A previous post got me thinking about how I went from TBM to atheist. The poster of that thread asked if anyone lost their belief in God first, rather than the usual process of losing their belief in the church first, then reaching the conclusion of atheism. I responded in the affirmative, that belief in an all powerful sky daddy evaporated first before I came to terms with the sham that is the Morg.

That period of my life is relatively very recent. I had many doubts and questions, starting very young in life, but I was always able to shelve the questions or make a self-convincing apology. I remember reading The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn. The premise of the book is that human knowledge is always contingent, never complete or perfect.

Instead, human knowledge, and particularly scientific theory, must proceed from a standpoint of an attempt to account for all the available data. A hypothesis is proposed to explain the available data, and it either will explain the data better and more consistently than prior theories, or it won't. If it doesn't, the hypothesis is discarded. If it explains the available data, and can withstand the emergence of new data from, say, experimentation and new observation, then the hypothesis takes on the respect of theory. A new generation of scientists, devoted to the theory, devise experiment after experiment to prove the theory, and wave after wave of new data emerge. Over time, these experiments and observations inevitably lead to the discovery of anomolies, or data that aren't immediately and elegantly explainable by the basic terms of the theory. Scientists will attempt to explain the anomolies in terms of the theory, or modify the basic theory in order to account for the new data in such a way that the theory can still account for the entire corpus of knowledge.

Eventually, however, the emergent anomolies become so numerous, and modifications to the theory become so cumbersome and inelegant, that a new hypothesis will emerge to replace the old theory. To gain acceptance as a theory, the new hypothesis must seamlessly and elegantly account for all the known data at least as well as the old theory. In other words, the new hypothesis cum theory must not suffer from anomolitis. None of the known data should be anomolous to it. If the new hypothesis can accomplish this, then it becomes a theory that replaces the old theory.

The replacement of an old, worn out theory with the emergence of a new one is often referred to as a "gestalt shift." Gestalt is a term borrowed from psychology. It refers to those drawings that, depending on how your psyche interprets the image, can appear to be an old hag or a beautiful lady. You view the picture, and your psyche filters the data to make it appear one way or the other. If you see only the old hag, and someone says "Look again. There's a beautiful girl there," you may experience a moment of disorientation, and then a major "aha!" moment where the new explanation accounts for much in the image you at first didn't grasp.

The emergence of a new scientific theory causes the scientific community to experience a theoretic gestalt shift, and once the newer, better theory gains general acceptance, a new cycle of experimentation and verification begins. The new round of experimentation, of course, produces its own anomolies, and perfect knowledge remains ever elusive. This is the process by which Ptolomeic (Earth-centric) cosmography was replaced by a Copernican Sun-centric one, which was eventually replaced when astronomers discovered that the sun is actually in the suburbs of the Milky Way Galaxy. It's the process by which Newtonian mechanics were replaced by Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics.

This book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, had a profound effect on me, because it forced me to examine my own theory of the universe, specifically the God hypothesis. I realized consciously, for the first time, what I had been doing by shelving my religious doubts and making weak apologies. I had been accumulating anomolies, and I discovered almost in a flash that those anomolies vastly outweighed the evidences for the God hypothesis.

Some of those anomolies included the following: unanswered prayers; lack of any overwhelming conviction by the Spirit; prophesies and blessings made by priesthood leaders in my life that did not come true; others testifying they felt the Spirit when I spoke, when I did not feel it myself; knowing consciously that I was lying when I testified that I knew something; bigoted ideas and statements from "the Lord's annointed"; an awareness that my financial circumstances were not improved by my tithes; the death of my wife after a mere year of marriage, even though the Spirit told me that she was my eternal companion; others testifying they saw her or felt her presence at my later remarriage, even though I myself (the one most entitled) could not see or sense her; the strong awareness that the Church and sincere service in the Church gave me only fatigue, doubt, stress and guilt, when leaders told me it should lead to happiness; and on and on and on.

