"People who leave the LDS church go from fundamentalist belief to fundamentalist non-belief without exploring the middle ground." - absolutely brilliant, and so true. What if there is a baby in the dirty bathwater of the LDS church?
As we discuss, when your whole religious paradigm has been taught to you by a church and it's leaders who claim infallibility, I think it is a big ask and frankly insulting to be judgemental towards people who have no intention of trusting what religions tell them about God ever again. If you are going to try and persuade them to still give it a chance and look for some babies in the bathwater I think it is incredibly important to acknowledge that reality and approach it very humbly rather than as if you have the moral high ground to demand of people to still believe in God or Jesus and go through the struggle and effort of rebuilding a religious paradigm from scratch after the mental and emotional exhaustion usually involved in disentangling from the last religious paradigm they were in. Because they can't really accept that leaving the Church or becoming disillusioned with it and it's doctrines and leaders is a valid path to take, most active faithful members handle this extremely badly, which doesn't help the credibility of their God at all. If you believe remaining in some way faithful to belief in Jesus despite becoming disillusioned with Mormonism matters, the only way to I'd recommend approaching that is to begin with a grovelling apology on behalf of the Church, which its leaders are never willing to offer, and an unequivocal acknowledgement of how much it has screwed up to cause a person to lose trust in it in the first place. This is an extremely difficult state of mind for a typical church member to even understand, never mind perform, unless they have had a pretty significant trust deconstruction of their own and reconfigured their personal religiosity with much less dependence on Mormonism and its leaders being right about everything. My experience over decades has been that reactivation is incredibly rare. Most people who leave leave the LDS church for good and very rarely bother with another one. I disagree with Paul's sweeping statement that everyone who leaves becomes a militant atheist, segwaying from one form of fundamentalism to another. I think for most people they learn through that experience of leaving the LDS church to distrust any fundamentalism ever again, specially when it involves letting other people tell you what to think and allowing them to invade your privacy and constantly judge you. But they will be angry and hurt by the many cruelties and injustices they experienced from the Church, and particularly what they feel is enormous amounts of time and money wasted on it if they leave after decades of faithful service. Being rightly rageful about that harm and loss is interpreted by TBM's as fundamentalist hostility to God, but it isn't- it's hostility to their own fundamentalism and distortion of what should be a kinder and gentle religion. Be careful not to confuse the two. I think most people who leave that I have encountered maintain some sense of spirituality and awareness of a Divinity, but they discover the big secret the fundamentalists cannot handle that that is more than enough to be getting on with for the rest of your life. Attaching official membership of a particular church and getting back into its demands and judgements and expectations of declarations of specific beliefs and lifestyles is far too triggering and unhealthy to want to ever touch that with a barge pole again. so they will not be rushing into another organised religion unless that aspect of the religious life and a need for that kind of a community is still very important to them. I'm constantly fascinated by the profound irony of Latter-day Saints, especially our parents, hoping that we will maybe at least go to another church if we reject Mormonism, despite having spent all our lives intensively indoctrinating us that those other churches are all incredibly apostate and don't have true doctrines or priesthood. Cognitive dissonance at its most bizzarre! This whole area is fascinating and very important, specially in part member and mixed faith families, with really significant implications for family relationships. There needs to be a lot more dialogue and bridge building about it, specially if the Latter-day Saints trying to bring people back have any intention of being successful and competent at it. 👍
@mormoncivilwar6189 This is a beautiful essay, Peter! I read it out loud to my family. This passage jumped out at me: "I think for most people they learn through that experience of leaving the LDS church to distrust any fundamentalism ever again, specially when it involves letting other people tell you what to think and allowing them to invade your privacy and constantly judge you." I resonate so much with at! I think that's one reason why I've enjoyed so much listening to Paul Toscano over this last year as we've left the LDS church. In his interviews, and the book I read of his excommunication (The Path to Exile, I think it was), he seems to really get the message from the BoM that it preaches specifically against heirarchies and authoritarians. I find that same message as I read it. It's been very difficult for me to parse my former beliefs. Many of my loved ones who were hurt by the LDS church and it's doctrines have gone towards the side of total disbelief. I empathize with that, and also consider those ideas and persuasions. However, I keep coming back to the Book of Mormon as being something true. It's hard to rationalize or explain, let alone convince anyone else of. I certainly am not on a high horse judging those who leave and never look back - quite the contrary. Like Paul so humbly repeats: he doesn't pretend to have the truth, he just chooses to believe what seems the most true to him at the time. Anyway, keep up the great episodes. I love your enthusiasm, your points of view, and the counterpoint you are to Nemo when you podcast with him :)
"Idealism vs Physicalism" ... and yet the host - the host, not his guest - regales us (at length) with the "17 Things Jesus Taught ..." WTF??? It was not until the 34th minute that the subject of materialism was introduced, and not until the 41st minute that the intended subject of "Idealism vs Physicalism" was addressed! As a post-physicalist (retired eye doctor with undergraduate studies in physics), I was looking forward to hearing the guest's views about Idealism (which I happen to believe is the ontological primitive). But instead, the audience was subjected to an off-topic sesquipedalian rant from an unhinged host. Sorry, Peter, but in a word: your performance was rude.
