(This post has been updated)

Just saw this blurb in the Deseret News this morning:

When Josh and Susan Powell were first married, both were very active in the LDS Church, Petersen said. They were sealed in the temple. But once they moved to Utah, Josh Powell stopped attending church.

Petersen said the Powells’ marriage counselor instructed Susan Powell to set specific goals. Susan Powell told her husband that her goal was for him to become active in the church again by the end of 2009 and to have his temple recommend again by their anniversary in the spring. Otherwise, she was going to divorce him and take the children, Petersen said.

Let me start w/ the obvious:

• Murder is heinous, disgusting, grotesque and horrible.  No excuses there.
• I’m learning more and more that there is never ONE factor that “causes” anything.  There are always countless factors that add up to any one act or decision…and the same is clearly true here.  I am not advocating for the idea (in the slightest) that this potential LDS Activity ultimatum was “the cause” of anything…only a potential factor (of many)…if it bears out to be true at all.
• Finally, let’s acknowledge up front that ALL of this (including the idea that Susan Powell was murdered and that Josh Powell was guilty) is completely theoretical.

But assuming this report is true — what do you think of an ultimatum like this…in isolation — “get active, or I’m leaving you and taking the kids” ….assuming an otherwise healthy relationship?

What if you were the one who had lost your faith….and what if you lost it because of reasonable issues like polyandry….or racism…..or DNA in the Book of Mormon…or the Book of Abraham….or sexism in the church….or the treatment of homosexuals in the church….or whatever.  Or what if you sincerely prayed about the church, and felt the “Holy Ghost” tell you to LEAVE the church?  Or what if the church just didn’t inspire you any more?

And then what if your spouse threatened to leave you and take the kids for following your conscience?

That would be a horrible thing to experience.  How trapped and desperate would you feel in this situation?

Murder is obviously a horrendously terrible solution to such a situation….but such an ultimatum would be a horrible thing to face, I think: your conscience, or your wife and kids.  Over the years, I’ve had hundreds of people contact me with this very dilemma — so I think this topic is worth exploring.  I know it’s directly relevant to thousands of people out there who are struggling in silence w/ their faith, wondering what will happen if they “come out” to their spouse regarding their feelings.

Here are a few ways to restate the point of this post:

1. Is it fair to leave a spouse  and take the kids if they go inactive?
2. Would God/Jesus want this?
3. Would the church leadership want/encourage this?
4. Could an ultimatum like this make things worse in a marriage, and even become dangerous?

So, first of all, what is meant by being predisposed toward religious belief?  Here are the characterizations from the article:

• imagining the invisible hand of the supernatural in acts of randomness (aka “answers to prayer”)
• conjuring “non-physically present agents” and imagining “what if” scenarios involving these agents (e.g. angels and devils)

Hmmm.  Based on that, I’m not sure I’m religious after all.  Interestingly, the Reformation rejected many of these “superstitions” of Catholicism.  So, does that mean Protestants are less religious than Catholics?  Really?  I guess this means that religion = superstition.

Data shows that the parietal lobe (which detects where our physical body ends and where the larger world begins) can be suspended during intense meditation or prayer.  This indicates that our brains are wired to “commune with God.”  This is the quintessential religous experience.  So if the belief in God is hard-wired into human brains, then the logic goes that it is innate and therefore unchangeable.  Yet, the number of unbelievers has doubled since 1990.  This begs the question whether it really is innate or not.

New data suggests that maybe this predisposition to believe is not innate after all, but created by our environment (yes, the old nurture vs. nature argument).  There are two prevailing ways of looking at the data:

1. Our lives suck because we believe. Religious belief creates dysfunction (religious wars and being judgmental), causes stress (through guilt and perfectionism), causes us to fear death (and eternal damnation), causes us to become poor (through misplaced altruism and donations to churches).  This is the party line of some prominent atheists who are anti-religion.
2. We believe because our lives suck.  Religion is our way of dealing with stress, fear of death, poverty, and dysfunction.  If people live in an environment free of these things, they tend to become agnostic or atheist.  This is kind of like the idea that poor people cling to “God and guns.”  It’s what is meant when they say “religion is the opiate of the masses.”  Is it also what was meant when BY said he feared the Saints’ ability to withstand prosperity.

