Yesterday I took some time to evaluate myself and see how I was doing, a practice I enjoy taking part in every so often. In doing so, I decided to read a couple journal entries from during and before my LDS mission. What surprised me is how different it sounded, how not-like-me it sounded. I'm well aware that I changed a lot during my mission, and I feel that I've changed at least as much since the completion of my mission. But one defining characteristic of the changes I've been through has been a gradual decline of my emotional excitability throughout my life. With the possible exception of the last few months, this has largely been unintentional and has gone mostly undetected. I don't necessarily consider this a loss, but yesterday I was wondering why much of my emotional excitability has faded. This post is somewhat of an attempt for me to gather my thoughts about it. The easiest way is for me to approach it autobiographically.
I remember little about what it was like to be a child, and I feel most people my age will relate. But from my parents' description of my personality, I was very expressive about almost everything that happened to me. It was very easy for someone to tell how I was feeling at any given time. I was also quite extroverted and had very little inhibition about sharing my opinions or thoughts about something. I think this is pretty common among children today.
This trend continued throughout most of junior high school. I was more withdrawn in the occasional environment where I felt less comfortable (physical education, for example), but for the most part, especially around those I knew well, I continued to be expressive and outspoken, with little care for what other people thought about me.
Sophomore year of high school was different for me. I had gone to a junior high school that most people in my area didn't, so when I returned to the high school that most of my childhood friends were going to, I knew a lot less people. My default became introversion, a habit I broke out of only when I was around people I knew well. Around this time I began to notice that most other people's ups and downs seemed more intense than my own. I concluded that it was because I had never really been through anything difficult; and because I had never known the sorrow of hardship, I didn't really know how to appreciate the joy of wellness.
This conclusion lead to some interesting behavior on my part. I often wondered why my life was so easy (I still do sometimes). Being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I had often been taught that if we had not had extremely trying experiences up to that point in our lives, we would someday. I began wondering when all my trials were going to come, and if God was just "saving them up" to unload a barrel of crises on me when he saw fit. I would occasionally pray for trials, just because I knew they would come sometime so it might as well be now.
After a couple years of nothing hard really happening, I decided that one of two things must be the case: either I was so spiritually strong that nothing that happened to me seemed like a trial, or I was so spiritually weak that God was just babysitting me through life until I was able to handle something remotely hard (I didn't realize at the time that reality was probably somewhere between those two extremes). I also wondered where my motivation to do good was going to come from, since I never had to apply self-discipline or a work ethic to overcome any obstacles.
My first year of college brought a lot of changes. Like most people, I knew hardly anyone in the singles ward I attended at BYU. Most of my first semester free time was spent either associating with a few close friends or doing things by myself. After a few months of this, I realized I was missing something. Second semester I tried to get a lot more involved, and it worked. Our ward did a mini-version of the Lion King for a stake activity we had, and I played Pumbaa. It was the corniest thing in the world, but for some reason I still don't understand it was one of the best experiences I had in my life. I made some really close friends that semester, and I was happier than I had been before. As a bonus, anytime I listened to music from the Lion King, it brought back all the memories and feelings from that time in my life.
One of the first things that I learned about my mission was that I would experience greater happiness and joy than I had ever experienced before (Preach my Gospel, page v). Knowing how amazing college was for me, I looked forward to when that was going to happen. Sometimes I had great experiences that seemed like they "qualified" for my happiest experience ever, but after thinking about it for a while I decided that college was still better. I started to doubt somewhat if anything that great would ever happen. An experience I had about halfway through my mission crushed all doubt whatsoever (the last one described in the linked post). I may only be able to say that I had one experience that "topped" all the happiness that I had ever felt before, but I unquestionably did, and I can't deny that.
I mentioned that I've changed a lot since the end of my mission. Part of that was when I spent a summer in Oklahoma selling pest control, but that doesn't have much influence on what I'm discussing here. The main thing that's changed in the last few months has been how much I've pursued intelligence to the exclusion of several other things in my life. I've recently been exposed to several works of fiction that quite realistically depict the protagonist being able to do things that other people can't, largely because they can keep their emotions in check and use their intellect to solve problems. It's fiction. I know that. But I can't help it affecting the way I think. I know a lot of difficult decisions are coming up for me, both planned and unplanned, and my current opinion is that I'll deal with them a lot better by using my head and not letting emotions cloud my judgment. I don't know if that's the best way to go about doing things. But I don't plan on changing unless I feel that regaining my emotional excitability (or extraversion for that matter) is something I should do. Right now, being "left-brained" feels like part of who I am. I guess it's only a matter of time before I figure out whether it's worth the cost.
Metamorphose
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Rationality
I was introduced to rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter spinoff known as Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. The work functions partially as an extended advertisement for the science/art known as applied rationality. Applied rationality is the effort to evaluate one's methods of decision-making, removing all irrational methods, and replacing them with rational methods based on cognitive science, decision theory, probability, studies on human nature, and various other categories of knowledge. In short, you're trying to take the stupid out of your decision-making.
Rationality appeals to people who 1) are intelligent, 2) have realized they are intelligent, 3) have decided that they want to make their intelligence one of their defining factors, and so 4) the obvious next step is to use your intelligence to learn how to make yourself smarter. It's more than just deliberately exposing yourself to mental challenges to prove yourself, just like weightlifting is more than just heading to the gym and spending inordinate amounts of time pumping iron. For almost every skill, there's a certain technique to it that has been learned and refined by those who have excelled in the past. In almost every case, knowing the technique is necessary to get ahead.
