https://americancynic.net/Atom Feed for 'religion' Features2022-02-28T21:08:44ZAmer Canishttps://americancynic.net/about/tag:americancynic.net,2014-12-07:/log/2014/12/7/on_camels_liberal_myths_and_ferguson/On Camels, Liberal Myths, and Ferguson2014-12-07T13:41:11Z2019-08-09T23:51:58Z<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
“In a world that really has been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood.”
</blockquote>
<div class="attribution">
— Guy Debord<br>
<cite>The Society of the Spectacle</cite>
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</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_background_the_killing_of_michael_brown">Background: The Killing of Michael Brown</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>As far as I know, none of the following facts are disputed. On August 9, 2014, Officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson City Police Department confronted Michael Brown, 18, and his acquaintance<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_1" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_1" title="View footnote.">1</a>]</sup> Dorian Johnson, 22, from his vehicle because they were walking in the middle of a residential street. The officer ordered them to move to the sidewalk. Instead of simply complying, Brown argued with the officer through the window of the police SUV. A scuffle ensued, Brown, who was unarmed, hit Wilson in the face with his hand, and according to Wilson’s testimony, made a grab for the officer’s firearm. In response, Wilson fired 2 shots at Brown who ran down the street for about 150 feet before turning around to face the officer (some witnesses reported he had turned around in surrender). Meanwhile Wilson had exited his vehicle and pursued on foot, firing at least 10 more times. Less than 90 seconds after initially contacting the jaywalker, Wilson had hit Brown with at least 6 bullets, including a fatal shot to his head.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_2" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_2" title="View footnote.">2</a>]</sup></p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Johnson later explained that Brown was in the midst of a some sort of mystical crises on the day he died.
He had an earlier preminition that his stepmother and grandmother would be delivered from their illnesses through his prayer, and was experiencing what seemed like supernatural phenomena including that he was being protected from cars as he walked in the street.
This state of mind may help explain both why Brown was walking in the middle of road and why he made the courageous but suicidal decision to turn and face the officer who was firing at him.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_3" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_3" title="View footnote.">3</a>]</sup></p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>A grand jury was convened after the shooting, and it found the evidence to be insufficient to provide probable cause for bringing criminal charges against officer Wilson. He was never arrested in connection with the killing.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Both the shooting and the grand jury decision have been met with significant <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ferguson_unrest">social unrest in Ferguson</a> and in cities around the country including protest marches, riots, looting, and destruction of retail storefront property.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The sentiment behind some of the protesters' demands for “justice for Mike Brown” and the bewildered response of spectating [white] Americans trying to make sense of why the black residents of Ferguson (sometimes just “thugs”) would destroy “their own” neighborhoods both reveal something of the mystified nature of capitalism and the myths which sustain it.</p>
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<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_myths_the_size_of_camels">Myths the Size of Camels</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Frederich Engels used the term ‘false consciousness’ to describe beliefs about the world which obfuscate its actual workings and mislead people into accepting the current social structures as “natural” or even inevitable. And it was Karl Marx, an often unemployed theorist living under industrial capitalism, who taught us the importance of the economic basis in understanding the nature, ends, and ideologies of the dominate political structures in all times and places. But it was Jesus of Nazareth, a propertyless Jewish peasant subsisting under imperial Rome, who taught us how to see and see through the moral judgments which flow from such false consciousness, a morality which serves to protect and create the exploiting classes.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Among the sayings of Jesus which have been preserved, there are a handful of colorful and memorable quips employing exaggerated contrasts to illustrate the hypocritical judgments made by the dominant political and religious ideologies and leaders of his time. One of the most famous is his rhetorical question to those who fixate on the speck of sawdust in their brother’s eye, but don’t even notice the log sticking out of their own eye.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_4" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_4" title="View footnote.">4</a>]</sup> Another is, “You blind leaders! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!”<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_5" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_5" title="View footnote.">5</a>]</sup></p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>What Jesus' sayings help to reveal, although it is counterintuitive, is that the most successful and stubborn ideas which make up a false consciousness do not operate on subtle misconceptions or minor deceptions. They are always complete reversals resulting in total hypocrisies.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Jesus' cynicism can be applied generally to see how the hypocrisy is borne out today (and a few specific examples of such reversals from Ferguson will be demonstrated in the next sections). Every stable mode of production has its own obfuscating myths which are accepted by a sufficient number of both the exploiting and exploited classes to maintain widespread complacency. And so in liberalism we can expect to find those myths which hide the horrors of capitalism from the citizens of republics:</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Private Property, a ruthless process and legal institution which deprives millions of property, requiring armies of police and soldiers to maintain, is seen as a provider of prosperity and stability. The Rule of Law, which so impartially allows the rich and the starving poor to depend on the purchase of commodities for survival, is seen as an egalitarian force. Above all Progressivism — by which the current social organization is seen to be fundamentally good and always improving through the democratic mechanisms of elections, petition, and scientific enlightenment — condemns as criminal any attempt by the oppressed to assert their dignity or make actual improvements to their conditions.</p>
