Introducing the Hosts and Today's Topic

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am one of your hosts for today, John Dehlin. It is January 23, 2023, and as always, I'm excited to have in studio with us Carah Burrell, otherwise known as Nuance. O. Hey, Carah. Of course.

Carah Burrell [00:00:18] I love being here. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [00:00:20] Welcome back.

Carah Burrell [00:00:21] Thanks.

John Dehlin [00:00:22] Yeah. We're here in January bringing you another John Larsen episode. For those who don't know, John Larsen is a podcast legend within the Mormon and ex Mormon spaces. He was the host of Mormon Expression podcast for a long, long time. Thanks to your donations@mormonstories.org mormonexpression we are able to raise enough money to pay John and Care each month to come on once to address a topic of John's choosing. And we were able to put back up the Mormon Expression catalog on Spotify and Apple podcasts so you can hear, I don't know, something like 300amazing episodes of John and various panels over the years. Today the topic is going to be, why don't more Mormons who doubt or question their faith just leave? I think we might be dealing with the trope that often believing Mormons throw at critical or questioning Mormons, which is, you know, you can leave the church, but you can't leave it alone. I think that's what we're going to be talking about, but that's really up to our guest for the evening, John Larsen. Hey, John. Welcome back to Mormon Stories.

John Larsen [00:01:27] Hey, everybody.

John Dehlin [00:01:28] How's he?

John Larsen [00:01:28] Thanks for having me on.

John Dehlin [00:01:29] Yeah. How's the new year treating you so far?

John Larsen [00:01:32] Good. I like the. The introduction. I'm like the Foghorn Leghorn of ex Mormon podcasters. And, and, and why does Carah get a nickname? I need. I'm. I'm like Unnuanced Hoe, except I got a hard R in there. I'm Unnuanced Whore.

John Dehlin [00:01:47] Can it be bro instead of hoe?

Carah Burrell [00:01:49] That's who I stole it from. A YouTuber named Nuance Bro.

John Dehlin [00:01:52] Yeah, how about. How about Unnuanced Bro? Should that be it? No.

John Larsen [00:01:56] All right, but that. That doesn't. That doesn't pick up my whoring around, so. Okay, we'll have to keep working it. Let's send it committee.

John Dehlin [00:02:01] All right, we'll send it to committee.

John Larsen [00:02:03] All right.

John Dehlin [00:02:04] Well, John, what we always love to do is begin with some announcements. Is there any corrections or additions or comments or even news that you want to share before we launch into the topic today? And I should say, I guess I want to say, John, I have an announcement first. Do you mind if I share it?

John Larsen [00:02:21] No, no, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:02:22] It's kind of cool that that Mormon Stories podcast reached the hundred thousand subscriber mark.

John Larsen [00:02:29] Yes. Congratulations on YouTube.

John Dehlin [00:02:32] Carah's clapping.

Carah Burrell [00:02:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:34] Yeah, Like, I want to thank everyone who subscribed and helped make that possible. It's actually not easy to reach a hundred thousand YouTube subscribers.

Carah Burrell [00:02:44] Are you gonna get one of those YouTube plaques?

John Dehlin [00:02:46] Yeah, we're gonna, I think we're gonna get a plaque. But more importantly, one of the reasons we wanted to reach that precipice is that once we have a good decent amount of subscribers, it's easier to get bigger named guests, authors of big books. And so we just want to thank all our loyal listeners, everyone who took the time to subscribe, please still subscribe if you haven't, because 200 is better than 100 subscribers. But also I want to thank everyone on staff who made it possible. Carah, you were an important part of our, of our growth, so thank you.

Carah Burrell [00:03:18] Yeah, back when you weren't into as many authors and you're like, I'll take that tick tock chick. She can come on.

John Dehlin [00:03:24] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:03:24] Now you're, you're above and beyond that.

John Dehlin [00:03:26] It's been to the moon since we brought you on, basically.

Carah Burrell [00:03:28] Yeah, I will take credit for that. But no, like moving into YouTube shorts and tick tocks and stuff has grown. It like skyrocketed. Right?

John Dehlin [00:03:35] Yeah, I mean, I think, I think, I think it really began with Gerardo and the upping our camera and lighting game, cinematography game, and our thumbnail game. That's kind of what totally got us on track. And then, yeah, shorts, shorts were very, very important. But just recently, YouTube is really almost petrified at Tik Tok success. And so it's really rewarding YouTubers who, who are sharing shorts on YouTube. And we found that some crazy thing, like 60 to 70% of our growth over the past few months has come from the shorts that we've been adding to our YouTube channel.

Carah Burrell [00:04:13] So those five hour podcasts in like a minute or less bounced around the Internet. I've done amazing things.

John Dehlin [00:04:19] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:04:19] So excited for you.

John Dehlin [00:04:20] And we brought on, you know, Anthony, our, you know, our YouTube expert. He's been helping us for a couple months and of course, Brooklyn and Maven's been helping a lot and Margi and just a lot of people have helped make this possible. So thanks again. Thanks to all our viewers and listeners. John, anything you want to add about that?

John Larsen [00:04:38] Oh, you've, you've got an amazing staff right now. The best I've seen in 15 years, they really are doing a fantastic job. And I just want to add Mormon stories. Fan base is like filling up a bathtub with the drain open because as people process their way out of the church and move on, they quit listening. And John, you've been lamenting this problem to me for years and years, but I, I just want to point that out because the 100,000 is all the more meaningful because the people who were listening 10 years ago, they're not part of that 100,000. They, they, they've, they've, they've, they've been here in this liminal space and they've moved to the next thing. So it, it speaks very highly of what you guys been able to put together, and I'm, I'm proud to be a tiny little part of it.

John Dehlin [00:05:25] Yeah, John, you, you also were an important part of our growth the past year. And you're saying that the fact that people move on is a, is a feature, not a bug, right?

John Larsen [00:05:34] That's right. Yeah. This is not a place to live, you know, pitch a tent here for a while and, and life, the world's beautiful, there's other things to do. But while you're here, while you need it, you know, we're here to, we're here to take the blows with you.

John Dehlin [00:05:49] Absolutely. All right, so again, thanks everybody. All right, John, so I guess anything. We were talking a little bit about the Great Salt Lake. I was calling you a real genuine modern day prophet. Do you want to update us on kind of Great Salt Lake news and how you've been, your expertise has even been tapped a little bit?

Great Salt Lake Update and Channel Milestones

John Larsen [00:06:09] Well, that's, that's to come. But the big, the big, you know, as we do Lake watch. The big news is before the legislative session began, a group of, of experts came together and released a report. And they set the clock running. They said they've got about five years before the lake is gone. So the pressure is on. The good news is, and I'm not, you try to talk about, like I broke this story. To be clear, the New York Times ran the story before I did. I was riffing off a New York Times article. But it is, it has gotten more and more coverage and it has become one of the, I've noticed in coverage of climate change there's like five or six places around the world that the press has started focusing on. Lake Mead is one of them. And, and this is another one, the Great Salt Lake. So let's hope our collective voices and our efforts pay off and we can reverse the The. The damage.

John Dehlin [00:07:12] Absolutely. I know.

John Larsen [00:07:14] It's not too late. It's not too late.

John Dehlin [00:07:16] Yeah, I know the legislature's considering some things, even this legislative session. Is that what you've heard as.

John Larsen [00:07:24] Yeah, I haven't been following the legislative session that well, but I. What I've heard around the back end is they're starting to. They're starting to take things a little bit more seriously and figure out what they do. It's. It's going to be difficult because alfalfa farming is an old tradition and there's a big political resistance to pushing out the farmers.

John Dehlin [00:07:44] Yeah. All right, well, John, any other news you want to talk about or corrections or clarifications or you, Carah, before we

Carah Burrell [00:07:53] jump in, these are fake eyelashes.

John Dehlin [00:07:56] Okay. That's news. News flash. Newslash. I made it. Funny.

Carah Burrell [00:08:02] Maybe these episodes wouldn't be so long if you didn't have so many puns.

John Dehlin [00:08:06] Newslash cares.

Carah Burrell [00:08:07] I just took the whole last month off of all content, so. So I feel reborn and sometimes the space is really heavy and you need to, you know, buckle down and get grounded and realize what you really want out of life. And for me, that was fake eyelashes, so.

John Dehlin [00:08:21] And you all can. Can check out Carah Burrell's YouTube channel at Nuanceho. And I just want to say my goal is not necessarily to reach 200,000 subscribers. It's to make 10 other ex Mormon and ex Mormon creators to help them reach a hundred thousand.

Carah Burrell [00:08:40] Yeah, these two guys are like the best with advice. So, yeah, I'll get there one day.

John Dehlin [00:08:45] Yeah. Yeah. So. So please go subscribe to Nuance Hoe and all the other creators out there, of course, Mormonism Live and. And Zelf on the Shelf and all the others. All right, John, take it away. What's the topic for. And we do want to welcome and thank our. Our live stream audiences both on. On Facebook and on YouTube.

Carah Burrell [00:09:06] And I have to do a shout out, too. Yeah, that my neighbor's mom. This channel. Hey, Roberta.

John Dehlin [00:09:12] Okay.

Carah Burrell [00:09:13] And now it's her new favorite channel. And so still I'd give her a shout out.

John Dehlin [00:09:17] All right. Hi, Roberta. We love you a lot. Like, a lot. Okay, John, what's the topic for today?

Why Don't More Mormons Leave the Church?

John Larsen [00:09:25] All right, well, the, you know, the question is, why don't more people leave? I. I would state, start from the beginning. The church is obviously not true. Can we all agree on that? I mean, how many episodes have you done, John? What are we on? You know, and as you pointed out, I did hundreds, and there's hundreds more hitting every day. The tradition of tearing the church apart goes back to 1832, if not beforehand, like, let's say the court case of 1826. So we've dismantled every corner of it. Maybe not today, but it's been done. The church, to an outside observer, is obviously not what it says it is. And that's why I use the shorthand. Their own short line. That's obviously not true. So why are people not walking out in droves? Why are there still so many Mormons? It is a very fascinating and interesting question, I think.

John Dehlin [00:10:25] Absolutely. Yeah.

Normalcy Bias and How People React to Threats

John Larsen [00:10:27] So the first question I have for everybody out there and, sorry, I'm just going through puberty, so my. My voice would crack from time to time. The first question I have out there is, what do you do when the fire alarm goes off?

John Dehlin [00:10:41] Okay, I think here, I think he means you to answer this.

Carah Burrell [00:10:44] Who, me?

John Dehlin [00:10:45] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:10:46] I think you fall into, like, a fight or flight response and you remember your training to, you know, fall in line, bullshit, run out the door.

John Larsen [00:10:54] You do when the fire alarm goes off. For real?

Carah Burrell [00:10:57] For real. I say that's a mistake. There's obviously not a fire in here. And I'm just gonna wait until I smell smoke or a fireman carries me out. Is that such a bad thing?

John Dehlin [00:11:06] Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I think she got it.

John Larsen [00:11:08] You're at work and you hear the big. The big alarm goes off. And what do you do? You, like, you finish writing your email, you know, you go and grab your purse and, you know, you don't go running and screaming out the building if you're like most people. Okay, so let's talk about a little bit about what happens when disaster strikes. I'm going to walk you through some recent disaster. Tenerife, I think, is how it's pronounced. I'm not exactly sure. I only read the words. 1977, two airplanes crashed over the Runway. One of the airplanes comes to a skidding stop and catches on fire on the front of the plane. An individual on the plane grabs his wife as this plane is slowly being engulfed in planes. And he had made note of the exit. So he and his wife head to the back of the plane. And when they get there, as it turns out, the back end of the plane had been sheared off and he was able to jump out. He passed people sitting in their seats. The plane was full. These people weren't hurt. They were just sitting there in their seats staring at the fire, and they all burned to death.

John Dehlin [00:12:23] Whoa. That's a true story.

John Larsen [00:12:27] 9, 11. First plane hits the building. We have people who survived? Who said after the crash they returned to their desk and started working again. And it was only when people said you have to get out of the building that they actually got up and left. 2004, the big tsunami in Southeast Asia. 2,230 thousand people died. There is video footage from Thailand as this wave from the tsunami was traveling at 500 miles an hour. But what it did is the water all started sucking out of the bay. If you're, I mean even I know this, I don't live next to the coast. If you ever see the water start receding at a quick rate, please run. But they just stopped. They stopped walking. They just stared at it. These people almost to a person died. 2018 in Hawaii. A message comes across everybody's cell phones. This is the message. Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill. There are people who took action, but the majority of people did absolutely nothing. They didn't, they didn't alter what they were doing at all. 2020, February 3rd, the Chinese opened their second hospital that they built in 10 days. We spend the, we mean the world spends the next 35 days or so assuring ourselves that nothing's going to happen until black March 13, that Black Friday when the President announces there's going to be that, that we're going into lockdown. And most places of business shut down. Even then two months later, early in the COVID 19 pandemic, people wanted to get back to normal and when went back out, even though the majority of death and destruction occurred after that. Okay, this is not always just disaster. There's a famous example of corporations who in the light of impending do do nothing. A famous case is Blockbuster. Blockbuster was facing the demise of the video rental business and Netflix offered to buy them out and they turned it down. So what most people do in a disaster and this. Yes. And you can look it up, you can read all about it. I encourage you to do so. Like everything I ever say on this podcast, don't take my word for it. Go out and, and, and read a book, read Wikipedia, you know, and find out for yourself.

John Dehlin [00:15:18] John, you just, you went silent for just a second. Did you give a name to this phenomenon? Dude.

