In the comments I get the sense that somehow you guys are talking past each other, although I can’t quite see why.

I’ll take a stab at it. I think one thing that would be helpful is acknowledging the large list of phenomena Mark S has listed are all spiritual experiences most likely. That is to say I’d imagine in an MRI setting most of these could be detected and they would be dealing with the same or similar parts of the brain in those experiences.

It might be like asking which of a large list of items are food? To me they appear almost all to be food. A separate question might be which of these food items taste good? (could be pretty subjective). Another might be which of these foods items if any are good for the body? (in the absence of specific studies, opinions might still vary quite a bit, but to Jonathan’s points – one could gauge their bodily reactions to eating specific items and take measures to adjust and eat that which produces positive results).

We already know there are many spirits. That is why we are to try the spirits, yes? Experiment upon the seed and all that. The restoration from a macro perspectively largely seems to be about finding these spirits, parsing them, and gathering the food which is found to be good food into one great feast.

(Side note: taking it one step further, my guess is that while various regions around the world might produce different crops, if we were to take a closer look I think you’ll find that the same macro nutrients (protein, carbs, fats) are the mutually sustaining ingredients. And while final food presentations can and do vary quite a bit, and you can definitely find extremes, I think you’ll find that the central staples for most people are quite similar in composition.)

To me the strongest argument is the one from surprise. Take people where there’s a spiritual experience going on and see if they can discern the spiritual element before they encounter things like music, speech and so forth. i.e. put them into the situation blind and deaf and see what they think is going on. Fortunately a variety of times that actually did happen on my mission which was why I first became very convinced of the holy ghost as an actual ‘physical’ phenomena rather than either just communication to each individual or an experience tied to their beliefs and reaction to the trappings of the experience we agree upon. i.e. how people react emotionally to music – the music is an objective phenomena and the emotions are a reaction from a conscious/unconscious interpretation of the music.

But of course by its very nature that’s difficult to encounter and certainly not the sort of thing one can do on demand. So it’s less than persuasive to others.

Clark, I’m not trying to make a case for truth. I clearly acknowledge the problem of truth being informed by consensus. Geocentrism used to be widely accepted (in fact it still is, http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/14/277058739/1-in-4-americans-think-the-sun-goes-around-the-earth-survey-says). It doesn’t mean that it is true. Like Jonathan acknowledged in the OP, anything we perceive as truth could very well be an illusion. What I’m saying is that some concepts such as chocolate and fatigue are less culturally informed and have more similar meaning across cultures than others. Hence, fatigue and spirit are false comparisons.

But I will say that I fully agree with Jonathan in that we shouldn’t have to wait around to hear what others say to make a case for the truthfulness of some concepts amid ambiguity and uncertainty. However, it appears that some leaps of faith are much more culturally informed than others and are much larger bounds than others, particularly if it is faith in a set of concepts that conforms to one’s preexisting culture.

Fundamentally the question is whether one can know without there being consensus. Of course one can (and indeed must if consensus is going to change). So moves that appeal only to consensus of various sorts (especially scientific) are problematic from the beginning.

That said if we remove those elements of Mark’s argument the core element is just that we have to explain all these other experiences we don’t see as valid. I think we can do that of course, just as scientists have no problem dismissing the majority of interpretation of scientific phenomena that is wrong. People reason poorly. The fact people reason poorly doesn’t mean the less interpretive elements of their experiences can be dismissed. They do need explained though.

Your objections so far – about norms and objective definitions and universal experience – are all similar in that they strike me as mostly irrelevant to my particular concerns. I don’t have to explain the spiritual feelings of everyone who has ever lived before trying to figure out the meaning of my own experiences; it’s an impossible task that wouldn’t help me with my own situation, but instead prevent me from ever addressing it. In much the same way, I am grateful for my blessings without being able to explain why there is suffering in the world, and I plead for my daily bread in full knowledge that some people who need it more than I do won’t receive it.

It is of course not a new observation that some people are frauds and others are delusional; the New Testament makes that clear (while the NT also sees those categories as overlapping with those who are demonically inspired, a category I am not interested in defending or rejecting right now). I can’t easily investigate the thoughts of other people, but I can try to interrogate myself while trying to reject as little evidence as possible. It turns out to be pretty easy from an LDS perspective to dismiss a few people as con men and loons while still acknowledging the spiritual experiences of the vast majority of people as valid confirmations of the truth they have found and the righteous acts they contemplate.

I think our interpretive frameworks may actually be rather dissimilar. I’m trying to figure out what you are arguing for, and the best that I can come up with is that you’re a proponent of New Atheism. That’s fine, you don’t have to be a Mormon to participate at T&S. We only ask that you are respectful of Mormon belief and not use the space here as a soapbox for evangelizing people to your cause.

To your later point one need not have an accepted definition for there to be a phenomena that people are attempting to explain. Again you’re making the mistake of saying there is only truth/explanation when there is universal consensus which of course is self-refuting.