The surface value of rationality, from my perspective, seems to be that it helps rid people of cognitive biases that cause them to make improper judgments some of the time. This is done by identifying the presence of a certain cognitive bias and knowing how to bypass it. I don't want to describe any of the cognitive biases we've already found, but reducing or eliminating these seems to be the mental equivalent of replacing a faulty part of a decently-working machine, causing it to perform better. Rationality also consists of evaluating the beliefs and opinions we have about the world, and using a fact- and evidence-based approach to determine how rational our beliefs really are.
lesswrong.com is the main resource for those who want to learn more about rationality. I found much more on here about removing deleterious mental processes than culturing new beneficial ones, but I'm sure more reading will uncover more fruit. There's a LOT written on here, and I could spend a huge amount of time reading all of this. I'm not as excited about this as I was a month or two ago, but I'm always interested in sharpening the way I think. Posts like The Twelve Virtues of Rationality sometimes makes it seem like commitment to rationality can border on the religious; and while I don't intend to make this pursuit my main goal in life, I could easily spend more time on it than I should, to the detriment of other more important things.
Rationality appeals to people who 1) are intelligent, 2) have realized they are intelligent, 3) have decided that they want to make their intelligence one of their defining factors, and so 4) the obvious next step is to use your intelligence to learn how to make yourself smarter. It's more than just deliberately exposing yourself to mental challenges to prove yourself, just like weightlifting is more than just heading to the gym and spending inordinate amounts of time pumping iron. For almost every skill, there's a certain technique to it that has been learned and refined by those who have excelled in the past. In almost every case, knowing the technique is necessary to get ahead.
The surface value of rationality, from my perspective, seems to be that it helps rid people of cognitive biases that cause them to make improper judgments some of the time. This is done by identifying the presence of a certain cognitive bias and knowing how to bypass it. I don't want to describe any of the cognitive biases we've already found, but reducing or eliminating these seems to be the mental equivalent of replacing a faulty part of a decently-working machine, causing it to perform better. Rationality also consists of evaluating the beliefs and opinions we have about the world, and using a fact- and evidence-based approach to determine how rational our beliefs really are.
lesswrong.com is the main resource for those who want to learn more about rationality. I found much more on here about removing deleterious mental processes than culturing new beneficial ones, but I'm sure more reading will uncover more fruit. There's a LOT written on here, and I could spend a huge amount of time reading all of this. I'm not as excited about this as I was a month or two ago, but I'm always interested in sharpening the way I think. Posts like The Twelve Virtues of Rationality sometimes makes it seem like commitment to rationality can border on the religious; and while I don't intend to make this pursuit my main goal in life, I could easily spend more time on it than I should, to the detriment of other more important things.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Ten people who have influenced me
I have to state a caveat before I begin. These are not necessarily the top ten, they are the ten that have influenced me in a way that is easily identifiable. It's entirely possible that there are people who have influenced me more than people on this list, but in ways I can't identify or remember as well. Numbers 2-10 are listed roughly chronologically, and I have grouped together people who have influenced me in similar ways.
1: Jesus Christ.
There is a lot I could say here, but the most important thing is that nothing that matters in my life would ever last if it wasn't for what Jesus Christ did. I don't know how something that happened 2,000 years ago can be such a powerful and direct strength to me, but I know that it is. I know that my character and my greatest desires are directly attributable to the power that comes from Christ's atonement.
2. My dad.
Throughout my teenage years, my dad never stopped letting me know the kind of potential he knew I had. He never stopped letting me know that I was capable of more than I was doing. He cared about my success. My response was somewhat of a delayed reaction, but because of his example, I've gained a desire to reach my highest potential. Thanks, dad. I love you.
3. Oliver Sacks.
Oliver Sacks basically gave birth to my love of neuroscience. For those who haven't seen the movie Awakenings, it's about his work with a group of patients suffering from a Parkinson's-like neurological disorder in which they are unresponsive to almost anything. Sacks figures out how to treat their condition, and remarkably many of them "wake up" and are able to live normal lives for a while. Unfortunately, the medication used to treat their condition eventually wears off, and they become unresponsive once again. Oliver Sacks told stories that opened my eyes to how truly amazing the brain is, and it made me hungry to learn more.
4. Carl Sagan.
Carl Sagan makes science an art. His description of the wonder of modern science and the discoveries we've made borders on poetry. Often, science is viewed as an extremely left-brained, analytical, and objective pursuit of life, which it frequently is. But Sagan paints a picture of the beauty and awe inherent in the way the world and the universe and life work. I love science, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life doing it, but anytime it gets too black-and-white, Sagan brings the color flowing back in for me.
5, 6, and 7: Lawrence E. Corbridge, King Benjamin, and James Watson.
These three people set into motion an extended experience that was really what made my LDS mission, and much of my life since then, meaningful for the best reasons. I've summarized this experience in a previous post, but I'll elaborate a little more here. Lawrence E. Corbridge gave a talk/speech entitled "The Fourth Missionary" that explained the difference between doing the right thing because you're supposed to and doing the right thing because you want to. As a missionary, I had mainly the former attitude at the time I read this talk, but I wanted to do the work out of desire. Corbridge's talk inspired me that such a change was possible, and convinced me that it was something I needed to look for.