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</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_justice_for_mike_brown">‘Justice for Mike Brown’</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="verseblock">
<pre class="content">If the pig who shot Mike Brown ever sees the courtroom
You’ll have mostly the looters to thank for it</pre>
<div class="attribution">
— Pat The Bunny<br>
<cite><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCdTUY-NRnM">"I Was A Teenage Anarchist"</a></cite>
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</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Returning to the death of Michael Brown: arming oneself then confronting, fighting with, pursuing, and finally shooting to death an unarmed young man is behavior which should require significant extenuating circumstances to excuse. Even if Wilson were not a police officer, his actions would likely warrant a criminal trial to determine the facts more fully. But Wilson <em>is</em> a police officer who has been entrusted by the public (whom he is ostensibly protecting) with weapons, training, and legal authority. If anything, while acknowledging his work will tend to place him into conflicts, he should be held to a <em>higher</em> standard of behavior and legal culpability than an ordinary citizen in handling those confrontations. Instead, in accordance with the law, he has been granted extra leniency and the case against him will not even be examined in open court.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Given all of that, <em>and not even considering pre-existing systemic injustices or the patterns of police abuse</em>, it is plain why there is such widespread belief that an injustice was committed against Michael Brown and the Ferguson community. ‘Justice for Mike Brown’ has become a slogan for protests, and is taken as a demand by journalists looking to provide a motive for protesters. But what would such ‘justice’ look like? All too often the slogan is simply a demand that Darren Wilson be more fully subjected to the same criminal justice system which produced him. In such cases it is actually a demand of ‘justice for Darren Wilson’.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>It’s a demand that reveals two divergent but both conservative reactions. The first, the ‘peaceful protesters,’ believe the justice system provides its own adequate channels of reform and view protest, insofar as it is legal or at least peaceful, as legitimate democratic petition of the government. The second, sharing the logic of a lynch mob, believes itself to be an extralegal corrective to a justice system gone so far astray that its own means of reform are no longer effective. Both accept at face value the necessity of the justice system as it promises to function.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>On one of the riotous nights following the grand jury decision, CNN described a crowd of protesters who overturned and burned a police cruiser and then chanted across the street toward the lines of riot police and national guardsmen, “We are not your enemy. We just want justice.”<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_6" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_6" title="View footnote.">6</a>]</sup> The demand for justice, referring to criminal justice, shows how fully even some of the vandalizing protesters in Ferguson have internalized the liberal myths which legitimate capitalism and its political superstructures. Except to the grieving friends and family of Michael Brown who can’t be blamed for seeking whatever peace and closure they can find from a legal system which purports to provide it, the question of justice in the case of Darren Wilson is a symptom, a speck of dust, a gnat. Yet the Ferguson community leaders and many protesters strain at him while swallowing the murderous political system they believe can bring them justice.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Vandalism, even in the cause of liberalism, is clearly seen as a threat to the authorities and the image of control they’d like to maintain (hence the frenzied calls for peace among political leaders at all levels). But the split between the strictly peaceful and the extra-legal protesters also provides an opportunity to control the scope of debate during times of social unrest. For example, note what the highest ranking office of liberalism in the world has to say about rioting. During the 1992 LA Riots, President Bush acknowledged that while Americans have reason to be frustrated with the law, they should not actually unleash those frustrations on the legal system itself:</p>
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<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
“In this highly controversial court case, a verdict was handed down by a California jury. To Americans of all races who were shocked by the verdict, let me say this: You must understand that our system of justice provides for the peaceful, orderly means of addressing this frustration. We must respect the process of law whether or not we agree with the outcome. There’s a difference between frustration with the law and direct assaults upon our legal system.” <sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_7" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_7" title="View footnote.">7</a>]</sup>
</blockquote>
<div class="attribution">
— George Bush
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</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Similarly, president Obama in his address to the nation after the Ferguson grand jury decision pleaded for frustrations to be channeled “constructively”:</p>
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<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
“First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law. And so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make. […​] But what is also true is that there are still problems and communities of color aren’t just making these problems up. […​] What we need to do is to understand them and figure out how do we make more progress. […​] That won’t be done by throwing bottles. That won’t be done by smashing car windows. […​] So, to those in Ferguson, there are ways of channeling your concerns constructively and there are ways of channeling your concerns destructively.”<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_8" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_8" title="View footnote.">8</a>]</sup>
</blockquote>
<div class="attribution">
