I don’t remember the conversation exactly, but I know that it happened in the autumn of 2001 and that is was with a good friend, Dean. That particular conversation was the beginning of the end of Mormonism for me.

I met Dean in March of 2001. Dean and I were two of the three students invited to a graduate student recruitment weekend by the Department of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati. We had all applied for the master’s degree program in sociology and were being recruited by the department. I didn’t get to know Dean very well during those two days in Cincinnati; but I recall thinking that he was nice and I also remember him mentioning that he was into PC games and technology, which gave us some common interests. He and I chatted over instant messenger once or twice during the summer before we matriculated at the University of Cincinnati, but I don’t recall those chats very well. I do know they were not “the chat.”

No, that conversation happened once school started. Having met before any of the other students and having several shared interests, we naturally gravitated towards each other and quickly became friends. In between discussing sociology, computer games, moving to Cincinnati, and all the other things you talk about when you first meet someone, one of our many conversations turned to religion. And since religion was “my thing,” I was excited to talk about it. Dean was excited to discuss it too. Dean was an evangelical Christian who had just graduated from Lee University, a Christian university in Cleveland, Tennessee affiliated with the Church of God. Religion was Dean’s “thing” too.

What do I mean when I say religion was “my thing”? In the autumn of 2001 I had been home from my Mormon mission for just under four years. I spent most of 1996, all of 1997 and about the first month of 1998 in Costa Rica trying to convert people to Mormonism. I met a young Mormon woman, Debi, about a year after I returned from my mission and married her about a year later in a Mormon temple near Salt Lake City, Utah. Marrying in a Mormon temple is a privilege reserved for faithful Mormons, and that’s exactly what we were. Before we moved to Cincinnati we were heavily involved in church activities. Not only did we attend the weekly three-hour meetings on Sundays, but we participated in other activities during the week, read scriptures and prayed daily, and regularly went to Mormon temples to perform rituals for the deceased to make sure they had a chance to get into the Mormon version of heaven. Mormon missionaries helped move us into our condo in Cincinnati and we immediately made friends in our new congregation. In short, we believed in the doctrines and participated in the services of the LOS (Latter-day Saints, or Mormon) Church up through our first year living in Cincinnati. In fact, religion was so much “my thing” that it was the reason my wife and I moved to Cincinnati – for me to pursue a graduate degree in the sociology of religion (while my wife pursued a graduate degree in genetics).

But religion hadn’t always been of so much interest to me. My life goal as a teenager before serving my Mormon mission was to be a faithful missionary, then return to the University of Utah and complete a degree in biology so I could eventually become a physician. My first declared major in college (during the one semester I attended prior to my mission) was biology. But my mission changed everything for me and, in fact, started me down the road to apostasy.

My two years spent as a missionary did two things. First, as a result of my mission I was convinced there was nothing more important than religion. This was, in all likelihood, a social psychological justification I developed to convince myself that I wasn’t wasting two years of my life. But I came home convinced I had to understand religion because it was the apogee of existence.

The second thing that my mission did was to give me an inordinate amount of free time to study my religion. Yes, I was supposed to spend most of my time preaching to others, and I did. But I have always been a voracious reader and am eager to learn. Unfortunately, in order to for me to sate my desire for knowledge, I had to break the mission rules. The letter I received informing me about my mission calling (i.e., where I was going to serve my two years) included a list of approved reading materials. The list was remarkably short – Mormon scriptures (The Book of Mormon, The Bible, The Doctrine and Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price) and four additional books that were written by Mormon leaders and approved by the current leadership. I had read all of the Mormon scriptures before my mission – and had reread The Book of Mormon close to a dozen times. I bought the other four books and took them with me on my mission. I read them in a month. That left 23 months to either reread these books or break the mission rules and find something else to read. Lucky for me, there was something of a black market for books among missionaries, and some of the members in Costa Rica had collections of books on religion as well. I made good use of both of those sources. However, my best source of reading material was actually the library in the mission president’s house. Mission presidents are married, adult males, typically over 40 or 50, who are responsible for overseeing the work of the roughly 200 missionaries in a mission. It just so happened that the mission president in my mission had a large collection of books on Mormonism, but they were off limits to missionaries. For most of the two years I lived in Costa Rica preaching my religion I did not have access to that library; but for about seven months I worked in the mission office and was able to access it, discreetly, about once a week. I picked through the library while no one was looking, “borrowing” new books and returning the old ones. I can’t remember all the unapproved books I read while a missionary, but there were many. Those books raised questions about Mormonism I had never considered. Those questions stuck with me, even though I was pretty good at either putting the doubts off or justifying Mormon beliefs and practices despite the problems.

