Russell M. vs. board of psychology thought experiment

[Gadianton]

Russell didn't grow up in North Korea or within a geographically isolated cult where he literally didn't have access to anything but propaganda. Somehow he became a top surgeon while navigating social circles to wind up as prophet of a church that teaches foremost that God is an exalted man who lives near Kolob with a wife or wives and populates universes via spirit children that he literally fathers. The contradiction is an adult mind, one that hasn't been literally stunted by isolation, professing childish beliefs.

Imagine Russell testifying to his beliefs about the anthropomorphic "mystic literal" nature of God to a room of the world's smartest psychologists. He agrees to answer any questions (it's a thought experiment!) and submit to any tests. What do you think the psychologists will determine?

The first obvious test is bear testimony under a lie detector. Can he speak in detail about his imperishable man and father and father's father without lighting up the machine?

Suppose he passes the lie detector, then what are the options?

It could be an intensely practiced situation, where his rational mind escapes within while a psychological golem manifests to field the questions. This would come about by a life of learning to evade trouble as the barely conscious mind spots trouble way in the distance and finds ways to avoid it.

It's really a fantasy rather than belief. Heaven is pretty drab, but eternal progression where he can achieve and distinguish himself and consume forever in the kind of political chess he mastered in life is exciting. He doesn't really believe it -- he hopes he will open the door to a sunny day and enjoy it, and is unable to answer what he really thinks is beyond the door. It's possible he doesn't even have an opinion.

His belief is expressed in full presence of his rational mind and sincere, but must be deciphered through a complex web of symbolism. He appears to sincerely believe the words, but what the words mean don't reduce to a belief like getting wet in the rain. This would be quite complex encoding when professing simplistic beliefs that directly intersect with subject matter he has expertise in and I don't at the time have a good suggestion for how it would work that doesn't collapse into compartmentalization.

[Moksha]

Russell M. Nelson is way too smart to get anywhere near a lie detector.

[Gadianton]

I consulted DeepSeek to find a way for Russell to believe in God as a literal man in full soberness of thought. The superficial answer is projection. He could believe in a manlike God, a real overachiever (worlds without end) as a projection of his own dark-triad desires.

A nuanced version might go like this. Carl Jung argued for a collective unconscious, a reservoir of symbolic archetypes that everyone inherits. God as a father -- a patriarchal authority figure, would be within the reservoir. Growing up in Mormonism where a literal father as God is taught, leaves that symbol as ripe for selection. We know Russell had many dreams involving the divine from his book. Archetypes come in dreams during the process of individuation, where the self, also an archetype, separates from the collective unconscious. Seeing God the father in a dream, as a representation of self, could result in a numinous experience for Russell, one that leaves him taking the symbol as literal and also identifying too strongly with the archetype leading to self-aggrandizement.

I think this is an interesting pathway because somebody totally outside of the Church could have the same dream during the individuation process and it could be quite powerful, but not suck the person into a fantasy. One internal pressure, Russell's legendary ego, and two external pressures; the games of the collective unconscious and also, his upbringing in a literalist church that reifies one of more symbols the unconscious is working with, could lead to a sincere belief that God is a man.

[SaturdaysVoyeur]

I intentionally chose two contradictory options to reflect the problem with the Mormon brand of faith called "knowing."

I never liked saying that and used to avoid it as much as possible, even when bearing my testimony. Even when I believed, I was aware it was a belief. Isn't that the whole point of faith? If I knew, then I wouldn't need faith.

Other religions don't state their faith that way. In other churches, it would probably be seen more as bizarre (or even prideful) than pious to say you know the religion is true, or that you know this or that to be true about its teachings.

So I selected both: When Nelson says he knows the church is true, he intends for others to interpret it in the same way as that he knows he will get wet in the rain. He is intentionally expressing it as incontrovertible fact.

I think his rational mind is involved in sincerely expressing those words. In other words, I don't think he's consciously (fail lie detector) or unconsciously (compartmentalizing) being deceptive. That may not be the case with all the Brethren. It's unlikely that none of them have lost their testimony, but they're just in too deep at that point to admit it out loud. Probably the case with some well-known apologists too. But Nelson has never struck me as one of them.