— Barack Obama
</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Riots provide several benefits for the working class at the expense of the owning class. As such, there is an ideological benefit in dissuading those who can be persuaded by liberalism from rioting. The liberal kit outlined by Obama — foundation on a Rule of Law, Progress, the sanctity of Property, and proper Democratic channels — is so ingrained in the minds of Americans that such appeals may work at an almost instinctive level. But even if they are ineffective in that, appeals to the law serve at least two important roles in maintaining order:</p>
</div>
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>By constantly making a distinction between lawful and non-lawful protest, the debate becomes centered on the morality and efficacy of extralegal reform. This has the effect of pushing radical change to the periphery, and completely out of view of most protesters and spectators.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>By creating a sense of urgency in maintaining peaceful protests, politicians can induce protesters to police each other.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>A darker theoretical speculation can be drawn about the role of murderous policing itself, including the double-standard seen in the indictment process. By deviating so obviously from the promise of justice the system purports, prosecutors and police have succeeded in prompting people to take to the streets in <em>support</em> of the criminal justice system.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_why_are_they_looting_their_own_neighborhoods">Why Are They Looting Their Own Neighborhoods?</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Meanwhile, much of the American populace suffers from a similar but different aspect of the liberal mystification. They read the reports of looting and see the pictures on TV of shops on fire, and they just can’t seem to figure out why those black people would destroy “their own” neighborhoods. As if the shopping centers in any American neighborhood, much less a black neighborhood, are collectively-owned cooperatives or in any way belong to the community rather than to petite bourgeois owners.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>These Americans are so ensconced in liberal mythology that they are utterly unable to make sense of the world that confronts them on their cable news programs every night. It seems perfectly natural to think of people — especially the dark skinned and uneducated — as automatons who should spend their lives working and obeying (or begging and obeying), but any disruption of peace and order is a startling transgression. ‘Peace and order’ is paramount; it implies the ability to peaceably and orderly employ, tax, fine, and blame the poor…​ in Ferguson and everywhere.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>As it is with gnats and camels, so it is with looting and capital. Businesses have stolen more from the working class — and most extensively from the black working class — than any practical amount of looting could ever recover. Yet the political leaders, news journalists, and the average American worker will strain all of their moral indignation at the tiny acts of re-appropriation like when a looter makes off with food or a television, but will swallow without question the entire impoverishing, alienating system of wage work which leaves so many with so little.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The wealth of the United States of America, from a British colony to an imperialist superpower, is the result of over four centuries of indentured servitude, chattel slavery, genocide, debt peonage, subjugation of women, plundering wars, and a system of wage labour which has no end in sight, all legally sanctioned and enforced by the established police forces. And what Americans cannot understand, the thing that is beyond acceptance, is when a liquor store is looted.</p>
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</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_the_virtue_of_rioting">The Virtue of Rioting</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Of course not all events that occur during times of rebellion are necessarily good. There is nothing useful or dignifying in opportunistic violence against individuals or theft of personal property committed under cover of social unrest, and such acts are properly crimes. It is also important to recognize that spontaneous uprisings like Ferguson are not organized revolutions in which targets are prioritized, goods are seized and distributed according to need, and capital is taken over to be run collectively — or whatever revolution might look like.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>As much as some of us may wish to see such activity, and while some spontaneous rebellions have historically lead to more directed revolutionary efforts, it is not even possible without more preparations than currently exist. The national guard in Missouri is happy to guard only the highest value centers of capital during a couple of nights of light looting of consumer goods. But if any protesters had attempted to actually take control of and operate their own workplaces, it would have been SWAT raids, live rounds, and whatever carnage was deemed necessary to return property to its lawfully exploiting owners.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>But why loot and riot at all? Earlier in this essay I claimed that riots provide benefits to the working class. What are they? Most obvious is the material benefits inherent in the act of looting. In addition to material gain, looting brings a flavour of what a post-capitalist economy will feel like. On every other day of their life, a looter’s needs rule over them in the form of money and commodities. For a few brief days during a riot, commodities are subordinated to the form of mere goods which satisfy needs.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Secondly, riots win political concessions. They signal to the ruling class that it is squeezing a tad tightly and needs to let up in order to keep its grip. The unrest in Ferguson has directly prompted the federal government to begin investigating the Ferguson Police Department for possible civil rights abuses,<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_9" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_9" title="View footnote.">9</a>]</sup> and President Obama has asked congress for $75 million to fund 50,000 body cameras to help reduce murder and other abuse by America’s police officers.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_10" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_10" title="View footnote.">10</a>]</sup> Other reforms may follow, none of which would have happened if protesters in Ferguson and elsewhere had not forced the issue.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>But most importantly, riots and the reactions to riots reveal the hypocrisy Jesus saw so clearly. The public judgment of rioters lays bare the false morality of the dominate ideology. Covert domination — including economic exploitation and racism — can be swallowed and transmitted to new generations without being noticed. But overt domination is noticed and generates its own resistance. It is when domination is exposed and individuals are freed of their false consciousness that Jesus' “kingdom of heaven,” the Wobblies' “new world in the shell of the old,” and the Marxist’s “whithering away” of classes is possible. There are Christians who don’t understand a word of what Jesus said, but who nevertheless believe with all of their strength that his words have the power to save their souls. I don’t think they are wrong.</p>