I began searching the scriptures for stories of people whose hearts were changed to have desires to do good. The best example I found was in the book of Mosiah in the Book of Mormon, when an ancient American king teaches his people about experiencing a change of heart by the power of the Holy Ghost. I read his sermon multiple times over the period of a couple months, and James Watson, my missionary companion at the time, was my mentor and example through it all (largely without meaning to be, I'm sure). Nothing happened abruptly, but I know that because these things helped me open myself to the influence of the spirit of God, He changed my heart and helped me have a desire to do good. I owe more to that than almost anything.
8. Don R. Clarke.
In many Christian denominations, services include the observance of the sacrament, also called the Lord's supper. It is reminiscent of the last supper of Jesus Christ and His apostles, in which Christ gives bread and wine to remind His followers, then and now, of His crucifixion, suffering, and sacrifice for all of us. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the sacrament is observed each week during Sunday services, and for those like me who have grown up in the church, it's easy to lose appreciation for the ordinance. Elder Clarke helped to bring life back into this experience for me. He gave me specific ideas of what I could do to make the sacrament meaningful each week, ideas that are summarized here. As I apply his suggestions consistently, the effect has been gradual, but the sacrament has become a source of great spiritual power and strength in my life. It keeps me safe from falling into old habits and helps me keep moving forward. Near the end of my mission, I wanted to make sure there was a way to keep all of the incredibly valuable character developments I experience. Because of Elder Clarke, observing the sacrament helps me to avoid losing any progress I've made. Week after week, year after year, this has become a life-preserving spiritual resource for me.
9 and 10: Eliezer Yudkowsky and Douglas Hofstadter.
I'd be surprised if anyone reading this knows who Eliezer Yudkowsky is. Not only would that require my level of geekiness, it would also require my specific kind of geekiness, and given the readership of this blog, that's simply too improbable. Let me sum up. Eliezer Yudkowsky is the author of an online Harry Potter fanfic called "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" (and yes, I can hear the laughter from here). The Harry in this story is an incredibly intelligent young boy whose intellectual acuity is far beyond those of his peers, much like Ender Wiggin of Ender's Game fame. Like Ender, Harry has a highly developed ability to read people, is extremely creative, and can make intelligent decisions rapidly. Harry makes multiple references to Douglas Hofstadter, including his award-winning book "Godel, Escher, Bach", much of which I have read. Harry uses principles of decision theory, science, mathematics, and probability, as well as his inherent skills, to get himself into and out of a variety of intense and difficult situations.
The story, while its plot is highly engaging, is in many ways a front for Yudkowsky to promote the idea of applied rationality. I could spend a whole post talking about applied rationality, and probably will, but this post is dedicated to how it's influenced me. I consider myself an intellectual by nature, and rationality has made me at least twice as much as I was before. I spend a great deal of in-between time thinking about rationality, intellectual acuity, and how I can multiply my opportunities simply by being smart about the way I make decisions. And I have to admit it's kind of a stimulant for me. I definitely think about it more often than I should, and I definitely use it to compare myself to other people far more than I should. Ways to conscientiously make yourself smarter are inherently addicting, especially for a left-brained person like me. Practicing rationality has taken several of my unique traits and multiplied them, and it's starting to throw things off balance in a way I can't really describe yet. In my current habitat of academia, this imbalance is largely working to my favor, but I need to take some time and consider how it's affecting other necessary areas of my life. Other areas that I'm going to want to take part in someday, even if not right now.
1: Jesus Christ.
There is a lot I could say here, but the most important thing is that nothing that matters in my life would ever last if it wasn't for what Jesus Christ did. I don't know how something that happened 2,000 years ago can be such a powerful and direct strength to me, but I know that it is. I know that my character and my greatest desires are directly attributable to the power that comes from Christ's atonement.
2. My dad.
Throughout my teenage years, my dad never stopped letting me know the kind of potential he knew I had. He never stopped letting me know that I was capable of more than I was doing. He cared about my success. My response was somewhat of a delayed reaction, but because of his example, I've gained a desire to reach my highest potential. Thanks, dad. I love you.
3. Oliver Sacks.
Oliver Sacks basically gave birth to my love of neuroscience. For those who haven't seen the movie Awakenings, it's about his work with a group of patients suffering from a Parkinson's-like neurological disorder in which they are unresponsive to almost anything. Sacks figures out how to treat their condition, and remarkably many of them "wake up" and are able to live normal lives for a while. Unfortunately, the medication used to treat their condition eventually wears off, and they become unresponsive once again. Oliver Sacks told stories that opened my eyes to how truly amazing the brain is, and it made me hungry to learn more.
4. Carl Sagan.
Carl Sagan makes science an art. His description of the wonder of modern science and the discoveries we've made borders on poetry. Often, science is viewed as an extremely left-brained, analytical, and objective pursuit of life, which it frequently is. But Sagan paints a picture of the beauty and awe inherent in the way the world and the universe and life work. I love science, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life doing it, but anytime it gets too black-and-white, Sagan brings the color flowing back in for me.
5, 6, and 7: Lawrence E. Corbridge, King Benjamin, and James Watson.
These three people set into motion an extended experience that was really what made my LDS mission, and much of my life since then, meaningful for the best reasons. I've summarized this experience in a previous post, but I'll elaborate a little more here. Lawrence E. Corbridge gave a talk/speech entitled "The Fourth Missionary" that explained the difference between doing the right thing because you're supposed to and doing the right thing because you want to. As a missionary, I had mainly the former attitude at the time I read this talk, but I wanted to do the work out of desire. Corbridge's talk inspired me that such a change was possible, and convinced me that it was something I needed to look for.