Peter is being Peter, and some of us love him just as he is. I suspect that Paul is one of those. You can move along, of course, if you are not a fan. I find Peter's monologues fascinating.
@@donnellallan With respect, you miss the point and purpose of my criticism. Day-2 was entitled "Idealism vs Physicalism," yet the majority of the time was spent allowing Peter to pontificate on the "17 Things Jesus Taught ..." ... ??? And while I agree with his detailed and prepared summary (not ad hoc remarks delivered on the fly), his rehearsal off-topic! You don't tell your audience to expect A and then provide them B. Secondly, no guest was required for what largely became a soliloquy. You don't invite a guest to speak on an assigned (or agreed upon) subject, only to then deny him/her the privilege of doing so. To do so is offensive; a breach of propriety. I have no doubt that Peter is a genuinely good person motivated by the best of intentions. What I question is his fitness as a host and his abilities to deliver what was promised. Be well, and thank you for taking the time to share your POV, even if I happen to disagree. Cheers.💚
If you consider a 3 minute ... count them... insert with specific evidence supporting a point made as a derailing insult to the guest then you are I'm afraid far too impatient to cope with the long- form and thorough style of this podcast. The purpose of these episodes is a dialogue and the role I outlined for myself from the start is to contribute where needed to keep everything discussed accessible and explained for a non-specialist viewer and we both share a passion for understanding how the big ideas have an impact in the everyday lived experience and challenges of local Church members. If you find my part distracting please buy and read Paul's books uninterrupted 👍😊
Someone doesn't take criticism well ... Peter, I sincerely wish you and your family a very happy New Year. I respect your passion for the subject and the efforts you make to inform your audience about the incongruities that exist within the organizational church. I'm confident your audience appreciate the efforts you expend to inform and educate them. Frankly, I would love to share a beer with you (okay, 2) and have a lengthy discussion as to why I abandoned Physicalism for Reductive Idealism. The short answer: classical mechanics supervenes upon the probability densities of the wave function of QM. I also have no doubt but that I would relish your company. It is plain that you are a genuinely good person. Cheers. ❤
Mormonism is all about Eternal Progression. There is always something more to learn. Questioning is eternal.
Fascinating. Not sure how much I agree or disagree with but I hope that i prefer to face the sea of uncertainty while staying within my own paradigm
Thank you and merry Christmas.
"People who leave the LDS church go from fundamentalist belief to fundamentalist non-belief without exploring the middle ground." - absolutely brilliant, and so true. What if there is a baby in the dirty bathwater of the LDS church?
As we discuss, when your whole religious paradigm has been taught to you by a church and it's leaders who claim infallibility, I think it is a big ask and frankly insulting to be judgemental towards people who have no intention of trusting what religions tell them about God ever again.
If you are going to try and persuade them to still give it a chance and look for some babies in the bathwater I think it is incredibly important to acknowledge that reality and approach it very humbly rather than as if you have the moral high ground to demand of people to still believe in God or Jesus and go through the struggle and effort of rebuilding a religious paradigm from scratch after the mental and emotional exhaustion usually involved in disentangling from the last religious paradigm they were in.
Because they can't really accept that leaving the Church or becoming disillusioned with it and it's doctrines and leaders is a valid path to take, most active faithful members handle this extremely badly, which doesn't help the credibility of their God at all.
If you believe remaining in some way faithful to belief in Jesus despite becoming disillusioned with Mormonism matters, the only way to I'd recommend approaching that is to begin with a grovelling apology on behalf of the Church, which its leaders are never willing to offer, and an unequivocal acknowledgement of how much it has screwed up to cause a person to lose trust in it in the first place. This is an extremely difficult state of mind for a typical church member to even understand, never mind perform, unless they have had a pretty significant trust deconstruction of their own and reconfigured their personal religiosity with much less dependence on Mormonism and its leaders being right about everything.
My experience over decades has been that reactivation is incredibly rare. Most people who leave leave the LDS church for good and very rarely bother with another one.
I disagree with Paul's sweeping statement that everyone who leaves becomes a militant atheist, segwaying from one form of fundamentalism to another. I think for most people they learn through that experience of leaving the LDS church to distrust any fundamentalism ever again, specially when it involves letting other people tell you what to think and allowing them to invade your privacy and constantly judge you. But they will be angry and hurt by the many cruelties and injustices they experienced from the Church, and particularly what they feel is enormous amounts of time and money wasted on it if they leave after decades of faithful service. Being rightly rageful about that harm and loss is interpreted by TBM's as fundamentalist hostility to God, but it isn't- it's hostility to their own fundamentalism and distortion of what should be a kinder and gentle religion. Be careful not to confuse the two.
