"That is, seeing all sides, not just one. BY using our reasoning abilities, assessing evidence, and using the rational, justified knowledge (gawd I LOVE how Riskas puts this over and over again in his book!) of what we already know, we can assess the reality, as it were, of what is asserted, proposed, or to use one of Tom's favorite words in his book "putatively" presented."
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,892915,893378#msg-893378

Kerry Shirts (thebackyardprofessor) posted this sentence on the thread linked above.

I think Tom Riskas was going for Deconstruction yet, Kerry you seem to be fascinated with the rational untying of the Mormon Gordian Knot. I think many thought it was untied for you? Yet you seem to still be Mormon?

Obviously you aren't Defending Mormonism after "Deconstructing Mormonism" so what is you relationship to Mormonism now?

EB,
I'm trying to stay out of DM threads until the we begin digging into the book together in earnest, but found your posting provocative, and your question apropos to all who have allegedly carefully and reflectively read and truly understood the book.

Perhaps, as your question at least implicitly seems to suggest, the relationship is more with "mormonism" than with any particular deity, or personal conception of god. If so, the question seems to answer itself, as all good analytical questions tend to do when not half asked.

To those, however, who assertedly remain theists, and not just mormons or members of some theistic faith, the question I would ask would be a bit different, as follows: "What exactly is the nature of this so-called 'God' you have faith in (or believe to actually exist), and what specifically is the basis of such faith or belief?"

This 2-part question, like your question that precedes it, might also answer itself, particularly, I think, if "real" doubt has been "betrayed" (i.e. exposed), a real understanding of the the 'four requirements' prescribed in the section 'Resolving the Dilemma of Doubt' (xxxi-xxxii) for getting 'outside the box' of your theistic beliefs using the OTF (xxxiii-xxxix) has been applied, and intellectual integrity is truly valued.

Without knowing KS, or in any way speaking for him, which I would not presume to do, my sense in reading his reviews and posts so far is that he has likely been, as I was, in the words of Kai Nielsen in his Foreword, bitten by "the wolves of disbelief," and that such bites will "gradually begin to take hold" (xi), if they haven't already done so. (I would be truly interested in knowing if this is so from you, Kerry, if you are willing to share.)

In my experience, such "bites" -- when of the nature of those inflicted by the "wolves" of personal crisis, disenchantment, and/or analysis and assessment offered in DM and Kai's books (1982, 1996, 2001, 2006) -- are usually, ultimately fatal to faith in all gods for all who are truly "bitten".

The exceptions, as I see it, would be, in part, where such faith is, or remains, as nothing more than a "regressive attachment" and/or "psychological defense" (205-7) that depends for its justification and survival on a sense of "communitas" or tradition (which Woody Allen famously characterized as an "illusion of permanence"), or on "common reasoning fallacies" (xlix-lx), flawed "apologetics" (63-7), the "parity argument" for theistic belief (77-80), and the "evasive possibility strategies" of ignorance, isolation, and inflation" (72-7).

Anyway, good question EB.

T

You are correct Tom, anyone who retains a theistic belief after reading your book would need to ask the question you posed for themselves.

I don't think Mormonism's Gordian Knot easy to untie. I think you did it successfully. I think for others they will just cut it. For people like myself, I have chosen to stay entangled with it but from the perspective of an atheistic-leaning non-believer.

This is why I want to know where Kerry Shirts is. In his videos he said he was not atheistic. I'm cool with that, but he has marked up your book like a truly devout Mormon does their scriptures.

It begged the question for me.

On another note, I love the metaphor of being bitten by doubts. And you are spot on about the nature of God for individuals so "bitten." I've been bitten and for me my God is dying little deaths. Some days are better than others. I know that eventually God is going to go, I just hope it isn't replaced with something else and I claim atheism without truly disbelieving in "something."

You have indeed been bitten by the "wolves of doubt" EB, and will soon die to god and return to your natural Atheism.

With this death you will be free to embrace -- as a mature, free-thinking person (see footnote 82, pp. 123-4) -- your natural place in the cosmos with the rest of biological existence, and do so with the realization that there is no "self" (much less "spirit") that survives the death of the body, even if the elements of your body return to cosmos from which it came.

What will take the place of the absurd, regressive beliefs in the "immortality and eternal life" of a "resurrected body" and "spirit" reunited with a "Parent-god" and "eternal family" will likely be the mature, sensible (and sane) realization that your immortality will be, to use Yalom's metaphor, merely the "ripples" your life makes in the world, and in the lives of those that your life has affected in some way.