It very quickly dawned on me that all of these facts (and many more) had to be explained away by the God and Mormon hypothesis, and that I was tired of explaining and apologizing. So I tried a mental exercise. I thought to myself "Does the universe and my life make more or less sense if there is no God?" Everything, EVERYTHING, made eminently more sense, and immediately so. A secular universe accounted for every anomoly in my physical and mental life, without losing any explanatory power anywhere else.

For about two weeks, I feared the conclusion that there is no God. From a "Pascal's wager" sensibility, I attempted not to become atheist. I thought I don't want to lose my soul if I'm wrong. But I knew, deep down, that atheism is the only possible conclusion that I could hold with any amount of integrity. I accepted a secular universe, and then I embraced it.

The moment that God dissolved in my psyche, it was as if light burst forth in my soul. I had never, even as a small child, felt as healthy as I now did. I had gone from seeing life as a haggard witch one day, to seeing life as a beautiful lady the next. It was a grand gestalt shift that has improved the quality of my inner life in innumerable ways. I have never, not for a moment, regretted my discovery that there is no God and that all religion (including the Morg) is nothing but the cheapest charlatanry.

My only regret is that I didn't discover it sooner. I have always considered myself not entirely unintelligent, and I have always had a philosophical bent. I'm still discovering the mechanisms by which the Morg and society in general kept me shackled to the God lie, in hopes that it will heal me of all the harm I know I suffered.

I know this has been a long post, but it's been the journey of my soul. Thanks for reading.

Wow. Thank you for sharing your journey with us.

I agree. Thank you.

I have pasted it into a word document- Res, this is crystal-clear thinking and communicated so eloquently. The spirit moved me when I read it (just kidding). I got goose bumps from the truthiness of it, actually for real.

Yes! That's it--the accumulation of anomalies and then suddenly a jump to a new paradigm, almost involuntarily, as if the facts had a will of their own to be synthesized and form a whole greater than the sum of their parts.

Which is, in fact, a part of some of the new theories which have sprung from accumulated anomalies in the study of evolution and the arguments for/against the existence of god.

Well done, and don't forget, if you lived past 60 in the old days, you were suspected to be a witch 'cause it was so unnatural!

I think I'm going to keep a copy of this posting as well, and keep working on it over time. I'd like to flesh it out completely as a manifesto of why I left the church and outgrew God. Partly this is therapeutic, but primarily I'd like to have a systematic explanation for my TBM family. They have basically accepted my atheism, and they mostly leave me alone, but I know they're uncomfortable and eventually will ask me about it. Whether that will be a confrontation or a rational discussion remains to be seen. Either way, I'll develop this line of thought as well as I can, keeping the essay at the ready for when my family asks.

"outgrew God" Why you arrogant so-and-so. How dare you utter such blasphemy!

Just kidding. Fabulous post.

It's hard to verbalize without sounding arrogant, but my view has shifted to where I now see religion as a crutch for the weak and attending church of any sort is a character flaw. Accepting the universe at face value without need of some supernatural explanation is very powerful. And freeing.

I'd like very much to be able to compile a complete list of the accumulated anomolies, but I'm not sure I ever could. There are just too many of them. Besides the anomolies arising from my personal life that I listed above, I also spent years agonizing over some of the big scientific and philosophical problems that beset theism. Some of these included the problem of evolution vs. Adam and Eve, post-modern linguistic deconstruction, and the utter certainty that the New Testament is mostly comprised of forgeries.

I'm interested in hearing other people's accumulated anomolies.

and do not have a gestalt shift.

Thank you for expressing what I try to explain to people. I have no regrets, am far happier, and my mind, and life is free from the baggage that worship of imaginary beings places on us - guilt, fear, and the consequences of obeisance to frauds, and foolishness, obedience to useless rules, giving up my hopes, and dreams for their delusion, etc. They get us to think we chose "the right" all on our own, and we were oblivious to the fact that they told us what was right, and manipulated us. I am still a moral person, but happily free of the dogma, and control.