I think most people who leave that I have encountered maintain some sense of spirituality and awareness of a Divinity, but they discover the big secret the fundamentalists cannot handle that that is more than enough to be getting on with for the rest of your life. Attaching official membership of a particular church and getting back into its demands and judgements and expectations of declarations of specific beliefs and lifestyles is far too triggering and unhealthy to want to ever touch that with a barge pole again. so they will not be rushing into another organised religion unless that aspect of the religious life and a need for that kind of a community is still very important to them.
I'm constantly fascinated by the profound irony of Latter-day Saints, especially our parents, hoping that we will maybe at least go to another church if we reject Mormonism, despite having spent all our lives intensively indoctrinating us that those other churches are all incredibly apostate and don't have true doctrines or priesthood. Cognitive dissonance at its most bizzarre!
This whole area is fascinating and very important, specially in part member and mixed faith families, with really significant implications for family relationships. There needs to be a lot more dialogue and bridge building about it, specially if the Latter-day Saints trying to bring people back have any intention of being successful and competent at it. 👍
@mormoncivilwar6189 This is a beautiful essay, Peter! I read it out loud to my family. This passage jumped out at me:
"I think for most people they learn through that experience of leaving the LDS church to distrust any fundamentalism ever again, specially when it involves letting other people tell you what to think and allowing them to invade your privacy and constantly judge you."
I resonate so much with at! I think that's one reason why I've enjoyed so much listening to Paul Toscano over this last year as we've left the LDS church. In his interviews, and the book I read of his excommunication (The Path to Exile, I think it was), he seems to really get the message from the BoM that it preaches specifically against heirarchies and authoritarians. I find that same message as I read it.
It's been very difficult for me to parse my former beliefs. Many of my loved ones who were hurt by the LDS church and it's doctrines have gone towards the side of total disbelief. I empathize with that, and also consider those ideas and persuasions. However, I keep coming back to the Book of Mormon as being something true. It's hard to rationalize or explain, let alone convince anyone else of. I certainly am not on a high horse judging those who leave and never look back - quite the contrary.
Like Paul so humbly repeats: he doesn't pretend to have the truth, he just chooses to believe what seems the most true to him at the time.
Anyway, keep up the great episodes. I love your enthusiasm, your points of view, and the counterpoint you are to Nemo when you podcast with him :)
@@MormonRescueThankyou so much 👍
43:09 is it a bad idea to judge people by what they look like? God looks on the inside, but we can't.
Apostles rob themselves of their spirituality by their seniority system.
"Idealism vs Physicalism" ... and yet the host - the host, not his guest - regales us (at length) with the "17 Things Jesus Taught ..." WTF??? It was not until the 34th minute that the subject of materialism was introduced, and not until the 41st minute that the intended subject of "Idealism vs Physicalism" was addressed! As a post-physicalist (retired eye doctor with undergraduate studies in physics), I was looking forward to hearing the guest's views about Idealism (which I happen to believe is the ontological primitive). But instead, the audience was subjected to an off-topic sesquipedalian rant from an unhinged host. Sorry, Peter, but in a word: your performance was rude.
Peter is being Peter, and some of us love him just as he is. I suspect that Paul is one of those. You can move along, of course, if you are not a fan. I find Peter's monologues fascinating.
@@donnellallan With respect, you miss the point and purpose of my criticism. Day-2 was entitled "Idealism vs Physicalism," yet the majority of the time was spent allowing Peter to pontificate on the "17 Things Jesus Taught ..." ... ??? And while I agree with his detailed and prepared summary (not ad hoc remarks delivered on the fly), his rehearsal off-topic! You don't tell your audience to expect A and then provide them B. Secondly, no guest was required for what largely became a soliloquy. You don't invite a guest to speak on an assigned (or agreed upon) subject, only to then deny him/her the privilege of doing so. To do so is offensive; a breach of propriety. I have no doubt that Peter is a genuinely good person motivated by the best of intentions. What I question is his fitness as a host and his abilities to deliver what was promised. Be well, and thank you for taking the time to share your POV, even if I happen to disagree. Cheers.💚
If you consider a 3 minute ... count them... insert with specific evidence supporting a point made as a derailing insult to the guest then you are I'm afraid far too impatient to cope with the long- form and thorough style of this podcast. The purpose of these episodes is a dialogue and the role I outlined for myself from the start is to contribute where needed to keep everything discussed accessible and explained for a non-specialist viewer and we both share a passion for understanding how the big ideas have an impact in the everyday lived experience and challenges of local Church members. If you find my part distracting please buy and read Paul's books uninterrupted 👍😊
Someone doesn't take criticism well ...
Peter, I sincerely wish you and your family a very happy New Year. I respect your passion for the subject and the efforts you make to inform your audience about the incongruities that exist within the organizational church. I'm confident your audience appreciate the efforts you expend to inform and educate them. Frankly, I would love to share a beer with you (okay, 2) and have a lengthy discussion as to why I abandoned Physicalism for Reductive Idealism. The short answer: classical mechanics supervenes upon the probability densities of the wave function of QM. I also have no doubt but that I would relish your company. It is plain that you are a genuinely good person. Cheers. ❤
@@DrFuzzyFaceThankyou!