Introducing Randy Snyder and Tyson Jacobsen

Part 1 of 6 · Ep. 222

Randy Snyder [00:00:00] Mormon Stories podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:18] Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Mormon Stories. My name is Dan Wotherspoon, and I'm very pleased today to interview two interesting guests with me in or by Skype as we're recording. This is Randall Snyder, Randy Snyder, we'll call him. And that's what he always goes by. He's in West Phoenix, Arizona, where he's an orthodontist. And Tyson Jacobsen, who lives in Orange county. And Tyson runs a construction company that mostly deals with apartment complexes or multifamily dwellings or some official word like that. Both of them should be fairly recognizable to several or to some of our listeners who pay attention to the Mormon Stories podcast blog or some of the other open forums, open Mormon forums and things like that. So we're grateful to have them. And the purpose of our getting these two guys on here is to have a robust discussion of not only their personal faith journeys, but the direction that both their journeys went, which was into a. Instead of like a shifting so much of their religious worldviews or move to another religious tradition or to a more liberal or progressive position within Mormonism, both Randy and Tyson journeyed more into the secular camp. They were both comfortable calling themselves atheists. Secular humanist supply, to some degree, scientific naturalism will kind of let themselves identify as they go. But it's basically a journey from Mormonism to sort of a position where

Randy Snyder [00:02:05] there

Dan Wotherspoon [00:02:05] is no God, there's probably no Great Spirit. There's really basically what we can know and what we should count on is the things that naturalistic worldview and naturalistic tools could reveal. So I don't know how I did guys there with the framing, but welcome to Mormon Stories. Why don't you guys both just. Randy, why don't you say hi so people get to know your voice?

Randy Snyder [00:02:31] Hello, everybody.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:02:32] Cool. And Tyson.

Randy Snyder [00:02:34] Good evening, everyone.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:02:35] We kind of agreed ahead of time that we'd go ahead and begin the podcast with Randy sort of telling his faith journey. Following that, Tyson will tell his stuff and the path that he's followed along to this position. I'll try to answer the. Or ask the questions that don't come up as they tell those stories. I'll try to ask the things that listeners have sent in ahead of time they were interested in knowing in case those guys don't cover that. And then following that, we'll. I really want to give Randy and Tyson a chance to sort of sell their worldview to us a little bit to unimpededly talk about the pillars or the animating ideas or the pivot points or sort of the, you know, Archimedes says, give me a lever and a rock or a solid place and I can move the world. So sort of those positions in their. And their thinking that they feel are pretty solid. And we want to give them the chance to tell completely as they want to, their worldviews before we'd ever move into sort of the bulk of the questioning, which will be, you know, where do you get morals from? Where do you get, you know, how do you decide between something being better or worse and things like that if you don't have a story or a religious narrative or a God or something to refer to? So let's get rolling. Randy, if you just want to kind of start in where were you born? You know, where were you raised? Tell us about your Mormon journey and sort of the things along the way that took you in this new path.

Randy's Background and Early Church Experience

Randy Snyder [00:04:17] Okay, well, I apologize for my voice. I have a cold, but I'll muscle through it. I got a mute button for the coughing, so if it's not muting, let me know. I was born in Southern California. I was the fifth of seven kids. And if you remember, that was during the time of zero population. That's a Saturday's warriors reference for you. My parents did. They were the only ones on the street with more than two kids, and so they took a little flack for that. But as far as my upbringing, my mother was one of 10 children from Ogden, Utah, farm girl. So pretty much all she knew was Mormonism growing up. And she was extremely emotionally attached to. Was something that was visceral to her, was not just intellectual. There really wasn't much intellectual to it. She didn't really dive into the scriptures very much, but she just felt and knew in her heart that it was true. And we'll get into more of little bit later. My dad, he had a little bit more colorful background. He was. His mother died when he was 6. She was a Protestant. His dad was a deacon till the day he died at 77. So the church really wasn't anything to him. But when his mother died, they moved from LA to Ogden and the church kind of helped raise him. And eventually he attributes the church to getting on a mission and basically, you know, providing for him the good life that he has now. So to him, the church served a very practical purpose in his life. But he also has a strong testimony, had a strong testimony, still has a Strong testimony,

Dan Wotherspoon [00:06:18] but not an intellectual testimony, you wouldn't say. It was more of a very practical one.

Randy Snyder [00:06:24] He's got a practical. But he, you know, I mean, he's, he's intellectual to the extent that you're allowed to be as a Mormon. You know, a good, faithful Mormon. He reads good approved stuff from FARMS and BYU or not byu Deseret book. He teaches, actually teaches at the USC Institute and he teaches early morning seminary and he has for a decade. So he knows a lot more than the average Mormon about church history, but he still believes very fervently so. Growing up as a fifth of seven, at one point in my childhood, I had this distinct memory of thinking, wow, we're the perfect family. We had seven kids and all of us are still active in the church. Then reality hit. Eventually my oldest sis, not my oldest, one of my older sisters, got pregnant at byu and that was like, first of all, grace. And then she ended up leaving the church and marrying the guy that got her pregnant. They're still happily married and has a happy ending if you're not Mormon, you know, she left the church for good. But, you know, it wasn't the horror story that you sometimes would expect growing up Mormon leaving the church, Randy, was that leaving the church for good in the, you know, the dual sense of the word for good? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll let you. It's open to interpretation. Thanks. But then the real. I mean, that was something that the family handled okay because kind of felt like she was seduced out of the church by a charismatic young man. Then the one that was the real blow was when I was a freshman in college. My older brother had just left from BYU during the time of the first Gulf War, and he was a philosophy major and he was going to Vanderbilt to get his PhD in political philosophy. Well, just after he arrived at Vanderbilt, pretty much was announced that he not only had he and his wife left the church, but they were atheists. That was really tough for me because I was just a few months away from going on my mission and my brother was really kind of a childhood hero. He was a lot older than me, eight and a half years older than me. So he was not. I know we talked about this earlier, Dan. He was not a model of what could happen in my life. He was a cautionary tale, as you stated it. He was what could happen if you allow the ways of the world to corrupt your soul. And I went on my mission and

Dan Wotherspoon [00:09:12] you bought into that too. I mean, it wasn't. You weren't Questioning that spin from the family?

Randy Snyder [00:09:18] No, not at all. Because the proof of that is in my missionary Book of Mormon in the Second Nephi. I cannot remember the chapter and verse, but there's a verse that basically says, men are ever learning, but never come into a knowledge of the truth, and their wisdom profiteth them nothing, and they shall perish. In the column I wrote, jim and Heather, that's my brother and his wife's name, that's how much I truly believed. And I've taught so many lessons over the years on my mission, after my mission. And there's countless times I used my brother as the cautionary tale of the dangers of the wisdom of men. And so that really was. That produced a lot of staying power for me, because during all this time, I don't really like church that much.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:10:13] So you're saying growing up prior to your mission, you didn't even like church?

Randy Snyder [00:10:19] I mean, I had some good experiences in my youth, but I absolutely, positively despised the Scouting program. And I don't know if it was so much the Scouting program itself, but maybe the troop that I grew up in didn't have a lot of maturity. And I was kind of a sober, mature kid for my age at age 12. And it just didn't appeal to me. You know, all the armpit noises and the fart jokes and all that. It just wasn't appealing to me at the time. And not only that, I had a really bad. My only Scout camp experience. I had a horrible experience where I was tormented and picked on the whole week and basically came home and told my dad, I'm not going back. And I was always a really obedient child. Kind of took him back. He thought I was joking. And when he realized how serious I was, he just kind of let it go and said he still likes to tell that story. That was him losing the battle during the war to get me on a mission.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:23] Wow.

Randy Snyder [00:11:24] But then I'll go ahead.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:26] No, we'll come back to sort of spiritual experiences and things as a child and how you may interpret those differently now if you had any. But go ahead, keep going.

Randy Snyder [00:11:38] I never had any real personal experience, spiritual experiences until I was on my mission. But we did had a really strong, a powerful family spiritual experience. In 1988, when I was 14 years old, my mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and she went to the hospital for surgery. And the night before the surgery, she claims that she was praying for the presence of her father, who is dead, to come. And she says that the room filled with kind of like A golden glow that then encompassed her body. And she could feel the warm, loving arms of her father embracing her and held her there for like an hour of comfort before the surgery. And then she. Excuse me. She had the surgery and it came back and they said, well, it's not really what we thought it was. It's a different kind of cancer and it's a much slower killer. So we kind of thought, well, that was our miracle. It turned out not to be. She ended up dying anyways eight years later.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:12:48] Eight years?

Randy Snyder [00:12:49] Yeah. But then, you know, I always spun that as a believer that that was the Lord giving us a gift of eight years instead of six months, which was the original diagnosis. So I had that to draw from. But I never had any personal confirmation about the Book of Mormon or anything like that until I went on my mission. Had to mute a cough. Sorry.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:13:12] No problem.

Randy Snyder [00:13:15] So I go on my mission. The MTC is incredibly intense, as anyone who's going on a mission knows. And they had this presentation. Well, prior to this presentation, you know, they tell you one of the first days is like, you know, you need to get a testimony of the Book of Mormon if you're going to preach it. So I was like, well, I've never done that. So I started to pray and I didn't get anything. I prayed, didn't get anything. And then maybe the second week they had a presentation on Christ and they showed, they played all this really, you know, like Janice Cad Perry Christ songs and hymns and showed this like montage of Christ's ministry. And during that moment, I, my, you know, I had this like this intense warmth. It was. I started to sob. I felt like warmth was pulsating through my body. And to me that was confirmation that the church is true. And that kind of carried me throughout my mission as my confirmation that the church was in fact, you know, God wants your church. I had a second experience on my mission. It's funny how spiritual experiences like that and demon stories are both equally faith promoting. If there's a devil, then there has to be a God, right? Yeah, Martin Luther. Exactly. So I was on a reservation. I was probably about 18 months into my mission and my companion had filled my head with all kinds of crazy Indian folklore stories about skinwalkers and hoofy. Who's the Hopi? We were on not the Hopi, the Pima. We were on a Pima reservation in Arizona. And so my mind was already kind of on these things. And one night in our trailer, my bed was facing the hallway and the door was Open. And I woke up, and all of a sudden, like a dark mist was in the hallway. And it then came over my body in my bed and hovered over me. And I was completely paralyzed. And then the part of the cloud congealed into this really hateful, ugly, contorted face that just had this look of contempt that wanted to, like, destroy me. And, sorry, I need a drink of water. And then I tried to do what, you know, you're trained to do as a missionary, to raise your arm to the square and command it to leave in the name of Jesus Christ. But I was paralyzed. I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. So finally, in a last act of desperation, it was just right out of that video of the first vision. I conjured up all my energy and I just blurted out just a scream. My companion kind of woke up, but then just rolled over, went back to sleep. And I looked up and it was gone. I could talk about what I think it is now, but we could talk about that later. That was another one of those spiritual experiences that carried me many years through cognitive dissonance and the fact that I just really have never enjoyed church.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:16:37] Cool.

Randy Snyder [00:16:38] So. All right.

Mission, Marriage, and First Doubts

Dan Wotherspoon [00:16:41] So, well, any more experiences on your mission you want to talk about or take us past your mission?

Randy Snyder [00:16:47] Well, I don't think any of the stories would really contribute too much to the story.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:16:56] So you came home and what'd you do?

Randy Snyder [00:16:58] Well, I came home and I went to BYU and got my. Or started to. I had decided on my mission that I wanted to be a dentist. I had a dinner appointment. When you're in Arizona, you get fed every night. And by the way, that was bitterly disappointing to be from LA and get called to Tempe, Arizona, a mere eight hours away.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:17:23] Or seven hours.

Randy Snyder [00:17:24] Yeah, I could have gone home on P day in the morning and been back to teach discussions by night. Excuse me. Sorry. What years? What years were you there, Randy? I was at tempe mission from 93 to 95. And yeah, actually the day I got my mission call, I dropped a letter and just started yelling Tempe over and over. And then I went outside and tried to shoot hoops, and I couldn't make any shots because I was so upset. I just ended up drop kicking the basketball about three yards over. And it was. It's just my older brother went to Ecuador, my little brother went to Philippines, and I went to Arizona.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:18:08] Yeah, but then. But then you end up moving there, basically. Right. So. Yeah. Must have grown on you a little bit.

Randy Snyder [00:18:14] Well, I moved to the Other side. There's too many Mormons on the east side. Okay, I say that in jest, but anyways, after I got home from my mission, I knew that I wanted to be a dentist. So I picked a major that would basically give me all the prerequisites I needed, that would be the easiest, and that was having to be zoology. But in my courses, we took a lot of evolution courses. And unlike what it's like for BYU students in other parts of the campus, South Campus, evolution is pretty much factor. You pretty much are forced to assimilate Mormon theology with evolution somehow. And that's what I did that solved that problem. And so I continued on. I met my wife at BYU in Sunday school and we got married then. And I had a good experience at byu, enjoyed it all. Besides the shaving. The shaving was absolutely torturous. But we moved to California because I went to USC dental school. And in fact, part of when I was out there in dental school from 99 to 2003, Prop 22 came out. And back then I had no problem supporting Prop 22. I was beating the streets, I was pounding doors, I was making phone calls. I was totally on board with following the brethren.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:19:49] And just make sure that everyone knows Prop 22 was the precursor to Prop 8. So it's the same basic issues of defining marriage.

Randy Snyder [00:20:00] The only difference was it wasn't currently legal anyways. So it was basically a solution without a problem yet.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:20:08] Right.

Randy Snyder [00:20:08] Prop 8 was, was, was trying to overturn.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:20:11] Yeah, right.

Randy Snyder [00:20:12] It was. Yeah. So that's why it was so much more at stake. And I finished dental school. Then we went out to Florida for my. My residency. And I remember having one of my mentors in ortho school was a French man. He's a very arrogant French guy, atheist. And he and I used to go back and forth all the time arguing about the existence of God. Is there such a thing as a non arrogant, non atheist Frenchman? And he was, quote unquote, married, but I think he slept with half of the nursing school which was adjacent to the ortho school.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:20:59] Okay, you're arguing with him is to show us that at this point you are totally still within the Mormon worldview. It all works. It all works for you?

Randy Snyder [00:21:10] It all works for me. I was. You know, when I've tried to be retrospective about it, sometimes it's hard for me to know if I'm being honest. But honest, I do think that I believe that the flood was historical, which is kind of embarrassing to me now. But the Book of Mormon Kind of, you know, forces you to believe that because the Tower of Babel doesn't happen without the Flood. The Book of Jared doesn't happen without the Tower of Babel. And so you extrapolate back and to believe the Book of Mormon is historical, you have to believe the flood is a historical event.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:21:46] Right.

Randy Snyder [00:21:46] So I had this strange, really nebulous marriage between Mormon theology, somewhat literalistic interpretations of the Bible, mythology and my training in science. I see. So then we just before we move from Florida, we basically been married about eight years and couldn't have kids. We'd gone as far as artificial insemination. Just looked like we were going to have kids despite all the praying and the fasting. And then we decided to adopt and an opportunity fell into our lap to adopt a seven year old boy from Tennessee whose dad had beat him, which is what got him arrested and taken out of his home. We ended up adopting him just before we moved to Phoenix. But the kind of, it was kind of an unspoken caveat of us taking him was that the grandmother, who was a very extremely spiritual TBM Mormon, who was given my son after he was taken out of his parents home, you know, she kind of still believes that, you know, the, the deal was for us to raise him into the church, get him on a mission kind of thing. So that plays a role later in my story. But as soon, about three months after we moved to Phoenix and adopt Jonathan, my wife finally got pregnant. So there we were. This is where the story changes. I'm a high priest, group leader, my ward, it's the beginning of 2006 and my wife is pregnant. I'm just as happy as can be. Got my new practice already, got a son who just got baptized that fall. It was, everything was kind of right with my Mormon world. And then one day I got a phone call from a close friend that was still living in Jacksonville and he told me that he had just gotten a book called Rough Stone Rolling. And he said, did you know that Joseph Smith had many wives? And I said, yeah, I read Work in the Glory. I know about Joseph Smith's secret polygamy. That's not a big deal. I've reconciled all that. And he said, but did you know that nine of them were already married? And that's where the world shifted underneath me. Blood went cold. And it was like a punch in the stomach because I could not think, because my friend wanted consolation, he wanted me to help him resolve this issue. And I was trying to, you know, keep composed myself, but I wasn't I wasn't ready yet to just uproot everything in my life and completely have my entire world crumble, my worldview crumble. So I kind of suffered in silence. I went out and got rough stone rolling, but I only read the parts about polygamy and polyandry. And then I just kind of put it away and suffered in silence for a couple of years.

Encountering Difficult Church History

Dan Wotherspoon [00:25:10] So you didn't read a lot. So you didn't buy the way Richard Bushman in that book sort of frames what's going on there with the polyandry. It was just for you, there was just no scenario whatsoever, no amount of reasoning or spiritual reasoning that could ever justify that as that was.

Randy Snyder [00:25:28] If there was any good spiritual reasoning or justification for that, the church would have come out with something official a long time ago and just saved everybody from the anguish and the trouble. Preemptive strike.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:25:41] Yeah, well, I haven't read it in a while, but I mean, was Bushman acknowledging that Joseph Smith was having sexual relations with these nine wives? I know that Brian Hales now has a book out where he's denying any of that and marshaling his evidence. Anyway, I was just curious. I remember you telling me when we talked a week or so ago that this was a thing, but I forgot to grab my rough stone rolling out.

Randy Snyder [00:26:08] I don't believe from what I remember, I read a long time ago, but what I remember, he did not let Joseph off the hook that easy. So I could be wrong. So listeners want to eviscerate me for that. They can.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:26:22] But that was just the first cheek of the armor for you.

Randy Snyder [00:26:26] That was the first cheek of the armor. And it was always. I'd always had kind of the thought experiment in my head. I said, if the church isn't true, this is the only church that could be true if there is a true church. So if the church isn't true, I'm definitely not going to just go to some other church. And I think I'd even said that out loud to people.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:26:48] And why do you think you felt that way?

Randy Snyder [00:26:50] To me, the Mormonism answered all the tough questions the best that any other religion did. I mean, Christianity wants to condemn anyone who doesn't even know about Christ to burning in hell forever. Mormonism is much, you know, they got vicarious work for the dead. So everyone has, theoretically, in the Mormon theology, everyone has a chance. That was always one of the biggest problems for me is like your church is so small. How could this be the one with true church? But then they have that part of their theology is that everyone will have a chance and they will get baptized, whether it's themselves on earth or vicariously. The Mormon Godhead made a lot more sense to me than the Trinity ever did. The whole. The whole notion of families and progression becoming like God. So I felt like Mormonism had. For me, it made the most sense. And I just kind of had this notion that if it's not Mormonism, nothing else will measure up. That was just my mindset. That was always a hypothetical. Because to me, the reality of it was the church is true. I'll second that motion right there.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:28:12] That was your thought too, Tyson. Okay, had any of you guys studied the Eastern traditions or any of the nature traditions or anything like that?

Randy Snyder [00:28:25] Those wouldn't have appealed to me. I mean, they do now. I like Stephen Batchelor. I haven't read Ed stuff, but I've listened to him speak for a couple of hour lectures on Buddhism without God. That stuff appeals to me now, but it wouldn't have then. It just didn't explain everything as well as I thought the Mormonism theology did. So then I'm suffering in silence. My faith is slowly eroding. I mean, it was hard to enjoy church before. It's even harder when you start to acknowledge that it might not be true.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:29:04] Okay, so it's eroding, but you've already put away Bushmen and you haven't taken it back out. What are the other things that are causing it? Or is it just like this one obsessive thought about polyandry that just keeps corroding your faith?

Randy Snyder [00:29:18] Well, I mean, I think it was President Hinckley himself basically laid out the logic sequence. If. If the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith is a prophet. If Joseph Smith's a prophet and all the dominoes fall from there.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:29:34] Okay, but not a claim that Joseph Smith is perfect.

Randy Snyder [00:29:38] Well, to me, if Joseph Smith was that out of control with his sexual behavior, which to me, it was out of control, he did not have to marry married women. There isn't even any doctrine to support that. To me, he was out of control, and that just made him a fraud. To me, I hadn't confirmed that. I just had said. I had allowed the question in my head to come up that, is he a fraud? He could be a fraud. And then it turned into, he's probably a fraud. But I hadn't really wrestled with it yet because I just wasn't ready to change my whole lifestyle and my whole review. So I continued on for four and a half years as the high priest Group leader, teaching, even teaching out of the manual for two years. The Joseph Smith, you know, teaching to the prophets. I ended up eventually starting to bear thankimonies because I just couldn't bear testimonies anymore.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:30:36] That's great.

Randy Snyder [00:30:37] Never heard that before. Thank the monies.

Randy Snyder [00:30:40] That's good.

Randy Snyder [00:30:41] I like that.

Randy Snyder [00:30:42] I like that.

Randy Snyder [00:30:42] That's so real. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a horrible liar. So it was one way of not

Dan Wotherspoon [00:30:50] lying to stay away from it.

Randy Snyder [00:30:52] Yeah, I love it. That's cool. So the next real pivotal moment is when Prop 102 out here, simultaneous with Prop 8 in California came out. At that point I'd pretty much come to a place where I did not think that homosexuality. I definitely knew that homosexuality wasn't merely a choice. I even knew that all the way back to byu I had a professor that taught bioethics that went into the possible biology of homosexuality. It was really interesting.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:31:32] Was it Bill Bradshaw?

Randy Snyder [00:31:33] Who?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:31:34] Mormon stories. No, it was a different one.

Randy Snyder [00:31:36] I had Bradshaw for a very long, difficult molecular biology class and he just kicked my butt. Completely kicked my butt. He, at the time, I really didn't like him and it was mainly because I didn't get what he was trying to do. He was trying to make us think and all I wanted was give me the facts, I'll rehearse.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:31:59] Yeah.

Randy Snyder [00:32:00] He was trying to get us to look at the data, interpret it and use your brain to think. So now I think he's a stud. He's one of my heroes. So I got nothing bad to say about him now. But back then he kicked my butt. I can't remember the name of the doctor or the professor. He was awesome. He told us all about the B.H. roberts and Joseph Fielding Smith. Knock down, drag out, battle over evolution.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:32:31] It's probably Duane Jeffrey. Does that sound familiar?

Randy Snyder [00:32:35] It could be. He's an older guy.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:32:37] Yeah. Dwayne's probably retired by now.

Randy Snyder [00:32:40] Yeah, it might be him.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:32:41] Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, enough of that. So you got. So this, this sort of the Prop 8 Prop 102 just sort of set up.

Randy Snyder [00:32:50] Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:32:51] When they were asking decisions here.

Randy Snyder [00:32:52] Yeah. They're asking me to put a sign in my yard and I didn't want to do it and I, I didn't want to give any money, I didn't want to do any phone calls. I thought it was wrong, but I put on a good face at church. I would kind of give like they would. You know, they had a whole priesthood meeting just on Prop 102 and I was always the voice of we got to be more compassionate. We got to be more compassionate. Finally, someone came up to me after a meeting at church and said, do you have a brother that's gay or something? I said, no.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:33:26] As if that's the only reason.

Randy Snyder [00:33:28] Yeah, that's the only reason. Yeah. But this is where I email a friend who back in 2006 told me about Rough Stone Rolling and I said, you know, does this make me a bad Mormon? I don't want to do any of the things they want me to do with Prop 102. I think it's wrong. And he said, actually, I feel the same way. And it really kind of. We kind of together at that time kind of held hands in a non gay way down a path. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Down this path of really, both of us really pretty much decided we're going to follow the evidence wherever it leads us. We want to. You know, we're getting rid of all of the assumptions that all true believing Mormons have. They start with the assumption the church is true and then they go forward and cherry pick the evidence and ignore the other evidence against. I was, I was willing and ready to take the path and just go wherever it led. And that's when my friend's sister introduced us to Mormon stories and I became a Mormon stories junkie. I've listened to all of them, some of them multiple times. Easily over 100 hours of my life has gone to listening to Mormon stories. I then picked up Rough Stone Rolling and read it this time all the way through. I read Insider's View to Mormon Origins. I read. I didn't read all of In Sacred Loneliness, but I read probably about half of it after a while. You don't need to read every single story to get the gist of it. And during this time, this is my angry phase. I was really getting angry. I'd felt deceived. And the other part of the anger was learning more about. The more I learned about Brigham Young, the more angry I became. He became my symbol of anger with his racism, his apparent. His arrogance, his lack of respect to women, at least from the quotes I read. And I know that I'm not getting. I'm only getting like a. I'm only cherry picking the bad stuff. I understand that, but just the quotes on their own. Some of them are so awful. You know, blood atonement, the fact that he owned slaves in Utah, legalized it, the whole Mountain Meadows massacre and the obstruction of justice and his kind of arrogance through all that process. So I became really angry. And then that takes us all the way to the summer of 2009. It's our 12th anniversary, my wife and I, and we have a trip to Cabo. It's going to be a wonderful trip. Right. I get the bright idea that this is the trip. This is the time I'm going to let my wife know that I don't believe the church is true anymore. So how do I do it? This is straight out of the playbook of what not to do.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:36:43] Okay, listen up.

Randy Snyder [00:36:46] The very first night, we sit down on the beautiful beach, Cabo San Lucas. And the waiter comes and I order a glass of wine. She looks at me and I said, did you know that Joseph drank wine all the time? He drank beer all the time. Brigham Young had the best equipped liquor cabinet west of the Mississippi. He entertained Mark Twain and others. And you know what? And then I started going to Polyandrian. And I said, you know, basically, I don't think the church is true anymore. She took it kind of well at first, I thought. And we finished the meal, and she seemed okay with it. And I think she even had a glass of wine herself when we got back to the hotel room.

Leaving the Church and Family Dynamics

Dan Wotherspoon [00:37:36] Was this the first time you've ever drunk wine?

Randy Snyder [00:37:39] No, I had. I had sown my oats a little bit in high school, just mainly just out of pure curiosity. I just. I just had to know why it was so forbidden. So we. We had a reasonable evening that night. Everything's fine, and then I go golfing. The next morning, she goes to get a massage, and I come back and I said, hey, do you want me to order another bottle of wine for tonight? And she just started crying. And I went over to her and I said, what's wrong? She says, it feels like my family is falling apart. And I'm just like. I was. Actually, my reaction wasn't like, empathy for her. It was anger at her, because I had always sensed that she really didn't like church either. She usually complained about her calling. She never liked going visiting, teaching. She was always in a bad mood, getting ready for church. We never discussed it, but I always sensed that she didn't really like church much either. And I thought this would be, you know, it'd be welcome news for her that we can leave the church now.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:55] And you hadn't prepared her at all in this intervening years?

Randy Snyder [00:38:58] No.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:59] This really is just totally out of the blue. Yeah.

Randy Snyder [00:39:02] Awful, awful protocol. It's amazing. She didn't divorce me. Well, I actually challenged her that. That night. I said, have you. You You've never even prayed to find out if it's true yourself, have you? And she said, yes, I have. I just did while you were golfing. And the Lord told me that it's true, and that's all there is to it. And, you know, that's a conversation stop. We can't talk about all the issues I have anymore. She's prayed about it, so what do I say? There's nothing I say. And then the rest of the trip, it was. It was. There were some moments good. It was mostly just an awkward, bad trip. And it was so expensive, too. It was such a waste.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:39:49] So wait till the end. The end of the vacation or when you get back home while you're at it.

Randy Snyder [00:39:54] Well, she gave me. She kind of gave me an ultimatum. She said that I have to do one of two things. I either have to go to the bishop and talk, at least talk to him and try to resolve my issues, or I have to go to my dad, who she kind of perceived as someone who's wise in the ways of the church, seminary institute teacher and all that stuff. And so I chose my dad. And so I told my dad, Sid. I gave him all the issues that I have. You know, the horrible history of fighting against the civil rights for the church. Church was always on the wrong side of history there. The. All the other issues. And my dad acknowledged that all of them were valid concerns. But he told me the thing that you always get told. He says, you know what I do? I just put it in a box and place it on a shelf. And, you know, I was like, I can't do that, dad. My mind does not work that way. And. But I could see the pain on his face. So I kind of sell, you know, what I'm. I wouldn't be. I think I got this line from you, Dan, on your Fowler Stages of Faith podcast. I told him if it wasn't so important to me, I wouldn't be fighting so hard to find out the truth. So I'm.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:41:13] I said something like that. Yeah.

Randy Snyder [00:41:14] Yeah, you did. I took it right out of your. I totally lifted that from you. But I left him encouraged that I was fighting for my faith because it was important to me. It didn't happen. I briefly flirted with at least being Christian, but then I started to look into Christianity, and that fell apart pretty quickly. Then three months goes by, and I make a joke to my wife. It's actually. It's after Thanksgiving, before Christmas. I'm coming home from work. She asked me to go to the store to get some stuff. And I said, hey, you know what? I can go get some Southern Comfort and eggnog for tonight, just as a joke. And she said, you know what? Go for it. And I was like, what? I came home and I said, what happened? And what had happened for the last three months is that she had prayed, like every day, every night to get an answer if the church was true. It turned out she had lied to me in Cabo. She just was hurt by the way that I had accused her of not being, in her mind, a good Mormon. And so she lied to try to hurt me back. But then she's like, she had to get home and find out for herself. Three months and she got nothing. And she finally said, you know what? If you won't give me an answer in this time of need when my husband is leaving the church, then he must not care. So she gave up and she I kind of wanted to stay in the church, at least go to church just for social reasons. You know, I have a local business. I kind of want to keep a good aim in the business, in the community. But when she decided the church wasn't true, she leapfrogged me and said, we're not going anymore. So it was basically her that pulled me out of the church. But it was such a blessing because now we're on the same page, and that makes all the difference in the world in a marriage.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:43:24] Now, is she studying the same issues as you and kind of coming to the same sort of basic worldview, or is it just for her? Why do I bother with the church? Because I haven't got an answer on that particular thing. Is she kind of a naturalistic.

