"Why Do They Leave?"

Interesting that you would focus on only one one of the nine things listed, DA – and that it would be the last one described.

Do you feel like the survey and list are wrong, apart from that one issue?

To me this article mostly just sounds like a fancy way of saying the same old stereotype that members that leave the Church supposedly typically just wanted to sin as if there are no good or legitimate reasons why any Church members would ever fall away from the Church. It makes me wonder how much of this is coming from the original study and how much is coming from the interpretation of it by the LDS apologist that wrote this blog article. For example, this makes it sound like pre-marital sex and drinking are supposedly a major factor in college kids becoming non-religious in general when alcohol is not even prohibited by many of these churches to begin with and even if they preach against the idea of pre-marital sex the data from the “Mormon advantage” survey seems to show that the majority in most other churches included in that poll ended up having sex before marriage anyway without it becoming a reason to leave their church behind altogether.

DA is not reacting to the study. He is reacting to the blog post interpretation of the study.

So the desire to sin in ways that fundamentally conflicts with their religion affects about 30% of LDS teenagers. We lose 13% of our teenagers to secularism. So the desire to sin does not automatically lead to an abandonment of religion, but the NSYR found a statistical correlation on keeping religion and obeying the law of chastity (Smith and Snell, Souls in Transition, 218, 271-75). On the other hand, having doubts about religious beliefs was only weakly correlated with retaining or losing faith to the point that the NSYR deemed it not significant (Smith and Snell, Souls in Transition, 216). Doubts play a role in loss of belief and commitment but only in combination with other factors. (Smith and Snell, Souls in Transition, 229-31). For instance doubts play a role in the loss of faith of emerging adults only when faith did not play a big role in the teen’s parents’ lives, and the parents were lax in their church attendance, and faith already played less of a role in the teen’s life, and is usually accompanied by the youth’s less frequent religious devotion, i.e. prayer, church attendance and scripture reading (Smith and Snell, Souls in Transition, 229-30). In other words, doubt usually needs to be combined with other factors to come into play.

I agree with DA that this particular blogger seems to be comparing apples and oranges on several issues.

The best data available to me indicates that we are not primarily losing youth to doubts that spring up in their minds as a result of something that they read on the internet (which is not to say that such a thing does not ever occur). The losses seem to be the result of a combination of factors (in which doubt sometimes might play a role). Loss of faith seems to be a complex play of factors rather than some simplistic story. Other factors weigh more heavily including sin or the desire to sin.

The study was about american youth in general. I have a hard time imagining a young member from a nondenominational Christian church finding out some boogeyman facts on the internet about Christianity and lose faith over the issue. However that can and does happen to LDS youth. The blogger is suggesting that because this is not a huge problem for non-LDS youth it is not a big problem for LDS youth either.

It really bothered me that he seemed dismissive towards those that are leaving. He repeatedly uses the phrase “desire to sin.” He also seems to state that even if youth find the LDS skeletons on the internet that they will stay in the church unless they were already fence sitters anyway due to their parents spotty church attendance, FHE, family scripture reading etc. If this blogger is to be believed then perhaps the solution to so many youth leaving the church is more dogmatism and indoctrination. The era of Utah isolationism is gone and pinning for its return will not help.

The following post has a few conclusions with which I don’t agree automatically, but it is worth reading and seeing what the survey implies about why youth leave the religion in which they were raised. It also is instructive that the LDS Church does retain its youth at a higher rate than most other religions, even though we lose a large minority.

I agree with Ray that the data from The National Survey of Youth and Religion is very interesting and useful and does provide some pretty good reasons why an emerging adult being away from their parents and family for the first time and basically off on their own (as opposed to living in a BYU-esque area where religious attendance would be culturally enforced) might want to distance themselves from the religion of their youth.

It is interesting because letting your children choose their own path to adulthood can be a scary road. OTOH shuttling them from high school to BYU, to mission, to temple marriage seems to be the safer course statistically. Are youths that are culturally insulated from any other paths at an advantage or disadvantage? I suppose it depends on your perspective and how you measure success.

Interesting that you would focus on only one one of the nine things listed, DA – and that it would be the last one described…Do you feel like the survey and list are wrong, apart from that one issue?