John Larsen [00:15:22] Oh yeah, sorry. This is, this phenomena is called the normalcy bias and we're going to talk about what that means. And what I, what I said is don't take my word for it. Like everything I over tell you, okay? Go out and verify for yourself. I'm just some douche canoe on the, on the Internet.

John Dehlin [00:15:37] The normalcy bias. I was going to say, I, I'm sure you're familiar of the Palo Alto Research Center, park labs in the 70s. I think they're on record as having invented like, the Ethernet, the Internet, the mouse, the graphical user interface, like everything that sort of drives the modern computing era. And this was Xerox, who made their money off of photocopy machines. And they, they literally said, we're not going to do anything with this research. And thus, like intel and Apple and Microsoft and Novell and Cisco and all these other companies were formed because Xerox just didn't want to move. Is that another example?

John Larsen [00:16:17] Yeah, that's a great example. So oftentimes normalcy, the normalcy bias is spoken of in terms of disasters, but it applies to other things like you brought up. And we're going to talk about that over the next hour or so. So I asked the question, what do you do when a fire alarm goes off? And the answer for almost all of us is nothing. What you believe people do in the face of disaster is that they run. But there's been lots of research done on this, and it breaks down about this way. In the face of a disaster, an impending problem that's gonna happen 70% of people, and we're gonna talk about animals who show these same behavior patterns. 70% of people freeze, they do nothing, and they become docile. They actually stop thinking. They stop processing. They will just sit and stare.

John Dehlin [00:17:13] Now, is that. Do you know if that's an anxiety response, John? Like, I'm thinking of, like, once I was driving down the road and there were a bunch of doves in the middle of the street and I thought they were going to fly away and they didn't. And it wasn't very good for the doves and I. So I wonder that, you know, there's that fight or flight thing in the amygdala that people often like to associate with, like, anxiety and stress and fear. I'm curious if you're going to end up saying that this freeze thing is not necessarily an anxiety latent response or if it's more kind of like the, the boy who Cried wolf effect where, like, people get conditioned to not feeling a sense of, of distress or emergency. That's kind of where my, where my mind's going. I don't want to, I don't want to steal your thunder. Before you answer that, John, I just want to thank those who are giving super chats. Alan the Pratt. Do you want to read that, Carah?

Carah Burrell [00:18:11] Music industry ignoring streaming.

John Dehlin [00:18:14] Oh, so he's giving examples of. Of people who don't respond when they should. Thank you, Alan, for that super chat, Kimmy. Kimo. Kimo Lewis also donated. And. And then, of course, we want to thank Rossi, anyone who wants to support John Larsen and Carah and this episode. We really appreciate those super chats. Okay, John, Sorry, I was. I was kind of. I was just reflecting a little bit. What were you gonna say?

John Larsen [00:18:44] No, no, great. Great contribution. I. I love it. It's. It's. The first is what the research tends to show. It is not a learned response. It is. It is something that is deep down in stressors, and we'll talk about that a little bit more in just a second. Got it.

John Dehlin [00:19:00] So.

John Larsen [00:19:00] So, you know, we. We. I grew up hearing flight or fright, Fight or flight, but the actual responses are fight, flight, or freeze. So I'm saying that the research tends to break down to show that 70% of people, in the face of an impending disaster with will freeze. They become docile, and they don't do anything. 15%. So of the remaining 30% of people, 15% panic. They freak out, and not. Not in a good way. They just start screaming and running around in circles. And only 15% of people, research shows again and again and again, in the face of a disaster, will behave in the appropriate way. So I mentioned animals. I live. I live in the foothills of the beautiful Pacific coast mountains, and I live in. I live in the territory of wild animals. Let's be honest. I moved into their territory. They didn't move into mine. So I see a lot of deer and bunnies, and we play a game at my house. It's called the Darkness Looks Back. Carol, when you were there, did we play the Darkness Looks Back? No.

Carah Burrell [00:20:10] I guess I'll have to buy another plane ticket.

John Larsen [00:20:13] So. So. So what we do is, you know, I'm kind of in a valley, and there's not a lot of lights around. There's not people in front of behind me. So you. You shine a flashlight out into the darkness, and then all the whatever is out there, you can see their glowing eyes looking back at you. And there's always more glowing eyes than you think there should be. But the deer and the bunnies will. And we're talking about, like, the kind of bunnies that. Not like pets, the kind that are pests. More times than not, when you startle them, when you make a loud noise, when you shine a light on them, they will just simply freeze. I have walked straight up to frozen bunnies sitting right in the middle where I could have punted them out of the yard.

John Dehlin [00:20:56] Wait a minute, wait a minute. I gotta. Wait, wait, wait. Carah just laughed at the suggestion of kicking bunnies. I want to know what that's about.

Carah Burrell [00:21:03] Oh, just because John is. He's so gentle. He would actually never do that.

John Dehlin [00:21:07] He's a teddy bear.

Carah Burrell [00:21:08] He's a teddy bear.

John Dehlin [00:21:08] Everybody says John Larsen's a teddy bear. He would bunny, basically.

Carah Burrell [00:21:11] No, but it just is kind of funny because John and I, I really worked hard on that fence with him. When I was at his house, I spent like good 30 minutes, woke up hung over, and I was like, I guess I'll help you at the fence. So the bunnies are staying out of the. The crops, right, though, John.

John Larsen [00:21:25] And that's you. We've named that the Carah Memorial Fence. Thank you. So. So what? My. My point is, how long ago on the evolutionary chain did we divert from rabbits and deer? It's been quite some time. This response is documented in all sorts of mammals that in the face of danger, they will. They will freeze. And you were asking about, asking about it, about the research behind it there. We really don't know. I kind of started going down a rabbit hole. Psychology. And as psychology always is, it's a big rabbit hole, these things. Researching human behavior is notoriously difficult to do, especially in the face of a disaster, because the 70% that die, die, and then you can't really ask them questions. So it kind of messes up your. Your no case a little bit. But so. So part of it is, you know, predator eyes are attracted to motion. So oftentimes in the. In the. In in threat, the best thing to do is just stop moving. Freeze can actually save your. Save your life. And I was reading down one little rabbit hole, and they were talking about, there's even signs like if. If, like a bear is attacking, you know, heading towards you. If you just stop moving, it kind of triggers a response that is this. Is this prey unhealthy? Is it sick? Is it something I should be avoiding? So there is some evolutionary arguments for how this got into our. Our. Our DNA. But the point I want to make now that we're going to return to way in the end of this is this is buried deep, deep in our DNA. This is a precognitive motion. This is not something people decide to do because it makes no sense. So let's talk a little bit more.

John Dehlin [00:23:13] And John, really quickly, if you're. If you cover this later, then don't answer it now. I'm guessing I'm Just imagining that there are different brain types that maybe the evolution sort of evolutionary history. It's advantageous to the speed. I'm just predicting. You may talk about this. Tell me. And repetition is not a bad thing. I'm wondering if you're going to end up saying that evolutionary biology teaches us that we need kind of a bell curve distribution of brain types. Some are going to be more followers and just kind of like react to what happens less. Less energetically. Some are going to be even looking ahead towards the future, kind of like the John Larsen types and maybe even getting out as early, early adopters. Are we gonna. Is that something you even plan to talk about today?

John Larsen [00:24:01] I don't have it on my notes. But it's a fantastic point that because different incidents impact populations of animals of which we are having a wide diversity of thought and reactions give evolutionary success. So having different mating strategies, working consistently different survival strategies helps ensure that genetic diversity helps ensure the survival of the species. That's. That's what you're. You're referring to?

John Dehlin [00:24:32] Yeah. Like the way I heard it explained. And I don't want to get a sidetracked, but I think this might be interesting to some. Like, imagine a bunch of animals all in a herd, and they're all going. If. Let's just say there's a big cliff up ahead and all the animals are just like, happy in their herd, not really worrying about what's ahead, then literally the entire pack goes over the cliff because they just all follow each other off the cliff. If there's. But. But you want a bunch of people to be following in a pack because if the wolves come or the lions come or whatever, you're. You're better off as a group than you are as a bunch of stragglers. So there needs to be kind of a genetic default to kind of group following. And then when you evolve into the kind of Homo sapiens, you're going to need groups to be able to do specialized things like build buildings or build walls or build moats or. Or raise armies. You're going to want the majority of people to be followers, right? But you're also going to want some of those more curious, more aggressive, maybe even more independent people who go out ahead of the pack, see that there's a cliff, and who's willing to come back and say, hey, the house is on fire, or we're about to run over a cliff? And then that saves the herd. And in. In that sense, care Burrell. You know, you. You are. You're saving you're saving Mormonism single handedly Care Burrell. That's basically what I'm.

Carah Burrell [00:26:00] With your microphone in your studio paid for by this audience who Support you. For 16 years. I did nothing. But it's true. It's, it's, it's what I always tell people who are like, can't you get something better to do? It's like there needs to be agitators in kind of any space who help people who want that information, who are trying to cause a little bit of a reform in the, in the tribe that we still love. Like all of my favorite books, leaving Mormonism, had to do it with Sapiens and the Book Tribe. All about how we evolved and how to give a. A good, proper honoring of my past Mormonism and the parts that it served me and then the parts of human history that we want to move forward with and then the parts that we should be kind of overcoming and doing better on.

John Dehlin [00:26:41] Yeah, yeah. And John, just to close out this point, I. You said it's for the survival of the species. And I, you know, the fact that like, I know we're going to bring this to a religious context eventually, but the fact that all the Mormons, you know, didn't leave the church when John Larsen started Mormon expression or whatever or when the September six were excommunicated, that's probably a good thing for the tribe, right? Because it probably wouldn't have been good for all of Mormons to have left Mormonism in 1945 when Fawn Brody published her book. Is that even fair? If we want to look at it charitably or compassionately or fairly, it's probably healthy for the tribe, not for everyone to act too quickly, right?

John Larsen [00:27:24] No, yeah, it is absolutely healthy. And I think we're digging this a little bit more. But you're making a great point and it's timely that, you know, if every, you know, being in this space, John, you know. Exactly. Well, not exactly, but how many prophets spring up. And it is, it is a lot. There are a lot of them all the time. When Joseph Smith was a prophet in Upper State New York, he was competing with literally hundreds of other people just like him, with claims and miracles just like him. And if his humanity, if we followed after every little shiny keys that came into our eyes, we would just constantly. We wouldn't be able to keep any kind of cultural regularity. And us being social animals, human beings cannot survive on their own in nature. Really. We need a group. We're a social species. And if you have antisocial behaviors. It leaves you at the mercy of things that are outside of their tribe. If you piss off everybody in your tribe and you get thrown out, it's not too long till you get eaten by a tiger, really. So. So having that cohesion and not being too quick on the draw to accept contrary evidence is important. And we're going to talk about cognitive dissonance in a minute. We're gonna get more into that.

John Dehlin [00:28:40] Okay, cool. All right, John, talk about the cops. Yeah, let's go. Let's talk about cops. Let's do it.

John Larsen [00:28:45] All right, so we got, we got four examples from, from, from police. The way this, this nor normalcy bias works. And just to where I come from. I worked for the police department for four or five years myself, and then I did police software for about another seven years. So I spent 12 years hanging around cops. So that's how I know some of these figures. Most police deaths do not occur with rookies nor with the senior veterans. They occur in this sweet spot of about five to ten years of service. If you think about it, it's the officers who have a lot of experience, know what they're doing, are highly competent, and are still full of energy. You know, if you've been on the Force 19 years, you're just counting down the days until you can draw that retirement. If you've been on the force one year, you're still scared to death and you are doing everything by the book. It's these guys who. This becomes normal for them, like pulling people over in traffic stops, arresting people, going to domestic violence situations. It becomes normalized for them and they oftentimes will fail to see risks that either the senior senior officers or the junior officers will see. Second one, if you watch videos of police shootings when they're shooting down primarily black men, let's be clear, in at least half of the videos, if not the majority, you will notice that the person that they gun down actually freezes. They stop. It follows this effect that people in threat will stop. But the police don't see them obeying their orders. They don't interpret it that way. So they shoot them anyway, because that's what they're geared up to do. The third one, when police go lights and sirens, if you watch the videos from that, a huge number of people, a surprising number of people don't speed up and they don't pull over. They just stop. They'll actually take their feet off the gas pedals and their cars will just start coasting. They completely freeze and again go docile when they're faced with this threat of the lights and sirens behind them. And then the most recent tragic example is from the shooting down in Texas. What was the city on the. With. With the. With the little children. They're all with the little children.

John Dehlin [00:31:20] Waco. Waco.

John Larsen [00:31:22] The. The. The. The. The SWAT team stood outside for an hour. Right, right. Uvalde. Thank you. Thank you. So this same thing with those cops. Here are these guys, you can. You could get on the website and see their pictures, and I'm all geared up and all this kind of stuff. And then when they're faced with an actual threat, the cops just started milling around. Is that because cops are bad people? No, it's because they're human beings. And that. That is. That is like the programmed response is that when you're facing a threat, you do nothing. When officers point guns at you, you stop and do nothing. When police go lights and sirens, you just. You just freeze.

John Dehlin [00:32:05] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:32:07] So.

John Dehlin [00:32:07] So this is a sensitive topic, but I think oftentimes victims of sexual assault, that's their response as well.

