The Post-Mormon Metamorphosis:

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The Post-Mormon Metamorphosis How to Maximize
Creation and Minimize Destruction
bob mccue2006 Ex-Mormon
Foundation Annual ConferenceSalt Lake City, Utah
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• Introduction
• If there are any artists here, I suggest
  something that shows the human form emerging from
  a map of Utah, or the SLC temple.
• Do you remember the day when your Mormon shell
  cracked open?
• It is painful to get out.
• As Gloria Steinem said, The Truth will set you
  free, but first it will piss you off.
• This talk is about how to get through the
  pissing off part and into the free part ASAP.

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• Introduction
• Remember that everyone is mistaken, especially me
  because you are listening to me right now.
• All I can do is share with you my attempts to
  understand my experience.
• I promise that I will be frank with you. Those
  who have ears to hear shall hear is an insight
  based in this accurate observation of human kind.

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• We will talk about Re-storying
• What role do meta-narratives or myths play in
  our lives?
• Where do meta-narratives come from?
• What causes them to break down?
• How much choice do we have in creating new
  meta-narratives for ourselves?

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• Get ready to drink from the fire hose.
• This is a buffet, not a formal banquet.
• Huge amounts of great research out there as to
  how religions organizations function.
• I dont expect you to remember than two or three
  concepts and your ears to hear will pick those
  for you.
• So enjoy the ride, and read my notes later if you
  want.

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• We want the broadest perspective possible.

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• Bill Brysons A Brief History of Everything

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• Our meta-narratives (mythology) largely determine
  which parts of reality we see and how we
  interpret them.
• When they shatter, it is serious business.
• DSM IV Religious or spiritual disorder.
• Treatment Restorying.
• Why? Humans are narrative animals.

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• More meta-narrative examples
• Suicide bombers.

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• More meta-narrative examples
• Subjecting gay people to therapy so that they
  can overcome their challenge.
• Gay Suicide rates Institution v. individual
• The Hindu abuse of widows as depicted by the
  movie Water abuse of untouchables etc.
• Couple could not have children. Decided to have
  child by surrogate. Grandma strongly objected.
  Why? Sperm would have to be obtained by
  masturbation.
• Lingerie at bridal shower. Why would her friends
  give her those? Wont they will look terrible
  with garments on underneath?

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• What we value determines much of our behavior.
• Our meta-narratives determine much of what we
  value.

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• We will discuss
• Where meta-narratives originate.
• The stages we go through while rejecting one
  meta-narrative and finding another.
• How long the process usually takes.
• What causes this to occur in some people and not
  others.
• What we can do to help this process along.

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• Process overview
• No model captures all of reality.
• We will review several.

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• Process overview
• Stages of Faith analysis (James Fowler)
• Stage one Early childhood. Wide open learning
  about cultural taboos and rules.
• Stage two Literal faith usually lasts from
  age seven through twelve but can be maintained
  for life.

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• Process overview
• Stages of Faith analysis (James Fowler)
• Stage three Conventional faith is where most
  adults spend most of their lives. Characterized
  by conformity and strong identification with a
  group.
• Fowler says that in many ways religious
  institutions "work best" if they are peopled with
  a majority of committed folk best described as
  Stage 3
• Stage four Individuative faith The cracks
  form. Anger. Despair.
• Months at least.
• Years in most cases.
• Gradual healing. Think of tree that has grown
  around a boulder and then the boulder is moved.

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• Process overview
• Stages of Faith analysis (James Fowler)
• Stage five Conjunctive faith a person grasps
  the reality behind the symbols of her
  foundational belief systems, and is also drawn to
  and acknowledges of the symbols of other systems.
  
• Stage six - Universalizing faith. This is Buddha,
  Gandhi etc.
• Moral judgement and spiritual stages correlate.

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• Process overview
• Elizabeth Kubler-Ross Stages of Grief The
  transition from Fowler Stage 3 to 5
• Loss of meta-narrative like death or divorce.
• Stages
• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance.
• Symmetry The more painful the road out, the more
  joyous the creative process on the other side.
• Birth canals are dark, frightening, and painful.

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• Process overview
• Dogmatism
• Relativism
• Realism
• Teach your kids science.
• This is how we connect to reality.