Is topping considered bad form? Just wondering.

but this is such a good read, doesn't matter who tops it.

Another aspect of gestalten shifting is that the new theory, which ideally creates a neat accounting of all available data, will generally suggest new areas of research--fertile, heretofore unplowed fields.

In my own personal journey, the jettisoning of the notion of God caused a domino effect of jettisoning other notions that I had previously held, such as the truth of the LDS church, the sincerity of JS, etc.

Up until that moment, I had never made a study of church history outside the "approved" channels. I was familiar with Morg apology, but I had never approached the secularist histories which reveal all of JS's lies, Morg distortions, etc.

When it became clear to me, for philosophical reasons alone, that JS could not possibly be a true prophet because there could not possibly be a God, this suggested to me areas to search out and study. So many Morg ideas had to be lies, distortions, cover-ups. And lo and behold, further study yielded confirmation of each and every one of those things.

I think, although I'm not certain, that this approach is exactly opposite to how most people approach the intellectual disillusionment of Morgology. My impression is that most people discover the historical facts that are derogatory of Morgology, and then realize it's all a lie.

I was personally unprepared to even consider the derogatory historical information until I had accepted a theory of God and the Universe that REQUIRED a secular explanation of JS and Morg history. In other words, I couldn't see the data until I had a theory that predicted the derogatory historical facts.

I really think everyone should read Thomas Kuhn's book that I've mentioned. It's one of the most important works of the twentieth century, and it's actually a short, fairly easy read.

Maybe I'm missing something in reading your OP, but your list of anomalies seems to be heavily involved with a specific kind of religious thinking, all based on the Mo religion. But you say you dropped the general god hypothesis before you dropped the Mo religion.

Here is your (I'm sure partial) list of anomalies that no longer made sense to you:

"Some of those anomolies included the following: unanswered prayers; lack of any overwhelming conviction by the Spirit; prophesies and blessings made by priesthood leaders in my life that did not come true; others testifying they felt the Spirit when I spoke, when I did not feel it myself; knowing consciously that I was lying when I testified that I knew something; bigoted ideas and statements from "the Lord's annointed"; an awareness that my financial circumstances were not improved by my tithes; the death of my wife after a mere year of marriage, even though the Spirit told me that she was my eternal companion; others testifying they saw her or felt her presence at my later remarriage, even though I myself (the one most entitled) could not see or sense her; the strong awareness that the Church and sincere service in the Church gave me only fatigue, doubt, stress and guilt, when leaders told me it should lead to happiness; and on and on and on.

It very quickly dawned on me that all of these facts (and many more) had to be explained away by the God <and Mormon>* hypothesis".

This list seems to be mostly Mo-related. These anomalies are part of the fabric of Moism. So it seems to me you actually just re-evaluated your Mo beliefs by critically reviewing the lack of truth in your accepted Mo teachings and experiences. It seems that you lost your belief in god due to the Mo church teachings being false.

How am I misreading this? Is this too much of a nit to pick? I agree with your thesis, and don't wish to stir up trouble. It's a fine post, you make some great points.

Two responses. First, you're not missing anything from that portion of my OP. I added that section into the post as an afterthought, without giving a thorough list of the anomalies. That's just what came to mind in about 30 seconds of thinking about it. The anomalies are just too numerous and it's too daunting a task to try, or at least it was at the time I wrote the post. As far as anomalies regarding general, non-mormon theism goes, I was especially concerned with problems of theodicy. That's a big one. See also my later post, further down in this thread, explaining some of the other big problems I wrestled with. So it wasn't just "Mormon" anomolies.

However, this does sort of miss the point. The point I'm making is not that the accumulated anomalies suggest any particular solution. They simply suggest, as a corpus, that the current theory is wrong, and that another theory should be pursued. Because the problems with my previous world-view were so extensive and pervasive, I decided to take a radical skeptical approach, and the mental experiment I performed worked shockingly well. I described above the process I went through of assuming a godless universe, and it worked to explain all of the problems without losing any explanatory power elsewhere.