Randy Snyder [00:43:37] She is not an atheist. These things just aren't that important to. I mean, she did read under the Banner of Heaven. That's a good one. Throughout the whole process, I would always go, hey, listen to this part of this podcast. You see this? This is where Joseph F. Smith lied about what Joseph Smith said about blacks in the priesthood. Isn't that frustrating. They had a chance to get it right back in 1906 or whatever it was, and they blew it again. And I'd tell her stuff like that, and that would just chip away at it, but she never really wrestling with it, to her, you know, if God himself, you know, that's what she was taught her whole life in church, is that if you need an answer, what better witness can you have than from God? And when she went straight to God and got nothing, she just didn't care anymore. And Wrestling with it anymore. Delving into Mormonism was not an interest of hers.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:44:38] Okay, let's do this, Randy. Let's kind of stop multiplying the historical disconnects for you and things like that. I'd really love to have you center right now in on a little bit more what you started with the idea if the church isn't true, then no churches is true. And therefore you've now pursued this path to where you're really engaged in the secular, you know, atheist type movements as sort of the new founding for how you're shoring up your life and making sense of the world.

A Brother's Journey from Faith to Science

Randy Snyder [00:45:19] Well, getting back to the story of my older brother.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:45:22] Oh, shoot. Okay.

Randy Snyder [00:45:25] He became kind of family pariah, but it wasn't all the family. It was a lot of him too. And, you know, he just. Just didn't have anything to say to anyone in the family. So it was why bother kind of thing. They don't. They don't care about Kant or Hume. They care about McConkey and Fielding Smith. And he's kind of. I mean, he's a little bit. He was always a little bit different than the rest of the family. He's. He's a lot more intelligent than everyone else in the family. He was just as a teenager, just constantly reading, withdrawn, just thinking about the deep mysteries of philosophy. So he really just was like oil and water in our family. But for my part, I did not want to even let him in on this process. This had to be. I had to own this process. I did not want to call him. And until I was already had arrived at my. At my new place. So In October of 2009, I had a. I was driving out for another USC game by myself. It was a perfect opportunity to call up my brother. And I called him up and told him, I don't believe the church is true and here's why. And it was just like this. We talked for four hours on that drive. It was like we both had gained a brother. We both understood each other now, or particularly I understood him over all the 19 years. But at that point, I self identified as agnostic. He kind of pointed me in certain directions. He pointed me to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast. And that kind of started my journey of finding as many naturalist or skeptical podcasts as I could find. And I just became an avid podcast junkie. So that kind of helped shape my new worldview. My brother helped shape my new worldview from. At least he took me from. He didn't take me, but he helped Guide me in a direction that went from agnosticism to atheism. I self identify as a scientific naturalist. I think he self identifies as a philosophical naturalist. But we're both atheists. I hadn't got to the God delusion until I already self identified as an atheist. So I can't really credit Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris for contributing to my worldview, but they certainly have enhanced it, refined it. And basically, the way I describe it, when I was Mormon, when I was a true believing Mormon, it was like I was in a small little box and I was afraid to look around the world outside the box. And at least my experience in the church, there was a lot of fear of learning the wisdom of men, the philosophies of men. And you know, your faith is that you do that at your own peril, the peril of your soul. So I, you know, I felt kind of confined in that box. I always was kind of a closet liberal, but I was a registered Republican because I felt like the membership in the church was mandated. You know, kind of mandated it. But my natural, all my natural instincts were liberal. And so once I got out of that box, the, you know, it was like the roof of the box opened up and I saw this whole beautiful universe that I had yet to explore. And there was all this knowledge out there. And then when you, when you get rid of all of the, the cognitive dissonance associated with trying to make Mormon theology and Christian theology fit the rational world and the natural world, once you get rid of all that, all that background noise, you know, just turns off, everything comes into focus. And now I'm free, excuse me, I'm free to follow the evidence wherever it leads me. And it's just, it's a, it's a fascinating and exciting journey. There's so many books I want to read. I wish I could just plug in books into my head and download them. There's so much good stuff out there that I've yet to learn. I want to learn about the Buddha and the way he managed anxiety and stress. There's other philosophy. I want to learn more about some of the great minds in philosophy. So to me it was like this. It was like. It was freedom that was so appealing. It was the world coming into focus, the cognitive background noise, dissonance, background noise, falling silent, and the prospect of a whole life. I mean, I'm 36 years old. I have potentially another four or five decades learning ahead of me. And there's a certain amount of just fulfillment in learning all this stuff.

Randy Snyder [00:51:02] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon Stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your Ward Bulletin and Ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or skypixton.com that's sky with an e s k y e pixton.com thank you.

Randy Snyder [00:51:56] The sun gone down.

Part 2 of 6 · Ep. 223

Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:00] Mormon Stories Podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org.

Randy Snyder [00:00:17] Alright Tyson, you now have to take whatever time you need for sure.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:00:22] No I can do that. I'm happily do that. I'm reminded I was talking with Randy briefly before the segment started how I was listening to A.C. grayling and he always starts out his lectures debates with quoting a Hungarian MP when he was in front of a Budapest at the end of a long debate in Budapest he stood up and said well everything's been said but not everybody said it yet and I sometimes feel that way listening to a lot of and reading a lot of member stories as they exit the church and it's in many respects very similar to my own. I listened to John's and I just cut and paste delins and cut and paste on my own and a lot of just very similar experiences went through the whole I was born and raised in Southern California ancestry, walked across the plains on one side, converts on the other side, raised in a happy home until they got divorced and then bounced between homes and found my social structure within the church and that was really my home and really what raised me and why I have such an affinity for the members of the church and you know really did not have negative experiences until post mission and I had a lot of confirming what you describe as spiritual experiences. And I would say that. I was a very prototypical believing TBM Mormon and had a great experience on my mission in Washington D.C. and served with great people good experiences. I mean I always had the negative with the bad, but I had some really strong spiritual experiences that just parallel a lot of what we've heard already and everybody else has said so. It wasn't really until I got home from my mission that I started to have my eyes opened a little bit but really not quite some time prior to meeting my wife, prior to marrying my wife, I should say that I had my brother was serving I believe there was some overlap when my younger brother was serving his mission and he came home early from his mission he was in Georgia and nobody knew in the family knew or nobody would tell me why he came home early but you could see that he was distraught and dismissive and didn't want to talk about what was going on and probably some embarrassment there from what I knew at the time I couldn't really tell what was happening and I was post mission high getting ready to go back to BYU or I'd already been there for maybe A semester, half a semester, something like that. And I was completely enthralled with my life at the time and I really didn't have a good inkling as to what was going on. It was over spring, no, excuse me, over summer break. And I had gone on a bike ride, a mountain bike ride. We lived up in Big Bear at the time and gone on a mountain bike ride with my dad. And he and my brother had stayed behind and didn't want to go out with us that day, which was. Didn't think much of it. Not everybody wants to go spend three hours on a bike riding up a hill sometimes it's not all that exciting. But we were really tired on the way back and we called to find out if he could come pick us up and he didn't answer the phone and we couldn't get a hold of him. So now at that point you start thinking something's amiss, something's a matter, but you don't think the worst until you walk into the room and you see that he's taken his life. And it wasn't really until then that I, I even had an inkling that he was suffering from what the evidence indicates is same sex attraction or homosexuality or certainly, certainly based upon his writings, the burden and the guilt associated with those thoughts with or without any actions. And surprisingly enough, and something I'm not proud of, it didn't faze my faith at all. It didn't. Not for a minute. I went along, not so callously because this is not something that you recover from and this is having a tragic event in your life like that. You don't recover from it, you just learn to live with it. And went on with my life. Got married and my wife and I walked door to door during Prop 22. And again to my shame, I had no qualms with doing that. It wasn't really until for me, the stage four, I guess you could say, right, that rude awakening to the reality didn't really hit until it was a combination of a lot of things. It was having some experiences with the Odyssey and then listening to reading, hearing a lot of faith promoting or faith revealing evidence

Tyson's Story and Intellectual Path Out

Dan Wotherspoon [00:06:41] for.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:06:42] Searching for evidence for the church, for the truthfulness of the church. I was teaching seminary at the time and then post seminary I was teaching the youth. And you're looking for ways to find faith promoting stories. You're looking for Joseph Smith and the Shearestone and the faith promoting stories associated with it. And so it was this very subtle.

Randy Snyder [00:07:09] So what you're looking for it but you're not finding it, is what you're saying.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:07:12] Well, you're finding everything else. Oh, I see what you're saying. So you're finding you're looking for an explanation to polygamy. I see, right. And then you're building the case that there's other cultures that practice polygamy. So you're trying to find justification. You're becoming. You want to be the apologist for the faith and then you run into polyandry. And that's just a slap in the face right there. But it doesn't knock away your testimony. It revealed itself, one naturalistic principle after another. And I think there's plenty of faith demolishing evidence that's out there. And I like to, I really don't look at the church through. The antagonistic approach in dealing with apologists versus people that are either anti or truth or, or not lds. From my perspective, as soon as I was able to leave that thought, the epistemological black hole of the Book of Mormon Bible, pray about it, get an answer, don't get an answer. The answer is in the Bible Book of Mormon, pray about it. Just that black hole. As soon as I was able to leave that, I was able to question other things and look at Mormonism as just an extension of Christianity.

Guest [00:09:14] And

Tyson Jacobsen [00:09:17] there's this great scientific term called wronger than wrong, which I view Mormonism as wronger than wrong. And I view Christianity as not even wrong. I view it as this because of that epistemological black hole that they get caught in. They can never be wrong through that thinking. If that circular argument, you just follow it all the way around. And these are kind of, these are kind of scientific approaches that if you've got a theory that's not falsifiable, then it's really not a theory. If you can't be proven it wrong, you just can't be right. And there's good science behind why that's the case. So I don't look at all of these. I mean, there's plenty of them out there and it's almost like shooting fish in a barrel when you want to go into it. But it doesn't hold a lot of interest for me to talk about it or to discuss it. I just don't see it. It's a little bit more engaging on the Christianity side. I mean, there's how many, 12, 13 million Mormons at best, maybe half or 60% are active at best. And there's one point, what, 6 billion or 2 billion somewhere between there

Randy Snyder [00:10:41] Christians

Tyson Jacobsen [00:10:41] in the world and 1.6 billion Muslims and then Hinduism. I mean, it's such a small sect. Even though it is my faith tradition, and even though that's the society in which I've been raised and which I associate with and which I can correspond with, I just don't view it as

Guest [00:11:01] being

Tyson Jacobsen [00:11:03] the best topic to bring up when you're having adult beverages with friends. I think looking at about these large issues, you know, there's 8 million children that die every year that are under the age of five due to, you know, preventable diseases. I think those are the better questions to be asking and better problems to try and argue over. Find out how to get resolution on some of those things and what to do with radical Islam. These are. These are challenges that are more real in my life than the Mormon stories.

Randy Snyder [00:11:47] Where along the line were you always somewhat intellectually oriented or philosophically oriented or science oriented? Through high school and college, I was terrible.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:11:59] I'm a general contractor, so I'm not the sharpest tool in the. In the box here. And so I rely upon. I've learned to rely upon evidence and good arguments, and I'm just not a great memorizer. But through repetition, obviously you can get some stuff down, but that's never been my strong point. I've always been the one guy that fairly altruistic in my approach to life and my approach to business. I employ a bunch of members of the church, and I think the best of them. And. I'm just not that strong intellectual genius. I'm not the Richard Feynman or Sam Harris or A.C. grayling of philosophy. I'm just not there.

Randy Snyder [00:12:51] I guess I'm trying to find that spot where you're looking for evidences to prove that it's true as you teach classes and what whatnot, and you stumble into the problems. So was it just a cumulative effect of no Mormonism, No Mormonism, coupled with the idea that you said you resonated with Randy, that if Mormonism isn't true,

Tyson Jacobsen [00:13:12] then you want to know what it is? You want to know the best.

Randy Snyder [00:13:16] Where did it come from?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:13:18] Google Wikipedia, Google YouTube. This is where the debate.

Guest [00:13:26] That's the new three enemies of the church next conference.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:13:31] Yeah, Google Wikipedia. I mean, it's all there. If you want to learn about the adultery pericope in the Book of John, Wikipedia, it's right there. You can actually look at the Codex Sinaiticus, and you can look at the end of Mark and see that the last 12 or 14 or 16 verses are in the Book of Mark. And you can see that the adultery pericopa is not in the Book of John. You can actually see the Greek and the translation side by side. The information is just there. And that's what's great about the citizen philosophers, the citizen scientists, the citizen academics like myself, is that I don't have to memorize that stuff and I don't have to know where it all is because it's right there at the tip of my fingertips. I can remember specifically the first time I thought atheism was a viable. Atheism. Atheism is to belief, just like bald is to hair color. It's just the absence of. Of belief. It's something that you're not right. So I don't collect stamps. I don't skateboard. These are things that I don't do. But I really. The first time I considered that as a course of thought on how to analyze and critically think about our world was the Christopher Hitchens debate between him and Reverend Al Sharpton. Have you seen that, Randy?

Guest [00:15:11] The Hitchens debate with Sharpton?

Randy Snyder [00:15:13] Yeah.

Guest [00:15:14] Didn't Hitchens come off looking pretty bad?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:15:18] I thought.

Guest [00:15:20] I thought he might have been a little too drunk.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:15:24] Well, I mean, that's Hitchens.

Guest [00:15:26] Well, there's a J shaped curve with Hitchens and alcohol. He starts out as a baseline of being somewhat witty. The more he drinks, the curve goes up and he becomes increasingly witty. But then you get past a certain point, then you get a sharp drop down, and he becomes belligerent, impatient and incoherent, even in some ways.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:15:51] But I thought I really was very much entertained by that level of intellectual integrity. And I'm really quite inspired, honestly, at the way he's approaching his esophageal cancer right now. And the integrity and the intellectual honesty that, you know, what these quote unquote, the four horsemen have was really what led me to secular humanism. It was watching these debates with Hitchens, with Harris, with Dennett and Dawkins, and then listening to the Point of Inquiry podcasts where these and others. Jennifer Michael Hecht. What's her name? Blackburn. I might be confusing. She's got purple hair. I don't know how I could figure

Randy Snyder [00:16:47] her, but it's Jennifer Hecht that has the purple hair.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:16:51] Oh, no, no, it's not Jennifer Michael Hecht. No, she's not. But it's. I'll find her. It'll come to me at some point. We're having a spiritual conversation. When we talk about morals, that's when I'll get it. So it was listening to all of these arguments and presenting that evidence. And then you get into YouTube and you can see this groundswell of citizen philosophers. And sometimes these are attorneys or geologists, and they all have a unique perspective on this debate, the creationist debate, the morality debate, the atheism debate. And you get to see the evidence. You get to see these debates play out. And they're just wonderful opportunities for me. They're just intellectually. It's just intellectual crack. It's just fantastic to listen to these ideas banter back and forth. And then that's when you get introduced to Hume and Kant and Rawls and these great philosophers and Spinoza. I mean, I had no idea what transcendence or the numinous was before listening to Hitchens describe it. And I didn't know anything about Spinoza before hearing it from these gentlemen. And so that was very much a congealing point in defining what I believe in and that move towards secular humanism. And it wasn't. When Prop 8 came out, that was where I really felt one. I couldn't stand by and let that happen, but I didn't have my feet underneath me yet. When it comes to having a rational argument, an explanation for the way our world works, I'm not saying I've got the Richard Feynman definition of quantum mechanics, but I certainly have a much better understanding. I know more and more, I guess you could say, about less and less. So I submitted my resignation in October of 2008, right before Prop 8 was voted on. And, I mean, I was fairly out by that time. I didn't have a lot of. I didn't get any resistance from members of my ward. And I think I probably had the best bishop to deal with these items because he gave me the most honest answer to all of my questions. He didn't have answers, and he didn't try to pretend he had answers, too. He was just a genuine friend.

Guest [00:19:39] Was the rest of the world glad to see you go or something?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:19:44] I don't know.

Guest [00:19:44] Just ask too many questions.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:19:46] I wasn't the questioning kind of guy. I have a buddy that works with me, and he's the questioning guy.

Randy Snyder [00:19:55] You're not talking. You're a questioning guy. You just weren't a guy that was saying a lot in church, is what you're saying. Yeah.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:20:00] Yes, exactly. If I didn't have a. I remember seeing this in a movie, I guess you could say I'm fairly prolific when it comes to memorizing movies as well, I guess. But remember, you know, and I've Been on the stand in a court of law where, you know, you're being either in a deposition or in a court of law and they don't ask you questions. Well, in depositions they do, but not in court. They don't ask good questions that they don't know the answers to. So I didn't really want to be voicing a lot of deep or philosophical or challenging questions such as isn't it a little hypocritical that the church uses the First Amendment to defend polygamy and then wants to call it the complete opposite when it comes to same sex attraction? So I guess this kind of works its way back to my brother Matthew. It's at that time I really, I was able to read his letter to his mission president and I really saw the full effect of that. Just immense despair. This is when I learned about Stuart Mattis and was able to see how big of a problem this is for those of faith. And that was really caused great concern because I have four children now and you can say that the church teaches correct principles or morals or ethics. But here I have a brother that's deceased who we don't know what the opportunity cost of his life is, but we know the reasons why he took it. And that's just as serious to me in raising my four children as. As anything else in life.

Resigning from the Church and Experiences Abroad

Randy Snyder [00:21:56] Well, tell us about. From our talking beforehand, really you're starting on this path to when you resigned from the church is about two years, right?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:22:08] Yep, 2008.

Randy Snyder [00:22:09] And is that a personality trait, that you're just a decisive guy and I just rush in and I see the problems and I act that. That's fairly quick.

Guest [00:22:20] Yeah.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:22:22] Did you have something to say, Randy?

Guest [00:22:23] No. No.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:22:24] Oh, okay.

Guest [00:22:25] Sorry.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:22:28] There's a great, there's a great quote. It's Edmund Burke. Right. When bad men combine, the good must associate, else they'll fail one by one. An unpitied sacrifice and a contemptible struggle. Right. That's the, The only way that evil can win is for good to do nothing type of thing. So I felt that I very much have that feeling of standing up for. And I think this is my Mormon upbringing standing up for what is right, choosing the right being, men of character and integrity and espousing what is intellectually honest and what's morally right. And I'm no way putting myself up on a rami emptom or an ivory tower to hold myself as a standard bearer. But I think the call needs to be heeded, not necessarily within my confines. Perhaps better minds and this is when I looked at Grayling and Harris as people that are really on the cutting edge. So I don't know if that answers. I don't know if that answers your question.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:23:48] No.

Randy Snyder [00:23:50] It was good to have you reflect a little bit on why you felt like this wasn't. You'd made some decisions quite quickly and you felt like I can't associate with that. I want to be a stand up person and go in the other direction. And my integrity says let's cut the bait or cut the line. Tell me. I know that this has had some effect in your family life.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:24:17] Oh, certainly.

Randy Snyder [00:24:18] Well,

Tyson Jacobsen [00:24:20] when somebody really believes it and they stand up for what they believe, you're going to have. When it's this dramatic, you're going to have opposing views and that's. I have to hedge and couch my comments such that my Nicole, I like to call her my ex but she decided that she is a believing member of the church. And certainly we've had our challenges up to that time, but I, I had always wanted, when I went through this crisis of faith, I always wanted her to be with me. And that was a challenge because you can't force people to think the way you think. That was decisive.

Randy Snyder [00:25:16] Unlike Randy, who kind of sprung it on her after quite a few years of struggling silently. Were you cluing her in all along? During this two years

Tyson Jacobsen [00:25:28] there reached a point where I had, there was a bit of a tipping point where I thought is the Mormon Church just like the Catholic Church and that we have the same problems they got because we have the same problems that they got. We're just churches of man. And I invited her into the conversation and Randy, I totally one upped you because you took your wife to Kabul, but I took my wife to Tavirua, which is in Fiji, man. And if you know where that is, I thought that would. And I didn't throw any alcohol at the situation either. But I just, I wasn't wearing my garments and that was a bad thing.

Guest [00:26:07] I'm no big shot contractor so I can't afford that.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:26:13] Well, it's an accurate shot. It's not a big shot. It's an accurate shot. And I think that also plays a little bit then into your comments about being decisive. It was, I had taken on a few other life challenges and knew that that's how things happen. That's how action happens. That's how you can do good, is by doing good.

Randy Snyder [00:26:43] Okay.

Guest [00:26:44] For its own sake.

Randy Snyder [00:26:46] So you're in Fiji and this is how many, how far into your own thinking process that things are starting to fall apart.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:26:55] Oh, this is when I think you probably went through this exact.

Guest [00:26:58] Right.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:26:58] You talked about 100 hours of Mormon Stories podcast. I was probably on maybe hour number 90.

Guest [00:27:07] Yeah,

Tyson Jacobsen [00:27:10] I love the Bushman interviews and the Stages of Faith. And that for me was I was getting all of that, but at the same time, I was getting all this other stuff. I'm a fan of technology and so not just podcasts, audio books, anything to try and provide the most access to the best information. As efficiently as possible.

Randy Snyder [00:27:45] And one thing you mentioned to me that I might be good to bring up here is because of the nature of your job, certainly you're a busy guy and you're running your company and all that, but you were kind of telling me that you probably went at an accelerated pace just because you were able to structure your own time.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:28:01] Yeah, it's nice when I can delegate some things and I can carve out some time for looking into things, and I don't have to worry about somebody firing me for doing a thing that Google search or Wikipedia search.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:28:18] Good.

Randy Snyder [00:28:18] All right, so tell us about the events in Fiji.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:28:21] Oh, well, I'm probably not going to tell you about the events in Fiji.

Randy Snyder [00:28:26] Okay. All right. Okay. Then what's the upshot of you telling her a little more directly what's going on with you?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:28:33] You know, it came to the point where the education of my children was. A divisive point. We couldn't resolve that. And I really don't want to argue my side without her arguing hers. And so I'd want to respect her ability to respond. But I genuinely don't feel that an unhappy marriage is preferable to happy individuals, be they divorced or single.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:29:13] So.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:29:14] And it just certainly wasn't at that point a happy marriage. And I think, you know, I do have challenges dealing with the belief. I mean, it's the. I don't remember which number it is at the Temple recommend interview. But, you know, certainly if, you know, if you're affiliating with an individual or teachings or practices that are contrary to or oppose those accepted by the church. Right. Or do you sympathize with these people? I mean, if you're living with them, how hard is it to answer that question honestly? And Nicole is. She's honest. She has a tremendous amount of integrity. And this is that level of belief that is admirable because this is. And there's lots of people out there surrounded by.

Randy Snyder [00:30:03] Now, I wouldn't imagine, though, that a bishop or a church leader would counsel her to end her marriage over this issue. So is it more coming from your direction that an unhappy marriage isn't doing anyone any good?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:30:16] Well, certainly, that's certainly coming from my direction and she deserves to say her side of the story as well.

Randy Snyder [00:30:24] Right. But if you were going to talk about this temple recommend question and she were to answer and fill in this stuff here, she probably wouldn't be denied a temple recommend by state marriage.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:30:35] No, no, no.

Randy Snyder [00:30:36] Okay. I just wanted to make sure that you weren't making up.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:30:39] I think it just illustrates the challenges that believers and members who are in this marriage where one party has been disaffecting. The challenge that the believer has because this is their belief is post mortal existence celestial kingdom. The only way you get there is with your spouse if you're not. I remember my stake president telling me at byu, if you're not worthy to get into the house of the Lord here on earth, what makes you think you're going to be worthy to get in the house of the Lord in the next life? So I think these are weighty challenges for them that they take seriously. If we want to know what the Let me just segue here into a completely different section from my marriage to belief. And there's some people that don't criticize. It's the big elephant, the white elephant in the room is Islam. People don't criticize Islam for a myriad of reasons, some of them just for fear of repercussions.

Guest [00:31:57] Well, mainly there's explosives attached to the elephant.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:32:03] But if you want to find out what they believe, you ask them, what are the 21 hijackers, 19 hijackers of 911 profess as they were flying the planes into the buildings. This is not a we don't need to look much farther than what they actually believe. And that gets into lots of different ways that we can go off and talk about those things.

Disagreements, Listener Questions, and Afterlife Views

Randy Snyder [00:32:34] Okay, now let me just clue the listeners in here. I've disagreed with probably 50 things that you guys have said over the last hour and a half or however longer we've going here. But we kind of agreed that this is for you to tell your stories as fully and thoroughly as possible before we seek to understand, before you seek to challenge or to ask the tougher questions and things like that. So I'm really uncomfortable with this little stuff here on Islam. As a scholar of religion and someone who certainly, certainly has studied in all of its different manifestations, I know where you're getting it from because I am familiar with some of the rhetoric from Some of the people that I know that you listen to, just for the listeners who say, well, Dan, you've been pretty silent, as these guys have done. I wanted to say that I really want to hear you guys and have you get that chance to tell your full story. We'll have a very robust discussion.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:33:39] So let me give me.

Randy Snyder [00:33:41] Your marriage did break up, though, right?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:33:43] Yes, yes, yes.

Randy Snyder [00:33:44] Were you divorced after you've left?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:33:47] No, no, we're still. We're still working our way through it, but.

Randy Snyder [00:33:49] Okay, so you're separated now, but it's

Tyson Jacobsen [00:33:52] very civil so far. Very civil. But let me get to your foundational beliefs and moving on. I think you're going to see a lot of similarities here with Randy. But I can tell you that

Guest [00:34:09] one

Tyson Jacobsen [00:34:09] of the enlightening things that I learned is that I was wrong and it's okay to be wrong, and it's actually good to be wrong. I don't have a problem with that.

Randy Snyder [00:34:21] So you're saying now one of your animating things are guiding your life is that it's okay to be wrong?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:34:26] Yeah, absolutely. Certainly another is that my belief scales with the evidence. And I think there's a lot that. There's a lot that kind of fits within that brief statement.

Randy Snyder [00:34:42] Okay. You're basically saying the. You try to keep it calm if it's just minor evidence, but then you're. You'll.

Guest [00:34:52] Its level of confidence is proportional to the level of evidence.

Randy Snyder [00:34:58] Okay. And we'll talk later about what counts as evidence for you guys. Okay, good, good.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:35:04] And so the next is a little bit into the Humes is and ought. But on the is side, I can kind of summarize it with saying that, you know, through the study and that some of these really foundational beliefs, things that help me move forward and understand my life, is really, simply put, that evolution is a fact. It's not a theory, as in it's still being debated or still might be possibly wrong, that Darwinian evolution, in the most modern terms of that is a fact. And that explains so many things in life. It explains our origins of morality, it explains our health, our outlook on life, are the reasons why we do things as humans, as primates. So that's the is. That's the is side of that.

Randy Snyder [00:36:04] And we'll wrestle with the morality and all that later. Okay, Go for it.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:36:09] Okay. And then the ought is making. There's a little bit of a leap. And I'd love to go into this because this is the. This is an argument that Harris puts forth, and it's Very convincing to me. And I'm more than happy to. Again, starting with the epistle number one. Tyson's epistle number one is I could be wrong. And it's okay. But from the broad sense, in the broad sense of speaking about science, incorporating neurology, philosophy, the lab coat guys, that science is our best tool to identify our best morals and ethics in the world today. And there's really good arguments on that side. So that's my odd. In answer to Hume's is ought dilemma.

Randy Snyder [00:37:03] Okay, good, we'll wrestle with that one. Any others that you wanted to put forth as sort of what you're hanging your hat on right now?

Guest [00:37:13] Nah.

Randy Snyder [00:37:14] Okay, Randy, got a few,

Guest [00:37:22] you know, just to kind of, you know, piggyback on some of the things that Tyson talked about. I mean, the one thing I love about science is that it's always prepared to go further, whereas dogma is a discussion ender, it's a progress stopper. You know, when you compare science versus dogma, and I think this is along the same lines as Tyson, is that, you know, science can throw a great deal of light on human nature. And that's where, you know, understanding human nature and understanding, you know, being sympathetic and understanding of the human condition, those are things where science can then inform and even really dictate what our value should be going forward as a species.

Randy Snyder [00:38:16] Okay, others,

Guest [00:38:21] no. Is it time for a bathroom break?

Randy Snyder [00:38:25] We certainly can, and our listeners will probably appreciate that too. The listeners did send in a lot of questions ahead of time, so I have a few things here related to your Mormonism to clean up. So are you okay if we kind of just clarify a few spots? I think I can predict your answers on a lot of these, but just as a way to honor the questions that came in, I would love. And these are going to be the kinds of questions that I don't think will be challenging questions to you in the sense of if I were to ask you, do you maintain any belief whatsoever in an afterlife? Now that's not like a question where this isn't an argumentative question. This is just a clarifying question. So either of you guys. Afterlife?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:39:15] My belief scales with the evidence, and there's absolutely no evidence that it's convincing to me that there's an afterlife.

Randy Snyder [00:39:22] Okay. So near death experience, past life, spontaneous memory of things like that.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:39:30] I just don't think that the.

Guest [00:39:33] I would just say that to me, the naturalistic, materialistic explanations are just so much more likely. So it's a matter of probability for me as well. And Positing one side, you're positing everything we know about the laws of physics will be broken. On the other side, you're coming up with a plausible naturalistic explanation. I throw in my cards with the naturalistic explanation for those things. And there are very good explanations for out of body experiences. In fact, they can be reproduced chemically with drugs. There's a part of your brain that actually dictates your sense of being, your place in the universe inside your body. When you mess with that, either with the magnetic coil or with drugs, you can actually reproduce in a lab out of body experience.

Randy Snyder [00:40:29] Okay, well, we'll wrestle with that. I'll throw you some different alternative views of the universe that would.

Guest [00:40:37] No, the discussion's over.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:40:39] Yeah, our minds are closed. We're not atheists.

Guest [00:40:43] That's what atheists are, our minds are closed.

Randy Snyder [00:40:45] Okay, I'm looking here. I know that. Randy, you said you and your wife are no longer attending the church and so you're not taking your kids to that, are you doing, what are you doing as far as finding a community of like minded individuals or how are your children being socialized in sort of the worldview that you guys are now entered into, or is it.

Raising Children Outside the Church

Guest [00:41:12] Well, if you remember the complication of adopting.

Randy Snyder [00:41:15] Oh yeah, the grandmother who said that Jonathan needed to stay. Huh.

Guest [00:41:20] Right. And Jonathan's kind of a interesting character. He's got his own psychiatrist and psychologist. So he's a wonderful kid. He's got a lot of issues, a lot of history to deal with. And when I left the church, I shocked his world. And the funny story is that we went to church the next day after I told him I don't believe anymore. I told him, this is a family secret for now. We haven't decided what we're going to do. We hadn't physically left the church yet. And he said okay, and we sat down, we went to sacrament the next day. And as soon as sacrament was over, he bolted for the bishop and told him, my dad doesn't believe in God anymore. That's the impulsive ADHD that he displays. Plays, presents this.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:42:14] How old is he now?

