NOM

Was interested in any resources anyone has which explain the spirit?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevation_(emotion)

This is mostly the work of Jonathan Haidt but there is other work as well.

https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php? ... type=CMSID

Interesting.

Here is another discussion:

Interpreting Emotions: 5 Faulty Messages You Got in Primary
https://www.postmormonmentalhealth.com/ ... X_AoNbLe7w

Especially powerful video:

https://youtu.be/UJMSU8Qj6Go

Angel wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 6:56 pm Interesting.

Here is another discussion:

Interpreting Emotions: 5 Faulty Messages You Got in Primary
https://www.postmormonmentalhealth.com/ ... X_AoNbLe7w

Especially powerful video:

https://youtu.be/UJMSU8Qj6Go

that is an fascinating video. It should have a million hits, a billion hits. The video also references another video, My LDS Journey 8.0. This gives a little background. It is also short- about 14 1/2 minutes. The ending of it is disturbing, frightening. They should be shown in every LDS ward. What might an LDS apostle or apologist respond with?

deacon blues wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 1:21 pm

Angel wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 6:56 pm Interesting.

Here is another discussion:

Interpreting Emotions: 5 Faulty Messages You Got in Primary
https://www.postmormonmentalhealth.com/ ... X_AoNbLe7w

Especially powerful video:

https://youtu.be/UJMSU8Qj6Go

that is an fascinating video. It should have a million hits, a billion hits. The video also references another video, My LDS Journey 8.0. This gives a little background. It is also short- about 14 1/2 minutes. The ending of it is disturbing, frightening. They should be shown in every LDS ward. What might an LDS apostle or apologist respond with?

If the Church wrote an essay to deal with this what would it be like?

deacon blues wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2019 2:16 pm
If the Church wrote an essay to deal with this what would it be like?

I posted it in another forum... you can read what the "apologists" had to say about it http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/719 ... diversity/

Most did not click on it... LM clicked on it..."Very interesting video. I don't think I've encountered this powerful a challenge to my testimony in decades. Bad enough the Islamic lady prayed so earnestly to choose between Christianity and Islam. The Heaven's Gate suicide cult's spiritual witness? Dang - sounds waaaay too similar to mine. Heh. I appreciate the apologetic way you open this post - I believe you when you say you're not trying to upset anyone. ...I think my testimony remains intact. ..."

One more just ran across, worth watching to the end.

https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_bowler_e ... edcomshare

I enjoyed that Tedtalk, Angel. I think the Church wants us to believe spirituality and religion are the same thing; when we feel an “elevated feeling” or a “higher power” it means “the Church is true.” My experience is there are exceptions to this- a lot of exceptions.

The best resource is to test the spirit for yourself. I don't mean test yourself against the spirit like the church recommends, which could be just a mind game with your elevated emotions. I mean to test the spirit. See if it works. For some reason the church never proposes we test the spirit. Validate it. Is that warm feeling in the chest an all knowing spirit? Or is it the vagus nerve? We should test it.

For example, roll a dice. Do not look how it lands. Ask the spirit how it landed. Check to see if it was right. That is a validation test. This is the type of test we would conduct for any Scientific claim. For some reason we don't think religious claims need to be validated. But they certainly do in today's world.

Another easy validation test is to flip a coin. Without looking, ask the spirit how it landed. You need to repeat this about 10 times to develop a statistical reliability figure for the spirit test.

I don't doubt that some people can actually succeed on these. Humans appear to have some low-level psychic abilities under certain conditions. But for most people, most of the time, using the warm feelings church members attribute to spirit as your guide is pretty random.

There are of course other dimensions of the spirit, such as the feeling of calmness. But just like the warmth in the chest or burning in the bosom, they still have alternative and mostly neurological explanations.

And what about the times when the feelings we attribute to spirit do seem to work, when they warn of danger that does appear, or tell us through our feelings that something will be a good choice or bad choice and it is correct? We don't have the answers for everything. There may be some other worldly dimensions to our existence and at times we may receive spiritual feelings that are correct. These things happen to people in all religions and also to non-religious people. Carl Jung called the phenomenon synchronicity.

Here is another explanation that may also be true, our emotions are very finely tuned to help us survive. Feelings originate from our mammal brain, the limbic system, which evolved over millions of years to produce highly accurate assessment of threats and friendship. Sometimes our emotions simply are right because the subconscious brain correctly interpreted a situation. This is an evolved feature of being mammals . Sometimes our emotional read on a situation is correct and our elevated feelings confirm that. This is not necessarily a spiritual phenomenon, it can simply be emotional processes in the brain.