Welcome and Introducing John Larsen

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am one of your hosts for today, John De lin. It is March 20, 2023. We are here in studio with the Nuance o Carah Burrell. Hey, Carah.

Carah Burrell [00:00:15] Hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:16] How you doing?

Carah Burrell [00:00:16] Great. Excited to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:18] I think you've got a. I think you're wearing Jared Wine mom. Is that right?

Carah Burrell [00:00:22] Yeah. Jared Anderson. Winemon. Jared. Follow him on Instagram. All my clothes are from him on every live stream. Other than that, I don't have any personality outside of going to Taylor Swift in three days, so.

John Dehlin [00:00:32] Oh, you are just a swifty. You're swifty. Swifty, Carah. Well, today we are so excited on Mormon Stories Podcast to be bringing to you another in our amazing series with John Larsen. Let's bring. Let's bring the man the myth of legend on. Hey, John Larsen. How you doing?

John Larsen [00:00:50] Hey, guys. I'm wearing the JCPenney Husky Boy series, so. But they're not paying me a sponsorship. Yeah, I don't know.

Carah Burrell [00:01:00] Looking good, Looking good. Good to see you, man.

John Larsen [00:01:02] Thanks.

John Dehlin [00:01:03] So we apologize to our. Our viewing and listening audience. We tried to do this episode with John a few weeks ago, and we're still working out a few of the kinks. The Internet, I think Satan. You know how like the Doctrine and Covenant says that Satan has control the waters. John, is it possible Satan has control of the Internet too?

John Larsen [00:01:19] It could be. We could also be broadcasting during like the. The hour when everybody streams tv, you know, but we did a bunch of upgrades, move them things around. Obviously, I'm upstairs. I'm not in the. The basement of iniquity, so I think we are. I think we're good to go.

John Dehlin [00:01:37] All right, well, for those of you who don't know, John Larsen, once upon a time ran one of the most important podcasts in the history of Mormonism. Carah says the most important podcast in the history of Mormonism. Is that right?

Carah Burrell [00:01:50] Somebody says that they got deconverted through John Larsen's podcasts. You know that they're all right.

John Larsen [00:01:55] Hey, I will tell you why it was the most important one. And this is something that Dr. Dehlin told me himself when we started Mormon Expression, John had taken a break. He'd been doing Mormon stories for what, a year and a half, two years, and kind of burned out a little bit, was doing some other things. And then we inspired John to get back. So if it wasn't for us, John, John would have retired and gone off into another realm of existence. So you are welcome.

John Dehlin [00:02:25] There's truth to that. Thank You, John Larsen. Yeah. I had started my PhD and my professor was like, you're not going to be running a podcast while you're getting a PhD. So I retired it. But then you guys started kicking so much butt, I was, like, biting my. I was, like, biting my palm and saying, I got to get back. I was jonesing for Mormon podcasting, so. You're right. You get all the credit, John Larsen.

John Larsen [00:02:45] Yeah, thanks. No, no, you. You've done God's work, John. You have. You've moved the needle, man.

John Dehlin [00:02:51] No, but in all seriousness, listeners and viewers, the. The episodes on Mormon Expression are really important contributions to the Library of Mormon thought and Mormon expression, no pun intended. We. We helped John resurrect those from hackers and Soviet Ne' er Do Wells. You can check out the entire Library of Mormon Expression podcast on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, wherever you consume your podcasts. And this. This podcast is brought to you by those who have donated to mormonstories.org mormonexpression, which pays for both John and Carah each month. Now, really quickly, I, you know, every once in a while. Yeah. By the way, I'll just say this, that I just had world cult expert Stephen Hass and Dr. Stephen Hasson here in Salt Lake City for a week. Car. You had him on the show, right?

Carah Burrell [00:03:47] Yeah, I have a episode on my Nuance how channel coming out tomorrow morning with Stephen Hassan.

John Dehlin [00:03:52] Yeah, yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:03:52] Just laughing because it's just been a wild, wild, fun week. Yeah, Steven freaking hasn't, you know.

John Dehlin [00:03:59] Well, he. He was really emphatic about how healthy and important anger is. And while we, we. These Mormon Expression episodes provide a full range of emotions, from humor to heartfelt sadness and empathy to sometimes anger. We do like to provide a little bit of a content warning for those who are sensitive to authentic emotions, raw in every direction and occasionally profanity. Do you sometimes swear on these? Carah?

Carah Burrell [00:04:27] Sometimes I push the mic around away and say the F word and I get told that I need to, like, get off of podcasting because I can't control myself. So I get all kinds of range of. Of what I should be told to do.

John Dehlin [00:04:40] And I'll just say I'm proud to have John Larsen and Carah Barrel on Mormon Stories Podcast. And we'll just give a content warning. If you're not into. If you're not at a place where you can handle occasional anger or potty words, just. Just move on to the next episode and come back when you're ready. What do you have to say about that, John Larsen?

John Larsen [00:04:58] Yeah, you Know, Mormon expression was the short name. The actual long name was more Mormon Expression of fucking Rage was the name of the, of the podcast.

John Dehlin [00:05:08] Yeah. So there's your warning, there's your content, but I think it's impossible to. I think it's very important to be supporting John Larsen. So, anyway, John Larsen, do you, do you want to tell us what the episode is going to be about today, or do you want to jump into announcements first? Where do you want to start today?

Setting the Stage: What Is Happiness?

John Larsen [00:05:27] Well, we're going to talk about happiness. Just. I, you know, I want to give a shout out to the folks up in Seattle. I just got back yesterday. I went up to Thrive Seattle. We had a. A great time. And just a plug for Thrive. I know you were involved in setting that up, John, but you've handed it off to others and, you know, you can contact the Thrive people and set one up in your city or help, but it's, it's. Everybody who goes always is glad they went.

John Dehlin [00:05:57] Let's go ahead and go to the announcements.

John Larsen [00:06:00] Yeah, well, I guess I don't really have any. I think I saw in the chat there, people were asking what my opinion was on the church giving up those water shares, and I say, yay, bravo. Well done. That's the first step. Let's keep going. We're talking about the Great Salt Lake, and the church donated some water shares that it has to go to refill the Great Salt Lake.

John Dehlin [00:06:25] John, did you ever find out how significant of a contribution those water shares will be to the lake? Is it just a drop in the bucket or is it. Is that a pun? Is that a pun?

John Larsen [00:06:38] My understanding, and I don't have a source for this, it's in my head. It's the equivalent of like either 20 or 40,000 households. So it's not enough to reverse course, but it sounds like it is something that is moving in the right direction. But I will say this. I don't want to turn it negative, because this is good. This is a. A good step forward. But we will know the church is serious when their green lawns go brown, when they let the lawns go dormant and they stop watering the temple lands and all the churches. So when they give up that water share, we'll know they're serious.

John Dehlin [00:07:18] Yeah. All right, well, kudos, Mormon Church, for doing some good.

Carah Burrell [00:07:24] Do I get to say anything critical? Please, Carah, we can say anything critical.

John Dehlin [00:07:27] You can say whatever you want.

Carah Burrell [00:07:28] I just. My babysitter went to the conference where they released it all, and they had Governor Cox speak. And if anyone has the. The video of Governor Cox speaking. I heard it was a real shit show. Speaking like he was like Trump at a rally, like at a base, and they're all scientists. And he was like, making fun of scientists and things like that. And then the bishop spoke when they were releasing, talking about these water shares. And it's that whole, you know, Matthew 6:1, the whole like, take heed that ye not do your aims before men, and. Or else you have your reward from your Father in heaven.

John Dehlin [00:08:01] But they made dreams or alms.

Carah Burrell [00:08:03] Isn't that Ames?

John Dehlin [00:08:04] Alms.

Carah Burrell [00:08:05] Alms.

John Dehlin [00:08:06] No big deal.

Carah Burrell [00:08:06] I closed my eyes to pretend that I wasn't reading it. So anyway, the point is, is it's. The church does these things when they make sure they get good PR and propaganda. As somebody who did church pr, I know this all too well, that they make sure that they have cameras, lights, action, news release when they do anything for the community. They would never want to let a good task that they're doing go unphotographed.

John Dehlin [00:08:31] But, but I mean, you. You could argue that it's in their self interest to not have Salt Lake City become a toxic wasteland, right? Why are you laughing, Josh?

John Larsen [00:08:42] That's what's interesting, because that is a sentence we can all agree with.

John Dehlin [00:08:48] So, I mean, they may have good intentions, right, Carah?

Carah Burrell [00:08:50] Yeah, I mean, it's. It is. It's interesting, though, like I said with Governor Cox, and he was saying, like, I prayed that I. I told everyone to pray so that we could get more rain. What more do you want me to do? So you have, like, you know, these different factions of legislatures that are involved in Mormonism where they think that their version of praying and things where you have that satisfaction then combating, right. Against the scientists telling them what's actually going to be best. So there's this butting heads in Utah, and the scientists are going to need to win out and we need to just be like, sh. No more prayers. Just do the. Just do what the scientists say. We do need to save Salt Lake.

John Dehlin [00:09:28] One of the funniest things that people who live in Utah will know is that they don't pray for rain in Utah. What do they pray for, John? What do they.

John Larsen [00:09:35] They pray for moisture.

John Dehlin [00:09:37] They pray for moisture. Literally. If you're at a sacred meeting in Cache Valley, you'll hear them get up and say, dear Heavenly Father, please help there to be more moisture. And they'll say, moisture. Was that true with you, Carah?

Carah Burrell [00:09:50] Yeah, because it's like, you don't want to say rain. Cause Then heavenly fathers be like, okay, how much rain do you want? It's. I don't want to say snow because it's just snow. God's, like, very pedantic. He's like, you need to see moisture. So I have a general sense of what you want.

John Dehlin [00:10:01] Otherwise God won't know. Yeah, which one? Yeah, because you want it to be year round, right?

Carah Burrell [00:10:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:06] So they're, they're, they're very specific with God so that God doesn't send the wrong type.

Carah Burrell [00:10:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:13] Like the wrong state of liquid. Right. You don't want God to sit in the wrong.

Carah Burrell [00:10:16] I literally always thought that's what it was. Don't you guys think that's what it was? So you just want to give God his options.

John Dehlin [00:10:24] All right, all right. What else you got for us, John Larsen?

John Larsen [00:10:26] Well, that's all the announcements I have. Are we ready to jump in and start talking about happiness?

John Dehlin [00:10:32] Let's do it.

Carah Burrell [00:10:32] Your voice sounds great, too.

John Dehlin [00:10:33] So what's that for us? What are we going to be talking about today?

John Larsen [00:10:38] Well, we want to kind of thread the needle of happiness. Happiness is something that Mormons talk about quite a bit, and they talk about more often now than they did in the past. And I want to kind of like unpack what's going on here and why. This is such an interesting topic, but we're going to be moving fast and loose through a lot of things, so buckle up, let's go on a ride. Okay, should we first define happiness?

John Dehlin [00:11:06] Yeah, let's do it.

John Larsen [00:11:07] All right. Everybody knows what happiness is. It's not mysterious. Like, it's literally a topic that they introduced to preschoolers. They put happy and sad on the wall. It's right there in your firmware. You know what it means to be happy. You know what it means to feel sad. Does anybody want to fight me on that point?

John Dehlin [00:11:25] So, like, positive chemicals in your brain, whether it's dopamine or serotonin or. What's the other one? Oxytocin.

John Larsen [00:11:32] Oxytocin and endorphins. Let's go through those four, shall we?

John Dehlin [00:11:35] Okay. Yeah, yeah.

John Larsen [00:11:36] Dopamine is known as the feel good drug. Right. It's a neurotransmitter that's a part of your reward system. So pleasurable sensations, it's associated with positive learning and memory and that sort of thing. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps you regulate your mood, helps regulate appetite and sleep and learning and memory. It just kind of gives you a steadiness.

John Larsen [00:12:01] Oxytocin, which Is called the love hormone. Right. It's emitted during childbirth, during breastfeeding, and creates strong bond, parent child bonding. It's also used in human sexual pair bonding and mating and generally associated with affection. And then endorphins are your body's natural kick and pain reliever.

John Larsen [00:12:31] And they are produced in response to stress or discomfort or exciting situations like being on a roller coaster. The only thing that I would add to this is also adrenaline. Oftentimes when you're really in a place and you're really excited, there's a big adrenaline hit, which can be very positive. People get addicted to that and they start skydiving and doing all sorts of things. So we have all these chemical reward systems in our brain that have evolved to reward us when we do certain behaviors that are, that are, that are helpful to us.

John Larsen [00:13:09] And one of those behaviors is if we form tight bonds and form community and basically love and take care of one another. That's, that's part of the human genome.

Neurochemicals, Reinforcers, and the Science of Happiness

John Dehlin [00:13:20] Okay, and you're probably, I'm guessing you're going to talk about reinforcers and how these neurochemicals play a role of, of re. Reinforcing behavior. Is that true? Am I getting.

John Larsen [00:13:31] I wasn't going to go down there, but, but, but please, maybe give us the, the overview of that.

John Dehlin [00:13:35] Well, I'm, I'm in no way. I, I know nothing, but I'll just.

Carah Burrell [00:13:39] Let me ask. Chat. GPT.

John Dehlin [00:13:40] Go ahead. Yeah, yeah, please. Smart. I, I hear a new version just came out that could pass the bar. That could get a 90 on the bar. Anyway. Yeah, so, I mean, as I understand it, your, your brain wants, you know, your, your, your neurochemicals are there in part to kind of do just basic behavioral reinforcement when you, you know, if you touch a stove, obviously your, your nervous system is going to make you feel crappy on your finger to try and teach you. Well, number one, to tell you to take your hand off, but also to tell you never to do that again.

John Dehlin [00:14:16] And, and if you're sad or if you are, you know, angry, those, those neurochemicals are telling you things like take a look at your life or make some changes or, you know, fight because something's coming at you or, or object to something. And, and obviously these positive chemicals are there to get you to do things that are probably good for the species, good for your own survival, and good for reproduction. So whether it's having sex or playing with your kid, that's good for, you know, if your kid makes you happy and then you want to play with your kid more because they make you happy, that's good for the survival of your kid.

John Dehlin [00:14:54] If you love your spouse and they make you happy and you make them happy, you're going to have a stronger marriage which is going to help you live longer and it's going to be or a relationship and it'll be good for your kids growing to adulthood, et cetera. So these neurochemicals provide positive reinforcements in ways that lead to adaptive behaviors, operant

Carah Burrell [00:15:14] conditioning, the type of learning in which behaviors are shaped by their consequences.

John Dehlin [00:15:18] Absolutely. Thank you.

John Larsen [00:15:20] Chat Carah Caregpt all good information, but the important point for everybody to focus on is that happiness is not a state of being. Although we talk about it that way and we seek it out that way and there's a lot of self help people who are selling it that way. But happiness comes as surges and we experience it as such. Now there are some, some very positive kind of more long term emotional states like contentment, ease, being comfortable, but you really don't experience happiness as a continual state. And actually we've kind of gotten off on that in American culture at least where we do talk about and look at happiness as if we can be perpetually happy all the time.

John Larsen [00:16:16] And that's just not the way the human brain works. These are chemicals that surge through, that were evolved to make certain things happen. We just went over. They are not like if you become enlightened, you'll have high dopamine levels like all the time. It would probably get you sick for one thing. And I think it'd become very uncomfortable if you were having all of those hormones surging through you constantly.

John Dehlin [00:16:44] Yeah, like if you take heroin all the time or if you take cocaine all the time, you know, anything that's going to make you feel good in the moment, it, it literally fries your nervous system over time. Your, your nervous system is not meant to be overloaded and you know that that's just like if you have cortisol in your system all the time, you're gonna fry, your kids are gonna develop, you're gonna, you're gonna develop heart disease and all sorts of problems. John, are you going to get into the happiness trap psychologically?