So, his rational mind is sincerely expressing those words, but there is also a more complex reality behind them. Or maybe I'm just projecting, since even at my most devout, I was uncomfortable saying, "I know Joseph Smith was a prophet and I know this church is true," even though I 100% sincerely believed those things.

If they toned down the insistence on "knowing," of making "knowledge" a litmus test of one's faith, I suspect fewer people might start picking at that scab and asking themselves, But do I really know?

Sincere belief ought to be enough, but it never is. You must always know, and then know even more strongly. This seems to drive a cultural fascination about Mormons, but the reality is much more exhausting.

[Gadianton]

I think you make a great point, and it's one I didn't consider. Hopefully I'm not misunderstanding you but this is what I'm getting out of it. Even without any complex psychology, belief in getting wet in the rain is different than believing God is a man because any religious beliefs are assumed not to be known in the same way we know we will get wet in the rain. My pulse isn't going to kick up under a lie detector saying God has a body because who is to say? Now add Packer psychology to that. The ability to get the maximum rhetorical force of saying "I know God has a body as sure as I will get wet in the rain" based on complex psychology, as the believer is convinced by packer that one can say "I know" very forcibly without really knowing and even having doubts about it.

[I Have Questions]

I think you make a great point, and it's one I didn't consider. Hopefully I'm not misunderstanding you but this is what I'm getting out of it. Even without any complex psychology, belief in getting wet in the rain is different than believing God is a man because any religious beliefs are assumed not to be known in the same way we know we will get wet in the rain. My pulse isn't going to kick up under a lie detector saying God has a body because who is to say? Now add Packer psychology to that. The ability to get the maximum rhetorical force of saying "I know God has a body as sure as I will get wet in the rain" based on complex psychology, as the believer is convinced by packer that one can say "I know" very forcibly without really knowing and even having doubts about it.

Packer specifically stated that you can come to know something is true simply by continually saying you know something is true, even if you don’t believe that to begin with.

I think Russell has always held a very high opinion of himself, and has always thought of himself as special. He wrote an autobiography and distributed it to his family at a relatively young age and when he wasn’t really a “somebody”. His anecdotes always aggrandise himself, and exaggerate the situation. He’s not self deprecating, he surrounds himself with sycophantic people. I think that when he wakes up in the middle of the night with a thought or an idea, he genuinely believes he is special enough to be receiving direct communication from God. What kind of man has his wife leave the bedroom when he’s making notes of thoughts in the middle of the night?

[Gadianton]

I think Packer's idea is that if you bear testimony and say "I know" when you don't know, then commensurate with that leap of faith the HG will manifest the truth. I don't think he means that if you say it enough you'll believe it. But he surely hopes that will happen if nothing else. It's a clever trap. Once you've stood before several hundred people and proclaimed that you know without a shadow of a doubt this whole list of crazy ideas is true, how do you walk it back? When the lightning bolt doesn't come, you're trapped. If you say that you saw your paralyzed cousin drink the new MLM nutri-drink and he got out of his chair and walked, then you better act from then on as if you really believe that happened.

[I Have Questions]

I think Packer's idea is that if you bear testimony and say "I know" when you don't know, then commensurate with that leap of faith the HG will manifest the truth. I don't think he means that if you say it enough you'll believe it. But he surely hopes that will happen if nothing else. It's a clever trap. Once you've stood before several hundred people and proclaimed that you know without a shadow of a doubt this whole list of crazy ideas is true, how do you walk it back? When the lightning bolt doesn't come, you're trapped. If you say that you saw your paralyzed cousin drink the new MLM nutri-drink and he got out of his chair and walked, then you better act from then on as if you really believe that happened.

Yes. I think you’re right.

I’m reminded of an anecdote from a book (may have been Black Box Thinking, or Factfulness) about a doomsday cult. The cult’s Prophet announced the date for the end of the world, and where cult members needed to be for them to be saved from the end of the world. The Cult members resigned jobs, sold houses etc and relocated to where the Proohet had told them to be by the required date. The date came and went. No end of the world event. You’d think that the cult members would rumble that they’d been taken in. But no, the reframed the events somehow in their mind and continued to believe.

