(note: This arti­cle is an updat­ed ver­sion of my orig­i­nal Ratio­nal Faiths arti­cle)

1 Introduction

1.1 Know the truth of all things

The Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints teach­es that the Holy Ghost is cen­tral to under­stand­ing truth. Con­sid­er these vers­es of scripture:

• And by the pow­er of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things. (Moroni 10:5)
• But the Com­forter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remem­brance, what­so­ev­er I have said unto you. (John 14:26)
• [The Holy Ghost] will show unto you all things what ye should do. (2Ne 32:5)

Mem­bers are taught to “trust [not] in the arm of flesh” (D&C 1:19) but to “trust in the Lord with all [their] heart; and lean not unto [their] own under­stand­ing.” (Proverbs 3:5).¹ Knowl­edge gained by the Holy Ghost is con­sid­ered the foun­da­tion of a tes­ti­mo­ny, which is a “per­son­al wit­ness borne to our souls by the Holy Ghost that cer­tain facts of eter­nal sig­nif­i­cance are true and that we know them to be true.” (Oaks, April 2008 Con­fer­ence) Mem­bers are some­times giv­en the impres­sion that these spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences may be trust­ed absolutely:

When we know spir­i­tu­al truths by spir­i­tu­al means, we can be just as sure of that knowl­edge as schol­ars and sci­en­tists are of the dif­fer­ent kinds of knowl­edge they have acquired by dif­fer­ent meth­ods. (Oaks, April 2008 Con­fer­ence)

1.2 The Church is cautious with spiritual impressions

Those who have been in the Church for some time, how­ev­er, will find evi­dence sup­port­ing the notion that the body and lead­er­ship of the Church is cau­tious in how it deals with inter­pret­ing the thoughts and feel­ings asso­ci­at­ed with the Holy Ghost. While vir­tu­al­ly any pos­i­tive emo­tion or thought may be tak­en as con­fir­ma­tion of the core truths of the Gospel, when deal­ing with dif­fi­cult deci­sions or areas where there are con­flict­ing doc­trines, scrip­tures, or ideals, expe­ri­enced Lat­ter-day Saints tend to be cautious.

For instance, it is well-known that deci­sions of the First Pres­i­den­cy and Quo­rum of the Twelve are only made in una­nim­i­ty (see D&C 107:27,29). Were the feel­ings of the Spir­it trust­ed absolute­ly, then we might expect to see deci­sions made based on the spir­i­tu­al con­fir­ma­tion giv­en even one mem­ber of the quo­rum.²

Mem­bers are taught to be dis­trust­ful of spir­i­tu­al con­fir­ma­tions that fall out­side of their Church stew­ard­ship.³ Not only does this include call­ings, but it also includes con­fir­ma­tions received about life deci­sions such as marriage—most mem­bers know the sto­ry of the returned mis­sion­ary who receives a wit­ness of who he is sup­posed to mar­ry, and these are regard­ed with due skepticism.

Lat­ter-day Saints are sim­i­lar­ly dis­in­clined to believe the accu­ra­cy of any spir­i­tu­al prompt­ings that pro­mote ideas that are con­trary to the accept­ed doc­trines and prac­tices of the Church.⁴

Nowhere is the cau­tion relat­ed to inter­pret­ing spir­i­tu­al feel­ings more evi­dent than in the Preach My Gospel Man­u­al. In the sec­tion “How Do I Rec­og­nize and Under­stand the Spir­it?”, a “good­ness” test is out­lined which is meant to enable Church mem­bers to check the verac­i­ty of spir­i­tu­al prompt­ings.⁵ An exter­nal test seems unnec­es­sary if we could eas­i­ly and always rely on spir­i­tu­al feel­ings to lead us to truth.

Per­haps the clear­est teach­ing on why we should be cau­tious inter­pret­ing spir­i­tu­al prompt­ings (also includ­ed in Preach My Gospel) is from Dallin H. Oaks, who warns:

We should study things out in our minds, using the rea­son­ing pow­ers our Cre­ator has placed with­in us. Then we should pray for guid­ance and act upon it if we receive it. If we do not receive guid­ance, we should act upon our best judg­ment. Per­sons who per­sist in seek­ing rev­e­la­to­ry guid­ance on sub­jects on which the Lord has not cho­sen to direct us may con­coct an answer out of their own fan­ta­sy or bias, or they may even receive an answer through the medi­um of false rev­e­la­tion. [empha­sis added] (source)

Why are skep­ti­cism, exter­nal tests, and con­trols need­ed when using spir­i­tu­al feel­ings to deter­mine truth? What might cause Oaks to con­clude that a per­sis­tent sup­pli­cant may receive what they thought was a spir­i­tu­al impres­sion, only for it to have been self-con­coct­ed or just turn out to be a false revelation?