John Larsen [00:32:15] Thank you. I was talking to Kimmy beforehand, and she told me to bring this up, and I don't want to, you know, speak for. For women's experience, but many women will say, you know, when they're touched, you know, and Kimmy, you know, she told me, you know, the first time somebody grabbed her breast, she just froze. She just. It's like her mind stopped. And many sexual assaults happen. They say, why didn't she fight? And the answer is normalcy, bias. Somebody has done something that is dangerous. You've entered into a disaster mode, and you rely on what is normal, which is not to slap their hand away, but the. The effect inside the mind is you turn docile. You don't fight back, you don't say anything. And it's often only afterwards that women will process what happened to them because of this psychological effect. It's completely understandable. It's completely predictable.

John Dehlin [00:33:20] That's sad and dark. A little bit.

John Larsen [00:33:22] It is. This stuff is not. I'm sorry, we don't. We don't deal with the fuzzy, happy stuff on this podcast very often. All right, so let's start tying this into Mormonism. I have noticed over the years that. That when arguing with Mormons, and then I'm sure many of the listeners out here about not arguing, when you're trying to make a point, when you're trying to point out something, the biggest answer you. The biggest answer that you will get is nothing. You can send a big Email to your, to your mother, you know, and you probably will get nothing back. The normalcy effect predicts that behavior, that when confronted with a threat, you will most likely just be ignored, that most people want things to return to normal. Okay, okay, so I've kind of set the table and said that the normalcy effect is a response to disaster. So now let's talk about why leaving the church is a disaster. First of all. And I think the biggest case has nothing to do with Mormonism at all. It has to with being human. Death is the biggest and greatest disaster that we all face. And it is terrifying to most human beings. And it has been argued that all religion are very complex explanations as to why death is an illusion. They're really constructed around giving us the idea that even though you die, you actually don't die. Your consciousness continues, that there'll be great things that happen afterwards, that death is not to be feared because that is the biggest disaster that's waiting for us all. So what happens when people leave the church? If you talk about them? They usually encounter at some point the long, dark night of the soul. There are people who just jump from one religion to the other and then they, they kind of bridge over this and, and it never happens. But for those who leave the church and don't have another explanation, they don't have another story. It is a horrific, terrifying ordeal, at least for a time, because of the terror of the unknown about death, they no longer have anything to cling to. This disaster is coming to them and it's, you know, death is coming for them. Like our, like our friend in the airplane who got out, but everybody else just watched the flames come at them. Religion is a bulwark against watching the flames come at you because you have all these stories about everything that's going to happen. So that's the first big disaster. It's death.

Why Leaving the Church Feels Like a Disaster

John Dehlin [00:36:13] John, can I add to that, please? In addition to, you know, religion assuaging people's fear of death, which is a, some would say it's a feature for, for many, there's also. I'm, I'm recalling Luna Lindsay Corbden's book Recovering Agency, where Luna talks about like the 31 tools or techniques used in colts or high demand religions. And One of the 31 is, is something like dispensing of existence. And it's basically a threat on the other end of either hell or outer darkness or eternal damnation. So it's not just the fear of losing the thing that makes you not feel so afraid of death. It's also whatever threats the religion implanted in you or conditioned you to have to fear eternal, to fear the possibility of eternal death. Now John, it may be that you were planning on talking about that in a second.

John Larsen [00:37:16] Oh, excellent segue. Let's open our scripture, shall we?

John Dehlin [00:37:19] Were you gonna jump in Carah, or you wanna wait for John's segue?

Carah Burrell [00:37:21] And I just wanna say that that implanted, that people really do need a long like a lifetime of deconstruction from that implantation. I have friends who are like militant atheists who, they still have dreams about hell. They can't do mushrooms or do any kind of drug because they just feel like that means that hell is real. And they, they just have this other subconscious that just comes in that's been programmed and then since they were a kid and there's no way for them to get around it, it's still in there. That fear is so deep seated.

John Dehlin [00:37:49] The south park guys actually memorialize this idea in a Book of Mormon musical song called you haven't seen it yet. It's called the Spooky Mormon Hell Dream. Yeah, but check that out. It's. It's a thing anyway. That's right, Carah. Okay, John, go ahead and keep going.

How Mormon Doctrine Reinforces Staying

John Larsen [00:38:05] So we covered just basic garden variety existential dread that would be experienced by all humans everywhere. Now let's go and see what the Mormon what modern prophets and modern revelation has to say about these things. Let's go to the Book of Mormon, the doctrine and covenant, shall we? Let's start. Alma, chapter nine, verse 23. And now behold, I say unto you that if this people have received so many blessings from the hand of God, should transgress contrary to the light knowledge which they do have. I say unto you that if this be the case, that if they should fall into transgressions, it would be far more tolerable for the Lamanites than for them. And we all know what happened to the lamanites. Alma, chapter 47, verse 36. Now these dissenters having the same instruction, the same information of the Nephites, ye having been instructed in the same knowledge of the Lord. Nevertheless it is strange to relate. Not long after their dissensions, they became more hardened and impenitent and more wild, wicked, ferocious than the Lamanites, drinking in with the traditions of the Lamanites, giving way to indolence and all manner of lasciviousness, yea, entirely forgetting the Lord their God. Alma 5:13. And then shall it come to pass that the spirits of the wicked, yea, who are evil for behold, they have no part nor portion of the spirit of the Lord for behold, they chose evil works rather than good. Therefore the spirit of the devil did enter into them, and take possession of their houses, and these shall be cast into outer darkness there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and this because of their own iniquity, being led captive by the will of the devil. Doctrine covenants, section 3, 4. For although a man may have many revelations, and have power to do many mighty works, yet if he boasts in his own strength, and sets it not the counsels of God, and follows after the dictates of his own will and carnal desires, he must fall and incur the vengeance of a just God upon him. D&C. 82, 3. For of him unto whom much is given, much is required, and he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation. D&C.41. But whosoever breaketh this covenant after he have received it, and altogether turneth therefore shall not have forgiveness of sins in this world, nor in the world to come. D&C. 133, verse 63. And upon them that hearken not to the voice of the Lord, shall be fulfilled that which was written by the prophet Moses, and that they should be cut off from among the people, and also that which was written by the prophet Malachi. Behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, all that do wickedly, shall be stubble. And the day that comes shall burn upon them, saith the Lord of hosts, and it shall leave them neither root nor branch, wherefore this shall be the answer of the Lord unto them. In that day, when I come unto mine own, no man among you received me, and you were driven out. When I called again, there was none of you answered. Yea, my arm was not shortened at all, that I could not redeem neither my power to deliver. Behold, at my rebuke, I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness, their fish stink and die from thirst. I clothe this heaven with blackness, and make sackcloth their covering. And this shall ye have of my hand ye shall lie down in sorrow. Behold, and lo, there are none to deliver you, for you obeyed not my voice when I called out of the heaven. Ye believe not my servants, and when they were sent unto you, ye received them not. And Finally, Nephi, chapter 28 read the whole damn thing. I was going to read it to you, but I'm not going to bother. And behold others, he flattereth away, and tell Them there is no hell. And he saith unto them, I am no devil, for there is none. And thus he whispereth in their ears until he grasp them with his awful chains from whence there is no deliverance. Yea, they are grasped with death and hell, and death and hell and the devil, and all that have been seized therewith must stand before the throne of God and be judged according to their works. From once they must go into the place prepared for them, even a lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment.

John Dehlin [00:42:08] Well, you added.

John Larsen [00:42:08] You.

John Dehlin [00:42:09] You added the right.

John Larsen [00:42:10] Yeah, that's not in the book.

Carah Burrell [00:42:11] He's a prophet. He's allowed to.

John Larsen [00:42:12] The new Enhanced John version. All right, John, what's wrong?

John Dehlin [00:42:16] What's wrong with all that? What's your point?

John Larsen [00:42:18] Confusing that. What? That. That people are scared to leave the church?

John Dehlin [00:42:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. I think that's what Luna meant by dispensing of existence. Right, great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that. That language is. Well, number one, if that type of language were used with the child, can you imagine, like, do your homework, make your bed.

John Larsen [00:42:43] This stuff to their kids.

John Dehlin [00:42:44] That's right. That's right. Forgot. Okay, let me. Let me change that. If a parent. If Carah, if you as a parent were to say, hey, Lake, make your gosh darn bed or I will murder you. You know what I mean?

Carah Burrell [00:42:58] Yeah. The consequences a little bit swift there, huh?

John Dehlin [00:43:01] Yeah. Like, it would. You would literally cps. If someone heard you say that, reported you to cps, they would come take your kids away. Right?

Carah Burrell [00:43:09] Yeah. I do gentle parenting, and then I lose my once every two weeks, so they know what I'm holding back. But what I was thinking of, John Larsen, when you said that is today I just wanted to listen to a lot of testimonies of people who stay in the church. And I was listening to different YouTube videos and different testimonies, and one thing that comes up over again is people are like, Christ, you just gotta. You've gotta forget everything else and just have a relationship with Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ is on every page of the Book of Mormon, and you'll find him there. And it's that kind of stuff of Jesus Christ who. The Jesus Christ who, like, sunk the lame, like the. Like Zarahemla, the Jesus Christ who, like, came in and just spit out all hellfire and mowed people down. And it's technically the same Jehovah of the Bible. And then like, this. This Jesus Christ that. You're finding all of this love and empathy in that's a beautiful version of Jesus Christ, but you can't find it in every pages. You can cherry pick the hell out of it.

John Dehlin [00:44:00] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:44:01] But there is this damnation just lurking in the background of this Mormonism. And if you want to concentrate on just the good parts, that's fine. But this is the, this is the real indoctrination that a lot of people do get this. That if I don't follow this, this is what's waiting for me.

John Dehlin [00:44:16] Yeah, yeah. And. And I'm. While we're on the topic of like the 31 flavors of undue influence, another one is double speak. Right. Where on the one hand you can say it's all about love and, and the church can put out an Instagram video of a Utah Jazz cheerleader, blonde Utah Jazz cheerleader, saying, hey, we love everyone and we accept everyone and it's all about love and come as you are. That's. You can find Jesus quotes in Mormon scripture to support that mindset. But you. You also find all those scriptures that you so eloquently and passionately. Somebody said you're like an evangelical preacher. John Larsen.

John Larsen [00:44:54] Yeah. Religion should be shouted in a tent from the rooftops.

John Dehlin [00:44:58] From the rooftops.

John Larsen [00:45:01] So, yeah, fantastic points, guys. There's a two tier narrative in the church about apostasy, about people leaving the church. The first one is that their lives will fall apart and the second one is that the devil lies. So with the first one, the problem is everybody's lives are full of problems. Like people inside and outside the church get divorced. People inside and outside the church have children who get strung out on drugs. People inside and outside the church have car accidents. But when you tell the narrative over and over and over again that terrible things await those who leave the church, the members of the church scan the lives of people leaving and they just see the failure points, which I know we've talked about in previous podcasts. It's one of the most difficult things when you leave the church, but your family's still in. It's like they're watching for you to stumble because that feeds into the narrative that they've. They've been told, go ahead, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:46:08] Yeah, no, it's true.

Carah Burrell [00:46:09] That's true. For just being a vulnerable person in the ex Mormon content space too. I know, John, you feel. Delin that like just about anything that you do feels like you're not allowed to mess up or do anything because that's going to every Mormon staring at you.

John Dehlin [00:46:23] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:46:24] That you can't just be a human ever.

John Dehlin [00:46:25] Yeah. I mean, Buddhism does the opposite. Buddha Buddhism says life is suffering. You're all, you're all going to suffer. You can't escape it. So health and happiness comes from just accepting the suffering of life. Unhealthy or high demand religions or cults basically, you know, basically look for any excuse to point to a defector as a cautionary tale the minute that something bad happens to them. Whereas if a bad thing happens to a believer, there's another explanation. And what's the explanation? It's, it's, it's God's wisdom. Right. It's a trial of their faith. Right. Or, or, or even God, sometimes God, you know, the, the righteous will be persecuted. So there's always a narrative, you know, to help justify, you know, the narrative. There's always a narrative to help justify the position you're holding.

John Larsen [00:47:21] Right, Agreed. Yeah. So what I said is two tiers. The first tier that Mormons are told, remember we're talking about this whole thing from the perspective of believers and not really to take shots at them, but they're told that their lives will fall apart if they leave the church. And then the examples are pointed to over and over again of saying, see, he left the church, then he got divorced. See, he left the church and his baby died. Okay, so that's the first tier. The second tier is this insidious thing that was buried in the stuff I was reading is that the devil is the master liar. I think what's fascinating about all of Christianity to me is God seems like this helpless whelp who really is just confused and doesn't know what to do. And the devil is this master God who, you know, like, makes games like Dungeons and Dragons or controls cable tv and he's constantly telling the, these very sophisticated lies. And the reason that's an important thing to point out is that a lot of people in the church and in other Christian religions believe this really highly organized, highly intelligent superpower of a devil. And so when they hear things that are contrary to what they've been told, they may not be able to spot the problem with science, they may not be able to disprove evolution, but they know that the devil is the master of lies. So the fear is that anything outside the sanctioned views of the church can be laced in lies that are too sophisticated to detect. So we're talking about fear, we're talking about leaving the church as a disaster. That's the two narratives. One, if you leave the church, your life will fall apart and you will suffer in this life and in the next. And everything that doesn't come from the church that might question the validity of the church is woven in this fabric of lies by the master of all lies, the great Beelzebub himself.

John Dehlin [00:49:24] Okay, so people are afraid to leave because their lives will be destroyed. And any challenge to the church, people are primed to just believe it's a lie. Is that. Are those the two things you're saying, John?