Guest [00:42:16] He's 13. One of my last acts as a Mormon was giving him the Aaronic priesthood about a year ago. So he's a deacon and for a while he was trying to save my soul. And then after a while he lost interest. And I always told him, you're always welcome to go to church. You know, you can do whatever you want. That's one of the, that's really one of the hallmarks of raising your kids in a secular way is you're open to let them do whatever they want. You don't have to control them and dictate what they should believe. If he wants to be a Christian, I can handle that. If he wants to be a Mormon and it makes him happy, that's great. And so I left it open. He went for a while on his own. Eventually he didn't want to go and I couldn't be hypocritical and say, you gotta go, even though I don't think it's important for myself. So I didn't force him to go anymore. But then the ward has started to rally around him and trying their best to keep him going. I don't mind him being in Scouts, but he goes sporadically. And there's more of the story I'm not going to get into. But right now, the two and the four year old, there's not a whole lot to socialize them into. They're a little too young.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:43:42] But

Guest [00:43:45] I just think the most important thing is family time. And I have a lot more family time now that I'm out of the church to spend with the kids and to really be there for them always, in every way and teach them the values that I. Things that I value. As far as socializing, you know, I might get them into something like 4h eventually, but it's the 2 and 4. I really haven't thought about it. And with Jonathan, he's got the scouts, so that's. We'll keep it for that for now.

Randy Snyder [00:44:22] Okay. How about you, Tyson? I know your wife's probably taking the kids when they're with her. Are you trying to block that at all or how are you negotiating that?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:44:33] Well, no. Each of us has the kids on alternating weekends and we've been very civil at this point, up to this point in coordinating each other's schedules. And I just don't think that when you have kids with somebody you can ever be divorced. And I genuinely want her and my kids to be random. I think the best way for me to look at it is that,

Guest [00:45:03] and

Tyson Jacobsen [00:45:03] I don't think Randy was insinuating this at all, that you'd let the kids do anything you want. Naturally, you're going to want to teach

Guest [00:45:12] them

Tyson Jacobsen [00:45:14] morals and ethics. And I don't think Randy's having that. Without Gods, all things is possible.

Guest [00:45:24] No, yeah. It was more like whatever makes them happy or if they're curious, I want them to learn about it and then I'll. Obviously I'll counter it with my take on it. But I don't have so much writing on what worldview they adopt as Mormons do. And that's, that's a really unnecessary but real and strong pressure that Mormon parents have. You could have a kid that's, you know, a physician in Africa doing free clinics, has a wonderful wife, but if he's not Mormon or he doesn't believe in the church, there's some part of him that's going to feel like a failure as a parent.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:46:06] Yeah, I thought, I wanted to clarify that because that's a common misconception that people have without religion, that you can't raise your children to be moral, ethical. And I think not only do the statistics belie that, but I think you can in practice provide a more moral and more ethical environment. I'm not leaving Mormonists because

Guest [00:46:31] I think.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:46:36] I left Mormonism because I really think there's something better out there. And I equate Gordon B. Hinckley's take all that good stuff with you when you come to us. That same approach to humanism and naturalism, it truly isn't from being in both camps better on this side for me in particular. And then I also like to use the analogy of with my children, they're not allowed to vote. They don't vote until they're 18. And we don't have a lot of problem with that in the church or outside the church or as a society. And so why are we letting our children or why are we compelling our children to decide when they can't decide who the mayor of their town is? How are we to make that jump to they need to decide which church, which God, which view of creation is the most accurate one. So for what's important to me is to teach my children how to think critically and how to analyze things and to use the best information and evidence to make the decisions that bring the greatest amount of well being into their life. And that's taking a trip to. Oh, Yosemite, that's going up to Mammoth, that's going down to the beach and going and looking at aquariums and science museums and then there's just spending time with them and enjoying life with them and watching good movies, reading good books, just experiencing everything there is to life and then letting them ask questions and then encouraging them to ask questions. My kids love the Mr. Deity. We got the Mr. Deity DVD and they are all over it. My boy is quoting Brian's dialogue in there and they got to, I can't remember if they got to meet him or not.

Randy Snyder [00:48:51] Your kids are how old now?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:48:52] I have 13? 11. 9. Soon to be 9 and 18 months. Just under 18 months. But I'll take them up to, you know, people ask what's the forum or what's the environment, the social structure for, you know, people outside the church? And it's, you know, there's lots of good answers to that. But one of the things I do is I go to, I go to lectures and I was in Arizona last week at a debate between just intellectual giants and academic giants. But I'll take my kids up to Caltech and they've got Skeptic Society lectures up there. And one guy was talking about ants and the world of ants and just mind expanding information. My daughter remembers that she knows the leaf cutter ants and what they do, and it's just a way for them to understand the world in which they live. I think just being with my kids, I spend a lot more time with my kids, even though, you know, I'm separated, but I'm spending 100% of my time with my kids when I have my kids. And that's more than I was able to do in the past.

Guest [00:50:00] There was actually a study that was done where they compared strict upbringing of teenagers in evangelical Christian homes and compared to secular children that were raised in secular homes. And teen pregnancy was higher among the evangelicals. And sexual kids are having sex a little bit sooner with the evangelicals on average. And what they attributed to was that the evangelicals were teaching their kids about sex in very scary, hellfire damnation terms, whereas the secularists were basically using a practical approach, saying, look, you've got a lot of things you want to accomplish in life. If you go and get a girl pregnant or you go and get yourself pregnant, you're going to limit your options in the future. And so you're teaching them something that they can wrap their heads around. That's not fear motivated and it's a more practical. And it focuses on what's really important. You know, instead of obsessing about whether he's masturbating, I'd rather not get a girl pregnant so he can go to college and, you know, become a scientist. That's my dream as my kids become scientists. But, but anything they want to be, it's fine as long as they're happy and they're good people. I mean, with, basically, if my kids get bad grades, if my kids don't do well in sports, that's okay, but it's not okay. But I'm not. But If I find out you're being cruel to other kids at school, you're going to really get it from me as a parent, because cruelty to me is most important. One of the most important aspects of raising a moral child is teaching them about cruelty and to fight against it.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:51:54] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon Stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your Ward Bulletin and Ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or skypixton.com that's sky with a e s k y e pixton.com thank you.

Part 3 of 6 · Ep. 224

Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:00] Mormon Stories Podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:17] Welcome, everybody, back to Mormon Stories. We're with Randy Snyder and Tyson Jacobsen. Again. I've organized a lot of the questions that came in from listeners that John Dehlin asked everybody to send in, and we're going to kind of take it slowly and we're going to take it right through the things that you've asked as much as we can, and leave any of our debating and whatnot towards the end of the podcast. So I'm excited to hear in far more nuance and far more detail the things that Randy and Tyson are thinking, and we're grateful for these list of questions and we think it's going to really serve the podcast well and hopefully all of your interests. So, guys, if you are ready, let's just dive into the list.

Humanism, Atheism, and Post-Mormon Community

Randy Snyder [00:01:00] Okay, well, can we start with an opening hymn, Ye Elders of Israel?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:05] Cool.

Randy Snyder [00:01:06] Since we got a little quorum here.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:09] I'm a terrible singer, but if you sing lead, I'll.

Randy Snyder [00:01:14] It's Sunday morning. I'll sing the bass part. I got my morning bass voice. Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:20] Anyway. Well, I wonder if that part will be sliced out, because this is not a. Anyway, never mind. We're going. Okay, guys, in the first bit, as we talked a little bit, we talked a little bit about secular humanism, atheism, scientific naturalism, all the different sort of labels. What do you guys see as the importance of labels? What do you see about. Do some emphasize the positive aspects of the worldview that you're embracing versus the things that you're rejecting? What's the difference between humanism and atheism, is there a difference, etc. Does either one of you guys want to jump in on and start at least get that definition kind of going?

Randy Snyder [00:02:09] If you could just call someone out, it'd probably be quicker.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:02:12] All right, I know, Tyson, you began talking about it in the first one. So, Randy, why don't you take it here?

Randy Snyder [00:02:20] Well, as far as labels in general, you know, anytime you're discussing something, it's important to define your terms. So labels do serve a useful purpose in communicating and, you know, helping each other understand each other. But there's also stigmas attached to labels, and so there's a negative side to it, but I just don't know of any other way to approach this kind of stuff. You know, atheism is a pejorative term in some ways. In many dinner conversations lately, when I'VE outed myself to people both in the church and out of the church and never in the church. I almost always get the wide eyed look like you don't believe in any God. And I even had one friend from the south said that to me. Atheism is like devil worship. So, you know, there's definitely an aspect to that word I don't like. But you know, it is helpful to use terms to define what we are. Atheism is simply describing what we don't believe. We don't believe in a personal God. Humanism is more of a, an area that covers our morality and how our morality affects our civilization, our greater communities. And basically it's using logic and reason, but not completely cold logic like Spock. You know, you have to have some emotion that's just part of all the information that we need to create a society that allows for the most well being among the people. And we believe logic and reason trumps dogma when it comes to morality and ethics.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:27] Cool. Tyson, if you were to sing a song to humanism, if you were to sing a song to the highest values that you're hoping to, to teach or to see in the world, get on your soapbox for a minute or two and sing us the song of humanism.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:04:48] Okay.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:50] Without actually singing, of course.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:04:51] Yes, yes.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:52] But if you were to. Yeah, here's your three minutes to say you're in Hyde park on the soapbox.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:05:00] That's what it is, Hyde Park.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:05:02] That's what I was trying to remember.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:05:04] I think the easiest way to explain it is that humanism is concerned with the, the well being of conscious creatures. And what matters to us is what happens in this world. I think there's actually a misunderstood difference between people of faith and people that don't have faith. I mean, faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:05:33] Well, is that. Okay, never mind. We're not going to debate.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:05:35] Yeah, we don't need. I'm throwing it out there. That's a Tim Minchin quote. It's fun, it's provocative. But we're concerned about the well being of conscious creatures in this world. And religion is concerned about the well being of conscious creatures. But in this world and the next world, and sometimes this world is sacrificed. Your concern for the well being in this world is sacrificed for consideration in the next world. So we're primarily just focused on what good we can do in this world, what purpose each of us can find in this life versus searching for an ultimate or universal purpose which may or may not have any impact on our life as well. So that's the three minute version of humanism. And you can incorporate a lot of things in there. We're concerned about people's liberties, free rights through. We're concerned about protection of children's rights and well being of equality among women and gender and preferences. So that kind of, if we're focusing on the well being of conscious creatures that envelops a lot of these other, what we would refer to as liberties and inherent natural rights.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:06:50] Okay, cool. Humanism. Well, okay, maybe more specifically at least, because I'm more aware of what Dawkins and Hitchens and Harris and. And some of the thought leaders that I know you're aware of and I know you're done. They seem to have a focus on extreme characterizations of religion. Certain groups that act in certain ways and obviously the critiques that they have of. Krista Tippett uses the terms thin or thick religion. It seems like their focus is on thin religion or on the stuff that pretty much any thoughtful person would reject or say, yes, absolutely. Religion with the right personality and the right temperament, it can close itself off to all these things and whatnot. So I guess my question is, and this is based on a listener question, do humanists really have a beef with the real thoughtful religious folks or the deeper, the thicker religion, the religion that's focused on social justice and stuff like that. So is it religion in general or is it just specific versions of religion, the lesser versions? What would you guys say? I will go back to Randy, we'll flip flop.

Randy Snyder [00:08:25] Well, I think if she's, if I understood you correctly, Krista Tippett is referring to fundamentalism as thin religion.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:32] Yeah, I mean, well, among, you know, anything that sort of just, you know,

Randy Snyder [00:08:37] we got to define terms. Remember,

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:41] like for instance, I have debates with my friends and I'll say, you know, here's Mormonism. And they'll say, no, Mormonism is just purely thoughtless. You know, pray, pay and obey, follow the prophet, you know, that kind of stuff. And I'll say no, Mormonism's got all this rich stuff here. And so I'll say the version that you're concentrating on is thin Mormonism and I'm focusing on thick Mormonism, something like that. So I guess I'm saying, would you guys really have humanists? I guess we'll say humanists and then you guys can add your own flavor one way or the other on that. Is it all religion? Is it just the fact that somebody believes in the existence of a spiritual realm? Or something like that? Or is it really just the bad stuff that can kind of come out of religion?

Randy Snyder [00:09:24] There's one misconception I think people have about atheists is that we're out to try to destroy everyone's faith. We want to take it away from them, and that's not what we're about. We want freedom. We want to be free from the oppression of religious dogma, which, you know, case in point in our society today. They want to take away marginalized homosexuals and their relationships, not because of any empirical evidence. If anyone has read the court proceedings for the Prop 8 appeal, you see that one side is so paltry as far as evidence and pathetic versus the other side that was just rich with all kinds of empirical data and logic and reason and compassion. So, you know, we want. What we want is freedom for everyone to do, you know, as long as their people aren't hurting other people. I have no problem with people having faith if it enriches their lives, more power to them. Some of the smartest people I know are believers. And so I'm not. You know, I'm not to destroy religion. I just want. I just want people to. I guess what we want is education. We want people to think about more, about things that they just take for granted and never looked into. There's just such a deference to Christianity in America, and people have never really examined it, but they just accept it as true without ever really thinking about it their whole lives. So I think education about it is what we want. And so the more thoughtful, intellectual believers, I have no problem with.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:13] Okay, and Tyson, same thing for you.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:11:16] Yeah, I think I might be a little bit more defensive of the Four Horsemen, I don't know, because I don't think Randy really has a beef with him. And I think that everybody is entitled to their belief, but I think it's something to believe something. And then it's something else to go out and actively. Well, to enter the culture war, to enter that realm of engagement, and to. Not abide by the principles of reason and logic and evidence. And just by pure coincidence, you can call this miraculous if you'd like. I would just chalk it up to coincidence, but I opened up right into the moral landscape, right. Where there's something from Harris defending this exact point.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:12:11] Okay, and just back up just one second. The four Horsemen are Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:12:16] Yes, Sam Harris.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:12:17] And then the book that you're talking about is written by. The moral landscape is written by Sam Harris.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:12:21] Okay, yeah, yeah. So Sam Harris, neuroscientist from ucla and I think he got his degree in philosophy from Stanford. So this is direct quote from his book on page 174, the moral landscape. He says there is now a large and growing literature spanning dozens of books and hundreds of articles attacking Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and me, the so called news atheists for alleged incivility, bias and ignorance of how quote unquote, sophisticated believers practice their faith. It is often said that we caricature religion taking its most extreme forms to represent the whole. We do no such thing. We simply do what a paragon of sophisticated faith does. We take the specific claims of religion seriously. I think that's what they're trying to emphasize. They're not trying to point out that when a person is civil or humane or rejecting slavery for the reasons of humanity, they're not saying that that person is wrong for doing it. They're saying that they're taking the base religion, the claims of religion at their face value. And so when we have a person that is, this is more of Sam Harris argument that when you have a person that's liberal within their faith, It's a bit of a mischaracterization of the person who is orthodox of that fai, the atheist who's just looking at the beliefs of that individual of that religion are looking at what the tenets of that religion are. You don't see them out there criticizing Jainism or Buddhism. I don't see a lot of.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:14:11] So it's not the spiritual realm, it's just the specifics when they enter the public square and aren't based upon reason, something like that.

Randy Snyder [00:14:18] Well, when they impose their religious ethics onto the rest of society, like God doesn't like homosexuals.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:14:24] Okay, yeah. So they brought their very specific stuff into the public discussion and you said impose. Of course.

Randy Snyder [00:14:34] I guess I should be fair. God doesn't like homosexuality because you gotta love the sinner, hate the sin. Which I've never liked.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:14:42] No, well, no, I'm really appreciating what you're saying here and I'm actually quite in agreement with you guys there. And I think everything should stand up to the best reasoning and the best thinking. So I was just trying to get at, at the issue and I think that's what the listener question was. Because again, as we get further into it, we'll probably learn that you guys don't believe in a spiritual realm or something beyond it. And I guess I'm saying with humanism it's not so much that they would go after that it would be the stuff that does not seem to serve the well being of conscious creatures or whatever. Right. Let's talk about religious community and religious practices, especially the more general ones like meditation, perhaps contemplative prayer. That is more of a getting in touch your soul if you had one with the higher powers of the universe and things like that. So I kind of wanted to talk to you guys about how you see those. Also, have you maintained any practices or community type communal experiences in your own life? So let's start with religious ceremonies or communal meetings. Do you guys attend other churches? Do you go to revival meetings? Obviously you're not going to revival meetings when they come to town. What are you doing to kind of get together with other people and have the communal experience? Whose turn is it? Is it Tyson?

Building Shared Stories and Meaning After Religion

Tyson Jacobsen [00:16:24] That's a great question. That's the big. I don't know that this is necessarily a religious question as it is a humanity question. We think because the culture and the environment for Mormons is so strong. I mean it was my social net growing up. I lived out of the home for a couple years in high school and I lived with members of the church and my whole entire structure was with members of the church. So I think it's really challenging because that culture is so strong to try and find a replacement for it. And you know, I'm a little bit greedy in that I think I can have it both ways. I still think I can have all of my LDS friends and I still. And I want to go out and try and develop new social structures and new social networks. So it's.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:17:28] And you're still fairly early in this process. You're only a year or so out.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:17:35] I resigned in 2008. October of 2008. That should resonate with a few.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:17:42] So where are you starting with this sort of reaching out and still trying to develop communal experiences?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:17:50] Well, sitting at home and watching TV is not the thing to do. And necessarily being on the Internet 24 hours a day, it's a matter of going out there and finding new associations to be involved in. I really like meetup has a lot of groups where people with similar religious experiences that have left religion and then there's science focused groups and then there's activity based groups. It's just a matter of going out there and finding one that works for you. I really like the lecture series that they have at Caltech and I'll take my kids with me today up there. We're going to go learn about what the world is supposed to look like in 2050. I'm going to hang out with Brian Dalton, Mr. Deity, and have a good, hopefully intellectual conversation and introduce my kids to some good thinking. So it's just a matter of going out there and finding those. I agree that it's challenging to have that level of culture, but then I'd also argue that you've got other societies that are not theistic, that score far greater than the United States does in terms of longevity, happiness, social networks, social structures, and they find a way to do it without having that religious community. So I think people are afraid that they're going to lose that. And when you're in maybe Idaho, Utah, Arizona, it's really challenging because majority of people in their society might be lds. It's a lot easier for me in California. I go to the mall on Sunday and it's packed, so there's no shortage of opportunities for me. It might be more challenging for others.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:19:55] So if I were to take one little takeaway from her. Yes, you still value communal experience, getting together with other people, but your advice is know that you're going to have to work at it. You're going to have to seek it. It's not going to come to you like ready made, the way it does when you were a Mormon.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:20:11] Yes, yes.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:20:14] Yeah. So definitely take ownership of it. Randy, what have you found? Or I know you said you and your wife have stopped going. What are you going to. Or what are you doing together or with your family?

Randy Snyder [00:20:29] If anything, we go on hikes into the mountains on Sundays. Actually, I'm glad that Tyson brought up some of the Western European, especially Scandinavian countries. And I'm going to point out one that's close to my heart because of all the blood in my mixed bag of genetics, Denmark is the most influential. And when I was in Rotary a few years back, a group of Danish professionals came to America and they did a presentation at a Rotary meeting and they were incredibly impressive. And they were talking about. They started to field questions afterwards. And one of the people says, well, what's it like living in such a socialist kind of economy? And one of the ladies says, well, this is kind of the way it is. I talked to my daughter and we said, you know, when you're about to go to college and you realize you're going to have to pay, you know, pretty high taxes? She says, and they said, does that bother you? And the girl says, no, because what if someone down the street can't afford to go to college and they want to? So there's in these organic atheistic societies, particularly in Scandinavia. You know, those all rank in the top five least religious countries in the, in Western Europe, they have a more communal, broader communal spirit, taking care of each other. I don't know if that's possible in America because America has so much, you know, it's such a melting pot of culture and religion. So it's a little tougher when you get into the smaller communities. You know, it's hard to beat that Mormon mobilization when your wife goes in to deliver and you got dinners or your yard needs the gravel spread all over it and five guys from the quorum come in and help you. That's hard to replicate. But I think there's a greater communal aspect in the less religious countries that it certainly shows that it's possible. Now what am I doing for social. Just like Tyson, I joined Meetup, an atheist meetup group and a skeptics in the pub meetup group. That's not something for the kids, though. So as far as the kids are concerned, we'll just have to go out and find communities. You know, there's, there's sports that they can get involved in. 4H Club, you know, it's, it's, it's a little more difficult because you're just not totally plugged into the Mormon social network anymore. But it's possible.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:23:09] Yeah.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:23:10] Interesting.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:23:11] One of the.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:23:12] Go ahead, throw something in there really quick. Because when you don't have, when you don't have that built in social structure or culture, it makes the relationships that you have that much more important. You can't just move and already have a built in. You know, I already have my. I'm already going to have a home teacher. I'm already going to have, you know, the Relief Society, homemaking, yada, yada. You know, your family and your friends have that much more importance in your life. They have that much more value. And I think that's only a good thing.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:23:48] Yeah, very cool. Now, there was one aspect and you guys have actually hit on quite a few of the listener questions just the way you answered that. But there was one aspect that is interesting to me here and I'll just read a piece of the question. It says religions are often the creators of a story that binds people together. And these groups foster many of the essentials for happy living, purpose, friendship, accept its importance and then they want to know how you practice that. But I'm interested. You guys didn't really talk about a communal story in that aspect. Is there any thoughts on that? I guess There is somewhat of a communal story. If it was an atheism group or what you call it, the skeptical pub group or whatever. Randy. There is sort of a story of the universe that you all share by simply being part of that meetup group. But what do you think about religion as it's providing meaning? There's that typical thing that says science can give you facts, but you need religion or philosophies and whatnot to fill in the meaning and interpret it. We'll start with Randy again.

Randy Snyder [00:24:57] Okay, there's a couple of questions in there. I think the story that binds us. Actually one of the stories that binds us is the story of leaving religion.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:25:12] Okay, that's great.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:25:15] There is a very supportive, extremely supportive structure of people that have left.

Randy Snyder [00:25:22] Yes, sorry, Randy. And I'm a member of a couple of private online liberal former Mormons and that has led to some personal, in real life relationships that I really cherish and enjoy. So there's that. I mean you talk about if you just have, if you have a Mormon and a Catholic that both left their religion, it's not the same bond as two Mormons that left Mormonism and become atheist that there's so much understanding between each other, mutual understanding that really binds us. And we speak the same language.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:26:06] Well, right. And that's I think partly what's part of this question. You have a story where you can refer in shorthand to some lesson from the Book of Mormon or whatnot, and that helps you. Hey, we share the same basic mythic stories, meaning and values conveyed through the stripling warriors. So we don't need to reinvent all that. But it sounds like right now you've got a negative story. It's a story reacting against something. It's still interesting though, right? Okay, okay. But it's reacting against it. And I would love to hear more of the positive.

Randy Snyder [00:26:47] Well, the positive.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:26:50] Yeah, not positive. The non rejecting the more forward looking one.

Randy Snyder [00:26:57] It's a little bit of a mixed bag when you go to former Mormons because former Mormons can turn out to be yoga instructors. Everything from yoga instructor to born again Christian to. Although if they become born again Christian, you're not likely to join these liberal former Mormon groups. All the way to atheists though. So you don't always get the same positive background story. But when you go to this skeptics in the pub or the atheist meetup group, you know, we all respond and love the writings of Carl Sagan. He's like our inspirational. He's the one that popularized science the most in the last century and just how beautiful the universe is to atheists. Science is the greatest accomplishment of our species and we love to get together and celebrate that. And the universe is just so incredibly awesome and inspiring in and of itself to me. I'm going to steal a Tim Minchin quote from his beat poem Storm, which

Dan Wotherspoon [00:28:09] I did listen to in the reading three or four days.

Randy Snyder [00:28:14] To me it's his opus. But he says, and it's the same thing with me, to try to paint some kind of mystical spiritualness to what's already a beautiful thing is like spraying perfume on a beautiful lilac. I mean an aroma lilac. That's the kind of reaction that it has. I'm not saying that's the way it is for everybody, but to me that's the kind of reaction I have now is that it's beautiful in and of itself. It doesn't need any other additives.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:28:46] Yeah. Have you guys looked? Just in curiosity. I mean, I've enjoyed this book. It's called the Universe Story. It's Thomas Berry and Brian Swim and they basically try to add that level of story that takes you from the Big Bang, the initial flaring forth through all the different eras and to where we are now, which is sort of for them the culmination so far as the universe is now finally become conscious of itself or it's created beings that can reflect back upon it.

Randy Snyder [00:29:12] That's an incredible idea that we are the universe created from a supernova billions of years ago that is now contemplating its own existence. I haven't read that book, but I have read a book by Michael Dowd called thank God for Evolution, which pretty much does the same thing.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:29:30] Okay, cool. Yeah, no, but the idea. So you guys aren't without story. Maybe not as quick and shorthand as you can quickly fire off when it's the Bible stories or the Book of Mormon stories or whatnot to unite you. But there is sort of a sense of the Big Bang at least as the initial start of things. And some miraculous and wonderful and awe inspiring things since then.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:29:59] Randy, by telling me that he is a Carl Sagan fan, all I should have to do is say just consider the little blue dot.

Randy Snyder [00:30:06] Pale blue dot.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:30:07] Pale blue dot. Excuse me. Thank you. And that equated the same thing as saying consider Captain Moroni's standard of liberty.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:30:20] Oh, I see. Okay. So there is sort of a shorthand like that within the community because a lot of you have read at least the seminal books where you can do that. Well, I was really impressed with Carl Sagan as a person and individual myself. Just to give you guys one quick story. When I graduated with my doctorate in 1996 at Claremont, Carl had been very, very sick with cancer. But he was sort of in a remission period for eight or nine months. And he was the speaker at my graduation. And one of the things I really liked is he talked about being part of the. What's the name of the. Was it voyager that they sent out of the solar system and just kept traveling out there. But he was part of the team that was. Was involved with what to put on the little plaque and the music and all that stuff. And then he says, as it was leaving the solar system, he just made sure that they would turn it around and look back at Earth. And the opening shot in the movie Contact. You guys ever seen that? Yeah, it just sort of shows it backing away from. As the Earth gets smaller and smaller, you see it against the background of all the other stars and. And it's both insignificant, one of thousands or billions or trillions, and yet it's also precious. Is sort of his thing. But his thought was, he says, I don't know. But he says, I don't think from this perspective, when you say the pale blue dot or whatever, he goes, I think we got to solve our own problems. When you look at it in this background, I don't think the outside entities are going to come in and save us from our stuff. And so I really thought that's, you know, a very ethical position.

Randy Snyder [00:31:59] Brand new Jonas. Who knows what works. We've been robbed of by him dying at such a young age of 62. It's just. It was just a tragic. Just a big tragedy, in my opinion.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:32:12] Yeah, Dan, what you. What you described there was Carl Sagan's blue dot.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:32:18] That's what I thought. Yeah, that's what I thought what you meant too. Yeah. But again, even though you and I will obviously disagree and those things will come out, when it comes to are we enmeshed in a background of spirit and interconnection far beyond what I think science can touch. I like the ethic that comes out of a this world focus. Solve our own problems, get the best minds and the best thinking.

Randy Snyder [00:32:47] I don't think it's a very healthy attitude to say Jesus is coming in my lifetime to solve all the problems of the world when I believe I may be wrong. And this is the Number I remember, 44. I believe 44% of Americans believe that Jesus will return in their lifetime. I may be wrong. Maybe that's Just that's how many people believe Jesus will return soon. But that's not a healthy attitude. We need to take care of it ourselves. We need to look out for each other.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:33:18] And within Mormonism, we actually have strands of both. We have plenty of people that sort of say, well, we're going to have this big wrapping up scene and obviously it's going to end in fire. So Bob Marley, we've got to fulfill the book from his redemption song thing. Let's not worry about it. But then you have Brigham Young and you've got him who says, hey, if we're going to have a heaven, we've got to build it right here ourselves. We've got to focus right here. And God isn't going to come and fix it. If Christ comes, it's going to come after. We're ready for. We already have the millennial society basically put together. So even within Mormonism, there's different ways to do it. But I certainly am more of a Brigham Young, build it yourself, fix it yourself kind of thing. But on the other hand, I don't rule out.

Randy Snyder [00:33:59] I'm more worded.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:34:00] I don't have the inspiration or the wisdom of other realms that can at least infiltrate elites. For me a little bit too, I'm

Randy Snyder [00:34:06] a little more concerned with the evangelical fundamentalist Christians because they have more influence in our politics than Mormons do. So. Well, as far as the end of the world mentality.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:34:17] Yeah, yeah. Anyway, well, let's get back to solicitor questions. But anyway, I thought that was. Was fun and I appreciate the reflection on community. Let's now do the part on spiritual practice, or what's at least been called spiritual practice. You know, meditation, some sort of morning devotional or something that puts you in touch with the larger perspectives than just the immediate cares of this world. Tyson, any thoughts on Are you for, Are you against? Do you see too many dangers of anything that relates to something like that?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:34:55] Well, I think there are just natural explanations for the reasons why you should do those things. I think meditation is fantastic. I'll do yoga exercises maybe two or three days out of the week. I enjoy good literature. I'll read other books by Hitchens that don't have anything to do with bashing religion. There's so many things that are out there for me. My personal preference right now is very scientific because that's just such a huge gap in my life. And listening to things like Sagan's Pale Blue Dot is very inspiring for me. I just think that it has so much more meaning when you Realize that these things have the best explanation for these things can be found within this world. And then there's so much potential. I can tell you that last week or maybe two weeks ago, I learned of these doctors, these scientists in Germany that cured blindness. They implanted a chip into the back of a gentleman's retina and was able to. He went from being perfectly blind to not perfectly being able to see, but to be able to see when his name was misspelled, which was. That's hopeful for me. Those things really buoy my soul and they're providing natural explanations or natural possibilities for why the world is the way it is and why the world works.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:36:44] Yoga practice for you would be. You would leave out most of the philosophies behind it, of energy. I know a little bit more about Kundalini yoga than other types of yoga. So I know you would probably reject at least the idea of chakras and all that stuff. The practice of it is, what is it a centering practice for you? Is it just a mind body connection practice?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:37:15] What is it Mostly a stretching practice?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:37:18] Okay.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:37:18] All right. But it's nice to sit there and if I want to sit and think and clear my mind, so to speak, I'll go for a mountain bike ride or I'll go surfing or. And if I want to enlarge my mind, if that's what I'm just trying to clear away the cobwebs and maybe concentrate on work or concentrate on other life problems. If I want to broaden my mind, I'm going to go see an indie movie or I'll go to Sundance or I'll go to the museum. I mean there's tons of other things that I can do to enlarge my mind, other things I can do to, to clear my mind, but all of these are within the natural world.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:02] Okay, so either of you, if you were to critique meditation as a practice, do you have a strong critique or is it.