I began searching the scriptures for stories of people whose hearts were changed to have desires to do good. The best example I found was in the book of Mosiah in the Book of Mormon, when an ancient American king teaches his people about experiencing a change of heart by the power of the Holy Ghost. I read his sermon multiple times over the period of a couple months, and James Watson, my missionary companion at the time, was my mentor and example through it all (largely without meaning to be, I'm sure). Nothing happened abruptly, but I know that because these things helped me open myself to the influence of the spirit of God, He changed my heart and helped me have a desire to do good. I owe more to that than almost anything.
8. Don R. Clarke.
In many Christian denominations, services include the observance of the sacrament, also called the Lord's supper. It is reminiscent of the last supper of Jesus Christ and His apostles, in which Christ gives bread and wine to remind His followers, then and now, of His crucifixion, suffering, and sacrifice for all of us. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the sacrament is observed each week during Sunday services, and for those like me who have grown up in the church, it's easy to lose appreciation for the ordinance. Elder Clarke helped to bring life back into this experience for me. He gave me specific ideas of what I could do to make the sacrament meaningful each week, ideas that are summarized here. As I apply his suggestions consistently, the effect has been gradual, but the sacrament has become a source of great spiritual power and strength in my life. It keeps me safe from falling into old habits and helps me keep moving forward. Near the end of my mission, I wanted to make sure there was a way to keep all of the incredibly valuable character developments I experience. Because of Elder Clarke, observing the sacrament helps me to avoid losing any progress I've made. Week after week, year after year, this has become a life-preserving spiritual resource for me.
9 and 10: Eliezer Yudkowsky and Douglas Hofstadter.
I'd be surprised if anyone reading this knows who Eliezer Yudkowsky is. Not only would that require my level of geekiness, it would also require my specific kind of geekiness, and given the readership of this blog, that's simply too improbable. Let me sum up. Eliezer Yudkowsky is the author of an online Harry Potter fanfic called "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" (and yes, I can hear the laughter from here). The Harry in this story is an incredibly intelligent young boy whose intellectual acuity is far beyond those of his peers, much like Ender Wiggin of Ender's Game fame. Like Ender, Harry has a highly developed ability to read people, is extremely creative, and can make intelligent decisions rapidly. Harry makes multiple references to Douglas Hofstadter, including his award-winning book "Godel, Escher, Bach", much of which I have read. Harry uses principles of decision theory, science, mathematics, and probability, as well as his inherent skills, to get himself into and out of a variety of intense and difficult situations.
The story, while its plot is highly engaging, is in many ways a front for Yudkowsky to promote the idea of applied rationality. I could spend a whole post talking about applied rationality, and probably will, but this post is dedicated to how it's influenced me. I consider myself an intellectual by nature, and rationality has made me at least twice as much as I was before. I spend a great deal of in-between time thinking about rationality, intellectual acuity, and how I can multiply my opportunities simply by being smart about the way I make decisions. And I have to admit it's kind of a stimulant for me. I definitely think about it more often than I should, and I definitely use it to compare myself to other people far more than I should. Ways to conscientiously make yourself smarter are inherently addicting, especially for a left-brained person like me. Practicing rationality has taken several of my unique traits and multiplied them, and it's starting to throw things off balance in a way I can't really describe yet. In my current habitat of academia, this imbalance is largely working to my favor, but I need to take some time and consider how it's affecting other necessary areas of my life. Other areas that I'm going to want to take part in someday, even if not right now.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Why I believe in God: Objections and responses
To close out this topic, I'd like to respond to further objections to the existence of God. I've discussed a couple already (the lack of evidence and the existence of scientific counterexamples of creationist teachings), and there's one more that I'd like to address. In doing this, I hope that it doesn't appear that I'm simply setting up a strawman argument and beating it to pieces. Atheists and agnostics have real and legitimate concerns about God's existence and what has been taught concerning Him. The religious community often does not have complete or even partial answers to these questions. For example, the problem of evil is something both religious and non-religious people struggle with (although I won't address that topic here). I'd like to be as complete as possible, so if any readers feel that other relevant questions are important to address, leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer it.
What if you weren't raised religious?
Since this is hypothetical, there's no way for me to be fully accurate in my response. Also, this seems like more of a statement than a question to me, the statement being "the only reason you believe in God is because that's how you were raised". But I'll do my best. The short answer is that, all other things being equal, I don't know if I would have found God if religion wasn't in my upbringing. Now for the longer answer.
I tried to mentally construct a hypothetical sketch of how I might feel during such a situation. I don't think I know enough to make it conceivably accurate, and I think that depends a lot on whether God exists. Surely God has to make Himself known somehow, and in my experience, much of that has been through thoughts and feelings (as I explained in the last post). But I think the important thing to mention here is that God's existence is not dependent upon our acceptance of theism. If God is real, it is completely possible for many people to disregard, disbelieve, or supposedly disprove His existence, but it is equally plausible that a belief in a nonexistent God can be widespread.
What if you weren't raised religious?
Since this is hypothetical, there's no way for me to be fully accurate in my response. Also, this seems like more of a statement than a question to me, the statement being "the only reason you believe in God is because that's how you were raised". But I'll do my best. The short answer is that, all other things being equal, I don't know if I would have found God if religion wasn't in my upbringing. Now for the longer answer.
