Repudiating Old Beliefs

Yep. It took years to build, and might take years to rebuild. Stage 5 is so worth it, though.

I had a lot of thoughts as I was reading this post, but then I realized everything could be summarized by quoting something someone else said:

It took years to build, and might take years to rebuild. Stage 5 is so worth it, though.

You know what’s strange about this demythologizing process that is part of Fowler’s Stage 4? I can’t just say to myself, “The Church probably isn’t what it claims to be, so it’s all partially bunk and partially true, and that’s that, so now I’ll move on with my life.” No. When a certain worldview has dominated my life so powerfully and has come to influence the way I see the world in everything from astronomy to Chinese politics to the structure of DNA to supernatural claims to neurology to romantic attraction, I have to go through the lines of code of my mental programming ONE BY ONE, challenge my old beliefs, and replace them with new ones based on my own observations, my own feelings, and the available evidence. I have to ask myself what I believe about tea and coffee, about alcohol, about chastity, about doing whatever on Sunday, about Church history and doctrine, about who the Lamanites really are, about Joseph Smith who was married to Marinda Hyde who was married to Orson Hyde who was married to a couple other women and about what that means, about the structure and content of Church Sunday school manuals, about politics and the “Founding Fathers,” about the nature of God and an afterlife and if they even exist, about what it means to be a Hindu, about where the Qur’an came from, about the historicity of the Flood of Noah and the Garden of Eden, and about the laws of physics. I am shocked at how much being a Mormon has influenced the way I see the world in every way. Losing a literal belief in the religion is a complete mental and worldview overhaul. And it’s kind of….taking FOREVER. I am constantly running into situations where I recognize the dissonance between what I was taught (or came to believe) and what my new reality is. And I have to work through these situations one by one to reprogram myself.

That is all for now.

This is where I am almost word for word. It is completely exhausting to relearn almost EVERYTHING!!! I find it even more frustrating going through this process with where I am at in life. Right now I am at a complete transition in my life. I just graduated with my masters degree and I am looking for a job. I used to feel so sure about things. I used to feel like there was a plan and there was so much comfort in the idea that there was this heavenly father that was guiding me on this path. Now I feel like Lehi in the dream where he follows a person in a white rob and he gets lost in the dark before finding the tree. Right now I am in the dark playing Marco Polo with the person in the white robe. Right now in the dark I am wondering where in the hell this person went. I swear I was following a person and I was not hallucinating. Now after being in the dark for so long I am beginning to wonder if the person in the white robe even exists. It is a scary thought that I got myself lost in the dark for nothing.

Yep. It took years to build, and might take years to rebuild. Stage 5 is so worth it, though.

It’s statements like this that are giving me faith/hope to keep on stumbling through the dark. I hope to make it to stage 5 and possibly just like Lehi’s dream taste of the fruit (which I compare to stage 5).

I think a lot of the disconnect comes in because people embrace and perpetuate specious reasons to justify assumptions that really don’t have any need to be justified. For example, the Pharisees were appalled that Jesus & his followers ate ears of corn on Sunday that they picked in the field. Jesus understood the higher law: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” I suspect all religions are full of Pharisees. Those of us who question other people’s assumptions will be viewed by some as heretical and dangerous.

This. Galileo Galilei(a devote cathlic who dared challenge the orthadox knowledge[opinion] of the time), Daniel Shechtman, Barry Marshall, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, ignaz Semmelweiss, Alec Gordon, Alfred Wegener, Nicolaus Copernicus who received criticism sounding like something familiar( “Some people believe that it is excellent and correct to work out a thing as absurd as did that Sarmatian [i.e., Polish] astronomer who moves the earth and stops the sun. Indeed, wise rulers should have curbed such light-mindedness”.Protestants -Melanchthon…. criticism wording…sound familiar?) Johannes Kepler, Reverend Monsignor Georges Lemaître(non static universe), Edwin Powell Hubble(the universe is bigger then the galaxy and the galaxies are moving further apart and therefore closer and closer before), George Gamow, Penzias and Wilson(cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation). Just a few examples of heretics in thier day by certain groups or people. In fact some still consider them heretics today even with proven data because it’s seen as “dangerous–light midedness”.

