P90X and the Atonement

I saw a TV ad the other day similar to the below:

Like many TV ads, the marketing message tried to convince the viewer that s/he is inadequate as they are, and that the product being advertised will make them whole. "You are flabby and unpleasant to look at. For just $XX.99 a month and some sweat, you can be made muscly and confident like us." Of course, almost every sales pitch follows this basic pattern: you're lacking somehow, and you need our beer, our insurance, our sports car, etc. to bridge the gap.

Sounds to me like the Atonement.

A few weekends ago, I floated the American River in Sacramento. I served my mission in Sacramento, and used the opportunity to reflect on the core of the gospel message I shared: (1) because you sin, you're unclean; (2) only clean people can live with God in heaven; (3) only Jesus can reconcile the cosmic balance and make you clean again. The explicit metaphor President Packer and others use is of a spiritual debt that only Jesus can pay:

Spiritual debt. I reviewed my law school debt this morning, so debt is fresh on my mind. Not the most pleasant thing, admittedly: I would and do pay a high price to hack away at debt. Similarly, I invited folks on my mission to pay a high price: commit to attend church every week, get baptized, read your scriptures, pledge allegiance to the prophets, pay 10% of your income, etc. And what did I promise them in return? That the spiritual debt incurred due to their sins will be written off, paid by Jesus because you followed His exclusive formula.  Your inadequacies will be washed away if you buy our... beer/P90X/car/insurance/_______.

I don't buy it anymore. I don't believe I'm fundamentally flawed and indebted, and I don't want to teach that psychologically harmful and confidence-sapping self concept to others any more. It's dehumanizing! I  have felt personally and seen in many of my LDS peers (my brother and a dear mission companion of mine, for instance) the severe damage caused by the guilt and God-is-taking-notes consciousness the Atonement paradigm can induce. The basic premise is that God has a perfect knowledge of your every act, and any performance level less that perfection puts heaven out of your reach. Romans 3:

23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.

Unfortunately, we simply have no reliable way to know whether God has forgiven us. The closest proxy, guilt, is neither proportionate nor universal: it punishes the sensitive soul a thousand lashes for a nickel of offense, and afflicts a thieving and murdering sociopath no more than a passing mosquito.

Yet there is no better substitute for checking your cosmic balance, and as a practical matter many Mormons rely upon it. Thus, we live in constant fear of failing heaven, and an awakened self-consciousness of our inadequacy becomes a draining misery imposed on us by the recipe of the Atonement doctrine mixed with the reality of the fickle, capricious physical emotion we call guilt.

Sure, conceptually it's useful to think of a cosmic account that we debit through harming others and credit through benefiting them. This concept can aid in administering justice, for instance. However, the conceptual utility does not create the reality of a cosmic account subject to manipulation by deities, and no other evidence suggests the existence of such an account. Acknowledging that fact would cause a morally sensitive community to carefully safeguard freedom, vigorously detect and disincentivize oppression, and adopt the twin ethics of non-malevolence and benevolence (avoid harming and seek to benefit others) as moral guides. Such an acknowledgment might prioritize preventing autocracy and corruption, for instance. Instead, many invest their energy into exercising faith in Christ via religious activity, the mental effort involved in prayer, and proselyting. I can't help but think those energies would be more profitably invested in solving the governance and economic problems which are primary drivers of the net avoidable suffering extant in the world today.

In any case, the standard of perfection is irrationally high. Yes, I can reduce my moral errors: but if I don't eliminate them, I'm not in spiritual debt that only Jesus can pay. I'm a limited human being, for Buddha's sake. I don't have the intelligence, insight, energy, or wherewithal to analyze every moral decision (and all decisions are moral in my view, since all decisions have consequences). I lack the discipline, as does every other human on the planet, to execute the best moral alternative at each of those decision points.

I have a new ethic now. When I witness suffering caused by the immoral actions of others (e.g. suffering of Syrians affected by the current conflict), I am more interested in establishing institutions and practices that stop that suffering and prevent similar suffering in the future, and less interested in whether Jesus may or may not rectify the balance of justice in some distant future. I'm more interested in holding people accountable for their immoral behavior, and less interested in whether they have faith in Christ. I am more interested in making increasingly moral personal decisions now because it's the right thing to do, and less interested in reducing my spiritual debt or lessening Jesus's suffering in the garden or paying the price of God's forgiveness.

