Scholars have often debated why humans gave up their hunter/gather ways and settled down to farming. In many ways, the change is hard to explain because hunting/gathering provided a more reliable standard of living with less work. Experts suggest that hunter/gathers worked fewer hours per week than most people do today.
So why did we do it? According to a University of Pennsylvania anthropologist, the answer is beer. Yes, that’s right. We started cultivating grain, so we could get drunk. Our ancestors took up the back-breaking work of farming, so we could waste away in Margaritaville, so to speak.
The oldest recipe we have discovered is a Sumerian recipe for beer. The UPenn anthropologist theorizes that some ancient person in making gruel left wheat and barley soaking in water for too long and, thereby, discovered the wonders of beer.
Is anything that is happening today more absurd than taking up farming for beer? If civilization is founded on our desire to drink, doesn’t that prove we have always been an absurd species?
This is the first in my series of Absurd Past Event Stories (#APES) in which I’m seeking to answer the question, “Can the Humans still Win?” To participate in this experiment and be eligible for Awards and Prizes, answer in the comments below whether you think this story is true. Or did someone in the past merely write this as fiction? Or have I possibly made it up myself? Along with your opinion, include how you came to this opinion? Did you merely guess? (This is perfectly acceptable. Just say so.) Or did you do research? How did you do research, and what is your source? For the first 48 hours after posting this story, comments will be held in moderation so that you can post your answer without influencing others. See Rules for a full explanation of how to participate.
If you believe the number of points you have been awarded is inaccurate or unfair, you may submit an appeal, using the form below. Note: all portions of the form must be thoroughly filled out. No one will read or respond to your appeal, but you may feel virtuous about having appealed, and you may award yourself honorary bragging rights. Honorary bragging rights have the same relationship to bragging rights as an honorary PhD does to a real PhD.
Now, this is the real question. I’m done struggling with how to approach my own writing in this era of political instability. I’ve decided no more of this doom and gloom and writing at the end of an era nonsense. Yes, the rise of right-wing authoritarianism and the spread of AI have made this an absurd era. So should we just lay down and die? No, we will thwart them all by answering the question: “Can the Humans still win?”
How will we answer it? By looking to the past. Every generation tends to think they’re special, and I am no different. I think my generation is especially fucked up. But are we really? If you’re like me, you may want to shout, “Of course, we are! Everywhere you look its absurdity after absurdity.” But are we really living in a particularly absurd point in history? Or have humans always been absurd creatures? Have we lost our connection to reality? Or did humanity never have a solid grasp on the dividing line between fact and fiction? Possibly, we’ve never been able to tell the difference between uncovering a conspiracy and believing a conspiracy theory.
To answer this profound mystery, I will delve into the annals of the past for the most absurd things that have ever happened, have been believed to have happened, or have been written about happening. Notice, I said I will use the annals of the past. If you don’t know what annals means, we can pause a moment for you to google it? Once you have, come back.
As you knew, or found out, annals means books.* It doesn’t mean googling or asking ChatGPT. All of the research, and I mean 100%, for this experiment will come from actual physical books that I have held in my hands. Real books. Made out of paper and everything. Not only will AI do none of my writing, the computer itself with play no role in my research. Does this mean that the books I use or the same information from another source isn’t available on the internet? Of course not. To determine what percentage of human knowledge has been made available online, you’d have to ask some kind of data engineer, but I know it’s pretty high. However, my source will not be the internet. I will find these absurdities and write them up on my blog as Absurd Past Events Stories (APES) on a weekly or bi-weekly basis depending on time and interest.
You can participate in this experiment and help me discover if the Humans can still win against absurdity and AI by reading the APES and correctly (or incorrectly, as the cause might be) identifying whether the event or belief is real. Did the event I recount happen? Was it a belief humanity truly held? Or was merely rumored to have happened: an urban legend, folk tale, or myth? If it is fictional, was it produced by one of the literary greats of the past? Or by an upstart Crow beautified with our feathers or a scribbling woman? Or did I just make it up myself?. Will you be able to find the correct answer with a simple google search? Maybe, I make no promises.
If you identify the APES as a true historical event, let me know if you think it is more or less absurd than what is happening today. For the rules of how to play, see Rules. Awards and prizes will be given. See Awards and Prizes for more information on how awards and prizes will be handed out.