Randy Snyder [00:38:14] It's harmless.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:15] Meditation is harmless. Even though a lot of meditators will say that all of a sudden I discovered non dual reality or something. They had this.

Randy Snyder [00:38:29] That's great.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:32] You would deny their interpretation. But on the other hand, you don't have a real problem because not a whole lot of meditators who get to that state are probably in the public square screaming against same sex marriage.

Randy Snyder [00:38:44] No, in fact everyone who believes all that stuff probably shares a lot of the same political views. I do so probably agree on more then we disagree. So I see no need to try to trash them. Just because I don't accept it. You know, if they're, you know, with meditation and yoga, if. I mean relaxation, introspection, that sounds healthy to me. But if they're gonna try to tell me that they're squeezing toxins out of their organs, then that's where I go. Well, I'm not sure about that as a nice way to put it, but, you know, in spirituality in general, to me, spirituality is just a word we've come up with to describe powerful human emotional experiences. And becoming atheist doesn't mean we become robots. I mean, I keep mentioning Tim Minchin, but I think I have a crush on him. I just bought his album, and he's got this song at the end called White Wine in the Sun.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:39:48] Yeah, yeah, it's great.

Randy Snyder [00:39:49] And it literally. And I'm not even trying to be overdramatic here, it drove a tear to my eye. It's a song about family and love and sentimental feelings and being there for each other. Even though the first half of the song isn't. Is kind of critical of Christianity. I dare anyone to listen to that. Just listen and feel it, and you'll feel the sincerity of the song. And so I think emotional, powerful emotional experiences enrich our lives. I don't have to give it the name of spirituality for it to be meaningful to me, but I definitely don't want to become a robot. That's not my goal.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:40:41] Cool. Well, when we get into what we as human beings are, we can clarify a little bit more about that. I did want to ask one quick question before we left this sort of section of the listener questions, and that was a fellow was talking about struggling with getting rid of some of the sentimental trappings of Mormonism that he once valued. And he's sort of in a mourning period of feeling the loss of his. What have you guys left in your homes that related to your past lives, if anything? Have you felt enough disaffection that you wouldn't want a picture or something that reminded you still of your Mormon past? Around whose turn? Tyson, I think it's your turn to talk.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:41:30] I don't know if that's the best thing, because I moved into it. I'm in a new house, right. So I'm starting entirely new bash.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:41:42] Okay.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:41:42] What about next to my scriptures, though? I got them right here. They're right next to. Let's see, I got the scriptures, and then I've got the Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. And then I've got. And then Tipping Point, and then Doubt by Jennifer Michael Hecht. And you know, I got them all there.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:42:02] Cool.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:42:02] So that's. That's the best I'm going to get.

Randy Snyder [00:42:05] What about no Doubt by Sherry Dew?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:42:10] I should keep that right next to Doubt, huh?

Randy Snyder [00:42:12] Yeah. You gotta have balance. You gotta be centered.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:42:16] That's right, Randy.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:42:17] Maybe because.

Randy Snyder [00:42:19] Yeah, my house, I have pictures of my kids all over the place. They're. They're my. They're my whole world. But I have two pictures, two religious pictures that will never come down from my walls. One, as I mentioned earlier, my mom died 14 years ago. She really tried her hand in art and she painted a picture of Christ. It's not the highest quality. She didn't have the most talent in the world, but it's. To me, it's gorgeous. It's beautiful. And it reminds me of my mom and what was important to her. So that picture and somehow the seven kids, I'm the one that got it. So I have the picture of Christ that my mom painted and then I have. I don't know what you call it, I guess you'd call it. It's a metal relief of the Last Supper. And the reason why I keep that up is that was given to me by a host when my wife and I were looking to adopt a child. We first went to Nicaragua and our host there would have given us the shirt off his back. Just a wonderful, beautiful man. And he just took that right out of his kitchen, office kitchen wall and gave it to us as a gift. I guess that's a tradition in his culture. And it just touched me so much that I'll always keep that on my wall as well. So I do have a little bit of my past on the walls. Very cool.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:43:55] Even though to an outsider they might say, oh, he's still a Christian. Both of those. There's other reasons for it there that you don't see any problem with continuing to be vital in your life.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:44:13] I could add that I don't see problems with having it up, even if you are a non believer. I mean, there's. There's value to great works. There's value to the literacy of the Bible. I mean, who talks that way anymore? It's fantastic to have that piece of literature. I mean, it's one of the oldest pieces of literature that we've got. I mean, it's up there with all the great works of antiquity.

Randy Snyder [00:44:37] I mean,

Tyson Jacobsen [00:44:40] we don't look at. Man, this is where my ignorance is going to come out.

Randy Snyder [00:44:50] I would say that if anyone wants to really get a better appreciation of the Literary value of the Old Testament. They should read the works of Richard Elliot Friedman.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:45:02] Yeah. Which one? Who wrote the Bible or which other ones would you recommend?

Randy Snyder [00:45:07] Either one. Yeah. Who wrote the Bible, probably.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:45:11] Yeah. That's one of my favorite books. It's hilarious. I mean, not hilarious. It's fascinating. Good. Sison, did we cut you off there?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:45:20] No, no. I was just trying to remember a piece of literary work that we don't ascribe any value to from a reality perspective, but we ascribe literary value to it.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:45:32] Yeah. There's a question coming up and there's a section listeners I definitely want to talk about where the source of morality to teach their children stuff comes from. We'll need to set the stage. But one of the questioners was if you were to colonize space, if you were going to send a group of people off to go to other worlds, what literature would you take with you? I'm guessing from what you guys are saying, it wouldn't necessarily not take great literature or whatnot that had spiritual mentions or core values that at least came through the various religious traditions. You wouldn't necessarily leave those behind.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:46:12] Ask me that question in about 10 minutes and I'll give you a list.

Randy Snyder [00:46:19] I just say, I just like to add that if you can stop. If you're a non believer and you can stop looking at the Old Testament as an owner's manual to life because there's so much bad stuff in there, you know, genocide and incest and children being mauled by bears, that if you just. This is a problem. I think a lot of people that leave Christianity have, is that they focus on all the, you know, the bad stuff that's in the Old Testament, but they don't realize that there's a lot of literary value to the other stuff. There is some good stuff in there to appreciate

Dan Wotherspoon [00:47:00] and certain things within there that seem so crazy and very progressive for their day. And they're proposing a different morality and really an improved one over the context in which they emerge from. So they seem different to us.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:47:18] That's how we progress than they did.

Making Sense of Spiritual Experiences Naturalistically

Dan Wotherspoon [00:47:20] Well, cool. If you guys are cool, let's shift gear to really sort of the meat type issues here, which are spiritual experience, everything from the experience of intuition to whether there is an afterlife to just whether these powerful, powerful spiritual experiences that seem to be the grounding or most important touchstones with reality for many people, you guys, at least I know from talking with you before and in preparation for the podcast, you guys believe that those are explainable through scientific methodologies. The tools of science can give us the best read to understand what's going on in these realms.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:48:15] I'm more than happy to answer this, Randy, unless you.

Randy Snyder [00:48:18] No, go ahead. I forgot whose turn it was and I. Yeah, me either. No worries.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:48:24] You know, I've had those conversations with people that have had those deeply experienced spiritual experiences or unexplained circumstances and they've, they've happened in my life as well. I'm a product of what would, what some people would, would describe to be miraculous life saving event. So, so I'm, I'm cognizant of it and I've worked through those issues as well and I don't have an answer. And that's okay. It's okay to be. In coming to the reality that it's okay to be wrong, you get to be okay with not knowing as well. And not knowing sometimes is just as invigorating and challenging as thinking that you have the right answers. So are there explanations for why these things occur and why people have these strong feelings or how they feel these strong feelings? I believe there are explanations and that they're found within the natural world, but that doesn't mean I know what they are. And I think there's joy to be found in not knowing. I mean, if I can find a section on, on Richard Feynman where he comes out and says, I don't know if there's a way for you guys to hear this at the same time, but Feynman really crystallized it for me.

Randy Snyder [00:49:51] I think it's much more interesting to

Tyson Jacobsen [00:49:54] live not knowing than to have answers

Randy Snyder [00:49:56] which might be wrong.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:49:59] You can find that Feynman lecture or that discussion on YouTube.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:50:07] Yeah. For those who don't know who Richard Feynman is, I know he's considered by many to be the most brilliant physicist probably of the last half century. And he died quite young. I know he was a powerful teacher. And wasn't he primarily associated with chaos theory and sort of made that out? Or not.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:50:28] He won the Nobel Prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics, so it was

Dan Wotherspoon [00:50:32] quite the QED stuff. Okay, okay, okay, but okay. Somehow or other, I own a book by him called Chaos or something.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:50:41] Could be. Okay, you know, you're asking me to explain Feynman. I don't know. There's a terrible analogy I could make.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:50:51] I just wanted to try to give some sense of context for the listeners who maybe had never heard his name.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:50:55] Yeah, so the short answer is I don't have an answer to those things. And it's okay that I don't have an answer to those tough questions.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:51:05] But on the other hand, you do sense that even though you don't know it 100%, you're going to have compelling reasons for thinking this person really didn't touch a spiritual realm.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:51:16] Well, before I assume a supernatural explanation, I'm going to try and explore all of the natural explanations because that's where we've always found these explanations. You know, I think Scooby Doo is a great cartoon for kids because. And this is also.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:51:38] Okay, Everybody go to YouTube and go put.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:51:44] He says that show was so cool because every time there's a church with a ghoul or a ghost in a school, they look beneath the mask and what was inside the freaking janitor who dude ran the water slide. So throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be not magic.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:52:00] No, I agree. It was a fun poem. Storm was quite a caricature. But yeah, that's what makes it fun. I enjoyed it, too. I thought he was very talented.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:52:14] So I'd like to hear Randy's. Because this is something.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:52:17] Yeah, do that. Because this is going to help us the whole rest of the way, at least, Tyson, that you do have a humility and a joy in not knowing, but you are going to speak very strongly and very adamantly from your hunch or at least this perspective of trying first the natural before the supernatural.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:52:39] Adamantly is a strong word, I think I would argue based upon the evidence. So my belief, again, my belief is going to scale with the evidence. If there's good evidence to suggest it. If there's bad evidence. The great Randy's Million Dollar challenge is still.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:52:56] James. Randy. Yeah.

Randy Snyder [00:52:57] Not me.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:53:00] Yeah. Randy probably don't have a million dollars when he's still paying off his orthodontic debts, school dental debts. But James. Randy. Right.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:53:12] James Randy. Tyson proving some supernatural reason or truly magical reason behind doing a trick has still not been collected upon.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:53:28] Yeah, Randy, what's your take on that idea of speaking to somebody who's had powerful experiences and then saying, you know, I think you should rethink that. I know, sorry. Not that you would rethink that powerful. But that you would rethink your explanation of that powerful experience?

Randy Snyder [00:53:52] Believe me, I've had this conversation, you know, one of seven kids, each one had to have the story told to them. And one of my sisters told me it was like a death in the family. I don't know if I said that in the earlier segment, but of course that's going to be thrown at me from any true believing Mormon, because that's the Mormon epistemology is the strong, powerful emotional confirmation of truth. So I'll preface what I'm going to say with something, a trend that has been going on for hundreds of years. Before modern science, people sought to explain the natural world. And the natural world was fully explained in the beginning by supernatural means, and then later became more sophisticated with organized religion and their creeds and dogmas. And as time has moved on, as we've become more scientific, the ground that religion wants owned has become smaller and smaller and smaller. As far as explanations of the natural world, it's never gone in the other direction. So to me the evidence is pointing to a natural world. And that's why I'm a naturalist. So what do I say to someone? You know, remember in my personal story earlier, I mentioned three powerful spiritual experiences. I think all of those have a natural explanation that in my mind, for my money, is more likely than positing some supernatural explanation. It's a matter of probability. Is it possible that there's a supernatural world? Yes. I can't prove that there's not, but it's just much more probable that the natural explanations will work. Now the first one I'll take is the demon that visited me. The demon that visited me, it had all the classic telltale signs of a waking dream. It was very early in the morning, I was paralyzed, I couldn't speak. I had a visitation from an other that took on a cultural familiarity, a demon. So that has almost to me just a no brainer. 99.999999% chance that it was a waking dream, not a visitation from an actual demon. The other spiritual experiences, the one that my mom had and that I had, I just think there's a part of the brain, I believe epileptics experience this part of the brain gets activated and they have the most profound spiritual experience that they've had in their entire lives. So moments of stress, moments of dire need, I think that part of the brain, it's possible that that part of the brain gets activated, but that really, that's not really how I talk to my Mormon friends or family. The way I talk to them about it is these warm good feelings. You are extrapolating some very specific things from good feelings. Well, guess what? These good feelings are ubiquitous. All cultures, all religions have these powerful warm confirmations of their specific belief. You know, what makes you think yours is more special than their experiences? And you know, to say that I felt really good in church, therefore, Joseph saw God, an anthropomorphic God the Father and his son Jesus Christ in the woods. That's a huge leap. It made total sense when I was a Mormon and true believer, but now it just seems absurd and really kind of arrogant and not in a consciously arrogant way. It's just. That's the way it seems now to think that you can know all the greatest secrets of the cosmos because you felt good in church.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:57:49] Right? No, I think that's absolutely true. Do you want to keep going?

Randy Snyder [00:57:56] No, I think that's okay.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:57:57] Well, let me just pick up on that a little bit there too, because I don't know if you know, I taught at the MTC for several years after my mission, and one of the things that you teach missionaries how to resolve difficult questions and issues, and I had a very big, difficult problem with even this is obviously, I'm in my true believing days. This is before grad school and studying religion and pulling it all apart, before I began the process of putting it back together. So I'm fully in, and I'm still disturbed by this one. And one of them was the way to resolve questions was an appeal to the Book of Mormon. So in other words, you've got a convert here who has a difficult question about the church, just any aspect of the church, and you say when you read the Book of Mormon, you felt warm or you felt the spirit. Right. Well, if the Book of Mormon came from Joseph Smith, and Joseph Smith restored the church, therefore anything that's happened in the church since then that you're now having trouble with really goes away. Because you had the experience of the Book of Mormon. What you've just described there was actually written into the sort of way to resolve questions, was to actually extrapolate from one spiritual experience to basically the entire thing, when really what you can say is, I had this experience at this exact moment and every piece of my life, I can't have the hangover effect or the carryover effect. That doesn't make any good sense. That's what you're saying, I think, Randy.

Randy Snyder [00:59:29] Yeah, the logic dominoes are an illusion. Just because you had a warm feeling doesn't, you know, you cannot extrapolate back to all these great, incredible, fantastic claims made in the 19th century, which just don't seem to happen as much anymore.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:59:53] I like the phrase that I've heard recently was that whole the Book of Mormon way to find out its truthfulness and then through the feelings as an epistemological black hole, there's just no escaping that circular logic.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:00:12] Right.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:00:13] And so I'm 100% again with you guys on everything has to be.

Randy Snyder [01:00:18] I'm feeling the spirit right now with you. Agreeing with me.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:00:21] Agreeing with you. There you go. Well, and again, I think it might be interesting to talk right now about why we take these shortcuts, why we let the dominoes fall there. I can speak from my own experience of when my faith got pulled apart piece by piece as I'm in graduate school and I'm learning different theories. I'm approaching scripture through the historical critical method, and I'm looking at psychological and sociological and anthropological and mythic approaches and everything to religion. I'm going, holy crap. I'm just like everybody else now. I have to actually work. I kind of thought that I had still bought into the thing, that because I'm Mormon and I understand who I am and my purpose, I sort of get to skip life because I already have the answers. And whatever I was supposed to be studying was only supposed to enhance my view of Mormonism and stuff. I'm like, oh, dang it, Now I've got to actually work at this life again.

Tyson Jacobsen [01:01:22] You know, you're just like everybody else.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:01:25] Yeah.

Randy Snyder [01:01:26] You don't have all the answers.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:01:27] So I have a feeling that that's, at least for me, that might be just this little bit of piece of, you know, I won't stop and examine it every step of the way because it's a dang lot of work.

Randy Snyder [01:01:41] I do want to add one last thing, I think, to me, ever since I've self identified as an atheist, I've had equally and similar powerful emotional experiences. One of the most spiritual experiences I've had since I left the church is watching the movie Milk. It just broke my heart to watch that movie, to see how far. How bad it was for homosexuals in the 70s. I used to look at the city of San Francisco with disdain because of all the. The quote unquote lifestyle, the homosexual lifestyle. Now I look at them as pioneers for positive social change. Now, if I'm having a powerful spiritual experience watching Milk, then what does that mean about the church when they're fighting against gay rights so much, so ardently? And a song that Tim mentioned, song. I felt I totally had a powerful emotional response to that. Well, he's totally trashing Christianity at the beginning of the song. How do you explain that? So that's. To me, that kind of blows that epistemology completely out of the water in my mind.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:02:56] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon stories alive, Please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your Ward Bulletin and Ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or skypixton.com that's sky with an E S K Y E Pixton. Thank you.

Part 4 of 6 · Ep. 225

Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:00] Mormon Stories podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org. We've kind of. To me, I thought this has been very healthy to get us into a position of sort of understanding that you guys are still having rich experiences, emotional experiences. You are not closed off to those things. It's just simply a matter of a difference of interpretation. So one of the listeners wrote in a question where he had listened to the William Bradshaw interview, the five part interview that I also very much enjoyed, and he says the question was basically, how do you account for somebody like William Bradshaw who's a scientist? Hard to knock his credentials, it's hard to knock his thinking and his full on embrace of science to the degree that science can interpret the world. And yet he says when it comes to some of the experiences about the Book of Mormon or difficulties of the DNA stuff or whatever, he says, you know, John, somehow or other my experience when I was at Harvard in which the Book of Mormon was confirmed to me trumps that. It somehow puts science in its place. It's a little bit of a backdoor. At least it's in second place to something that feels far more powerful to me than the reach of science. What would you say in response to that? I think it's your turn, Tyson.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:01:48] No, I think it's Randy's turn.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:50] Oh, okay. Well, however you guys want to do

Randy Snyder [00:01:52] it,

Tyson Jacobsen [00:01:56] my thoughts might not be as fully developed as his are. I'd like to hear what he has to say.

Randy Snyder [00:02:00] Okay. I think that, I mean, far be it for me to presume to get inside the head of William Bradshaw, but there are, you know, there's tons of really smart, informed people like Richard Bushman and William Bradshaw that still believe in the Mormon Church. I don't know to what degree they

Dan Wotherspoon [00:02:26] do or that something's there, quote, unquote.

Randy Snyder [00:02:30] Something, something's there. But when William Bradshaw goes and actively campaigns against Prop 8, he's obviously falling outside the, the mainstream. True believing Mormon.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:02:44] So in other words, yeah, he's trusting his experience over the current light and knowledge of the leaders.

Randy Snyder [00:02:52] Right. And when you listen to the Bushman interview, John tries to pin this down on him and his answer is, look, I choose to live in a world where Joseph Smith is a prophet of God. So it just boils down to him choosing to allow that part of his life. Kind of the only way I can understand that mind is that they compartmentalize it, they put it in a box and they do not. They choose not to deconstruct it with logic and reason because it's kind of like a sentimental, sacred place to them. Because logically, you know, if you do take cold logic, I think it's gonna break down. That doesn't make them stupid. That doesn't make them delusional. It just, it just is their choice to. On how they want to live their life. That's. That's my interpretation. I could be totally wrong and presumptuous. Obviously I'm. But I'm being asked the question to get inside someone else's head that I don't understand. That's the only way I can make sense of it.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:01] Okay, I've got a different spin. But Tyson, do you want to try anything first?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:04:05] You know, it reminds me of. First of all, I had Bradshaw for biology at byu. I remember when he did the dissection of the living rat. I can remember how insulting the students were to him. How ignorant and just small minded. When I can remember somebody, it was either Barnes or Branch and they gave him a banana. And how pithy it is that they're presenting a product of evolution.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:43] Yeah, the banana is a very domesticated,

Tyson Jacobsen [00:04:47] human oriented, engineered, remarkably small mind. And how courageous it was for him to be at BYU and teaching those things. And kudos for BYU for not, not censoring his teaching while he was there. But also there's a little bit of a black eye because they pulled him off some things. So I have a lot of respect for him. I think he's very thoughtful and he appears to be very courageous, especially for what he was doing and when he was doing it. And however, it reminds me of Francis Collins, who led the genome product and is currently the head of the NIH and an espoused evangelical believer. So you can have those contradictions. 93% of the people that are in the National Science Academy are atheistic. That means that 7% still are believers. So. I can't reconcile how somebody will willingly yield to or how their belief scales with the evidence. And the evidence is so overwhelming against some of the positions they take. I view it to be some cognitive dissonance that's going on. And I'm not discounting that that would happen in my life as well. And it's really difficult to be a slave to the evidence. It's a challenging thing to be that disciplined.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:06:38] Okay, well, good. I'm tempted to jump in right now. I think we'll jump in later. I'll give one little hint that at least my approach to this question would be Randy, when he says logic and reason, and Tyson, when you say the evidence is so overwhelming, my guess is what's going to happen. What's happening with them is how I end up coming down to it and say I see logic and reason as important, valuable, essential tools. I see the evidence that science can do as things that I absolutely must consider, but I don't see them as so totalizing as far as they're one tool. There are several tools among a whole toolkit. And I don't see them as so overwhelming that they can completely explain experience and stuff like that. So anyway, I love these little teasers

Tyson Jacobsen [00:07:41] you throw out there, Dan.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:07:43] We can get into it.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:07:44] It's like a preview for the coming attraction. Good.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:07:46] Well, anyway, I just want to.

Randy Snyder [00:07:48] I guess all I'm trying to say is that they don't apply the same critical thinking rigor to their cherished belief in Joseph Smith as a prophet that they do in every other part of their life. And that's fine, that's my interpretation. But I think that they're. I've already said it.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:10] Right. But their shorthand of what Joseph as a prophet means is going to be.

Randy Snyder [00:08:15] Yeah, I mean, as comparable. You can always redefine the word prophet to make it fit whatever you want it to. Apologists do that all the time, but we'll talk about that later.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:25] Okay, good. Alrighty. Well, let's dive in on how you guys put the world together. So let us deal with some questions here of do you believe, for instance, in any kind of afterlife, any soul survival, any personality survival beyond the last heartbeat and brainwave? Whose turn, Tyson?

Mortality, Consciousness, and Life After Death

Tyson Jacobsen [00:08:52] Yeah, my answer is easy.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:53] No. Okay, you don't believe it, Randy?

Randy Snyder [00:08:56] I'm assuming my answer is no, pending further evidence.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:59] Okay, so you would hold open a slight possibility?

Randy Snyder [00:09:03] The possibility in my mind, the probability is so low that it's close to zero.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:09:09] Okay, so are you impressed at all with. Okay, so you guys left Mormonism quite quickly and went to scientific naturalism or you went with these tools as being the driving force? I guess what I'm asking is what in this scientific realm has given you the sense that there's absolutely nothing to soul survival kind of possibilities?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:09:42] Well, I guess you can go to Bertrand Russell. He says, when I die, I rot. I mean, that's the reality of what's occurring. That's what the evidence indicates. Our level of consciousness ends when our brains cease to function. And that's just what the evidence suggests. Now, if there's something that's more persuasive I mean, we need to have it. We need to have that persuasive evidence to suggest something otherwise. But if I don't have any evidence, I mean, you could substitute any argument for what happens after life. You take out the soul and you can replace it with a vibrating string at 11 dimensions that just moves on to a different dimension. Right. You could substitute with anything, but without any evidence to suggest that. By the way, I got that from

Randy Snyder [00:10:42] Miku somebody, rather, who was a. Michio Kaku.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:10:46] Yeah, that guy. Michio.

Randy Snyder [00:10:48] Yeah, that's hard to say it. Michio Kaku.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:10:52] And I think because the first time I saw him was last night watching a debate down in South America where he talked about his string theory. But the same thing with string theory is that it's all theoretical right now. There's no evidence to suggest it. So as soon as there's something, you know, as soon as there's some evidence for me to give me some direction as to how I'm going to go or how I'm going to think, it's hard for me to come up with the same answer that I would apply to this flying spaghetti monster and I'd be wrapped up into his noodley appendage and, you know, suckered for the rest of my postmortal existence.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:28] Okay, now for their. You might have to explain the Pastafarian stuff.

Randy Snyder [00:11:34] Everyone has Google and Wikipedia. They can look it up.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:37] So what should they Google Pastafarian or

Randy Snyder [00:11:40] explain Spaghetti Monster and you'll get it all.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:42] Okay, sounds good. So in some ways, I'll let you know. I think you guys hurt your own cause when you go to caricature like that.

Randy Snyder [00:11:49] Yeah, but it makes us more interesting.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:52] Okay, so the podcast. The podcast has served. Your credibility is hurt. Who cares, right? Anyway, so. Okay, so. Okay, so let's talk specifically near death experience, spontaneous remembering of past lives kind of stuff. Have you looked at that evidence? Or if you looked at least those things firsthand yourselves.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:12:16] Did we give Randy a chance to explain that last.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:12:19] Well, he said no, and I guess we went right to you. So go ahead.

Randy Snyder [00:12:22] I just. Well, you wanted to know why I abandoned all faith so quickly or both of us?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:12:28] Well, I mean, I just kind of mentioned that in the context that you went from one where you supposedly. That's really quite prominent. And what was it in science that said no to you as a possibility?

Randy Snyder [00:12:43] When you read the book by Robert Wright, Evolution of God, you realize that God pretty much takes on the morality and the characteristics of the culture that he's professed to come out of. And after a while, you learn about all the different religions, you start to feel like, well, everyone just. That's just everyone's best guess is to try to make things make sense of things. And to me, my favorite Carl Sagan quote of all time is, science delivers the goods. So when you look at what science has contributed to humanity and compared to religion, I'm more impressed with what science has offered, has delivered. The other part is that I had so much cognitive dissonance trying to synthesize my scientific training with my theology, that I had this constant cognitive dissonance. Once I just let go of the supernatural and became a naturalist, the background noise ended and the world came into focus. And that's the appeal of naturalism in as far as my personal experience.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:13:50] Okay, can I say these things?

Randy Snyder [00:13:52] I'm sorry.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:13:53] Yeah, go ahead. So this process of making peace with the fact that you have a limited amount of time and there's no surviving Randy Hood or Tyson Ness beyond your death, talk through that process. I'm sure that lots of our listeners who are asking questions about this sort of stuff are really wrestling with that idea of just sleep at the end of life.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:14:23] Take a search after the initial freaking out over. That idea that you would no longer exist, your consciousness would end. Yeah, well, that initial idea was horrific. And I attribute it to my upbringing, my indoctrination, and when I start to look at things more rationally, and I think the writings of A.C. grayling really found a home with me where we talk about postmortal existence from a naturalist perspective is the same as our premortal existence. And if you've ever had. One time I went in for eye surgery and they gave me Propofil, which is. That's the medication that Michael Jackson mixed with other medications that led to his untimely death. And they told me before that you're going to experience just this wonderful sleep and you're not going to have any recollection of anything that went on, but you're going to feel totally rested afterwards. And that's exactly the way I felt. It was fantastic. I was completely unconscious and there was no. I had no memory, I had no dreams, nothing that was going on. And I equate that to the state of being post mortal. So the only thing that's left. So there's not going to be any suffering, anguish or anything that happens after my life ends. So the only thing that's left in this life is pondering and fearing death. And so this is why Marcus Aurelius in his meditation said that the meditation of the wise man is a meditation of life and not on death. So it just made me focus more on how awesome I won the lottery. All of us have won the lottery, the intergalactic lottery, that we're conscious, that we're alive and conscious and we have such a short time. And like Tim Minchin said, thanks to science, that time has doubled. It brought a lot more meaning and purpose in my life after I thought through that entire process that I'm not going to have consciousness after this life, that the only time I should be fearing death is when I. The only fear of death is what I bring upon myself. And my meaning and purpose can be defined in my life and to bring meaning and purpose in my life. And that's all I need.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:17:18] And it is what you call it, an intergalactic lottery that you really are in a position here in the west, the modern west, to enjoy at a different level than somebody in a third world country whose aids infected from birth or something. It's a lottery for you and it's because they're going to enjoy. There's no enjoyment. There's no personality to enjoy the sleep. Somehow it's just the brute fact of existence that that child.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:17:52] Yeah, I will readily admit that life has not been fair to me. In fact, I pray that life doesn't treat me fairly because that's how good I perceive I have it. Especially when concerned about pondering the locality and how provincial our existence is.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:18:18] Randy, any thoughts to add on that? As far as your own wrestling with

Randy Snyder [00:18:23] your own mortality, this is the number one question I get when I out myself. The shock on their face and then the question of so do you believe that when you die, that's it. How do you find meaning in life? And so to me, my inference of that question is that they are saying without immortality you cannot find meaning. To me, that doesn't hold water. Because if things have to last forever to have meaning, then why even bother alleviating the suffering of children? It's going to end anyways, right? But obviously that's a very worthy cause, a very meaningful cause is to try to. To alleviate the suffering of the children in the world and to prevent the suffering of the children in the world. Another quote I love that helped me because this isn't easy. This is the hardest part of becoming an atheist is staring into the abyss when you had all the answers as a Mormon and this warm fuzzy notion that we're all going to be together, happy in the Celestial kingdom is finding this. This new place. But the quote is Mark Twain, and he said I didn't exist for billions of years and it didn't bother me none then God bless Mark Twain. Mark Twain, awesome. But he's definitely someone I would take to outer space, his writing. So to me, this new position of a naturalistic worldview has totally sweetened and richened. Is that a word? Enriched. Enriched.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:20:15] Both of them work.