Coming to terms with our mortality, and accepting the burden (again with maturity and intellectual integrity) of being, as Nielsen puts it so well I think, a naturalist without metaphysical foundations, is not an easy task for anyone. This is particularly so, I also think, for those of us who have been trapped and kept captive inside the "box" of the "Barogue" theistic, world-view for so long.

In some way, your poignant question betrays the existential anxiety we all feel, which presents itself as the desperate need to "believe something". I attempt to address such anxiety in the final paragraph of p. 341-3, and in my Epilogue, which I think is crucial reading for all those who have been bitten by the "wolves of disbelief."

Hope this helps.

Tom

tomriskas Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You have indeed been bitten by the "wolves of
> doubt" EB, and will soon die to god and return to
> your natural Atheism.

I have indeed. I like usual usually take longer than most to come around. I proceed to my death in small steps and quick embraces with it.

> With this death you will be free to embrace -- as
> a mature, free-thinking person (see footnote 82,
> pp. 123-4) -- your natural place in the cosmos
> with the rest of biological existence, and do so
> with the realization that there is no "self" (much
> less "spirit") that survives the death of the
> body, even if the elements of your body return to
> cosmos from which it came.

This is put beautifully. I love it. Thanks. I sure wish I could get my hands on a copy of that book.

Elder Berry. I'm sorry you don't have a copy of the book. I typed out the (long!) footnote for you, so you get the full sense of Tom's reply. The footnote itself is not as poetic as the wolves and the cosmos and etc of which Tom wrote. But footnotes tend to be non-poetic I've found, and this one delivers. :)

So here ya go. (This time anyway. Can't promise the same service into the future. The book is long, with small print and lots of similar-length footnotes).

I couldn't put in the italics (not part of this software) but I hope this doesn't confuse the reader as to meaning - I think it's still clear - and also I broke it into more paragraphs than were in the original, for ease of reading here. It was also a challenge for me to keep the American spelling and punctuation but I hope I managed that. (Please let me know if there are any bad typos).


“Deconstructing Mormonism” by Thomas Riskas, Footnote 82, pg. 123 & 124

The terms ‘free-thinking’ and ‘mature’ require some clarification, since it is very likely the case that perhaps most if not all mentally competent and functional adults consider themselves to be both. As used above – and implied throughout this book in assessing the rationality of theistic believers and the reasons why faith in a god exists and persists among otherwise educated and intelligent adults – to be a free-thinking individual does not refer or appeal to the arguably incoherent notion of indeterministic free will or free agency. Consequently, what is not being referred to here is the incoherent idea of a person with ‘free will.’ Rather, apropos to this analysis and assessment of the Mormon faith and all theistic religions as well, to be a free-thinking individual is essentially to be a person who is not so bound by intergenerational tradition, repeated social conditioning, and indoctrination to a particular ideology or way of thinking and seeing the world that he or she is unwilling and or incapable of critically thinking about and rigorously testing their core beliefs for intelligibility, coherence, and factual content. A free thinking person can function (to a greater rather than lesser degree) as an objectively critical and reasonably skeptical outsider with the intent to determine – through analysis and/or the pragmatic employment of the ‘scientific method,’ broadly conceived – whether or not such beliefs, as asserted truth claims, are warranted as being true (or probably true) or false (or probably false).

Moreover, a free-thinking person is, as conceived of here, one who is not bound by fear, anxiety, pride, or guilt to suppress real doubts about professed and held beliefs. He or she has sufficient ego strength or is sufficiently individuated as a personality not only to doubt, question, and test such beliefs (even closely held or cherished beliefs), but to relinquish them as well if they do not hold up to rigorous and critical analytic scrutiny. In considering the above, the condition of being a free thinker should not be confused with being liberally or indiscriminatingly open-minded as opposed to conservatively or stubbornly closed-minded. Neither condition is synonymous with being a free-thinking individual as such is conceived of here. On the contrary, a free-thinking person, as I see it, is discriminating, critical, and reasonably skeptical (or sensibly close-minded to nonsense) – as well as an avid proponent of the fact of human fallibilism in the pursuit of knowledge and rationality.