Clark, note the asterisk below. I account for the fact that what cultures regard to be valid evidence varies over a number of issues. However, on issues such as what is an airplane and how does it function, there is uniformity on what the evidence is for that across cultures. At some point you have to ask yourself if processes such as voodoo rituals actually allow people to speak with dead ancestors, or at more extreme levels if Nat Turner experienced a vision of god telling him to slaughter white people in rebellion against slavery. Did Christopher Nemelka experience a vision from God telling him that he was the reincarnation of Hyrum Smith and did the LDS version of the Holy Ghost enable him to translate the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon? What I’m saying is that you have to acknowledge the diversity in concepts of what the spirit is and what its manifestations are. Are you willing to accept these as evidence of the spirit? Might at some point you want to claim that these so-called manifestations are nothing but delusions (or perhaps false spirits negatively influencing thought, as Joseph Smith maintained)?

On chocolate, I realize that you are an expert chocolate maker, and know more about that than me. But it should go without saying someone can’t make an omelet out of eggs, onion, and red pepper and then call it chocolate. Even the white chocolate that you mention, there is a set process for how that is made. There may be some debate among connoisseurs about whether some product constitutes chocolate or not, but that doesn’t change the fact that what chocolate is or isn’t reaches a point at which it is not just in the eye of the beholder and that someone calling an omelet chocolate is either seriously uninformed or just plain crazy. There is little to no variance across cultures of what chocolate is or isn’t. However, the concept of what the spirit is really does appear to be largely in the eye of the beholder. There are no uniformly accepted definitions of what the spirit is or what a valid religious/spiritual experience is across cultures. Plus there are hundreds of millions of people (even close to billion people by some measures) on this planet who reject the idea that the spirit or spirits exist. Atheist, agnostic, and non-spiritual cultures can’t be disregarded as somehow not counting or not being important.

On sight and hearing, these came about mostly because of different life forms’ interactions with inanimate environmental factors. Social interaction may have had some effect as well, but not entirely.

On another yet related point, I have found what appears to be a strange pattern among many LDS believers which is that they appear strangely ecumenical and accepting of the idea of interfaith equality in secularism vs. religion conversational contexts. However, my experience with LDS believing members and leaders is that when discussing the validity of one religion over another (as missionaries commonly experience in Latin America with Catholicism and evangelical churches being huge competition) they reject the claimed spiritual/religious experiences of the practitioners of these religions (especially ones that the practitioner claims reinforce belief in a particular non-LDS religious institution) if not gratuitously denigrate these altogether. Bear in mind that Joseph Smith <a href="http://www.boap.org/LDS/Parallel/1842/1Apr42.html"said in an article in Times and Seasons, 1842 (I thank Clark for referring me to this in an earlier discussion) that “The Turks, the Hindoos, the Jews, the Christians, the Indian; in fact all nations have been deceived, imposed upon and injured through the mischievous effects of false spirits.” He also criticized many of his followers for being deceived by false spirits. So I don’t quite understand how LDS believers should regard spiritual/religious experiences by those who claim to be such to be equally valid evidence of the spirit, at least as the LDS church explains it.

Mark S (18) I don’t want to get too afar but I’d dispute the claim “there is zero evidence* that a spirit or spirits exist.” To make that claim demands one carefully qualify what counts as evidence. Plenty of people claim to see spirits and so you have to be able to dismiss as evidence such accounts. In a scientific context there are good reasons to do so. But let’s be honest about what we’re doing then. We’re not saying there is no evidence. We’re saying there is no scientific evidence.

However religious experience is so widespread throughout so many human cultures we can’t dismiss it. That’s why evolutionary psychologists come up with the hypotheses they do. Unfortunate as is common with evolutionary psychology establishing empirically such hypotheses is difficult.

Beyond these cultural aspects of biological development of the nervous system there are other issues. For instance what we perceive biologically is shaped by our culture. (Admittedly you did mention this when you said “things we notice are partly informed culturally” but I think it goes beyond that) The debate ends up being tied to the metaphor of a software/hardware divide. What is culture doing to the software and what to the hardware. I’m not sure that’s a good metaphor for various reasons. (Not the least of which being that computer hardware always had a software aspect) The SEP has a pretty good entry on the more philosophical aspects of all this. I’ll be the first to admit there’s not a ton of consensus in cognitive science here. But I do think the divide you’re making is perhaps problematic even if some come close to sharing your view.

This may seem like we’re getting astray, but I think these issues can have significant impact in the discussion of the spirit in a Mormon context from a more scientifically informed perspective. Even from more evolutionary psychology perspectives on religion (where they would be highly skeptical of Mormon truth claims) the cognitive structures postulated behind religious experience are complex. (Say for example as in Atran’s In Gods We Trust) One common evolutionary psychology argument is that religion evolved as part of the evolution of the state. When the state reaches a certain complexity and provide sufficient services then the need for religion is less. Effectively the state is the religion. This explains why states with strong social welfare are the least religious and also why the United States is an outlier in religiosity. I’m not sure I buy that thesis, but it ends up making an interesting play between biology and culture in terms of evolution.

*Meaning, there is nothing that would widely be accepted as valid evidence across cultures. There is only culture-specific evidence.