2 Do spiritual impressions teach truth?

2.1 Not unique to the Church

The process by which mem­bers con­firm their beliefs is not unique to the LDS church, but is used effec­tive­ly by many reli­gious (or qua­si-reli­gious) groups to sub­stan­ti­ate their truth claims. The fol­low­ing three exam­ples from this video demonstrate:

Mar­shall Apple­white, for­mer leader of Heaven’s Gate, said this about test­ing the group’s truth claims:

… At least pon­der this, that you go into the pri­va­cy of your clos­et. Don’t ask your neigh­bors, your friends what they think of this. You go see if you can con­nect with the purest, high­est source, that you might con­sid­er God and say, “What about this? Is it for real?” (~11:19)

A.J. Miller, leader of the Divine Truth move­ment, encour­ages his fol­low­ers to deter­mine truth in this manner:

… There is a gen­er­al process that God designed that allows us to dis­cov­er what is truth and what is not…the process would be: ask this God to receive love and then feel about that par­tic­u­lar thing and if that par­tic­u­lar thing turns off the flow I know it’s not true … And if that par­tic­u­lar thing stays flow­ing I then, I know it’s true. (~8:34)

Many splin­ter LDS groups, such as the Apos­tolic Unit­ed Brethren, ask mem­bers to con­firm their belief using Moroni’s promise in the Book of Mor­mon. When mem­bers of such groups bear tes­ti­mo­ny, they sound vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal to the tes­ti­monies borne by Lat­ter-day Saints:

I’ve been search­ing for a wit­ness of this work and of this church, and since tonight I got my wit­ness and it’s burn­ing with­in my soul of how impor­tant this work is and how true it is. I know it is. And it’s hard to believe that just a year ago I was in High School, and now I’m in a plur­al mar­riage and [audi­ble sigh] strug­gling. But I know with­out a shad­ow of a doubt that this is the Lord’s work—that I have final­ly found it. I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.⁶ (~5:11)

Sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences are report­ed by those who have read the sealed por­tion of the Book of Mor­mon, as received by Christo­pher Nemelka:

Ida Smith nev­er­the­less had an intense, life-chang­ing reac­tion when she read the book [the sealed por­tion revealed by Nemel­ka]. She devoured it over six weeks, in the process emp­ty­ing two box­es of tis­sues and sev­er­al red ball­point pens as she wept and under­lined page after page of scrip­ture. (source)

2.2 Confirmation of contradictory positions

Lat­ter-day Saints believe that the Holy Ghost and/or the Light of Christ can lead any­one to truth. Is the Holy Ghost or Light of Christ mere­ly lead­ing those peo­ple to some aspect of the truth, or do these spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences con­firm irrec­on­cil­able positions?

2.2.1 Contradictory truth claims

The var­i­ous reli­gious groups men­tioned in the above sec­tion (Heaven’s Gate, Divine Truth, etc.) appear to have been expe­ri­enc­ing con­fir­ma­tion of teach­ings which are very dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with stan­dard LDS truth claims. Lat­ter-day Saints would be inclined to reject out-of-hand that: sui­cide is the means to liai­son with an advanced UFO civ­i­liza­tion⁷, A. J. Miller is the rein­car­nat­ed Jesus of Nazareth⁸, polygamy should cur­rent­ly be prac­ticed, or that Hyrum Smith was rein­car­nat­ed in the per­son of Christo­pher Nemel­ka⁹ and he was able to spir­i­tu­al­ly trans­late the sealed por­tion of the Book of Mormon.

2.2.2 Witnesses of divergent belief systems

Polls of mem­bers across reli­gious faiths sug­gest that many peo­ple expe­ri­ence strong con­fir­ma­to­ry answers to the ques­tion of whether theirs is the most cor­rect reli­gion (source). Of the respon­dents who believe that God answers prayer, most are ‘very sure’ of their answer. The answers include ver­biage famil­iar to Lat­ter-day Saints:

• “An over­whelm­ing wave of calm­ness and peace” (Catholic)
• “inde­scrib­able: being too intense for descrip­tion.” (JW)
• “audi­ble voice and dream+apparition” (Catholic)
• “…felt as if my heart had stopped and then ‘felt’ as if a voice inside spoke to me, telling me I was loved as a child and to be true to his church — I was near a Catholic Church at that time.”
• “I felt God’s pres­ence & had a knowl­edge of Him” (Catholic)
• “I prayed and asked if the ortho­dox spir­i­tu­al path was to be my path and a voice, a voice I can­not describe, said ‘For this rea­son you were made’.” (Ortho­dox Christian)
• “inner voice” (Catholic)
• “it was a firm answer. like see­ing a brick fire­place still stand­ing after the house burns down around it.” (Judaism)
• “ask [sic] to see some­thing and it appeared” (Islam)
• “God puts a feel­ing of peace in my heart that I can’t describe. No mon­ey can buy such hap­pines.” (Islam)
• “I asked if I should do some­thing, then the next day cir­cum­stances pre­vent­ed me from doing any­thing else” (Judaism)
• “Gave me a prayer lan­guage when I asked; used me to heal a friend with seizures” (Chris­t­ian charismatic)
• “too won­der­ful to put into words” (Catholic)
• “I was inspired to look ran­dom­ly in the Bible and the text answer my ques­tion.” (7^th-day Adventist)
• “I asked which reli­gion to fol­low and He clear­ly said Sci­en­tol­ogy. I was Bap­tist until He led me into the light.” (Sci­en­tol­ogy)
• “Just a deep sense of cer­tain­ty.” (Quak­er)