Randy Snyder [00:20:16] Both of them work. Enriched. My love and appreciation of my family and my children, I now know. Well, I'm now more aware that they have only one childhood. And it's even hard for me now to be here at work doing this podcast when I know I could be with my kids right now. They're everything to me. And I cherish and appreciate the time that I have on this earth now so much more than I did before. Because before you have the mentality of live for after you're dead. That's what's most important. Now it's live for now and make this life for yourself and for as many people as you can, as happy as possible. And so in that way, it's kind of a little bit sweeter. And if I die, I have no control over it. That's what's great about Buddhism is my limited exposure to it, is coming to grips with the fact that you don't have control over change and death is a change in your life. Just accept it and it won't be so scary. And if I'm wrong and there is an afterlife, Yay.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:21:32] Yay. One last thought, Dan. I'm sorry. Unless you wanted it, Randy, that's all

Randy Snyder [00:21:40] I have to say about that.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:21:43] Forest Gump,

Tyson Jacobsen [00:21:45] here's a very real world analogy for you. I lost my sight in my left eye about three or four years ago. Now, unfortunately, I have two eyes. But do you think that losing my sight increased or decreased my appreciation of vision in my right eye versus my left?

Randy Snyder [00:22:08] Very interesting.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:22:13] Okay. All right. Before we leave life after death and things like that, I imagine you've at least firsthand read or at least you've read summaries that I will hope and trust are good and fair readings of the stuff that has emerged from near death experience type things. Ian Stevenson and his work with children who spontaneously start telling their parents as soon as language is really formed and where they're able to do this to say, I'm really not your child. I, my name is so and so. I lived in this village over there and I'm not your child. And then through very careful Methodology and whatnot to make sure that there's no possible way the child could do it. They'll take that child to that village and he'll start naming everybody there and landmarks and saying this. And sort of the story checks out. So there's these different sort of. Again, it's not hard science, it's not chemistry, it's not biology, it's not the residue of lines on a graph that explains some subatomic thing. But there's sort of this collection or this body of stuff. How do you view that? Is it just because it's social science versus regular science, it doesn't count as much.

Randy Snyder [00:23:38] Whose term is it?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:23:39] I went first last time, Randy.

Randy Snyder [00:23:45] You sure you don't want this one, Ted?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:23:47] Sure.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:23:47] Well, I can tell you on the latter, I don't have any experience or study on it. I don't have on the former near death experiences. I view them as just exactly what they claim to be. Near death. Near death, okay, not death, not post death experiences. And I think the science has really got some good things to say, some good research.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:24:15] So even though they'll say that because your heart stops, but your brain, there's still brain waves.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:24:24] We define death as when there's a cessation of mental activity for a certain period of time. And I don't know that anybody has come back from that.

Randy Snyder [00:24:36] I don't think so.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:24:39] So that there's just not, there's not good evidence that somebody's come back.

Randy Snyder [00:24:43] I know that they. According to Skeptics Guide to the Universe, Stephen Novella said that they have tried because, you know, most of the time, not most of the time, but a lot of the time, these near death experiences are described as out of body, like they're floating up above, they can see, they can see themselves on the table, the doctors working on them, trying to revive them. And so someone decided, okay, in that room where people go to die, I guess you know, where they have the code, the coded patients, they put things that you could read only if you're floating from the ceiling and tried to confirm. And of course they didn't tell any. Anyone as far as patients. And not one person was able to confirm what was written up above where you can only see from above. That doesn't prove anything, but it's at

Dan Wotherspoon [00:25:34] least an attempt, it was at least

Randy Snyder [00:25:36] an attempt to try to confirm that. That, that didn't work. As far as Ian is Ian Stevenson.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:25:43] Yeah. He's written, you know, half a dozen books, right.

Randy Snyder [00:25:48] I got to that question like 20 minutes before we did started this Sunday morning podcast. I did a quick look at, looked them up a little bit. I didn't have time. I don't have enough time to really give you an intelligent rebut to his work, but I promise you I will read it and evaluate it. But do I believe in reincarnation? No. But maybe by reading Stevenson I'll become convinced. But I don't think that his work has been. I mean, and you said it's not hard sight. I mean, it's not like all I accept is hard evidence. The psychology itself is defined as a soft science. And there's all kinds of really interesting valid data that comes out of the soft science like psychology. So I don't just only accept repeatable, rigid data coming out of a laboratory. And I think social experiments are fascinating. They're just incredibly fascinating, like terror management theory. If anyone wants to look that up. Tmt, there's a documentary called Flight from Death I highly recommend. Those kind of social experiments are fascinating and I think they do reveal a lot of stuff about our human nature. But as far as Ian Stevenson's work, I just don't know enough about it to comment on it.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:27:06] And again, to me it's one of those things that at some point a lot of literature that seems to line up in certain ways with each other. The titles of his books are 20 cases suggestive of. So really he makes no hard and fast conclusions. And lots of people have looked at his methodology. And if you read it yourself and you read the books of the people who go along on him with these trips to where he's investigating and whatnot, it's pretty impressive. But again, my whole thought would just be if you've taken a look at it, when you said 99.9999 or something like that, to me it's just one little piece that sort of holds a door open. And I just wondered if you guys had looked at it that way. Do you even. It doesn't.

Randy Snyder [00:27:58] I said 99.9999 for something else though, didn't I?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:28:00] Oh, wasn't it? I thought it was on the death one, but you're right, it probably was on something else. But anyway, so it's kind of interesting because I have a friend who's probably been an atheist or secular humanist for 15 or 20 years and I gave him Ian Stevenson's book and he goes, I don't know what to do with that kind of thing. And so he, at least to me is holding open a 110 of 1% chance from it anyway. Well, good. So I think we've done a pretty good job after death and where you guys are. And actually, I thought it was very good that you both sort of said, without the afterlife, it helps you focus, and life in the current thing becomes very sweeter. And I think that makes absolutely 100% perfect sense to anybody who would really think about it that it's more fragile. It's therefore something to value and to hone more in on. That's not evidence against an afterlife, but that's certainly a. A very positive way to look at it from your perspective.

Randy Snyder [00:29:04] There's some things that are just gonna suck. There's no good spin to put on a child dying. But just because Joseph Smith came up with an incredibly comforting notion that you'll be able to pull your kid out of the grave and raise them, just because that's comforting doesn't make it true. You know, evolution isn't comforting, but it's beautiful because it's true. And so, you know, I just wanted to. I imagine some of the listeners are like, well, what about if your child dies? How do you deal with that? Well, you just deal with it, and it sucks, and there's no way around it.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:29:43] Yeah, you never. You just. You don't get over it.

Randy Snyder [00:29:47] I almost lost my child this summer to a drowning, and it shocked my whole world. Everything's okay. But that even furthered my appreciation of the time I have with my kids.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:30:08] Probably on the little document I prepared out of listener questions, I probably put some of the questions that are coming up a little bit out of order. So I still want to ask them just for clarifying positions, because I know that a lot of listeners here, you don't really come to Mormon Stories podcast without I'm in a transitional state or I'm in a state of re. Wondering what I think about and what I don't think about, especially with it related to Mormonism. So there's a section here that kind of takes us back to Mormonism for a second. So let me just ask you a series of questions, and then we'll continue on with more along. Afterlife and intuition and all that in a second. I guess maybe this comes back again to the question of you guys both left Mormonism and you didn't really study religion in general. You didn't really examine alternate views of God. That makes it a little bit less man in the sky. Randy, you mentioned a couple times an interest in Buddhism. And so in some sense, you know that Buddhism is an atheistic religion, but it's Certainly not a religion that denies the existence of a spiritual realm or something that you can.

Randy Snyder [00:31:37] If you believe Stephen Batchelor. It was a rejection of supernatural in its earliest form. And later on, a lot of the supernatural stuff was added after the Buddha died. That's if you believe Stephen Batchelor.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:31:49] Okay, well, yeah, we can talk about that kind of stuff a little bit later. But I guess what I'm saying here is there's a series of questions I'm going to ask you right now that are a little bit. I think they're more on this. You guys made a pretty hasty move. Not hasty in the sense of non thoughtful, but you didn't wrestle for 10 years with alternate views of religion and spirituality. You went quite quickly to this other stuff. Here's a series of questions. Would you guys probably not go in this direction if the LDS Church didn't make the truth claims that it does, if it weren't such a one and only true church? This is the path to salvation. And even if people don't know it, in this life, all knees will bow and all tongues will confess to Jesus is the Christ. But they'll also need Mormon baptism. If it weren't that kind of thing, would you guys have probably moved out of Mormonism?

Randy Snyder [00:32:54] Whose turn is it?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:32:56] We'll go Tyson.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:32:58] If it wasn't for that, would I have moved out if the church didn't make a claim to its truthfulness, in other words?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:33:07] Well, such a strong claim.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:33:11] I mean, if they were weak, if they were like a Unitarian and we didn't ascribe to any specific beliefs, anything's okay, right?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:33:19] Well, that's a caricature I would reject.

Randy Snyder [00:33:26] You're calling Unitarians caricatures? Come on.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:33:32] When I attended. When I attended a Unitarian church and they were quoting the Great agnostic from the 19th century. Help me, Randy.

Randy Snyder [00:33:45] Oh, Th. Huxley.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:33:47] No, no, no, no. From late 19th century. The great Agnostic. I can't believe. I can't remember his name. He was the most popular man in the United States at the turn of the century.

Randy Snyder [00:34:04] The most popular man in the United States.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:34:06] He was the most popular speaker in the United States and he was agnostic and he was. I can't believe. I can't remember. It's just one of those things. It'll come to me.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:34:17] But this person was being cited in a Unitarian service that you.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:34:20] Yeah, yeah, he was being cited. Okay, so if you're sitting there quoting somebody that denies the existence of God in your religious service, I think that was fair. I think that's fair to say that you're not quite sure what you believe. You can accept any beliefs, especially when it's non belief. But notwithstanding, yeah, we'll fight about it

Dan Wotherspoon [00:34:42] because I attended for six months and thought of it as an option for me and it was a very spiritual experience.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:34:49] It was, I'm not taking anything away from it. I thought it was fantastic. That's why I liked it because they were so accepting of everyone's beliefs. But that was the one thing, and it is the one thing that I really admire about Latter Day Saints is it does have at its core beliefs. That integrity. It's honest to its own beliefs. It's not forgiving of the lack of truth. I look at people like David O. McKay, Hubie Brown, I look at these as great men still. And I refer to a lot of things that they say with respect to integrity, intellectual honesty, truth and adherence to truth. I think these are still virtues that the church espouses and I think being honest with yourself is something worth living for. I think it's a worthwhile objective. So I think that truth claim that the church makes was vital for me in leaving the church. It came down to that the evidence was so persuasive that the truth claims were not factual. But that didn't remove the core belief or the trust in truth itself or integrity itself. And intellectual honesty,

Randy Snyder [00:36:30] That's like an alternate universe that I'd have to speculate on the Mormon Church not being so strong with its claims. So it's kind of like asking if you were born a Jew, would you be an atheist now? I really don't know. But if I was to hazard a guess, I think that how strong the church was with its truth claims and how effective they were at making you fear evaluation from outside the safe zone with the scriptures and with the conference talks, at least my interpretation of them, I think that was the biggest factor in keeping me in for so long. I think eventually my mind would have resonated more eventually with naturalism and science. And I've never really, like I said many times earlier, I've never really enjoyed church that much. So that would be my guess, is that the actual, the truth claims, it took something to jolt me out of that or I might have stayed in that mindset the rest of my life.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:37:37] So for both of you, the way that the church is, the way it presents its message, at least at this moment in time, which I think we

Randy Snyder [00:37:45] could argue it's a two edged sword.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:37:47] Yeah, we could argue there's a pendulum of if you buy into Armand Mosses, the angel and the beehive. Sort of. Sometimes we're really retrenching against the encroachment of society and sometimes we're the more prophetic forward looking stuff is in ascendance. There's something. So you guys are both saying the way that the church is itself was a factor in you guys kind of leaving fairly quickly. But you both kind of said that you sort of believe that if the Mormon church isn't true, then no religion's true.

Randy Snyder [00:38:25] Well, I want to clarify that.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:27] Yeah, yeah, please.

Randy Snyder [00:38:28] After I listened to the first part, waiting in line for Harry Potter, I, you see, atheists will go watch Supernatural movies.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:39] There you go.

Randy Snyder [00:38:42] I, I lost my train of thought. I started thinking about Harry Potter. Oh yeah. When I said my mindset as a Mormon was that if the Mormon church isn't true, it wasn't like the alternative was atheist. Atheism was not on my radar as a true believing Mormonism. Agnosticism was. And I think that day that when my friend called me and told me about Polyandry back in 2006, I think I even told him that day I said, man, you know what? If the church turns out that I decide the church isn't true, I think I'm going to become agnostic and just abandon religion altogether. But atheism was not something that I ever thought I'd be. So I just wanted that clarification.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:39:32] No, that actually is a very important difference there. Yeah, I can see that. Tyson.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:39:39] Yeah, I did not consider atheism when I sat down with my bishop and he said, what do you believe? And I said, well, I still believe in God and Jesus Christ, but I can't accept the tenets of the church as being accurate. So that was not my, I believed in the apostasy. I mean, it was rational, the apostasy.

Randy Snyder [00:40:02] Right.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:40:02] Because that's how we formulate it. And atheism and secularism is and has been excoriated from religions as being just the supernal evil. So I hadn't considered it. It wasn't on my radar and it wasn't until I started being exposed to more and more rational thought and seeing this, that preponderance of evidence siding with the side of science.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:40:36] Okay, well, good. I think that helps. And there was a whole series of questions here.

Randy Snyder [00:40:40] Well, you asked why do we didn't explore other religions. I did spend about maybe, I'm really just guessing here, maybe four weeks of trying to be Christian. And then I started to dive into redactive criticism of the New Testament, the Synoptic Gospels and the writings, and then criticism of the writings of Paul, and then what the Old Testament really is when it was really written. And then eventually Christianity became a lot more plausible. When you look at it from a secular, scholarly view, it just made a lot more sense. So then Christianity, Christ as a divine figure went away. And then, you know, do I really need to explore the Muslim faith to find out if it's true? It comes from the same origins, the Abrahamic God. And then I did look into. I listened to about two hours of podcasts on going over the general tenets and the origins of the Muslim faith. After a while you're just like, okay, it's becoming clear to me that religion is man's best attempt in pre scientific times to make sense of the world. So did I need to evaluate every single possible faith system out there?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:41:56] For sure.

Randy Snyder [00:41:57] Eventually. Just like, you know what? None of this stuff is resonating with me. I'm just going to take the stance of the naturalists and say that I don't, you know, I don't know, I don't have all the answers and be like Tyson said, be good with that. Mm. That's the thing that religion tries to do, they try to have all the answers. Yeah.

Why Leaving Believers Feel Anger and Betrayal

Dan Wotherspoon [00:42:19] Now it's interesting. There was actually a series of questions from listeners that let's maybe move into this right now. And that was like, why do you think? Because there was one fellow who talked about his own experience of he's with those atheist group and whatnot. I'm trying to remember exactly how he phrased it. I didn't take his little story part into my notes here, but he wondered why Mormons, it seemed to him, don't go to Christianity, don't go to that sort of thing, and why they might head in the direction that you guys did, which is more scientific naturalism. Do you have any thoughts on that? Because I had a good discussion with another atheist friend and he gave me a couple of ideas. But I want to hear your stuff first. Do you sense that there's something about the Mormon worldview that basically would predispose you to not really explore or feel comfortable in another Christian religious home? And then secondly, that would drive you in the direction of scientific naturalism?

Randy Snyder [00:43:24] I could take a couple of guesses, but first of all, do we have any data on that? Do we know what the percentages are?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:43:31] Anecdotal? I'm sure it's anecdotal.

Randy Snyder [00:43:34] That would be so fascinating to me if somebody could Do a study to find out what do ex Mormons generally or mostly, what's the thing they tend to go to more. And if it is atheism, agnosticism, I think that Mormonism, the doctrine, the version that we have now appeals to logic, but the logic starts from an absolute assumption that I reject, that the church is true. So if you start from the church is true, like Tyson said, the apostasy totally makes total logical sense. Everything is really pretty logical.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:44:11] Deductive. Yeah.

Randy Snyder [00:44:12] Yeah, it's deductive. And then when that shatters, what that does is that appeals to logical people. And then when that shatters, maybe they're turning to some other replacement that's more logical. That's just a total guess. The other guess is that is that you are given a religion that really tries to have all the answers for everything. And when you realize what you have strongly professed to you, and you had strongly professed at the pulpit and fast and testimony meeting, when that turns out to betray you, I think there's a lot of anger that may lead to just being. Anger being. It's kind of like if you got burned by a woman, you don't want to get in a relationship right away.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:45:02] Yeah.

Randy Snyder [00:45:03] And maybe there's a little bit of that going on.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:45:05] I don't know. Yeah. And I'll actually bring that up definitely in the final section when I start asking if you guys are just afraid to be burned again. You know, hey, it's a lot safer. It's a lot safer in the world

Tyson Jacobsen [00:45:18] that you guys are pillars of my faith. So bring it on.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:45:21] Cool.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:45:22] I think.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:45:23] Yeah. What do you think, Tyson? Yeah. What do you think about why it would go that direction?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:45:28] My last rant, which was that

Dan Wotherspoon [00:45:33] we

Tyson Jacobsen [00:45:33] were programmed to value intellectual honesty and to value truth. Right. So I think. And it's purely anecdotal for me as well, but I think that that's why you see guys leaving the faith and because they're. They're actually searching for what is true. And they've been programmed and that process of that faith crisis, they're coming to terms with their cognitive dissonance. They're analyzing what they really believe based off what reality is or what the evidence, the preponderance of evidence suggests. And they're yielding to the evidence in that faith crisis. Right. And they're coming to terms with it. So now they're able to look objectively on everybody else's religions through the same lens. So just, I mean, there's a famous quote. I can't remember the guy that said it. But you know, I would argue that both of us are atheists. I just go one God further. And when you analyze. That's why when you're talking with another believer, when you analyze why, if I was. When you. Excuse me, scratch that right for a second here. So when you analyze why you reject everybody else's beliefs, then you'll understand why I reject yours. So those are the two nice little quotes or ideas about why when people leave the church that they're just following that line of evidence that they used on their own faith apply to everybody else's and hence they're coming up with a more natural, evidence based, rational approach.

Randy Snyder [00:47:27] Cool. I'd have to say that the betrayal and the anger for me was definitely real and poignant, but it didn't last forever. I don't have anger at the church anymore other than the fact that their stance on homosexuality makes me angry especially. And Boyd K. Packer makes me angry pretty much every time he opens his mouth, but the anger is gone. And so to me, it's, it's all the stuff that Tyson just talked about. It may have applied to me in the early months, but it definitely doesn't apply to me now. But it may apply to other people. I don't know. I mean, there may be a lot of people that leave the church bitter and angry and they never even look into anything anywhere and just don't think about these questions anymore.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:48:21] Right, right. Yeah. I always say even if we've talked about something hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times before, there's always somebody who's talking about it or hearing about it for the first time. So we need to always honor that it's not all been said before because it hasn't been said to that person. Tyson, somewhere on your thing you said everything's been said, but it hasn't been said by me. Right. So it's kind of the same thing. Well, let me give a shout out to a friend that I'm really just getting acquainted with in the last month or two, but his name is John Adams and his couple of ideas I thought were pretty good as far as why Mormons might head to scientific naturalism or something rather than Christianity. The first one is the little more basic idea that Mormons eternal progression and we are focused on moving ahead and learning more and growing and having a deeper understanding of all things and sort of this whole end game of if you're going to be a God, you're going to eventually need to know all this stuff. I think there is A predisposition, as one of you were talking about, towards science and whatnot as being valuable ways of knowing. So that was one of his thoughts. But then the one that I thought was more interesting was he said, I think Mormonism is one of the most focused religions upon human beings rather than on God. So when you go to a Christian tradition or something like that, there's so much that God is the creator, we're the created being, and that there's this sort of it's all about worship and praising of God and stuff. Whereas Mormonism, you're kind of the center of the universe here. So to go to Christianity, for the people who at least their deep, dark turmoil isn't about, I need saving by God, I need saving from my corrupt nature, my sinfulness or something, at least for those people, he thought within Mormonism, the feel and the flavor of Christianity would be so different. Does that make sense to you guys?

Randy Snyder [00:50:31] To me, the Christian notion of hell is so insidious that that alone repels me.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:50:35] Would do it for you, Tyson?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:50:40] I mean, yeah, that seems plausible.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:50:42] Yeah, I thought it was actually pretty intriguing. So thank you, John, for our conversation to that. Yeah. And again, like we said, it's all anecdotal. We don't really know the percentages or anything like that. I know that a lot of Mormons, it seems like anecdotally to me, kind of have gravitated, at least here in Salt Lake, to Episcopalianism, the Episcopal Church, because it's quite progressive socially and whatnot. But yet you still have the high church sort of feel in the ritual that they sort of like that. Maybe that's a hangover from the temple or whatnot, that they sort of like a liturgical sort of approach in their life to help them meditate or whatever. We'll move on from that and the reasons there. And let's get a little bit back more to the worldview. But are there still aspects of Mormonism that you guys would say you haven't quite shook what's still in your brains? That is like the initial Mormon lens that you catch yourself saying, wow, I'm still seeing that the way a Mormon would.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:51:49] That's an interesting idea. I was reading on one of the Facebook posts, Tal Bachman brought up that point, how we are not able to. How many times we're not cognizant of how we're not leaving Mormonism behind and the way we're thinking and doing things. That's worth some self reflection. I don't know that I can answer

Dan Wotherspoon [00:52:11] right Now Randy, any thoughts?

Randy Snyder [00:52:22] You know, actually one thing that was really interesting to me was when my son almost drowned and we were in the, you know, they took us by ambulance to the hospital. My wife was out of town at the time so it was just me and my little 2 year old. And not once had I did I did the notion ever come to me to pray to give him a blessing or anything like that. And I thought that was really interesting because that would have been my instinct just a year earlier. So a lot of it has really just I've shocked, you know, when my, when my father in law and brother in law came to the hospital and wanted to give him a blessing. I wasn't going to take that experience away from them so I allowed them to bless him then. But the only thing that I keep holding onto is an interesting in Mormonism. I still find it fascinating. I find it even more fascinating now than I did before. I look forward to further work by Craig Crittle on his renewed Spalding theory on the Book of Mormon. Why I should care if I believe it was written by a man, why do I care? I just find it fascinating because that was my whole world for so long and that's the only thing I'm holding onto is just. I still listen to Mormon expressions every episode because of my fascination with Mormonism.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:53:52] What about in your practices? I get the impression at least there's been either joking or whatnot, that both of you might enjoy a beverage. That would be against the word of wisdom from time to time. But is any of your Mormonism still at play in how you view everything from word of wisdom type areas to sexual morality to just sort of the morals? We'll get into the morals and how the morals come out of your scientific worldview and the evolutionary impulse and human beings and all that? We'll do that in a bit. But what about your Mormonism for just the straight how you conduct your life? Any remaining influence?

Randy Snyder [00:54:50] Well, the word of wisdom thing, I don't smoke, but I do drink coffee and I do drink alcohol. Ultimately, is it better if I never drink alcohol again? It's definitely safer. But it also has added a part of my life that I really enjoy. I'm still learning how to be responsible because before the only way to drink responsibly was to not drink at all. So I'm still kind of bumbling my way through that part. But sex is a big thing in Mormonism, all the way down to masturbation. I don't, I don't believe in the Notion of sin. I believe that's a human construct. But I believe actions have consequences. There's nothing to me, there's nothing mystical, magical about the act of sex, penetration. To me it's the emotions that are attached to it. Are you betraying someone by having sex? The act itself to me isn't the issue. It's what you're doing to other people. Are you being cruel to other people, unfair to other people, dishonest with other people? And are you being irresponsible in the fact you might get a girl pregnant or you might get pregnant if you are a girl? That's basically where I stand on the word of wisdom and sexual morality, which is the two pretty much all they talk about with the youth and none of my Mormon. I don't have any Mormon hangovers on those issues. Those all come naturally to me. To me now.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:56:32] Tyson, do you want to add anything?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:56:36] Sure, yeah. It's reaffirming of what Randy says. I look at morality through the lens of science. Now. I don't know if we got into this previously, but it's a. Well, I know we did, but we might have. We might be rehearsing the same thing again. For me, this is the ott part of the David Hume's is ought dilemma. And it's something that I side with Harrison and you can tell I got my 18 month old in my arms right now. I side with Harris on because I find his arguments very persuasive. And it boils down to the well being of conscious creatures and what is beneficial for the well being of conscious creatures. And a healthy sexual relationship with your spouse or your significant other at the right point in time I think is entirely normal. In fact, I think it's not normal to have those experiences. It's not the way we evolved. Guys did not evolve. We evolved to be serially monogamous. And I'm not encouraging serum monogamy, but I'm saying that that's the way we evolved and understanding how our evolution helps us understand the science behind what's moral and what's immoral based upon the well being of conscious creatures. For me personally, I haven't adopted

Randy Snyder [00:58:07] a

Tyson Jacobsen [00:58:07] lot of practices that people in the church would consider to be immoral. I'll drink on occasion when the occasion calls for it, but it's not something I don't drink for other reasons besides whether or not it's moral or immoral. I don't drink coffee. I just don't like the taste. Except for the McDonald's caramel frappe, which I think is just delightful. Besides that, I just haven't developed a taste.

Randy Snyder [00:58:45] It's delightful because it's like 500 calories.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:58:47] Yeah, exactly. See, that's the reason why I don't do some of these things. I don't drink alcohol because it's a lot of carbs associated with it and there's calories. Right. So. This gets into the reason why I don't do some of these things. It doesn't have anything to do with the church. It has something to do with just rational reasons why I don't want to do it. And I have no problem with other people doing those things. I think it's perfectly normal. I think it's fantastic that people are able to practice moderation in all things, including moderation.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:59:26] Okay, cool. We talked a little bit about the physical sciences, the social sciences. Randy, you kind of said, yeah, I don't need laboratory stuff to count something as evidence in the worldview. How did the non soft sciences, at what point, excuse me, how do these more social science human studies things sort of get into your worldview as something that you really bank on or become a hinge point for you in how you look at the world?

Randy Snyder [01:00:03] It's just, again, it's the level of confidence I have in any given notion is directly proportional to the amount of evidence that it presents with. Now, if you got a soft science like there's a lot of people that believe in terror management theory, that the reason why people believe is because they are basically afraid of death. And my brother totally disagrees. He thinks that Pascal Boyer is on the right track, that the reason why people believe is because of the cognitive dissonance that occurs in our brains. When we see someone that we knew that had dreams, aspirations and loved. Suddenly all that's gone when they die. And it's just cognitive dissonance that is the cause of that. So, you know, those are interesting things to talk about, but I wouldn't say that I think that terror management theory is the truth. Like I think evolution is the truth. So I don't outright reject things that aren't to the level of the germ theory of disease and the theory of gravity and the theory of evolution. But I certainly don't have the level of confidence that I have, you know, as I do with the things that are a little bit harder.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:01:19] Okay, cool. Tyson, anything to add on that? Ok, well, I'm going to go back to Randy.

Tyson Jacobsen [01:01:28] That was a no.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:01:29] Ok. Did you really have something maybe just.

Tyson Jacobsen [01:01:32] No, I did. No, I did. I Just couldn't get to the unmute button fast enough.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:01:35] Ok, I apologize. All right. I'm going to go back to Randy on this one. I'm sorry, Tyson, because Randy did a pretty good job when we were having more of our trial run for these later sections of our podcast of explaining sort of the feeling of freedom that humans have and how that sort of meshes with what many people would call a deterministic worldview that science sort of indicates. So, Randy, if you don't mind taking that again, what would your answer be to are we as human beings genuinely free? And if we're not free, why is it that we feel like we're free? Why is it that our experience is that we are free, if indeed we're determined by everything that came before us?

Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Philosophy

Randy Snyder [01:02:28] Let me just preface what I'm going to say by saying that Dan Dennett is at the forefront of this debate, this ongoing discussion between free will, dualism and deterministic materialism. And it takes him an hour to make a case. So he understands it about a million times better than I do. I will give a stab at it. I'll hit on the kind of the high points, the main points, but I don't think for the good of the listeners and for the fact that I'm not qualified, I'm not going to get as deep as I did the other night. So basically, the difference between the two is that the general Judeo Christian notion is that we have an immaterial soul, a spirit. That's half of the equation of what makes our mind. And the general belief with people that believe in this kind of dualistic free will is that the spirit is uncaused. It's like an executive branch of your brain that is free without any other influences to make choices. And the brain is just the function of which the free will has to work through. Whereas determinism is that everything is contained within the material brain. We don't need any uncaused cause. Or ghost in the machine is another way of putting it, to make choices. And the evidence for this is that we can fundamentally alter people's personalities by altering parts of the brain. We can give them experiences by altering their brain. But. And then there's compatibilism, which is kind of a. A compromise between the two, but it's still deterministic. The distinctions I want to make is, first of all, there is a distinction between fatalism and determinism. Fatalism is that you got no control over your future. You're just dust in the wind. That is not what determinists believe, especially compatibilists. Compatibilists believe and determinists believe is that we are, we do have choices that we can make, but any choice that we make has causes both biologic and from our environment. So we basically. It's along the same lines as naturalism. There's no, nothing supernatural, nothing outside what we know is in science. I guess you're saying you're not. You don't believe in supernatural, but you believe in something outside of the material brain that's influencing consciousness. One of the things you asked me was, why would you subscribe to this philosophy when you can't live it? The truth of the matter is I do live it. And how it influences how I live is it makes me more compassionate to other people to not be so judgmental of people and their bad choices. The other thing it does is it makes me more humble because it makes me not feel so good about myself for the things I accomplish because, you know, everything I accomplish is caused by a good environment, you know, good enough DNA. And so it, what it does is it creates an inherent humility and inherent

Tyson Jacobsen [01:06:11] compassion that Dennett is very persuasive. That's just what it boils down to for me, is that his arguments and evidence is very persuasive. Harris delves into a little bit of this philosophy and a little bit of this neuroscience as well. But what's happening to us as conscious creatures is happening to us in our brain, and we know that, and that's what the science is telling us. So what impact we have with respect to whether or not we have free will, it's happening in our brains. And that's where it's to be best understood is through that science.