John Larsen [00:49:39] I'm rolling it up. They're primed basically to think that the act of leaving the church, the act of apostasy, is a disaster. Because if we go back to the beginning of the podcast, we're pointing out that this normalcy bias gets activated in human beings in the face of disaster. What I've just laid out to you is for most believing Mormons, leaving the church is in and of itself a disaster that needs to be avoided. And of course, the threat of the loss of testimony in believing members triggers stress, panic, depression, anger, sadness, and even violence. Let's not forget that the tragedy of the Lafferty brothers, the murders, were committed in the name of stemming apostasy.

John Dehlin [00:50:26] Yeah, yeah. And John, again, tell me if you are going to talk about this. There's also. Well, one of the features and bugs of the human brain is it's so sophisticated that it can create imagined stories or imagined threats that aren't real, but that feel like a threat to your existence. And that's just. That's just the consequence of having an imagination. And so, you know, you don't see a kitty cat. When a kitty cat or a mouse runs away, it's because there's some real, legitimate physical threat facing them. They're not just sitting there imagining things or heard something that some other mouse or kitty cat said to them. And all of a sudden they hear a sound and then they run away because of, because of the story that they were taught. But with, with humans, once we are taught this narrative about birding in hell or being separated from your family forever, or that Satan and Lucifer really exist and he's the father of all lies. And if you leave the church or even listen to Carah Barrel or John Larsen on a podcast, it could lead to eternal damnation. Our brains have the capacity to experience all of that as if it is as threatening as. As an actual threat to your physical, material life.

Carah Burrell [00:51:56] Yeah. And literally, I put on my Instagram and on Faith Journey Meetups Facebook page today, because as I was thinking about this topic today and thinking about the fight or flight and the normalcy bias that we have, that, yes, if this is a real traumatic experience, you know, reading the CS letter, coming in contact with something, that gives you a big load of cognitive dissonance. And I asked my followers, like, you know, what happened to you when. If you read something and came into contact with that, what did you do? Kind of. And how common is that? Or did you read it and then you just left the church? Or did you go back and. And spend a few more years there? And the poll came out as 47% people of people had a traumatizing experience reading something, coming into contact. 47%. And then still stayed for. For years after that, and then had to deconstruct for other reasons, you know, going forward after that. And I think that's a real, like, serious part of my journey as well. And all of the DMs that I got, I was. I was curious to their reason, same reason as mine. It's because you're freaking already in a Mormon marriage and you already have kids and you don't know what your spouse is going to do if you actually take this information seriously and you don't communicate about these things. Your livelihood is tied to it. You don't know what you know. Obviously, you don't know what you believe about the afterlife. And all of that stuff is true. But then there's just physically. Physically, my needs as a Mormon mom were never gonna be met again. If I go leave the church, who am I gonna be friends with? Your entire worldview of how do I operate as a person in this world is threatened. That's just as threatening as somebody coming up at me with a knife. I don't know where my. Where I'm gonna rebuild mentally. I don't know if I'll have a marriage. Will I be a single mom? Like all of those questions, those. Do those feel just as big, if not bigger, than any amount of other alarm bells that just threatens everything core to me.

John Dehlin [00:53:38] I'm guessing there are Mormon parents that would rather face a knife than the eternal death of their children.

Carah Burrell [00:53:44] I.

John Dehlin [00:53:45] Right.

Carah Burrell [00:53:45] I went out to lunch today with a friend of mine who was on a Mormon Stories episode, and she talked about how just telling her parents the first time she sent that letter to say, hey, we're leaving the church. She's like, it was so hard to even tell you this. I wish that I could have gotten hit by a bus instead, because I wish you would. I would have just died. And that you could think that I was your, you know, good, faithful member, because I know how much pain this is going to Cause our family, yeah, all of those big existential questions all get funneled down into interpersonal relationships now where you don't have that, that line of communication open with your parents anymore. All because Joseph Smith decided to create a religion.

John Dehlin [00:54:21] Yeah. And the flip is true. And John Larsen, you may or may not be planning to talk about this, but how often does a believing Mormon parent tell their child who informs them that they've lost their faith, that they would rather have died than heard the news that their kid had, had lost their faith? Right.

John Larsen [00:54:42] Yeah, I mean, I, I've heard that all along. These are, these are great examples of, of, you know, the, the, the point really in, in, in normalcy bias theory is that the people have to see the act of, of, of what's coming as an enormous threat, such that these cognitive functions kick in and the behaviors that are in response to them are real. And what you guys are all showing is how seriously people take this from outside perspective. You can think, oh, leaving the church, you're just leaving one club and you can just walk away at any time. What's the big deal? Well, the big deal is, as you guys both so eloquently pointed out for believers, even years and years and years, like you've said, into non belief, they, they, these, these fears, the threat, the disaster of leaving the church holds a lot of real estate in people's mind.

John Dehlin [00:55:36] Really quickly, John, will you be talking about the association between contention and bad feelings and Lucifer, or is this an okay place to just briefly talk about that?

John Larsen [00:55:48] Sure, yeah, go ahead, please.

John Dehlin [00:55:49] Yeah, I was just, I was just going to say, in addition to fears of death or damnation or outer darkness, one other real barrier to the ability of Mormons to, you know, process and, and be open to bad information about the church is the fact that we've all been primed as Mormons to believe that the, you know, the scripture says the spirit of contention is of the devil, or that the Holy Ghost represents peace and joy and love and comfort, and any negative emotion represents Satan or Lucifer. And so when, when you find out, when you see the CS letter for the first time, or hear John Larsen or, or Carah Burrell or watch a tick tock from, from someone and it, it says Joseph Smith had 30 wives or married 14 year olds, or the Book of Abraham is a fraud, these, these feelings of discomfort, of fear of anxiety are naturally going to emerge. Not because there's some fictitious Lucifer out there sending his spiritual minions to, you know, cause you to feel awful things. It's because your mind is, is set when it feels any sort of threat, imagined or physical. It's set to shoot chemicals into your system that. That make you afraid, that make you scared, that make you tense. And Mormons are all primed to interpret those negative emotions as the adversary, as, as messages or communications from the father of lies, Lucifer himself. And that becomes a really effective barrier to information for, for Mormons and members of other high demand religions. Carah.

Carah Burrell [00:57:39] And I just want to add to that. I always said if I could change one thing about ex Mormon culture, it would be a better understanding of psychology and how our brains work of what John Dillon just said. Because I don't think Mormons are stupid for, for not taking that information seriously. Nobody thinks that any Mormon doing that is stupid. This is never about the person. This is all about the system that they've been indoctrinated. And all of these, all, everything that we're talking about now that has conditioned them to react and to double down and engage the backfire effect. This has nothing to do with the person. And we hold empathy and we totally hold space because I was in that space. Most of us listening to this podcast were. We were all in that space once.

John Dehlin [00:58:19] Absolutely. All right, John, we feel bad for talking, but you're just making us all excited. So we'll give you.

John Larsen [00:58:25] I love it. You guys are. You. Don't, don't ever apologize for your comments. You can talk over me all you want. I've done my fair share of talking over people, so. Okay, so John, you've left kind of the breadcrumbs to where we're going next. And I think you've even mentioned the term of cognitive dissonance. So let's talk a little bit about cognitive dissonance theory. And this one's really kind of important to me because I see this term misused constantly all across the board. But in Mormon circles, the next Mormon circles a lot. Cognitive dissonance just refers to the general state psychological state that occurs when you believe two things that can't be resolved. And it actually happens all the time. And we had talked about this earlier, if the brain was wired so that whenever you had new information that contradicted old information as your learning strategy, you would just flip on the dime. You would drive yourself absolutely bonkers. So we have some cognitive breaks that when we're introduced with new information, we kind of sit on it. As a matter of fact, researchers say that when you are processing new information, and this, they say, is one of the triggers of normalcy bias when you're Encountering new information, like the fuselage of the plane that you're sitting on is on fire. It takes about 8 to 10 seconds to the mind to even register and process new information. We're not really good at dealing with new information. We get into ruts. We do the same things over and over. And actually, your mind takes less and less and less brain power to do the things we've all encountered. That where you're in the shower and you're like, jesus, did I just wash my hair or not? You show up at work and you're like, I don't remember the drive. It's. It's because your mind does not want to spend a lot of extra energy and stress yourself out. So it likes normalcy. So cognitive dissonance speaks to that. That state. And we're all in the state of cognitive dissonance about things all the time, you know, and you can see it, you know, like, wow, he's a real jerk to her. Why doesn't she just leave him? She knows he's a jerk, but he's also a good provider. And she remembers all the great years they had together and all this kind of stuff. That's cognitive dissonance. And it oftentimes takes a while for us to deal with it. So we have these psychological tricks that are hardwired into our brain to deal with cognitive dissonance, at least to buy our brain time until it can really process all the data and make an informed decision. Because in nature, making the wrong decision oftentimes leads to death. So any kind of evolutionary advantage we get that keeps us alive a little bit longer is important. So normalcy bias would be considered a cognitive reaction to cognitive dissonance because it is the brakes on overreacting to new information, even when that information is harmful. And let's go back to the statistic I gave at the top. It's fight, flight, or freeze. And it breaks down that 70% of the time, our cognitive reaction is to freeze up, to wait, to process that information, to give yourself the 10 seconds that it takes to figure things out. And that when you stop moving, the hope is the tiger can't see you. So you're frozen in path, and you're hoping to buy yourself a little bit of time till you can figure out if you should fight or flight. Because both of those things, motion triggers predators. Predators go after motion. And of course, fighting is a good way to get yourself killed. All right, so let's tear apart normalcy bias a little bit and talk about some of its. Its Identified traits, how it manifests. I think we first want to talk about the most infamous ex Mormon metaphor of all time, the shelf. Who wants to explain the shelf?

Cognitive Dissonance and the Shelf Metaphor

Carah Burrell [01:02:55] I'll do it.

John Dehlin [01:02:56] All right, Carah.

Carah Burrell [01:02:57] The shelf metaphor coined by Camilla Kimball, Spencer Douglas Kimball's wife, was supposed to be a helpful thing that when she can't reconcile with some information, she learns she just puts it on a shelf. And we'll worry about that later and we'll keep going forward with faith and keep going on the true path, straight and narrow. But then you have you, you learn more things and your, your cognitive giant, you know, biases are getting to you and you learn more things and you put all that stuff on the shelf and for a lot of ex Mormons, one day that whole shelf collapses and you say too, I can't reconcile this many things, it's too heavy. And it all comes crashing down. And you say, oh, the true, the church is not a true thing after all. And it all comes crashing down.

John Dehlin [01:03:37] All right, that's, that's pretty good. John, do you, do you want to give Carah grade for her explanation of the shelf?

John Larsen [01:03:42] Yeah, yeah. A minus.

John Dehlin [01:03:43] Solid.

John Larsen [01:03:44] A minus.

John Dehlin [01:03:44] Nice.

Carah Burrell [01:03:47] I can give you the apologetics too.

John Larsen [01:03:48] It was perfect.

Carah Burrell [01:03:49] Extra credit.

John Larsen [01:03:50] So if you go on to ex Mormon Reddit or those places, you'll hear people say all the time, my shelf broke. This is what broke my shelf. And, and what this is describing is basic normal, normalcy bias as a function of cognitive dissonance. So the shelf represents that cognitive dissonance. As more and more information comes in, it's being put on the shelf. It is not normal. I don't know what to do with this. I believe Joseph Smith is a prophet and I just found out that he married a 14 year old. I don't know what to do with this. So my mind just sits on, is biased towards what is normal. And for normal, me is believing that Joseph Smith is the prophet. So I can't deal with that in the immediacy. I put it on my shelf. It goes to the back of my mind. And some people can just kind of forget this stuff and move on. For some people it's like the metaphoric sand that turns into a pearl, right? You just keep touching it and touching it and touching it and you have to keep dealing with it and thinking about it. And there comes a point when that cognitive dissonance gets too great. The pain, the psychological pain and suffering that's caused by believing in these two contradictory things collapses in on itself and one leaves the church. But that space between when one first gets information that the church is not what it says it is, and when the shelf actually collapses is the normalcy bias. You are conditioned in your mind to go back to where you started, to keep with what you're doing, and you're not. You do not have a psychological bias to chase after the new information. And when ex Mormons talk about their ex. Their shelf, they're talking about the cognitive dissonance and the normalcy bias that is keeping them in the track until it explodes. For some people, that is a slow burn. For some people, it's instantaneous.

John Dehlin [01:05:55] Yeah. And John Larsen, tell me if you think that the. Again, I'm pulling out Luna. I'm doing a full Luna. Lindsay Corbin. There's this idea of thought stopping and thought stopping care. You kind of highlighted that this shelf metaphor originally didn't come from ex Mormons. It came from Camilla Kimball. And I don't know if that's true, but I believe you. Um, it's true, but. Okay, yeah. And. And whether it's, you know, put it on a shelf or whether it's they leave the church, but they can't leave it alone, which is basically signaling, shut up, stay quiet. Or whether it's stay in the boat, you know, or doubt your doubts, there are all sorts of different catchphrases that. That I think Stephen Hassan, the world's expert in colts, would call thought stopping, which is a way to kind of neuter your cognitive dissonance. Is that right, John? Are we thinking about that right or not?

John Larsen [01:06:55] Yeah. Yeah. Those would all be like normalcy biases. These. These thought stopping things that they talk about. They're these psychological tricks we do to minimize threat because the threat is scary and we don't want to deal with the threat. And remember the kind of threats I was talking about the beginning, when the fire alarm goes off? Well, to think about your workplace, your home on fire, is very scary. So in a completely cold, rational, computerized world, the fire alarm goes off, you should get the hell out of there and then figure out if there's a fire when you're free and clear from the building. But the way our brains are actually wired and the way deer brain are actually wired and bunny minds are wired is we don't do that most of the time. Most of the time, we just go docile.