“Obviously a surface meaning of many passages could be tested, for example, against archaeological discoveries, and the meaning of others can be enriched by scientific and historical knowledge. But I want to suggest that the primary function of scientific enquiry in such fields is neither to verify nor to add to the inspired picture, but to help us in eliminating improper ways of reading it. To pursue the metaphor, I think the scientific data God gives us can sometimes serve as his way of warning us when we are standing too close to the picture, at the wrong angle, or with the wrong expectations, to be able to see the inspired pattern he means it to convey to us.” — Donald MacCrimmon MacKay

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. ” –Galileo Galile

“We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.” –Galileo Galile

“Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.”– Galileo Galile

“By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.” –Galileo Galile

“It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.”– Galileo Galile

“for in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.”–Galileo Galile

“It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.”– Galileo Galile

What an enlightening mind full of truth and reason against established dogma. Especially for a devote catholic with no authority. We can use history as the basis for what happens when god reveals a new and interesting truth even to a mere man of no authority. I find it is indeed harmful to the soul to make it a heresy to believe what has been proven no matter where the prove comes from. when you combine that with Donald MacCrimmon MacKay qoute you have the bases of Repudiating old believes and reexamining them to the larger picture until thier is not a paradox or as close tone as we can come to until god reveals more truth.

“In these respects we differ from the Christian world, for our religion will not clash with or contradict the facts of science in any particular. 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.”–Brigham Young

When god reveals new truth from where ever, we need to Repudiate old ones. A person doesn’t need approval to repudiate, it starts from within after established truths are revealed and established. Of course change never happens overnight, especially with long established views. Historically it has taken 100s of years for some old teachings to be repudiated. We personally(individually) don’t have to wait that long. We can apply it individually to ourselves.

[/quote]The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. –Helen Keller[/quote]

To affirm that the Sun … is at the centre of the universe and only rotates on its axis without going from east to west, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting the Scriptures [Cardinal Bellarmino, 17th Century Church Master Collegio Romano,

“I have been judged vehemently suspect of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the sun in the centre of the universe and immoveable, and that the earth is not at the center of same, and that it does move. Wishing however, to remove from the minds of your Eminences and all faithful Christians this vehement suspicion reasonably conceived against me, I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error, heresy, and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church. (Quoted in Shea and Artigas 194)”– Galileo Galile

We stand on established truths in light of the fact that anyone of us has been too stupid to figure it all out. God reveals slowly maybe in light of the fact because we move so slowly away from old views. We being human tend to cling so strongly to past “truths” how can we hear or listen to new ones from god? Truths that can be revealed to anyone at any time that is seeking,studying and ready to listen.

41 No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;

42 By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile—D&C 121

Wow, Gallileo really did buck the system — and in the process, came out with these timeless singers of quotations above that I didn’t know existed. These quotes will live in my journal and you can bet I’ll be bringing them into my SS class to make people think.

The one I like the best is the one where he asserts you can’t teach anyone anything — all you can do is help them discover it in themselves. As a teacher and consultant, that has great meaning to me.

Thanks for sharing the details from this book.

because the LDS schema fully connects everything we are taught to the primal emotions, we have built a tree of knowledge of good and evil, a dogma structure connected to lizard-mind fear-comfort dualism that effectively blocks rational thought.

Lost me on the lizard thing, dude.

That a common set of beliefs tend to marginalize those on the fringe?

Yes, the one-size-fits-all mentality works great, except for those for whom things don’t fit. My wife attended ward council the other day and I was looking at the agenda that she brought home. Among other things, it listed the ward goals, which were specific enough that if certain people didn’t do certain things (attend the temple, serve a mission, renew a recommend, etc) then the ward council will have failed in its goals. It all seemed a little perverse to me … like the “gospel” is a hammer and the ward members are nails.