Interestingly, this trend holds true across most believers:  the worse their lives, the more religious they are.  The more prosperous people are, the less religious they are (the more secular).  This sounds a lot like the BOM prosperity cycle.  Once you get rich enough, you “outgrow” religion.  It reminds me of the joke about the guy who is going to die, and he says if God saves him he’ll give half of everything he has to God, so God saves him.  Then the guy says, “Oh, nevermind, God; looks like I got it covered.”  (cue rim shot).

Of course, this is tricky logic when applied to Mormonism because the most recent Pew Forum shows (yet again) that higher levels of education and income actually create higher levels of religious commitment, contrary to the trend in other faiths.  IOW, Mormons somehow bust the BOM prosperity cycle.  Take that, Nephites!  Maybe it’s all that reading of the BOM.

The article posits that it may be a combination of our brains being hard wired to believe, but that life circumstances have to reinforce that worldview (e.g. life has to be sufficiently dysfunctional) in order for the programming to kick in.  So, here are some more logical questions if that’s true:

• If social progress is the enemy of religion, should religion quit trying to solve social problems?  Should it try to create more social problems?   Remember, Jesus said “I came not to bring peace, but a sword.”
• Do things like “persecution complex” and imagining we were are in an actual war with Satan (people ranking as generals and so forth) work to kick in the God programming?  Are these “imaginary dysfunctions” adequate to the task or do they wear off like placebos?  Do we need actual persecutions and enemies for it to work long-term?
• Once your God programming starts, can it be rewritten or changed, or do you always have a glimmer of belief (or a nagging fear you are wrong in unbelief)?
• If your God programming doesn’t kick in by a certain age, does it take a major dysfunctional event (like personal tragedy) to get it to work, or is it too late for it to fully develop?

These questions are still unanswered by science, so each of you will have to come up with your own speculations!  What do you think?  Discuss.

Every discussion of faith must distinguish it from its caricatures. Faith is not credulity. It is not “believing things you know ain’t so.” It is not a formula to get the universe to do your bidding. It is not a set of beliefs to be swallowed by one gulp. Faith is not knowledge. It is mixed with uncertainty or it would not be faith.

Who wrote it, and why wouldn’t this be published in a lesson manual today?

Take this assessment and find out:

(Taken from D. Jeff Burton’s For Those Who Wonder : forthosewhowonder.com. Similar to a Correlation Department survey on Religion and Life conducted among LDS Church members in the mid-1980s)

So share if you dare, or simply sit back and contemplate the combinations and their consequences for our church!

What does it mean to say you believe something or “believe in” something? Would a child say they believe in Santa Claus? Or would they simply act and react to situations as if Santa Claus existed? That is, if their parents took them on the Polar Express would they expect to meet Santa Claus tucked away in a cozy brick house at the North Pole checking his naughty/nice list and getting fist-bumps from Mrs. Claus before he gave rousing speeches to the elves?

Is belief as expectation the best way to understand religious belief in general?

Here’s a concrete example:

To be completely frank, I would no sooner expect to see the scene above in the Second Coming painting than I would expect the Polar Express to whisk me off to the North Pole to get a peek at Santa Claus in his workshop. That’s not to say that I don’t believe in Jesus Christ or His divinity. I do, as far as I can understand the concept of divinity, which is not very far. But I don’t ever expect to see a scene like this.

Nor do I expect any number of other things, including a physical Second Coming, the presence of multitudinous spirits hanging out with me every day influencing me for good or evil, or that the devil is sitting around thinking of how he is going to ruin my family’s picnic.

I expect that there is a residual influence from Jesus Christ which exerts an example on me and others to reach out to others in service, in compassion, and in the hope of eternal life.

I suspect that my expectations may have a greater influence on my behavior than my beliefs.

So,

If you don’t have an expectation of something, can you be said to believe in it? For example, if Mormons are supposed to believe in the Second Coming in some form, but we are also told not to expect it (or not to expect it in our lifetimes, though the practical value is the same to me), do Mormons still believe in the Second Coming?

What things do you expect, or not expect?

Are their other ways to analogize belief besides as expectation?