John Dehlin [01:07:45] Right.

John Larsen [01:07:45] And that. That's what we were talking about at the beginning.

John Dehlin [01:07:47] Yeah, but the. But the. Are you saying that the shelf metaphor kicks in for some when the cognitive bias becomes so overwhelming it can no longer be suppressed or ignored.

John Larsen [01:08:00] Yeah, I think if we, if we use the fuselage example, the people sitting there watching the fire come for them that burned up, if they had enough time, more and more people would get up and leave. They would recognize the threat. But normalcy bias indicates that in the short run, they do not. Because I go up into the World Trade center every day and I do my job every day, and this is what is normal. This is what is supposed to happen. We haven't brought up climate change yet, but this is the description about what is happening in the light of climate change. Most people get scary information about climate change and they read it in the New York Times or, you know, or the Fox News or wherever they get their news, and then they're scared for a minute and then they look around and say, look, the birds are chirping, the trees are still green. There's beautiful produce available at the, at the market. Things are normal. The threat is not real. The threat is not coming for me. I'm going to put that on my shelf. Yeah, we all do this all the time.

Carah Burrell [01:09:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:14] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:09:15] And I also think that our, our species, hopefully with the invention of technology, is waking up to, like, the missing factor of empathy for other tribes, other people around the world. That if it's just, if it's, you know, snowing outside, that can't possibly mean that the climate is getting warmer. Like, you know, ask any baby. Like, it's just like kind of infantile thinking that whatever is happening just in your sphere, that's what's normal for you. But other people are going through things that are. That are traumatizing to them, that you should also be paying attention to that, whether they ever affect you or not. I think, like, that's what our species is hopefully moving towards, is global action on every front.

John Dehlin [01:09:53] I'll never forget the time I was in New Orleans working for Microsoft and I decided to take a tour of the city. And this was pre. What was the major hurricane that destroyed the city?

John Larsen [01:10:02] Like Katrina.

John Dehlin [01:10:03] Katrina, yeah, this is pre Katrina. And one of the tour guides in New Orleans is like, see out there, See out there in the bay or whatever it's called? Those are levees, and they were built a long, long time ago. And that we scientists have demonstrated that someday there's going to be a hurricane that's so big it's going to destroy those levees and it's going to flood the entire city. And the tour guide literally told us this just a few years before it happened. But. But somehow people just Kind of, again, normalcy bias. Right. John Larsen.

John Larsen [01:10:35] Right.

John Dehlin [01:10:35] Yeah.

Behaviors Associated with Normalcy Bias

John Larsen [01:10:36] So let's, let's talk about some of the identified behaviors associated with normalcy bias and how it works out. One, we tend. This is, this is based on, on research. I'm just distilling it down for you. We only see cues that confirm our biases, so we tend to ignore evidence of the contrary and just focus on normalcy. So I look around the fuselage and say, well, everybody else is still sitting here, so this must be the right thing to do. Like, I know the water's receding from the beach, but look at all these people. They're all just standing here. They're not running, so why should I run? And there's an interesting thing that I kind of skipped over. They say in a disaster, not only do 70% go docile and, you know, 15% panic and 15% try to do the right thing, try to respond appropriately, but the docile 70% will oftentimes the first thing they'll do is try to convince everybody else that everything's okay. They will try to calm down the panickers and they will try to stop the 15% from actually taking the appropriate action.

John Dehlin [01:11:44] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:11:45] And part of that is because we want to confirm our own biases. So we're ignoring any contrary evidence and we're seeing the evidence that we are in fact right to do nothing.

John Dehlin [01:11:56] Yeah. Yep.

John Larsen [01:11:57] Second observation, it makes people in, in normalcy bias are dangerously optimistic about the current state of affairs. I have seen this argument made in terms of climate change. People saying we are living at the pinnacle of our civilization. You can get anything you want. You can go down to get food and get imports from all around the world. And we're not at war or whatever. These are all people who are talking from privileged bubbles, but they optimistically believe that the good parts about right now are going to continue. That's the second one, the third one I kind of hinted at. There's over reliance on those directly around you. When you see a threat, you're going to look to your left and look to your right. So if you live in a tight knit ward and suddenly you're finding information about the church that makes you question it, you're going to look at Brother Smith and Sister Jones and the Bishop and their leaves, Saudi president, you're going to see, well, none of them are panicking. None of them seem to be in distress. So the information must not be that much of a threat. I already talked about delays, the 8 to 10 seconds to process more information. One of the behaviors associated with normalcy bias is over reliance on anecdotal evidence. Well, my uncle was in a tsunami and he came out just fine. So we tend to cherry pick things from our own shared experience, the anecdotal things that have been shared with us and say, oh, it'll work out where, you know, scientifically we know that relying on other people's experience is one of the worst ways to arrive at information you have. Over reliance on authority is another hallmark of normalcy bias. You look to, you look to your leaders who by the way, are subject to exactly the same normalcy effect, and you say, well, look at Jeffrey R. Holland. He has advanced law degrees and he has an MBA from prestigious schools and he was president of a university. He's an accomplished man. He's been in the quorum of the 12. I've heard him talk. He does all these wonderful things. He's a great man. He wouldn't leave us astray. If he, who's a member of the 12 knows all this stuff, then the normalcy is that there is no, there is no. Look at, look at the people who are telling you that this isn't true. You know, they're apostates and malcontents and drunkards. They're fat and they're ugly and they have bad hair. Why would we rely on them? You know, look at all these beautiful people who are in the church. So there's over reliance on that. And then the last one we'll bring up is over reliance on one's own past experience. This one is deadly. I have heard lots of fire alarms go off and I have never, never once seen a fire. And I have encountered many, many ex Mormons in my life. I think about In God's army, the rant that the main character goes on. I've read all that anti Mormon stuff. It's all just garbage, you know, in my experience. I read it and it was terrible, you know, and, and, and so, so what,

Carah Burrell [01:15:21] John?

John Larsen [01:15:21] Can you repeat yourself to one's testimony?

John Dehlin [01:15:23] You, you blacked out for just like five seconds. So go back like five seconds.

John Larsen [01:15:27] I just gave you the formula for Coke, so they probably.

Carah Burrell [01:15:31] That'll come in handy, right, John? You guys out something.

John Larsen [01:15:35] So we're just talking about over reliance on one's own past experience. Right? We, we, we tend to say it's worked so far. It's going to keep working. So you'll dismiss evidence of something that happens. Now, I just saw a comment says this exists outside the church as well. Exactly. 100% true. This is not everything we're talking about is not uniquely Mormon, nor is it uniquely dealing with religion. I think that's a good point.

John Dehlin [01:16:03] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:16:04] Yeah. Can I tell you where I saw this utilized this week? Where I see it in my life a lot, too.

John Dehlin [01:16:09] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:16:10] Is I was on the old Quick channel by a Greg Matson, who's a very conservative Mormon. YouTube.

John Dehlin [01:16:18] CWIC.

Carah Burrell [01:16:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:19] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:16:20] And he was talking about why people leave the church. And he was saying, it's not what you think. It actually starts. And it kind of had this. This Fox News era to it. It's the wokeness. It's that people are going through the filter of racism, through the filter of sexism, and then projecting that onto everything that has to do with the church and polygamy. Like this. This idea that everything that is progressive, everything has to be viewed through this filter. So you have this bias that if somebody's telling you something and they have. This happened to me, so happened to me three years ago. I was a very conservative Mormon girl that if whoever was telling it to me looked like they were like, could be a member of Antiva or something. Like, I have a. I have a bias against looking at people who look the way that I do. The way that, like, you know, my Provo, Utah, friends look. I don't take information from people because of the way that they look. Because I'm like, well, where did they go to school? Like, where. What kind of biases do they have of, like, dragging me down? And then you add onto that feeling of like. And plus, what they're saying makes me feel icky. And I want to go back to my safe place where we're having, you know, Rice Krispies squares in the Relief Society room. And you. You add all of that, this concoction up, it makes it really easy to not be able to internalize any information, not think for yourself, and then be like, I'm going to rely on the authority figure. They just said, doubt your doubts. Follow the prophet. Follow the prophet. And that feels so much better. And you can just demonize everybody else who gives you any other icky feeling. And I just think it's so funny that the YouTube channel I was watching, like, he's like, the people are leaving the church because. Because they are listening to the wrong types of people. They're getting in this woke crowd. They're paying attention to sexism and racism, and that's just kind of how the church is. And they need to stop looking through these filters. I'm like, what if there's actual. There actually is racism. There actually is sexism. You don't have to put like a woke filter on it. Like, it actually is that bad thing that we're talking about and people don't have. People are not comfortable with it anymore, and it adds up and it breaks their shelf. It doesn't have to do with, like, that. We're. We're just indoctrinated into caring about people too much. I don't know. That's my rant on the biases, because I was just like that. I didn't want to pay attention to anything and just stay in my safe space. Yeah, I had a safe space.

John Dehlin [01:18:31] Yeah. Thanks, Carah and John. That's a. That's a powerful list you've provided us. And we could. We could do an episode on every one of those lists. You just enumerated one of those items that you enumerated in your list.

John Larsen [01:18:42] Yeah, yeah. And this stuff is. It's. It's a. I. The reason I decided to do this podcast is it's great model for understanding not human behavior, because that sounds like we're in. In a lab. It's a great model for understanding ourselves and how we react to threats and what we see as threats and the fact that you're probably not nearly as responsive as you think you are.

John Dehlin [01:19:11] Yeah.

Advice for Doubters, Believers, and Exmormons

John Larsen [01:19:11] All right, I want to kind of close out starting the last act here. And I know we have a lot of different people, you know, people who are wondering, people who are faithful, people who observe, but I want to talk to the ex Mormons for a minute. Sorry, this is going to be a little hard. What I want you to take away from this podcast is the behaviors that we have been talking about are deep cognitive biases in our genetic code. They are not choices. When you start seeing something in the fat in the face of. Of a disaster that will take your life, that over and over and over again, that human beings basically do nothing and die sometimes in horrific ways. Should stop the presses because the more your family and friends in the church love you and respect you, the more confusing it is to them when you leave. The more that you don't fit their narratives of why people leave the church or what happens to them, the more difficult it is for them to process why you are going. Even though when we leave the church, oftentimes you get ignored and you get ostracized and you get shut out. The Mormons need grace. This is an automatic response to a threat. And you, by discovering what is true and following your conscious and doing what is the right thing are crushing their world in a way that they can't quite deal with. Not because they have character flaws, not because they're stupid, not because their religion is terrible, even though it is. It's because that is the human response they need. And I know what many are saying right now, that I'm the fucking victim in all this, which is true, the ex Mormon, but it's not true. Deep, deep in the oldest parts of our brain. For them, they can't process what's happening. And by them, I mean us. I mean all of us. I mean humanity. I want you to collapse the us and them narrative just for once, even though I put it here instead of talking the ex Mormon, so forgive me. The message in this podcast is that not leaving the church is a cognitive default that's built into us. And the reason I call religions mind viruses is they take advantage of weaknesses in our psyche, and this one is fucking huge. And they don't know how to deal with this. We don't know how to deal with this. We don't know how to deal with each other. We are in bumper cars with dynamite strapped around them, all of us. And we blow up our families and we blow up our communities and we blow up our religions and we blow up all this stuff because we're. We're fucking dummies and we can't do any better. It is not a character flaw. There is nothing wrong with them. There is nothing wrong with us. We're trying our best. And that's what I mean by grace. That doesn't mean you have to put up with their. That doesn't mean you have to put up with their abuse. That doesn't mean you have to keep these relationships. But just remember, it's not them talking. It is the deepest parts of their mind, and it demands us that as a people, if we're going to survive, if we're going to do better, we have to recognize that all of this comes from places that are way, way more complicated than we even understand.

John Dehlin [01:23:55] Beautiful, John Larsen. That's a beautiful plea. And we sometimes feel angry and we want to rant and we want to vent and we want to rage at the machine. And we're. We love our family members and friends and our community members, and we want them to just like, oh, Carah, you're smart. I respect you. You're an honest person. You lost your faith. Well, tell me everything you learned, because I trust you and I think you have a good heart. So, like, if you've left, then I want to Investigate what caused it. That's the response that almost no believing Mormon gives, ever. But it's the one that we all kind of want because we love these people and they have historically loved us. And so we often only hate that which we once loved, that person who we once loved, or we get most angry when the people who we love most hurt us. And so, and so it's, it's so natural, John Larsen, for us as, as questioning Mormons, daddy Mormons, ex Mormons, to lash out in anger at those who remain in the church, or Carah, to your point, to belittle them as dumb or lemmings or ostriches with their head in the sand. But, but John Larsen, what your episode today is calling us all to do is to have empathy and to understand the, the humanity that we're all fools. We're all subject to these, these brain patterns and these biases. And frankly, if some of us are part of the 30% that don't just obey authority or that, that don't just freeze, but instead we, we take flight, do we even get full credit for that? Or is that just the brain chemistry that we happen to be the wiring and the chemistry that we, by no choice or merits of our own, just happen to inherit. So, so we kind of fall back on what Jesus said, which is don't judge and love everyone. And John Larsen, I think that's what you're making a plea for today in a very heartfelt way.