After hearing about the rewards and prizes, I’m certain you will not want to miss out on your chance to participate in this historic experiment. The first APES is scheduled to appear on July 14. Keep your eyes peeled for my information, or subscribe to my newsletter with the form in the sidebar to make sue you don’t miss an important update. Pass the word to friends and family. Be sure to use the hashtag #APES.
Note: The above post contains several allusions. To get a head start on earning awards, you can earn 1 point by correctly identifying any allusion and its source.
* Can the word “annals” be used to refer to something other than books? Of course, it can, but do you really want to argue definitions? When I say, annals, I mean books.
Disclaimer: As expressed in my first post in this series (see here), I’m struggling with how to approach my own writing in this era of political instability. I don’t have an answer, so I’m writing this series to explore possible answers. The arguments expressed aren’t necessarily my opinion, but possible opinions on the issue. I’m hoping to spark dialogue to help me find my own answers. Please comment with your own reactions to these opinions. Do you agree or disagree with this opinion? Why? All polite replies are welcome.
I had a couple of interesting replies yesterday. My favorite included this quote: “The most radical thing we can do is not allow ourselves to be downtrodden. In the face of pain, we have spite and hope. If we have the ability and the will, I think we owe it to ourselves to be self indulgent.” (See responses to this post for the full comment). I like this sentiment. How often has a book taken us out of our own problems and allowed us to breathe free and happy if only for a few hours? How many of us have found joy not only in reading the stories of others, but in writing our own? Grabbing for and spreading joy in the face of negative events we can’t control can be a radical act.
Sometimes I think that continuing to write my fantasy stories in the face of this political instability is an irresponsible act. That I should be doing something, anything, to combat what is happening to my country. But am I thinking about this all wrong? Is there anything wrong with writing fiction that brings joy to myself and others, even in a time like this? Is laughing in the face of pain the radical act I should be engaging in? Does the writer who takes us out of this world and into other do us a favor or does it encourage escapism in a world falling apart?
Again, I’m not writing this series because I have the answer, but because I’m searching for it, or at least for an answer that works for me. I would love to hear the thoughts of other writers on what, if anything, is our responsibility of writers in this time? Have you found any answer to these questions that has worked for you? Or are you untroubled by them? Or as a reader, what do you want from writers at this time? I would love to spark a dialogue on the topic, as I search for an answer of my own.
Disclaimer: As expressed in my first post in this series (see here), I'm struggling with how to approach my own writing in this era of political instability. I don't have an answer, so I'm writing this series to explore possible answers. The arguments expressed aren't necessarily my opinion, but possible opinions on the issue. I'm hoping to spark dialogue to help me find my own answers. Please comment with your own reactions to these opinions. Do you agree or disagree with this opinion? Why? All polite replies are welcome.
Literature should explore timeless themes rather than comment on the current political climate. As a recently retired teacher of literature and creative writing, I can see at least two arguments to support this claim: 1) politically motivated literature encourages bad writing, and 2) politically motivated literature quickly becomes dated and unrelatable.
Politically motivated literature encourages bad writing in the following ways:
Characters become caricatures rather than believable people. When writing to make a point, an author is in danger of creating one dimensional characters that exist and act merely to prove the author's point. Such characters are unrelatable and uninteresting. All real people are complex and don't fit easily into neat boxes.
Plot is contrived. Rather than the story proceeding naturally, the plot is off forced into unrealistic directions, merely to support the author's point.
Writing is didactic. Rather than being invited into a story, readers feel that they are being preached at.
Adding to the problem of bad writing, a story is motivated by current political events quickly becomes dated and loses relevance. Dante's Inferno is a good example of this problem. Dante's hell is full of his personal, political enemies who no longer have any importance. This makes much of the Inferno tedious. To fully understand what Dante is saying, you need to look up who these people were, and when you find out, you still don't really care. By sentencing his personal enemies to creative, eternal torture, Dante looks petty and unlikable, and the piece loses some of the power it otherwise would have.
What do you think? Are these valid reasons to avoid allowing the current political climate to influence your writing? Why or why not?