Lacking strong evidence for the existence (to say nothing of the details) of God's judgment, I am interested in the equation of human suffering and happiness that precedes death. There is no shortage of work to be done in that space, and it is there I choose to thrust in my sickle with all my might, and no longer spend my limited energy on the post-death equation my LDS peers claim to know so intimately. To the Atonement doctrine, I now say the same thing I say to the P90X and beer and sports car pitches on TV:

Religious Liberty For All!* (*Except at BYU)

Because I'm a BYU Law graduation, JRCLS (J. Reuben Clark Law School) emails appear in my inbox every month or so, much like the below:

I appreciate these emails, which help me stay up to date on happenings, and occasionally participate in JRCLS initiatives. It was the "Inspiration" portion of this particular "JRCLS Happenings -- Updates and Inspiration" that caught my attention today. It reads:

I couldn't help but be struck, once again, by the sanctimony of BYU Law-founded proclamations about the meaning and importance of religious liberty. The very institution that BYU Law is governed by, BYU, severely burdens the religious liberty of the vast majority of its own 30,000+ students. LDS BYU students, including LDS BYU Law students, are obligated to comply with the honor code. That honor code penalizes disaffiliation from LDS faith as an offense resulting in the inability to (1) enroll, (2) graduate, or (3) have their degrees post. As I have argued almost to excess, and as evidenced by my own brother's getting kicked out of BYU for converting to atheism, this practice unquestionably coerces pretense and inauthenticity among LDS BYU students whose religious convictions change while at school. They are not free "to witness their beliefs in public," for fear their Bishops will withdraw their ecclesiastical endorsements. The are coerced, on pain of their otherwise earned academic degrees, "to act contrary to [their] sense of religious duty." LDS BYU students who feel called to Islam, or to question, or to abandon theism altogether, do not enjoy "the right to change one's beliefs and religious affiliation." Instead, they pledge allegiance to the flag of Joseph with their lips, and populate LDS pews with their bottoms. I find it tragic that so many bow their heads, and say... something other than what they truly believe, because of the religious freedom that is denied them.

I feel that statements like this inspirational thought should be required to have an asterisk by them: "this applies to everyone but us."

My related posts:

The Emperor's Clothes: Religious Freedom and BYU Law's International Center for Law and Religion Studies

http://bradcarmack.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-emporers-clothes-religious-freedom.html

BYU's Policy of Kicking Out LDS Students That Convert: Addressed by Managing Director of BYU's International Center for Law and Religion Studies

http://bradcarmack.blogspot.com/2012/12/byus-policy-of-kicking-out-lds-students.html

Religious Freedom? Not at BYU

http://bradcarmack.blogspot.com/2011/01/religious-freedom-not-at-byu.html


My rebuttal to Robert George on a different subject:

And They Shall Be One Flesh: Why Robert George’s “What is Marriage?” May Falter

http://bradcarmack.blogspot.com/2011/05/and-they-shall-be-one-flesh-why-robert.html

"What is Marriage?" My Response to Robert George

http://bradcarmack.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-is-marriage-my-response-to-robbie.html

And They Shall Be One Flesh: Why Robert George's "What is Marriage?" Falters

http://bradcarmack.blogspot.com/2011/10/and-they-shall-be-one-flesh-why-robert.html

My book is on Amazon!

My book became available online the same day that SCOTUS issued the Prop 8 and DOMA decisions (27 July). Talk about your serendipity!

You can buy my book in hard copy:

or on Kindle.

Enjoy!

Mormons: Why do we get same-sex marriage so wrong?

Today I posted in one of my Facebook groups:

Sunday School teacher just mentioned how romantic Ruth 1:16-17 is (whither thou goest I will go...). It's obvious she doesn't realize that the quote is spoken by one woman to another. Good thing my friend is here to keep me from pointing out the legitimacy of same-sex family relationships as evidenced in this story.

Some of the subsequent thread debated the nature of Naomi and Ruth's relationship. I share my response in this post.

I feel I should clarify. I can see that my inclusion of the word romantic may have led to the conclusion that I assert a romantic relationship between Ruth and Naomi. I do not see any evidence for that assertion.