In other words, the God hypothesis has no explanatory or descriptive power that accounts for any data whatsoever without raising a host of unmaneagable problems elsewhere.

This was amazing. Thank you for sharing your thoughts in such a well-organized, meaningful way.

Please post this on the Bio board.

Thanks Kolobian. That's nice of you to say. I'm still organizing my thoughts, and will consider posting it to the bio board when I feel it's ready.

Good writeup on what a lot of us who gave up on the Mormon god and religion went through. At some point, you just throw up your hands and say "does not compute".

Very well written. Thank you for sharing this.

Well thought out, res. I remember when I wanted to be called agnostic, because I really didn't know. Taking on the mantle (heh heh) of atheism is self-affirming, and I went that way with renewed confidence.

Quibbles over doctrine are meaningless when you know that all religious doctrine is fictional, and all gods fantasies.

I'm going to play Devil's advocate.

Since you brought art into it, I will as well. When you are learning how to draw or paint, one of the things that you learn is that your idea of what something is or looks like doesn't necessarily match reality. And our ideas are powerful. If I asked you to draw a daisy that was right in front of you, you alreay have an idea of what a daisy looks like, and that would in all likelihood deeply influence what you draw. And due to your ideas, your drawing would not be accurate. You are not drawing what IS, but instead what you THINK it is.

You can prove this to yourself by trying to copy a picture first right side up, and then upside down! For people who are untrained in art, the copy of the upside down picture will often be surprisingly accurate. This is because your preconceived notion of what something looks like is not getting in your way. You are looking at reality.

The process of being trained as an artist is that of learning how to shed your preconceived notions about things. And for some people, belief in God might be seen in the same manner. There is what we think about God, and then there might be what God actually is. Two entirely different things, perhaps.

Art training also involves the concept of negative (or empty) space. An artist needs to be aware of not only what is there (what the artists paints on the canvas,) but what *isn't* there. The two are necessary complements to one another. One learns how to harmonize positive and negative space in an artwork. The negative space supports the positive space. Yin and Yang.

In the same manner, perhaps that which is unseen (God and the spirit world) is a necessary support and complement for that which is seen (observable reality.)

I'm not trying to change your mind. I support your atheism. I'm just trying to explain how some people might come to a different way of seeing things, including a belief in God.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2013 07:35PM by summer.

I will never forget it. The very second I realized the church was false and a few minutes later when I realized there was no God, the world turned on a dime. Everything became beautiful because the hidden agenda was gone.

A flower was just a beautiful thing. A sunset was just a glorious light show. They were no longer saddled with being proof that there is a god. My clothes were just for fun and warmth and no longer needed to cover my nakedness or exemplify my purity. Food became life's second greatest reward, this time including coffee and wine and the occasional Sidecar or Martini. Life's greatest reward (and you know what that is) became the beautiful thing it was always supposed to be and there was no need to feel guilty and tearfully repent and beg forgiveness on my knees. Life became a journey and an exploration instead of a test with impossible and damaging rules to follow.

I began to see something more in others than just where they were on the path to exaltation. I marveled at their accomplishments even if they weren't faith affirming now, well, especially if they weren't faith affirming. I was in awe of what this planet is in the middle of this solar system, so unique, so interconnected. I loved being 'in' the world instead of pretending to be above it all.

I found myself in a world that was ripe with possibility and even when things went wrong, we could all just boost each other up instead of judge each other.

Well, that's all a little idealized, but it is the way I felt. And let me tell you, the seventies were a very good time to realize it.

Well said. Thanks for that.

Terrific post! Thank you for sharing your experiences. Mine are very similar. I wish more people understand the methods of science as you do.

And I'm not even a professional scientist.

...I, too, had that big rush of clarity. "Wow, everything makes sense now."