What does it mean to be an author at the end of an era? What is our responsibility when free speech and the concept of truth itself is under attack? How do we use the power of the pen when basic human rights are disappearing? What does a specifically American writer do when nearly the 250-year-old American experiment appears to be coming to an end? Are new genres or new approaches needed?
As an author and a teacher of literature, I have always believed in the power of fiction to change the world. When we enter a story as a reader, we enter a world that is often unlike our own. Not only do we see the world through different perspectives, we experience the shared humanity of those whose lives little resemble those that we know. This enhances empathy and gets us to question our previous world view in a way that emotionless facts can’t accomplish. It is this empathy, more than anything, that is dying in Trump’s America. Literature is always a causality in an authoritarian state. What does a writer do when she sees this dark new world approaching, but feels powerless to stop it?
I never remember wanting to be anything other than a writer and began writing my first stories for my older sister when I was seven or eight. While my books haven’t gotten as many readers as I would like, I am proud of what I have written. My own journey as a writer came to a screeching halt on October 12, 2020, when my 24-year-old son and only child was murdered. (I have written of this elsewhere on my blog.) I was nearly destroyed by my son’s death and strongly considered joining him. While it has taken me some time to work myself up from a dark place, I have come to the decision that if I’m not going to die, I need to live. To me, living means writing. I have long said that a writer needs to write to be happy. About nine months ago, I began The Llama Apocalypse, a dark comedic speculative fiction novel in which Native American gods get their revenge. For awhile the writing went quite well, and I was starting to feel alive again. I presently have over 77,000 words of it completed.
But as the destruction of the Trump era rips apart the very fabric of democracy, I have had increasing problems concentrating on this novel, as it seems somehow trivial when faced with my government imprisoning people without trial and attacking the right of transpeople to even exist. I temporarily abandoned in and have attempted working on numerous other projects, including the fourth novel in my epic fantasy series, The Kronicles of Korthlundia, a paranormal novel in which a drug addict sees ghosts when he isn’t under the influence, a fantasy novel in which a 21-century college student finds himself in Valhalla, a non-fiction analysis of MAGA as holy warriors, and a memoir/historical fiction exploring my deconstruction of my Mormon faith and my relationship to the great, great grandmother I was named after. But none of it seen right in the current political environment.
All of this leads to the questions I began this post with. What do I write when my country seems to be dissolving from within? Should the current political situation effect my work? Am I being too alarmist? Will the United States be able to pull back from the precipice? Or as a writer do I have some responsibility to fight or document this collapse? If so, what form does that responsibility take? And how do I do so? Or should I just relax and write as I always have?
I would love to hear the thoughts of other writers, especially American ones, but all others welcome, on your thoughts of writing in the Trump era? Has the political situation effected your writing? How? Have you found any answer to these questions that has worked for you? Or are you untroubled by them? Or as a reader, what do you want from writers at this time?
I’m starting a new project called “Snapshots of My Son.” I’m not sure this will be of interest to anyone other than myself, but I’m feeling a need to preserve what Jesse meant to me. The following is the first snapshot I’ve written. They will be collected and revised under the link: Snapshots of My Son.
The Pun
Days ago my fourth demon-haunted Christmas passed. But how can something that isn’t haunt me? How can an emptiness be a demon? What does it mean when demonic devils show me to be one of their own?
Where the sky is blue Daemenoth Diablos queries? “If possession is 9/10th’s of the law, how come there aren’t more exorcists with legal firms?”
This devil knows what will tempt me. The Pun. That play on words I can’t resist. It pulls me in with need to make the interaction last. I am one of those odd ones, a lover of puns. I’m an odd because I lost my mate, the other half of myself. I passed to him my love of puns, but I can’t pass on this latest one, as I have so many before it.
In his snapshots, he preserved our mutual love. Screenshot of text from Mom:
In his response, he showed himself to be an odd one’s mate. “Hahahahahah! I laughed very loudly.” My son, my boy, my sweetheart. He appreciated how deliciously, devilishly terrible the pun is. Blood of my blood even got the adverb right.
As young as ten, he knew how to eviscerate a pun gone bad. I don’t remember the pun I created that day, but I will never forget his response. “Mom, that isn’t even worth a disgusted look.” He knew, knew what a pun needed whether a good one or bad.