Let's assume that as many other things as possible about my life, my experiences, and my personality are preserved. Perhaps I am raised in a family of atheists who encourage me to excel academically and follow my dreams, whatever those may be. They are good, moral people who help others and volunteer in the community. They do not believe in God, but have no problem with people who do. I have friends who are religious, and thus I am familiar with the idea of God and with mainstream Christianity. I devote much of my time to doing well in school, since that is what I am good at and I want to get into a good college.
Somewhere along the way, during my teen years, several of my religious friends notice that I am not involved in religion and, with varying degrees of persistence, seek to help me see the reality of God's existence. At this point I have not thought about whether their "god" really exists or not. After some time, I decide to read some of their religious texts, mainly out of curiosity. Much of it I find boring and devoid of meaning, but every now and then I find a story that teaches good principles. I resist invitations to church services to all except the most persistent, since I don't want to appear as if I am planning on being a member of their church. I resist invitations to pray for a long time, since it feels weird talking to nothing. The first few times I try, I begin speaking briefly and then withdraw due to awkwardness. During times of great happiness or distress, I sometimes reach out in my mind to see if anything is there to respond.
My impression of their doctrine and theology evolves along with my cognitive skills. At first, I am likely to reject a belief or teaching if it seems too "weird". Such teachings include stories of miracles, prophets receiving revelation, angels, and the atonement of Christ. Later on, as I become more familiar with religious teachings, my interest might be hindered by discovery of intellectual discrepancies in their doctrine. I bring these discrepancies up to my friends, and they try their hardest to answer them. Some answers satisfy me, some don't. The more my personality becomes analytical and intellectually based, the less likely I am to entertain much of their teachings.
I tried to mentally construct a hypothetical sketch of how I might feel during such a situation. I don't think I know enough to make it conceivably accurate, and I think that depends a lot on whether God exists. Surely God has to make Himself known somehow, and in my experience, much of that has been through thoughts and feelings (as I explained in the last post). But I think the important thing to mention here is that God's existence is not dependent upon our acceptance of theism. If God is real, it is completely possible for many people to disregard, disbelieve, or supposedly disprove His existence, but it is equally plausible that a belief in a nonexistent God can be widespread.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Why I believe in God: Evidence
Why I believe God is a reality, not just a plausibility
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I believe in the Holy Ghost as a God along with Jesus Christ and God the Father. To me, the Holy Ghost is a being who lacks physical form, and is able to communicate to each of us what God would have us know. In addition, the Holy Ghost (commonly referred to as the spirit) can help us feel when something is true and motivate us to do good. Mormon doctrine teaches that the influence of the spirit is subtle and usually can only be detected if one is looking for it.
Thus, I try to make my life and myself an environment in which the influence of the spirit can be most easily felt and received. In the past, I have had a variety of what I call spiritual experiences, in which I believe the Holy Ghost was present to some degree or another. The vast majority of these have been simple and at a low level of intensity, often small enough that I am unable to distinguish between the effects of the spirit and my own feelings or thoughts. However, several experiences have occurred in my life which I consider to be much more conspicuous manifestations of the spirit, to the point that I can no longer accept that they were produced by my own mental or emotional processes. I will describe three such experiences.
The first occurred when I was around 12. Like many Mormons raised in the church (especially in Utah), I had grown up learning church doctrine, history, and principles. For the preceding couple of years, I had been giving a lot of thought to what I believed and realized that I didn't really know if it was the truth. I worried about the possibility of entering the afterlife only to realize that I should have been a member of a different religion. I had been taught at least a few times before this period that each person should strive to find the truth for themselves, and not have a certain belief system just because their friends, parents, or leaders professed the same. This is often referred to as "getting your own testimony" in Mormon culture, and this was what I was trying to do for a couple years. I remember feeling like my case was a minority, that there were not many Mormons who spent a significant amount of time wondering if their doctrine was true. Because of this, I almost completely kept my doubts to myself.
I put plenty of time into prayer and study of the scriptures, seeking to have some sort of spiritual impression or manifestation that would confirm my faith. There were times when it seemed as if my doubt was alleviated, but it would later return. I felt much like Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the Mormon church who also spent much of his youth wondering and searching for the truth (further information about Joseph Smith is available here). I had a friend at that time who seemed spiritually in tune and someone I could share my thoughts with, so I decided that I would talk with him about it.
I decided to do so at a boy scout campout some time later. After everyone else had gone to bed, I explained my plight to him and asked if he had had any similar experiences. I don't remember him giving a direct answer to my question, but I remember the experience he related to me. He told me about a dream he had in which he was alive during the second coming of Christ (Mormons, and many other Christians, believe that Jesus Christ will return to the earth as a resurrected, immortal being). In the dream, angels were singing a common Christian hymn, "God be with you 'til we meet again". He continued relating the story, but at that point my mind focused on the lyrics of the hymn. At that moment, I felt an incredibly strong wave of emotion come over me. I cannot describe it as any particular emotion, just strong. I felt reassurance about my doubts and the wordless communication that my beliefs were true.