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</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_further_reading">Further Reading</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Roughly in order of relevance:</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p><a href="/log/2014/12/16/no_war_but_the_class_apocalypse_further_reflections_on_rioting/">“No War But The Class Apocalypse!: Further Reflections on Rioting”</a> - some of my further thoughts on riots.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p><a href="http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/in-defense-of-looting/">“In Defense of Looting”</a> by Willie Osterweil is an eloquent defense of looting in the context of the Ferguson riots.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/09/the-nature-of-police-the-role-of-the-left/">“The Nature of Police, the Role of the Left”</a> and <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/19/learning-from-ferguson/">“Learning From Ferguson”</a> by Peter Gelderloos look at the liberal mechanisms (including the narrative that ‘non-violence works’) used to relegate the efforts following police violence to superficial reforms.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p><a href="http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/decline.html">“The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy”</a> by Guy Debord is an insightful analysis of the Watts Rebellion of 1965.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>“False Consciousness or Laying it on Thick?” is the fourth chapter of James C. Scott’s <a href="http://xenopraxis.net/readings/scott_dominationandresistance.pdf"><em>Domination and the Arts of Resistance</em></a> which, like much of his work, explores the operation of hegemonic ideology and the degree to which it is accepted or merely tolerated by subordinate groups.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p><a href="http://humaniterations.net/2012/02/29/you-are-not-the-target-audience/">“You Are Not The Target Audience”</a> by Wiliam Gillis is an apology for the black bloc tactic of smashing windows.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p><a href="http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-anger-from-gulf-war-to-class-war-we-all-hate-the-cops">“From Gulf War to Class War: We All Hate the Cops”</a> by Max Anger is an optimistic (probably overly so) summary of the 1992 LA Riots.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p><a href="http://anti-imperialism.org/2014/11/27/ferguson-missouri-rioting-is-a-virtue/">“Ferguson, Missouri: Rioting is a Virtue”</a> by Zak Brown is commentary on Ferguson by an American Maoist.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="footnotes">
<hr>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_1">
<a href="#_footnoteref_1">1</a>. Wesley Lowery and Darryl Fears, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michael-brown-and-dorian-johnson-the-friend-who-witnessed-his-shooting/2014/08/31/bb9b47ba-2ee2-11e4-9b98-848790384093_story.html">“Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson, the friend who witnessed his shooting,”</a> The <em>Washington Post</em>, August 31, 2014.
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_2">
<a href="#_footnoteref_2">2</a>. Robert Patrick, “<a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/multimedia/special/darren-wilson-s-radio-calls-show-fatal-encounter-was-brief/html_79c17aed-0dbe-514d-ba32-bad908056790.html">Darren Wilson’s radio calls show fatal encounter was brief</a>,” <em>St. Louis Post-Dispatch</em>, November 14, 2014.
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_3">
<a href="#_footnoteref_3">3</a>. Wesley Lowery, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/dorian-johnson-witness-to-the-ferguson-shooting-sticks-by-his-story/2019/08/08/79ff3760-b77e-11e9-a091-6a96e67d9cce_story.html">"Dorian Johnson, witness to the Ferguson shooting, sticks by his story,"</a> The <em>Washington Post</em>, August 9, 2019.
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_4">
<a href="#_footnoteref_4">4</a>. <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7%3A3&version=NRSV">Matthew 7:3</a>
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_5">
<a href="#_footnoteref_5">5</a>. <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Matthew+23:23-24">Matthew 23:24</a>. It is sometimes suggested that the saying in Aramaic, the language Jesus probably spoke, would have involved more word play as the Aramaic word for “camel” is <em>gamla</em> and the Aramaic for “louse” (which could have been adapted to greek as “konopa” meaning gnat) is <em>glama</em>. A louse is smaller than a gnat, making for an even greater contrast in imagery.
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_6">
<a href="#_footnoteref_6">6</a>. Moni Basu and Faith Karimi, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/25/justice/ferguson-grand-jury-decision/">“Protesters torch police car in another tense night in Ferguson,”</a> <em>CNN</em>, November 25, 2014.
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_7">
<a href="#_footnoteref_7">7</a>. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060216041435/http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/papers/1992/92050105.html">“Address to the Nation on the Civil Disturbances in Los Angeles, California,”</a> May 1, 1992.
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_8">
<a href="#_footnoteref_8">8</a>. <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/24/remarks-president-after-announcement-decision-grand-jury-ferguson-missou">“Remarks by the President After Announcement of the Decision by the Grand Jury in Ferguson, Missouri,”</a> November 24, 2014
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_9">
<a href="#_footnoteref_9">9</a>. Sari Horwitz, Carol D. Leonnig and Kimberly Kindy, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-dept-to-probe-ferguson-police-force/2014/09/03/737dd928-33bc-11e4-a723-fa3895a25d02_story.html">‘Justice Dept. to probe Ferguson police force,’</a> The <em>Washington Post</em>, September 3, 2014.