Randy Snyder [01:06:47] You know, basically, we don't. Determinists just think that positing that there's an uncaused ghost in the machine controlling the brain, it just doesn't add anything to what we know and what we can do with the brain. And so people that psychiatrists and neurologists, they have to basically practice as if they're materialists because I don't want any dualist, you know, cutting into my brain. I want them to completely be comfortable with the fact that they're influencing every part of my consciousness and be careful with what they're doing. Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:07:31] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon Stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your Ward Bulletin and Ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or skypixon.com that's sky with an E S K Y-E pixton.com thank you.

Part 5 of 6 · Ep. 226

Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:00] Mormon Stories Podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:18] Welcome. We're back from Randy's coughing attack, and hopefully you're feeling better, Randy, and can continue with this discussion of freedom and whatnot. Did you have anything left over to say about the freedom? I just wanted to quickly explain the comment of why live a philosophy? Or why have a philosophy that you can't live? You kind of mentioned that in passing. That was just from our discussion. That was our.

Randy Snyder [00:00:42] Yeah, feel free to clarify what you meant by that.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:44] I'm happy to clarify that now if you want. And it really will become far more pertinent at the end when I kind of propose some different things if I were to at this moment, just to let listeners know what. What's really been occurring to me. And I think I knew this before we had this good discussion. I'm with you guys for almost 90, probably 90% of everything you say. I really think the critiques of religion that come from the conversations that you do are very important and whatnot. And really where we're going to end up differing in the end is in an openness level to certain possibilities that you guys seem close to at this moment. And so for something like this, where I'm open to realms and I'm also aware of critiques, for instance, of a sensationist doctrine of perception. In other words, all knowledge comes through the five senses only from my philosophy background and whatnot, I know that that makes problems in things. But anyway, I guess I'm just trying to say in that last 10% that I'm open to that you guys seem close to. There are some very common sense things, like a sense of freedom that I'm not having to kind of untalk myself out of thinking that I'm free. In other words, in that 10% where we disagree, or at least that I'm open to an alternate model, I can actually feel that I'm genuinely free and I don't need to strain and kind of talk myself in. Oh yeah, I feel like there's something genuine in the universe that I'm accomplishing here by my actions. It counts, it matters in the eternal scheme of things. And yet you may have those feelings and you may be living where you're at, and then all of a sudden you say, no, actually, it doesn't count in the eternal scheme of things. It counts in the here and now, and it isn't making a difference in another realm or in Something beyond the reach of science. So that's what I'm saying. Can you live your philosophy without having to constantly talk yourself into what am I experiencing different than what I think I'm experiencing?

Randy Snyder [00:03:04] I don't think that I walk around going, I'm determined to do this. Do I have a choice? Probably not. So I'm just going to do it. It's not like I think about it, it's just when we start to talk philosophically about it. I understand that every choice I make is a byproduct of my material brain and the. I lost my train of thought. Oh, with the executive part, you know, I may be wrong, but from what I understand, the executive part of the brain does a really good job of constructing a sense of self. So of course you feel free. Of course. We all feel free. We all, you know, we have. I have, I have a choice right now to turn off this computer and end this discussion and go home to my kids. But I'm not making that choice because there's a part of me that is driving me to want to fulfill a commitment. I have that in my DNA. I have that in my history of feedback, in my history that, you know, that people respond well when you're reliable. So that's a good behavior. So there's all these influences. We may not, and we're not aware of every influence. We can't possibly be aware of all of the deterministic factors, but it certainly doesn't change our sense of freedom and our ability to choose. But the bottom line is I do not believe that there is a ghost in the machine controlling you.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:36] And by that you mean you don't believe there's a spirit that's independent of the brain?

Randy Snyder [00:04:40] Yeah, independent of influence.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:42] Right, Right. Okay, so I want to move you guys right into the next one. There was a question about intuition and I know the question about how do you interpret this experience that many people

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:54] claim

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:56] of being so deeply interconnected with somebody else that they can sort of know when that person is in trouble, when they're thinking about them, that they should call that person, etc. Whisperings of the Holy Ghost, telling me to go take the casserole or do all those things. I want to hear your take on intuition and this experience that so many people have really hinged a big portion of their life on. So who wants to take it first? I know when we kind of pre interviewed in our false Start, it was Randy, but I don't know if. Randy, have you been dominating the conversation lately? And we need to go back to Tyson?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:05:35] No, heavens, no. I've been dominating the conversation. Randy, it's time for you to talk.

Randy Snyder [00:05:38] I was just sitting back and letting him go after the quantum stuff, so I guess I'll take this one. Intuition. There's a very interesting book called Mistakes Were Made, but not by Me, by Carol Tavris.

Intuition, Confirmation Bias, and Human Reasoning

Dan Wotherspoon [00:05:59] It's a hilarious book, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, it's something.

Randy Snyder [00:06:05] And it basically talks about how, you know, how we make mistakes in our cognition and we're not being dishonest. It's just how our brains work. And so to me, people have. They have a notion that something has happened. Like, say, I don't know if anyone remembers Len Bias. He was the beginning of the end of the Celtic dynasty of the 80s. He was the number one overall pick, and he died of an overdose.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:06:37] Number two or number three?

Randy Snyder [00:06:38] Oh, was he?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:06:39] Cocaine overdose?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:06:40] Yeah.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:06:41] Right.

Randy Snyder [00:06:41] So he dies of a cocaine overdose, and his mom in the documentary says, I just knew something bad had happened before I even got the phone call. And so some people would see that anecdotal testimonial as proof that intuition is a real thing. She was connected to him somehow, spiritually or metaphysically. And so to me, a good way to explain that is that she's probably had unpleasant feelings many times before and then nothing happened, and then she forgot about it and just completely forgot. So that's called confirmation bias. The other thing is intuition. I kind of, I think, goes right along the lines of instincts. Like, for instance, if you're going into a burning building and you're with a fireman who's going in and he just. Something doesn't feel right to him. Something seems wrong. It's pretty smart to go with his instincts because he's got years and years of collecting data in and around fires that he is. There's stuff that he's collecting. He's not even aware he's collecting, that his brain is processing. Our brains process more than we realize that they're processing. And so I think intuition instincts can be somewhat explained by those two phenomenon.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:04] Okay, Tyson, you want to add some more?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:08:08] Not a whole lot that I could. I mean, Randy does a really good job of doing that. I think the origins of intuition are evolutionary based. Type 1 errors, type 2 errors that are made as we're evolving. Right.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:22] Explain those terms. Type 1, I would say so a type of.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:08:25] A type 1 era is a false positive. You're walking in the forest, you hear the rustle in the leaves. You assume it's a predator. So you run from it. Well, it's not a predator, but you survived. Right. And natural selection would favor you over the person that committed a type 2 error, which is a. A false negative. You hear the rustle in the leaves and you say, well, it's probably just a mouse. And it turns out to be a manny, a predator. Now you become a.

Randy Snyder [00:09:00] So natural selection wipes out all the skeptics.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:09:03] Yeah, yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:09:05] How did we get to you guys then?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:09:10] Yeah, it tends to.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:09:13] Yeah, you guys are the outliers.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:09:14] Yeah, the fastest growing in the United States and the world, by the way. It tends to favor patternicity. Us seeing patterns in our world. The devil's face and 901, excuse me, the 9, 11 smoke figures in the clouds, faces and rocks. I mean you see this everywhere in Catholicism. Right. You see the Virgin Mary everywhere. Tree bark and toast. So this patternicity has evolved and that leads us to assume that there's a duality because of our own consciousness, that there's a duality. And I think the best explanation of this, and I'm pulling this straight from the TED Talk by Michael Shermer, the straight examples that he's using, which I think is probably a better explanation. So I'd refer to everybody to go to YouTube and check out the TED Talk, the second TED Talk that Michael Shermer did.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:10:09] I was talking about Ted the other day to somebody who I thought was really bright and connected. They had no clue what TED was. Do you want to give them quick technology, entertainment and design.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:10:19] And design. Yes, that's correct.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:10:21] So Ted.com and it's this amazing conference of fascinating. I asked you to tell, so go ahead, you tell.

Randy Snyder [00:10:29] It's what it is.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:10:30] It's a conference where they're taking, they're trying to identify the people with the best ideas or just unique ideas or something. I mean you're going to have, you're going to have some diversity of thought. Al Gore presented there.

Randy Snyder [00:10:41] James Randy, James Ranney presented there.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:10:44] Michael Sherman's presented there twice. Yeah, Tony Robbins. You're going to have Rick Warren presented there. Rick Warren presented right before Dan Dennett did. And so Dan Dennett gets up and he's talking. He's just totally. It was fun to see because Rick Warren gets up there and rick Warren gives 90%. He tithes 90%, not 10%, 90%. This is a guy that, you know, he sells 15 million books and he's given a huge sum of money to. And I believe he's also giving it to people that are not of his faith or belief.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:21] And his wife's really working on AIDS in Africa.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:11:25] Yeah, and I've attended him because he's local for me. I've attended him several times and I take exception with a lot of things he says in his sermons. But a lot of what he does coincides with humanistic values and practices. In other words, they've got a diversity of people that are represented there. And so not everything that you're going to get there is you're going to get a lot of opinions, but you're going to also glean a lot of really good ideas. And one of these was Michael Shermer, who's the co founder of Skeptic Society, which has got a lot of good science based promotional materials out there.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:12:15] Well, let me add one other good thing about ted for those who don't know about it. They're limited to 18 minutes long than their presentations. And so it really forces them to focus. It's always high tech focus. Fully multimedia, integrated talks. They're just really high quality and you can watch them. And so I got into the habit where I'm probably watching a TED talk most of the time while I'm eating breakfast and whatnot. It's nice to have it in those small chunks.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:12:43] Yeah, yeah, agreed. So that's where I'm pulling this type 1, type 2 errors from is from his presentation and that's from. I found it to be the most plausible explanation for these intuitions we have. And it coincides exactly with what Randy was saying, how our brains are just magnificently selected to interpret all of this data that's coming in.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:13:12] Terrific. So before we leave intuition, let me just. Again, I'm not going to make an argument here, but confirmation bias is certainly a powerful tool and we all recognize that we very likely score more significance to the hits than the misses. All the times that the telephone rang and it was your friend who you happened to just be thinking about there, you'll remember those and you won't remember thinking about your friend a million times that they don't call. So confirmation bias is certainly a thing to be considered and every thoughtful person should absolutely do it. I think we've answered one of these questions here, so I'm going to go right to. This is maybe where you're going to have to dive in and talk about evolution and biology or something like that. Does life have a purpose? Whoever wants to go, please go.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:14:12] I can give you mine real quick. Mine's easy. The platonic, the universal world. I don't see any purpose in it. I don't see any supernatural or designer creator purpose to the universe.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:14:28] Okay, so it wasn't purposely created is what the angle on that question you're answering, correct?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:14:34] No, there's no evidence to suggest that as of yet. But for me, my individual purpose is. I do have individual purposes and it's purpose that I create for it. I take exception with people whose purpose is not their own. It's something that either their religion or their upbringing or their culture has provided them. It might be their own, but they're not going to know unless they have that freedom to make that choice. But for me, my life does have meaning and purpose and it's meaning and purpose that I provided. I think the example I gave with my eye is a good example. That meaning and purpose of the remaining vision that I have is much more salient and significant for me just as my life. Knowing that there's not a post mortal existence or believing it as such has more meaning and purpose.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:15:25] Okay, Randy, you want to add to that before we dive in a little more?

Randy Snyder [00:15:29] No. The personal meaning is exactly what I would have said. As far as the universe. Yeah. There's no real evidence that there was an intelligent designer. One of the biggest misconceptions though about evolution is that it's random. It's fully random. And that's not the case once life did in fact finally form here on the pale blue dot. Natural selection is not random. It's the opposite of random. That's why it's called selection.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:16:01] But I do think the mutations are though random or not.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:16:07] The genetic mutations are random. It's nature that's selecting which ones are persevering. Yeah, right.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:16:13] Nature isn't selecting it.

Randy Snyder [00:16:15] Not consciously.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:16:16] Right, right.

Randy Snyder [00:16:17] Just the way it is. But I do grant that leading up to the moment where, which we don't know much about, is how did life originate. I think my guess, my money, if I live another 40 years, I think we're going to crack that code to figure out how to life originated. But right now we don't know for sure. And everything leading up to that, yes, that was random. There was a supernova sometime congealed into a planet just the right distance from the star. All that was random. But you also got to be careful of the lottery fallacy. Just because it, you know, just because you have a 1 and 6 million chance of winning the lottery, someone's going to win it. And just because Joe, who won the lottery only had a 1 in 6 million chance of winning, it doesn't mean that it was completely impossible for or improbable for him to do it. Someone has to win the lottery. So that's the weak anthropic principle that Richard Dogkin talks about. We know it can happen because we're here to think about it.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:17:24] Right.

Randy Snyder [00:17:25] So anyway, so we should probably move on.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:17:28] Okay. Again, move Tyson. Yeah, I'm in concurrence that we should move on. Well, I've got a couple questions, both

Tyson Jacobsen [00:17:37] that and to Randy's, unless you've got some follow up questions. I'm.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:17:41] Yeah, yeah, no, I have. Well, again, I think it would be important. You guys talked about, you know, you're, you're, you're now the, the people who choose your own purposes in life. You're choosing, you've moved into this realm of deliberately saying everything I think, everything I do, I have some choice in it. I imagine that was a little bit of a transition for you. Just like making peace with your own mortality. You found some benefit from that, the honing of the sweetness of life and it's more precious, it's more fragile and I'm going to add more zest to it and stuff like that. Transition go for you. And all of a sudden says, man, There's no inherent purpose to this other than what I make of it. How did you transition for that? And what has been the joys of making that transition?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:18:40] Randy, I think you touched on this before. Everything was resolved for you when you. I don't know.

Randy Snyder [00:18:48] Yeah, I mean, I think we're kind of rehashing the same thing.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:18:53] Well, I don't. I guess I'm not remembering which part Tyson's referring to here.

Randy Snyder [00:18:57] You know, once I didn't have to try to make theology fit what's observed in the natural world. The world snapped into focus and, and I was free to explore all that's out there. All the literature I could follow, the evidence. I haven't yet delved deep into the great literature and the great writings of the philosophers. Just don't have time. I got a life to live, but I look forward to getting into that stuff eventually. And so the purpose of my life right now is to love as much as I can love and to learn as much as I can learn because that enriches my life. Art, culture, all those things add meaning to my life. I can't control whether, when I die. So I just don't worry about it. You know, maybe it is tougher for someone like Tyson and myself to contract pancreatic cancer, giving us about a six month prognosis to live. Maybe that's tough, but even in that moment, I think that I'm just going to cherish those six months that I have, the best way that I can. And we can talk about euthanasia more towards the ethical part, but that's where I find meaning and I just don't need anymore to have some immortal fantastic afterlife to be part of it, to find the meaning that I need. I don't know what else I could say.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:20:52] Okay.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:20:52] And Tyson, anything to add?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:20:55] I'll mirror what Randy said and I think there's a question that I don't know if it was asked, but a lot of people have, have this idea that without religion, without religion and without God, all things are possible. And that's from the brothers Karmatov. But it's interesting to note that the individual who said that, I think it was Smerienkov, however I pronounce the guy's name was the least intelligent of the crew. And I think there's a misconception that people ascribe morality with religion and, and you can't. I don't think that's a valid claim that first of all, you look at the Scandinavian societies and you find that they're better off than religious societies and you find out with more education people are better off and they're less believing. There's some good correlation there that doesn't necessarily equate to permanent. For me, I didn't have a need to go out and practice a life of hedonism when I left the church. I think that's just a fallacy that

Dan Wotherspoon [00:22:06] people

Tyson Jacobsen [00:22:09] that are believing list as one of the reasons why that they need religion in their life.

Randy Snyder [00:22:15] It's the false dichotomy that's created in the church. Happiness out of the church, carnal wickedness that you learn pretty quickly after you get out that you don't have the inclination to do all these things.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:22:34] And what's the best reason for that? Again, evolution is our best way of understanding how that has come to be the evolving of our morality and equitability.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:22:47] Okay, you both have a really robust view of evolution. You brought it up a hundred times or more. Let's talk about how a view that doesn't have a God or a being or some sort of non personal but yet still perhaps patterned or ordered sensibility to it. Something like the Tao or Dharma or whatever, without something like that or a realm of morals the way Plato would have put morals in the same realm that would create the mathematical principles and constants and universals throughout the universe. Without that to rely on, which you guys have said that you don't rely on it, how do the morals come out of the things that you do believe are firmly established? How do you get to all that sensibility? Whose turn?

Morality, Purpose, and Teaching Values to Children

Randy Snyder [00:23:43] I think it's my turn.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:23:45] Okay, go for it.

Randy Snyder [00:23:49] Sorry, I didn't think I was going to cough, and all of a sudden I did.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:23:52] It's your turn, Randy. You're dropping the ball. Come on, buddy, pick it up and run with it.

Randy Snyder [00:23:56] Sorry. Okay, here we go. The notion that morals are, I think C.S. lewison is mere Christianity. I read a lot of it. I couldn't get through the whole thing. But he makes the case that because there's enough similarity between all our moral codes, that's proof that there's God. And then he. And then when he started making the case on Christianity, that's when I stopped reading. But to me, that's quite a jump to go from. We have. And what are the similarities? I mean, they were. You really have to boil down morality from society to society to the most core basic thing, you know, because during the Bronze Age, you have tribal ethics, you know, and then we evolve to, oh, geez, we actually know our neighboring tribes a little better. They're not so bad. And then you start to have a little bit more, you know, so there's that kind of evolution of like a social evolution, but the biological evolution. You can see precursors of a moral code in other species. One of the closest relatives to humans is bats, and vampire bats have this practice where everyone goes out to get blood, but not everyone gets it. Not everybody's successful. And then when you come back to the cave, everyone's expected to share so that everybody has some. Well, the ones that will take but won't give, they get attacked and killed by the rest of the group. There's like a rudimentary moral code there, so you can see precursors of that in other species. And so it only makes sense that you start with a very rudimentary human moral code maybe 50,000 years ago. And over time, as we've grown and as a species and gain knowledge and become more experienced, especially with the globalization of the planet today, where we can truly understand people aren't scary because we don't know them at all,

Tyson Jacobsen [00:26:16] of the

Randy Snyder [00:26:16] world is created right now where we're getting closer and closer to what I think is the ideal moral code, which is equal human rights for everybody, regardless of nationality, race, religion, and all that. So to me, that's where morality comes from. You don't need to posit a supernatural source for morality, because when you do, you're creating all kinds of problems. You got to figure out how to explain, you know, the totally and utterly contradictory moral codes in almost every way across the globe on, you know, the more fringe things. So that's my best take so far.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:27:04] Okay, tie that a little more to solution. Tyson, do you want to have any more at that level?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:27:14] I think that adequately describes the is of morality. And we can see that evolution through our cousin primates, and they have very

Dan Wotherspoon [00:27:28] similar

Tyson Jacobsen [00:27:32] codes, cultures, and ethics that they adhere to as well. When two monkeys are using a rope to procure food, one monkey will not. If one doesn't share, the other monkey won't cooperate. And that equitability, they do this through psychology studies as well. When we're dividing up money, there's that evolved sense of equitability between the individual. So if it's not divided, if it's not equal enough, then one person will reject the entire experiment, essentially. And you see this within a lot of respects. You see, even when it comes to, like, drinking, you see the same levels, like, I think it's in these capuchin chimps that would raid these, like, sandals resorts for the food and the alcohol. And the same breakdown of usage in alcohol or consumption of alcohol by the chimps was the same as it is among humans. So we see these really strong ties between our morality and evolution. So the question really is not whether our morality came from because certainly everybody knows it's very difficult to deny the evidence of revolution. I mean, it's a fact of nature. So it clearly we had to obtain it from somewhere, and we had it

Randy Snyder [00:29:11] before

Tyson Jacobsen [00:29:14] the law of Moses came about. So the question really for morality, for me, is, what do we do now? What should our morality be? And who should be saying that? Or what should be the process to define what that is?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:29:35] Cool. Now, Randy, it seemed to me that when we chatted once before, you, at least in this question, kind of talked

Randy Snyder [00:29:45] about how

Dan Wotherspoon [00:29:48] so we now have the is. But I want to know a little bit more about how you felt like this got coded into our DNA and somehow it's in our DNA Is the reason that we.

Randy Snyder [00:29:57] Oh, did you want to take it a little deeper?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:30:01] The way I was looking at it is you have a lot of faith in this DNA strand as basically explaining everything. And so I'm just curious how I

Randy Snyder [00:30:12] didn't say this DNA explains everything. What I said was that all the best evidence is not in the fossil record. The best evidence is in the DNA and where. What I'm talking about with that is that you can, you know, I'll just give the most common basic example. We cannot produce vitamin C naturally. We do have a gene, however, that is coded to produce vitamin C, but it's broken. And this broken gene is broken in a very specific way within millions of base pairs. So this is like very low probability that this could happen by chance. So we have this vitamin C gene that's broken in a very specific place. And guess what? Chimpanzees, our closest relatives, have the exact same vitamin C gene broken in the exact same way in the exact same place. So there's only two possible explanations. Number one, you have a natural selection, which explains it perfectly, we inherited from a common ancestor. Or number two, an intelligent designer made it that way to trick us. Or I guess there's a third one. An intelligent designer used evolution as his tool. So to me, natural selection is the best explanation for that. Now, as far as morality is concerned, there's what's called the selfish gene. And it's kind of a funny. I think there's a book even called the selfish Gene. So it's a gene that it's selfish to itself, but that doesn't create a higher level organism that's selfish. It actually creates the exact opposite. It creates an altruistic being. So all of us are naturally born with empathy. Unless we're sociopaths or psychopaths. We're all born with a natural empathy. And that's part of that altruistic gene that has evolved over millions of years to, you know, there's symbiotic altruism and then there's true altruism where you're actually putting yourself in danger. And there's lots of different theories explaining why animals, including ourselves, how that would be beneficial. But basically by putting yourself at risk for the good of your group,

Tyson Jacobsen [00:32:29] that

Randy Snyder [00:32:29] gene itself is getting a better chance to proliferate. So that's how the gene is selfishly going forward, even though it's producing an altruistic phenotype or in the organism. So that would be another kind of deeper level explanation of the morality through natural selection evolving.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:32:50] Okay, and so you're. So I guess I just want to clarify that it's because it's in our genes rather than any other external source. In other words, it's sufficient for you at this moment to say genes and coding and whatever I've inherited from the past is sufficient for my sense of morality. Just so this Universal sense of what's fair and what's just. And all that can really come from.

Randy Snyder [00:33:22] Yeah, the basics could come from there, but refinement happens over social evolution.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:33:28] Good. I want to move into that. And I also. Tyson, I know that you are reading Harris or you've just been reading Harris and kind of had some extensions on. I can't remember. I remember you posted to the Mormon Stories podcast community one of TED talks of Sam Harris where he was sort of of talking about what you really can learn. Boy, I'm losing my train of thought on exactly what the point was. I know that you've talked about how you can kind of show this stuff in there, so why don't you go

Tyson Jacobsen [00:34:00] ahead and dive in? Sure. It's something that was really engaging for me because it fills a gap that it's very much in the culture war. I'm sure it's been said by others in the past. I found it with A.C. grayling and I'm sure others have talked about it. But it's. It's after we recognize that we've flown the coop on morality from an evolutionary perspective. So how ought we to define what morality is? And Harris very persuasive book called the Moral Landscape, available in fine bookstores everywhere, is something that I've really latched onto and it's become very near and dear to me just because it's so rational and so even handed. And so what Sam proposes is that science is the best determination for what ought to be moral in our society. And that's something that a lot of philosophers have pushed back on. And Sam defends his position by starting out with his first position, which is just give me that there is something that's wrong or bad for absolutely everybody in the world. Is there something that everybody can agree upon that is bad, wrong, evil, something that damages us? In other words, something that impacts negatively the well being of conscious creatures. And so that's a starting point. And if you can buy into that, then he's able to logically make the leap that our values relate to facts about the well being of conscious creatures and that these facts are within the realm of science. So we really shouldn't be standing by while female genital mutilation is occurring. We do have something to say about that. We do have something to say about women wearing burqas. We do have something to say. We'd have something to say about. The use of prophylactics in sub Saharan Africa and the direct correlation between that and aids. We do have something to Say about abandoning science in our schools. Not literally, but

Dan Wotherspoon [00:36:39] it's all because you can point to at least one thing that you think everybody could agree on is bad. And from there you could build out.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:36:44] Yeah, you can build.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:36:45] Instead of needing an external source like God to say this is why it's right or wrong. That's all we need as a species.

Randy Snyder [00:36:52] Yeah, yeah.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:36:53] You can just define it within our own universe, within our own population, within our own species, that we can identify what is. Science can help us identify what is specifically what is wrong, and it can help us identify what is happening. And there's not. He calls it the moral landscape because there's many peaks in a landscape and there's lots of areas where there could be happiness and morality, but we can certainly identify where the valleys and the gulfs are. So it's a very persuasive book.

Randy Snyder [00:37:27] Something that I actually just read it too. Tyson made me read it. I'm just kidding. I enjoyed it.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:37:34] It's compulsory when you have.

Randy Snyder [00:37:36] Yes, he coerced me.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:37:38] All of you who are considering going with these guys, you must read.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:37:42] That's right.

Randy Snyder [00:37:43] Yeah. That's part of being in the. In group. Just to kind of piggyback again on what Tyson's saying about Sam Harris's book. He's basically what he seems most frustrated by is moral and cultural relativists, which is a total. What Sam Harris claims is that it's kind of a backlash of British colonialism where they kind of forced their. What they thought was a superior culture onto other cultures that they had conquered. And obviously that's not the right way to do it. You can't do anything by coercion, especially. I know it's a question on the Nazis and secularism. That's not the same thing as organic atheism, which is what you see in Scandinavia. And so. But we can objectively, I think we can objectively say that some cultures are better than other cultures at maximizing the well being of its. Of its citizens or its people. If you have a culture that kills every third child as part of a religious ritual to their God, I think you can say that they're not doing as good a job as Denmark in maximizing the well being. That's to take it a little further than just the starting point that Tyson was talking about. We're talking about evaluating entire cultures. You know, a lot of the primitive morality in hunter gatherers that are still around today, you could probably objectively say that they're not maximizing the well being as well. As the United States, for instance, is. So I think that's really at the crux of what Sam Harris is getting at, is trying to objectively evaluate the best way to obtain well being for conscious beings and using any big science to inform it.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:39:38] Right. And the avoidance of relativism is probably the hinge issue here.

Randy Snyder [00:39:43] He really has a contempt for relativists in that book.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:39:46] And where typically people will have point to an external source like God or the dao or something like that. In a transrational realm, you guys are saying that you are convinced that you do have firm places for judging between better and worse, right and wrong, based upon the calculus that can kind of come out of this evolutionary background and then this sort of agreement that Sam Harris is beginning with.

Randy Snyder [00:40:18] It's really important to remember the landscape metaphor because everything's not black and white because there's a lot of equally high peaks that, you know, there are. Sometimes there is more than one right answer on obtaining well being. So it's not. It's not so simple. That's why he chose the landscape as his metaphor.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:40:41] Go ahead, please. Because I want to get into children, but I want to. How would you teach morality to children without biblical stories and all that different stuff here? I want to go there next. But if you had something that sounds

Randy Snyder [00:40:56] fun,

Dan Wotherspoon [00:40:58] you were about to say something.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:40:59] I want to hear Randy's thoughts on this because I think we touched on this before. So we might be rehashing it a bit, but it's worthwhile.

Randy Snyder [00:41:07] Oh, it's my turn.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:41:09] Yep.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:41:10] Yeah, I didn't really form the question.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:41:12] Oh, come on. We already know what the question is. You just told it to us.

Randy Snyder [00:41:16] How do we. How do we. How do we teach kids morality without the Bible?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:41:20] Well, that wasn't. Yeah, I would have formulated a little bit.

Randy Snyder [00:41:23] Softball man.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:41:25] No, stronger than that.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:41:27] We wanted the easy question. We want you to have time to formulate the challenge.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:41:32] There were lots of questions about this. This might have been the main one that people seem to focus on, that it's like, without a religious narrative or is having them weekly getting a dose of the Christian stories and whatnot. Is this really bad for our children? And a lot of people are saying, I can't think of a better alternative than the religious destruction I'm getting in Mormonism or my children are getting in Mormonism. They're really helping me raise them in a way that they'll probably make it through their teenage years a little less of a crapshoot or something than I might have otherwise. So There is a big concern about this. Without you guys raising your children now, within this kind of immersion, how do you teach them? And how would you translate what you just told us about what morality is based upon to your children?

Randy Snyder [00:42:29] Well, if it's my turn, do you want me to go or.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:42:31] Sure.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:42:32] Yes.

Randy Snyder [00:42:32] Okay. So if someone is going to hold on to the notion that they want to prevent their teenager from having sex at all costs, if you're going to hold to the notion that oh so awful. I had to read forgiveness on my mission, even then it bothered me. Obviously I needed to repent for something. And there's a line in there that chilled my blood. Even then as a believer, he said, no righteous Latter Day Saint would prefer their child to lose their virtue than to be killed. And to me, that is. That's crazy. That's crazier than crazy. And it's sick in the head. If I choice is for my teenage son to get laid or to be slit his throat slit in a ditch, I'm going to say get laid every time. So if you're going to hold on to that kind of Victorian notion of sex, my method isn't going to be very good for you.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:43:42] Yeah, you know that you've gotten to a pretty extreme. That wasn't what the question was. I was is talking about.