The second occurred during my time as an LDS missionary in Alabama. Since my previous experience years ago, I had never doubted the truth of the church. I did my best as a missionary to do what I knew I was "supposed" to do, but there came a time when being a missionary out of a sense of obligation wasn't enough, even though I knew it was what God wanted me to do. I wanted to be motivated by desire, not just duty. I felt that the missionary I was serving with (Mormon missionaries always live and work in pairs) was an excellent example of who I wanted to be. He gave me a copy of a talk (Mormon jargon for "speech") he had read earlier on his mission that was given to missionaries by a leader in the Mormon church (the talk is here). The focus of this talk was the difference between desire and obligation as motivating factors for missionaries, and the speaker described how to gain the intrinsic motivation to serve.
Over a period of several weeks, I studied this talk, as well as scriptures from the Book of Mormon that I felt were related to the issue. I prayed many times for the true desire to do what was right, and to be happy and content in doing missionary work. Unlike the other two experiences I describe here, no part of this experience for me was instantaneous. I cannot pinpoint a time when any monumental change occurred. But I do know that before this period, I was motivated primarily by obligation. After this period and ever since then, I have been motivated primarily by a desire to please God. Something changed in me that I had tried and failed to change in myself before. It has never permanently left. I do not believe it came from myself, or from any other person. It came from the purifying influence of the Holy Ghost.
The third experience was also as a missionary. I was in a different area with a different missionary at this time, and we were teaching someone we had met quite recently. I enjoyed teaching this person because he was close to our age and someone we could relate to. He seemed open-minded and willing to explore and find out if what we were teaching was true. He had been raised as a Christian, and on this particular visit he asked us what was different about our faith. We had a good discussion about a few of our unique beliefs, and he was once again accepting and willing to ask questions and learn. At the close of our visit we asked him if he would pray, and he complied. We closed our eyes and waited for him to speak, but for a good while he said nothing. Finally he looked up and said, "Wow. That has never happened to me before."
My first assumption was that he had prayed silently and felt the Holy Ghost telling him that what we had taught was true. But he then explained that he was trying to speak and no words were coming out of his mouth. He wasn't distressed, but wondered why such a thing would happen. The other missionary and I were surprised to hear him say this, because Joseph Smith's account of his praying to know which church was true includes a description of a similar experience. My companion urged him to try again to pray. I don't remember the words he said during the prayer. I may not have even been paying attention at the time, because at the moment he began to pray, I had the most amazing and powerful feeling of joy that I had ever experienced before. When he finished the prayer, I looked up at him and the other missionary, and their expression suggested that the same thing had happened for them. Nobody said anything for a while. We didn't really know what to say. We all knew what we had felt, and we all knew it was from God. We stayed for a couple more minutes. Nobody wanted to leave and disrupt the moment. But we eventually departed, and thanked God for what we had experienced that day.
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I believe in the Holy Ghost as a God along with Jesus Christ and God the Father. To me, the Holy Ghost is a being who lacks physical form, and is able to communicate to each of us what God would have us know. In addition, the Holy Ghost (commonly referred to as the spirit) can help us feel when something is true and motivate us to do good. Mormon doctrine teaches that the influence of the spirit is subtle and usually can only be detected if one is looking for it.
Thus, I try to make my life and myself an environment in which the influence of the spirit can be most easily felt and received. In the past, I have had a variety of what I call spiritual experiences, in which I believe the Holy Ghost was present to some degree or another. The vast majority of these have been simple and at a low level of intensity, often small enough that I am unable to distinguish between the effects of the spirit and my own feelings or thoughts. However, several experiences have occurred in my life which I consider to be much more conspicuous manifestations of the spirit, to the point that I can no longer accept that they were produced by my own mental or emotional processes. I will describe three such experiences.
The first occurred when I was around 12. Like many Mormons raised in the church (especially in Utah), I had grown up learning church doctrine, history, and principles. For the preceding couple of years, I had been giving a lot of thought to what I believed and realized that I didn't really know if it was the truth. I worried about the possibility of entering the afterlife only to realize that I should have been a member of a different religion. I had been taught at least a few times before this period that each person should strive to find the truth for themselves, and not have a certain belief system just because their friends, parents, or leaders professed the same. This is often referred to as "getting your own testimony" in Mormon culture, and this was what I was trying to do for a couple years. I remember feeling like my case was a minority, that there were not many Mormons who spent a significant amount of time wondering if their doctrine was true. Because of this, I almost completely kept my doubts to myself.
I put plenty of time into prayer and study of the scriptures, seeking to have some sort of spiritual impression or manifestation that would confirm my faith. There were times when it seemed as if my doubt was alleviated, but it would later return. I felt much like Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the Mormon church who also spent much of his youth wondering and searching for the truth (further information about Joseph Smith is available here). I had a friend at that time who seemed spiritually in tune and someone I could share my thoughts with, so I decided that I would talk with him about it.
I decided to do so at a boy scout campout some time later. After everyone else had gone to bed, I explained my plight to him and asked if he had had any similar experiences. I don't remember him giving a direct answer to my question, but I remember the experience he related to me. He told me about a dream he had in which he was alive during the second coming of Christ (Mormons, and many other Christians, believe that Jesus Christ will return to the earth as a resurrected, immortal being). In the dream, angels were singing a common Christian hymn, "God be with you 'til we meet again". He continued relating the story, but at that point my mind focused on the lyrics of the hymn. At that moment, I felt an incredibly strong wave of emotion come over me. I cannot describe it as any particular emotion, just strong. I felt reassurance about my doubts and the wordless communication that my beliefs were true.