Understanding Anger and Empathy After Leaving

John Larsen [01:26:16] Yeah, yeah, I, I think so. And appreciate what you said there. I think that. And I don't, I don't want my words to be taken as chastising ex Mormons either for their anger and they're fighting back and all that. I just see, I see us locked in this eternal struggle of humankind and we're in a fuck gunfight in a submarine. It really doesn't make any sense, you know, because we're, we're all faced with the same, same problems. And I want to go back and read a comment here. Hopefully I can go without a scrolling. From where? From Facebook.

John Dehlin [01:26:57] Well, John, while you're looking for it, I'll just thank. There's several people that Maven have highlighted in. In as having donated and I just want to. We want to always take the time to thank those who donate because they make this possible so difficult. Research donated and said great topic tonight. Thank you. Thank you for that super chat. Tom Applegate also wrote. Sent a super chat and wrote thank you for helping us expand the space to love and understand each other. Thanks for that support. We want to, we want to have. Before we end, we want to have a little bit of a dialogue with our live stream audience. We want to invite people to share their questions or their comments. John, have you found the comment yet or do you or. Yeah, okay, I've got, I want to read a couple. But John, let's go ahead and have you read the comments?

John Larsen [01:27:51] The one is from Leela to Tuler.

John Dehlin [01:27:54] Lila. Lila Tuller, she's a former Mormon Stories interviewee, daughter of not LeGrand Richards. Who's the other guy?

John Larsen [01:28:05] Oh, I Love that guy. LeGrand Richards was great.

John Dehlin [01:28:07] No, not him. He's the one that a lot of people don't like.

Carah Burrell [01:28:11] He's the one who's like, oh, Jesus, kids, if they grow up, kids will, yeah, kids will not turn out homosexual if they have a love interest.

John Larsen [01:28:19] Junior Junior.

John Dehlin [01:28:20] Yeah. Lila is the daughter of former general Authority Hartman Rector Jr May he rest in peace. Okay, go ahead. Let's read Glyla's comment.

John Larsen [01:28:27] Okay. But John, not all of them respond the way you're describing. Some are gentle and accepting. Some are unconditional with their love. Why is there such a difference in response? Why are some people able to hold space for us and others not? It's a fantastic point and we, we paint with too broad a brush. But it, it leads to the fundamental question is when, when the, the, the, the title the is why in the face of overwhelming evidence that the church is not true, do so many people not do anything? And it's the same question, Lila, that you're asking just flipped on its head that there are always those who push against the greater narrative. And John pointed out that there is probably a biological explanation for it. But it is a puzzling question indeed. And a great point.

John Dehlin [01:29:13] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:29:13] And we always need to be careful that for whatever narrative you say about bishops or about ex Mormons or about. There's, there's plenty of examples that prove it wrong. We are, we are more complex than, than, than we often give ourselves credit for.

John Dehlin [01:29:29] Yeah. John, what, what? I, I was, I was thinking of a couple other things that I might add to this outline and I'll just share one. Have you ever heard the, the idea that social death feels a lot like, you know, the fear of social death feels a lot like fear of physical death. And so we, we talked about fear of eternal damnation in hell. But one of the most toxic, deadly human phenomenon that we can experience is loneliness and, and rejection. We've talked about the Family Acceptance Project, which was a study that came out of San Francisco State University, I believe, by Caitlin Ryan, that basically said that an LGBT youth is something like eight or nine times more likely to attempt suicide if they're highly rejected by their families. So if high rejection makes people want to die to end their own lives, then another thing that keeps people in the church, John Larsen, is just fear of their dad rejecting them, their mom rejecting them, their siblings, their. Their children, their grandchildren. I. I think a huge contributor to people not only, you know, grasping at confirmation bias and avoiding any information or allowing their shelf to build up, and that. That even keeps this pimo. PIMO phenomenon alive, which is physically in, but mentally out. It's this terrifying fear of either disappointing people we love or of our spouse or someone else literally cutting us off. Carrie, you're nodding your head.

Carah Burrell [01:31:18] Yeah. Everything comes back to a bandwidth issue for me. And when I did this episode with my friend Eve on my nuanceho Channel, and she was having questions about the church, and me and John had a conversation, and we dropped a bunch of bombs about the truth of Joseph Smith, and we let her sit there and talk about them. And she brought up a great point. She's been somebody who's had doubts for years, but. And I was like, you know, people, you don't have a lot of time to. To read the books and investigate the stuff. And she's like, no. What about just the, like, mental fortitude to be able to. To put all of that to the side and say, I don't care what my family says. I'm gonna keep reading this and I'm gonna keep investigating. That's really brave and really kind of rare for people to be able to have the bandwidth to say, no matter what happens, I just want to get to, like, the meat of the issue and, like, let the chips fall where they may. It's just when you're a mom and you have. Your whole life revolves around your primary calling and your. Your neighborhood friends, and you're so well integrated into your community. And, yes, there's a normalcy that it's what you grew up with. I grew up in Provo, Utah, where that is all I knew. And that's. I associated. Happy people stayed in the church, unhappy people were out of the church, and I was only fed that kind of bias. And so you combine that with the fact that, yes, there's a social dynamic to the church that beautiful and wonderful. And I wish, you know, we wish as ex Mormons, we could have, you know, somebody bring you casserole when you're in the Hospital. We're still trying to find methods as human beings to still have that method of communication, and it's right there in the church. And then to say, all right, well, I am going to put my kids to bed and I'm going to read the CES letter. I don't know if I'll be able to stay married to my husband in the morning or. I don't know if he'll want to stay married to me or what my eternal family will look like or if people at church will. You know, nobody will understand me. Nobody will understand what I'm going through. That's the traumatizing part of it. You don't have. Your identity is tied to who you are as a daughter of God, child of God. Your identity is tied to who you are in this family structure, this lineage, this pioneer heritage. Your identity is core to all of those things. And to be able to have the mental fortitude to say, I don't care, I have to know if it's actually true or not, because my shelf is building up. There are gay people that I love. It's causing a lot of harm. It looks like it's got some nefarious things that they're doing with their money and their temples and something's got to break. And it takes a really brave person to be able to move past that. But it's. It's one of those things that you move only when you feel like you have to move when the pressure gets too much.

John Dehlin [01:33:38] Amen. John, did you want to comment on that point?

John Larsen [01:33:41] Yeah. The social point, I think is. I don't his name, Eiley or Eli Weisel. This quote comes to mind, which is the opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness. It's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy. It's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death. It's indifference. And I think that there's a. There is the. The fear, the. The. The. If you look at what's the worst Mormon hell, it's not burning in endless fire, it's outer darkness. It's to be in a place where everyone and everything is utterly indifferent to you. And I think that fear of loss of social bonds, of loss of connection, is the indifference. And love and hate, as they say, play very similar on the screen. But indifference is hard to deal with. And I think as people go through these changes, that's the fear, that's the dread that you'll just no longer matter to anybody.

John Dehlin [01:34:53] Yeah. Sometimes Mormon apologists like to say that Mormon hell is an upgrade. It's a feature. It's an improvement on the traditional evangelical Christian hell of fire and brimstone. At least in Mormonism, the worst you get is outer darkness. But I imagine that there are people that would choose the fire over complete isolation for eternity and separation from everyone you love.

John Larsen [01:35:21] Well, you know, I was reading recently about people put themselves in deprivation, changes the silent chambers in the dark. And I think the world record right now is 75 minutes that anybody can survive before they. Before they pull the cord and say they have to get out. Wow. So, you know, if you call that an upgrade, most people would go raving insane in a matter of minutes.

Carah Burrell [01:35:43] Wow.

John Larsen [01:35:44] So, yeah, you and your upgrade.

John Dehlin [01:35:46] Right.

John Larsen [01:35:47] See, I. See, See, I'm not. I'm not the saint that I pretend to be.

Carah Burrell [01:35:51] There's also an argument to be had, like maybe you don't baptize so many people because if they leave the church, they're in outer darkness instead of just the lowest level of heaven. I don't know. Seems pretty cruel. Come home for your missions, everyone.

What Keeps People In Despite Knowing the Truth

John Dehlin [01:36:04] Okay, another John Larsen and Carah, another thing that I thought about again, I mentioned this Pimo. Pimo phenomenon physically and mentally out. You know, the. The past 20 years in the Internet had not been kind to churches, you know, throughout the United States and throughout the world. But, but Mormonism is. Has certainly suffered from the Internet. Of course, Covid also dealt the church quite a significant blow just in the past few years. But, but there's still this. You know, while there are many people leaving and there are many people resigning, what I don't think any of us really have a full grasp of is how many people, how many Mormons have completely lost their faith. But they, but, but no one knows because they just show up and attend church and keep it to themselves and stay quiet. And I do think that fear of rejection and isolation is part of that. But another big one, John Larsen, is finances. I can't tell you how many dentists and doctors and accountants who, who would leave the church, especially in Utah and Arizona, or real estate agents, right? But their, their livelihoods are dependent upon referrals or relationships or friendships. Financial advisors, CEOs, like, how many software execs, you know, are, you know, don't want to rock the boat, don't want venture capital opportunities to dry up. And so they stay in the church because either they. There's a lot of wealth that they stand to gain by staying and by hiding, or they have a lot of just income or sustenance that they stand to lose. And I'm going to add, I'm going to sort of advocate for them in a sense, because poverty is no picnic, right? And becoming bankrupt or losing your job or becoming unemployed, you know, some of the worst things that happen in humanity are an outgrowth of poverty. People. People do really bad, horrible things when they become too poor and too desperate and don't have basic things like education or health care, etc. And, and we all grew up kind of Mormons grew up idolizing the Jewish community because they stuck together, because financially they supported each other and kind of lifted themselves and each other up. And as soon as you start, you know, introducing religious disruption, well, let me start in a different way. Once Brigham Young comes to the Great Basin Kingdom and implements a theocracy, you see businesses and fortunes rise, and you see a people lifted out of poverty and out of disgrace. And then you see their, their collective financial and. And governmental power start to become very significant. And that's good for the people to, you know, money and power can help protect and grow a people. And so I would even say there's a, There's a political and a economic advantage to people staying silent, not just for themselves, not just for their family, but for the people as a whole to just go pmo, just stay quiet, don't disrupt, and keep the. Keep the cash registers flowing. All right, so. So I'm not. I know that that's going to cause both Carah and John some angry, frustrating feelings, but isn't there some reasonable. Oh, there's totally a reasonable truth to that.

Carah Burrell [01:39:50] Can I say something?

John Dehlin [01:39:51] Yeah, please.

Carah Burrell [01:39:52] This is what made me think of that. In addition to that, John de Lynn, it's that when you leave the church, you have an identity crisis and you don't know who you are and you don't know how to reckon. You don't know how to reckon if you're a good person or not. And there is such a checklist and there's such a. An appreciation of like, you know, those talks, they're like, I'm a Mormon. I stand for this. And people kind of know who you stand for and people who don't like the church, but they like Mormons. Joe Rogan has a famous clip on his podcast where he's like, I like Mormons. They're nice. You want to be thought of as a person who. You introduce yourself as a Mormon. And if you don't know, you know, look at a review of a dentist. Are non Mormon dentists any More, worse, or better than Mormon dentists? No, they're probably all about the same. But I think there's this, this mantle of feeling like you are a good person. People know what they're getting. They're getting an honest dentist. And when I was a nanny in la, I always put on my resume that I was Mormon because that meant something. I had an identity in it. And I got more jobs because of it, because people knew what kind of person I was, that I was getting. I didn't have to, like, tell them that I was very honest and that I, I had these different core values. People know what you mean when, you know, it's kind of a shortcut to feeling like you have this identity and people can, can find that marker. And then again, in addition to your point, John, other Mormons want to do business with other Mormons because it's like, are they technically any more trustworthy? I don't know. We could negotiate that all day. But, like, you feel like if you're gonna hire a Mormon plumber when you're Mormon, I'm gonna pick the Mormon plumber over the non Mormon plumber. Because you feel like there's this, this connection. Even today, I'm like, I would, you know, it's helpful to know what your values are that, that, you know, if I was in any kind of profession, I, I, at least as my type of Mormon, I was and am still very honest. And that was core to what Mormonism meant to me. You know what I mean?

John Dehlin [01:41:36] Yeah. Yeah, that's good. John, did you, did you want to jump in on this part?

John Larsen [01:41:42] Go to. Now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you. Yeah, I know. I mean, I've rallied against him. There are lots of people who sell their souls and sell the souls of their children. Their children. Children for another real estate deal and another wisdom tooth they can pull. Yeah, you have your reward, as Jesus said.

John Dehlin [01:42:13] But I mean, but then, John, I'm hearing a bit of a mixed message from you. And of course, we're all complex, but on the one hand, we're trying to build empathy and understanding for people who are just kind of following their biological wiring and their social conditioning. So. Which is, I mean, John, I'm hearing two things. I'm hearing let's have empathy and compassion, and I'm hearing a little bit of condemnation speech as well.

John Larsen [01:42:40] Yeah, yeah. I would easily say that rape is a biologically inclined activity. That doesn't mean we should tolerate it.

John Dehlin [01:42:49] Right?