My interest in religion followed me home and into college. I decided to change my major in college from biology to a discipline that would allow me to study religion. The disciplines that came closest were the social sciences – given the social nature of religion. However, the University of Utah, where I got my undergraduate degree, did not offer many classes on religion (aside from the LOS Institute, where I took about half a dozen classes) and there was no major in religious studies. In fact, I have checked the University of Utah’s catalog since I graduated in 2000 and have found that they created a religious studies minor in 2009 but still do not have a religious studies program (all the classes are taught out of other departments). I may have found my intellectual home (sociology) sooner had it not been for the fact that after the death of Glenn M. Vernon, a sociologist at the University of Utah who studied Mormonism, there was a conscientious effort not to hire someone in the sociology department who studied religion (and, as of Summer 2015, there isn’t anyone who studies the sociology of religion at the University of Utah and the class isn’t even offered)

Without an intellectual home as an undergraduate, I pieced together as much of an education on religion as I could. I took classes in mythology in the classics department, classes on religion in philosophy, communications, and anthropology, and even a Tai Chi class hoping to better understand religion. But I couldn’t major in religion, so I developed a side interest in cognitive psychology as I realized that a lot of what happens in religion is cognitive. I ended up majoring in psychology and worked in two psychology research labs doing research that was unrelated to religion. However, a chance encounter with a sociology textbook changed my plans. On a whim, I picked up a secondhand Introduction to Sociology textbook and quickly turned to the chapter on religion. It was like someone had finally turned on the lights! Whoever wrote that chapter understood religion, and understood it from the perspective I did. I devoured that chapter and decided right then that I was going to pursue graduate education in the sociology of religion. Sociologists studied religion from a scientific perspective, and that was what I wanted to do.

That brings me back to my conversation with Dean. That particular conversation wasn’t highly emotional or even all that intellectual. It was just a sincere conversation between two people who had grown close and were willing to consider each other’s perspective. Dean asked me why I was Mormon. I told him that I was a Mormon because I had received a spiritual witness, an overwhelming emotional manifestation from the Holy Ghost, that Mormonism was the true church and that it was guided by God. Then Dean said, “Huh, that’s funny. I received the exact same witness that the Mormon Church was a cult and was not of God.”

Dean’s response stunned me. I had no response.

I could have dismissed Dean’s response the way I had been taught growing up and on my mission. I could have said, “You didn’t really receive a witness of that.” Or, “That was not a witness from God.” Or, “You obviously didn’t ask the correct way.” But I didn’t say or think any of those things. In fact, I’m not sure I responded to him at all. But something in my brain clicked. And that something was a change in epistemology. At that moment I realized that the method I had been using to arrive at what I perceived to be knowledge was not reliable. I later came to realize that the method I had been taught to use was and is an abuse of human psychology.

The method I had been taught growing up to arrive at “knowledge” is called “emotional epistemology.” It is primarily used by religions, but occasionally by other hucksters trying to con people. Religions (and other fraudulent enterprises) have to use emotional epistemology because their teachings, beliefs, and products lack any “real” evidence. This is a widely accepted method among Mormons and was a method I taught those I was trying to convert in Costa Rica. This method is quite accurately summarized by a passage in The Book of Mormon that Mormons often refer to as “Moroni’s Promise”:

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. (Moroni 10:4)

The basic idea is that when you have a question, you can pray and ask God if the answer you have arrived at is true. God will, through the Holy Ghost, tell you if it is true through a strong emotional feeling. This is the foundational assumption of the “argument from religious experience” for the existence of god. How the emotion is described varies, but it’s typically a very powerful, overwhelming, emotional experience.

Dean’s comment drove home to me how problematic this approach is because it is not reliable. Reliability refers to the ability of a tool to accurately repeat a measurement. A scale that gives wildly different weights each time the owner steps on it will be thrown away and considered broken; it would not be reliable. Emotional epistemology suffers from the same problem. Dean, in describing the emotional witness he received from God telling him that Mormonism was an evil cult described the exact feelings I had experienced telling me that it was the church of God. And that was the quandary: Who was right? There were three possibilities here: (1) Dean was right and I was wrong; (2) I was right and Dean was wrong; or (3) we were both wrong. We couldn’t both be right!

Or ...

This is the switch that was triggered in my brain ...

Or the tool we were using was flawed. Emotional epistemology does not reveal knowledge. Emotional epistemology is a lie. It is a tool to manipulate. It is a tool to deceive and control. While I didn’t realize all of this during my conversation with Dean, I did realize that Dean was sincere and so was I. And that meant I had to figure this out.

Conveniently, I was in the process of learning about an alternative epistemology. I was digging deeply into the scientific literature as a new graduate student and beginning to understand what empiricism is. I was being taught that there was an alternative, and remarkably superior, epistemology to emotional epistemology that is also highly reliable. That alternative is empiricism. Using empirical methods, two different people will typically arrive at the same answer. As my knowledge about empiricism increased, it gradually replaced emotional epistemology as the tool I would turn to when I needed a question answered. About six months after my conversation with Dean I was a well-trained “convert” to empiricism. It was at that point I decided to turn my new epistemology toward the big question of my life: my religion.