Audio/video record­ings of oth­er adher­ents shar­ing their spir­i­tu­al wit­ness­es sug­gests that these indi­vid­u­als are high­ly sin­cere. Here again, a close exam­i­na­tion of the beliefs adopt­ed by these indi­vid­u­als as a result of their wit­ness­es calls into ques­tion the rec­on­cil­abil­i­ty of these belief systems.

2.2.3 God’s will on gay marriage

Anoth­er poll asked peo­ple to pray to ascer­tain God’s will on the sub­ject of gay mar­riage. Of the 68% of the par­tic­i­pants who believed that they were able to assess the will of God, every sin­gle per­son found that God agreed with their pri­or stance on same sex marriage—even though the stances were even­ly divid­ed and dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed among the col­lec­tion of par­tic­i­pants (source).

2.3 Confirmation of falsehoods

With­in the LDS tra­di­tion, spir­i­tu­al impres­sions have also been asso­ci­at­ed with sto­ries that were lat­er found to be embell­ished or out-right fab­ri­cat­ed. In “Exam­in­ing Church Claims”, Don­ald Cohen explains:

Anoth­er use­ful exam­ple [of spir­i­tu­al impres­sions con­firm­ing false teach­ings] involves the var­i­ous talks, speech­es, and books by Paul H. Dunn, a well known Gen­er­al Author­i­ty, and a mem­ber of The First Quo­rum of the Sev­en­ty, from 1976 to 1989. His talks drew upon var­i­ous events in his life, and thou­sands upon thou­sands of mem­bers tes­ti­fied of how they felt the Spir­it tes­ti­fy­ing to them when hear­ing or read­ing his words, strength­en­ing their tes­ti­monies of the Church. It turned out that many of the facts and events he spoke and wrote about were either com­plete­ly false, or sub­stan­tial­ly embell­ished. He even­tu­al­ly acknowl­edged this pub­licly, and he was giv­en ‘Emer­i­tus’ sta­tus in his Church call­ing as a result. 

Sub­stan­tial evi­dence sug­gests that spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences and approach­es sim­i­lar to those report­ed by LDS mem­bers sup­port truth claims that are con­tra­dic­to­ry and/or that are not fac­tu­al­ly accurate.

If con­tra­dic­to­ry truth claims or fab­ri­cat­ed sto­ries may be con­firmed by spir­i­tu­al feel­ings, then it begs a clos­er exam­i­na­tion of a spir­i­tu­al experience.

3 What’s behind a spiritual experience?

Although many mem­bers avoid think­ing in such terms, the idea that spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences are medi­at­ed through biological/physical phe­nom­e­na is right at home in LDS thought. For instance, Joseph Smith him­self taught that there is no such thing as imma­te­r­i­al mat­ter, and the con­nec­tion between the body and spir­it is strong­ly empha­sized in teach­ings such as the Word of Wisdom—where promised bless­ings to a health code include “wis­dom and great trea­sures of knowledge.”

The icon­ic spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence for a Lat­ter-day Saint is one that involves both the heart and the mind, as described in a rev­e­la­tion to Joseph Smith:

Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart. (D&C 8:2)

3.1 The emotion of elevation

The feel­ing most LDS mem­bers refer to as the feel­ing of the Spir­it in the heart (or burn­ing in the bosom) is prob­a­bly the emo­tion of ele­va­tion. Ele­va­tion:

• occurs as a response to wit­ness­ing moral beauty
• “gen­er­ates a desire to help or asso­ciate with others”
• gen­er­ates a desire to cul­ti­vate one­self to become a bet­ter person
• is dis­tinct from the feel­ings asso­ci­at­ed with amuse­ment or hap­pi­ness (which tend to pro­mote self-serv­ing behaviors)
• caus­es feel­ings of “warmth or tin­gling” in a person’s chest
• can be pre­dictably gen­er­at­ed in a lab­o­ra­to­ry setting
• is medi­at­ed hor­mon­al­ly¹⁰ (at least in part)

For those prac­ticed in feel­ing the Spir­it, the above descrip­tion seems like a per­fect fit. Cer­tain details even have explana­to­ry pow­er. For instance, D&C 8:2 talks of an ini­tial expe­ri­ence of mind and heart, but that the Holy Ghost will then “dwell in your heart”. Such a descrip­tion match­es up with a feel­ing that is hor­mon­al­ly medi­at­ed and lingers beyond the ini­tial trig­ger event.