John Larsen [00:17:13] Yeah. Yeah, let's kind of go there next. So, so what does the church say about happiness? That that's, this is kind of the nut and where we're going to go and then we kind of need to unpack that. I read far and wide in church stuff and I came up with four. The church defines happiness in four Four different ways. Are you ready for those four definitions?

What the LDS Church Teaches About Happiness

John Dehlin [00:17:38] Carrie, you ready? All right. We're ready, Big John.

John Larsen [00:17:41] Okay, the first one is to be sin free. And I'm going to go to Alma 41:4 for this. And Alma says, therefore all things shall be restored to their proper order, even everything to its natural frame. Mortality raised to immortality, corruption to incorruption, raised to endless happiness to inherit the kingdom of God, or endless misery to inherit the kingdom of the devil. The one on one hand, the other on the other. The one raised to happiness according to his desire of happiness, or good according to his desire of good, and the other to evil according to his desire of evil. For as he has desired to do evil all the day long, even shall he have his reward of evil when the night cometh. Oh, I'm sorry. This stuff is so hard to read.

John Dehlin [00:18:32] So no sin is happiness.

John Larsen [00:18:35] No sin is happiness. And there's another one that's kind of the second definition that's buried in there, too, which is happiness is the afterlife. So that's our second definition. Whatever happens to us in heaven is happiness. And it's. It's defined over and over again as this perpetual unending state of. Of. Of. Of. Of happiness.

Carah Burrell [00:19:01] So that our brains would. Our bodies that are going to be resurrected, there's our brains. Like John just said, we can't possibly be able to live in this constant state of these chemicals. So it also just kind of leads into the thought of, like, what is this weird state of happiness that this mortal body will be resurrected as God? Just like. Just trust me. I don't. Yeah, that doesn't even make sense.

John Larsen [00:19:22] Well, if you remember, a few episodes ago, I reviewed the 11 systems of the body, and we talked about how on resurrection, none of them made any sense. So you do run into that problem here that you're saying. Okay, happiness, which we know we can reproduce happiness by injecting these chemicals into people, is a state of those chemicals being turned up to 11 all the time. And, you know, biochemically, that. That. That really wouldn't work. It would not be fun at all.

John Dehlin [00:19:55] Yeah, I guess that makes sense. You know, if we resurrect with our serotonin levels and our dopamine levels and our adrenaline levels, and the systems work identically, because why wouldn't they then, if we're happy all the time? Yeah, the systems. That's not how the systems are built. Is that what we're saying?

Carah Burrell [00:20:11] Yeah. I mean, our bodies were evolved. Have evolved over millennia to get to the point that they are right now to reinforce these types of behaviors that are advantage species. But the church believes that the earth is 7,000 years old and that we started with Adam and Eve. So they have two very different sets. And I was reading a talk before we started about happiness from the church and the general authority said that happiness, that when we feel happiness right now, it is a memory implanted from deity that we are supposed to remember that this was the state of our being before earth, we're here to be tested, and that we're supposed to strive like a carrot on a stick to be in that constant state in the afterlife.

Carah Burrell [00:20:48] And so the entire paradigm of Mormonism is just this 7,000 years that this happiness is from God and that that's where exactly where we're going. And I just don't, I again, I don't believe buy into the Mormon paradigm of planet happiness whatsoever because if you don't take evolution into account, you don't understand yourself. And if you don't understand yourself in your brain and what you're doing here, then all of the other Mormon fiction that's heaped upon it is just going to be fiction, not going to be helpful and advantageous to true happiness if you don't understand your body.

John Dehlin [00:21:18] All right, anyway.

John Larsen [00:21:19] All right, so I was reading that passage and I got kind of bored by it. But let me skip down to verse 10 because this one's important. Do not suppose, because it has been spoken concerning restoration, that ye shall be restored from sin to happiness. Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness. So he does the double juxtaposition and he has sin, happiness and wickedness never was happiness. So this definition shows up over and over and over again in conference talks and in scriptures that the state of sin is the opposite of happiness. Ergo, happiness is a state of being sin free.

John Dehlin [00:22:03] Happiness is no sin. Wickedness is not happiness. Right, right. Okay.

John Larsen [00:22:09] That's our definition number one. And then I gave you the kind of throwaway definition number two, which I don't really have a, I didn't grab a source for, but the afterlife being happiness, I think that one is so common I doubt anybody will challenge me on that one. Okay, so the next definition is happiness is the nuclear family.

John Larsen [00:22:34] Okay, so let's read into that a little bit. We're going to go to some modern day prophets. If you search for plan of salvation or plan of happiness on the church's website, it will direct you as the first hit to this talk by Boyd k. Packer from 2015 and the church started A little bit before that, but after this, they really leaned into it. They're redefining the plan of salvation. We talked about that a couple episodes before as the plan of happiness. So they're starting to substitute that word happiness for salvation, just tautologically, just basically swapping them out, which is consistent with what we were just talking about a second ago.

John Larsen [00:23:22] But here's what Boyd K. Packer said. Over the years, I have frequently taught an important principle. The end of all activity in the church is to see that a man and a woman with their children are happy at home, sealed together for time and all eternity. The commandment to multiply and replenish the earth has never been rescinded. It is essential to the plan of redemption, and it is the source of human happiness.

John Larsen [00:23:49] Through the righteous exercise of this power, we may come close to our Father in heaven and experience a fullness of joy, even godhood. The power of procreation is not an incidental part of the plan. It is the plan of happiness. It is the key to happiness. So Packer is saying that being in a traditional nuclear, male, female relationship in which you're procreating is the very definition of happiness.

John Dehlin [00:24:28] Yeah. And I'm looking right now at the proclamation on the family, and I just searched for the word happiness, and it says the divine plan of happiness. That's the first appearance of the word happy. In the third paragraph of the proclamation on the family, it says the divine plan of happiness. What does it do? Carah, what does the divine plan of happiness do? It enables what?

Carah Burrell [00:24:54] Bring about eternal life and exaltation. From it.

John Dehlin [00:24:58] I put you on the spot. The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the mortal grave. Yep, beyond the grave. So that's it. That's the great plan of happiness. It makes it so families can be together forever. That's it. It's right there.

Carah Burrell [00:25:16] So simple.

John Dehlin [00:25:17] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:25:17] All right. And let's. Let's. Let's talk about Dallin Oaks. He has something to say here. And he said, maleness and femaleness. Femaleness and maleness. Maleness and femaleness. Marriage and the bearing and nurturing of children are all essential to the great plan of happiness. Modern revelation makes clear that what we call gender was part of our existence prior to birth. Then a few paragraphs down. Outside the bonds of marriage, all uses of the procreative power are, to one degree or another, a sinful, degrading, and perversion of the most divine attribute of men and women. The Book of Mormon teaches that unchastity is most abominable above all other sins, save the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost. Now, can we take a pit stop here? I want to. This is a little bit off topic, but I want to unpack this a little bit. Are you okay with that?

John Dehlin [00:26:11] Yeah, let's do it.

John Larsen [00:26:12] Okay. So. So Oakes is not satisfied with Boyd K. Packers. You know, we've pointed out in the podcast before the Oaks, even before he was a member of the 12, is absolutely obsessed with. With gayness, with any sort of what he would call deviancy from the standard model of procreation and sex.

John Larsen [00:26:38] But what's funny here is he goes further than Packer. It's not enough for him to say, okay, you need to only have sex with your spouse to whom you're married. He says, outside the bonds of marriage, all uses of the procreative power are, to one degree or another, a sinful, degrading and perversion of the most divine attribute of men and women.

John Larsen [00:27:04] And the Book of Mormon teaches that unchastity is most abominable above all sins, save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost. And I think it's fascinating that they feel like they have to put the word innocent.

John Larsen [00:27:17] So they're saying, Pat Oaks here is quoting Joseph Smith from the Book of Mormon, saying that there's only two things worse than any perversion of the sexual power. And a perversion of the sexual power is to use it in any way outside of marriage.

John Larsen [00:27:38] And he's saying that it is abominable above all sins, save the shedding of innocent blood. Not any blood. Innocent blood. Or denying the Holy Ghost. So, as a public service to you all, I have made a list of things that are less abominable in God's eyes than masturbation. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:27:59] Okay.

John Larsen [00:28:00] So these are things that in the eternal punishment scale, God hates less than little boys or little girls who touch their pee pees. Okay? Torture, torturing guilty people to death, genital mutilation, running Ponzi schemes, embezzlement, arson, drug trafficking, forging documents, including forging holy scripture documents, racketeering, getting a dui. Remember? Now, these are all things that are less serious in the minds of the church than you pulling your chain, than you flipping your bean.

Carah Burrell [00:28:46] He gave us an amusement park. It just feels rude, right?

John Larsen [00:28:50] So sabotage, counterfeiting, drug and alcohol abuse, espionage, Anything that you want to do to an animal, no matter how vile, how gross, how disgusting it is, it is less of a sin than masturbation, theft. You could salt the fields of your enemy and destroy their ability to create food. Food. That's less of a sin than masturbation. Physically abusing your spouse. You can beat the shit out of your spouse and that is not as bad in the view of Mormonism as touching your ding dong slavery. You can enslave an entire people and any type of psychological manipulation. These are all less serious sins in the eyes of the church than having sex outside marriage or anything like unto it.

Carah Burrell [00:29:42] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:29:43] Yeah. And I think you could add like just, you know, what about same sex? What about same sex committed love and sexuality? What about even monogamous, legally married, same sex intimacy? You know, all those things. You know, it's okay to include that as something that they're basically saying is, is a horrendous, terrible thing, right?

John Larsen [00:30:05] Well, we have early prophets, seers and revelators who gave us direction on this because in the early days of the church, there were people who would join the church and leave their spouse, both men and women, and not get a divorce. And the early church fathers said that that was fine because marriage that doesn't happen in the temple is actually not real. So in the church's stated view, which as far as I know, they've never countered that, that none of that, that is all still sexual abomination, because you don't, you're not sealed for time and all eternity before you have sex.

John Dehlin [00:30:45] All right, well, Carah, any, any quick thoughts in response to that?

Carah Burrell [00:30:49] No, and I just would like to add that a lot of people, I know this sounds like kind of hyperbolic language, but what's running through my head is people do act like same sex marriage is the most horrible sin that is going to destroy our nation. That all of a sudden like straight people won't exist. Remember, John, how I redid my, my Rod Meldrum thing and, and, and there's just this catastrophic mindset of so many people like Rod Meldrum and very traditionalist Mormons and religious people all over the country in the world, I guess that like. But gay people, if we just allow. Gay people like Rod Meldrum said in that interview that like, we'll just think about it.

Carah Burrell [00:31:24] If everyone was gay, then we wouldn't have any more kids. Be like, that's literally not what we're talking about right now because some people are gay. That means nobody can be gay. Because. Yeah, you guys know, I don't need to finish the argument for you, but there's just this insanely out of control slippery slope argument where they do act like same sex marriage and Sexuality and that the morals of America and the. Everything is just going downhill right now. And we don't need to pay attention to torture, Guantanamo Bay or Ponzi schemes or, you know, people being ripped off and wealth and inequality and not having health care.

Carah Burrell [00:31:57] There's a million better things that we could be paying to in the country. Paying attention to in the country. But yes, there are people who, they want to look at other people's sin and think that that is just the end of the world. And their case has not been made yet. We've had gay marriage for a while. The case has not been made that it's the end of the world yet.

John Dehlin [00:32:13] Yeah, not yet. John, what, what your, your illustration reminds me of is the November 2015 policy where the church declared legal same sex marriage as being an immediate. As immediately meriting a disciplinary council and excommunication, which raised legal same sex marriage as a, as a sin. Worse than, you know, rape and murder and incest, because none of those things necessarily mandatorily required a disciplinary council. And it just shows how weird and twisted the church is around matters of sex.

John Larsen [00:32:56] Well, and further than that, around the same time, the church created a policy that didn't last very long. Thank God for modern revelation. They created a policy that if you wanted to get baptized and your parents were in a same sex relationship, you had to denounce your parents. They were not going to baptize the children. Forget everything the church has ever said about children being innocent and not returning the sins of the father and all that stuff. When push came to shove, we, we saw their true colors.

John Dehlin [00:33:31] Yeah, that's interesting. I never thought about that. There was never a rule that if your parents, you know, defraud the entire community, you have to denounce that behavior. There was never a rule, you know, that said that if you're, you know, if your parents, you know, are physically abusive with each other, you have to denounce that behavior. I think it's the only time in the history of ever that Mormon church leaders required children to denounce their parents. And the one thing they're going to pick, the one time they're going to require kids to join the church. You know, the requirement of denouncing their parents is going to be when they get legally same sex married. That's kind of weird.

Carah Burrell [00:34:12] It's like white collar crimes. Like which one literally individual Mormon person who. White collar crimes that literally actually affect all of us as Americans and things like that versus like two gay people getting married. Which one really, really Hurts your quality of life, but that's the one that they have to denounce.

John Dehlin [00:34:29] Anyway, we're probably off track. Go ahead, John.

Four Mormon Definitions of Happiness

John Larsen [00:34:31] Okay, so we've, we've gotten, we've had three definitions of happiness so far. Remember, number one is sin free. Number two is just heaven. Heaven is happiness. Number three is the nuclear family with straight vanilla regular sex. And now definition number four, which is happiness is what is found by keeping the law of the gospel. Let's turn to Bruce R. McConkie for this one.

John Larsen [00:35:01] So Bruce R. Said that if you open Mormon doctrine, when you look up happiness in Mormon doctrine, it says see joy. See joy. So then you can go and look up joy. And it says this here, in mortality, men gain joy only by obedience to gospel law.

John Larsen [00:35:26] And on a related. So here we have obedience to gospel law, which is different than sinning. I want to point this out because the gospel law has all sorts of different things in it. We're going to turn to that in just a second. Second. But I want to read what Joseph Smith said, confirming Bruce Harr, which is this. Happiness is the object and design of our existence and will be the end thereof if we pursue the path that leads to it. And this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping the commandments of God. Now, there's something special about that quote, Carah. I'm sure you know what it is.

Carah Burrell [00:36:05] Yeah, just get horny just hearing it. So it's a real good, come on letter. Like the, you know, happiness. There's some people, there's this thing called polygamy. And listen, young sexy lady, there's other people who are not gonna get it. But what's wrong in one context is actually right in this one.

John Larsen [00:36:22] So if you read a Mormon manual, you'll see this quote everywhere. And they always quote the teachings of prophet Joseph Smith as compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith or Joseph F. Smith. And they never give the real source, which is a letter that Joseph Smith wrote to Sidney Rigdon's daughter, Nancy Rigdon, when she was 17 years old, because he wanted to fuck her, he was trying to convince her that he could sleep with her on the sly. And because the ultimate goal of this life is happiness. And as long as you're doing it right. And hey, if you're doing it with the prophet of God, you're doing it right, man. You know what I'm saying? And then that was happiness. This is the most twisted, perverted quote in all of Mormonism. And I just have to pause and point that out.

John Dehlin [00:37:14] And I think we'll have Maven put in the show notes. The LDS discussions episode on the happiness Letter, of course, we get that from Jonathan Streeter. He did an episode on that. And I think Bill Real and, and RFM have covered it too. But the, the happiness letter that Joseph Smith wrote to Nancy Rigdon is one of the most gut wrenching, disgusting, horrible things.

Carah Burrell [00:37:38] Yeah. If you go to lds.org like I did earlier today, churchofjesuschrist.org and type in happiness, you'll just see boom, boom, boom. Happiness is the design and object of our existence. And it's in so many conference talks. I'm just saying this to people who might not be LDS or X Mormon and not know that this talk is regurgitated all the time in these general conference talks. And you'd never know the context is exactly what John Larsen just explained, that it is very seedy, manipulative, sexual, deviant behavior.