The term ‘mature’ is likewise a different state or condition than might be commonly supposed. While a mature person is perhaps minimally and commonly understood to be a person who is, in virtue of temperament, self-restraint, and life experience sufficiently developed to function responsibly in society, such a condition, at a deeper, psychological level is much more than that. As used above the term ‘mature’ denotes a state of being sufficiently discriminating, individuated, and integrated as a personality to deliberately (albeit deterministically) function as needed, and in consequential matters, with sufficient independence, moral imagination, reasonable skepticism, and deep, personal analytic insight to act in one’s own or others’ best interests,. Accordingly, a mature individual, as I understand this fuller concept of maturity, is sufficiently differentiated from both the family system and the dominant culture of which he or she is a part to function effectively as part of the collective without being defined or bound to their own or others’ physical or psychological detriment by the expectations, demands and judgments of the collective. Stated with current, more common terminology, a mature person in this sense might be more completely characterized as someone who is sufficiently independent (individuated or differentiated) as a person to function interdependently without being codependent.

Such a state of being is, of course, conceptually connected to being a free thinker. One cannot be a free-thinking individual as conceptualized above without sufficient maturity, or independence from regressive, interpersonal neediness and the emotional bondage of codependency. A person who is reflexively bound by collective (family, institutional, societal) tradition, roles, rules, expectations, demands, judgments, values, beliefs, and moral imperatives (or authoritatively established and authoritarian enforced ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’) and who is either liberally (indiscriminatingly) open-minded or unreasonably closed-minded would not – regardless of their steadfastness and integrity in living according to such requirements or commitments, or their responsible functioning in society – be considered mature as referred to above.

Given the above explanations of these two terms, and the obvious fact that such characterizations exist in degrees among different human beings, it would seem – degrees or protestations to the contrary notwithstanding – that the notion of a free-thinking, mature, dyed-in-the-wool Mormon (or theistic believer) at least seems to be an oxymoron in relation to their stubborn, lazy, or fearful unwillingness (or characterological inability) to critically and non-apologetically or presuppositionally test their core religious beliefs and unshakable loyalty and commitment to their faith as an objective, skeptical outsider.

-----end of footnote by Thomas Riskas-----



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/14/2013 07:07PM by Nightingale.

...where you live?

Maybe someone could share?

Or a library near you...?

Not for me it isn't.

I live in Jackson County Misery. I'll scout around the Mid-continent Library.

Thanks for typing this out for me. I'm reading it now.

tomriskas Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What will take the place of the absurd, regressive
> beliefs in the "immortality and eternal life" of a
> "resurrected body" and "spirit" reunited with a
> "Parent-god" and "eternal family" will likely be
> the mature, sensible (and sane) realization that
> your immortality will be, to use Yalom's metaphor,
> merely the "ripples" your life makes in the world,
> and in the lives of those that your life has
> affected in some way.

This turned out to be my head space instead of Kerry Shirts' head space and it has been a heady trip.

This statement of yours Tom highlights The central question for myself. What if what will take the place of the absurd is just as absurd but more rationally so?

What is the medium of those "ripples"? I would like to think of myself as a butterfly effecting something in the land of people but I think this is too wrong to think given the scale of and scope of people. I tend to think outside of myself not realizing I'm the source for this thinking. It isn't as objective as I thought it.

So maybe the size of those ripples doesn't matter. Yours are bigger than mine and I applaud you for it. Mormonism needs deconstructing. I'm sure of that but mostly for myself. Outside of myself it seems like a good thing to take apart. It "feels" like a cult but having been born into this cult I judge it as such by way of comparison of a normal I've never really experienced outside of what I'm hoping is a more mature and free thinking existence I'm carving outside of Mormonism.

I don't see the absurdity of a naturalistic view of immortality as the the effect our lives have on others after we die. What that effect is is impossible to know, but then none of that matters to us when we're dead and gone, for "we" (the "self") are no more, right?

...what this effect is or isn't. We can't ever experience it postmortem anyway.

But I am a cause that can perceive myself as such. Sometimes I see this as self-transcendence (incorrectly in my opinion) and other times as a bane and curse of existence in this conceptual perception of something greater that I am a part of with only the "free-will" to effect a cessation of myself as a cause and ending my effects.

In this battle of absurdity the lesser of two evils is probably using rationality but up to the scale of assuming for myself intelligible things which I cannot understand more than superficially and in parts seems the more absurd the more I think I can reach the heights I thought I could with religion.

For instance, using language to describe for myself a world view I need to take for granted that I know enough about myself, my closest people, other people around me etc. While they don't have to share my world view (my wife and kids definitely don't) I need points of reference for them inside myself. I struggle with even this simple task.