Fur­ther­more, the idea that wit­ness­ing moral beau­ty gen­er­ates this emo­tion pro­vides an inter­est­ing con­nec­tion between the Moroni 10:3 and the rest of Moroni’s promise. Moroni 10:3 states:

Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things … that ye would remem­ber how mer­ci­ful the Lord hath been unto the chil­dren of men, from the cre­ation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and pon­der it in your hearts. 

Pon­der­ing on the mer­cy of God across the his­to­ry of mankind is like­ly to tap into this emo­tion such that when the ques­tion of the truth­ful­ness of the Book of Mor­mon is broached, the pre­con­di­tion for expe­ri­enc­ing ele­va­tion has already been met. Counter-exam­ples also seem con­sis­tent: those who fix­ate on the venge­ful God of the Book of Mor­mon (e.g., destruc­tion at his com­ing) seem less able to expe­ri­ence the Spir­it when read­ing the book.

Sim­i­lar­ly, patrons to LDS tem­ples often report expe­ri­enc­ing the feel­ings of the Spir­it. Giv­en that tem­ple work con­sists of the per­for­mance of high­ly altru­is­tic acts of ser­vice for the dead with­in places of exquis­ite beau­ty, we would expect the emo­tion of ele­va­tion to be abun­dant­ly expe­ri­enced. And the counter-exam­ple also holds: those trou­bled by var­i­ous aspects of the tem­ple seem not to feel the Spir­it like those who are not both­ered by the same concerns.

It is well-known that acts of ser­vice induce the feel­ings of the Spir­it, and this match­es up well with the caus­es and feel­ings relat­ed to ele­va­tion. LDS for-prof­it sub­sidiaries also claim to be able to pre­dictably gen­er­ate this kind of feel­ing for a giv­en prod­uct.¹¹

3.2 Inner speech, inner experience, and/or self-realization

A spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence, in LDS thought, is also accom­pa­nied by the flow of “pure intel­li­gence” as taught by Joseph Smith. The exact map­ping onto psy­chol­o­gy and brain phys­i­ol­o­gy is unclear, but it like­ly involves some com­bi­na­tion of these:

1. Inner speech
2. Inner Expe­ri­ence (semi-inar­tic­u­lat­ed thought)
3. Self-real­iza­tion

Whether ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed or not, our men­tal, inter­nal dia­log and sense of con­nec­tion with the rest of the cos­mos like­ly under-girds the men­tal com­po­nent of a spir­i­tu­al experience.

3.2.1 Self-generation

The flow of “pure intel­li­gence” may indeed rep­re­sent com­mu­ni­ca­tion from/with a high­er pow­er. How­ev­er, as Dallin H. Oaks point­ed out before, such thoughts may also be “[con­coct­ed] out of [one’s] own fan­ta­sy or bias”. Dis­tinct phe­nom­e­na point to our abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate pro­found and com­plex ideas—without even being aware that we are the respon­si­ble party.

For instance, incred­i­ble feats of author­ship have been per­formed in auto­mat­ic writ­ing, and the tech­nique itself can be learned. Inspec­tion of fan­tas­tic exam­ples (e.g., Helene Smith) have shown that the con­tent was “derived large­ly from for­got­ten sources (for exam­ple, books read as a child).”

The com­mu­ni­ca­tion facil­i­ta­tors of severe­ly hand­i­capped stu­dents depict­ed in the Front­line doc­u­men­tary “Pris­on­ers of Silence” are like­ly respon­si­ble for gen­er­at­ing vol­umes of con­tent with­out being aware that they were the generators.

3.2.2 The power of suggestion

The pow­er of sug­ges­tion may also play a role in the mechan­ics behind spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence. For instance, in attempt­ing to repli­cate the effects of the Koren hel­met (aka “God hel­met”), a device thought to induce spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence through mag­net­ic fields, it was dis­cov­ered that the non-ver­bal sug­ges­tion of spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence induced just as many reports of spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence from those whose hel­mets were turned off as those with them turned on. (source)

Kumare is a pow­er­ful doc­u­men­tary that shows that act­ing spir­i­tu­al can pro­duce spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence in oth­ers. A man adopts a fake Indi­an accent, dress­es like a guru and adopts that per­sona. Even though he is “fak­ing it” to some extent (his teach­ings do evolve some­what until they seem heart­felt), he is very suc­cess­ful in gath­er­ing fol­low­ers who treat him as a spir­i­tu­al guide and lead them through spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences. He even­tu­al­ly “comes out” as his nor­mal, Amer­i­can self, but even after com­ing out, some of his fol­low­ers insist that he has psy­chic abilities—even though he flat­ly denies it.

4 Testimony, bias, and propaganda

LDS belief is con­firmed by spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences, but mem­bers will often argue that their testimony/knowledge goes deep­er than that—they “just know”. What kinds of mech­a­nisms might under­lie a belief that the hold­er is unable to source, artic­u­late, or explain? Could mem­bers be biased but unaware of this bias?

