just nate – code is poetry, life is code

This weekend in my home town of Salt Lake City, Utah, a bi-annual curiosity known as general conference is taking place on its scheduled day, just as it has with few exceptions since the first time in New York, 1830.

General conference is a time for the LDS church to gather, sing, worship, and listen to guidance from church leaders. There are live streams on the internet, and it is a televised event. It’s also on the radio, and you can buy DVDs and audio CDs of the proceedings afterward.

The LDS church has constructed a giant, 21,000-seat auditorium known as the conference center, complete with a fancy organ and state-of-the-art audio, video, recording, and broadcasting equipment. It is the scene of a great deal of controversy every April and October when conference happens: people with anti-church signs, people shouting, and the massive body of “saints” (this is the way members of the church identify themselves) streaming in and out of five two-hour sessions spanning Saturday and Sunday.

I grew up in the LDS church. It was a great social framework, and most of the values taught therein are still a part of my life today. However, as I moved into adulthood, science, logic, reason, math, physics, and overall rationality have become my guides. I won’t go into too much detail about the reasons I left the church, or my personal moral code. It is sufficient to say that I believe that faith is the enemy of reason, and that, from an epistemological perspective, reason must be my only absolute.

And now to the purpose of this post. I have received several invitations, all cordial, from friends and family who are aware of my “fallen” and “wayward” state, to join them in their homes and watch a session of conference with them. I have thanked them and politely declined. Generally, that is sufficient. However, there is a militant subset of people who will not take “no” for an answer. They are on a mission to bring me back into the fold.

Sometimes they make an appeal to logic, which is commendable. They seem to understand that faith has never held much sway for me. However, the arguments they make are hardly founded in logic, and I think they are an interesting perspective into the patterns of thought inherent in religious abstractions. Since they are very bad at listening to my responses (mostly because of a lifetime of being conditioned to think in a way that is in direct contradiction to logic) I feel compelled to write them down and express them to the void we call “internet.”

• But don’t you remember how the church helped you when you were in it? Don’t you remember feeling inspired and happy?

  You’re going to make me admit that I was wrong then, or that I am wrong now. You know that I don’t like to admit that I was wrong, and that I make it a point to be “right” as often as possible. Well, I freely admit that I was wrong then. However, I think that being born into a family, a neighborhood, a culture, and in my case an entire state that has completely hegemonized a set of ideologies into a dogmatic compound with a very thick hide is a form of mental slavery. That’s right folks, I am calling child brainwashing mental slavery.

  Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
  -C.S. Lewis

  Yes, I quoted a great Christian writer to prove my point. But back to the discussion, if a child is born into slavery, who is to blame? The child, or its parents? Or the community? However, if a person figures out a way to escape slavery, I think that’s an admirable feat. More to the point of your actual question, the answer is yes. I do remember feeling inspired, happy, and included. I remember really liking it. Just because something helps you does not make it right though! Think about those mystical “paranormals” who pretend to be talking to your dead husband or whatever. Those guys are known charlatans! They’re just using little tricks to fool you into believing that they’re talking with your deceased friends. But it could make you feel very good to hear your loved ones say that everything is alright, even though it’s fake. Do you prefer that sort of ignorant inanity to concrete, scientific, deductive, discrete, reasonable epistemology?

• By saying that logic and reason are guiding you away from the church, you’re putting yourself on a higher plane of intelligence than all the people who are in the church. Professors, businessman, engineers, and your family are all included.

  So what? Do you really think that matters when we’re talking about objective truth?

  When you think of religion as a moral and intellectual slavery, what’s really happening is that I am just more free than they. I don’t doubt their convictions; indeed, I felt such great conviction that I gave away two years of my young life “enslaving” many Guatemalans into the LDS church (smirk). However, putting aside the fact that I am inherently on a different plane than anyone in any church only because I am free to use my brain, let us examine the actual nature of your assertion.