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• Process overview
• Creative destruction.
• Death is necessary for life.
• Destruction is necessary to creation.
• This is more than a relativist statement.

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• Process overview
• Help develop the model at www.postmormon.org
• See Arza Evans handout Recovery from Mormonism
  at front table.

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• Back to meta-narratives.
• They are the backbone of life.
• Each of the processes we talked about are driven
  by meta-narrative formation and reformation.
• Review Fowler and Kubler-Ross

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• Back to meta-narratives.
• Where do they come from?
• We inherit them.
• They grow roots as we live their stories.
• The deeper the roots, the harder they are to
  change.
• The better we understand how this works, the more
  likely we are to be able to deal with it in a
  healthy manner.

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• Meta-narrative roots
• Evolutionary landscapes and attractor basins
• Belief maps and hierarchies
• The edge of chaos
• The Rider on the elephant.

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Complexity Theory and the Evolution of Religious
Groups Star Island 2006

Think of the basins between the peaks as
attractor basins.
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• I received a testimony bearing email from a
  stranger last night You cant avoid eternity!
• Exactly how do we know what happens after death
  or what God is like?
• Elohim v. The Holy Trinity v. Allah v. The Pink
  Unicorn etc.
• Emotional knowing anchors most religious
  attractor basins.

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• In yesterdays paper I read
• Three stories about Muslim violence and
• One story about a highly respect Canadian scholar
  and author telling about how she discovered
  God.
• My deconversion was like having a vice removed
  from he head, or finding out that the shoes I
  have always worn are two sizes too small.

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• I felt like Tarzan watching the slide projector
  absorbing massive amounts of information with in
  intensity that I dont expect to ever duplicate.
• Necessity brings us to life.
• The acknowledgement of ignorance creates
  curiosity.

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Complexity Theory and the Evolution of Religious
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• How to help the healing process along
• Understand as much as possible about it.
• Pain results from collision between false
  expectations and reality.
• Understand yourself.
• The personality type connection.
• The influence of the unconscious (elephant on the
  rider).
• You need chaos to grow, but too much will kill
  you.
• So look for appropriate, controlled chaos.
• Democracy v. revolution.
• Market economy v. regulated economy.

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• How to help the process along
• You need order to grow, but too much will kill
  you.
• So look for stable environments that are open to
  change.
• Recognize your mimetic nature (elephant on the
  rider).
• Accept the pendulum.
• Accept the wisdom of smart crowds.
• James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds.
• Develop your creative side.
• See as artists see.

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• Evolutionary or energy landscapes.
• Concept of energy minima.
• Two laws of the universe
• Minimize energy loss.
• Maximize irony.

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• Or how about
• I know that Mormonism is Gods only true church
  on earth and if you wont agree with me you are
  an arrogant intellectual.
• If you say that Islam is violent and bigoted one
  more time, I will rip out your throat and send
  you to hell where infidel dogs like you belong.

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• Religious literalists are irony impaired.

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Think of the basins between the peaks as
attractor basins Areas that are dominated by one
kind of social behavior.
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• Evolutionary or energy landscapes
• Individuals are marbles.
• As landscape changes, roll toward valleys.
• These are energy minima or efficient states.

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• Evolutionary or energy landscapes
• As valleys become shallow, not much appears to
  happen.
• Then all of a sudden, the marbles start to roll
  out.
• Phase transition.
• This can be thought of as a movement from one
  attractor basin (dominant pattern of behavior) to
  another.

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• Evolutionary or energy landscapes.
• Phase Transition
• Kuhns paradigm shift describes this in global
  terms and its used colloquially to describe for
  individuals.
• The abused spouse who finally realizes she is
  being abused
• Human phase transitions are often painful.

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• Evolutionary or energy landscapes
• Light colored moths on light tree trunks.
• Soot changes trees.
• Landscape changes.
• At what point does the phase transition occur?
• Light moths now on a hill.
• Dark moths in the comfortable valley.

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• Evolutionary or energy landscapes
• Moths change by evolutionary pressure from one
  generation to the next.
• Human individuals can change radically.
• The younger we start, the more we can change.
• New neurons, and connections between neurons,
  grow right up to death.