4.1 Insufficient justification

It has been shown¹² that when we try to con­vince some­one else of some­thing that we don’t ful­ly believe, it will alter our orig­i­nal beliefs to cor­re­spond with our words. The Church encour­ages its mem­bers to begin dec­la­ra­tions with the phrase “I know … .” At least in part, then, some of what a mem­ber “knows” may mere­ly be their mind work­ing to align their beliefs with their dec­la­ra­tions.¹³

4.2 Too wide a net?

Mem­bers are taught that vir­tu­al­ly any pos­i­tive feel­ing is the Spir­it con­firm­ing the truth of the gospel (see “How do I Rec­og­nize and Under­stand the Spir­it” from Preach My Gospel). The New Era teach­es that the “thoughts and feel­ings from the Holy Ghost can come” (source):

• “Imme­di­ate­ly and intensely.”
• “Sub­tly and gradually.”
• “So del­i­cate­ly that [a per­son] may not even con­scious­ly rec­og­nize it.”

An unsus­pect­ing indi­vid­ual may find that any num­ber of pos­i­tive emo­tions and/or men­tal states are “con­fir­ma­tion” of the Gospel, even if this range of emo­tions and men­tal states is shared by those from oth­er faiths and even though these emo­tions and states are expe­ri­enced by those with no belief in God at all (exam­ple).

4.2.1 Confirmation bias

We tend to ignore all the times we have a feel­ing or notion and noth­ing came of it, and over-empha­size any time a feel­ing or notion led to some­thing good.¹⁴

For instance, if a per­son were pray­ing to a wood­en idol in their room, would they be able to dis­tin­guish answers to prayer from that idol ver­sus answers from God? They pray for some­thing and it hap­pens: “the idol answered my prayer”. They pray for some­thing and it doesn’t hap­pen, “I need to wait for the answer”. They pray for some­thing and it hap­pens counter to their expec­ta­tions: “The idol knows best what I need­ed, or I must have been pray­ing for the wrong thing.”¹⁵ We can­not dis­tin­guish between the suc­cess rate of prayers to God and those offered up to an idol, sug­gest­ing that we should be cau­tious in inter­pret­ing answers to prayer as con­fir­ma­tion of our cur­rent belief sys­tem. (adapt­ed from this source)

4.2.1.1 Keep praying

The same kind of con­fir­ma­tion bias may be at play with inves­ti­ga­tors pray­ing to receive a tes­ti­mo­ny of the Book of Mor­mon. An inves­ti­ga­tor who may not have received an answer is told to just “keep pray­ing”¹⁶ until they do. An inves­ti­ga­tor that receives con­fir­ma­tion of a deci­sion to not join the church will like­ly be told that they weren’t in tune or that this feel­ing should be doubt­ed. But, if noth­ing but a pos­i­tive con­fir­ma­tion of some­thing is an accept­able out­come, then it should raise ques­tions about the valid­i­ty of infor­ma­tion gained in that manner.

4.2.1.2 Doubts vs. Questions

Recent Ensign arti­cles ask mem­bers to deal with doubts about the Church in a prob­lem­at­ic way. For instance, mem­bers are told that ques­tions are okay while doubts are not (where a doubt is a ques­tion that actu­al­ly chal­lenges the truth claims of the Church) (“When doubts and ques­tions arise”, Ensign March 2015). The var­i­ous strate­gies for deal­ing with ques­tions have one thing in com­mon: they pre­vent a mem­ber from ever arriv­ing at the con­clu­sion that the Church may be wrong. Although these are effec­tive strate­gies for main­tain­ing faith, were they applied to mem­bers of oth­er faith tra­di­tions (e.g. to inves­ti­ga­tors of the Church who already belonged to a dif­fer­ent faith tra­di­tion), then it would pro­mote the main­te­nance of any pri­or faith position—regardless of its truth (see “Fix your faith cri­sis with this one weird trick!” for more discussion).

4.3 The power of propaganda

Bear­ing tes­ti­mo­ny is an inte­gral part of LDS ser­vices, class­room study, and mis­sion­ary efforts, and a typ­i­cal mem­ber will either lis­ten to or bear tes­ti­mo­ny many hun­dreds or thou­sands of times a year. Preach My Gospel out­lines suc­cess­ful approach­es to bear­ing tes­ti­mo­ny that are used by mem­bers and mis­sion­ar­ies alike.