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_10">
<a href="#_footnoteref_10">10</a>. Nolan Feeney, <a href="http://time.com/3613058/obama-ferguson-police-body-cameras-funding/">‘Obama Requests Funds for Police Body Cameras to Address ‘Simmering Distrust’ After Ferguson,’</a> <em>TIME</em>, December 1, 2014.
</div>
</div>My commentary on an aspect of the unrest in Ferguson from what I consider to be a Christian perspective. I examine two reactions to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, and identify the liberal myths they reveal. I also make some theoretical speculations about the purpose of both the establishment calls for 'peaceful protest' and the practice of murderous policing. I conclude with a brief look at the benefits of looting.tag:americancynic.net,2012-06-20:/log/2012/6/20/transcript_of_dateline_nbcs_expos_of_gabriel_of_sedona/Transcript of Dateline NBC's Exposé of Gabriel of Sedona2012-06-20T20:42:34Z2013-11-25T17:41:17Z<div class="paragraph">
<p>After <a href="/log/2012/6/7/gabriel_of_urantia/">I posted</a> three links to a video of a Dateline episode featuring a small Arizona religious group, two of the three hosts received DMCA take-down notices from the group’s lawyer and took down the video. So I pulled out my stenotype keyboard and made this quick transcript of the 40-minute program. Corrections welcome. <a href="https://paste.0xfc.de/?be8d7a8df54ddb4d#9CtTvq4mFjXoUyZEjoqyGXQniLq4qTcLWv7PgFvtrJkY">"Transcript of Dateline NBC’s Exposé of Gabriel of Sedona"</a></p>
</div>After I posted three links to a video of a Dateline episode featuring a small Arizona religious group, two of the three hosts received DMCA take-down notices from the group's lawyer and took down the video. So I pulled out my stenotype keyboard and made this quick transcript of the 40-minute program. Corrections welcome.tag:americancynic.net,2012-05-25:/log/2012/5/25/jesus_and_samesex_marriage/Jesus on [Same-Sex] Marriage2012-05-25T20:06:48Z2018-08-10T03:51:42Z<div class="paragraph">
<p>There is no consensus as to what the purpose of marriage is. But whatever its purpose, it is political. Private friendships, romances, sexual partners, economic alliances, housemates and other relationships are sometimes subject to legal agreements of lease and contract. But more often they are informal and mutually beneficial arrangements. Marriage is all these relationships made public and explicit. It benefits from social recognition and acceptance in return for public accountability in ways that previously private (and often implicit) vows of commitment that create new families do not.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Marriage is how society — or its body of political representatives — controls its reproduction: who can legitimately rear children and inherit property. The state traditionally subsidizes favourable families and de-legitimizes (and sometimes criminalizes) unfavourable forms based on age, ethnicity, gender, consanguinity, number of spouses, or whatever other criteria creeps into the imagination of the masses and our masters as constituting a proper or “natural” union.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The twentieth century saw the end of so-called miscegenation laws; laws which were the result of a confused project to restrict the reproduction of American society based on ethnicity and skin color. For those who see through the distorted logic of racism, there remains no comprehensible reason to exclude families from social recognition based on arbitrary notions of “race” that too often grab hold of humanity’s haunted mind. Likewise it is no easy task for many of us to understand those who currently wish to restrict marriage based on gender.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>President Obama recently evoked his Christianity in prompting his <a href="/log/2012/5/25/obama_on_same-sex_marriage/">change of heart about same-sex marriage</a>. Others have been known to appeal to Christianity to argue against same-sex marriage. In <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/readme/2003/07/abolish_marriage.html">his 2003 argument for privatizing marriage</a>, one commentator wrote of the gay marriage debate, “It’s going to get ugly. And then it’s going to get boring.” Well, it’s gotten boring. Nay, beyond boring, it’s gotten frustratingly monotonous watching marginalized groups clamor for acceptance from their oppressors while all sides explain what Jesus would do.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>I can think of one vaguely philosophic, though not very compelling, argument against abstract homosexuality. That is an argument from teleology: since men and women are endowed with some complementary bits, they are naturally meant to pair off. That argument not only assumes a binary gender, but to apply it to marriage is to presuppose that the sole purpose of marriage is sex and biological reproduction. Nobody takes that position. Despite those apparent weaknesses, Jesus does use such a teleological argument against divorce in the accounts of Matthew and Mark:</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="attribution">