John Dehlin [00:38:08] Basically, the number one quoted passage on happiness in the history of Mormonism is written by a sexual predator trying to seduce a teenage girl to have sex with Joseph Smith. Am I wrong? John Larsen? Did I overstate that?

John Larsen [00:38:22] That's exactly right.

Carah Burrell [00:38:24] Thank you.

John Larsen [00:38:24] Yeah, if it wasn't so terrible, it'd be funny, but I guess it is still funny. But Nancy rebuffed him. So this story ends positively. She's like, no way. Creepy old guy, go away.

John Dehlin [00:38:36] She's one of the heroes of Mormonism along with William Law and a couple others. Really quickly, I'm just gonna shout out, give a shout out to Janet Shaw Bins. She gave us a super chat. Those of you who are viewing through YouTube, you can donate to this episode through the super chat feature. Janet Shaw Bins did, and she writes, John Larsen, thrive. Chicagoland loves you too. So I guess Chicago wants to have you out. John Larsen, are you willing? Are you willing?

John Larsen [00:39:04] Buy my plane ticket and I'll come.

John Dehlin [00:39:06] All right. And you know, thanks to everyone who who donates to make this show possible. All right, back to you, John Larsen.

John Larsen [00:39:13] Okay, so we have laid down four definitions of happiness, and now the fun is going to begin. All right, so the one according to Mormons is no sin be completely sin free. The other is, you got to just wait till heaven. Happiness is what comes when you're in heaven. Third is nuclear family, procreative sex only. And the fourth is what is found by keeping the law of the gospel. Now, the law of the gospel is something that's really interesting because we actually covenant in the temple to obey. It's one of the few covenants that you make and you have to bow your head and say yes to covenant, to follow the law of the gospel.

John Larsen [00:39:55] Like according to this definition, the law of the gospel, even when Joseph Smith is trying to seduce a young woman, he refers to the law of the Gospel. It is ostensibly one of the only four ways to get happy, or you have to do all of them, I would guess, but to get happiness. So it's really very important, right?

John Dehlin [00:40:14] Yeah, absolutely.

John Larsen [00:40:16] So the law of the gospel we would know from going to church is actually a lot of different commandments and laws, right?

John Dehlin [00:40:22] Yep.

John Larsen [00:40:22] The most important thing we're sent on this planet to obey the law of the Gospel. It's like the whole purpose.

John Dehlin [00:40:29] Yep, that's it. It's still obey. Obedience is the first law of heaven, as they say.

John Larsen [00:40:34] Okay, so what is it? The law of the gospel.

John Dehlin [00:40:38] Oh,

John Larsen [00:40:40] right. I mean if this is, if this is the whole design of our existence is to obey this set of rules that they talk about non stop, where are they?

John Dehlin [00:40:53] All right, so, so devil, how many are there? You want me to play devil's advocate?

John Larsen [00:40:57] Like, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:40:58] I, I imagine an apologist is going to say the, the best place to start maybe is with your baptism covenants to mourn with those that mourn that you know, to, to serve, to love, to be kind, etc, and then they'll probably jump to the covenants you make when you take out your endowment, whether it's the law of tithing or the law of chastity or the law of consecration. What is it? The law of the gospel? What are the covenants you make in the temple? Does anybody remember Anyway, let's just say they might say that. John Larsen.

John Larsen [00:41:31] Yes, of course they would say that. Yeah, yeah. You're spot on, John. It's like you've done this before, but so why not do that? Why not make a list? Why has no one ever made a list of the laws that were just the rules? Mormonism is full of rules. Mormons love rules. Why has no one ever made a list of the rules now? And why is it when anybody tries those books get on banned book lists within 20 or 30 years after their publication?

John Dehlin [00:42:05] Yeah, you could argue that Mormon. Well, you could argue that Doctrines of Salvation was the attempt of Joseph Fielding Smith to put together all the doctrines of salvation. Right?

John Larsen [00:42:15] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:42:16] Now that's kind of banned. Rousseau, McConkie put Mormon doctrine Together. That's kind of banned since W. Kimball put Miracle Forgiveness together. That's kind of canceled. Like. Yeah, you're right, John Larsen. How about journal discourses like There were multi volumes of prophetic council and utterances. Now, correlation says you're not allowed to quote from journal discourses unless there's literally no other source. That's better. So, yeah, I guess anyone who tries to make that list, John, gets banned by Desiree.

John Larsen [00:42:48] The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, which was written and compiled at great expense just about what, 30 years ago, has been disappeared down the memory hole that the Mormons gave away to libraries. There was actually a Compendium written about 2001, a small book that had, it looked like it was when they were getting ready to phase out Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon doctrine that they wrote. That's gone down the memory hole. Of course, Bruce R. McConkie's Book. Bruce R. McConkie's book was a rewrite of his father in law's book called Mormon Doctrine by Joseph Fielding Smith, which was a rewrite of his father's book called Mormon Doctrine by Joseph F. Smith. But the most important thing, let me belabor this point. Is that you keep the law of the gospel and the central purpose of this whole thing has not been defined. That is not by mistake. That is not just an omission.

John Dehlin [00:43:51] Yeah. And honestly, it's because, you know, I think, John Larsen, you've made the point. Not only, not only has, has the gospel never changed. Tell me if I've got this right, John Larsen, not only has the, the gospel of the church, Jesus Christ, you know, experience changes, but isn't it you who said, John Larsen, that of all the major doctrines that anyone could list, they've all changed significantly over the years, Is that right?

John Larsen [00:44:18] I have thrown the challenge down years ago and I'll renew it tonight. I have yet to run into a single doctrine of the church that has not been altered in some way. And I challenge anybody to find one that, that has been untouched.

John Dehlin [00:44:36] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:44:37] Okay, so, so we have four definitions. Right. And that. Let's, let's talk about them a little bit. All right, so the first one, people are full of sin, aren't happy. We, we can look at.

John Dehlin [00:44:50] Make the point. Can I just make the point? Like.

John Larsen [00:44:51] Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:44:52] I'm sorry, this is probably a tiny bit repetitive, but, you know, there's a reason why, like in civil society we have laws and they enumerate them and they codify them with numbers. It's so that you know what, you know, you, you know what you can and can't do, and you know what the punishments are if, if you do the wrong thing and there's sentencing guidelines tied to infractures of the law. And. And that. That's like basic rule of law and it's basic informed consent.

John Dehlin [00:45:23] And it just, It's. It seems like the rules that govern civil society. God, kind of Mormon. Mormon, I guess. Mormon. Heavenly Father wants a pass and doesn't want to have to follow the rules of civil society. He wants you to be. It's just not fair to be held eternally accountable for a list of laws and consequences that he's not willing to provide. I think that's your point. Is that your point?

John Larsen [00:45:47] Yeah, yeah, at least in part. But my point is also you. You can find, like it says in Doctrine Covenants, 88, that you should only eat meat in the winter or in times of famine. It's very clear.

John Dehlin [00:45:59] 89.

John Larsen [00:46:00] It's not ambiguous.

John Dehlin [00:46:01] 89. Right.

John Larsen [00:46:02] 89. 89. Yeah. Sorry. The word of wisdom, and it says you shouldn't drink hot liquids. In the early days of the church, they wouldn't drink soup. It was against. They didn't like. It's in black and white. So the problem here, and I'm saying it is not a flaw, it is a feature of Mormonism, is that the central thing you're supposed to do is not defined, and it can't be defined and it won't be defined. And where it is defined, we don't really hold to it because we want the ability to, you know, to make things up as we go along. In the podcast over the years, John, you've documented hundreds of cases, and there's tens of thousands where this person over here has been excommunicated for the same behavior.

John Larsen [00:46:48] I know of many. It's almost always women who've told me stories where they got frisky with some dude and they got punished, disfellowshipped or otherwise, and the dude didn't, for the same copulative act. So there is an ambiguity around this whole thing. Nevertheless, they spout on about law, law, law, law, but they're not laws. Laws can be written down. There is a U.S. penal code. You can find your state building code. You can find all that stuff. It's published, it's out there, it's public, it's known.

John Larsen [00:47:26] But God has published part of it, and only part of it do we even pay any attention to. And there's other parts that come and go or are subject to the interpretation of a man behind closed doors who is not, you know, he doesn't have to answer to anybody. And this is a problem.

John Dehlin [00:47:47] You're talking about selective enforcement and kind of leadership roulette in the Mormon Church. Right.

John Larsen [00:47:53] Selective enforcement is almost too kind because that implies that they're selecting from some rubric and doing some things and not others. I'm saying there is no rubric. It, by design doesn't exist. The. The law of the Lord doesn't exist and it never will, and they don't want it to.

John Dehlin [00:48:12] It's almost even worse than that, because it's almost what I said before is almost to imply that it's kind of random or arbitrary. But the truth is, like, one of the reasons the Church protects pedophiles is actually has nothing to do with the severity of the sin of pedophile pedophilia. It's literally because they want to protect their image. So the fact that they're selectively punishing people, or in this case, choosing not to punish pedophiles, but instead allowing them to remain in the system and repeat abuse children is for a motive of just protecting their image. So why in the world would. Would punishment of very serious sins and abuses be given free passes? Because the Church wants to protect its image in the newspaper.

John Larsen [00:49:00] Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right.

Why Mormon Happiness Is Impossible to Achieve

John Dehlin [00:49:03] All right, all right.

John Larsen [00:49:05] So let's inverse the four definitions, because the Church really doesn't use happiness much, except it's a carrot that's dangling out there because it says if you don't commit any sin and you obey the law of the Lord completely and you have a cisgender relationship in which you're procreative, then you will be happy, maybe in the afterlife.

John Larsen [00:49:30] But let's invert those four definitions a little bit. So people who are full of sin or people who've committed any sin are not happy. They just look happy. Because we know that if there's any degree of sin, you're not actually happy. So no matter what people out there outside the church look like, if they're happy, they're not. Because we know that by definition, if you commit sin, you're not happy. So no matter how much dopamine or serotonin or how content they are or how gentle they are or how kind they are, they are not actually happy, because sinful people can't be happy. Now, I think it's important we point out here that Jesus Christ said that nobody is free of sin.

John Larsen [00:50:15] So the whole one, first one is kind of a strange thing, because what the Church has basically said is there is no happiness because any degree of wickedness is not happiness, and everybody is wicked. Ergo, nobody's happy.

John Dehlin [00:50:32] Yeah, okay.

John Larsen [00:50:33] That's. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:34] I also think it's, you know, you're calling back to my memory many, many cringeworthy moments as a Mormon where you'd see this well intended Mormon get up in fast and testimony meeting, bear their testimony and just literally say, I feel so sorry for all the people who aren't Mormon in the world. They will never know. And this is not, I'm not joking, this happened regularly and I'm not even trying to shame the people who said it because they were just victims of what they were taught, but they would literally get up and say, I feel sorry for all the, for the 8 billion people in the world that are not happy like us and that are miserable because they don't have the plan of salvation and true happiness.

John Larsen [00:51:15] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:51:16] Am I exaggerating, Carah?

Carah Burrell [00:51:18] No. Were you at the Santa Monica First Ward between 2011 and 2014? Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely a very common talk. Especially because there's communal conversion cannot be understated. When you're in a big room of people and you're just feeling a lot of loving feelings and you think that this is the only place in the world where this type of chemical exists, where this type of high exists, and that then you conjecture your way through to say that this feeling equals the church being true. And you just keep circular reasoning your way through until you die.

John Dehlin [00:51:44] And, and spending a week with Stephen Hassan, this is all by design, number one, a high demand religion or a cult. One of the like top five criteria is that the people have to feel special, which means superior to everybody else. And whether it's the Moonies or Nexium or Scientologists, Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons, it's absolutely central to the formula that everybody in it, the in group feels superior to the out group. That's just, that's just core. But it, but it leads to a level of arrogance and, and you know, kind of in group thinking and out group judgment. That, that is kind of, that is kind of unhealthy but also just kind of untrue and crazy.

Carah Burrell [00:52:28] The only in group is the nuance, O Patreon.

John Larsen [00:52:31] Well, and it's, it's a complete mind trap. And we're going to, we're going to go to that a little bit because I would say the majority of ex Mormons have encountered this brick wall. At some point they'll be talking to a former or a loved one that they formerly had a relationship in the church, a relative or a friend or something, and then the ex Mormon will say no, I'm really happy that I've left the church, my life is good, things are going well, and they will either be told right to their face or when they turn around saying, poor Carah, she just thinks she's happy.

John Larsen [00:53:04] She's not really happy. It doesn't matter. No, happiness can compensate for leaving the church because they have a definition saying, no, you're not happy. It's a counterfeit happiness. There's no way you could hook up to a machine and show the dopamine and serotonin levels, but they have defined it as you not being happy.

John Dehlin [00:53:25] I don't know if axiomatic is the right word here, but the second part that I was going to say with Stephen Hasson is he talks about phobia conditioning that you condition in your members of phobia. And what's implicit is, we're all happy within, but everybody's miserable out.

John Larsen [00:53:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:42] What does that imply? It implies that if you ever leave, what's going to happen, Carah?

Carah Burrell [00:53:47] That you're gonna absolutely be miserable and be like, I'm miserable because I left. I should probably go back.

John Dehlin [00:53:51] So it's like phobia, it's like phobia induction. It's conditioning and, and it's very. It's real. I can just, I can tell you I lost my faith in 2001. We moved to Logan and we're like, we're gonna. I'm like, margie, we have to stay in the church. I can't raise. I literally believed as a Mormon that you cannot raise happy, healthy, moral children outside of Mormonism. And so I said, the only option I have is to stay Mormon because I want to raise my kids. I want my. Raise my kids to be healthy and happy. Literally. That was my logic as a non believing, 30 and 40 something grown ass adult who didn't believe in the church anymore.

Carah Burrell [00:54:29] Yeah, that was my conditioning too. And going back to like this, I always love to just widen things to. The paradigm that we're talking about is a church that believes in a literal Lucifer, a literal Satan, who has demons, who can tempt all of the children and their stories in the Book of Mormon like Korihor and Alma, that there's literally false spirits and antichrists. So when Mormons are looking out and seeing people who, yes, their serotonin is popping and people look happy. A Mormon's paradigm is to project that that is a devil and evil spir spirit, that there is something that is taking a hold of them because they're literally.

Carah Burrell [00:55:03] No, there's no Such thing as happiness and wickedness going together. Those things cannot operate together. It is God's design and for us to be happy. And no matter what, they're still gonna foist their paradigm of, of like this Antichrist ideals onto whatever system that you participate in. And so that's why my catchphrase is cult members opinions of me are irrelevant. Like, that's your paradigm. What you think about my happiness is not relevant.

John Dehlin [00:55:30] And that, that quote, wickedness never was happiness. It ties right to what you were saying, John Larsen, because we're all. We're literally all wicked. I remember trying to go into the Mormon Temple and it's like, okay, no unclean thing can enter the. The house of the Lord. Oh my gosh, my brain just said, fuck, what do I do? I gotta stop that. And so here I am trying to be pure and righteous and, and literally by trying to be pure and righteous, my brain would swear more and more and more. Or a dirty image, you know, an image. I shouldn't say dirty image. An image of a naked woman would come into my brain or come on

John Larsen [00:56:03] the screen in the temple.

John Dehlin [00:56:05] What's that?

John Larsen [00:56:05] Or show up on screen in the temple.

John Dehlin [00:56:08] Yeah, yeah. And it literally. It literally was impossible. It's lit. You know, if to think a sin is to do adultery in your heart. Right. If to think a sexual thing is to do adultery in your heart, then literally it's impossible to be pure and clean. And if wickedness never was happiness, it means that there's no, like you said, John Larsen, there's no such thing as happiness in the world because we're all wicked and none of us can be pure. Right?