Randy Snyder [00:43:48] I'm giving extreme because it is a real thing. When my sister got pregnant at byu, that was to my mother, it was like ripping her heart out. So I'm not going very far out there in the extreme. This is real Mormon life. It may not be anyone else's experience, it may not be some other people's experience that are listening, but it is experience for a lot of people in Mormon homes, that's worse than, than getting killed in a car accident. And so since I don't believe the act of sex itself fundamentally taints your spirit somehow, to me, I'm going to take a practical approach on teaching my kids what I think is most important for well being. And so I'm not so worried about them having sex as I am them being responsible about it. Don't use sex to betray someone. Don't use sex as a weapon. Don't, you know, under false pretenses and don't be irresponsible about it. You know, don't get yourself pregnant. Don't get yourself a sexually transmitted disease. So, you know, by taking and then teach my kids, you know, look, you got, you got so much potential. There's so much you can accomplish in this life. And if you Go and make really bad choices. You're going to limit your options going forward. So, more practical approach to child rearing. It's been shown. It's just one study, but this one study I read evangelical Christians that were taught to fear hell, have sex at the peril of suffering, eternal damnation, versus the secular homes that were taught the practical approach. I'm talking about, the secular homes did much better. They had less teen pregnancy. They had sex a little bit later on average. And so I think it's just a more realistic, practical way to go about teaching them morality. Plus, I'm going to focus, instead of focusing on masturbation, I'm going to focus on cruelty and compassion and empathy and understanding and civil rights and love. I'm going to teach them all the really important things, values that I have as a humanist. And how am I going to do it without church? By spending time with them. I spend a lot of time with my family. Being an orthodontist allows me to do that. So it's nice, but that's the best way I know how is to just constantly be there for my kids, talk to my kids, and establish a relationship with my kids where they want to talk to me.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:46:29] Okay, what about the, you know, where are you turning? You know, there's didactic teaching where you can lay it out for them. Your futures are bright. You're cutting off your options. If you make this choice or that choice, there's that level, but then there's also that level that human beings respond to of the narratives, the stories, the different things. Are you turning to literature? Are you turning towards the newspaper, television? Where are you getting this? The stuff that can kind of hit him at that more of a gut level than perhaps dad just always telling me, don't be cruel.

Randy Snyder [00:47:12] I think allowing them to believe in Santa Claus and then having that bubble pop is a great story to teach them about skepticism.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:47:22] So do you know Santa Claus for your youngsters? What about your.

Randy Snyder [00:47:26] Oh, no, no, no. Kids live in a magical world. And they should. I think they're evolved to live in that magical world. I'm not going to take that away from them. But eventually they're going to learn just from school that Santa isn't real. That's a good learning opportunity to teach them about skepticism. And don't always just take things at face value. Look at the evidence. But you're talking about something different. You're talking about, like my dad used to always say, I have no idea how people that aren't religious raise their kids because What I have in my pocket is an appeal to a higher authority, God. You know, I'm not asking you to do this because it's what I want you to do. I'm doing it because I'm asking you to do it because it's God wants. So my dad has always thought that was just this wonderful tool. Maybe it is, but I don't think it's something I'm. It's not something I'm going to use, and I don't think it's necessary. I think teaching kids to be good for the sake of being good has a lot more power than being good. Because you want to please a guy, an anthropomorphic God in the sky.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:48:33] You kind of veered off my question about story. How narrative can reach us at maybe a gut level or a subconscious level a lot deeper than what you're talking about. Again, it sounds like dad lecturing dad appeal to this or that versus, I

Randy Snyder [00:48:53] mean, like, versus the story of Ammon cutting off arms and the Book of Mormon stories I read.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:49:00] That's probably not a favorite of a lot of people there, but.

Randy Snyder [00:49:03] Oh, I loved it as a kid. That was awesome. I could still see the bag of arms that he's pulling up to Lamona in that cartoon. You know those books I'm talking about? They're like cartoon renderings of the book.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:49:16] Yeah,

Randy Snyder [00:49:19] but I guess there's. I don't know of any secular children's narrative books out there, but Spider Man's pretty good. My kids are totally in love with Spider Man.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:49:30] That's what I'm asking. Are you turning to those instead?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:49:33] Yeah, we are. We are.

Randy Snyder [00:49:34] We read them the two and the four year old. We read them two books before they go to bed every night. And they always pick Spider man. And the message in Spider man every, at the end of each one of these little Spider man books is with great power comes great responsibility. So, I mean, that's a good. That's a good message. And I can, if they ask me, when they're old enough to say, what does that mean, dad? You know, it's a great opportunity to teach them, you know, the responsibility of, you know, being conscious beings that are capable of hurting or helping other people. You know, we have a lot of responsibility as to our fellow man, especially to our family. So. Yeah, I don't know. Do you have any volumes of books, Tyson, that you go to?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:50:24] My story is a little bit different because I'm in a split household here. So my kids are getting the story on one side and So I view my role to be a little bit different. Again, I'm looking to science and for defining what well being is as the. The basis for which I'm teaching my children. So what ideas and where I'm taking them, it's all couched in how can I teach them to respect the well being of their well being and others well being. And I do want to broach one quick thing about when Randy talked about in the miracle of forgiveness. I mean that is a powerful. I remember my mission president telling me that. I remember seeing it sourced in LDS documents. And I have a brother that believed that. And you could see the strong correlation of that teaching and his actions. So that's a real threat to me. I mean, it was issue within my marriage that is not reconcilable. So getting to the point of what I do with my children, it's more focused on because they're already getting some of those stories. It's providing some alternative to those stories. I think the Mr. Deity series is one of their favorites. It's providing these satirical commentaries and they get into it and then their lives are filled with so many other things that have no meaning and some alternative meetings. But my focus, when I have the opportunity to spend time with them is focused on really scientific based experiences. Going to lectures, going to museums, doing sciencey stuff, doing crafts that involve putting things together, building a motor tie, dyeing T shirts, things that can be related to experimentation, invention all along. Those natural experiments, natural experiences, that approach.

Randy Snyder [00:52:47] You know what I need to get? I need to get a bunch of action figures of Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Homo sapiens.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:52:55] That's awesome.

Randy Snyder [00:52:57] That would be a good starting point for some narratives for them.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:53:00] Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:53:02] All right, guys, let's move a little bit into another kind of. Here's where the conversation will probably change its tenor and its tone a little bit. Not necessarily. You'll still be able to explain more things and more when I'll come out. But let me just go ahead and start suggesting a few theoretical frameworks about what might be going on with your particular journeys in Mormonism or whatnot. That at least I don't know. I just think they're worth bringing up. There's this other category that's called a plausibility structure, which is basically every group sort of has a world in which they inhabit that feels plausible to them. That feels like, yeah, this is really the way the world works. And the social scientists will tell you that the way that plausibility structures are sort of maintained is by constant repetition, constant storytelling, the same things after each other, reinforcement of the worldview. So that when you guys are Mormons, you inhabit a universe in which angels really could bring books or at least show guys on earth where buried books are that relate to other people. That was within the plausibility structure. God could really show up as an embodied being along with his son Jesus Christ, to a guy there. So as long as you are within the Mormon conversation, that is a worldview and a plausibility that you inhabit. Well, you begin to loosen those ties from the one group, and then all of a sudden, you now enter into more conversation with people outside your social group. So you guys are now engaged with science and whatnot that says there's no such thing as angels. There's no solid evidence for it and whatnot. And those may all be true that it's there, but you guys have now entered into a new plausibility structure. Do you sort of understand that there's a community of discourse going on that you've now entered into? You've left one group and you've entered into another one. Is that correct?

Randy Snyder [00:55:14] Yeah, there's actually a really good Mormon expression. It's one of their first ones where they had a guy who was collecting ex Mormon letters of explanation.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:55:24] Oh, yeah, I know that. It's Parker Blount, isn't it?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:55:27] Okay.

Randy Snyder [00:55:27] Yeah. So he says the first part of every one of these letters is a segment of an apology for why they were. Why they believe these crazy things in the first place. That just made me. Reminded me of that. Okay, yeah, that wasn't that long ago that I believed that the flood was historical. So. Yeah, that's interesting that you bring that up.

Skepticism Within Secular and Atheist Communities

Dan Wotherspoon [00:55:47] Okay, well, so I guess the question is, okay, so we kind of have hopefully, a basic dynamic here that for whatever reason, you guys left one structure for another and one community of discourse for another. And I guess my question is, you guys are now immersed. And again, this is a journey of just a few years for both of you, of you, I think 1996 or 2006 for you, Randy, and a little bit after that for you, Tyson. Now you're completely immersed in another community of discourse, which is giving you a lot of its own spin on things. And among the plausibility structures, at least, would be that science, its tools, its methodologies, evolution, etcetera, can handle everything. And if it hasn't handled it now, we really think that the progress of science will show that it really can. Would you guys accept that as at least a description of you being now in this new community of discourse. And that they would be telling you that. They would be telling you who is the real scientist and who is not the real scientist. They would be telling you what counts, what doesn't count.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:57:04] That seems to be an argument from authority instead of.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:57:09] That's a big part of it. I'm open to that. So let's hear it.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:57:14] Well, that just seems like that counts

Dan Wotherspoon [00:57:15] as authority figures for you.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:57:17] Right. Instead of what the evidence is. And sometimes there's difference of opinions as to what the evidence indicates.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:57:24] But.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:57:27] But when they're testing the speed of light, this goes into the language of science. It's universal. Just like math. It's universal. There's not an American science and a Chinese science and an Egyptian science. Science is science, and it's not attributable to one individual or one custom. So I can go with you so far. I can see the plausibility for it. It seems a little bit. It seems a little bit more theoretical for me than it does practical.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:58:05] Okay.

Randy Snyder [00:58:07] I wanted to add that there's a big distinction between an appeal to authority and an appeal to a scientific consensus. They're not the same thing. An appeal to authority is saying such and such person said this, and he works at Yale. So therefore it's true. Appeal to a scientific consensus is something that a group of people actively trying to tear each other's work down, but finally coming to a basic agreement on some aspect. It's not infallible, it's not 100% right. But when you have a scientific consensus, it is fundamentally stronger and different than an appeal to an authority figure.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:58:47] Okay, I get that. And I think everyone would agree with that to some degree. I mean, to some extent. I don't know how far everyone would go, but I go pretty far with you on that. I guess the question is, or at least the wiggle room or the little thing that I want to put in there is how skeptical are you guys of the skeptical community that you are part of? How much alternative voices are you listening to now that is sort of checking you and keeping you confident that you are not just buying in, like you said, to different level of authority figures rather than prophets, parents, all the people who served as an authority figure when you were in the Mormon worldview, with this caveat of scientific verification and all that, across cultures and stuff, how sure are you that the Four Horsemen and the others don't have motives and reasons for dismissing certain outlying theories? And scientists like Rupert Sheldrake Or David Bohm or these different guys that have interesting things going on here and yet they're telling you they're not real scientists so you're not really looking at them. I'm not talking about those specific guys, but just this general thing of, are you skeptical of your own people?

Tyson Jacobsen [01:00:16] Yeah, I think I am. At least I think I am. Sorry about that.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:00:26] And that's a great answer. I really appreciate that.

Tyson Jacobsen [01:00:29] I like the analogy of I want to keep an open mind, but I don't want my. I don't want my brains falling out. I like it when somebody says, when somebody asks somebody a question like, why should I believe what you believe? And the person responds and says, you shouldn't. Find it out. Figure it out on your own. Look at the same data, look at the same evidence, and then come and let me know if you think I'm right. I respect that level of intellectual honesty.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:01:03] Okay, Book of Mormon. Hey, read it for yourself. That's all we're asking. We're the missionary. We're not trying to persuade you anything.

Tyson Jacobsen [01:01:09] Go to God, read it for yourself

Randy Snyder [01:01:11] and we're going to tell you what your feelings mean.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:01:15] I'm just messing with you a little bit. But I mean, but there is. At least I remember the church. Every once in a while you'll hear them say, what impressed me so much about the church is they told me to go get my own answer. But you guys obviously aren't scientists. You guys are all reading second hand and you're, you're within a community of discourse. You're attending lectures. I remember, Randy, when you and I first actually talked on the phone just to kind of get to know each other. You were a seven hour drive to Los Angeles from Phoenix and you were saying, yeah, you'll catch me if you call him. You'll catch me after I've listened to five hours of scientific and whatever podcasts.

Tyson Jacobsen [01:01:52] Harris.

Randy Snyder [01:01:53] Yeah, that was the book assignment that Tyson gave me. I was listening to Sam Harris's book.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:01:58] Okay, whatever. Yeah, so stuff like that. So we accuse Mormons of. All you read is within your community of discourse, of the scriptures and approved books, and you don't bring in outside sources. And if all you're listening to is that and we could treat Mormons for that,

Randy Snyder [01:02:17] I'll give you the answer.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:02:19] You realize you have to guard against that even in your own.

Randy Snyder [01:02:22] Let me give you the answer. It's called Google. And so what you can do is you can Google Sam Harris moral landscape critique and you can go in and you can get I mean, these people don't always agree with each other on everything. And so you can get the other side. There was a very healthy critique of his book by, I think it was a philosopher that gives you another take. So you can always, with the power of the Internet today, you can always kind of get the other side of these discourses. Especially you go to a blog like one of my go to blogs is Neurologica by Stephen Novella. And you just go to the comments section and he has physicists. In fact, he was talking about Deepak Chopra on one of his entries. Or no, it wasn't Deepak Chopra. It was a different scientist who's along the same lines as Chopra. And there were physicists that were actually in the comment blog saying, you don't know what you're talking about, Stephen, and here's why. And then there was like this back and forth. So you actually can, you know, you're open to, hey, you know, I'm not going to just completely blindly take on every opinion that Stephen Novella has. And there's. We have the ability nowadays to have it all at our fingertips so quickly. It's wonderful.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:04:01] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon Stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your Ward Bulletin and ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or or skypixon.com that's sky with an e s k y pixton.com thank you.

Part 6 of 6 · Ep. 227

Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:00] Mormon Stories podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org. When you see a book, for instance, one of the Four Horsemen or something would write a book and they were to describe religion in a way that was much narrower, much more of a caricature, caricature of a religious believer or a religious position that you yourself had some first hand experience with from your Mormon days or when you were out on your mission or something and met people like that. How is it that you're making sure that if they've misspoken in this area, that I'm making sure that they're not misspeaking in another one? How do I make sure that the people who are helping to shade my view of religion or a particular,

Randy Snyder [00:01:01] particular

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:01] faith or a general worldview that's open to the possibility of a spiritual realm or something?

Randy Snyder [00:01:08] I just don't think these sophisticated theologians are a real large number of the Christians that are out there. I think the largest number are people that just give deference to Christianity, don't think about it that much, just assume Christ is the son of God. And then there's the really loud, obnoxious fundamentalist group that worries me because of their political sway. And we had a born again president get in and stop stem cell research. And now we've fallen behind the rest of the world in that. So I understand that there are sophisticated theologians out there. I don't at all buy their mental gymnastics that they, I don't think they have any logical basis for their personal God. But I do understand that they're out there and I respect them. And they're certainly not the kind of people that are going to be out there doing the things that will inhibit social reform and secular humanistic views for the most part. So I'm just not worried about them and I understand their position. I just think I'm aware of them enough that I don't have to be ultra careful when I read stuff by the Four Horsemen and I don't know if I'm making any sense.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:02:31] No, no, I think you've got it. I just wanted to point out that the importance. I don't know if you guys have heard of Kirster Stendahl. He just passed away recently, but he has that certain. I can't remember what he called it, the commandments for discussing across disciplines or across worldviews. Yeah, the first one is basically that you hear from the insider, you hear from the person who is truly the expert in it, and you make sure to watch yourself there. The second thing is that you compare the best with the best and not the best of one with the worst of other. And then the third one is that you remain open in your life to the truth or whatever of that other person to such a degree that you may really hear them and hear their integrity and hear the flavor and the zest or whatever that their worldview adds. And you would make room for, gee, it would be neat if I were oriented that way, too. He calls it holy envy. Make an opening for holy envy. So it was just an element of that that I think is important to bring into the conversation.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:03:39] Could I ask a couple of clarifying questions here? Are we talking about identifying truth claims in comparison? Are we trying to identify baseline Jesus is the Christ type of truths, or are we trying to find items like this is the type of culture, or these type of people are happy and this works? Is it more of a social perspective

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:14] or sociological word or is it more important? Okay, Doc. Well, that's interesting. I mean, I think it works at either level. Be careful not to listen to a character or a characterization. If you are here at a characterization either of a doctrine or a teaching, be careful to hear it in full complexity. The same way if you were looking for a study or somebody who's going to paint a religious group with a broad brush or say, these are the motivations and whatnot, it's just to add that level of care to that. So I don't know if I've answered what you were looking for or something.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:04:59] Well, it just helps me define my answer. I think the other question is with respect to identifying who, who are the experts on the subjects? Are we looking at academia to be experts on the subject? Are we looking to the actual heads of the organizations? Do I look, do I consider Boyd K. Packard to be an expert on Mormonism?

Randy Snyder [00:05:24] Am I going with the Pope for Catholic faith, or am I going with Alan Plantinga, Notre Dame? Right.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:05:32] So those are good. And again, in some ways it might be. If you were on the doctrinal issue, yeah, Boyd K. Packer would probably be somebody who, even though he might be very dogmatic in his position, if you were to get him to get out of his institutional voice or whatnot, he would certainly probably be able to lay out the complexity of the different opinions in Mormonism on him. So, yeah, whatever the question is, you would go to the appropriate one. If it's a sociological question, you'd probably want to go to a sociologist and so the academic might be the right person. Anyway, my whole issue is the best with comparing the best with the best.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:06:09] I'm with you on that. And here's the things that I would comment on that is that the best of what some organization has, it doesn't necessarily equate to truth. We might have. You might have. For instance, Jainism is the comparison of choice when it comes to pacifist religions. That doesn't necessitate. And that's the best when it comes to pacifism. Right. That influenced Gandhi, Gandhi influenced Martin Luther King. That doesn't necessitate or that doesn't validate the truthfulness of the Jainist claim

Dan Wotherspoon [00:07:01] as far as the metaphysics that underlie their reason to not kill or be careful about karma and all that stuff.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:07:09] Yeah, so that's one aspect I'd point out. And then the second is that when it comes to doctrinal claims, I, I tend to not give as much credence to academics when it comes to defining the doctrine of that faith. I think they have a much more nuanced, a much more probably plausible. However, when I want to find out what the Church thinks about a specific issue, I'm going to, I'm going to take them at their face value. I'm going to take them at their word from what they actually state when it comes to the evolution of man. I'm going to look at the doctrines of the Church, I'm going to look at their statements on the origins of man and I'm going to derive my opinion about their doctrine from those. Rather than looking at maybe a member of the 70. Brother Eyring said this or. Right. I'm not going to necessarily look to the periphery for an understanding of their doctrine. I'm going to look at what the core tenets of the faith are.

Randy Snyder [00:08:27] Okay.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:28] I think that's fair and that's actually a very good way to do it.

Randy Snyder [00:08:32] Just to add to that.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:32] Go ahead, please.

Randy Snyder [00:08:33] Who's more influential? An apologist who's got a very more plausible, nuanced version of Mormonism or Boyd K. Packer who is speaking in front of millions of people with General Conference and who's more influential to Catholics? The Pope or Alan Plantinga who's relatively obscure as far as his influence compared to the Pope.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:57] Right. But both are still Mormon or both are still Catholic.

Randy Snyder [00:09:04] Both are still worthy to know about and important to know about. But I just think that, you know, to what Boyd K. Packer says just has more influence and power and it's something that I need to pay more attention to.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:09:22] Okay, but we'd all probably agree that it's important to not make sweeping generalizations, to always know that there's diversity and whatnot behind what seems to be the loudest claim at this time. And so to say that this is Mormonism and to exclude everything but the Boyd K. Packer position, we'd all agree is wrong. Is that not true? Or maybe we want to agree on that.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:09:49] I think it's a fair statement.

Randy Snyder [00:09:51] Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:09:52] Okay, good. Let's move on a little bit. I know you guys are aware of James Fowler Stages of Faith podcast. Listeners here may have heard the three parter that I did with Tom Kimball and John Dehlin on Fowler's stages of faith. And let me just throw out an observation and you guys can say whether this fits you or not. But as somebody were to look at the stages, Fowler names six. Other people have nine stages, other people have four stages. There's sort of this idea that human nature and human growth and development sort of seem to follow a progression across cultures, across societies. And a lot of times it's tied with age, sometimes it's tied with brain development and whatnot. That as the brain develops, different capacities emerge and things, things like that. So for anybody who wants to look at Fowler, please do. But you guys, right now, for someone who were to analyze from the outside, and it's a very descriptive thing, there's no judgment or anything like this. But right now, on a Fowler scale, I would say that you guys are fairly typical stage. Four out of six stages, at least in Fowler's model, you guys are in that stage of demythologizing, deconstructing, going from a place or a stage or a part in your life where other people were authority figures for you, you're now owning your own. You know, I need to make these decisions for myself. I'm responsible for the morality that I choose, that I choose to teach my children. I'm not going to leave it up to other experts. I'm owning that I'm doing it. And so this is what he calls individual and reflective faith, where you reflect on the stories you were raised with and the different ideas that were a big part of your life. And in the early stages, it's mostly a tearing down and whatnot before. Typically the stage lasts 10, 12, 15 years before you really have come to a full integration of your worldview and are perhaps for him there's a couple stages beyond it. So I guess what I'm going to say is with that description, first of all, does it fit you as you were to look at the Fowler model? And I know I gave you a hint about this question ahead of time, so maybe you did. Does it fit you? And then second, is there any part of that model that says to you, wow, I fully expect that I will possibly, if I keep going down the path and don't make stage four. In other words, is there a possibility that you'll have a different worldview later? Are you open to that? Or are you guys pretty well sure that science is always going to be for you, the ultimate arbiter, pure science,

Stages of Faith and the Long Road to Wholeness

Randy Snyder [00:12:51] I mean, so it's going to take that long? 10 to 15 years. Really?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:12:58] Well, for the most part, what he calls stage five. And you were right when you talked about the preponderance of people not really being reflective about their own faith. I haven't looked at my Fowler in a while, but I think he thinks that 60, 65% of people do kind of max out at that conformist. Other people are authority figures. I don't really apply my exam. I don't step out of the fray. Or he has this thing, the fish in the water, swimming in the water, and they don't realize the properties of water. It takes. You have to step outside water to understand water, at least to gain a different perspective on it. Stage four is where you begin to do that process. And then for him, you kind of live into what he calls the conjunctive faith, which is the one where you really very peacefully and very much without a whole lot of stress, can honor the truths of religion, the truths of mythology, and truly mean it and feel at home with the animals. Ambiguity of uncertainty, to really love the questions that are remaining there and all the paradoxes of life and stuff. So I'm just trying to say if someone were to map you guys, it looks like you might be early stage four. I'm just wondering if there's anything to the model that you like or find enjoyable.

Randy Snyder [00:14:28] I guess I can invoke John's interpretation in Mormon Expression podcast where he says he only accepts Fowler's stages if it will include stage five atheists. So it 100% does.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:14:46] Yes.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:14:47] Okay.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:14:47] Yeah, he addressed

Randy Snyder [00:14:50] if it includes that and doesn't say that you got to have faith to get to stage five. I guess I'm open. I haven't read it. I have a good friend who's a lawyer who's read it and he doesn't like it at all. But that's just an appeal to a friend. That's a logical Fallacy.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:15:10] Yeah, there you go.

Randy Snyder [00:15:12] But I have never felt so comfortable in my skin. I've never felt so peaceful, and I've never been so excited to learn and to ask all the big questions. So if I'm in stage four, which I've always kind of interpreted from the podcast as kind of an angry stage, I don't feel like I'm angry anymore, and I feel like I'm really content. And if it takes me another 10 to 15 years to fully form and round out and refine all the different parts of my worldview, so be it. But it's hard for me to imagine adopting some kind of apologist style Stage five.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:15:55] Oh, it's not apologist at all. No.

Randy Snyder [00:15:58] Well, I mean, you know, they say stage. I've heard little quips like stage five is knowing everything and jumping back into religion and being okay with it, with all the. All the conflicts and the contradictions. I just. I think that I have found a place that from where I'm standing now, the horizon looks too beautiful to walk in any other direction.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:16:22] Sure, yeah, no, that's fine. And the angry stage thing, it's certainly not in Fowler. I think that's coming when people throw the Mormon layer on it. And when you have sort of such an uber authoritative religion and one that says we have the truth and people start. When they start pulling it apart for themselves or when it starts to break down, there's that level of deception or whatnot they would. But for the most part, for Fowler, usually typically emerges just in college, when you're away from home, you're meeting people who are just as passionate about their worldview as you were about yours. And you slowly but surely, in a way, you begin to examine the myths and the stories and the teachings and who was authoritative in your life and all that stuff. Don't, don't stick with the idea that it's an angry stage. And it's certainly a long, long stage. In fact, if I were to put just a couple of minutes, or maybe Dan, obviously, I'm doing a lot more talking here in this part of the podcast, the Stay LDS movement, that John is saying he doesn't know if he any longer endorses where he talks about being comfortable with paradox and both and. And, you know, kind of, he's kind of describing stage five stuff. I think the problem, the reason he's finding it doesn't work is because you have to live into it. You can't just make these categories of thought that I'm going to now embrace paradox, but you know, if you look at Fowler, it's like you have to know this, the, the agony of defeat. You have to have, you know, different, you have to have failures. You have to know the road's not taken and there were real consequences. And you kind of just have to live deep into life to some degree. Certainly he doesn't think it emerges much before midlife. So that's where I kind of looked at the Stay LDS stuff. Yeah, you're saying all the right words, which is sort of rehappiness with myth and ritual and embracing the things that you can and at the same time holding them as paradoxical or whatnot. It's just not something that you can do in your head. I think you have to kind of live with it in your life. And that would be what Fowler would say. So I don't know. So right now you're very excited and happy and that's great. Tyson, any thoughts from you on this whole stage thing and whether you're kind of say, you know, there might come a time when I will hold the dogmatism of science a little bit less. It seems like you're open to mystery now, but on the other hand, you know, which tools would solve the mystery eventually. So I guess, do you ever see an openness down the road for you? Well,

Tyson Jacobsen [00:19:35] I think the best way I could kind of describe it would be Spinoza's description of God, that God of nature, and, and that type of approach of being comfortable with not knowing and accepting some of these rituals or cultures or cultural practices into my life. I'm really intrigued by psychology studies right now and I've been doing a lot of research in that direction and it was really fun listening to Fowler stages on Face because it just, it so nailed my progression through life. And it seems, it seems so pertinent now. I don't know that I feel so ascribed to one stage or another. I feel very comfortable where I'm at and the direction I'm going. And there's a lot of unknowns where I'm going and I'm very comfortable with those unknowns. It's very exciting actually. But there's a lot of things that really get me riled up and you know, some of those hot buttons. Dan. And those things I think are, you know, this has to do with when we can define morality as the well being of conscious creatures, when we can say that these things are not good for humanity, they're not good for my children, they're not good for. These are things worth standing up for. And that's probably a lot of my Mormon heritage coming out. So there are. I could see that, like that stage four disgruntlement as being this little bit of this anchor for me in helping me move on past it. But then again, I kind of like having that. It's the whole William Shatner I want my pain. I need my pain. And that helps ground me because I had some very powerful experiences in the past. Some of them very good and some of them really horrific. And I don't want to forget those horrific things because I don't want them to be repeated.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:22:02] Yeah. The language often with stage theory and others, is that each stage transcends the previous one, but it includes all of it within it. You do hold it. So like even us, we're still holding within us the very initial stage of what he calls. I can't remember. It's actually a pre stage from infancy were we comforted. We find the universe to be friendly and welcoming to us. Somewhere deep within us could be those things, because we know that some children. There was a break at that point and sort of a pathology developed to where they've had trouble connecting with others because of that. And so the same thing. It was important for you to be a literal believer at some point in your life. But in the stage of the human drama, everyone needs to transcend the particularity. We all need to break away from mom or dad and strike out on our own. That's a human development kind of thing. And so the same thing within our religion. Jesus was a Jew, but he certainly transcend Judaism things along those lines.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:23:16] I can tell you if you ever see me starting a ministry or starting some type of supernatural mysticism, it won't be because I've reached some level, some stage. It'll. Because I've lost all my money and I'm looking for the cheap. Easy.

Randy Snyder [00:23:33] Come on. Hey, Dan, let me tell you one of my favorite parts of your Fowler stages of faith. I can't remember if it was you or Tom, but you said it was. A really interesting insight is that people in stage three think they're higher than people in stage four and five. People in stage four think they're more enlightened than people in stage three and more logical than those in stage five. And people in stage five think they're more sophisticated and nuanced than people in stage four and three. So that's the mentality that you gotta. That's fascinating.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:24:11] And you have to fight against.

Randy Snyder [00:24:12] You have to fight against it because you. You got to remain Humble. But the advantage that I think Tyson and I have, and you too as well, Dan, is that we know what it's like to be a true believing Mormon and true believing Mormons don't know what it's like to be us. So we do have a little bit more understanding of where they're coming from and I think that allows us to be a little bit more compassionate.