The second occurred during my time as an LDS missionary in Alabama. Since my previous experience years ago, I had never doubted the truth of the church. I did my best as a missionary to do what I knew I was "supposed" to do, but there came a time when being a missionary out of a sense of obligation wasn't enough, even though I knew it was what God wanted me to do. I wanted to be motivated by desire, not just duty. I felt that the missionary I was serving with (Mormon missionaries always live and work in pairs) was an excellent example of who I wanted to be. He gave me a copy of a talk (Mormon jargon for "speech") he had read earlier on his mission that was given to missionaries by a leader in the Mormon church (the talk is here). The focus of this talk was the difference between desire and obligation as motivating factors for missionaries, and the speaker described how to gain the intrinsic motivation to serve.
Over a period of several weeks, I studied this talk, as well as scriptures from the Book of Mormon that I felt were related to the issue. I prayed many times for the true desire to do what was right, and to be happy and content in doing missionary work. Unlike the other two experiences I describe here, no part of this experience for me was instantaneous. I cannot pinpoint a time when any monumental change occurred. But I do know that before this period, I was motivated primarily by obligation. After this period and ever since then, I have been motivated primarily by a desire to please God. Something changed in me that I had tried and failed to change in myself before. It has never permanently left. I do not believe it came from myself, or from any other person. It came from the purifying influence of the Holy Ghost.
The third experience was also as a missionary. I was in a different area with a different missionary at this time, and we were teaching someone we had met quite recently. I enjoyed teaching this person because he was close to our age and someone we could relate to. He seemed open-minded and willing to explore and find out if what we were teaching was true. He had been raised as a Christian, and on this particular visit he asked us what was different about our faith. We had a good discussion about a few of our unique beliefs, and he was once again accepting and willing to ask questions and learn. At the close of our visit we asked him if he would pray, and he complied. We closed our eyes and waited for him to speak, but for a good while he said nothing. Finally he looked up and said, "Wow. That has never happened to me before."
My first assumption was that he had prayed silently and felt the Holy Ghost telling him that what we had taught was true. But he then explained that he was trying to speak and no words were coming out of his mouth. He wasn't distressed, but wondered why such a thing would happen. The other missionary and I were surprised to hear him say this, because Joseph Smith's account of his praying to know which church was true includes a description of a similar experience. My companion urged him to try again to pray. I don't remember the words he said during the prayer. I may not have even been paying attention at the time, because at the moment he began to pray, I had the most amazing and powerful feeling of joy that I had ever experienced before. When he finished the prayer, I looked up at him and the other missionary, and their expression suggested that the same thing had happened for them. Nobody said anything for a while. We didn't really know what to say. We all knew what we had felt, and we all knew it was from God. We stayed for a couple more minutes. Nobody wanted to leave and disrupt the moment. But we eventually departed, and thanked God for what we had experienced that day.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Why I believe in God: Empiricism and human chauvinism
The phrase "human chauvinism" is taken from an idea that Douglas Hofstadter describes in "Godel, Escher, Bach" (although he calls it "earth chauvinism"). I'm extrapolating Hofstadter's ideas into my own thesis here, but let me define human chauvinism as "the notion that humans have a monopoly on information-gathering". To give you some background, I'll explain what Hofstadter means by earth chauvinism.
Hofstadter prefaces earth chauvinism with an extended analogy of messages, meanings, and how messages are interpreted by intelligence. A message is compared to a record, the meaning is compared to the music isomorphically encoded within the record, and the interpreting intelligence is compared to a jukebox. Hofstadter explains that different records could be played differently by different jukeboxes; thus, a single record would not have the same music (meaning) everywhere. Likewise, the meaning encoded in a message is not invariable; it is not an intrinsic, unalterable property of the object.
In our minds, Hofstadter explains, "the ascribing of meaning to a message comes from the invariance of the processing of the messages by intelligences distributed anywhere in the universe". We could say that a message's meaning is completely intrinsic if and only if every single intelligence in the universe interpreted it in exactly the same way (which is highly improbable). Humans, of course, are used to the way that humans interpret messages, although a fair degree of variance does exist between cultures, languages, perspectives, etc. Human chauvinism, or earth chauvinism, occurs when we assume that our method of interpretation is universal, simultaneously excluding the possibility of messages or meanings that cannot be interpreted using our method.
Breaking free of chauvinism is done by "imagin[ing] that there could exist other kinds of 'jukeboxes'--intelligences--which communicate among each other via messages which we would never recognize as messages". Such speculation opens our minds to other methods of interpretation beyond those which we are accustomed to using. The most simple level of "meaning-interpretation" for us is done involuntarily by the sensory nervous system, the five "jukeboxes" we refer to as sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. From this basic input, through the millennia, we have created additional, more complex jukeboxes such as science, philosophy, mathematics, and every other academic discipline known to man.
What does this all have to do with my belief in God? For one, I think it highlights the irrationality of empiricism, the idea that knowledge comes completely from sensory experience. To say that all information comes through the five senses is to say that there are no other ways of interpreting meaning or gathering information. In a less extreme sense, to say that all worthwhile information comes through the five senses is to say that there are no other worthwhile ways of interpreting meaning. It is to discredit the existence of countless plausible forms of information and truth simply because they are inaccessible to us.
To those who haven't figured out where I'm going with this, here it is: a supreme being (or any intelligence for that matter) does not have to conform to our system of information-gathering in order to communicate with us. The idea that no one has found any sensory evidence of a supreme being does not and cannot imply that such a being is nonexistent. The only way that this conclusion could logically stand is if our sensory system was, in fact, the embodiment of all possible forms of information-gathering. I find this extremely improbable.