John Larsen [00:56:37] Right. Okay, now let's look at the reversal of the second definition. Now is the time to toil. Now is the time to work. We won't be happy until a beautiful heaven awaits. So if you're in the church and you're miserable, or your life is one problem after the other after the other, or you're a slave, or you're in poverty, or you have all these problems, even though what the church is selling is happiness, they do not have to deliver on that promise till after you are dead. Because happiness is heaven and this earth is corrupt and confusing, and we don't really know what happiness is. So one actually doesn't need to manifest any happiness to be in the church that's selling happiness. Because happiness doesn't have to happen until after you've already died.

Carah Burrell [00:57:33] Can I play devil's advocate? I think I have my Mormon mom's mindset pushing into me that people who do have very hard lives and they would give up. I have Justin Bieber's mom coming to mind as well. She was like. She has this interview where she said that she was going to walk in front of a bus, I think, when she was pregnant, because she just wanted to die. And then some Christian guy visited her and converted her. And there's that other aspect that at least there are people who. They just want to die. They just cannot get through this life. They can't raise their kids.

Carah Burrell [00:58:02] They can't possibly see what there is worth living for if they're not given that carrot on the stick. And then I don't think that that is ever going to actually be manifested. But that is the. That's the enticement of religion, of every religion in the entire world for 8 billion people, is that the happiness is just. It is at least the concept that gets them to wake up the next day to keep going.

John Dehlin [00:58:23] Yeah. And we. I'm sorry, John Larsen, do you want to go or do you want me to go?

John Larsen [00:58:27] Go. Go.

John Dehlin [00:58:27] Oh. I mean, we all know the. The epidemic of LGBT death by suicide within Mormonism and the core premise or the core cognitions that lead to that outcome. For so many that I've heard about or talked to, the math is really simple.

John Dehlin [00:58:47] God made me gay. But I've tried everything that my bishop and my church leaders have told me to pray the gay away. It. It won't go away. Wickedness never was happiness. I can't know true love and joy in this life.

Family, Procreation, and the Plan of Happiness

John Dehlin [00:59:04] And so if the afterlife is. Is the only place I'm going to be able to know true joy and love and happiness, I may as well accelerate that and. And get there now. And that's. That's in my understanding. Those are the basic. That's the basic cognition chain that leads to suicide. And it's not just LGBTQ people.

John Dehlin [00:59:28] You know, Carah, I don't know if you know, the Stephen Hassan was at. At. At Thrive Lehigh just a couple days ago, and this mother, this Mormon mom walks up and says, hey, Stephen Hasson, I just want to thank you for your work. I want you to know I'm dealing with a lot of guilt and shame because a couple, you know, just like, you know, a year ago, my son came home from his mission, told me that he discovered the church wasn't true.

John Dehlin [00:59:57] And. And I did what most orthodox believing parents do. I told him that he was sinning, that he was not being righteous, that he was a disappointment, that he needed to get his faith back. And he died by suicide the very next day.

Carah Burrell [01:00:11] Oh, my gosh.

John Dehlin [01:00:12] And that's. And that's just some random person went up and told Stephen Hassan this. That's like, you know, this teaching that happiness is for the afterlife, not only has it been the justification for untold bondage and servitude of. Of lower. Lower SES people, of an entire slave culture for. For millennia or generations, it's the way you pacify the poor that are being exploited by saying, don't worry, your life may be crap now, but you'll get those golden. Those, you know, golden bricks, that golden paved road and the angels with the wings and the harps. You'll get that when you die. So much carnage has. Has come about, let alone neglect of our world by teaching. The joy comes later.

Carah Burrell [01:00:58] I think you look through the pinhole like that and you just. You're very privileged a lot of times. Like I was in the church, you know, if you're looking through and you're just seeing your happiness, you don't know about all the other. You don't know any of that. You think that you're happy. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:01:11] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:01:11] Like, I. I had no idea that wider context that. That everyone's religion brings them happiness in that same way and that everybody is promised a different type of afterlife.

John Dehlin [01:01:20] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:01:20] Like my system is not unique, but I do think my happiness is unique.

John Dehlin [01:01:24] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:01:25] Okay. Yeah, yeah. Membership in the church at all costs. Yeah. There's no, no, no externalized cost that's too large in our quest to conquer the world. All right, those are two definitions. Let's go to the third one. If you aren't having a family, then you don't know true happiness.

John Larsen [01:01:45] And what's funny in those definitions is it's not just having a family, it's procreating. Now, there is a statistic called the total fertility rate, the tfr. And in order to reproduce you, every female needs to have 2.1 children.

John Larsen [01:02:05] Otherwise you are not replacing yourself. You're not procreating. So not only do you have to be in a monogamous, heteronormative cisgender. What other term can I throw out there to piss off the conservatives? You have to be in a normal, regular 1950s marriage. Normal quote here.

John Larsen [01:02:31] But you have to have at least 2.1 children. Now, the average woman, I looked this up. The average woman in the 50s had five children. So if you don't have children, then you can't know. According to Boyd K. Packer and Oaks real happiness. Because for them, it is the act of nuclear family procreation that drives happiness. Now, most of us don't get that.

John Larsen [01:03:00] Like, you know, when I was in the church, my first wife and I, we were unable to have children. So we were, by the definition given by the prophets, seers and revelators at the time, unhappy because happiness only comes from procreation and we were not able to procreate. The church is full, tragically full of a lot of young women who want nothing more than to have the family that's been sold to them. And the church is tragically full of young men who feel like they're monsters because they jerk off. And these two groups can't get together right now because the church has put their own fucking wedge between the two.

John Larsen [01:03:41] But neither of them are getting to this place. So when you're living your normal life and you're a 25 year old female who hasn't had a Mormon marriage yet, you're going to internalize whenever you feel sadness, whenever you don't feel happiness, that you have not followed the program. Because according to the current prophet Seer and Revelator Oaks, the only way for happiness is a procreative nuclear family.

John Dehlin [01:04:08] Yeah. And if you've met any divorced people in the Mormon church, single people, never married, people who get into their late 20s, 30s, and 40s having never been married. Not to mention all the gay and lesbian celibates that try and live a life of celibacy because they, you know, don't want to live with someone they're not attracted to. There is just an epidemic of sadness and misery created by this teaching, this sort of heteronormative, you know, traditional family kind of rhetoric. It's super damaging.

John Larsen [01:04:43] Absolutely. And now our fourth one, which we dug into a little bit more. I am not happy because I'm not fulfilling the law. But we already pointed out that fulfilling the law is impossible. So the church has created literally a four sided box. You aren't happy if you sin. You aren't happy because you're not in heaven. You aren't happy because you're not fulfilling the law. And you're not happy because you're not doing sex and stuff. Right.

John Larsen [01:05:08] And it is a box from which there is no emergence. I hope you all can see that they have defined happiness out of existence. But this is where the mind fuck comes. This is where the church's magic happens. They have now changed the whole aim and goal of the church is the plan of happiness. Right. So the first thing they need you to do is, is realize that you're not happy. And even if you're happy, you're not happy because you've got the wrong happiness. You're not actually doing it right. So this is what is commonly called gaslighting. It is the idea of taking whoever your victim is and you're going to drive into their mind that whatever's wrong outside in our relationship, me being the church, you being the member, whatever's wrong in our relationship is because of you.

John Larsen [01:06:00] You're broken, you're crazy, you're sinful, you're not married. Right. You're not doing it right. You don't love the right people, you don't have the right body. You haven't waited enough time to get into heaven. You're wrong. So that there is an unwinnable situation.

John Dehlin [01:06:18] Yeah. And it's so ironic, John, because what we've laid out is basically, we're all taught that we're superior to everyone. We're all taught that this is the plan of happiness. And then we're all made to be constantly miserable, hustling for love, hustling for acceptance, hustling for worthiness. And you're right. That's a mind fudge, as I'll say.

Carah Burrell [01:06:41] And the only thing I want to add to that is somebody who spends a lot of time on the Internet again, and in my comment sections, the pushback that I would hear from Mormons about that is they just project that people who are not in the church just have addictions. They're addicted to porn, they're addicted to. Addicted to cigarettes and alcohol and that they just have this negative connotation that the people out there are just addicted to substances and all these worldly, sinful, liberal ways, that there is just such a black and white thinking that is just so pervasive and toxic, you know, on. In so many Mormons minds that they can't possibly imagine, let alone for themselves, but that other people could be happy.

Carah Burrell [01:07:18] And then what you just described, John Dehlin, is like that hustle for love, that conditional love. There is nothing more toxic in the world than conditional love from a maker or from a community. That is. That's what I talked about in my episode with Stephen Hassan, by the way, that's coming out tomorrow is this idea that you just. People just want to be able to be authentic. They want to be in their own skin. And when you're in a system, who cares if you like literally what is. What is worse? Somebody like having a drink now and then at a bar or constantly looking for validation from a maker that will never come, or from a community or from a parent that will never come.

Carah Burrell [01:07:51] And never being your authentic self, like which one is more damaging to the soul overall? Your liver can cleanse itself, but you need full blown Stephen Hassan, cult conditioning expert to come in and people to pay people like him to be able to un fuck your brain from what I just described on the other one. And it's heartbreaking. And I don't. That's why I'm in this space. It's because people need so much undoing of this, this undue influence that Steve Hassan talks about. The phobia that, that is what it's all about. This hustle for this hyper conditioned love that you'll never get in this life. You're in this box.

John Dehlin [01:08:25] Yeah. And I think any of us who have kind of been exposed to an abusive relationship or a toxic narcissist will know that the core message that an unhealthy organization or an unhealthy individual will send to somebody is you can't be happy without me. You need me to be happy. It's, it's psychological dependence and culture. Unhealthy organizations, they need you to feel like they need you to have learned helplessness. They need you to feel like you're psychologically dependent on them. And so they need you constantly feeling unworthy, they need you constantly feeling not good enough, constantly feeling shamed so that you're hustling. Not only hustling to serve them, pay them more money, give them more service, volunteer more time, do a better job in your calling.

John Dehlin [01:09:17] It's all engineered to maximize your contributions to building up the organization at the expense of your own health and happiness and well being. Because there's never a point. Is there ever a point, Carah, in your 30 plus years in Mormonism, was ever a point where they're like, hey Carrie, you've done great, good job. You, you know, you've arrived, you're good.

Carah Burrell [01:09:39] You know, that's what I told myself, even though it wasn't true, Right. Or else I would go crazy. People are some, some Mormons are self aware enough though. They're just like, this has to be between me and God. Because there's a thousand too many expectations over here from these people. So I just have to go to God and be like, am I okay? All right, I'll worry about this anxiety tomorrow. I'll try a little bit better, be a little bit better.

John Dehlin [01:09:58] But you had to unmorm in your brain to be able to survive in the system. Right?

Carah Burrell [01:10:02] Yeah. You're, you're trained on codependency in marriage and when you're Mormon and then a codependency with the system and then with this God, you're never given a space to know who you are. And yeah, so it's, you have to do undo a lot of learned conditioning of, of how your brain was forced to operate in this system. And then when that system's not true anymore, you don't know who you are. And it's really fun to get, be able to discover who that is without all, all that codependency, all that undue influence.

John Dehlin [01:10:29] Yeah.

The Logical Tautology Trapping Believers

John Larsen [01:10:30] Well, this whole thing is what we would call a logical tautology, which is all possible outcomes once you've been indoctrinated in the church, point to the same conclusion. The whole status of being is unfalsifiable. So you're going to look at any manifestation of happiness in the world and you've now been conditioned to dismiss it.

John Larsen [01:10:54] And any miserable state that you're in. No matter how awful the church is, you're taught to believe that it's just you that kept me in the church for 33 years because it didn't work for me. I tried. I tried to have the same experiences that other people had. I tried to have this, I believed, I tried, but it didn't work. But I see how perversely brilliant it is because it kept me trying, because I wanted to have that. So I kept swallowing all the bullshit. I kept believing that I didn't feel revelation from God. God wasn't talking to me, so I was wrong. And this is why I repeat the refrain for everybody who's looking at church now.

John Larsen [01:11:50] The people who it works for, who God is talking to in their soul, they're the ones that are broken. It's not you. The normal, healthy psychological people will feel a bit of disturbance when they're in the church. But if you think that God is talking to you directly and your thoughts are God, that you're on the verge of, I don't know, kind of a low level schizophrenia, then we want you. And then if you are manipulative and you can get up there as some kind of narcissist sociopath and be able to project your own will and call it God, you're going to be successful. But if you're actually looking for the voice of God or direction, you're going to be sad and broken and you're going to keep paying tithing and you're going to submit because you believe that those sociopaths and those lunatics are the ones who have it right, and it's exactly wrong.

John Larsen [01:12:53] What is the church run by? Take a survey of the 200 members of the 12 and what you'll see is a lot of lunatics in the beginning and a lot of sociopaths now.

John Dehlin [01:13:08] So there's a John, there's a. I love it. I, I, I want to talk about, you know, you, what we understand about the demographics of Utah and, and happiness. Or are you going to get to that? Or is that, is this an okay place to talk about?

John Larsen [01:13:22] No, it's perfect. Go ahead.

John Dehlin [01:13:23] Okay. Yeah. So we've uncovered some real ironies here, and I've just made a couple notes that Mormons are generally. Well, one thing that people don't know is that ssri, you know, antidepressant medication is sky high in Utah, as I understand it, in terms of like, pornography, you know, use or unhealthy or problematic pornography use or addiction is, is way higher than normal. And, and sometimes Utah ranks as one of the top porn consumers in the nation. There have been historically very significant opiate addictions and death by opioids, not to mention the LGBTQ epidemics of, of death by suicide here and, and LGBTQ homelessness like, and women just like levels.

John Dehlin [01:14:18] I, I remember reports over the years of extraordinarily high levels of depression amongst Mormon women, largely Mormon women here in Utah. And so part of just, you know, what makes total sense psychologically, but what is, is completely ironic about this whole conversation is Mormons claim to have the one true church with the one true plan of happiness, and yet they're miserable and divorce rates aren't any, any better, and there's just super high rates of, of depression and anxiety and suicidality in Utah.

John Dehlin [01:14:56] And so that's ironic. The other thing that's super ironic is we, we have this conditioned fear that you can't be healthy and happy outside of Mormonism. And then you actually, like, meet people who have never been Mormon before and they, like, have a glass of wine with dinner and they go enjoy, you know, they sit on picnics and blankets and enjoy, you know, a concert at, at the local, you know, outdoor amphitheater. And they raise kids without stress and they have good relationship with good relationships with their kids where they're authentic and vulnerable and they're not super uptight. And I don't want to say that, you know, you know, leaving religion is automatically means you're going to be happier. And of course we know that on average People who are religious may be slightly happier on average than those who aren't.

John Larsen [01:15:52] But when they report. Well, let's pause for a second.

John Dehlin [01:15:55] When you isolate that report. Go ahead, John.

John Larsen [01:15:57] They report themselves to be happier. But I think if you take what we've just been saying over the last hour, it's understandable why religious people report that they're happier because they've been told that they're happier. So it's not an objective measurement. Go ahead.

John Dehlin [01:16:12] Part of it. That's part of it. I think also they've teased out the controlling variable there and usually it's community. And one thing religion does is it provides community. But if you're able to find community without religion, you're going to be right up there as good or better than, than the religions. Carah?

Carah Burrell [01:16:31] Yeah, I just wanted to add a couple weeks ago I did a video on my YouTube channel responding to Kevin S. Hamilton's speech and it's the kind of famous one that came out a couple months ago about how if you're having problems with the church, just replace the word the church with Jesus Christ, you know the one I'm talking about. And so I did a response to that and he starts his talk saying how religious people on average, including members of the church Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Pew Research reports that the frequency of feeling spiritual peace and well being by religious groups at least once a week and their intendance and it shows like, and he shows just how Mormons are like one of the very most happy.