My son, my boy, my sweetheart wasn’t merely a lover of puns, but a pun maker. Another screenshot of a Mom text he saved:
This time my son, my boy, my sweetheart punned in response:
What a proud Mom I am. How can puns fail to haunt me when I can’t pass on the need for exorcists in law offices to the one who understood that eating paladins made a dragon’s stomach holy with their lawfulness?
This song is taught to children in primary (the Mormon auxiliary for children under the age of 12). I remember singing it myself and with my students, during my unfortunate stint as a primary teacher to the 11-year-olds. One of the main ways Mormons differ from other Christians is that they believe their founder, Joseph Smith, was called of God as a prophet in the same manner Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah were. Moreover, every president of the church since Joseph’s time has similarly been a prophet of god with a direct link to God himself. The prophet tells Mormons what God wants them to hear today. While the Bible and other Mormon holy books tell of God’s interactions with this people of the past, the prophet can deliver a direct message from God himself. At General Conference (held twice a year), the current president of the church is sustained as a prophet, seer, and revelator.
Russell M. Nelson or Rusty
Current prophet is Russell M. Nelson (for some reason, Mormons always include the middle initial in the names of those in the church hierarchy). His appearance kind of reminds of Voldemort. Nelson was a celebrated heart surgeon who was appointed to The Quorum of the Twelve apostles by former prophet Spenser W. Kimball (the prophet of my youth), at a time he was falling into dementia. Nelson had operated on Kimball, and as Kimball started to lose his mental facilities he appointed both his doctor and his lawyer to be one of the fifteen men who lead the Mormon church. When the current prophet dies, he is replaced by the most senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve, meaning that by the time a man reached this position he is invariably old. Nelson is over 90. Among Ex-Mo’s, Nelson is referred to irrelevantly as Rusty.
In processing my religious trauma caused by growing up in a cult, I’ve spent a good deal of time watching atheist YouTubers responding to sermons, religious books, and apologists. There is comfort in hearing from others who have deconverted, but many of the points they address don’t line up exactly with the doctrine I was taught as a child because, as I said in my first post on Mormonism, Mormons are weird. As I considered what to write about today, I thought about doing a similar thing with one of the two speeches Rusty gave at the most recent General Conference, which was held just last weekend in Salt Lake City.
As a whole, his speech titled “Peacemakers Needed” presents a fairly good message. But there are subtleties and dog whistles throughout that the non-Mormon would miss. Today I’m going to go through the beginning portion of his speech, let me know in the comments if you’d be interested in hearing the rest of this speech analyzed. Although readership of this blog has gone up slightly since I started this, comments are rare, and I’d really appreciate hearing from you to help me decide what to cover next.
The words in italics are from Rusty’s speech.
My dear brothers and sisters, it is a joy to be with you. During these past six months, you have been constantly on my mind and in my prayers. I pray that the Holy Ghost will communicate what the Lord wants you to hear as I speak to you now.
In every sermon I’ve heard from local leaders up through the top of the church hierarchy, listeners are always assured that the leader loves us, thinks and prays about us. Rusty’s use of this technique is colder and less personal than they often are, most notably in that there is no mention of love. I don’t mind this omission. During my long deconversion process, I found these “reassurances” insulting and condescending. None of these leaders knew me and what my challenges were, so how could they love or pray about me? It seems, and I believe it was meant to be, manipulative, as if hinting that they had special knowledge about us individually directly from God.
Mentioning the Holy Ghost as the communicator is also typical of Mormon sermons. Mormons don’t believe in the trinity and see the Godhead as three separate beings. The Father and the Son have bodies, but the Holy Ghost hasn’t received one yet so that he can testify to us spirit to spirit. We were told that if we ever doubted anything we heard in church or read in scripture, we should pray, and the Holy Ghost would let us know if it was true. I somehow missed the memo that there should be only one possible answer to such a prayer, a confirmation that it is true, and I had far more mixed results in the answers I believed I got, if I felt my prayer being answered at all. While Mormon doctrine on the prophet’s infallibility is a bit convoluted and contradictory, most Mormons do see him as uncapable of being wrong, even though the prophets often contradict their predecessors. This near defying of the prophet is one of the things that makes Mormonism a cult. My unwillingness to simple “follow the prophet,” as the song instructs, was seen as sigh of unrighteous pride, the few times I ever voiced it, so I tended to keep my thoughts on the matter to myself.