Instead, my appeal would have been to the more central aspects of relationships that merit being categorized as familial. Those aspects include, most predominantly, three: (1) a long-term commitment to caretaking, (2) an economic partnership, and (3) cohabitation. Though not new to the stage, (4) companionate, (5) romantic, and (6) sexual love are fairly recent occupants of the lead role, and even in the present are, I argue, lest central to the concept of family than the first three. 

For instance, consider the case of a couple who wants to get married, and are committed to (1), (2), and (3). Further imagine that the woman in that relationship recently underwent a vaginectomy (or imagine the man lost his penis in an accident), and that the couple does not intend nor are they capable of genital sex. None would consider them barred from marriage candidacy, nor would their relationship fail to constitute a family.

Similarly, parent-child relationships elicit the three core aspects of a family relationship: (1) a commitment to caretaking (though admittedly in only one direction, though it could hardly be otherwise because a child is dependent by nature), (2) an economic partnership (primarily in just one direction, again unsurprising), and (3) cohabitation. In these three important senses, family relationships are genderless.

(4) Companionate, (5) romantic, and (6) sexual love are frequently associated with the subset of family relationships that are spousal, but are less central, and if you go back a century or two or three, generally, less central still. Thus, and this would have been my point: Naomi and Ruth's relationship strikes us powerfully as being familial, and same-sex relationships do as well, _for the same reasons_. (1-4 anyway, 5 and 6 being rather awkward for two presumptively straight women from different generations and living in their culture and century). 

I believe Mormon practice is incredibly good at getting family right, most things considered. Latter-day Saints understand and emphasize the importance of commitment, stability, and much to their credit, building the social capital needed to support the demands of keeping families healthy. Many church programs, teachings, and even its very structure (e.g. the local ward) are seemingly calculated towards founding, maintaining, and nurturing healthy families.

For those reasons, it is at once both painful and surprising that we get this one so wrong. There is so little that matters about what anatomical structures are found in your crotch, and so much that is harmed by presuming that your birth genitals do tell us something about your fitness for governance, or about what genitals you should be paired with in marriage, or about whether you're a candidate for ordination. 

As I've argued extensively (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocUHzmK6IjU, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNAIB3cxiLA,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1jDUcBKml0) and continue to maintain: the sooner we acknowledge our baseless presumptions, the sooner we regain hemorrhaging credibility as a people and as an institution, and the sooner we cease to wrongly stigmatize LGBT persons, same-sex relationships, and those who fail to express a penis at birth (i.e. women). And that, in my opinion, would be a wonderful thing.

LDS Transsexual Policy: A Critique

My presentation at the 2013 Mormon Transhumanist Association Conference, held 5 April in the Salt Lake City Public Library.

An earlier draft version of the paper version is here.

American Philosophical Association: my presentation in San Francisco on 30 March 2013

The Mormon Transhumanist Association newsfeed published:

Brad Carmack, director and secretary of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, represented the Mormon Transhumanist Association at the 87th Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Society in San Francisco on 27-31 March 2013. Brad spoke on the subject of "Transfigurism: a Syncretization of Mormonism and Transhumanism". His thesis was that emerging technology will continue to affect the evolution of religion, and Mormon Transhumanism is an early example of some of the adaptations we might expect to observe more broadly going forward. In the video recording, Brad speaks from 1:38:56 to 1:50:48 and participates in the panel discussion beginning at 2:04:40.
----------------

I give my piece at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=7Sr1kcogOoE#t=5936s
Fabuloso conference, I loved it! Dale Carrico was nice to me too. He's the kind of guy I'd naturally be friends with: far from the monster others' reports had me fearing. :-)

Marriage Equality: the debate goes on

An acquaintance of mine emailed me recently as part of his fundraiser for his trip to Washington to support traditional marriage:



We've been having a pleasant dialogue since. I wonder how many similar discussions are going on in the world right now.

On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 12:05 AM, Brad Carmack <bradleycarmack@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi ____! 

Thanks for the invite below. Marching in Washington D.C. sounds like an exciting opportunity! I've advocated publicly for traditional marriage myself, via calling voters in Maine in 2009, and I also feel that the Prop 8 case is a very significant one.