  Assume that I take your statement literally. I always do anyway. You are suggesting that, if the 12 or 13 million members of your church are all of one mind about some topic, and I alone disagree, I am at once insulting the mass of them with the insolent use of my brain. Are you then saying that Copernicus, in proposing a heliocentric model, was insulting the entire world and the hordes of scientists before him who believed in a geocentric universe? I say that Copernicus was lifting all the men around him, and continuing forward in the attitude of brilliance and scientific discovery that earlier scientists possessed. If you are asking me to step down out of deference to all those other people who believe differently, I will call you by your true name: liar, mystic, witch-doctor.

  Besides, the entire argument is outside of the scope of reason. If I agree with the masses, assuming they are right because of their numbers, I am giving away my logic. In fact, if I blindly agree with any other person for any reason other than logic, in that moment my personal epistemology has reverted to that of a caveman. The unabashed truth is that I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks. I don’t care at all if the whole world thinks I’m wrong. If you want to call that putting myself on a higher intellectual plane, aren’t you admitting that yours is the lower one?

• I know the church is true. I have a God-given conviction of it.

  That’s nice.

  Look, don’t you think I could say the same thing? I have a God-given conviction that you should give me money? [wait a second, where the hell is Billy Graham when I need him?] A higher power has told me that the earth really is flat? I can’t really say why, but I just believe, deep down in my soul, that 2 + 2 = 5 ?

  Just imagine if scientists used this argument. Would you take seriously any scientist who said he had a mystical conviction as his proof? Can you solve a math problem with this sort of conviction? I can promise you that I would not drive over any bridge or step foot inside any building built on such assumptions.

• I am worried for your immortal soul. I’m worried that you won’t be with us in the celestial kingdom. We really love you and we want you to be with us in heaven.

  Look, if I die and find out you were right all along, I’ll be very excited and very happy. I would love to sit down with God and let him explain how the universe works. God is the master physicist.

  Also, assuming I die and find out you were right, do you really think God can condemn me for following the path of reason rather than the path of mysticism? That’s how God does things!!! God never operates by faith. It’s impossible to have faith when you’re omnipotent. If, as the LDS church teaches, our purpose is to some day become gods ourselves, in the true image of our Father, don’t you think we’re going to have to learn to make an appeal to reason at some point? To an earlier question, don’t you think that God acts based on his own reasoning mind rather than caring what anyone else says?

  If your God would condemn me for following the fullest form of truth that I could find, I don’t think I want any part with him anyway. And neither should you.

• But why not just listen? You’re shutting yourself off to another perspective. What if there is more truth for you there?

  Actually, I know as much about LDS doctrine as anyone else. I’ve read all the books, I’ve listened to the leaders. I get it, seriously. I can quote scriptures until I’m blue in the face, in English or Spanish, with word-for-word accuracy.

  I can offer counterpoints to most of those scriptures, too. And as for the rest (the scriptures for which no counterpart is needed), they only vindicate my position.

  Why don’t they teach the geocentric model in school? Why don’t they tell you the earth is flat? Faith was a good stepping stone, but I’ve graduated from your antiquated mystical notions. I am ready to move on, yes, into a much much higher plane than any faith-based epistemology can offer. I’m not looking back. There’s no time to look back.

• What about basic human intuition? What about scientists who make quantum leaps in ideas and in developing knowledge, who form hunches long before there is mathematical proof for them?

  It doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes hunches are dead wrong.

  But, I agree. There is a place for human intuition. I have nothing against it. My only disclaimer is that human intuition, which is almost impossible to define and has no real rational foundation, can never preempt logic. If you are fully sure, rationally, about some point which is supposedly disproved by some intuitive conjecture, discard the intuitive conjecture and cling to reason if you value your life.

There is a whole lot more I could say, but I really need to stop typing and move on with my day.

I have never tried to convince any of you of my position. I have never called you to invite you to some sort of reason convention. Those of us who base our lives on reason don’t need to meet together every week and remind ourselves of what we believe in. But if we did have “knowledge fairs” like churches have weekly gatherings, I would not call you every month to invite you to one. I respect your right to believe whatever concept you want. However, I maintain that just because you’re allowed to have an opinion does not make that opinion right and does not mean I agree with it. As far as I can tell, it is not, and I do not.