I don’t doubt that the people included in the survey typically gave answers more or less along these lines and that these ended up being the some of the most common general categories of reasons why people didn’t remain faithful followers of the church they were raised in. Even in the case of “partying” it makes sense that a significant number of people would want to rebel against what they were taught especially if their family and/or church are relatively strict sort of like the general idea of the movie “Footloose” because they basically associate church with not being allowed to have much fun or do what they want to. What I disagree with is not so much these general reasons for leaving different churches behind as much as the dismissive interpretation of these reasons by the LDS apologist that wrote this article and possibly the book he was citing (Souls in Transition) as well not only in the case of “partying” but for several comments throughout the article.

For example, he talked about people wanting to pick and choose what they believe and how respecting diversity is supposedly bad in some cases more or less because we already know what is right and wrong (or should know in theory). Overall it just sounded like he was trying to say that people leave mostly because they are essentially being selfish, prideful, weak, and/or they have been deceived as if they are the ones with a problem or major misunderstanding rather than recognizing the possibility that some of this could instead be mostly due to actual real-life drawbacks of some of these churches compared to the alternatives including no church. If people feel like the churches they are familiar with are oppressive, not worth the time and effort, uninteresting, etc. then for all we really know for sure these reasons are every bit as valid and understandable if not more so than the reasons why they should supposedly continue to support these churches if they don’t feel like it.

The presumptuous attitude that people supposedly exist to serve their church and that it shouldn’t be the other way around looks like it is largely based on grossly overconfident beliefs about what is true or not, what God supposedly thinks, and/or what will happen when we die. Well suppose there is no God or life-after-death or else they turn out to be significantly different than many people think, in that case what would that mean for some of these churches? I know many Christians and maybe even Mormons as well can easily apply some variation of “Pascal’s Wager” and honestly say it would still have been worth it overall even in that case depending on their individual personality and values but I worry that too many religious hardliners don’t even seriously consider the possibility that they could be wrong and what that would really mean or recognize that they are basically taking a leap of faith that others don’t necessarily want to take as well often for perfectly understandable reasons and it looks like this approach has led to some of the worst problems that often give organized religion a bad name such as extreme intolerance and zealotry.

I think the survey was fine. Valuable.

The blog is where the train goes off the rails, and the “just want to sin” apostate belief gets thrown around.

Quote from blog, not survey…

” Other factors weigh more heavily including sin or the desire to sin. Far more detrimental to loss of faith than doubts are notions of relativism, or the uncritical commitment to politically correct notions of diversity, and misunderstandings of moral agency and accountability”

Oh wow. I just realized this is written by Gee. I’m really really not surprised about the hubris ooze from the blog now.

At least John got the summary correct…

” The narrative that Latter-day Saint youth are leaving the Church in droves because of something they learned from the internet that raises doubts in their minds is not supported by the available data.”

No John, it’s not that simple.

I do not know John Gee. However, he probably believes 100% in what he is writing.

He appears to have taken a study that was only loosely applicable to his target group (LDS youth and young singles). Then through confirmation bias he selects (perhaps unconsciously) the points that reinforce his preconceived notions while ignoring or giving reduced importance to points that detract from his theories.

As easy as it is for me to see the holes in Bro. Gee’s logic, I know that I too use confirmation bias.

I hope that because I am aware of my bias I may also be able to compensate for it. At least to the point that I realize that people like Bro. Gee may see the world differently but they are not the enemy. It does not need to be us vs. them, nephites vs. lamanites, nor any other manner of -ites.

As a Pantheist, I can relate to number 8. From my associations with self proclaimed spiritual people, it is the biggest factor in leaving religion.

” #8. Self-evident Morality

“They believe . . . religion plays an optional role in morally good living. The single thing in which it specializes–helping people to be good–is actually not needed in order for people to achieve that outcome. Religion thus serves a nonobligatory, noncrucial function in life. It does not have a corner on anything unique. Nobody has to believe in or practice it to live morally. As a result, its status becomes that of a lifestyle accessory. (Smith and Snell, Souls in Transition 83.)”