John Larsen [01:42:51] You're not talking about the person who's not leaving the church for other 40,000 a year job. You're talking about people in the upper crust. And man, fuck those guys. Like, you know, like, yeah, we're greedy, we're selfish, we're louts. Human beings have a lot of evil inside of us. But to use that. As you know, I was just a dentist and my boat needed to be paid for. Right? There's certain things we need to overcome and there's certain things we need to deal with. And understanding why your mother has trouble talking to you is different than making an excuse for people who make lots of money. Right? Because what they're doing is they're gouging things out of other people. And there's people who are in the church trying to do their best, trying to follow the teachings of Jesus, which are good teachings, and to then lump anybody else into this. I'm just doing biologically what I was programmed to do. You may be right, but then we need to deal with that. And of all arguments for staying in the church, the rich white guys who say, I'll lose my practice. What are you selling your soul for? You know, they'll have their reward on their deathbed. You know, they're like this machine keeps moving forward. And for another client, for another mortgage, for another whatever, I chose to ignore truth. I chose to push the pain onto other people. I chose to let others suffer so that I had more. I see what you're saying. It's not a terrible point, John, but I reject it outright. We still have to fight for what's right. That doesn't mean we can't have empathy. And I do have a little bit of empathy for people who are part of an organization and part of a church and part of a way. But if you're saying, I don't believe this religion, but I will lose my clients if I leave, fuck you. I don't give a shit. People have paid the price dearly to leave the church. And you dishonor the sacrifice of people who gave things up and put their heart and soul on the line by just keeping it for a little bit more money, Just one more client, just one more fucking trust fund, and then I'll be done. That's why the world's burning. That's why we live in a shithole. It's because of people like that. So this has nothing to do with Mormonism? This is just standard assholery. Mormonism has nothing to do with rich dicks taking advantage of the rest of us. So I'll put this aside because it doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about.

John Dehlin [01:45:49] There's that quote. The only thing necessary for evil to, you know, continue is for, yes, for good men to do nothing. John, if I can, if I can maybe use a bit of a carrot instead of your stick. Not to say, not to negate your point points, but to add to them. There are people that are just never going to be motivated by being chastised. But, but I will say this. You know, you talk about, you know, your reward, your negative consequence for leading a fake life or for being silent being what happens when you die. What I'd like to highlight is what I've seen, what I've seen happen to people who learn to live a lie while they're living. Because you know, whether it's anxiety that builds, whether it's depression that builds, whether it's learning to lie to yourself or learning to lie to the people closest to you, whether it's setting up a split life where you're one way when you're around a certain group of people and another way around another group of people, those things catch up to people in their immediate lived experiences in very real and significant ways. So that's one. I can say that I've met many a suicidal person, pimo person, someone who's in the church hiding and lying to make it work, believing that somehow they or their family is better off by them not making waves. Sometimes they're going to be people where that's true for them and we need to allow grace and space for people to make their own decisions. Maybe for some people they're better off staying quietly in, but I've met a lot of people where they think there's less pain that will be inflicted on them by staying than by leaving. And what they're basically doing is trading a moderate amount of short term pain for a massive amount of long term pain and suffering by, by delaying what, what sometimes is the inevitable. Because a good friend of mine once said that people are going to take care of themselves one way or the other. They'll either do it gracefully or ungracefully. And what I mean by that is sometimes your own psyche, sometimes your own psychology, if you pack down the honesty, if you pack down the anxiety, if you pack down the depression, if you pack down the truth for too long, it tends to seep out in addiction, in self Betrayal in anxiety or depression, and sometimes even suicidality. So. So viewers and listeners, if you're not into John Larsen's chastisement, which for many of us is earned or, or merited, practice self care. Because if you, if you go on too long living a double life or hiding or lying, sometimes you get beyond a path of no return. Whether it's the lies that you've told to others that come back to bite you, or the lies that you tell yourself, they come back to bite you, or a loved one that has remained in the church because of your example, they end up suffering in very significant ways, where you end up being a major reason why that LGBT youth ended up taking their life or that child of yours married, you know, got into a. Went on a mission and got married in the temple and then had a bunch of kids and then had this awful, terrible, horrific divorce where there was collateral damage everywhere. You know, sometimes you enable harm that happens to other people. And I'm not trying to say that I know what's best for you or that any of us can really stand in judgment of anyone's individual decisions, but I'm just saying be mindful because sometimes there's. You reduce your short term pain and suffering, but you trade it for long term pain and suffering, either of yourself or of someone else. Carah, are you, are you having a thought?

The Cost of Staying for Yourself and Your Children

Carah Burrell [01:50:23] I have to say to that is that if you're the, if you are a pmo, who's in the church, and again, I don't know your life story, but if you can say, oh, the church is absolutely fault, it's a thing that's made up by Joseph Smith and it absolutely has ramifications of, you know, discrimination and sexism and causes real life harm. And people, you know, look at every Mormon stories interview of people who have dealt with purity, culture issues, lgbtq, you know, suicidality. If you can actually reconcile that, yeah, this made up thing by Joseph Smith that is now run by 15 white men is obviously just a corporation now and causes real ramifications in people's lives. But I found a way that works for me. Recognize how privileged that is. Recognize that how unique that is. That that is, like John said, probably not gonna last forever, first of all, and gonna cause you a lot of harm. But recognize how privileged that is, that you have a space that you're able to find that. That ability to work through those things and find a comfortable life living as a physically and mentally out type of Mormon. But to John Delynn's point, who are the people that you were teaching in elders quorum who are now being indoctrinated and sitting quietly with that racism, with that sexism that you. You're fine with because you're in a place of privilege. You're like, it doesn't affect me. I found my way through it.

John Dehlin [01:51:41] Who.

Carah Burrell [01:51:41] Who's that LGBT kid in your ward who's not able to reconcile their sexuality because you weren't there to stand up and say, hey, I'm actually an ally, and I don't believe any of this doctrine in the church. Even though I take the sacrament every Sunday and every. And even though you see me, you know, sustain all of the leaders, where are people supposed to be able to get the mental fortitude that you're so lucky?

John Dehlin [01:52:00] Yeah, sorry.

Carah Burrell [01:52:01] I said I was trying to be nice, but I'm just like, yeah, I get. I'm a little John Larsen, a little feisty.

John Dehlin [01:52:08] John. John, were you gonna. We're gonna jump in.

John Larsen [01:52:11] No. Yeah. Thank you for saying what you have. And I've. I've said this many, many times and rhetorically. I'm not talking to people in the church. I never have. I'm always talking to the people who have already left. Leaving the church is way too painful for me to encourage that on anybody. I think it's the right thing to do, but it is not my calling in life to get people out of the church. I've never been interested in it. I've never wanted to do it. I know people have used what I've spoken to get themselves out of the church, but that's not who my audience is. So there is collateral damage in what I say, and sometimes it is too wide. So thank you for pointing that out. People are in difficult positions. And really, to be clear, what I'm raging about, it's things that are outside of the church. It's people are staying in for other reasons that really have nothing to do with either Mormonism or ex Mormonism. I just have no time or patience for those people. And when I'm talking to rich pricks, they're not going to be beat up by anything I say. But you're absolutely right that everything we say is a crudgel. And when we swing these things about, we create more victims. And it's something I've spent more time than I care to admit fussing over. So thank you for speaking for those who still need a voice, even if they're dicks.

John Dehlin [01:53:47] Yeah. And thanks to you both. Two more things that come to my mind, and then you guys can add Whatever, and we can wrap things up. One is I just, just another a trailing thought on the point I just made previously when, you know, Margi and I lost our faith in 2001 completely. Like, we no longer believed the church was true. Four years before I started Mormon Stories Podcast. No longer believers, but we, we were influenced by like, Eugene England and Lowell Bennion and all those progressive Mormons like Bushmen and others. And we said, well, just, you know, just like Jews, you know, just like reformed Jews. You, you don't have to believe in Moses to be a reformed Jew. I'll be a reformed Mormon, stay in the church and get the benefits of, of the membership, raise our kids in the church even as we don't believe. And so we raised our kids as progressive Mormons. You know, we raised our kids as pro LGBT Mormons, as anti racist Mormons, as feminist Mormons. And every single Sunday, the ritual was go to church and then come home and deprogram all the bad programming that our kids received in church. And we thought that by doing that, we would get the best of both worlds, that our kids would get the community of support and a moral foundation, and they would get progressive values. And what we learned, sadly, let's just say in our LGBT children's case, that they still internalized the homophobia, even though we were proactively trying to deprogram it. And, and our daughters still still internalized the, the sexism and the, and the misogyny, even though we were constantly trying to deprogram it. So the conditioning, just by having your kids swimming in the waters, even if you're proactively deprogramming them, they can still very much internalize all of the bad things.

Carah Burrell [01:55:58] Yeah. And we, as adults, we can, we can do our best to sort through that minefield, but we're putting our kids in the situations with their young women's leaders, sending them off to scout camp, putting them in this, this other type of shark tank that, like, we as adults have to recognize how privileged we are that we can be able to sort those out. And, but you can't control what, what other people are going to internalize and what's really going to cause them a lot of trauma depending on, you know, what type of messages they, they pick up that you're not around to ward off.

John Dehlin [01:56:27] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:56:27] And here, here gives us a chance to come full circle all the way back to our starting point. We told the story of the airplane in 1977 that caught on fire, and his fire burned down the fuselage, and our hero Escaped wondering at all those people sitting there staring at the fire who burned to death. That's the model for tonight's discussion that we want to give grace to those who sit in the seat. If there's somebody who knows that the fire is coming and sits there anyway in a conscious decision, I have nothing but confusion for those people.

John Dehlin [01:57:00] Yeah, no, that's a good point. Really quickly, we just got another super chat from Judd Westgate who wrote thanks for another great discussion. Thank you, Judd. Judd Westgate, for that super chat donation. For those of you don't know, in YouTube, there's a little dollar sign next to the chat, little window. You can click on that and donate. And that helps pay for John and Carah and Maven and the Mormon Story Studios. John Larsen.

Carah Burrell [01:57:29] Oh, can I ask one question?

John Dehlin [01:57:31] Yeah. And I also have one before we end up.

Carah Burrell [01:57:34] John Larsen. So in your analogy with the plane and there's some people who freeze and then you said that in disaster there are some people who want to believe their narratives so intensely that they'll actually fight against the people trying to, you know, put out the fire because they're just like, it absolutely is not as bad as you say it is. Can you make the connection for the audience of what that looks like in Mormonism?

John Larsen [01:57:55] Well, I think that it's been a

Carah Burrell [01:58:03] long night or don't. Or you can wrap up.

John Larsen [01:58:06] I, yeah, I don't, I don't know. Who knows? I can make something up. We all act differently. But the point is that there are people who will try to push the normalization. Okay, my mind's going into gear because they feel better if other people don't respond to the disaster. Because if everybody else starts responding, then, then they themselves are in a strange position. Another example I didn't use was Jews in Germany in the 30s. There are lots of Jewish people who got out who saw the pending threat, who believed the Nazi propaganda machine against the so called Jewish menace. And they got out, some of them very early. Some of them saw the signs very early. Others just kept pushing it and pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. There are many Jews, of course, who ended up succumbing to the Nazis because they didn't have the means to get out. But there were still a lot of wealthy Jews who could have got out five days earlier if they had just gone. But they would, following this theory. I, of course wasn't there. Then they would tell themselves and tell each other, it's okay, Hitler needs us. He needs, he needs, you know, the banking and the whatever you know, he's not actually gonna. This is just rhetoric. Nobody's really gonna do that. Nobody's ever gonna actually, you know, we have this in Congress right now. Was we, as we exceeded the debt ceiling. Oh, they won't actually let the Congress go. I've listened to interviews with congressmen the last couple days. Oh, those guys, they're just full of rhetoric. They're not actually gonna do it. Even though these people were actually pointing to insurrection. So I think there are the voices in that analogy who try to soothe those who are either panicking or trying to get out. They don't like the ones who actually get out because it makes them question their position. If we look at this as a response to cognitive dissonance, the people leaving increase their cognitive dissonance. So if they can get all of us to stay here together, then I don't have the cognitive dissonance of dealing with why Brother Jones, who I thought was the best scriptorian ever, just suddenly left the church. That's going to cause problems.

Carah Burrell [02:00:38] And I think one of the most painful, literal, pernicious that makes me cry to myself to sleep at night is the different, like LDS Mormons who are like, you can absolutely stay in the church. And it's again that cherry picking that, that they don't realize just because you have figured out a way for however long to stay gay and stay celibate in the church and you're like a poster child for this system working. That sounds like it to everyone else when people say, my grandpa smoked till he was 90 and you know, he never died of lung cancer. That kind of, that kind of, that's what so many Mormons point to where it's like, well, look at this person. They made it work. Why can't you also make it work? And it's disgusting and so, so seedy and so evil. And I wish, I wish the best to the gay Mormons who stay in the church, but they are used as a poster child for a million other things to prop up that it works for them. And nobody's gonna know. You know, for all of the different, you know, gay people who go into mixed orientations, marriages, it's not just a one time deseret news article or whatever about, hey, we made it work that your Mormon mom sends, you know, to your gay sibling or whatever, it's, well, what does that person actually react with at in their everyday life? Is it actually this pretty thing that's propped up as an anecdote for you to be able to, to say that it works for people. So why can't you make it work? It's just so seedy to me and. Yeah, that's all.

John Dehlin [02:02:04] Yeah, yeah. Really quickly, before I ask one last question of you, John, I want to thank H. Benzula for their super chat donation of $50. And Colby, my friend Colby Reddish.

Carah Burrell [02:02:17] Love Colby.