This was the middle of the end of Mormonism for me (the beginning being the chat with Dean). Once I realized that emotion was an unreliable epistemology and empiricism was reliable, I realized that I had to re-examine every aspect of my belief system. When I applied the rigorous methods of empiricism to my Mormon beliefs, they began to topple like dominoes. Having been raised as a literalist Mormon, I believed that The Book of Mormon was a history of the ancestors of Native Americans who came from Israel. Empiricism crushed that belief – Native Americans aren’t Jews: they are of Asian descent. A literalistic interpretation of the Bible crumbled soon after as that book, too, is littered with factual errors and inaccuracies. Almost every fact claim I encountered within Mormonism withered under my new tool for arriving at knowledge. And without scripture to bolster other Mormon beliefs, I had no reason to believe the doctrines were anything more than wishful thinking, which, of course, is precisely what they are. It’s perfectly fine to believe that God has multiple wives, but that is not something that can be claimed as fact or be verified using empirical methods. It’s a belief, at best bolstered by emotions; it’s not empirically verifiable.

Luckily, my wife was receiving similar training in empiricism and was open to my questions and concerns. But she also had other concerns with Mormonism. As a feminist, she was increasingly disturbed by the subordinate position of women in the religion. She also had concerns with other policy and political positions of the religion, like its advocacy of conservative political views and opposition to abortion. When I raised my concerns about Mormonism with my wife, we discussed them at length and she understood the problems I raised. Together, we decided to leave Mormonism.

In less than a year, I went from a devout Mormon to a non-believer – first an agnostic, then an atheist (as did my wife). I changed because my epistemology changed. I love my new epistemology. It’s not perfect or 100% reliable, but it’s close – typically about 95% reliable. I now try to live my life based on the best science available.

There is an intriguing lesson here concerning the religion of my childhood. Religions use social psychological tools to convince people of their veracity. While there were many tools used by Mormonism during my childhood to convert me into a believing member, the one that still stands out in my mind is emotional epistemology. Why was I unable to see through this manipulative tool until I was 25 years old? Why was it so compelling? I don’t have all the answers, but I think several things contributed to the deception.

First, the leaders of the Mormon Church continue to encourage members to talk about their beliefs in definitive terms, using the words “know” and “knowledge” rather than “believe” or “belief.” This is intentional manipulation. Social psychological research has found that the way we talk about our beliefs can actually convince us of our beliefs. The leaders of the Mormon Church use science (knowingly or not) to convince the members to believe in religious dogma.

The second factor that contributed to my failure to see through emotional epistemology was how pervasive it was in my social network. I grew up in Morgan County, Utah, which is typically ranked among the most Mormon counties in the nation in terms of the percentage of the population that is Mormon (close to 90%). Everyone I knew employed emotional epistemology – and if I had questions about something, I was regularly encouraged to either “just believe” or ask God. No one – not my parents, my Sunday school teachers, my religious leaders, or even my friends – told me to use my brain or investigate things using the tools of science.

The third and final factor that I think prevented me from seeing through emotional epistemology is the power of the emotions. The Mormon Church is remarkably good at creating atmospheres in which strong feelings are evoked. By forcing people to talk about their most cherished beliefs, traumatic events, and their greatest desires publicly, it’s virtually impossible not to evoke strong emotions. The leaders of the religion immediately associate those emotions with the supernatural, drawing a connection that does not, in fact, exist. They connect a naturalistic phenomenon – emotions – with a supernatural one – the Holy Ghost – and do this when people are most impressionable, as kids. Once the connection is made, it’s hard to unmake it. And the emotions are very compelling.

This leads me to my final point. Despite my criticism of emotional epistemology, I don’t want to give the impression that I see no value in emotions. I’m emotional. I laugh, I cry! And I still occasionally experience the same “human” (they are not “spiritual”) emotions that I used to believe confirmed Mormon doctrines. Those emotions are human emotions. They are natural sensations our bodies can experience. Those emotions may, in fact, testify of something, but it’s not supernatural knowledge. I now believe those powerful emotions testify of wonder, awe, and beauty! We can be overcome with emotion when our empirical senses are overwhelmed. It’s beautiful. It’s powerful. It’s amazing! And it’s NOT supernatural.

My acceptance of empiricism as a reliable epistemology led me out of Mormonism. For others, that may not be the case. Empiricism was a profound discovery for me because I believed in so many teachings of Mormonism that run counter to science (e.g., Noah’s ark, young earth creationism, Jonah and the whale, etc.). Mormons don’t have to believe those things. But there are many Mormons who believe this way, and the religion tacitly supports such literalistic beliefs. Young Mormons who are taught a literalistic version of Mormonism are being set up for a dramatic and tumultuous encounter with reality if they ever have the opportunity to realize what I did – emotions don’t reveal knowledge. For that you need science.

Claiming to “know” something because you felt good about it is no way to arrive at knowledge. Use your senses; use your brain; use science. It works, reliably. For me, reliability trumps faith. And that is why I’m no longer a Mormon.