During my surgical internship many years ago, I assisted a surgeon who was amputating a leg filled with highly infectious gangrene. The operation was difficult. Then, to add to the tension, one of the team performed a task poorly, and the surgeon erupted in anger. In the middle of his tantrum, he threw his scalpel loaded with germs. It landed in my forearm! Everyone in the operating room-except the out-of-control surgeon-was horrified by this dangerous breach of surgical practice. Gratefully, I did not become infected. But this experience left a lasting impression on me. In that very hour, I promised myself that whatever happened in my operating room, I would never lose control of my emotions. I also vowed that day never to throw anything in anger-whether it be scalpels or words.
This part is the seemingly obligatory personal story that nearly every conference sermon contains. Like nearly all of such stories, I sincerely doubt that it is true. When I was a child, one of my favorite conference speakers was Paul H. Dunn (they love that middle initial) because he had better stories than most of them. He spoke about his time as a solider in World War II and his career as a professional baseball player. Dunn made his stories specific enough that they could and were fact checked by those unfriendly to the church. It turned out that his combat stories were completely fabricated, and he never played professional baseball. While most of the stories Mormon leaders tell don’t include enough specific details that they can be proven lies, I suspect that vast majority of them are as fictional as Dunn’s were. In this case, it seems hard to believe that a highly trained surgeon would act in such a dangerous and childish manner. But no conference sermon would be complete without a story.
Even now, decades later, I find myself wondering if the contaminated scalpel that landed in my arm was any more toxic than the venomous contention that infects our civic dialogue and too many personal relationships today. Civility and decency seem to have disappeared during this era of polarization and passionate disagreements. Vulgarity, faultfinding, and evil speaking of others are all too common. Too many pundits, politicians, entertainers, and other influencers throw insults constantly. I am greatly concerned that so many people seem to believe that it is completely acceptable to condemn, malign, and vilify anyone who does not agree with them. Many seem eager to damage another’s reputation with pathetic and pithy barbs!
Starting with this part of his speech, I agree with much of what he has to say. As Americans, we have become increasingly divided and hostile toward each other. Political discussions on social media tend to quickly dissolve into toxic name calling. We can no longer simply disagree on the correct policy to address a problem. We must eviscerate our opponents. The other side isn’t simply wrong. They are evil, and evil can’t be compromised with.
But there is a subtext behind this speech that he doesn’t directly address. The Mormon Church has a Trump problem. Mormons have cultivate right wing political policies for decades, and as they have attempted to become more mainstream, they have joined with other conservative churches to advance conservative political viewpoints. Proposition 8 in California passed largely due to the financing and activism of the Mormon church. It is rare to find a Mormon Democrat. My own parents claimed that my ancestors would roll over in their graves if their descendants ever voted for a Democrat. If this prediction was correct, they have been doing a lot of rolling over on my behalf. Mormons cultivate this monster, and now the monster is escaping their control.
While Mormons were slower to embrace Trump than Evangelicals, many have converted to the Trump cult. With this conversion, they have become as toxic as most Trumpists. I had a Facebook interaction with one of my aunts that demonstrates this. During Trump’s presidency, I posted something on Facebook (I don’t remember what) that was critical of Trump. My aunt responding in the public comments, asking me what had happened to me and told me that my parents would be disappointed and ashamed of my actions. I was shocked and hurt by the vehemence of her attack. This aunt was always my favorite aunt as a child. She is married to my father’s youngest brother. Since I left Utah at 23 years old, I have had limited contact with her and basically none at all since my mother died 20 years ago. When I confronted her in a private message how hurt I was that she would use my father who died when I was barely 21 against me for a political point, she did apologize. But I still feel somewhat battered by the venom she directed at me for daring to express an anti-Trump opinion.
