are the same for everyone, but spiritual truth does not reside in the “natural” world as defined by physics. If subjective experience could be rated as valid and invalid then art and nature would have no beauty because its aesthetic worth could be clearly numbered.InquiringMind wrote:I’m much less comfortable with the idea of worshipping a God who makes himself and his works unknowable.
My perspective is that God does reveal “himself” and his works if we but open our eyes to see. Look at science as an inspired method. All truth is of God. Some things we can’t know, but there is much we CAN. My Mormonism tells me to acquire as much truth an learning as humanly possible, and by doing so I can only get closer to God. The purpose of the process is to BECOME something more — more compassionate, more knowing… more capable of elevating mankind as a whole. Learning to work as a whole. This is the divine purpose.
InquiringMind wrote:Stage 5 answer: The
cosine of 60 degrees is mysterious, paradoxical, and unknowable. To understand the triangle, we have to look beyond it.We can extract truth from the mysteries and paradoxes of triangles, but this truth is complex and individualistic because there is nothing about triangles that is true for everyone, and ultimately, no one can say anything for sure about triangles. As a Stage 4 person, I’m trying to understand Stages 5 and 6.
Stage 5 is particularly nonsensical to me, and the esoteric phrases that people use to describe it are far beyond my experience and comprehension– phrases like “finding truth in paradox” and “looking beyond the symbol” and “the sacrament of defeat.” Perhaps Fowler’s use of those kinds of phrases is more poetic than scientific. To me, there either is an afterlife or there isn’t.There either is a God or there isn’t. But in the Stage 5 paradigm, one person can say that there is a God and an afterlife, and another can say that there is no God and no afterlife, and both people are completely correct. That’s utterly absurd to me.
I haven’t read about the stages of faith in detail yet but personally I think math, Santa Claus, leprechauns, etc. are all bad analogies for this model because in those cases there actually is one right answer that everyone should realistically be expected to agree with eventually. However, with many questions people care about that are in the category of politics, religion, philosophy, history, psychology and other social sciences, etc. rather than hard science there really is no single specific answer that everyone should realistically be expected to agree with because people can and often do look at the same evidence or lack of evidence and interpret it completely differently in these cases.
For example, some people will hear reports of contact or communication with spirits or out-of-body experiences and take it at face value and readily interpret this as acceptable evidence (for them) of an afterlife of some kind while extreme skeptics will insist it has to be only in their mind or fabricated lies because it doesn’t match what they already expect to find. My take on this is that if someone is comfortable with guessing the answer without expecting conclusive proof and they can live with the results even if they are wrong I don’t see the harm in letting them believe whatever they want to in most cases. I see the stages of faith being more or less like a model of the typical process of growing up because it usually involves increasing levels of awareness and understanding of the world around you and sometimes this is painful to the point that you would rather just ignore or deny some of what you see and understand to try to maintain your current state that you are already comfortable with.
One problem I have with the “Stages of Faith” model is that it makes it sound like everyone should automatically have some faith but I think you could be an atheist without much use for pure faith and still evolve to a higher level of awareness and understanding similar to these stages. To me a militant atheist that thinks everyone should believe the same thing they do and gets upset and impatient when they don’t represents Stage 4 thinking but an atheist that calms down and realizes that it’s not the end of the world if other people continue to believe in God and maybe it will make some of them feel better than any alternatives has moved on to more of a Stage 5 type of mindset which I think is generally a good thing.
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