At least in part, a tes­ti­mo­ny impacts the hear­er because it fol­lows many pat­terns of effec­tive pro­pa­gan­da, includ­ing (see wikipedia:“Propaganda tech­niques”):

• over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion (tes­ti­monies are sup­posed to be sim­ple, direct declarations)
• rep­e­ti­tion (mis­sion­ar­ies and mem­bers coun­seled to bear tes­ti­mo­ny often)
• loaded lan­guage (lan­guage with strong emo­tion­al impli­ca­tions is used, e.g. “know” rather than believe)
• virtue words (e.g. “true”, “joy”)
• man­ag­ing the news (“con­fine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”)
• obfus­ca­tion, inten­tion­al vague­ness, con­fu­sion (what does “know” even mean?)
• thought-ter­mi­nat­ing cliché (e.g., “doubt your doubts”)
• trans­fer (e.g., asso­ci­a­tion with family—families can be forever)
• unstat­ed assump­tions (how a per­son “knows” each aspect in a tes­ti­mo­ny is typ­i­cal­ly left unsaid)

Because it fol­lows good pro­pa­gan­da tech­nique, tes­ti­mo­ny is pow­er­ful at per­suad­ing oth­ers; how­ev­er, that pow­er comes at some cost to truth itself—details and nuance are nec­es­sary to accu­rate­ly rep­re­sent real­i­ty.¹⁷

4.4 Repetition, repetition, repetition

Lat­ter-day Saints are exposed to Church teach­ings on a con­sis­tent, fre­quent basis. Three hours of Sun­day meet­ings (which are most­ly com­posed of lessons and talks), fire­sides and devo­tion­als, dai­ly fam­i­ly and indi­vid­ual scrip­ture study, fam­i­ly home evening, mutu­al activ­i­ties, and school-day seminary/institute instruc­tion mean that an active mem­ber is exposed to LDS teach­ings on a con­tin­u­al basis. Such a pro­gram is use­ful for encour­ag­ing the inter­nal­iza­tion of LDS teach­ings, and rep­e­ti­tion is a use­ful tool when try­ing to learn any­thing new. But, such rep­e­ti­tion can also explain some of the pos­i­tive feel­ings asso­ci­at­ed with Church activ­i­ty and how a mem­ber can “just know.”

In what is known as the “illu­so­ry truth effect”, exper­i­ments have shown that as we are repeat­ed­ly exposed to infor­ma­tion, regard­less of its truth, we are more inclined to believe it.

Sim­i­lar­ly, we expe­ri­ence what psy­chol­o­gists refer to as a “warm glow” as we are exposed to the famil­iar in what is termed the “mere-expo­sure effect”.¹⁸

4.5 The effect of new information

LDS truth claims have come under intense scruti­ny with advent of the inter­net age. How are we prone to react when exposed to new infor­ma­tion relat­ed to LDS his­to­ry and truth claims?

We tend to be con­ser­v­a­tive in updat­ing our old beliefs, giv­ing too much pref­er­ence to old­er infor­ma­tion (“con­ser­vatism bias”).

When peo­ple are pro­vid­ed evi­dence against their beliefs, they will often reject the evi­dence and become more firm­ly entrenched in their belief sys­tem in a phe­nom­e­non termed the “back­fire effect.” (see wikipedia:Confirmation_bias and this arti­cle)

5 Circularities: pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps?

When exam­in­ing or explain­ing the work­ings of the spir­it, sev­er­al inter­est­ing cir­cu­lar argu­ments emerge. Cir­cu­lar­i­ty does not nec­es­sar­i­ly indi­cate that either the premise or con­clu­sion is incor­rect,¹⁹ but becom­ing aware of the cir­cu­lar­i­ty is help­ful in avoid­ing log­i­cal fal­lac­i­es and hol­low argu­ments. Cir­cu­lar­i­ties may point to a lack of evi­dence in areas where a gen­uine argu­ment was once thought to exist.

5.1 Circularity in pray-feel

Per­haps the ulti­mate fac­tor in decid­ing whether or not we can rely on the feel­ings of the Holy Ghost for truth involves whether or not feel­ings and/or thoughts are used by the Holy Ghost to trans­mit truth. The pray-feel process is sus­pect because this all-crit­i­cal ques­tion can­not be answered using the method itself. Consider:

If one were to pray and ask God, “Are the good feel­ings I get when I pray about the truth­ful­ness of some­thing from God (or are they self-induced)?” what would a good feel­ing tell me?

5.2 Pray-feel and the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mor­mon teach­es that it is through the Holy Ghost that we can know the truth of all things (Moroni 10:4–5). Cohen explains the prob­lem with this teaching:

The most obvi­ous ques­tion [in Moroni 4:5], which often doesn’t get asked, is how do we know that this method of iden­ti­fy­ing truth is even valid and/or reli­able in the first place? In order for this state­ment to be ‘true’, the book itself has to be demon­strat­ed to be ‘true’. And how does one estab­lish the book to be true? — by apply­ing the method pre­scribed in the book. This is a clearcut exam­ple of cir­cu­lar rea­son­ing: “A is true because B is true; B is true because A is true.” (Cohen “Exam­in­ing Church Claims”)

5.3 Is it good?

As men­tioned above, the Preach My Gospel man­u­al presents a test for decid­ing whether a prompt­ing was from gen­uine­ly from the Spir­it (“Does it per­suade one to do good, to rise, to stand tall, to do the right thing, to be kind, to be gen­er­ous? Then it is of the Spir­it of God.”) (source).