The problem that the Mormon church has is that Trumpism is also a cult, and as Matt. 6:24 says, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” You cannot serve both Rusty and Trump. When the Mormon church finally decided to push back against the anti-vaxxers by encouraging all members to get the Covid vaccination, Trumpist Mormons went nuts. They started to question whether the leaders of the Church had gone astray. It got ugly. It is hard to overemphasis how significant this reaction was. Questioning the prophet’s words is something few believing Mormons would ever do, but when the Mormon church went against where Trumpists had gone, the membership question the church leadership instead of their political masters.
While the fervor over vaccination has died down, the infection of Trumpism remains in the church, leading to enormous difficulties for Church leadership. Like many religions, the Mormon church is bleeding membership, especially among the youth. Their conservative rhetoric on women and gay rights is alienating Generation Z, who are leaving in droves. Of course, the future of the Church depends on the keeping the youth, but they can’t move to the left to accommodate the younger generation without losing the older generation (today’s big tithe payers) to the Trump cult. And as Trumpism has poisoned all political discussion in this country, the venom directed at the church over vaccination is a sign of what would come if they ever dared to go against Trump on anything else. They are caught between a hemorrhage from the left and bleeding to death from the right. They have helped to create a monster they now can’t control. This speech is, in my opinion, an attempt to calm this descension. I don’t think it will work, and the church will continue to bleed membership from both directions. Its death will be slow since they have so much money they’ve been hoarding, but eventually they will bleed out.
The Mormon church has become a modern object lesson that if you create a monster, it will always turn against you. Decades of right leaning politics have helped to create the monster that is Trumpism, and now that monster is turning against its parent. I can’t say I’ll shed a lot of tears on their behalf.
Still, Rusty is right about how toxic our culture has become. If we don’t learn again to disagree with hatred, we will tear this country apart between us. But how we will heal our divide or even if it is healable, I have no better answers than Rusty offers.
If you enjoyed this and would like me to discuss more of Rusty’s speech or if you have other issues about Mormonism you’d like to see address, please comment below.
Sorry, I missed last week. I was having a bit of an emotional meltdown. The death of my son still disables me sometimes. I’m back this week.
I have spent several posts discussing my deconversion story, which highlights the problems I had with the Mormon cult I was raised in, but Mormon doctrine isn’t all bad. In some respects, it reflects a superior moral system than mainstream Christianity. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, took several deeply problematic Christian beliefs and changed them to make the align better with our natural sense of right and wrong. This is one of the reasons that Mormons, who come to doubt the truth of their own religion, rarely gravitate to a more mainstream Christian church. They are much more likely to become atheist or agnostic than they are a different type of Christian. While I questioned my faith for decades, I never considered joining a different Christian church because I found their beliefs horrifyingly awful. For me, probably the most immoral of these beliefs is the doctrine of original sin.
Mainstream Christian theology states that God created the world and humankind perfect. He intended us to live forever in a blissful garden, but Adam and Eve sinned. Because of this, not only will we die, but as David Vanacker, pastor of Grace Church of Wyoming puts it, we have all become “fundamentally depraved.” (1) Dan Vander Lugt of "Questions.org: Answers to Tough Questions about God and Life" states it even more bluntly (2):
There are no “normal people.” Everyone deserves judgment. We are fallen creatures under a spiritual curse in a fallen world. Apart from God’s grace, hell is our natural state of being. Apart from God’s grace, this world would be a place of unmitigated horror and suffering. . . Normal people deserve hell because they are willing participants in the events of a fallen, cruel world.
Because two people failed an unfair test (see my comfy blanket) thousands of years ago, we all deserve to be tortured for eternity, and only a belief in Jesus can save us from a fate we absolutely deserve.
I reject this belief on both epistemological and moral grounds. First, the fundamental depravity of humankind is not evidently true. While no one is perfect and a small percentage of people are depraved, most people do their best to do the right thing most of the time. Most people, no matter their religious beliefs, view things like murder, rape, torture, abuse, theft as morally reprehensible and even more morally reprehensible if these things are done to a child. While we do sometimes act selfishly, actual depravity is rare, and altruism abounds. History, literature, film, and the everyday news are full of people who risk their own lives to help others, even people they don’t personally know. (My own son was killed attempting to help a person he’d never met.) These are the people we admire and who are held up as heroes, while we deplore those who inflict senseless pain and suffering onto others. These are not the actions or beliefs of fundamentally depraved individuals.