Carah Burrell [01:17:10] And he starts his talk like that because then he's going to be asking a lot throughout that talk of the membership where he's saying, didn't you know our church brings the most peace according to even the Pew Research Center. And then as it goes along he says also this is the only place that you find these covenants and these ordinances. And also if you have a problem with the church, you have a problem with Jesus. He tells you directly replace the name church with Jesus Christ. If you say you have a problem with the leaders, say you have a problem with Jesus Christ. So it goes from one to the other to the other.

Carah Burrell [01:17:40] Happiness is here, here, covenants are here. If you don't like it, you have a problem with Jesus Christ, the true source of your happiness you following. And so I went and I looked up that Pew Research study for this video and the only other two that were as sky high as Mormons were the other like doomsday apothec cults. I know that word, right? Apocalyptic cults. It was like, Jehovah's Witnesses are just as high and like evangelical Christians. So it's people who think that the world is ending very soon. Again, going back to that premise that if you feel like you're special, you're on the inside, you're in a very high demand fundamentalist group and the world is ending and you have devotion to a church that you have to go to many times a week.

Carah Burrell [01:18:16] Yeah. Psychologically speaking, you are going to convince yourself that you are on the in group and what you're doing is leading to happiness because the world is about to end, is what all of those, those types of groups that all have NP research have in common. The Buddhists, they're happy, but they also don't have such a high demand fundamentalist teachings that kind of forced them into this system of a world ending apocalypse kind of thing. So I just think that's an interesting point to bring up in the grand scheme of what the church leadership as of January is teaching about how you find happiness. It's right here. Only right here.

John Dehlin [01:18:47] Yeah. And then the only other thing I'll add to that, Carah and John, is like you said, Carah, you, you like Carah. I, you were raised ironically in a, in a ward in Provo, Orem, Utah that was kind of progressive, kind of liberal. And a lot of times the people that are able to be relatively happy within Mormonism are the ones that don't take it too seriously.

Carah Burrell [01:19:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:12] Like the ones that are miserable are the ones with scrupulosity who literally try and follow every law, do everything they're told, obey every commandment. And those people are wrecks. Those people have literal OCD scrupulosity diagnoses. But the ones that aren't, that aren't as miserable usually are the ones who are like, I'm just not going to tell my bishop what I'm doing. I'm just gonna, I'll pay whatever tithing I want and just like not get hung up about it. I'll go to the temple when I feel like it, you know? Yeah, I don't believe all that garbage, but I go just to be happy. It's almost like you have to not obey Mormonism and not take it too seriously if you want to kind of survive from within 100%.

Carah Burrell [01:19:53] And that's what's interesting. Top down from the leadership, they would not be okay with that. They have the 14 fundamentals of following the prophet do not give you any nuance. There's no big tent Mormonism, if you're looking at what is taught at general conference. You know.

John Dehlin [01:20:05] Yeah. John Larsen, let's get you back in here.

Informal Fallacies the Church Uses on Members

John Larsen [01:20:08] All right, well, I. I want to dig this one level deeper because I really want to unpack what's going on here. So let's talk about logically, what's. What's happening here. We're going to. We're going to return to some informal fallacies. We're going to go through what fallacies are happening here.

John Larsen [01:20:26] And remember that a fallacy is something that doesn't follow logically. It's a pattern of thought or argument that we get into, but it's not actually sound. It sounds good, but it's not actually good. The conclusion doesn't follow. And when you start pointing them out and taking them apart, you can start seeing what's happening. And before we jump into this little short list based on a comment I saw, I want to point something out because I'm talking about the church as if there is some really dark guys somewhere engineering this system.

John Larsen [01:21:04] And while that does happen sometimes, like Brigham Young, most of the time, here's what happens. You get two missions, and you take two church leaders, two stake presidents, and you put them in as mission presidents. The one mission president baptizes twice as many people as the other mission president. And it might be because he has some dark personality traits. He is kind of shady. He kind of will tell people half truths and tell them what they want. He'll butter people up. He's really slick. He's really smooth. But then what happens? They say, oh, we've got two potential ones. This one baptize more people. So we'll make him a 70.

John Larsen [01:21:44] So you set up a criteria in the church where you're selecting for a particular type of success. And that success that we've been selecting for over the last 200 years is growth, Growth of funding and growth of membership.

John Larsen [01:21:59] So whoever can find creative ways to do nefarious psychological tricks on the human population that gets them in gets systematically promoted. So the system can be set up in a way that pushes the dark traits of humanity without anybody actually ordering that. Which is why I go back to saying there is no. Nobody's ever written down the law. Because they can't. Because that's not really what it's about. It's about making you just understand that you're not obeying the law. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:22:34] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:22:34] Yeah. That's deep.

John Larsen [01:22:36] Okay, so I identified six informal fallacies in those definitions. And first, it's about time to point out those four definitions of happiness are not Congruent. They can't all be true. Like if you say happiness is having the nuclear family and happiness is also obeying the law of the Lord. Unless you're just throwing everything into the law of the Lord and then you start identifying these enormous sort of things. These four definitions go after different aspects of our psychology, but they don't, they don't present themselves as sort of a philosophical whole.

John Dehlin [01:23:15] All right, so John, can I, can I just mention one thing that's coming to my mind? Sure. I hope this isn't something you're going to talk about in just a second. Are you going to talk about how effed up it is that God, the creator of the universe, the most powerful being in existence, ever, forever and ever? Amen. Alpha and Omega creates this plan that less than 1/2 of 1% of his children are going to be happy in. Like we've already established that they're actually not happy. But according to this plan, according to the math, God creates, you know, 20, 30, 40 billion children, 99.999% of them are from the start, not going to be happy.

John Larsen [01:23:56] Yeah, I would refer people. Your point is exactly right. I'd refer people back to our recording we did a few months ago on the plan of salvation. And you know, the takeaway from that is the really, it seems like the only purpose of existence in the Mormon view is to cause suffering in the world.

John Dehlin [01:24:11] Yeah, yeah, that's messed up.

John Larsen [01:24:13] Yeah, I'll say. Yeah. Okay, so I want people to start understanding the kind of mind tricks that cultish and cults use. So that's why I want to unpack these definitions a little bit and talk about the fallacies. Our first fallacy is what's called academically, the appeal to purity.

John Larsen [01:24:33] And in common vernacular, it's called the no true Scotsman fallacy, which is you define something and then when you find an instance of it that doesn't get what you want, you say, well, that's not a true Scotsman, or that wasn't pure enough.

John Larsen [01:24:49] So you can say if you go to the temple or use the marriage one, if you get married in the temple and have a hetero cis normative relationship and have 2.1 kids, then you'll be happy. And then say, well, I'm not happy. Well, you're not experiencing true happiness to true happiness. You also have to do blah and do this and do this and this. So it's this never ending regression, but keep redefining the word. So you can say, hey, we want everybody to have the plan. Of happiness. Oh yeah, I want that missionary sign me up, baptize me. And then as you start going, they'll start saying, yeah, but there is actually a purer definition and a more refined definition of happiness.

John Larsen [01:25:30] And oh, well, you're sinning. Oh well, you're not obeying the law of the Lord. Oh well, you're not in a, in a heteronormative relationship. Oh, you haven't gone to heaven yet. So this fallacy, this appeal to purity makes it so they never have to actually deliver because nobody can ever be pure enough to actually get what they promise.

Carah Burrell [01:25:53] I would love for you to just have a missionary at your door right now and say that to them.

John Larsen [01:25:58] When I talk to the missionaries, first of all, I believe in punching up, not punching down. They're just kids, so, and they're, they're dummies. Besides, they don't know Mormon theology. They don't know theology in general. They're just, they, I don't get any pleasure in, in arguing with missionaries because they, they know nothing.

Carah Burrell [01:26:16] For the record, I don't either. And anytime I make videos about missionary interactions, people are always like, oh, I like to show up naked at the door when they open. I'm like, hey, that's not cool. Like, do you think that's what I want to hear? No, I'm just kidding. I just think if only missionaries, you know, they, they could possibly have a system in which to understand that when they go around with that good hearted intention that everybody, yeah, we, you want to sell happiness.

John Dehlin [01:26:38] Cool.

Carah Burrell [01:26:39] Like everybody wants. Not having any concept or understanding of this, of this very narrow, bottlenecked version that is just never going to be achievable. But you guys are good kids. Just agree. Solar stuff.

John Larsen [01:26:53] It's a great example because it speaks to this methodology. You put somebody out there who doesn't know what's happening. When I was a kid in high school, I worked at Lagoon, the amusement park in Utah and I was a roller coaster operator. And whenever the roller coaster broke down, the person we always put in front was somebody who was ignorant, who didn't know what happened because then they couldn't answer any questions. So, I mean, churches do that all the time. They put people out front who don't know the real answer because then they never have to lie.

John Dehlin [01:27:24] Okay, really quick, John. Yeah, I, I, you're, you're making me think of an episode that we recently did with Liz Lampson, I believe that's her name. She plays the stand up bass for, for Ballet west. And she talked about how she had a, you know, troubling childhood.

John Dehlin [01:27:43] Her. Her mom was Korean, and. And her mom deserted her, her two. Her and her sister when she was, like, younger than 10. And so her dad, who was an African American, raised his two daughters without. Without help because the mom had deserted the family. So she was kind of vulnerable, kind of cult fodder. And she met some Mormons in high school, and this is in Colorado, in Colorado Springs. And she ends up falling in love with Mormonism and getting a testimony of Mormonism, but her dad wouldn't let her get baptized because obviously the mom had left the family to join a Korean cult, a Christian Korean cult. So the dad wasn't going to let his daughters join another cult.

John Larsen [01:28:31] Right.

John Dehlin [01:28:32] So she's able to hang out with Mormons and be friends with Mormons, but she's. She's not allowed to join. So she describes her high school years going to seminary, going to dances, hanging out with Mormon kids as a really, really happy time. I'm wondering if you guys know where this is going. So she graduates from high school, and she decides she's going to apply to byu, and. Because she gets a music scholarship. And so she goes to byu, and guess what happens? Guess what happens while she's at byu. Do you want to guess, Carah? Want to guess?

Carah Burrell [01:29:07] Scared.

John Dehlin [01:29:08] What do you think? What do you think? She's a byu. She's an adult. She's away from her dad's control.

John Larsen [01:29:14] What happens?

Carah Burrell [01:29:15] Has one wild, crazy, sober night on chocolate milk and gets dunked in a baptismal font.

John Dehlin [01:29:20] She got baptized. And guess what she reports her happiest days as a Mormon being before she was baptized. It was idyllic. But guess what happens once you get baptized within Mormonism?

Carah Burrell [01:29:31] The responsibility.

John Dehlin [01:29:32] Yeah. And the guilt and the shame. Because all of a sudden, she had never had worthiness interviews before. And then all of a sudden, she had worthiness interviews, and, oh, guess what happens. She found out that little practice that she had. She had.

John Dehlin [01:29:45] She had started when she was 12 or whatever, of masturbating all of a sudden, something that she had felt perfectly happy and content with, you know, even as a. As a dry Mormon she called herself. It wasn't until she actually got baptized that the worthiness interview started, where she falls into this deep, deep, dark depression that leads to suicidality. So in her case, it literally was the great plan of happiness that caused her misery.

John Dehlin [01:30:16] And so anyway, check out the Liz Lamson episode. It. It's really amazing. The only other thing I'll say, which is a total Tangent is in about a week or two, we're releasing an episode with a Mormon mom named Stephanie. She does hair. She's really famous because she does wedding hair.

John Dehlin [01:30:32] But she had several kids, did the Mormon mom thing until she was in her early 30s and she was deathly depressed. So depressed that as a believing Mormon mom, after seven years of, of psychotherapy, after seven years of SSRIs, of antidepressant medication, guess what she tried in desperation because. Because hyper righteousness and all the therapy and all the psychotropic medications could not make her happy. And she felt like she was broken. Guess what she tried?

Carah Burrell [01:31:06] Mushrooms.

John Dehlin [01:31:07] She tried mushrooms. Which, which, which the Church would say is evil, right? And that was the first time she felt happiness in forever. So anyway, that's wickedness. And in her case, that's what led. She reports that's what my baptism is.

Carah Burrell [01:31:23] The Church's argument to what you just said is basically like, well, when somebody gets baptized, that's Satan actually getting in there and making them feel guilt and shame. But God just wants them to be striving on this plan, be perfect, even as I am perfect. They're on the right plan and Satan's now trying harder to pull them down. And depression is just Satan putting his chains around you, I think is the Church's argument.

John Dehlin [01:31:42] And I'm not sure if that's the no true Scotsman fallacy. When basically the Church says any happiness that we don't approve of is by definition evil and counterfeit, does that even qualify as no true Scotsman?

John Larsen [01:31:53] John Larsen actually, it's the second fallacy I'm going to talk about, which is the definist fallacy D E F I N I S T and that is the illicit instance insistence on defining a term, a way that is favorable to one's own side of an argument. The Church does this non stop. And when you read any conference talk, what they do is they go and they will take these words and then they put spider special definition around them. And so when you're in a debate with them, then they have defined happiness to be whatever they say it is. And if you say no, it's not, well, now you're in an epistemological argument, you're not actually dealing.

John Larsen [01:32:36] So from a rhetorical perspective, if you can be the first to define the terms, then you can control the debate. So a lot of everything that the Church is publishing and putting out in the talks and conference are not so much about teaching people doctrine, it's about squatting on particular definitions of word or non definitions of word, keeping them ambiguous because that's what we really see with happiness is their definitions constitute a non definition because like we pointed out with the first one, just from that one, it's not even achievable.

John Larsen [01:33:10] So it's this ephemeral thing we're talking about and dealing in and selling and taking tithing over. But there, there, there isn't really any there there that anybody who's talking to you can, can land on.

Carah Burrell [01:33:23] Yeah, yeah. I think the word truth is another one. I see that all over the Mormon Internet as well as like, you know, I'm a member and I follow the teachings of the church, but if other churches have truth, I will listen to that because as a member we seek truth. You're setting the, the terms of the definition is I, I know I'm part of the true church. That's already a given. And wherever there's truth, I will seek after that as just a normal truth seeker. And it just feels like a catch all buzzword at this point because how do you seek truth from an institution that lies so much so continually to its members?

Carah Burrell [01:33:57] How do you seek morality? How do you say like I am in tune with truth if the truth as taught to you by the leaders is constantly changing and constantly trying to give you a sense of like moral justice and righteousness from a very, very broken system. So it just obviously members, when I was in the church, I never would have been able to put that together now, but I'm like, truth? What does that even mean? It's. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:21] The other thing that we should note, just because Stephen Hassan's on my brain, there's this idea of loaded language that cults use super intense loaded language to, to condition more phobias and fears. And this idea that not only can other can, can people not living quote the gospel not be happy but, but, but that their happiness is, is Satan's counterfeit. Can you imagine a more offensive and like loaded, charged teaching?

Carah Burrell [01:34:54] Did you watch my video?

John Dehlin [01:34:55] To be indoctrinating your, your people around? No. Did you talk about that?

Carah Burrell [01:34:59] Yeah, yeah. Again, these four, these forces are real in Mormonism. Satan's forces and God's forces. And wherever God goes, Satan creates a counterfeit. The same year that God restored the true church, guess what? Darwin took off on his little boat to go, you know, develop the theory of evolution. So there are these real ideas within Mormonism that there is a counterfeit to whatever God's standards is. So whatever, you know, you just said about like a, a girl thinking that like, you know, she didn't have a problem with masturbation until the church comes in. It's because masturbation is the counterfeit to this nuclear family. Like, there's. There's all this black and white Valsy again, that there's no gray area in between, that there's two competing forces since the war in heaven that's going to continue until Jesus Christ comes back and turns the earth into a ball of glass. Like, yeah, that makes sense.

John Dehlin [01:35:46] Yeah, not fun. All right, John.