There are sev­er­al poten­tial prob­lems with this test, depend­ing on how strict­ly the test is interpreted:

• If a seek­er is decid­ing between deci­sions that are all con­sid­ered good, then the test is not help­ful in dis­tin­guish­ing between feelings.
• If a seek­er is try­ing to decide whether some­thing is good or not, then the test may not be help­ful since one is not clear about what is good in the first place.
• When ideas con­tra­dict someone’s world-view those ideas often make them feel uncom­fort­able. A seek­er may reject truth mis­tak­en­ly because they do not feel good and kind in their state of dis­com­fort.²⁰

5.4 Confirmation by authority

In a case of con­flict­ing spir­i­tu­al impres­sions, the feel­ing of the per­son high­er in author­i­ty is giv­en greater weight. This method effec­tive­ly resolves most con­flicts with­in the exist­ing Church struc­ture. How­ev­er, when the ques­tion at hand is who has the high­er author­i­ty, such as dur­ing the suc­ces­sion cri­sis after Joseph Smith’s death, then this approach is ineffective.

The appeal to high­er author­i­ty also fails in the case where a per­son is seek­ing to know which of the many LDS fac­tions they should join. For instance, a spir­i­tu­al con­fir­ma­tion to join the FLDS church is sure to be reject­ed as spu­ri­ous by the lead­ers of the LDS Church and the Apos­tolic Unit­ed Brethren (AUB). (artic­u­lat­ed by Den­nis Pot­ter in his blog post and paper)

6 Conclusions

6.1 Summary

The Church itself acknowl­edges that spir­i­tu­al feel­ings may be self-con­coct­ed, and it tends to be cau­tious with any spir­i­tu­al impres­sions on mat­ters falling out­side of its core teach­ings. Mem­bers of reli­gions with con­tra­dic­to­ry truth-claims seem to receive spir­i­tu­al wit­ness­es that are iden­ti­cal to those described by Lat­ter-day Saints. Mem­bers seem to have felt spir­i­tu­al feel­ings con­firm­ing sto­ries that were lat­er deter­mined to have been fabricated.

A spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence appears to be com­posed of the emo­tion of ele­va­tion (feel­ing of peace and expan­sive “warmth” in the chest) and some com­bi­na­tion of the var­i­ous types of inner thought. Sev­er­al phe­nom­e­na strong­ly sug­gest that com­plex and pro­found thoughts may be auto-gen­er­at­ed with­out the sub­ject being aware that they are the ones gen­er­at­ing them. In addi­tion, the pow­er of sug­ges­tion has been sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly doc­u­ment­ed to pro­duce spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences in many subjects.

A member’s belief often runs deep­er than their spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences, and sev­er­al well-doc­u­ment­ed phe­nom­e­na may help to explain this con­fi­dence. When indi­vid­u­als try to con­vince some­one of some­thing they do not ful­ly believe, they tend to inter­nal­ize that belief. Any num­ber of expe­ri­ences may be inter­pret­ed as con­fir­ma­tion of a member’s beliefs, but con­fir­ma­tion bias may be play­ing a sig­nif­i­cant role. A mem­ber bears and hears count­less tes­ti­monies each year, and tes­ti­monies effec­tive­ly use many tools of pro­pa­gan­da to per­suade. The rep­e­ti­tion of church teach­ings makes mem­bers more prone to believe them and they will enjoy the “warm glow” of famil­iar­i­ty. In addi­tion, when con­front­ed with con­trary evi­dence, mem­bers (like all peo­ple) are prone to becom­ing more deeply entrenched in their beliefs and tend to under­es­ti­mate how much their inter­nal mod­el might need to change to reflect new information.

Sev­er­al LDS modes of deter­min­ing truth are like­ly cir­cu­lar, at least in part. It is impos­si­ble to ver­i­fy through the pray-feel method whether our feel­ings are from God or our­selves. The Book of Mor­mon asks that read­ers ver­i­fy it using the pray-feel method, but the pray-feel method relies on the Book of Mor­mon being true for validation—a cir­cu­lar argu­ment. Final­ly, both the “good­ness” test offered in Preach My Gospel and the LDS appeal to author­i­ty test are inef­fec­tive under mul­ti­ple con­di­tions, call­ing into ques­tion their ulti­mate utility.

Tak­en togeth­er, this analy­sis sug­gests that using spir­i­tu­al feel­ings and an inter­nal sense of assur­ance to deter­mine truth are both problematic.

6.2 Reconciliation

Although this exam­i­na­tion sug­gests that we should apply due skep­ti­cism to spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences, it does not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that God speaks to us through our mind and heart.