At this point, one might ask, "If God doesn't have to communicate through the five senses, how will we know of his existence?" My reply is that we need to break away from chauvinism and entertain the possibility of other forms of information transmission in the past and the present. As a Mormon, I consider the most important of these to be the Holy Ghost, but I certainly am not limiting it to that. I intend to give a sampling of some examples of alternative information transmission (that which I consider to be communication from God) from my own life, which leads me into my next post.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Why I believe in God: Evolution vs. creation
I recently finished watching the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham regarding the logical soundness of the creation model vs. the evolution model. It gave me an opportunity to think about how I really feel regarding science and religion (although I have done so many times in the past), and this time I felt that I could share a few ideas I have relating to the subject of the existence of a higher power. I will first describe how I believe that the existence of a higher power is not only possible but plausible, and then I will discuss why I personally believe in a supreme being.
Why God is "allowed" to exist
Evolution vs. creation: How did life and matter come into being?
I don't want to spend too much time discussing the Nye vs. Ham debate (if you're interested, here it is). There were several subjects, however, that Ham had a difficult time reconciling with Nye's points, and Nye requested elaboration on several topics multiple times that Ham never provided. I feel that a lot of Ham's difficulty in the discussion came from the fact that he posits a literal interpretation of the Genesis text. Ham, and all of the creationist scientists he cites, believes that the events of the creation took place in six 24-hour periods and that the earth, as well as the universe, does not far exceed an age of 6,000 years. Much of Nye's evidence was pretty glaring in its challenge to the credulity of Ham's claims.
Having been raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), I admit that a good portion of my thought process during the debate was what it would have been like for Ham if he had approached the issue from the perspective of Mormon theology. I am not implying that a debate between Bill Nye and a Mormon would be devoid of intellectual inconsistency on the part of LDS theology, but several specifically LDS teachings regarding the creation are, in my opinion, more in agreement with scientific evidence than those of mainstream Christianity (at least as set forth by Ham).
I don't consider myself an expert on Mormon theology, and much of what I say may be merely my own interpretation of LDS doctrine. Take it with a grain of salt. But here are some ideas I find plausible (meaning I am not presenting them as fact), some only loosely based on LDS theology, that may explain some of the events behind the creation:
Why God is "allowed" to exist
Evolution vs. creation: How did life and matter come into being?
I don't want to spend too much time discussing the Nye vs. Ham debate (if you're interested, here it is). There were several subjects, however, that Ham had a difficult time reconciling with Nye's points, and Nye requested elaboration on several topics multiple times that Ham never provided. I feel that a lot of Ham's difficulty in the discussion came from the fact that he posits a literal interpretation of the Genesis text. Ham, and all of the creationist scientists he cites, believes that the events of the creation took place in six 24-hour periods and that the earth, as well as the universe, does not far exceed an age of 6,000 years. Much of Nye's evidence was pretty glaring in its challenge to the credulity of Ham's claims.
Having been raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), I admit that a good portion of my thought process during the debate was what it would have been like for Ham if he had approached the issue from the perspective of Mormon theology. I am not implying that a debate between Bill Nye and a Mormon would be devoid of intellectual inconsistency on the part of LDS theology, but several specifically LDS teachings regarding the creation are, in my opinion, more in agreement with scientific evidence than those of mainstream Christianity (at least as set forth by Ham).
I don't consider myself an expert on Mormon theology, and much of what I say may be merely my own interpretation of LDS doctrine. Take it with a grain of salt. But here are some ideas I find plausible (meaning I am not presenting them as fact), some only loosely based on LDS theology, that may explain some of the events behind the creation:
- God has created "worlds without number" (Moses 1:33), and they were not necessarily all created at the same time; in fact, they probably were not. Thousands of planets could have been created before our world ever even began.
- The six periods of time during which God created the earth are symbolically given the appellation of "days", and do not refer to 24-hour periods of time. Thus, the creation could theoretically have taken thousands, millions, or billions of years by our time standards.
- Adam and Eve were the first two human beings to inhabit the planet, but they may not have been the only two human or human-like beings on the earth by the time the Fall occurred and they were cast from the garden. We don't know how long Adam and Eve were in the garden, and I find it reasonable that if the garden was separated from the rest of the world in the spiritual sense, it could plausibly be sequestered in an evolutionary biological sense. The process of evolution of various life forms could have happened exactly as modern science describes it, including the evolution of primates to humans or human-like beings, while Adam and Eve remained in the garden. (If this is the case, I don't have an opinion about how long any pre-Adamic human races remained, or if they intermixed with Adam and Eve's posterity. I haven't really been exposed to enough evidence to formulate an opinion about either of these ideas.)
I don't pretend that these ideas reconcile all the difficulties between the evolution model and the creation model. For example, I don't know how to reconcile the Biblical or LDS teachings regarding Noah's flood with several pieces of evidence Bill Nye mentioned during the debate, though I do not feel that there is no explanation. But what I've learned about the factual process of evolution has not disturbed my perception of how the creation could have happened. As far as the Big Bang and the creation of the universe in general, I am not enough a student of physics or astronomy to know much of the theory behind this, but I do find it plausible that the Big Bang or something like it could have been wrought by a supreme creator as well.
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