Even more that it not being true, the doctrine of original sin posits a god who is a moral monster. Unlike Lugt claims above, we are not willing participants in this world. We didn’t choose or even consent to being born, and there is no justice in punishing one person for the actions of another. We recognize this in human society. We don’t prosecute the children of murderers for their parents’ crimes. Nearly everyone would consider it unjust to do so. So how much less just is a god that punishes us for what our 1000s time great grandparents did, especially since he is the one who created people, knowing that they’d be unable to follow his commandment. I personally don’t believe anyone could possibly deserve eternal torture, and absolutely no one deserves it for the simple sin of nonbelief. There is no justice in a system that sends a person who has spent their life doing their best to do the right thing and help others into a fiery pit of eternal torment, just because they didn’t believe in an undemonstrated being. No matter how apologists try to twist their minds to accommodate this belief, any being that would do such a thing is fundamentally evil. Arguing that god loves us, but will torture us forever if we don’t believe in him is simply absurd.
Not only is it morally problematic for a god to punish people for what someone else did, a belief in this god perverts Christians’ view of themselves and others. They live in guilt and shame for their inability to be perfect, thinking the alternative is complete depravity, and it taints their views of people not of their faith. If we are fundamentally depraved without Jesus, non-Christians must, therefore, be evil, so there is no reason to treat them with kindness and compassion, at least not after they make their lack of interest in Christianity apparent. Threatening atheists with hell is one of the favorite pastimes of Christians in the toxic world of social media. The relish with which some do so calls their own morality into question.
In opposition to this destructive belief, Joseph Smith rejected the idea of original sin. As he wrote in the 2nd Article of Faith (3), “We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.” Mormons have an entirely different concept of the Fall. For one thing, notice the Article of Faith calls it Adam’s “transgression,” not Adam’s sin. Mormons believe before the Fall there was no reproduction. If Adam and Eve hadn’t eaten the forbidden fruit and chose to know the difference between good and evil, they would have lived forever alone in Eden. The rest of us would never have been born. God couldn’t violate their free will by forcing this knowledge on them. They needed to willingly make the choice, so yes, they violated the law they were given, but it was a necessary violation for humanity to come into being. So it wasn’t a sin, merely a transgression of the law.
Rather than Eve being the villain, who caused all suffering in the world, Mormons see her as somewhat of a hero. She is the first that recognized the necessity of the transgression, so partook of the fruit and gave it to Adam. Adam then realized that she had made the necessary choice and followed suit. We have Eve to thank for our existence, and we are only accountable for our own actions. We are not fundamentally depraved, but all are born with the light of Christ (our conscience) that makes us understand right and wrong, and therefore, act in the morally correct manner most of the time.
If you’re wondering how Joseph Smith reconciled this doctrine with the Bible, he didn’t. Smith didn’t teach that the Bible was inerrant. The 8th Article of Faith states, “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly.” The Bible didn’t stay pure as it was passed from generation to generation, and corruption crept into the word of god. The doctrine of the Fall isn’t fully taught in Mormon scriptures either, but can be found in the temple ceremony that only faithful members are allowed to attend. Mormons aren’t supposed to talk about anything that goes on in the temple outside of it. Of course, this doctrine has the same problem is any belief in a literal Garden of Eden, but it is far better that what mainstream Christians teach.
So yes, the Mormon church has a lot of problems, but as far as the doctrine of original sin, Smith fixed a belief that has figured into many of the deconversion stories I’ve heard from atheists who had been mainstream Christians. After growing up believing that I am only responsible for my own actions, a god who holds me responsible for what a couple of people did thousands of years ago seems so fundamentally unjust I never entertained the idea that it could be true.
Yes, Mormons are weird, but not all that weirdness is negative. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the justice of the idea of the Fall or the concept of Hell. Also, if there’s anything about Mormons, you’d like to learn more about. Post your questions in the comments.
Today, I finish my deconversion story. I’d love to hear your comments or your own story in the comments below..