A believ­ing Lat­ter-day Saint may also take heart in the knowl­edge that their tes­ti­mo­ny is but­tressed by a belief in exter­nal events, par­tic­u­lar­ly mir­a­cles (e.g., Christ’s res­ur­rec­tion) and per­son­al vis­i­ta­tions (sev­er­al prophets and apos­tles, not to men­tion Church mem­bers, claim to have spo­ken with God or Christ face to face²¹)—mem­bers do not rely on the inter­pre­ta­tion of per­son­al spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences alone to con­firm their faith (see, for instance, Moroni 7:25).

Skep­ti­cism of spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences may be help­ful for many believ­ing Lat­ter-day Saints—healthy skep­ti­cism of spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences can help mem­bers avoid scrupu­lous­ly fol­low­ing every intru­sive thought,²² be open to con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion and direc­tion,²³ and may help them to prop­er­ly con­tex­tu­al­ize the spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences of oth­ers. In addi­tion, these prin­ci­ples may offer a per­son wrapped up in the next “spir­i­tu­al” fad good rea­son to ques­tion the valid­i­ty of under­ly­ing assump­tions and truth-claims.

Regard­less of their ulti­mate source, spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences (i.e., medi­at­ed through the emo­tion of ele­va­tion) are impor­tant for encour­ag­ing self-improve­ment and help­ing us to look out­side our­selves and to help oth­ers. The deep inter­nal reflec­tion and con­ver­sa­tion asso­ci­at­ed with a spir­i­tu­al experience—facilitated through prayer and meditation—can be impor­tant for clar­i­fy­ing our think­ing and help­ing us to dis­cov­er and artic­u­late impor­tant truths. Giv­en their use­ful­ness, both the emo­tion of ele­va­tion and the deep, inter­nal dia­log inher­ent to spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence ought to be sought after and cultivated.

Fur­ther, research into deci­sion mak­ing sug­gests that some kinds of deci­sions are best made using our intu­ition. Mal­colm Glad­well, after study­ing the deci­sion mak­ing process, concluded:

We need to respect the fact that it is pos­si­ble to know with­out know­ing why we know and accept that—sometimes—we’re bet­ter off that way. (from “Blink: The Pow­er of Think­ing With­out Thinking”) 

At the same time, there are com­pelling rea­sons to ques­tion the reli­a­bil­i­ty of spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences and the things that we “just know”. The pre­sent­ed evi­dence sug­gests that the feel­ings asso­ci­at­ed with a spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence are more suit­ed to point­ing us to what is “good” rather than what is nec­es­sar­i­ly fac­tu­al­ly true.

We must also be care­ful not to miss truth over a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with feel­ings: that which we already con­sid­er to be “good” is most like­ly to be con­firmed by spir­i­tu­al impression—since it will gen­er­ate feel­ings of secu­ri­ty and not dis­com­fort.²⁴ Hence, we must be care­ful that we do not reject that which is good because it does not con­form to a nar­row pre-con­cep­tion of goodness.

6.3 Unafraid to challenge our convictions

These con­clu­sions sug­gest that there are no easy answers when it comes to find­ing truth—especially giv­en the bias­es that we each hold. Find­ing truth requires that we scru­ti­nize our assump­tions and ques­tion our deep­est held beliefs. Such pierc­ing inter­nal reflec­tion may be uncom­fort­able, but it will ulti­mate­ly lead us from a place where we mere­ly think we know, to one of greater wisdom—a place of humil­i­ty in the face of uncer­tain­ty and ulti­mate­ly greater con­fi­dence in those things which have with­stood the rig­ors of close scrutiny.

The reward for such inves­ti­ga­tion is like­ly worth the discomfort—the more accu­rate­ly our inter­nal maps align with real­i­ty, the greater our abil­i­ty to com­pre­hend and either adept­ly con­trol or peace­ful­ly accept the world around us. We should be unafraid to chal­lenge our own convictions.

7 Additional reading

• The Triple Path — a pro­found syn­the­sis of reli­gious and sci­en­tif­ic ideals which dis­cuss­es truth and spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences in sig­nif­i­cant depth in chap­ter 5. (note: I am not the author of the book, although it has clear­ly influ­enced sev­er­al points in this essay.)
• Mor­mon­Think — Tes­ti­mo­ny & Spir­i­tu­al Wit­ness­es — addi­tion­al data and per­spec­tives wor­thy of con­sid­er­a­tion (note: Mor­mon­Think is gen­er­al­ly crit­i­cal of the LDS view­point even though it some­times presents itself as unbiased).
• Fair­Mor­mon — Can We Trust Our Feel­ings (rel­e­vant apolo­getic response)
• Fair­Mor­mon — Is the “burn­ing in the bosom” a reli­able method of deter­min­ing truth? (rel­e­vant apolo­getic response)
• Fair­Mor­mon — Why do I “feel the spir­it” when watch­ing movies? (rel­e­vant apolo­getic response)
• Fair­Mor­mon — “Feel­ing the spir­it” while lis­ten­ing to ex-Mor­mon “exit sto­ries” (rel­e­vant apolo­getic response)