John Larsen [01:35:49] All right. So we've defined two fallacies. The appeal to purity and the deafness fallacy. Our third one is one we talked about in the Logical fallacies episode, and that's reification, which the fallacy of reification or the reification is a fallacy of ambiguity where an abstraction is treated as if it were a concrete real event or a physical entity.

John Larsen [01:36:18] Oftentimes it happens when we take like verbs or adjectives and turn them into nouns so we can say he's saved, right? As like, it's this. It's a state of being. Like it has definition. Because let's say I pulled my brother out of the pond when we were 10, and so I saved him from drowning.

John Larsen [01:36:43] You wouldn't define him. We'll say I rescued him. Right? You wouldn't say that my brother is in a state of being rescued that doesn't exist. The rescue was an event that happened at one time. There is no state of being rescued. Right? And we do this all the time in language, and we take things that aren't even real and turn them into nouns and talk about them like faith.

John Larsen [01:37:12] You can believe things that are wrong, or you can believe things that are true, but faith is just this abstraction that isn't. It doesn't correspond to anything in the real world. So when they're talking about happiness, they're doing this reification because they're taking this really abstract principle that is very illy defined, if defined at all, based on these definitions. And then they'll just talk about it over and over and over and over and over again in conference, and they won't. If you look at a lot of the conference talks, if you go search for the word happiness, you. You find they're not based on these four definitions that I gave. They're just based on some ephemeral idea that the speaker just doesn't have to define. It's whatever he believes it is at the moment.

John Dehlin [01:37:59] Yeah, I just had the thought, John, and maybe we've already said this, but maybe the reason why they don't tell you how to achieve happiness. What the requirements are or the destination is is because they don't want you ever thinking that you've arrived at it.

John Larsen [01:38:14] Well, yeah. Yeah. Because it doesn't exist. It's. It's always something you're short of. It's always something that you have to be striving for.

John Dehlin [01:38:21] Yeah. So we're not going to tell you the rules. We're not going to actually define doctrine. And we're, we're never going to let you know what it, what it, what it is that you have to do to arrive at that state of happiness. Because we want you on the hamster wheel.

John Larsen [01:38:35] Exactly. Because then you could say I did everything and I didn't achieve happiness, therefore what you're selling is false.

John Dehlin [01:38:42] Yeah. No, you can't ever have that.

John Larsen [01:38:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:38:46] Really quickly, I just want to give a shout out. We have a super chat. These super chats kind of keep us going. So thank you so much. Afton J. She writes. Thank you, John's and Carah and crew, for your efforts and time. Carah, do you ever feel outnumbered that there's two Johns and only one Carah? Does that ever bug you?

Carah Burrell [01:39:07] Yeah, but that's.

John Dehlin [01:39:08] Can you find a Carah?

Carah Burrell [01:39:10] There's literally only one other in the entire world.

John Dehlin [01:39:13] You're the only Carah that's actually. No, you're the only Carah.

Carah Burrell [01:39:15] I never met another Carah pretty much in my life till I moved into the ward that I left. As I left the church because there were five Karas in my ward and I'd never met another one in my life. And I was like, the church is not true. If I have to go with just to church with four other characters.

John Dehlin [01:39:27] John Larsen, can you help us find another Carah?

John Larsen [01:39:30] I think the, the one true name in the church is Jennifer, isn't it?

John Dehlin [01:39:35] Wait, is Carah the one true Carah?

Carah Burrell [01:39:37] I'm going by nuance, though. I don't even know who she is.

John Dehlin [01:39:39] Okay, all right, all right, John.

Carah Burrell [01:39:41] Grand thing.

John Larsen [01:39:42] All right. So we've named off three fallacies. And again just to level set. These are fallacies because fallacies fool people. I'm trying to explain to you how this whole system works. What they're doing to trip up people's psychology by pointing out where these are fallacious. But the problem with fallacies is we tend to buy into them. We tend to accept them as being true, even though they're not so informal. Fallacy number four, special pleading, or it's also called a carved out exception. That's when one cites something as an Exception to a greater universal principle without justifying the special exception.

Special Pleading and the Courtier's Retort

John Larsen [01:40:20] So I can go to my bishop and say, I went and I saw Oakes talk and he said that if I get into a heterosexual marriage and I have kids, I'm going to be happy. But we fight all the time. I'm miserable. I don't think I'm a good father. This is not joyful to me.

John Larsen [01:40:40] But then they'll just start carving out and say, well, you haven't done this thing yet, or you're not quite here, or happiness comes later. It's all buried in these four definitions. I told you, make a box where they're saying, no matter if we make a rule and you've proved the rule wrong, we're going to then say, well, there's a special pleading over here as to why.

John Larsen [01:41:05] And of course, the two big ones of sin and the law of the gospel, which are both completely undefined, is always this trap, this heat sink to grab everything that. That you can't get to anyway. So we can always say, the problem is you.

Carah Burrell [01:41:24] Yeah. And that. Can I add to that. There's also this fallacy within the church that everything just comes down to your lack of faith. That, you know, if you can't justify, whether it's a crappy apologetics position or you can't justify, somebody can't justify to you why they are really unhappy in the church and that they should leave. The answer is always that the answer will come and that you are allowed to have any. Any argument that still comes back to the Church being true and that at some point in the future, you are allowed to put off that. That the Church will be proven true and you're just lacking faith in this current moment.

Carah Burrell [01:42:02] And so there's just this constant circular reasoning where it's always feeding back to that starting point that the Church is true. And any other theory, again, apologetics, any other depression or anything that makes it feel like the Church might not be true. It's all just because you're lacking faith. Because that answer will come eventually. Yeah, that is Mormonism 101.

John Dehlin [01:42:24] Yeah. It's kind of like Zion's camp. Joseph Smith says, we're going to take over Missouri. Everybody goes down and does what he says, and they get. They. They end up running away with their trail between the legs. And the answer was, well, you weren't righteous enough. And that's why, you know, the Church can never be wrong. The church can never be responsible. Dallin H. Oaks, the number two Mormon, has said, we neither seek nor Offer apologies. If, if you're not happy, it's you. If you're happy, it's the church. If you're not happy, you're doing it wrong.

John Larsen [01:42:54] Right?

John Dehlin [01:42:54] So pretty much you're always doing it wrong for sure.

John Larsen [01:42:56] And I, I want to give a closer. I don't, I don't think I made the, the case really clear there for special pleading. So let me give you an actual example of what special pleading would be. You can say that divorce is the cause, is a cause of unhappiness for punishment for not following God's law. And then you have some sister in the ward whose husband divorced her without her wanting that to happen.

John Larsen [01:43:28] Well, then what you do is you don't say, well, divorce is a sign of unhappiness. You say that it's a trial, she's going through a special buffeting, or that God tries people to refine their soul. So for her, for sister divorced, it's a trial. For Brother Jones, who left the church, it's a sign that he is unhappy outside the church. Even though the two actions and outcomes might be exactly the same, you're going to give them two separate definitions simultaneously.

Carah Burrell [01:43:59] It's very uncharitable because people, life is

John Larsen [01:44:02] messy anywhere it is. Okay, the fifth one is what we call the relativist fallacy, which is also called the subjectivist fallacy. It's claiming that something is true for one person but not true for someone else, when in fact you're insisting the thing is objective.

John Larsen [01:44:19] So if one person says, hey, I paid my tithing and I went on a mission and I got married in the temple, and then I got promoted at work, and now I'm the CFO of this multi level marketing company. I have this great big house, I am happy, my family is happy, and now I'm gonna be a general authority.

John Larsen [01:44:42] And then somebody else who says, well, I did all those things and I, you know, my wife died early, I ended up having a bankruptcy, a tr. Tree fell on my house. Well, you hold both of those things simultaneously. Well, clearly this person A is happy because of the gospel and how the gospel rewards that. And this person B over here is unhappy even though they did all the same thing. Because we're just going to say it's all relative to the person and use these ambiguous terms like trials.

John Dehlin [01:45:17] Okay, makes sense.

John Larsen [01:45:20] All right, now my favorite one, though I saved for last. This is my favorite informal fallacy for the night. This is a more recent one and it's called the Courtier's response. And it is basically in which a respondent to a criticism claims the critic lacks sufficient knowledge, credentials or training to pose any sort of criticism whatsoever. This is the number one rebuff that I get from apologists.

John Larsen [01:45:51] They will do this all the time. They will say, you did not exercise enough faith. You weren't in the church long enough. You weren't in the inside, you don't have special knowledge, you didn't get your endowment, you weren't born in Utah, you weren't born in the covenant.

John Larsen [01:46:10] It is always dismissing the countercase by saying they just don't understand. So to take this or their happiness thing, you have your ex Mormon who. And I've had this literally said to me what I'm about to say. This ex Mormon who says, I left the church, I lost weight, I have more money in the bank, my kids are happier, my marriage is taking off, I'm devoted my career, I've gone back to graduate school, I'm mowing the lawn on time. Everything's better, right?

John Larsen [01:46:41] And they'll say, well, you don't understand what happiness is, so you have no grounds to say that you're happier than you were before because you don't have the spirit of God. You can't make that distinction. You are under the influence of Satan.

John Larsen [01:46:56] So whatever you say doesn't matter. So since I've in the apologist view, I have violated my vows of the temple and I am now in Satan's power, even if I'm making the most cogent, logical, well reasoned argument ever, it doesn't have to be listened to because of the courtier's reply that I lack sufficient standing to ever make any criticism of the church.

John Dehlin [01:47:25] Yeah. Yep.

John Larsen [01:47:27] Now, these six are all woven. Just one last thing. Sorry. Are woven into how the church defines and how they use those four. And we could spend the next 10 hours drawing all the lines, but I think you guys get it. Carah, go ahead. Sorry.

Carah Burrell [01:47:41] Now, have you guys heard that quote? I made a little TikTok the other day about it and in I, I found that quote in Hannah Stoddard's book about faith crisis. And it's this very traditionalist view of Mormonism. And when I was looking at this Joseph Smith quote, it's in, it's on the church's website and they have it in one of the manuals talking about the, like, the, the critics of. It's like a whole lesson about how, how evil apostates are quite literally on the church's website and they have this quote from Joseph Smith that I Just want to reiterate that this is not just a bunch of apostates talking about like how the church treats us and how they don't understand that we're really happy.

Carah Burrell [01:48:18] That this is quite literally indoctrinated from the church manuals, from the prophet Joseph Smith who said, and I'm like paraphrasing here, that when the church was presented to you and you had before you, you were sat on neutral ground and you had before you the option to choose God or to choose Satan. And when you are baptized into the church, completely disregarding that most of us are born into the church, that you left the neutral ground and then you were baptized to follow God. And that if you ever turn away from your covenants again, I'm directly quoting this quote from Joseph Smith, it's in the church manuals right now, that you will be doing so at the enticings of Satan and then become an agent for him and be controlled and under his power and work for Satan.

Carah Burrell [01:49:02] End quote. Paraphrasing. But that's what it says. And I just want to reiterate that if you are a Mormon in your mind and you look at your apostate kids or your spouse or whatever, and there is this idea that they think that they're happy because they have more autonomy now. And like they get to wear the underwear that they want, they can read the books that they want, their Sundays are filled with hiking and things, that there is just this projection that you are breaking your covenants and that you are literally like on a dog leash being an agent for Satan, trying to again do this counterfeit of what real happiness looks like.

Carah Burrell [01:49:35] Real happiness doesn't look like missing church to go hiking. Real happiness doesn't look like choosing your own underwear. Real happiness doesn't look like having an alcoholic beverage. And so everything is projected to make sure in a Mormon's mind. It was for me, for sure, that I thought that what other people had as true happiness was going to be a counterfeit. And that was Satan literally making happiness or making sin look like happiness, making wickedness look like happiness. Because guess what? Freaking is like people having autonomy. It is happiness for them. And it just is this, this, this mindset in Mormonism that, that you have to demonize the very autonomy that other people have that they should be having because there's 8 billion freaking other people and we such a small percentage of the world, it is so egotistical to think that we are the one true arbiters of happiness.

John Dehlin [01:50:28] Just as a side note, we recently Interviewed a woman who said that the mere belief that, that Satan and a third of the hosts of heaven were swarming earth and they're constantly surrounding all of us, trying to tempt us and make us fall and make mistakes was so stressful to her that that teaching alone made her miserable. And that once she lost her faith and no longer believed in a Satan and no longer believed that satanic angels were constantly trying to bring and tear her down, actually her, her sadness went away and her happiness improved. And I mean it's not as simple as that, but that doctors like that can be pretty stressful, don't you think?

Carah Burrell [01:51:15] Yeah. And again, I always come back to this point. The hardest pill for Mormons to swallow is that the church leadership does not care about you because if they cared about you, they would care about what is best for you psychologically, best practices speaking. And go doing this supernatural, mystical, crazy narrative about satanic forces being able to get you if you do this or break these rules that leads to in like an insane type of, of OCD scrupulosity, thinking that you always need to be warding off these powers of this unseen, unprovable satanic force instead of just going again my rant from two hours ago about evolution science helping us understand our bodies best practices, what we can prove, what we can know.

Carah Burrell [01:51:56] But so many of the times the church are at odds with one another because they only really benefit from forwarding their system. Forwarding like telling you that you are broken, that you have this toxicness that can only be fixed within their system. They don't actually benefit by making you a whole person with, with good information.

Carah Burrell [01:52:14] You know, what we know is best practices. How many times do we have to excommunicate people for like Natasha Helfer, for just trying to give people good resources to have a better life that the Church is going to be coming at odds with. Yeah, it's a hard pill to swallow.

The Happiness Trap and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

John Dehlin [01:52:30] One more thing, John, I just want to add is just this notion that I learned in my, in my training, you know, for, in my, in my psychology training. There's this idea of the happiness trap. And I don't know that we covered it, but teaching someone to pursue happiness actually has been shown to decrease their happiness.

John Dehlin [01:52:52] We are not made, as we talked about at the beginning of this episode, just like you're not, you know, how do you be happy? Take heroin, right? How do you be happy? Snort cocaine? How do you be happy? You know, snort Adderall. Like we know how to, how to stimulate the chemicals in your brain to be happy.

John Dehlin [01:53:10] But, but that's ultimately deadly or addictive. Right? But, but, but the brain wasn't made to be happy all the time. We need other stimuli. In fact, frankly, our nervous system needs a break. But, but even more than that, you know, one of the brilliant aspects of secular Buddhism. So, like, if Mormonism isn't the way, what is a better way? And I'm going to give a shout out to Noah Rochetta and the Secular Buddhism podcast, because, you know, one of the core tenants of secular Buddhism, it's not a religion, it's more of just a life philosophy. It starts out with the teaching, not you're going to be happy, not Buddhism is the great plan of happiness. Do you know care the core. The core tenant of Buddhism. You know the three words that Buddhism begins with?

Carah Burrell [01:54:00] Life is pain.

John Dehlin [01:54:00] Life is suffering. Yeah, exactly. Now, why would a philosophy that wants to have you living your healthiest and happiest and best life start with the teaching that life is suffering? It's because in reality, life does, you know, pain is inextricable. Pain is unavoidable. In this life, you can't avoid pain, you can't avoid suffering. It's going to happen. There's death, there's pain, there's disease, there's sickness, there's tragedy. But if you're set up with the expectation that you can successfully avoid pain and suffering and that you can behave in a way to where you're going to constantly be happy, what that does is it sets you up for disappointment.

John Dehlin [01:54:41] It sets you up to feel like, what's going on? I'm doing all the things I should be doing and I'm not happy. What's wrong? It must be me or God, I curse you. And what that's called is the second arrow and the third arrow of suffering that gets added to the core inherent pain of life. And so if what Buddhism does is it says, hey, you've got an arrow stuck in you, it's the pain that's going to happen when you catch a cold or when a loved one dies, or when, you know, you get a rash, or, you know, your kids disobey you, or, you know, your co host, you know, does something you don't like or whatever. Not Carah, because Carah would not do that.