It took until my son was two to earn my doctorate. Jobs in academia are hard to come by, but I did receive a job offer at Auburn University in Alabama, so there we moved. As is probably unsurprising, the Mormon church in Alabama is more conservative than it is in California. While being a Mormon feminist had been difficult in California, it was close to impossible in Alabama. Conservative gender roles were emphasized constantly, and I continually felt the need to justify my career. I hated to go to church and felt angry and literally sick afterwards. I started having breathing difficulties at church and needed hours long naps afterwards to recover. It was unsustainable. After a few years in Alabama, I stopped attending church.
But even then, Jane’s eyes were boring into me from heaven, reminding me of everything she’d sacrificed and endured for the church. Here I was not being able to endure a little (well a lot) of sexism at church while she had endured a 1000 mile walk on a ration of 3 tablespoons of flour a day, what kind of weak, faithless loser was I. None of my siblings seemed to have any problems with the church, so why did I have so many doubts? What was wrong with me that I would simply throw away what Jane had sacrificed everything for? Despite the enormous guilt I felt, I could not stomach attending church, but because of Jane, I also couldn’t admit my reasons for doing so. I blamed it on my asthma and the carpeted walls at the church that harbored so much dust that I was allergic to. While it may have been the true that asthma and dust was partially responsible for my breathing difficulties at church, I think most of it was psychosomatic. Being inside that building was so suffocating, I literally couldn’t breathe freely.
I used this excuse with other church members, with my husband, and with my son. I didn’t want my son to doubt the church just because mommy didn’t attend. I couldn’t stop believing that taking him away from the church would be taking him away from salvation, something I loved him far too much to consider. I just needed to be patient. Things would change, and I could happily go back to church. I just needed to wait a little bit longer.
I continued in this limbo status until my son was about 14. At that age, he started objecting to going to church himself and especially resisted attending the early morning seminar that Mormon teens start attending in the 9th grade. At that point, I worried that my lack of faithfulness was endangering my son’s salvation, so I tried going back for his sake. However, that was too little and far too late to save my son’s faith. My own doubts had stopped me from indoctrinating him in the way that so many Mormon parents do their children. My biggest fear when he was little wasn’t that he would leave the church, but that he’d become like the condescending Mormon men I despised. Instead of indoctrinating him in Mormonism, I stressed feminism, equality, acceptance and other liberal values at odds with the church’s teachings. I always discussed morality from a secular humanist, rather than Mormon, perspective. If he took a toy from another child, I didn’t berate him for stealing because the Bible said stealing was a sin. Instead, I asked him if he liked it when other children took things from him. When he admitted he didn’t, I told him we shouldn’t do to other people what we don’t like done to ourselves. With that background, his atheist best friends had an easy time convincing him that the values he held were at odds with what he was taught at church.
On top of that, my nieces were reaching their 20s and saw them being channeled into the same restrictive roles that I had fought so hard against when I was their age. The Church wasn’t going to change because it wasn’t true. Jane had sacrificed everything for a lie. She left her country to follow a con-man out into the desert. She was no hero to be admired. She was a victim to be pitied. The Church didn’t save people. It did incredible harm to them. I was finally ready to allow it to do no more harm to me. I embraced the label “ex-mo” and have never looked back.
Now, my moral code is best summed by Bill and Ted on their excellent adventure.
Be excellent to each other.
Party on, dude!
Treat others with kindness and compassion and embrace the joy of living. This life is all we have. Make it a life worth living.
If you have any questions about Mormonism or would like to suggest a topic for a future post, please leave it in the comments. Also, please do me a favor. If you are enjoying this series, please hit the like button.
Scholars have often debated why humans gave up their hunter/gather ways and settled down to farming. In many ways, the change is hard to explain because hunting/gathering provided a more reliable standard of living with less work. Experts suggest that hunter/gathers worked fewer hours per week than most people do today.
discovered is a Sumerian recipe for beer. The UPenn anthropologist theorizes that some ancient person in making gruel left wheat and barley soaking in water for too long and, thereby, discovered the wonders of beer.
current political events quickly becomes dated and loses relevance. Dante's Inferno is a good example of this problem. Dante's hell is full of his personal, political enemies who no longer have any importance. This makes much of the Inferno tedious. To fully understand what Dante is saying, you need to look up who these people were, and when you find out, you still don't really care. By sentencing his personal enemies to creative, eternal torture, Dante looks petty and unlikable, and the piece loses some of the power it otherwise would have.