Coming Out as Non-Believer to Family and Community

Dan Wotherspoon [00:24:31] Alright guys, let's kind of shift at this point to sort of a final section that we had outlined ahead of time. And that's just back to the question, the more practical question of you guys in your life as well as just others who might be contemplating this. And this is strategies that you think are more or less successful for negotiating the family ties, the friendship ties, when all of a sudden a relationship may be strained by them learning that you've left the church, that you no longer believe what they believe and you still want to have good relationships with them. And then I will take it to the broader public square area as our final conclusion. So if you guys are comfort with that, who would like to take the first stab at the question of. I know, Randy, you already said that you gave the how not to clinic with your wife on how to break the news to her. What would you guys say you've learned about leaving the church without hurting a lot of people? Is that even possible? And if it's impossible, how would you at least mitigate some of that or help the recovery to be quicker? So why don't we start with you, Tyson

Tyson Jacobsen [00:25:48] had a break with Mormonism so that the recovery can be quicker.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:25:53] No. How do you break with Mormonism and still maintain your relationship with the people around you?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:26:01] You're asking a guy that's no longer married as a result of the church? I don't know that I've got a good explanation for anybody on I can tell you I would do it differently, I would approach it differently in the future, but again, I don't know if that would work either. But I would definitely try and involve my spouse earlier on in the discovery process and not bring conclusions to them, just bring questions to them and let them work through the, the concreteness of those issues as well to see if there's some mutual understanding. But then again, I think that's a bit of a psychological approach to try and reach the same conclusion. When you're going through it, you don't have this end perspective as I do now.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:27:10] Right. You're in turmoil so it's natural that you're not going to really have it so for somebody who's in turmoil right this minute and is considering this from your perspective, where you guys are far more at peace right now, I know, Tyson, that you have an active brothers and sisters and family and whatnot. Even if your marriage doesn't seem like it's going to survive this, you know what might work best? Again, I don't know there's any great answer.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:27:47] Well, what I've been focused on within the last several months is not on the divisive issues, but on the issues that. And focusing on issues that are not necessarily Mormon issues, that are humanity issues. And even though I know. Even though I know the Mormon doctrine behind some of these things is contradictory, most Mormons don't know the doctrine behind it, that there's a problem with it. So when I approach, for instance, rearing your children in the church, if I approach it as a, you know, there's a reason why we don't let our children vote until they're 18. And people understand that analogy. And this is, well, what are we teaching our children in schools and what should we be teaching our children in our homes? And how do we help our children think critically so that when they do develop that age of accountability, which is, I think 18 is probably still young, I don't know that we rationally begin to think really rationally until we're into our late 20s, early 30s. I don't think our mind is fully developed until then. At least that's the evidence that I've seen from neuroscientists. That's a bit of a different approach I'm taking, is not to try and be as divisive and to focus on things that I think are much more pertinent to our society. I don't think that the GLBT issue is as big of a concern as most people do. I think we care more about stopping GLBT people from getting married than we do about children starving. And I mean, there's bigger global issues that affect more people, and I think those issues are more important.

Randy Snyder [00:29:48] Cool.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:29:48] Randy, initial thoughts?

Randy Snyder [00:29:50] Well, I already revealed the how not to, but I think I did pretty well with my father. I don't know how it would have done with my mother. She was. When my brother left the church and simultaneously announced that he's an atheist, she could barely be in the same room with him without crying. And that hurt him a lot that that affected him deeply. So I didn't have to deal with an uber TBM emotional mother. So I had a little bit more rational mind father to deal with. And so what I did was, you know, when I first came back from Cabo, I gave him all the issues, but I. I didn't just dump it all. I didn't dump all of it. And I didn't really reveal all the feelings I was really experiencing at the time. And I let. I just kind of let him in a little bit and let it soak in. And then. Then it was time where we were actually going to physically leave the church. And my. One of my sisters is in our ward out here, so that it's not going to go unnoticed. And I was kind of forced out because my older sister was divorced, remarried, got a temple divorce. Now she was going to get remarried in the temple, and it just happened to be the exact weekend we were going to be in California. So there was no way to come up with any excuse to get out of it. But neither Jen or I had recommends. So we were kind of forced to come out back in March, and the day that I was going to let my dad in, I had come out to all my sisters that didn't have a choice but to come out quickly. And some of them took it well and some of them didn't. But when I met with my dad, we went to IHOP out here, and my sisters were so concerned that they called me beforehand to make sure I was driving because they were afraid my dad would be so upset that he'd crash driving back. But because I had prepared him, let it set in for several months, and then I took a very kind and rational approach to letting them know. You see this problem here? Do you see why this is a problem for me? Okay, do you see this area here? Do you see why this. Do you see why this could be a problem for me? By the time I got to, like, the fourth or fifth one, he said, well, what are you trying to say? I'm saying, well, we left the church and he took it so well. It was. He didn't seem upset. He didn't even seem to get upset, which was really surprising. And ever since then, just recently, you know, because one of the reasons why I go to all these USC games is to spend time with my dad while he's still healthy. And that's kind of our bonding thing, my dad and I, to go to USC games. And one of the things he told one of my sisters after, like, this second or third game we went to together says, you know what? Randy's still the same Randy. He's not. You know, I just have to always remember that he's just the same Randy. He just doesn't believe the same things I do. So maybe it's just because I have a really sensible father. Maybe it was the way that I eased him into it. But that part has really worked out well, and it was really important because my dad and I are really close. I'm probably closer to him than he is to any of the other six kids, and I think everyone knows that in the family. But that's why everyone was so worried about how he would take it that I left the church and it went well. So that would be one success story to share with people. If you got parents, just if you're going to do it, ease them into it. Don't do the shock and awe.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:33:42] Not only by the way, no Band Aid. Yeah, the band Aid. Quick rip or something like that. Yeah. Well, that's terrific. If I could share one thought that occurred to me, and I think some of you will be aware of this story that might My bishop at the time when I wanted to ordain my son to be a deacon, he and I had had a conversation six or eight months before. And I was so new and early in my processes of really figuring out what I do believe and don't believe anymore. It was so much easier for me at first to pose everything and no, I no longer believe that. I no longer believe that. I no longer believe that just to watch the jaw drop and whatnot. I think it might be a good strateg to really be careful to say, there's that solar idea that you preface a thing and say, I've got something to share with you. What I'm going to tell you is this, but it is not this. I'm going to say this to you and it might feel this way, but this is not a personal attack. So you just let people know ahead of time what you're going to do and then you emphasize as much as you can the things that you do believe. I have compassion for everyone in the world and I want social justice. And these are the things that are driving me right now. And I'm finding difficulty marrying my Mormonism to these new goals of mine. Instead of saying I'm rejecting the whole kit and caboodle that I was raised with. Does that make some sense?

Randy Snyder [00:35:21] Yeah. I mean, you want to portray that you still have values and morals.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:35:25] Exactly.

Randy Snyder [00:35:27] Exactly. Yeah, that's definitely important. I guess I should tell, since you cut it out of the Tuesday podcast, the Story of Jonathan, because that's another what not to do with your 12 year old son. I basically told him everything all at once. I said not only do I not believe in the church, I don't even believe in God anymore. So stupid, I mean so stupid to tell him that because I just shocked a little 12 year old mind that was a deacon. So much so that what I got the next day I pretty much deserved. And as you guys know, I went to church and told him this is a family secret for now, not to tell anyone. And he said, okay, but he's a compulsive kid. Adhd. And after sacrament was over, he bolted up to the stand and told the bishop, my dad doesn't believe in God anymore. And so I had a pretty robust discussion with the bishop during priesthood outside the church. So I think, I definitely think with kids you've. I don't know, Tyson, how did you.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:36:29] Did you ease.

Randy Snyder [00:36:30] Because you got a very unique situation where you got a mother that's a true believer on one side and then you got you on the other side. Did you ease your kids into the knowledge of your worldview?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:36:45] He's the kids. Well, I've got a good range of kids. I didn't go into specifics. I've tried not to go into specifics with the kids. I've tried to not go into deconstructing Mormonism. I've tried to focus on teaching them critical thought and introducing them to broader scientific areas of life. That's been the focus on good, positive, reinforcing activities and promoting critical thought. That's been my M.O. thus far.

Randy Snyder [00:37:27] Good.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:37:27] I think that's actually probably a good way to go for those of you, for the relationships that really were very, very difficult to negotiate at all. Randy, your mother, Tyson, your spouse, your former wife, I guess you're in the process. Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Are you seeing things get better? Is there a hopefulness? Do you see a healing and sort of a return in some ways to a more sense of normalcy?

Randy Snyder [00:38:00] My mom is dead, so that's not a problem.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:02] Oh, I apologize. That's right, I forgot. I apologize.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:38:04] Yes.

Randy Snyder [00:38:05] With your yoga, with your brother that lives in the same ward as me. She's the one that didn't take it very well. And her exact quote was, it feels like there's a death in the family. And that really made me angry when she said that because. And the other thing you get a lot is, oh, I just worry about those kids, you know, that if you really want to get me going is to say you're worried about my kids. You know, first of all, worry about your own kids. Second of all,

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:39] do you say that? Are you recommending saying that? Yeah, that's.

Randy Snyder [00:38:42] No, this is something that I don't say that. No, no.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:46] So we're focusing on good strategies.

Randy Snyder [00:38:50] I just want to let people know in on what it's like to be, you know, feel like you've really spent a lot of time and energy and done put a lot of thought into, and you really feel like you've come to a place that is morally superior in a lot of ways to Mormonism, especially. Especially in regards to homosexuality. And then to have people look, you know, you know, they're looking down on you and they're saying things like, well, I just worry about your kids. You know, what about your kids? You know, they're gonna be fine. You know, they're gonna be very productive, moral people, because I'm gonna teach them good, productive morals. So there's that initial irritation, but over time, as long as we. There's a certain part of the relationship that's never going to be the same. You're not going to have as much in common. You can't really say certain things. So there's a fundamental change in the relationship, and I think there's some mourning that goes along with that. My little brother's in a bishopric out in the. In the Kirtland, Ohio, ward, and he and I are still pretty close, but now pretty much all we talk about is sports because there's nothing else really to talk about. And only lately have we broached the. Have we even broached the area where we joke about Hitchens. And I sent him the debate of Hitchens versus Hitchens, where his brother, who's a devout Christian, Christopher, debate. So we're just starting to ease into where he might feel comfortable talking to me about my worldview in time. So, yeah, there is light at the end of the tunnel with my little brother.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:40:32] Cool. I'm wondering, would either of you guys say that it's a good thing, and maybe I didn't give you a chance to answer, Tyson, but to let people know right off the, please feel free to ask me questions. Don't think that I'm going to be defensive about this. So if you kind of invite them to ask the questions and then she were to say something about your children, you've at least sort of established that this is a topic that we can really talk about now, rather than just having her blurt that out and it kind of be something where resentment builds up with you. Does that make any sense to you guys that that might be a good strategy for those who are of a different worldview or family. Ask me questions.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:41:16] Yeah, I don't recommend going on the offensive. I don't know if it's just California and just because I'm not in Utah, where the culture is much more predominantly LDs, but I have not had a lot of interaction with members of the church with respect to them asking questions. That's just not. They don't want to go there. Either the issue scares them or they're not comfortable with it. There have been a few people that have followed up, but I think one of the earlier mistakes I had was trying to engage people on this. This is part of my trying to figure out what's, you know, have you heard about this? And this was. For people, this was a little too close to reality, I think. And so I remember doing this with my mom. This is hilarious. I started talking about all the problems with the historicity of the church, and this is early on. And I'm like, I can't teach my kids these things. And I'm not going to teach them that the flood actually exists or actually occurred when we know it didn't. And they're just going down that line of thinking. And at the end of the conversation, my mom, and she's agreeing with. She's like, oh, I never knew that. And I never knew that. I'm thinking I'm having this breakthrough with my mom. And at the end of the conversation, she says, well, you're still going to let. Your kids are still going to go to church, right? And I knew at that time, oh, my mom kind of looks through the world through a different colored glasses. And I really haven't tried to do a whole lot of provoking her. With my dad, I have provoked a little bit and I kind of maintain the same mantra. And he's definitely come around. He's not as dogmatic as he once was, but I'm beating the same drum. I'm just relying upon the evidence and saying, if I'm wrong, show me where I'm wrong. I'm more than happy to change my mind and my position, but these are. But I'm not focusing on Mormon issues again.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:43:23] I'm focusing on world issues, on world

Tyson Jacobsen [00:43:27] issues, humanity issues, the things that matter in our life. And he's had some health challenges, and it's important for me that he's healthy. So I don't recommend provoking other members. I do recommend letting people know. And I have had people come up Tentatively and like, will email me a question and will. Or like people online, like all of a sudden I'll just get a response or a request from somebody that they know. I've just been reading some of your posts and thought, thought I could ask you this question or that question. I do get some of that as well. And so I know that people out there looking and interested and everybody kind of goes at their own pace and everybody's got their own life. Not everybody has a couple hours a day to spend on Wikipedia or YouTube or Google to thoroughly go through these issues. They've got other things in life. There's some times in my life where work has been slow and I'm able to do that. Not everybody has that opportunity.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:44:41] Well, and that. That just raises the issue of maybe it's just important for us to remember that we need to be patient, that other people allowed us our journey. We maybe didn't get to critical thought, at least being quite the ascendant position that we now hold. We didn't maybe do it on somebody else's timetable. So we always need to be remember to allow everyone to have their own journey and just to know that, that it's such a complex group of feelings and emotions and reasons that we hold what we do. It's just we need to be patient. Does that make some good sense to you guys? I hope it's obvious or something.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:45:24] Yeah, absolutely.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:45:25] That idea of allowing everybody else their own journey.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:45:28] A lot of people are much more cautious about the way they approach a lot of these things because they're concerned about. I've been blessed with respect to materialistic things, and so I've been able to do some things that other people necessarily couldn't. And that's. These things play into the consideration that people have. I mean, some people are so far invested in it that it would be too painful. And again, it might be too painful for me to try and liberate like my grandparents. I haven't even told my grandparents I have one grandfather who's incapacitated and another grandmother who I love dearly and admire for her keen intellect. But I don't know that I would want to burst that bubble for her. So that's not something I'd probably be broaching with her. So, yeah, I can definitely appreciate that and I can definitely see why others would not want me intruding upon. Upon their life with such, you know, strong, provocative ideas.

Randy Snyder [00:46:41] Well, there is definitely a stronger temptation to go around bursting bubbles when I was in the angry phase and, and I Think I did do a couple of foolish. Hello?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:46:53] Yeah, I'm here.

Randy Snyder [00:46:55] It's got really quiet. I did, I did engage in a little bit of foolish attempts to bubble burst and they were just really bad experiences. But now, in my more content and peaceful place than I am now, I don't have any desire to try to take away anyone's Mormon faith, especially when I have now got perspective to realize that was just me five years ago.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:47:25] Right.

Randy Snyder [00:47:28] How am I going to be arrogant about that when it was just me not that long ago?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:47:35] Right. Yeah, exactly. We're temperamentally different from other people. Our autobiographies are so diverse. Somebody may have an abuse in their background and we don't. And therefore they're going to naturally have things to cling to or feel it at a different emotional level than we would multiply that example by a thousand. There's lots of reasons for people to hold religion in the way that they do. We shouldn't generalize and we shouldn't say my stuff is for everyone and certainly not that my stuff should be for you right at this moment. Something like that makes some good sense, I hope.

Randy Snyder [00:48:21] Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:48:22] Cool. All right, let's move it a little bit now just to the public square and the importance of having good debates between secularism, atheism, if you want to bring it up, but just the secular worldview, the secular humanist interest, as Tyson outlined for us, of the well being of all conscious creatures or all conscious beings. Obviously you guys belong in the public square along with everybody else who vying for a spot there. How can secular voices be effective in the public square? And you know that you can't eliminate the religious voices from it. So any thoughts on strategies for successful negotiation of secular perspectives? Getting a better hearing than maybe they are right now. A more effective voice.

Engaging Religion Critically in the Public Square

Tyson Jacobsen [00:49:21] Yeah, I think the. I really think the weight of the evidence is on the side of the secular humanists. You've got a lot of really good examples as to why this occurs. Slavery, once defended by leaders in the south during the Civil War. We're quoting Bible scriptures and rightfully so,

Dan Wotherspoon [00:49:48] and I think so are the abolitionists though.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:49:52] Yes, yes, of course, Yes. I mean, that's nice. With the Bible you can argue both sides of a point. But I think what you see as. The arguments are pressed, you see the evidence becoming more and more persuasive to a lot of people.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:50:15] So how do you strategize to get to a place where they will actually hear you on the evidence versus simply reject you out of hand because you're scary because you perhaps appear arrogant to them, etc. So that's really where I'm getting at, is not actually once the debate begins, it's how to really be accepted there to where you can hear them and they can truly hear you.

Randy Snyder [00:50:45] Well, I think what the Four Horsemen are doing, the valuable service they're doing, is just in the United States especially, because we are, I think, by far, of all the really significant industrialized nations, the most religious. Which is kind of ironic that we are a secular government, which was, you know, that was a huge deal that we established a secular government. And so raising consciousness is what, you know, how long. I mean, 10 years ago, having an atheist book as a best seller was unthinkable. Now they're becoming bestsellers all the time. And I think. I think raising consciousness of people to just start to just use a little bit of critical thinking, number one. And number two, science isn't the enemy. I think that for too long in this country, science has been painted as the enemy because it challenges cherished beliefs. And when you have science as the enemy, then you get poor science education. Our schools. And why is that important? Well, because the people that actually make the decisions on where the money goes are generally not scientists. So if you have scientifically illiterate people making decisions about how to spend money on science research, that's not a good thing.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:52:19] So how do you get. How do you get them to listen to you and. And say science isn't scary? You can't tell them that they're ignorant. You can't tell them that they don't know. You can't approach them with a lack of respect. So how do you respect them? How do you convey to them that you believe that they are people who are trying to be. Trying to have integrity with regard to their beliefs and whatnot, and you appreciate that and you can honor that so that they could even hear you about science.

Randy Snyder [00:52:52] I think the only way that we can ever achieve that is just through education. I went through four years of college, four years of dental school, and two years of orthodontic residency. I had no idea what critical thinking was. By the end of my education, it took me leaving the Mormon Church to even learn about logical fallacies. So we're teaching our kids a lot of facts in America, but we're not teaching them how to think. And so the only way that we're going to ever break down this barrier, and I'm not trying to wipe out religion out of the face of the earth, I'm Just trying to get people to not be enemies to science, to embrace science and all that it offers and to have a little bit better critical thinking skills. And. And the only way that's going to happen is through education. And part of that education is all these books, these Four Horsemen books becoming best sellers. I think another thing that's going to help is the Internet.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:53:59] Well, and I guess you guys are answering a different question than what I'm really asking. It's valuable stuff that you're all saying. But let me phrase it this way. You talked about the Four Horsemen being, you know, very important cultural movers and shakers, and you appreciated them. But as I think it was in Brian Dalton's interview with John Dehlin, you know, that was, I don't know, a couple months ago, released here on the podcast, he recognized that the approach of like a Christopher Hitchens, which is a little bit more sarcastic, a little more. Less gentle than perhaps some of the other Horsemen, that it's going to take different voices with different strategies with different temperaments to do the job. So you don't want Bill Maher religulous. I saw it, I had some entertaining moments in it, but he didn't show to me any at all depth and breadth of understanding of religion, at least to what I did. And his segment on Mormonism didn't feel at all fair. So why would I think his segment on anything else would be. He took the sarcastic. I'm going to preach to the choir. I'm going to try to get that group that's already leaning my way to feel more justified in being part of that 16 or 18% that say no religion or agnosticism or atheism. So he was appealing to that. But he's a terrible, terrible missionary for the secular position with the people in the public square that you're trying to persuade to have better science education.

Randy Snyder [00:55:42] Well, there's definitely no doubt. I don't want Bill Maher representing me. I don't think that he's very sophisticated. I was really disappointed when I saw Religilous because it just didn't. There wasn't a whole lot. A lot of stuff there. It was fairly thin.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:56:02] Yeah. What do you call it? A mile wide and an inch deep?

Randy Snyder [00:56:05] Yeah, yeah, it was a mile wide and an inch deep. So that was. I don't know. I mean, there's a kind of a really strong debate amongst secularists. On one side you have the new atheists. On the other side you have what's called accommodationism. And the accommodationists believe that we need to be more compassionate and understanding to the sophisticated side of religion. And the new atheists are saying no, we need to shake things up. We need to wake them up and jolt them. I think maybe, maybe both voices need to be heard and maybe it will produce the diversity that we need to reach the most people. But if you think we're going to have the answers to these questions, all the great minds haven't figured out how to do it either. I don't, you know, I don't think I can really. I don't think I'm qualified to answer this question.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:56:56] Well, I only have one real answer to it myself or one thought on it. Tyson, before I offer that maybe we'll probably end, I don't know, who knows?

Tyson Jacobsen [00:57:06] I like both things that have been said. You talk about different voices. Randy talks, how you've got two sides of the argument. I tend to fall on the side of and knowingly so on the new atheist side. There's really nothing new about the atheist. It's the same message, but it's definitely a concerted effort, a concerted voice to point out the flaws and the reasoning and the flaws in the ethics and morality. And they don't take, I can remember Michael Shermer pointing out the flaws in Bill Maher's vaccine position. They don't take exception to. They're not saying, well if you're an atheist agnostic then we won't criticize you. They're taking aim at everybody. The main point of Sam Harris's new book is to take aim at philosophy and people that give, You know, the Chamberlain and approach to morality. He's got them well within his sights and he's trying to, to take aim at these people in their own trench, you know, so it's definitely a much more concerted effort and I think they've got a lot of ammunition to do so. I fall right in line with that approach. I think that's a bit of the, you know, if you want to say the good cop, bad cop and they're the bad cops, I would side for that. And I think you've got the other side with the Paul Kurtz's and I think Michael Schumer is kind of a guy in the middle and he tries to be less. Vitriolic and pro science and pro critical thinking and kind of a Mythbusters kind of a guy.

Randy Snyder [00:59:03] Right.

Tyson Jacobsen [00:59:05] Those guys seem to have a very broad appeal and rightly so. There's nothing but good things that these guys are pointing out about science and the importance of science and reliance upon science in today's society. So I do like the different voices approach. It appeals to a broad spectrum. And I think Certainly the Internet, YouTube, Wikipedia are fantastic tools to spread that message. And makes you wonder why, why a lot of these third world countries have restrictions upon free speech. Some of the reasons why is because it threatens their theocratic control. And not just the bad ones, but all faiths that restrict that freedom of thought and freedom of critical thinking are threatened by Google.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:00:07] Right. But you're never going to affect them positively by simply calling them outright or by the way you're acting, saying, you are a backwards people. You're never going to get them to persuade because they're going to look at you and they're going to say you're an immoral person or your society look at this. And they'll go to all the things that, that you guys would reject through the morality, the moral thinking, the ethical systems that you are working out of. You would reject the things that they are saying about you too. But you can legitimately understand the fear of contamination of their young people for this because they don't understand it. But you will never get them to listen to you or to hear your critique if they think that you think that they, they're backwards. So how do you convey to them that you see the integrity of their vision, that you respect their commitment, their love for their children, and that you convey to them that you have an equal amount of love and concern for your children? That has to be, I think the methodology, it's got to come from respect and they have to feel respected, otherwise they're going to lash out and they're going to shut down.

Tyson Jacobsen [01:01:24] Well, I can see that side of the argument and I can also see the side of calling a spade a spade. And I think it's okay to say some things are wrong,

Dan Wotherspoon [01:01:40] but you wouldn't say to your mother or whoever this loved one is, you are backwards. And so why would you then say that to an entire. Why would you paint with a broader.

Tyson Jacobsen [01:01:51] No, I said that to my, I said that to my mom. I wouldn't say it to my grandmother. For different reasons though. But I think on a political scale, this is what the UN should be doing. They shouldn't be out there saying giving protection to religion from criticism. They should be saying that everybody should be subject to criticism. I'm not afraid of criticism. I'm not afraid of being criticized based upon good evidence and then criticizing others based upon good evidence as well.

Randy Snyder [01:02:27] But until people are Educated enough to understand criticism. That's the key is education. There was a guy that was. He was actually on the Colbert Report a couple weeks ago. He's a philanthropist doing an incredibly noble project where he's got these little laptops that you could like, you can like throw them across the room. They're so durable and they're very inexpensive. And it will connect these kids in third world countries with the rest of the world. And they, you know, that's, that's like the best way for them to learn how to read and write and to learn about thoughts outside their culture. So again, I'm going to go back to education is the key.

Tyson Jacobsen [01:03:09] Is that Negroponte's one laptop per. Yeah, one laptop per child. Olpd.

Randy Snyder [01:03:13] Yes, I think that's correct.

Tyson Jacobsen [01:03:15] Yeah, they had some great things maybe a year ago that every time you bought a laptop from them, you know, it also paid for another for a laptop and a child in a developing country.

Randy Snyder [01:03:26] You're right. And they got the price down to, I think, $100 a laptop. Yeah,

Tyson Jacobsen [01:03:32] it's good stuff.

Randy Snyder [01:03:34] We have no hope of effecting change until we can get education more broadly out there to the third world countries.

Tyson Jacobsen [01:03:46] I agree. Yeah, absolutely. And that's going to. That just builds into a lot of these other social issues that, you know, when women become educated, there's, you know, it triggers a whole slew of other factors. The rise in population would be curbed, that the resources, the demand on resources would be curbed. The amount of violence, violence against women will be curbed. A lot of this really starts with education. Right behind Randy on that one.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:04:21] Good. And of course, I would not object to that either. My last 10 seconds on this would again be, you still won't get anywhere unless you can authentically, in your own heart and in your own mind and in your own soul, see that almost every person is deserving of respect for the integrity of the walk that they are trying to walk, the love that they have for their children, the fact that they, too, just like you, want to have a better world. And even if you think that they are 100% wrong, you are never going to get to that point of dialogue to reach them unless they can at first feel your respect. And so I think, I think it's very, very important for those of us who feel like we're the opposite of closed off or whatever it is to still see and really, truly believe and feel the integrity of the other person. Obviously, there's going to be the charlatans and the con people and the dictators and the tyrants who have gone crazy. But I think we owe people the benefit of the doubt that they're coming from a place of goodness and with good desires for the world. Does that make some sense?

Randy Snyder [01:05:43] Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:05:45] Okay, but let's hear the but.

Tyson Jacobsen [01:05:48] Well, I could just say for me that hearing that level of evidence and, and couched in that language of the Four Horsemen, it was something that worked with me. So I think there's going to be different tools for different people. So I hear, I hear Sam say that he receives thousands of letters, notices from people where his arguments have succeeded. And so I think the different voices. Something would work for other people, may not work for. Would not have worked for me. And then vice versa.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:06:32] Cool. Randy, any final thought on that?

Randy Snyder [01:06:35] Well, it's just. It's not really that productive when. If you're like at a dinner party with someone who then says, you know, they incorporate astrology into their worldview to just then just trash astrology, you just, you're never gonna get anywhere doing that.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:06:57] This is Back to Storm by Tim Minchem.

Randy Snyder [01:07:00] Yeah, well, she deserved it, cuz she, you know, because she's a cartoon character. If this, if this was a real. I think that there are people that are like her, but I know she's, she was made more so it'd be more funny.

Tyson Jacobsen [01:07:12] But yeah, there's certainly people like that. I could name a few right now. Yeah.

Randy Snyder [01:07:17] But I think, I think if you, if you're able to convey some respect and then just give an alternate view of astrology without being on the attack mode, I think that's a. More basically what Stephen Novella and the Skeptic Rogue say on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. They talk about this all the time. How do you be true to your skeptical self when you're at like a dinner party and somebody says something that you know, just absolute pseudoscience. And they said, don't try to change their mind on the spot. Plant a seed, let it grow. And if it takes root, great. If it doesn't, great. But you're just never going to be able to. It's not likely you're going to be able to attack their cherished belief that night and change their mind because what's the end of that storm poem? How does it end with. It might as well be 10 seconds back in time with a chance that I'll change your mind. Yeah, you're just, you know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna buy brute force beat them into submission. I don't care how calculated and accurate and precise your logic is.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:08:28] Let me just offer my thanks to you guys for your stamina, for your good humor, your willingness to, you know, put yourselves at risk. You are exposing yourself to perhaps a misunderstanding, especially for those who want then pay the price to dive in and listen to you. But I think you both have acquitted yourselves very, very well as very likable guys. I think you've put a very human and very moral face upon the secular humanist position. You've talked about your atheism in ways that I think will defang it a little bit. I think you've made some very good points. You've shown yourselves to be a bright intellig guys who are well read. You've conveyed your sense of excitement about the path that you're on. And I think that will be attractive to people who are going that direction. It wouldn't be fair for me to only leave it at that. I would have to say that you haven't persuaded me from a position to where I'm still open to a realm of connection and deep seated spirituality that falls below and that will never be touchable by the instrumentation of science. Science is important tools. I'm very concerned that my worldview is at least in good conversation with science. The things that I believe. But I believe that like a flashlight or a spotlight, scientific tools can illuminate particular realms very, very well. But we shouldn't always totalize our tool to think that we've now seen it or appeared at it all. And so I don't know that I'm really giving the most robust defense of my position that I certainly could. But I guess I would come across as a Bill Bradshaw or a Richard Bushman that say the calculus and the way I weigh various things in my

Tyson Jacobsen [01:10:35] life

Dan Wotherspoon [01:10:37] while being informed by all the things that you're informed with. I believe I've had experiences that somehow trump the explanation of bias from confirmation bias and what instruments would ever be able to touch. So to live the philosophy that's in integrity with my experiences, I've at least kept possibilities open. If you were to rank my belief in a personal God, it would probably be far below 50%. But certainly if I were to say there's a realm of interconnection that is the core of spirituality. That touching, that feeling of being somehow connected, somehow part of. To have the universe be part of me and me part of the rest of the universe and to feel at home in this very deep field of energy, you know, you got to put me in the probably in the 90% realm of that life after death, I'm probably certainly above 50%, but I'm not, you know, again I'm trying to keep the things open. So that was probably weird and I probably going to regret laying all that out for you. But I just wanted to again thank you guys for everything you've said and the way you've acquitted yourself. And I think, and I hope that we've at least modeled a respectful disagreement on those parts that we do. Even though I would still probably put us at 90% in agreement on the basic critiques and what needs to be done in the world. Have I totally straw manned any of you guys in that closing?

Randy Snyder [01:12:23] No, I don't think so, no. But this is doing this podcast is part of my elusive course quest for immortality.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:12:31] Oh good, okay.

Randy Snyder [01:12:33] Putting my essence out on the Internet for time and eternity. Very good.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:12:39] Well, 400 years from now someone will stumble across this and you will be living again that way. But in my worldview, you'll be watching the guy discover you.

Randy Snyder [01:12:53] That's the problem with atheists is we can't gloat about it if we're right because we're dead

Dan Wotherspoon [01:13:00] anyway. It's been a lot of fun guys and appreciate it and I hope the audience will enjoy it. And depending on the opinions of the other members of the braintest of Mormon Stories, we may or may not have a live call in show a few weeks after this gets released. But if we do, we'll look forward to that conversation with you guys again as well as the listeners. So thanks everyone. Good night.

Randy Snyder [01:13:28] Good night.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:13:32] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this

Tyson Jacobsen [01:13:46] episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook

Dan Wotherspoon [01:13:50] page, family newsletter, letter, or through your Ward bulletin and ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or skypixon.com that's sky with an E S K Y-E pixton.com thank you. The sun gone down.

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