— <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+19&version=NIV">Matthew 19:3-6</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>One great thing about Jesus' responses to the Pharisees is that he often confounds them by intentionally quoting passages of the Old Testament out of context (there’s a lesson there about sacralizing a book). In Genesis (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+2%3A24&version=NIV">2:24</a>), which Jesus is quoting, the reason men and women are compelled to unite as ‘one flesh’ is because Woman was originally made from Adam’s rib. It’s an explanation for marriage, or at least of sexual union. Jesus divorces (pun!) the explanation (the rib story) from the result (the drive to sexual union) and substitutes the less etiological gender binary of Genesis 1:27 (‘male and female He created them’) as an explanation.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In Genesis 2, God separates Woman from Adam, and later men and women rejoin themselves in sexual union. In Matthew 19 Jesus ignores the mythology and reverses this story: “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Now it is God doing the joining and people doing the separating. I’ll give my high-level interpretation: Men and women are attracted to each other not because of some imaginative creation myth, but because that is the nature of mammals with their sexuality and whatnot. Society will reproduce itself both biologically and culturally -- “Life finds a way,” as one chaos theorist put it. <sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_1" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_1" title="View footnote.">1</a>]</sup> Even well-meaning attempts at regulating reproduction by establishing legal institutions to control who can legitimately begin or dissolve a family aren’t a part of Jesus' vision of society.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>As usual the Pharisees don’t quite catch that Jesus just reversed their assumptions and they continue their line of legal questioning: “Well if God did not intend divorce, then why did Moses allow it?” (Matthew 19:7). Jesus responds the same way he did in the Sermon on the Mount, by <a href="/log/2012/4/29/authority_or_autonomy/">replacing law with morality</a>. Moses told you not to murder; I tell you not to be angry. Moses told you not to commit adultery; I tell you not to lust. Moses told you to keep your oaths; I tell you not to make oaths, simply say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Moses said an eye for an eye; I say give to those who steal from you. Moses said love your neighbor; I say love your enemy. <strong>Moses told you to be civilized about divorce; I tell you that divorce is tantamount to adultery</strong> (compare <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5&version=NIV">Matthew 5:31</a> and <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5&version=NIV">Matthew 19:8-9</a>).</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>To his disciples, marriage without divorce essentially made marriage unworkable (“if this is the case, then it is neither profitable nor advisable to marry” — which is what Diogenes was trying to say all along). Jesus' response was, “then don’t get married.” Actually he said that not everybody could accept the teaching, but some will renounce marriage “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” As an aside, I’ve always thought that his analogy about the eunuchs would be a good slogan for Linux: “And there be Unix which have made themselves Unix for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.”</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>So, even though Jesus uses the limited gender-binary language of Genesis, his answer here can also be applied to the question of same-sex marriage: Don’t let legal institutions separate what God has joined. More generally, don’t let the state supplant your morality with its laws by dictating what kind of society you will produce and reproduce. I cannot see how gender similarities or differences play into that teaching.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Elsewhere Jesus took an even more explicit stance on marriage:</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. <strong>At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage</strong>; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead—​have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="attribution">
— <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22&version=NIV">Matthew 22:23-31</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Whatever literal resurrection the Sadducees had in mind which gave rise to paradoxes like the widow being married to all of her husbands in heaven, their vision was not the same as the one Jesus had been teaching in which “people will neither marry nor be given in marriage.”<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_2" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_2" title="View footnote.">2</a>]</sup> It’s clear that whatever the concerns of the Life that Jesus taught, marriage is not one of them. As such, I do not believe it is consistent for anyone to appeal to Jesus' teachings to decide who should or should not be included in the legal institution of marriage, unless the answer is nobody. An appeal to Jesus in order to justify extending or denying the state privilege of marriage to certain populations requires ignoring the few things he is recorded as saying on the subject.</p>
</div>
<div id="footnotes">
<hr>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_1">
<a href="#_footnoteref_1">1</a>. Okay, a fictional mathematician: Ian Malcolm from Michael Crichton’s <em>Jurassic Park</em>. In the motion picture adaptation, Dr. Malcom warns about the folly of trying to control the park’s population by cloning only female dinosaurs: “Life breaks free, expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously …​ I’m simply saying that life finds a way.”
