{"id":46995,"date":"2024-04-13T16:42:59","date_gmt":"2024-04-13T22:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=46995"},"modified":"2024-04-13T16:42:59","modified_gmt":"2024-04-13T22:42:59","slug":"my-atheist-conversion-part-2-spiritual-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/04\/my-atheist-conversion-part-2-spiritual-experiences\/","title":{"rendered":"My Atheist Conversion, Part 2: Spiritual Experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"

In part one<\/a>, I talked about coming to the conclusion of deciding to both be an atheist and also remain as bishop a year or so into my time as bishop. Part of the conundrum that I was working through was how I felt about my spiritual experiences. I mentioned in my last post that I was not feeling very content with where those experiences seemed to have led me.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, my PhD education had introduced me to some basics of cognitive science as my adviser had shifted her focus to that field. I talked about this in these posts at JI<\/a> from a few years back, but had felt strongly prompted to work with Ann Taves, whose work had been in religious history, but was then shifting to cognitive science and its uses in studying religion. Again, I\u2019d felt very prompted to work with her but kind of wanted to do more standard religious history and I had no training at all in this brain science stuff.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I also happen to be friends with guys who studied that approach with Ann. One quite close friend liked the approach a lot and was quite an avowed atheist. Conversations were not religious contests, but he enjoyed talking about these things and I picked up some pieces of that he saw as the claims of cognitive scientists: humans have no free will, we are very complicated machines that respond to input the receive from the world based on our DNA and adjustments due to life experiences.<\/p>\n

Likewise, the takeaways I got from the claims Ann made in her classes and books were that humans have bodily experiences that they \u201cdeem\u201d to be religious ones, or bodily and mental experiences that humans ascribe religious meaning to. These are natural occurrences, but people can choose to interpret such experiences as meaningful if they like. But the underlying assumption is that there is not divinity or spiritual element that humans are in touch with.<\/p>\n

Again, I\u2019d felt led and was thus a little uncomfortable in a class or two with Ann as spiritual experiences were something important to me and felt that classes would devolve into ideological clashes.<\/p>\n

Likewise, my friend would point out things like drugs that could create major religious experiences (thus not real, just the drug) and there being scales to determine how \u201csusceptible\u201d people might be to such \u201creligious experience\u201d based on things like childhood imagination etc. (Again, these were just conversation of things that interested him and I found interesting to talk about too).<\/p>\n

All these gleanings played some role in what I was processing leading up to my atheist conversion. Simply put, I felt like I\u2019d held resolutely to my spiritual experiences during that education, but now was feeling less sure. That was the whole point as I understood it: cognitive scientists acknowledged that religious experiences do feel very real. Now I was feeling less sure about them so that possibility of seeing that atheist point of view started to make more sense.<\/p>\n

Apparently I was a person \u201csusceptible\u201d to religious experience (a very imaginative child) and bodily things happened to me that I interpreted in the light of my religious culture: the Holy Ghost etc.<\/p>\n

All this caused uncertainty and doubt leading up to the experience, and all this stuff combined to make me feel like atheism was perhaps a better framework. This didn\u2019t feel like a crisis, like I said in the last, post, but more of a choice.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d felt frustrated by my experiences leading me to a confusing place, and it felt like dismissing my spiritual experiences could be a relief. There were one of two that I was having a hard time dismissing. Not just because they were strong (again, bodily) but because they did turn out in ways that seemed to have completely transcended my possible human understanding. So in considering atheism, I contemplated placing such experiences \u201con the shelf,\u201d similar to how doubters were often told to do so with concerns about the church.<\/p>\n

So as I chose atheism and church activity (remaining as bishop), my atheism didn\u2019t invoke hostility toward my religion or religion as a whole. If there was no God, that wasn\u2019t something to be mad about. Again, I\u2019d learned about a human propensity towards such belief, and apparently me in particular.<\/p>\n

In those hours, I actually felt my atheist choice to have something of a calming effect. Soon I found this thought passing through my mind: \u201cSteve, what will you do now that you don\u2019t believe in a God to blame for your frustrations?\u201d An interesting thought experiment!<\/p>\n

Soon I found those frustrations melting away, and even by the end of the day started interpreting such a thought as a message from the Spirit (yeah, a little weird I know). The fact that I\u2019d chosen both to be a Mormon and a bishop also relaxed me: in the short term, not much had changed.<\/p>\n

By the end of the day, I started to view the whole process as an enlightening spiritual experience and in so doing confronted my worries about my spiritual experiences not be \u201creal.\u201d \u201cWell, if we really don\u2019t have any free will like the cognitive scientists apparently say, and if humans, especially me, are prone to religious thinking, then why should I worry about believing in religious experience? If the cog sci guys are right (as I understood it) I really have no choice in the matter.\u201d I\u2019m sure there are plenty of cog sci guys who would debate that take away, but that was my conclusion: my DNA seems to point me to a belief in God and spiritual experiences, so why fight it?<\/p>\n

By the end of the day, I was a theist again, having gained some interesting experiences as a result of that \u201catheist conversion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again, I felt like I learned quite a bit from the experience. I don\u2019t \u201cfear\u201d atheism, believing that I\u2019d behave similarly if that adopted that point of view. I\u2019m quite comfortable in thinking in atheist terms and am also quite comfortable \u201caccepting\u201d my theism despite that. I can still have concerns about spiritual experiences and doubt, but in examining my life, I have decided that I just \u201cdo better\u201d when I believe and embrace such experiences. Embracing them just seems to be better for my soul, my outlook on life, worldview etc. Interpreting them can be a confusing thing, but I just think I \u201cdo better\u201d embracing that worldview.<\/p>\n

The experience did cause some other changes as well. Part 3 next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In part one, I talked about coming to the conclusion of deciding to both be an atheist and also remain as bishop a year or so into my time as bishop. Part of the conundrum that I was working through was how I felt about my spiritual experiences. I mentioned in my last post that I was not feeling very content with where those experiences seemed to have led me. Furthermore, my PhD education had introduced me to some basics of cognitive science as my adviser had shifted her focus to that field. I talked about this in these posts at JI from a few years back, but had felt strongly prompted to work with Ann Taves, whose work had been in religious history, but was then shifting to cognitive science and its uses in studying religion. Again, I\u2019d felt very prompted to work with her but kind of wanted to do more standard religious history and I had no training at all in this brain science stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46996,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46995\/revisions\/46996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}