John Dehlin [02:02:18] Thanks again for such a great discussion. John Larsen's message about eliminating us versus them is my biggest belief right now. If we can't figure it out, which I think we probably won't, I think it means the end of humanity. That's dark. A dark but plausible conundrum that we're in. But regardless, Colby, we love you. Come back on Mormon Stories and thanks. Thanks for the donation and thanks for the comment. John Larsen. I erroneously assumed that today you would be addressing, and I even mentioned this in the intro, that today you would be mentioning the trope. You'd be addressing the trope of, you know, doubting or critical Mormons or ex Mormons. They can leave the church, but they can't leave it alone. That's not directly what we were addressing, but what I wanted to ask you to end with, you know, that's, that's the type of comment that hurts so many of us when, when a believing Mormon just basically says, shut up. You know, by, by saying, you see those ex Mormons, they can leave the church, but they can't leave it alone. How do we fit that trope of they can leave the church, but they can't leave it alone into your frame, your compassionate framework of, of normalcy, bias, and of cognitive dissonance management, just so we can kind of know where to put that.

Inverting the 'Can't Leave It Alone' Trope

John Larsen [02:03:40] Well, I, I, I've, I've railed against this trope so many times. Let's, let's invert it. So let's suppose that as a child you could be born into the church and go to primary for, you know, up till you're 12, hearing these stories and being told and singing songs of praise to these white men in charge that you, you get your young women's medallion or your priesthood advancement and you go on and you go on a mission and you're married in the temple and literally every major moment in your life is overseen and controlled by the church. I know things have changed, but, you know, when I was a young kid, we went to sacrament meeting in the morning, we went to junior Sunday school in the afternoon. We went to primary on Tuesdays, Relief Society was on Wednesdays. You know, you did your temple work and you did your conferences and you do your genealogy and you read Your scriptures for 10 minutes a day and you only listen to approved music and you avoid rated R movies and you are in the world, but you're not of the world and you avoid all this stuff. And then a day comes that your faith and your testimony crack and you leave the church. What exactly is it that they want? What they're describing for somebody who can have their entire being, their entire education, their entire self, their identity, the identity of their marriage, the identity of their family, of their ancestors, of where they sit in the universe, of what it means to be white, of what it means to be privileged, of what it means to be American. All of that in a big, large narrative. And they're supposed to do what now? Leave it alone. They're supposed to not think about it, talk about it, and just move on. What the fuck are they talking about? That's not even possible.

John Dehlin [02:05:39] How.

John Larsen [02:05:39] Why would you. It's like saying the ex Mormons are clearly not. Not valuable because they can't fly. No one can do that. No one can spend all of that psychological time and be indoctrinated so heavily for decades and years and just leave it alone. No matter how much you want to leave Mormonism behind. And this is why I'm still doing these goddamn podcasts all these years later when I should just be out watching the fucking sunset. Because it's impossible to leave it alone. Because they made it so. They made it so. It seeps into the crack of every portion of your life, every corner of your psyche. Everything about you, if you are a faithful Mormon, is Mormon. So you have to reprocess the entire world from the things you learned as an infant all the way through. You have to reprocess what it means to eat, what it means to drink, what it means to have sex, what it means to have friends, what it means to have a job. There is not one aspect of your life that Mormonism doesn't touch. So the idea that ex Mormons somehow trying to work through their own experience and figure out what life is about is some kind of insult to these people. They can all fucking pound sand. They're asking for something that is psychologically utterly impossible. That's what I have to say about that.

Carah Burrell [02:07:11] That was the mic drop of all mic drops. Hell yeah. Hell yeah.

John Dehlin [02:07:16] Yeah. Well, that. That's powerful. That'll be a tick tock short for sure. YouTube short. And John. But John. And let me ask. Let me ask a final follow on question. When a believer employs that trope of of they can leave the church, but they can't leave it alone. What are they doing within your framework? Is it cognitive dissonance management? Is that what's going on? They basically are saying, please be quiet because when you criticize, you cause me to doubt. And I don't want to doubt because I don't want to lose all these things. Is that what's going on?

John Larsen [02:07:52] They. They have to tell a story in which the apostates are the bad guys. And this is true of every. Of every. What do you call not high touch religion? What's the word?

John Dehlin [02:08:07] High demand.

John Larsen [02:08:08] High demand religion. High demand religions always have to deal with the apostates. That's always their Achilles heel. So you can make up all these little meaningless know nothing rules like don't drink tea, but never define what tea is. You know, you could. That's one of the strategies. But you can also just take standard human behavior. And it's sort of like saying you can recognize an apostate because they will apostatize. Right? You can recognize an ex Mormon because they're gonna have to deal with their Mormonism. That's basically what they're saying. So they set up these impossibilities and then declare them to be sin because it feeds their narrative. So they'll take everything an ex Mormon does. Did you see John today? He was only wearing one shirt. You know, like, you know, he didn't have his garments on. You know, whatever. They'll create all these rules to designate us versus them. So they have to constantly be building up them. They have to constantly be telling a narrative of what them is. And so it's just a intellectually lazy, emotionally abusive, and psychologically bullshit trick to do. And they do this stuff all the time, you know, oh, look at me. Has a beard. Oh, look at her. She hasn't cut her hair. Oh, I saw Sister Maples walking down the street. You know what? She didn't shave her legs. You know, like literally anything to other. The people outside the church.

John Dehlin [02:09:37] Tattoos, multiple piercings, shoulders, right? Exposed shoulders, porn shoulders, as we call it.

John Larsen [02:09:45] Boobs for views, asking questions, reading books. You know, there's a reason that these kind of movements always burn books, right? The ideas are the antithesis of what they have. So, yeah, I love playing to their narrative. I love dropping F bombs because it makes them go cluck and run away. And then people who really want the truth, they have to kind of power through it. And then they start to recognize that these taboos that were put in place by the church are bullshit. So I say fuck, fuck, fuck. Because it breaks taboo. And when you break taboo, then you can free your mind from these, these chains. Do you guys get it? I'm gonna have you passed out with your tequila shots.

John Dehlin [02:10:33] What we need to do is we need to say, you know, we need to have the reverse of a tip jar every time John Larsen or Carah Burrell or I swear, everybody's got to do a super chat donation. And that way they'll incentivize donations. A reverse tip jar. Instead of punishing, punishing us for swearing during these. John Larsen care every time we take

Carah Burrell [02:10:54] off a jacket, they should donate. Yeah, here we go. I was going to add to that the, the trope of leaving this off again. Boobs, reviews, whatever I have to do to make the Mormons upset at me right now, again. That's another reason why you should leave the church. If you're thinking about it. Look at me. Garmentless, free will and fancy free.

John Dehlin [02:11:13] No wonder she left the church. She can't keep her clothes up.

Carah Burrell [02:11:16] That's neither here nor there. Now listen, the, the that trope, I just. As somebody who spends a lot of time on the Internet getting a lot of people who say that in the comment section who think that they're very clever, it comes from this instinct to humiliate. Like, that you're obsessed with something that you shouldn't be obsessed with is basically what they're saying, like, stop having an obsession. And it's like, are you trying to say that having an obsession about anything is unhealthy? Because I'm pretty sure, just like John Larsen explained, I'm like, you're obsessed. You're obsessed. Not, not that it's your fault, but you spend all of your time thinking about all of these things. What you're, what you're admitting to when you say that Mormons, that if you leave the church and can't leave it alone, you're admitting that you're not curious and you don't have the right proper amount of empathy to wonder, why can't they leave it alone? You have just done a thought stopping cliche to say you're a loser, you're obsessed with things, move on with your life. But if you can't just stop for a second and say, why would somebody from my tribe who, who left this thing that they once loved, that I love right now, what would cause them to. To. To leave it? What kind of spaces of empathy am I not listening to and open to? You're admitting that you're a piece of when you do that basically. Sorry, tip jar.

Closing Remarks, Super Chats, and Farewells

John Dehlin [02:12:23] All right.

Carah Burrell [02:12:24] I have to choose one or the other. Oh, okay.

John Larsen [02:12:27] Damn straight.

John Dehlin [02:12:28] We've jumped the shark. We've officially jumped the shark into this episode. We. We have become a swear fest. No, it's beautiful. I love you guys. I love everything you contribute. There are people who complain every episode about the swear words or the politics, and all I can say is don't watch the John Larsen and Care episodes. This is what you're going to get in these episodes. But I want you to watch these episodes. So I resisted a disclaimer today. Did you guys notice that?

Carah Burrell [02:12:56] Why we are swearing so much? Where is your empathy missing? Maybe we are really fucking mad.

John Larsen [02:13:02] Well, if they. If they stop after John stops blubbering, they'll be fine. So you can PG the episode by. Oh, except. Except Carah dropped a. I think in

Carah Burrell [02:13:11] the we do show notes for where the swears are.

John Larsen [02:13:13] I was really good.

John Dehlin [02:13:15] When you say blubbering, do you mean you. You being emotional? Is that what you mean?

John Larsen [02:13:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:13:19] That's some of the best stuff too. That's gold. All right, well, thanks so much to everyone for today. We just got four from. From difficult research. $1.99 in the tip jar. So thanks. Difficult Research for the super Chat for swearing. Let's have a war. I've got an idea. Car. I think this is brilliant. If you like.

Carah Burrell [02:13:40] I always wanted to start a war with John Larsen.

John Dehlin [02:13:42] Here it is. No, no, no. With our audience. If you like the swearing, donate. And if you don't like the swearing, donate, donate. Either way. That's good, right? Is that good?

John Larsen [02:13:55] Yeah, it's like at the restaurants, they put two tip jars. One for Biden and one for Trump. Right, let's do that. Yeah. If the non swear tip jar gets more money than we will go completely clean. We'll go G rated for a whole episode.

John Dehlin [02:14:10] All right. Rosie just contributed to the swear jar. All right. All right. Well, John Larsen, as always, you're a treasure. You're a blessing to Mormon Stories podcast to the progressive and post Mormon communities, and to the church. Because ultimately, what we're all doing honestly is we're. We're helping strengthen the Mormon Church. At the end of the day, I hope we all realize that. Thanks to Madison Rose as well for donating to the Super Chat. All right, so, John, thanks. Do you want to give us any. Any hints for what's to come, or do you want to keep that at your own discretion?

John Larsen [02:14:49] You know, I. I always have a few on my back.

John Dehlin [02:14:52] Burner.

John Larsen [02:14:52] But at the end of the day, the only way I can do this is talk about whatever interests me that month. That month. So I. I don't want to commit too much because I might change my mind.

John Dehlin [02:15:01] Okay, that's cool.

John Larsen [02:15:02] Well, John, thanks for lots of good stuff coming up.

John Dehlin [02:15:04] Thanks for today. We had a great audience and you, you did great stuff. So thank you.

John Larsen [02:15:09] Thanks.

Carah Burrell [02:15:10] I've never felt more seen.

John Dehlin [02:15:12] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:15:12] I'm not just talking about my eyelashes.

John Dehlin [02:15:17] Yeah. And lots of super chats coming in. Tom Applegate, Wendy Dumpke, Laura Bowman, New Richard Jones, Gentleyn Elzinga, and John O. Childress. I think the tip jar thing is working, Carah. I think that was a good idea. And with that, Carah Burrell. Thanks for coming on Mormon Stories podcast, everybody. Go not only subscribe to the nuance whole YouTube channel, but you can also click on the donate button wherever you provide your donate button. Or you guys can sign up on Patreon. Anything else you want to say about your channel, Carah?

Carah Burrell [02:15:53] I took a month off for some self healing and reflection and I'm ready to get back into it. Today is my first day back at work. So lots of new big projects coming up on my Nuance Ho channel. So, yeah, just like Mormon stories with. Yeah, more swearing. Just swear all the time. No, but thank you, everyone. If you would sub scribe, that would be amazing.

John Dehlin [02:16:12] All right, and thanks to Jennifer hare and John McBride and Eve. Is that your Eve?

Carah Burrell [02:16:18] That's my Eve.

John Dehlin [02:16:18] Is that Eve Racliff.

Carah Burrell [02:16:20] Racliff. Yeah, that's my Eve.

John Dehlin [02:16:23] Thanks, Eve. Thanks, everyone.

Carah Burrell [02:16:24] Go on my channel and go watch the episode I did with John and Eve called Telling a Believing Mormon about Joseph Smith. It's like probably the best video in Mormonism of all time. I'm not.

John Dehlin [02:16:32] I think it's your highest viewed video, like 97,000 views. Is that.

Carah Burrell [02:16:36] That's so good.

John Dehlin [02:16:37] That's amazing. Yeah, that's a good one. All right, thanks so much. Thanks to all you have donated. Thanks to John Larsen, thanks to Carah, thanks to Maven for moderating the chats, doing the time codes in the show notes in the post production. Thanks to all the Open Stories foundation staff. You know, Gerardo, Margi, Brooklyn, Julia, everybody who's helping out, the co hosts who come on, and our board of directors, of course, Clint and Carrie. We couldn't do this without all the support, so thanks. And most importantly, thanks to the interviewees who come on Mormon Stories and the donors that make all this possible. If you value this content, if you want to see John Larsen and Carah Burrell, continue to come on monthly, go to mormonstories.org mormonexpression Maven can put that in the comments and in the show notes as well because we have a fund dedicated specifically to John and Carah to buy them equipment to pay their monthly compensation. And if you want and people always are canceling out and we don't want John Larsen or Carah to ever go away. So if you're newer to this channel and you're loving John and Carah, the John and Care show, go to MormonStories.org mormonexpression and dedicate, you know, donate to the Mormon Expression Fund and we'll have John Larsen on for as long as he's able to do it. All right, everyone, thanks so much for the support. Carah, thanks again.

Carah Burrell [02:17:55] So fun.

John Dehlin [02:17:56] John, great episode. John, we love you.

John Larsen [02:17:59] Good night to everybody.

John Dehlin [02:18:00] All right, good night everyone and thanks again and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. 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.