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_2">
<a href="#_footnoteref_2">2</a>. Luke offers something of an explanation as to what Jesus meant by ‘they will be like angels’: “Jesus replied, ‘The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.’” (Luke 20:34-36)
</div>
</div>I hate how people try to appeal to Jesus to support their own ideas of who should or should not be candidates for marriage. Jesus' teachings do not so easily lend themselves to those who would rule over their neighbors.tag:americancynic.net,2012-02-18:/log/2012/2/18/why_the_mormon_missionaries_did_not_convert_me/Biased Belief: Why the Mormon Missionaries Haven't Converted Me Yet2012-02-18T16:22:52Z2022-02-28T21:08:44Z<div class="paragraph">
<p>When a friend of mine left for Brazil to serve his two-year mission with the LDS church after graduating high school, I began meeting with pairs of missionaries at home. After almost nine years of these occasional discussions, I think I have a pretty good idea of what they believe, and why I don’t.</p>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_mormon_recap">Mormon Recap</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>First a quick recapitulation for those who aren’t familiar with Mormonism: the Latter Day Saint Movement, or “Mormonism,” got its start during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening">Second Great Awakening</a> (1820’s) in western New York when a farm boy named <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith">Joseph Smith</a> got fed up with the infighting of the various Christian sects and decided to ask God which church was the True church. God answered by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Vision">appearing in person</a> and telling Joseph that none of the current churches had the full truth. Eventually God used Joseph as a latter-day prophet to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_(Latter_Day_Saints)">restore</a> the full gospel to Earth:</p>
</div>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>He was shown the location of an ancient American record, and given the ability to translate it to English as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Mormon"><em>Book of Mormon</em></a>. (Mormon being the name of the ancient historian who compiled the book, written on metal plates, from the records available to him. It was Mormon’s son, Moroni, who hid the plates and later appeared to Joseph as an angel and told him where to find them buried in a hillside in New York.)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>He was <a href="http://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/js-h/1.69-72?lang=eng#68">visited by John the Baptist</a>, and later by other New Testement personages, which conferred to him the authority of previously lost <a href="http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Priesthood">priesthoods</a>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>He organized the church, founded cities, and introduced some of the unique theological concepts associated with Mormonism: that God has <a href="http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/130.22?lang=eng#21">a physical body</a>, that <a href="http://www.lds.org/ensign/1996/11/the-eternal-family?lang=eng">families are eternal</a>, and that, for 50 years during the late 19th century, some families were better off with one husband and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormonism_and_polygamy">several wives</a>, etc.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Today the largest organization in the Latter Day Saint tradition is the <a href="http://www.lds.org/?lang=eng">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints</a> based in Salt Lake City, Utah. That church has an impressive missionary program, sending out pairs of young missionaries to cities all over the world to teach the doctrines of the church and seek converts. It is with these missionaries that I’ve been meeting.</p>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_the_one_essential_claim_of_mormonism">The one essential claim of Mormonism</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>There is plenty to talk about, from church history to theology. Most missionaries are happy to discuss their claims both rationally and empirically (from archeology to textual criticism). But, ultimately, Mormonism can be distilled to one truth-claim: that the priesthood authority was restored by God through Joseph Smith. This is what the church <em>is</em>; the line of prophets established by God is once again on Earth, and this authority alone holds the keys necessary for humans to reach their intended destiny. And there is but one way to know the truth of that claim: subjectively, by the help of the holy spirit, you must recognize the truth in your own mind and heart.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>As such, the modus operandi of missionaries is not to convince investigators that the church is true in order to lead them to accept its doctrines; rather it is to present the doctrines (their teaching on families or the existence of the <em>Book of Mormon</em>, for example) as reasons why the church could be true.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_the_prophet_complex_theory_of_joseph_smith">The Prophet Complex Theory of Joseph Smith</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>My theory is that Joseph Smith was motivated by what I call the Prophet Complex. Like most of us, he would sometimes get excited about his ideas: when he had a moment of insight or a personal breakthrough in harmonizing contradictory ideas he had been struggling with or when he discovered an explanation or object he found elegant or beautiful. Unlike most of us, he interpreted his feelings, the stirrings in his chest, not as mere excitement but as divine validation of his ideas. Few things induce as much excitement within a person as romantic attraction or in discovering what appears to be a metaphysical or scientific truth about the universe.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>This theory easily leads to a “pious fraud” theory of why Joseph Smith would pass his own ideas off as divine revelations, and, as I see it, successfully accounts for several historical facts about Smith:</p>
</div>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>As a teen he made a living as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrying">scryer</a>: he convinced himself, or at least his employers, that by gazing into seer stones he could divine the location of hidden treasures.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>He was devoted to his wife, Emma, until his death. Emma’s father refused to sanction the marriage, so she and Joseph eloped. According to at least <a href="http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=46">one account</a>, not until Joseph married Emma, and brought her with him, was he allowed to finally retrieve the golden plates from which he translated the <em>Book of Mormon</em>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Despite his devotion to Emma, he took several other wives and introduced polygamy as an acceptable family structure among the saints.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>He believed he was a prophet of God.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>We see a similar epistemological method being taught by the missionaries today.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_mormon_epistemology_burning_bosoms_and_confirmation_bias">Mormon Epistemology: Burning Bosoms and Confirmation Bias</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Early in my first discussions with the missionaries, they presented <a href="http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/moro/10.3-5?lang=eng">Moroni’s promise</a>, found in the last chapter of the <em>Book of Mormon</em>, to me:</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
</blockquote>
<div class="attribution">
— Moroni 10
</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>So if you do manage to overcome the bootstrap problem of “having faith in Christ” in order to find out if His church is true, how does the power of the holy ghost manifest that truth? One oft-quoted Mormon scripture is a revelation given to Oliver Cowdery after his attempt at translating the <em>Book of Mormon</em> plates:</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.