Carah Burrell [01:55:23] Why would you say that?

John Dehlin [01:55:24] Exactly. But I mean, more John. More you, John. But, but, but as soon as something bad happens, if you've been set up to think that life is joy and happiness, then your expectations have not been met. You feel like you're broken or you're cursing God. And that's when you introduce additional suffering to the core inherent pain of life. The flip side is something that actually is very intuitive. If you expect that life is going to continually be handing you occasional sandwiches, I'll swear occasionally your life is going to hand you bad things. Then when it happens, it doesn't feel as personal. It doesn't feel like you're a failure.

John Dehlin [01:56:06] There's no one to blame, no one to curse. You're just like, yeah, sometimes life is going to make me sad. Sometimes I'm not going to be happy all the time. And it ends up that, on average, people experience higher levels of joy or happiness, ironically, on average, when they start with the expectation that life is not going to always be happy and life is going to contain suffering.

John Dehlin [01:56:30] So just by teaching that gospel, living leads to happiness, they're almost guaranteeing an increase in misery with their members. Does that make sense? Yeah. And there's a whole book. We'll have Maven include this. It's called the Happiness Trap. There's also a version of it that's called the Illustrated Happiness Trap, where there are lots of cartoons that are being drawn. But it's a really a solid life philosophy that you all should check out. If you want a manual for healthier, more joyful life, check out the Happiness Trap.

John Dehlin [01:57:06] And check out the Secular Buddhism podcast by Noah Rochetta. We'll have. We'll have Maven add that to the show notes as well. And while I'm kind of on a little bit of a rant, let's also give a shout out because Googie Grant has made us happy by giving us a super chat.

John Dehlin [01:57:24] He wrote, all my life, Catholic friends used to be so sad that I was going to hell because I wasn't Catholic and they told me so. Yeah, yeah, religious, religious people sometimes can be elitist and insufferable and judgmental. And ironically, it was Jesus himself who said, don't judge, judge not. You know, who are you to judge the sliver or the splinter in someone else's eye when you've got a beam or a moat in yours. Care. Anything you want to add

Carah Burrell [01:57:54] in addition to secular Buddhism and Eckhart Tolle books and a new Earth, and those are the types of things that brought me a lot of happiness from going one system to the other and then also just studying, like Taoism, and just one sentence that has made the entire my life very happy is the idea that life is a journey, not a destination. And when your destination is achieving this happiness, like it kind of was in Mormonism, like we're talking right about right now.

Carah Burrell [01:58:20] Yeah, It's. It's not taking into account that there needs to be balance and everything and that you need to be able to go with the flow and that just trying to manipulate that feeling like you have more power than you really do to manipulate your circumstances instead of just releasing it to the conditioning of other people, the conditioning of yourself, self is going to be what it's going to be. And just trying to live in a flow state as you're going and just understand that you're on a journey. You'll have good days, you'll have bad days, but there's not a single solitary destination of. I'll know I'm happy when I have done this or whatever, because I love that.

Carah Burrell [01:58:55] What was it, John, that you did? When every time you give that. Talk about that story about that, like, Chinese man and his horse and do you want to tell that story? Does that feel. Maybe I'm crazy, but I just. I love that story because I think it really illustrates that, like, whatever will be, will be.

John Dehlin [01:59:10] Yeah. Yeah. So. So this is. This. I get straight from no Rochette and Secular Buddhism podcast. It's kind of an old Chinese proverb of a. Of a Chinese farmer and his son. And you know, they have some horses in a corral, and the horses break loose and. And escape the corral, and the crazy neighbor comes up and says, oh, my gosh, farmer, neighbor, your life is over. You rely on those horses, you know, to farm. Now your horses are gone.

John Dehlin [01:59:44] You know, you're. You're screwed. And the. The wise farmer responds by saying, who knows what is good and what is bad? And then the next day, the horses come back, and while they're out, they find, like, a foal, and they come back with an extra horse. And so he's able to get them back into the corral, and now he's got three horses instead of two. And so the neighbor comes up and says, oh, you're so lucky. Now you've got three horses. You're a wealthy man. Wow. You never have to work again. And then the wise farmer says, who knows what is good and what is bad?

John Dehlin [02:00:16] And then the next day, the son is riding the new horse to break it in, and the son breaks his leg. And then the crazy neighbor comes back and says, you're screwed. You rely on your son to help you farm, and now you're screwed. Your life is over. And the wise farmer responded and said, who knows what is good and what is bad. And then the next day, the military comes into town to conscript young, young men for military service, but because the son has a broken leg, he's not carried off to war.

John Dehlin [02:00:47] And it's, it's just the. The idea is that when we're constantly evaluating everything, trying to label everything, trying to judge everything, we're. We're taking a lot of the joy out of life, but we're also setting ourselves up for expectation. Because if you think things are going great, well, then they're going bad, and then you're frustrated, and then when they're going bad, and then, you know, you can get caught in this loop of toxic evaluation instead of just living in the moment. Because in reality, we don't know whether something that feels awful is going to later become really good or if something that feels super good is going to turn out to be a curse.

John Dehlin [02:01:25] We're not wise enough. So instead of being tossed to and fro with these labels and these evaluations and these judgments, Buddhism teaches you to hold labels and judgments and evaluations loosely and try and just ride, Ride the wave of life. And sometimes the waves will be high, sometimes they'll be low, but try to just kind of stay as steady as you can.

Carah Burrell [02:01:48] Amen.

John Dehlin [02:01:49] Yeah. And that's all in secular Buddhism. Podcast and Noah Rochetta, thanks for.

Carah Burrell [02:01:55] Yeah, I love that toxic evaluation because that's again, what Mormonism and that shame cycle, all of that is a. It's a toxic evaluation to make you feel like crap so that you keep coming back and there's just like, how could you not be happy? I just can't imagine a Mormon listening to this and being like, no, I still found real happiness. I'm like, when you break away from just holding so tightly to these labels and you're able to live in a flow state and, and just look at life like a journey. And it doesn't have to do with reflecting on how horrible I am as a.

Carah Burrell [02:02:24] Of a person before my maker and what, like, penance, what actions do I need to do so that I feel right in my body? And I'm. I'm kind of having these forces against nature instead of flowing with nature and feeling like a more a fully actualized person who knows right from wrong in an intuitive sense without being told it. Like, how could that not create a sense of happiness? Is all I have to say.

John Dehlin [02:02:48] Yeah. You still there, John Larsen?

John Larsen [02:02:50] Yeah, I'm here. That was great stuff. And it's a good segue to the last little bit here. And I want to dig A little bit deeper into what you were saying. You were talking in Buddhism about the first Noble Truth, which is dukkha, and forgive me, I butcher Sanskrit. I'm not real super good at it.

Buddhism, Suffering, and a Healthier View of Happiness

John Larsen [02:03:12] But it's normally translated like you did, as suffering. But the word itself actually means to be. Well, it can mean suffering, but it means to be unsatisfied, that you suffer because you've got a thirst that is never quenched. So you're in this state of desire all the time that can never. You have a fire that can't be put out.

John Larsen [02:03:43] And then the next second noble truth is samudaya, which is that suffering comes from desire, or that dukkha comes from desire, which is also translated as yearning or greed or attachment, or the best word, I think, is craving.

John Larsen [02:04:04] So this endless craving, this endless pursuit for the Buddhists is what is driving all suffering. And I think why I wanted to pause that, and I really appreciate everything you guys both said there, why I want to pause that is. That is what Buddhism has identified to be the core root of all pain and suffering on this planet. But if we take four steps back into what we were just talking about, what happiness is, the way the church defines it is dukkha is an ever suffering of not being happy and an unsatisfied state where you must pursue happiness forever. You must always keep striving and never attaining, and you can't ever scratch that itch.

John Larsen [02:05:00] You will forever be short of happiness. And then you'll have one little experience and you'll have a really inspiring talk at conference or whatever, and you'll feel it, and then it'll go away, and then you'll feel alone and you'll feel sad and you'll feel lonely, and that means you need to pursue it again.

John Larsen [02:05:17] So it's fascinating you guys brought that up because it is the ultimate core of what the church does. It's like it has learned what Eastern religions consider evil and then packaged it up as good to keep people, as you said, forever on the hamster wheel.

John Larsen [02:05:36] And then I want to return to the third and fourth Noble Truth when we're done. But first, I want to continue what you guys just started here, because I've thought a lot about these podcasts and it really rakes my soul. I mean, in a real way, that we're oftentimes so negative. It's very important to point out the hypocrisy and lies and problems and pain of the church. But oftentimes I don't leave people with anything.

John Larsen [02:06:02] So this gives us a golden opportunity. We said that we know at the beginning of the podcast what happiness is. We know that as preschoolers, and we said that the church has manipulated this. But let's look at what some other people outside the church have said about this. And first I want to turn to Jesus of Nazareth.

John Larsen [02:06:23] He had something to say about this, actually about happiness and pursuit and, and what we should do to achieve. And I'll read you this little short passage. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up into the mountain and after he sat down, his disciples came to him and began to speak and taught them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The poor in spirit, meaning those who don't have spirit, those who are lacking spirit.

John Larsen [02:06:54] Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Those who seek righteousness will find it. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs the kingdom of God.

John Larsen [02:07:29] And blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. For in the same way that persecuted the prophets who were before you, Jesus in here rejects fundamentally the idea of happiness and he never talks about happiness anywhere else. And that verse 11 is key to you, my dear ex Mormon friends. Jesus says, blessed are you ex Mormon when Mormons revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

John Larsen [02:08:13] Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. In the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Now, I don't agree with Jesus that there's a heaven, but the reward comes after and it's the humility. It is the people who take a pause who are not the ones out charging. Jesus said elsewhere, blessed are those who pray in secret, not out in the open. They have their reward. That Jesus had a very clear message about what is good and satisfying in life. And it was take care of other people, don't put on showy religion, don't pursue money, pursue the common good. And that is a definition of happiness that is worth pursuing.

John Dehlin [02:09:02] I love it. John Larsen, preach.

John Larsen [02:09:04] And even better than what Jesus said, let's Go to Thoreau. Let's find the best definition I can of happiness. He said, happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase it, the more it will evade you. But if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder. Now, I was going to record downstairs and moved up. So I left my BYU magazine at home.

John Dehlin [02:09:32] Home

John Larsen [02:09:34] or downstairs. So I don't have it right here. I apologize. But I was preparing this podcast about three weeks ago and this magazine showed up in my mailbox because I'm BYU alumni and it has a picture on the front of somebody hiking with a butterfly on their shoulder. And I thought, oh, Thoreau. And I read the article, a great article, by the way, on how to be happy in BYU magazine. By I think it was four, maybe three BYU psychology faculty members had written, co written this wonderful great article. I highly recommend it on happiness.

John Larsen [02:10:15] And do you know how much of the church's definition of happiness shows up in their article? Of course you do. It's zero. These are professors of psychology who understand fundamentally happiness. These are believers who believe in the church. And yet the prophet seers and revelators have stated again and again and again what happiness is. And these guys who make this their life study find all of that, even publishing in a church magazine, to be utterly without value. They mention none of it. But they do mention mindfulness, which I think is ironic because I bristle a tiny bit when we talk about secular Buddhism because mindfulness is a part and parcel of Eastern philosophical religious tradition that dates thousands of years.

John Larsen [02:11:13] And then we kind of want to pull it out of this tradition. And the the more woke among us would call this cultural appropriation. I'm not going to go there. But then we shake it off and we say, oh, this is secular, but it's this thing that's part of this people and this practice that's been around for thousands of years and they quote it. I want to point out that this is proof of my Frankenstein theory of BYU professors.

John Larsen [02:11:41] For those of you who are uninitiated, it's this. If you take a BYU professor's area of study, their area of expertise, they in that realm, they believe nothing of what the church says. They will hold their testimony on everything that they don't understand.

John Larsen [02:11:58] And if you took and took the mind of a psychology professor and took the psychology part and took the mind of a physics professor and took the physics part and you knit that all together in a Frankenstein professor of byu, you would find nothing of Mormonism there. And here we have this magazine that shows up literally when I'm preparing this, that validates the point that everything the church says about happiness is wrong. The BYU professors themselves validate it, and the church publishes this to its members. It's just mind boggling.

John Dehlin [02:12:35] Thanks, John.

John Larsen [02:12:37] So I said we would talk about the third and fourth noble truth.

John Dehlin [02:12:41] Okay?

John Larsen [02:12:42] The third noble truth is basically the cure to suffering, and the endless desire and yearning is letting go. So the cure to this happiness conundrum we find, and I think you've both already said this more than once during the podcast, is to quit pursuing happiness.

John Larsen [02:13:01] You can't pursue it. You can't get to it that way. Happiness will come upon you when you're pursuing righteousness, when you're trying to be good, when you're trying to be helpful. And that's why I want to kind of push back on secular Buddhism a little bit, even though I've identified myself as a secular Buddhist, because you can't just have the first two and not acknowledge that the cure is a non attachment and learning to not get your panties in a wad about this stuff, which is something that I try to practice poorly.

Finding Real Happiness After Leaving the Church

John Larsen [02:13:39] All right, well, hopefully we have shown how the church works its inner mechanisms on happiness, and we've given you an alternate view of something that's hopeful.

John Dehlin [02:13:49] And, John, there's a couple things I want to add, just kind of a few final thoughts. One thing I want to say, just for those who don't know the history of the Mormon Church and the mental health profession, if you were to read the book Mormon doctrine in the 1960s and 70s and 80s, Carah, written by Bruce R. McConkey, do you know what it would say about the mental health profession generally?

Carah Burrell [02:14:13] Yeah, that they're all corrupted by Satan. And that's the intellectuals and the feminists and the psychology professors and people. They're all on the side of Satan.

John Dehlin [02:14:22] Yeah, Basically, for decades and decades, you know, legitimate psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health professionals, like today in Scientology, were condemned as. As evil, liberal, you know, bad people, and. And the church members should stay away from them also. For. For so long, the Mormon Church tied happiness to righteousness and tied, you know, depression and unhappiness to unrighteousness. And, you know, you would be told that if you were depressed, if you were clinically depressed, to pray and read your scriptures and go to church and go to the temple more and to try harder. And of course, that's. That's a recipe for disaster. So in so many ways, the church provided doctrinal teachings that were Anathema to, to mental health.

John Dehlin [02:15:17] And I guess we could say that just in the past, let's just say five to 10 years, the church has started to say it's okay to seek professional mental health counselors. And I think there was a groundbreaking talk when Elder Holland, I don't know, five or eight years ago, acknowledged that depression was a thing and said that sometimes depression happens and it's not tied to righteousness. But if you think about it, just like the Brethren who were late to the game with the civil rights, you know, with women's rights, with LGBT rights, they still haven't even gotten there.

John Dehlin [02:15:52] If they're prophets, there's a revelators. Why is it, it, why is it that it takes the 2010s, you know, before, before the Brethren are saying, yeah, it's probably a good thing, you know, to see a therapist if you're sad or depressed or anxious. Right? Like that's, that's a low bar for a prophet's here in Revelator to kind of be 50 years behind the mental health profession. Right.

Carah Burrell [02:16:15] And I'm remembering Camille Jones interview where she talked about depression. I remember I made a tick tock out of this clip because depression is so pervasive. It's so many people struggle with, with depression in, in different forms and anxiety in different forms. And people told her that when you have depression, then you are on. The reason you feel so bad is now you're unable to feel the Holy Ghost. You're unable to feel God's love for you. And she makes a great point in that interview. She's like, why would God design a system where so many people have depression? Or like I had postpartum depression and it's baked into our freaking biology.