Wall Street stockbrokers have a similar problem with their traders who hold on to losing stocks for too long, instead of cutting their losses quickly and moving funds to stocks with better prospects.

People have a bizarre ability to not want to accept they were wrong, to chase their “losses” ad infinitum. And will go to great lengths to avoid doing so. Especially when it will make them stand out in a group of peers.

[SaturdaysVoyeur]

Partly, yes, but not exactly. I think the belief I will get wet in the rain is qualitatively different than most beliefs about God. I don't think Russell Nelson does. I think he views those as nearly-identical statements. (Obviously, I don't know, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and my impression that he is a True-TBM.)

Correct: I don't think he would fail a lie detector test. (Ignoring the limitations of lie detector tests.) If we could give him truth serum, I think he might say a bunch of interesting stuff, but none of it would contradict very basic LDS "knowing" theology. That he would still say he "knows the church is true and he knows Joseph Smith a prophet." Saying it, and saying it in that way, has been second-nature to him for 100 years.

Compartmentalizing is harder to suss out, but that makes it a harder allegation without some evidence. He tells faith-promoting tall-tales, but they all tell faith-promoting tall tales. It's in the job description. It's just a matter of how tall the tale. Nelson has lied about things like the Flight of Doom. (That's a good example of where I think he may have compartmentalized and actually convinced himself that really was what happened.) But I see no reason to believe he's doing that with basic LDS doctrine.

Truthful answer: I don't know. I basically "left" when Hinckley was still alive, so I don't have as much basis to form an opinion on the prophets since. I answered that way to make a point about the toxicity of Mormon insistence on expressing faith as "knowing."

All I'm left with (among the available options) is to surmise that Nelson is intentionally conveying the kind of rain-makes-you-wet "knowing," but that he has a more complex rationale behind that knowledge than the clearer examples of compartmentalization, such as when he tells a Faith-Promoting Tall Tale---i.e., he convinced himself he's telling the truth, but he still doesn't fully equate it with water-makes-you-wet knowledge.

Total speculation to underscore the problem with saying we ever "knew" the church was true. Nobody decides in their mid-40s that rain, in fact, does not make you wet. Lots of Mormons in their mid-40s decide the whole LDS backstory really makes no sense whatsoever if you think about it that much.

I think Nelson just doesn't think about it all that much.

I think you make a great point, and it's one I didn't consider. Hopefully I'm not misunderstanding you but this is what I'm getting out of it. Even without any complex psychology, belief in getting wet in the rain is different than believing God is a man because any religious beliefs are assumed not to be known in the same way we know we will get wet in the rain. My pulse isn't going to kick up under a lie detector saying God has a body because who is to say? Now add Packer psychology to that. The ability to get the maximum rhetorical force of saying "I know God has a body as sure as I will get wet in the rain" based on complex psychology, as the believer is convinced by packer that one can say "I know" very forcibly without really knowing and even having doubts about it.

[Gadianton]

Great thoughts, SaturdaysV, you're killing me. Great example bringing up the flight of doom and how that might relate to his other religious beliefs. I'll have to think about that one.

Total speculation to underscore the problem with saying we ever "knew" the church was true

I got really literal here in this thread and I probably shouldn't have put so much emphasis on specific wording.

Phrasing like "I know the Church is true" and the actual active belief that there is a man who lives near Kolob who created the world, aren't necessarily the same thing. Saying "I know the Church is true" is rote that they learned to say from the time they were small. It could be regarded as a figure of speech and not very meaningful. Some do get hung up on it and are given Packer's talk. Both my parents were equally devout believers and believed in the Church with the same self-flagellating intensity. My mom had no doubts about the Church, but she did doubt her testimony and didn't like to bear it because she wasn't sure she "knew". My dad would bear his testimony nonstop and with over-the-top conviction. It would be a dice roll to bet on one over the other over who would get farther on a lie-detector test.