I did want to ask though, if you wouldn't mind sharing, why you feel to support a traditional version of marriage rather than a more inclusive version, i.e. one that accommodates homosexual as well as heterosexual orientation. Since opposite-sex marriage is much more difficult an arrangement for gay people than same-sex marriage, some argue that a more inclusive marriage (that is to say, for gay people as well as straight people) helps to strengthen marriage by making marriage an expectation and opportunity for a larger portion of our community. Buttressed by traditional norms of caretaking and commitment, gay couples and their families arguably stand to gain from entering into marriages, just as their opposite-sex counterparts do.

Brad,

Thanks for responding! Great to hear from you. This is a very thoughtful question, and I appreciate you asking it because I think discussion on this issue is so important. 

There are a couple of reasons I feel strongly that marriage should continue to be defined as between a man and a woman. The most important to me is my religious beliefs, of course.

It makes sense to be candid about that, and I respect your acknowledgment of the fact. Many LDS members understandably take the same position for religious reasons. Some of them then go on to make secular arguments that they're not very serious about, as a pretext for why they truly take the position they do.  

But since my religious beliefs don't matter to most people, there are a few secular reasons I believe this is the best policy as well. Most of them center around children. Research shows, and I believe strongly, that children do best when they have both a mother and a father.

What research do you refer to, and what does it mean to you to claim that research evidences children do best when they have both a mother and a father? I have heard this argument before, but as of yet it doesn't add up to me. If a man were to claim his junior high son is the best free throw shooter, certainly he would mean the best free throw shooter on his team, or in his district perhaps. He would not mean that his son is the best free throw shooter in the world, or the best free throw shooter possible: as soon as someone in the comparison group came along and demonstrated a higher shooting percentage, the father would have to admit his son is no longer the best out of whatever particular group he was comparing to.

Similarly, most research that compares family structures did not include same-sex couple households in their sample: and they certainly did not include married same-sex couple households, since historically there have been so few to study due to the lack of access to marriage for same-sex couples. Instead, comparisons were often made between married opposite-sex couple households, cohabiting opposite-sex couple households, and single parent households. Thus, that research cannot be used to compare opposite-sex couple families to same-sex couple families.
Those few studies that do include same-sex couple families suggest there is little difference in parenting outcomes when compared to opposite-sex couple families, or a slight increase in parenting outcomes if the parenting couple is a pair of women rather than a man and a woman. 

Legalizing gay marriage would almost without question lead to legalization of adoptive rights for gay and lesbian couples. Some argue that this would be better than leaving children in foster care or orphanages. Some also argue that gay couples are also more loving and caring than many heterosexual couples. I can definitely see their point on both of these counts.

That's fair: I think you're right to acknowledge that there are gay couples that are more loving and caring to children in their care than some heterosexual couples.  

However, if our aim is to get children out of foster care or orphanages, or to increase kindness in the home, there are other ways to accomplish this goal than legalizing a type of union in society that can never hope to replicate the ideal situation of having both a mother and a father in the home.

Again, I would challenge your claim that a mother and a father is an ideal situation for children. If you presume the fact, then there is little use trying to prove it: if you claim that a particular family structure is ideal, how could any other family structure even have a chance of besting it? Also, if you wish to create better homes for children, why wouldn't you spend your limited resources advocating research-based drivers of parenting outcomes, such as (1) stable, (2) low-conflict, (3) dual parenting, (3) drug-free homes with (4) adequate, steady income? Those four factors account for much more of the variability in child welfare than the number of genders in the parenting couple. Importantly, marriage can contribute significantly to the first three factors: and given the immense number of children that are and will grow up in same-sex couple households regardless of the outcome of the marriage equality debate, it would be in their interest to have their same-sex couple parents married rather than not married.

Children do not have a voice in this debate, so we must speak up and explain what would be best for children and their development in society.
I would agree that children do not have a voice in this debate, but that fact does not mean that your position or its opposite is any more right than the other. 

Additionally, the legalization of gay marriage has shown in many cases to decrease religious freedom, as well as parental rights in education. Both of these concern me deeply as a religious person and as a parent.
Perhaps: but couldn't religious persons and parents who take the opposite position argue just as strongly in the opposite direction? A straight mother who believes in same-sex marriage claims the absence of gay marriage diminishes her parental right in education. A religious gay man says his religious freedom is decreased because gay marriage is not legal. What marginal argument from parental rights in education or religious freedom can be made against gay marriage, that can't be made against its absence?
These are just a few reasons. So feel free to ask additional questions if you'd like!

I contributed to his campaign today. I look forward to his responses.