Carah Burrell [02:16:49] For now. You're not able to understand your maker's love for you. You're not able to feel the Holy Ghost. Like this is part of our human biology in so many ways. We're so just. Depression is, is, is just. Yeah, it's so, so pervasive in so many reasons in so many different ways. And that the very God that we're supposed to worship, we can't even feel him and we feel like we're gonna kill ourselves now. So anyway, just reminded me of that. And my second point is you were saying, like that's what they used to teach. Never forget that just because something used to be taught in the church.

Carah Burrell [02:17:20] Or they could have a gospel topic lesson that says we disavow these. There are so many people who are still indoctrinated with these messages and they still preach it and teach it. They can be your kids, grandparents, for instance, who think horrible things about the actions are all the actions of a kid having a tantrum, the actions of a kid having adhd, the actions of, of me just having a baby and having postpartum depression and not doing well during COVID is because you don't have the spirit with you. And your, your lack of success in life is very much tied to your activity in the church.

Carah Burrell [02:17:57] Like, even if they don't say that as expressly as they used to, I just want to make it clear that like, that is like the real painful, toxic part of Mormonism that is just again, that just weaves its way and causes so much division in families and relationships because of this, this superstition that, that all wickedness leaving the church, it's all because Satan.

John Dehlin [02:18:20] Yeah. I have one final question I want to ask both you, Carah and John Larsen. There's this idea of depressive realism, depressed realism, I don't know if you guys have heard of it, but the idea is, is that people who view the world realistically, on average, tend to be a little bit less happy than those who kind of view the world unrealistically, but with kind of rose colored glasses.

John Dehlin [02:18:49] And kind of tied to that is my is, is what I've taken from several cult documentaries that I've watched. Whether it's Wild Wild country, whether it's Holy Hell, whether it's the Nexium documentaries or the Scientology documentaries, or even the Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey documentary. When you, when you watch these documentaries of cult leaders and, and of cult members, you'll inevitably hear these cult members say, even if they've lost their faith and have completely left the cult and the cult devolved into, you know, apocalyptic ruin and murder and mayhem, they'll almost always say that the happiest they've ever been in their life has been when they were a full believer, fully enmeshed in the cult.

John Dehlin [02:19:40] And I think there's something, there's something important there because when I, you know, when I decided I didn't want to be Mormon or, or I didn't believe anymore and that the church wasn't going to work for me, I wasn't sure I was ever going to be more happy after leaving than I was within it. I would say now I'm much more happy than I was when I was in it, but I wasn't sure. But I just kind of made the decision that if I had to choose between living in reality Living a life based on truth. Living a life based on informed consent and a full knowledge.

John Dehlin [02:20:18] A life where I didn't know it happened when I die. A life where this may be the end. A life where I don't know if I have a loving heavenly father blessing me and looking after me and taking care of me.

John Dehlin [02:20:32] A life where I don't have certainty, where I don't believe that I'm better than everybody. Like you can. You can sometimes feel like that's losing a lot. You're trading a lot away for, you know, an average set point that might not always be as happy as when you were in the cult, but I personally would rather be less happy and live a life based on truth and authenticity and informed consent than. Than live a false life of, of fake, feigned happiness. And John Larsen, I'm wondering if you. I mean, if, if you feel similar, if you have thoughts about that.

John Larsen [02:21:12] Yeah, I. I read a story a few a little while ago. A woman who was in Sarajevo when the society collapsed and she was in the streets as a partisan fighter. And she describes that time period, although she would never want to go back and suffer the hunger and the deprivation and the violence. She describes it as the happiest time of her life because she. She was fighting for a cause.

John Larsen [02:21:43] She absolutely knew what her purpose was, and she was absolutely connected to the other people who were fighting with her. She was doing something that was full of meaning. And everything that she did, every amount of suffering she had had purpose. So she was happy. I think this goes to the underlying theme. Happiness is an evolutionary state of being to reward and push certain actions. And the pursuit of happiness is not the right way to live. It doesn't get us there. I also want to say this.

John Larsen [02:22:22] You're right. There is a high correlation to intelligence and depression and seeing things the way they are, because oftentimes, and it's not just now, in 2023, but, you know, if you look at, I don't know, 1929 or 1904 or 1844 or 1338, there's a lot of things to be depressed about happening right now.

John Larsen [02:22:49] And we know the research has shown that we live where there's these systems that are designed to keep us isolated, anxious, depressed, because we make better consumers. We know that most Americans, to make this an American thing, actually don't make enough money to cover the basics of life and be able to, say, repair a car or pay a health bill. We know that the healthcare system in the United States, for example, is suffering. We know that the global supply chains are suffering. We know that climate change is real and is coming, that we're looking for cures. And I say be careful, because sometimes you're not depressed.

John Larsen [02:23:33] Things just suck, Right? And sometimes you're anxious because you should be anxious, because there's things that are happening. Again, we're not unique in terms of human story. The whole parade of the human existence has been drunkenly careening from one tragedy to another of greater and greater tragedy. You know, there was one battle in World War I where a million people died. A million fucking people, right? And I think that's why you have to be careful of anybody selling happiness, be it Amazon or Google or Twitter or TikTok or YouTube or Mormon Church or your secular Buddhist guru, because sometimes things just fucking blow.

John Larsen [02:24:20] And what you might be hearing is a still small voice saying, we need to change our society. Like you pointed out, John, before, that it's more about community that makes people happy. We need to get back to what makes life good. And we constantly need to be doing that. We constantly need to be pushing against the forces that seek to divide us because we're better consumers. So I'll say, yeah, happiness is cool, but it's the wrong thing to pursue. Sometimes justice and mercy and empathy and fairness are better values. That's what I think.

John Dehlin [02:24:59] Yeah. And John, that. That was beautiful. And I'm just gonna. You're making me think of the movie Inside out. And, you know, if any of you have seen the movie Inside out by Pixar, you'll know this. And for those of you who haven't, check it out. But the. The premise of the movie is that this. This person, I think it's a little girl. It's just always trying, is always trying to push the sadness down. Trying to push the sadness down, avoid it, pack it down, and.

John Dehlin [02:25:28] And our emotions are there just like anger is there for a reason. Anger's there to help motivate us to make a change and to protect us. Depression and sadness is there to help us realize that maybe something oftentimes just needs to be changed. And if we. If we're never. If we're always trying to pack down and avoid and ignore our core feelings, sometimes we're going to fail to learn the lessons and make the changes that we need to make to make our lives and the world a better place. That was beautiful. John Larsen. Carah, any final thoughts?

Carah Burrell [02:25:59] Yeah, it's all a journey and it's all learning that balance. You're never, hopefully you're not going to always Be sad because you're going to be able to leave a high demand religion and understand what tools you were lacking before and be able to. You travel along and you carry along your little backpack and you learn different lessons through life and where you are. You develop your own values outside of the church and you can decide day by day if those are truly your values and if you're living up to your highest self and if the people around you are also helping you achieve those things.

Carah Burrell [02:26:30] And that's just kind of life is a journey and you go through it and you learn lessons and it's not about getting to a final destination where now I'm happy. It's just deciding if you, you are living up to your principles and your values. That's what I would say about it. And when you feel like you are, we all get triggered sometimes. And we all.

Carah Burrell [02:26:49] Yeah. Our nervous systems get deregulated and dysregulated and we all are just need to accept each other as human beings who are trying our best with the tools that are available to us as products of our genetics and our conditioning, as I always say.

John Dehlin [02:27:04] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:27:04] And so if you can just accept that within yourself that there's, there's, there's no need to have shame narratives about yourself or about other people. But we're all doing the best with the tools that we're given and every day just do a little bit better.

John Dehlin [02:27:16] Yeah. Yeah. And just to hit it, just to head on, believers are never going to believe that people who leave the church are happy. I can say I've interacted personally with, I don't know, 30, 000 or more ex Mormons at this point. Over the 20 years I've been in the space, 99.9999 of the ex Mormons I've interacted with would say they're glad they've made the decisions they did and that overall they feel happier and healthier than when they left. And that's not to say we're better than anyone. We don't want to create a new group of elitism and judgment. But if you're afraid that you can't be happy or healthy outside of Mormonism, my message to you is that's phobia conditioning that the church programmed into you through learned helplessness.

John Dehlin [02:28:05] And that the truth is there's, there's. That a faith crisis can be a gift and there can be untold joy and happiness and healing and learning and fulfillment and friendships and meaningful relationships outside of orthodox Mormonism or any form of Mormonism. John Larsen, we want to give you the last word.

John Larsen [02:28:29] No. So well said. Thanks, both of you. I've learned things from everyone here tonight. I do believe that at the end of the day, Mormons, non Mormons, ex Mormons, looky loos, whoever, we're all just kind of the same people trying to strive. And I think I would say if there's the takeaway message from this, for people who are believing, who made it this far, please give the ex Mormons grace. And for the ex Mormons, please give the Mormons grace. This is something that's being done to Mormons, and one of the joys about being an ex Mormon is shedding these shackles. But we need to be empathetic to the people who are still in the church, who still internalize all this stuff.

John Larsen [02:29:19] And remember that even though they can be real super big dicks to you, it's because they were trained to. And we just gotta, I don't know, hold hands and try. I don't have the solution.

Closing Thoughts and Supporting the Podcasts

John Dehlin [02:29:34] All right, well, John Larsen, this has been great. Thank you so much. Do you know what's next in our Mormon expression series, or is that going to be a surprise?

John Larsen [02:29:44] Well, right now on schedule is. I've got two I'm debating against. Maybe I'll put it up for the. I was going to give a history of Mormon theology, how it evolved and who evolved it and who wrote it. Or we can talk about. I compiled a list a few Years ago about 25 items of unhealthy organizations, and compare the church to that list. We can go either way.

Carah Burrell [02:30:12] Hey, Stephen Hassan.

John Dehlin [02:30:13] Yeah, they both sound great. I think they're both important. I think that second one would be fun.

Carah Burrell [02:30:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:30:21] Yeah.

John Larsen [02:30:21] All right, well, then there it is. I'll send you to the list and you can be prepared.

John Dehlin [02:30:26] Dude, I want the freaking Smoot hearings.

John Larsen [02:30:28] Brother Smoot hearings is coming. I found my book. So. So I just need. I need time to digest it. That finding the book was the first step.

John Dehlin [02:30:38] We got to have occasional John Larsen breaking down Mormon history. That's some of our best, best content.

John Larsen [02:30:43] So the real gem, I've got planning for the end of the year, but I need to talk to John Dehlin, because I want to do it live in Salt Lake City in the heart of the beast, and we got to make that happen. So I've got a real special one in the works, but we'll see.

John Dehlin [02:31:03] You're gonna keep it. You're gonna keep it secret? Is it sacred or secret? Which one?

John Larsen [02:31:08] No, I guess we're Gonna. We're gonna. The. The title is. Is how to Win a Ground War Laymanite style.

John Dehlin [02:31:16] He's trying to. He's trying to match her. Outdo his how to Build a Trans Ocean.

Carah Burrell [02:31:20] I've been hearing about this one for a couple years, so you better bring it.

John Dehlin [02:31:24] All right, John?

John Larsen [02:31:25] Yeah, well, I've been doing research.

John Dehlin [02:31:27] All right, well, there's tons of people here who would love to meet you and see you and come to a live event with you. Just like the old Mormon expression. Remember those days when you and where you and Zilfa showed up in togas.

John Larsen [02:31:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:31:40] At a public Mormon. Mormon expression event. Yeah.

John Larsen [02:31:43] You can still see it's on YouTube. If you go. If you go look for it, it's out there.

John Dehlin [02:31:47] Did you know they did a nude episode where they all did the podcast in the nude?

Carah Burrell [02:31:51] Yeah.

John Larsen [02:31:52] Bare ass naked.

John Dehlin [02:31:53] Yeah, I don't think we'll ever.

John Larsen [02:31:56] That was, that's before the cameras were on, though.

John Dehlin [02:31:58] Yeah, yeah, I do.

John Larsen [02:32:01] I do need. Wait, one last call for that episode to happen. I need. There is a Roman Legion reenactment society called the Legion XX, the Legion 20 or Legion, something like that. I need at least six of the guys in that to, to appear. So if you know any of these guys or, or, or are one, then get ahold of me.

John Dehlin [02:32:26] Are you talking about LARPers?

John Larsen [02:32:28] Yeah. Well, well, there's, there's, there's LARPers who kind of like hit each other with foam swords and stuff. And there's reenactment people and they're usually a little bit more serious. You know, There's World War I reenactors and civil War reenactors and all kinds of reenactors. But so the, the Legion, the, the legionnaires in this society, they're a little bit more serious. They, they try to achieve authenticity. So I need, I need some of you guys.

John Dehlin [02:32:55] All right. All right. Well, John Larsen, thank you so much for your ongoing series and Carah Burrell, thanks for joining us today. It's great.

Carah Burrell [02:33:03] I'm the happiest when I'm with my johns.

John Dehlin [02:33:06] Yeah, yeah. Well, we, we enjoy you, but we need one more Carah to make it complete. So see what you can do.

Carah Burrell [02:33:13] Think of things. And you're going to be perpetually pet seministic if you're always looking at the cup half carrot.

John Dehlin [02:33:19] So wait, what if one care equals two johns?

Carah Burrell [02:33:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:33:22] What if that's your worth?

Carah Burrell [02:33:24] Yeah, it's all in me.

John Dehlin [02:33:29] All right. Check out NuanceHoe. Please subscribe to the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel. Also subscribe to the Nuanceo YouTube channel.

Carah Burrell [02:33:39] I've got so much good content out this week, you guys. Like, I don't want to brag, but it's like, some of my best stuff.

John Dehlin [02:33:43] Yeah, it's, like, really popular. Please, please contribute to Nuance. Ho Patreon, I love you. And also, please give us super chats here on YouTube. And please contribute to John Larsen. You know, we. We paid John and Carah for their work here, but we. If you value John Larsen, if you want to see him continue on Mormon stories, go to mormonstories.org mormonexpression we'll have Maven put that at the top of the show. Notes, please become a monthly donor to this Mormon expression series. Or frankly, John Larsen, we're gonna have to fire you. Yeah, you don't want to get fired, do you?

John Larsen [02:34:18] I've threatened John that when the money is out, I'm done. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:34:22] Oh, ever. Yeah.

John Larsen [02:34:24] So keep.

John Dehlin [02:34:25] Keep supporting John Larsen or he'll disappear from Mormon discourse.

John Larsen [02:34:28] There's other things to do in life.

John Dehlin [02:34:31] So I. I don't understand what words are coming out of your mouth. I don't even understand those words. I'm kidding.

Carah Burrell [02:34:38] No, you're not. John de Lynn.

John Dehlin [02:34:41] All right, well, please Support Mormon expression. MormonStories.org Mormon expression. You can donate@MormonStories.org Click on the Donate button. Most importantly, share this with people. Subscriber. Follow to us on Facebook and. And YouTube, if you don't mind. You'll get the latest stuff and yeah, please give us your feedback@mormonstoriesgmail.com please don't write me and say I, I'm. I'm mad that. That you guys swear. When John Larsen comes on, we give you the content warning ahead of time.

John Larsen [02:35:12] We.

John Dehlin [02:35:12] We try to stay on brand as much as we can on Mormon Stories. It is okay to have a monthly episode with a little bit of swearing and some raw emotion. So just please stop writing me to complain about John Larsen. Just don't listen to the John Larsen episodes if you don't like him. Is that okay to say? John Larsen?

John Larsen [02:35:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And usually when you tell people are complaining about me, it boosts donations. So go ahead and do it.

John Dehlin [02:35:38] All right. You're a good man, John. John Larsen, thanks so much. You take care. All right. Thank you.

Carah Burrell [02:35:42] Love you, dude.

John Dehlin [02:35:43] All right, Carah, you're the best. Thanks for joining us.

Carah Burrell [02:35:47] Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [02:35:47] All right. All right, everyone, thanks again for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Thanks to Rock it out with Kim D for the super chat. Please be good to each other, please be kind to each other. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Thanks, Maven, and take care, everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.