</blockquote>
<div class="attribution">
— <a href="http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/9.8?lang=eng#8">Doctrine & Covenants 9:8</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>When I would ask the missionaries what the feeling was like when they finally had the truth manifested within them, most of them explained that it wasn’t a single experience but a conspiracy of feelings, thoughts, and events which lead them to their divine knowledge. The overarching theme was that the more I would pray for specific answers, the more I would experiment and invest myself in the teachings, then the more likely I would be to “feel that it is right”.</p>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_the_experiment_alma_32">The Experiment - Alma 32</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The one chapter of the <em>Book of Mormon</em> I was asked by my missionaries to read the most often was <a href="http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/32?lang=eng">Alma 32</a>. Part of this chapter is a sermon by Alma, using a metaphor of a seed, on how one can cultivate faith and belief. It is an excellent example of Mormon epistemology and can even be read as Joseph Smith’s own apology for his revelations. I’ll quote the bulk of it beginning at verse 27 adding emphasis to important bits I’ll discuss below:</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, <strong>even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe</strong> in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, <strong>if it be a true seed, or a good seed</strong>, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, <strong>it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions</strong>, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>[…​]</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>But behold, as the seed swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, then you must needs say that the seed is good; for behold it swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow. And now, behold, will not this strengthen your faith? Yea, it will strengthen your faith: for ye will say I know that this is a good seed; for behold it sprouteth and beginneth to grow.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>And now, behold, are ye sure that this is a good seed? I say unto you, Yea; for every seed bringeth forth unto its own alikeness.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Therefore, if a seed groweth it is good, but if it groweth not, behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p><strong>And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good.</strong></p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="attribution">
— Alma
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_confirmation_bias">Confirmation Bias</h4>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Alma suggests an experiment: believe, or at least <em>desire</em> to believe, something is true. If it turns out to be good, then you know it is true and worth believing; otherwise forget it. This is an approach to knowledge that is exceedingly prone to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias">confirmation bias</a>: the tendency to favor information that confirms preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_observer_expectancy_effect">Observer-Expectancy Effect</h4>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The missionaries would often use this scripture to ask me to conduct various ‘experiments’ to help me recognize the manifestations of the holy spirit. Worse, they would often use methods which introduced further bias. For example they would ask me to pray by asking God if the <em>Book of Mormon</em> was true. They would then bear testimony that they <em>know</em> the <em>Book of Mormon</em> is true and they are sure if I’m sincere then I will come to know as well. At our next meeting they would ask me what I felt when I was reading and praying, especially did I feel good or peaceful (as if the only way I would feel peaceful while reading is if the holy spirit were speaking to me). That technique, suggesting what an investigator will feel when they pray, is prone to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer-expectancy_effect">observer-expectancy effect</a> in which the missionaries' cognitive bias affects the investigator’s. It is an attempt to avoid this bias that many courts do not allow leading questions during direct examination.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_sunk_costs">Sunk Costs</h4>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Other experiments included changes to my lifestyle (praying everyday and attending church service and events). Whenever I didn’t receive a testimony of the truth of the church, the solution was to suggest more ways I could become invested in the church. One sister missionary, in all sincerity, suggested I be baptized into the church because she thought that would help me gain a testimony. I was reminded of the part of <em>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</em> when Tom is trying to convince Jim to tame a rattlesnake: “Blame it, can’t you TRY? I only WANT you to try — you needn’t keep it up if it don’t work.”</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The technique of asking investigators to spend more of their time ‘experimenting’ is prone to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_escalation">escalation of commitment</a>: the investigator has so much invested in the truth of the church that they will tend to believe it is true without sufficient reason.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_falsifiability_and_the_prophet_complex">Falsifiability and the Prophet Complex</h4>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In any case neither Moroni’s promise nor the experiment of the seed are useful in determining the truth of the church. Moroni’s promise presupposes the truth: either the investigator has it confirmed by the holy spirit, or they didn’t pray sincerely (or they just haven’t waited or invested enough yet). Alma’s experiment doesn’t test for truth, it tests whether an idea is good or not.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Note that early in the passage I quoted above Alma equates “true seed” with “good seed”. From then on he only discusses what is “good”. He even uses the metaphor of a growing plant to explain the physical feeling of swelling emotions which occur when an idea is good. This is the prophet complex! Alma 32 contains insight into the internal justifications of a pious fraud. It seems likely to me that in Joseph Smith’s mind if an idea <em>felt</em> good enough after consideration, then it also passed the test of truthfulness. Indeed many members of the LDS church, the so-called <a href="http://newordermormon.org/">Cultural Mormons</a>, are members precisely because they believe the church is good though not necessarily true. While interesting, it is not a path to knowledge I would take for myself and I do not consider Mormonism to be on firm epistemological ground.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_conclusion">Conclusion</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Of course none of my observations preclude the possibility of personal revelation, and it is certainly possible that the missionaries I’ve talked to believe because they have direct and irrefutable knowledge from God that Joseph Smith was a prophet, that the <em>Book of Mormon</em> is an ancient record, and that the church’s priesthood is based on divine authority. If that’s the case, outside of me having my own mystical experience, there is no good way for me to confirm their claims. I remain unconvinced.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>Where I present my prophet complex theory of Joseph Smith's epistemology and criticize the methods of LDS missionaries on the same basis.