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• Evolutionary or energy landscapes
• Sandpiles
• Nature of grains and rate of flow of sand
  determines size of landslides.
• System always returns to state near or critical
  point.
• Self organizing criticality.
• Shape of grains.
• Analogy to information flows.
• Denial has limits.

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• Evolutionary or energy landscapes
• If try to control change restrict chaos this
  can make problems that cause change become far
  greater.
• Forest fires.
• Traffic jams.
• Flooding on the Mississippi.
• Change within social systems Eastern Europe.

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• Evolutionary or energy landscapes
• Perception is reality in social landscapes.
• As perception changes, landscapes change.
• Information flows are the key to perception
  changes.
• A meta-narrative change means a huge landscape
  chance.

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• Evolutionary or energy landscapes
• Communications Networks

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• Evolutionary or energy landscapes
• Communications Networks
• Information flows within the Mormon Mormon
  Churchs has been like a friendship network with
  spokes going from each group into a central node
  that controls information.

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Complex in this case includes SOC.
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• Evolutionary or energy landscapes
• Communications Networks
• This is a classic phase transition.
• Mormon leader, marriage concepts, randomness, and
  an apostate teaches Sunday School.

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• Evolutionary or energy landscapes
• Best to think of one individual and her place on
  landscape.
• Mormon landscape is different for each
  individual.
• Perspective is king.

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• The adjacent possible.
• Light moths can become dark moths, not birds.
• Adjacent valleys represent what is reasonable
  possible.
• Where is Mormon missionary work successful?

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• The adjacent possible.
• One might travel from
• Literalist Mormon,
• to metaphoric Mormon,
• to intelligent design Christian,
• to extremely liberal Christian,
• to agnostic.

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• The adjacent possible.
• Once out of the deep basin, many people tend to
  avoid deep basins.
• Pluralism has been the wests strength.
• The mask metaphor.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Genes and History
• Degree of conditioning (mission? callings?
  etc.)
• What do your half dozen closest associates do?
• Iannaccones research.
• Consistency of behavior within group (family
  especially).
• Social capital.
• Lack of information.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Monism v. pluralism
• The one true church.
• Harsh environment.
• Bushman initiation rites.
• Female circumcision leading to suicide.
• The movie Water and the Hindu caste system.
• Military.
• War against evil meta-narrative within Mormonism.
• Perception is reality.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Attachment theory .
• Secure v. insecure attachments.
• Unhealthy dependency.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• For example, consider a religion that does not
  differ much from secular society.
• Hence, the fundamental values that the perception
  of utility drive behavior in the secular culture
  and this religious culture are similar.
• Liberal Judaism and Christianity (including
  liberal Mormonism) are fairly described this way.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• Tops of the two curves indicate difference
  between values.
• Height of the curves indicates perceived relative
  superiority.
• Rational choice theory would predict that the
  religious persons behavior would likely
  gravitate toward where the two lines intersect in
  order to maximize utility.
• Little unique social capital will be created by
  the religious group and its attractor basin
  created will be shallow.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• What if the religion in question is radically
  different from the secular culture that surrounds
  it.
• Like literalist religions of many types,
  including the fundamentalist Mormons now and
  mainstream Mormonism 100 years ago.
• Here is how this relationship could be depicted.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• This is the We are really different, and really
  better, than you model.
• Young religions are like young ant colonies,
  erratic and aggressive.
• This forces members to choose between the two
  world and live almost completely in one.
• Think of the Old Order Amish, for example.
• The further apart the curves, the steeper the
  sides of the attractor basin.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• What happens as these worlds move a bit closer to
  each other?

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• As literalists learn more about other religions,
  they see more similarities but may also continue
  to perceive a large difference in terms of
  utility.
• For example, as non-Mormons moved into Utah
  during the late 1800s this began to occur within
  the Mormon community and that continues to this
  day.
• There is still a huge cost to be paid by those
  who move to the edges of the religious system as
  they try to take advantage of secular life.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• The next diagram illustrates that it does not
  help much as the perceived utility of the
  religious life comes down relative to that of the
  secular life.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• Those who wish to remain in both systems are
  stuck in a place that can be counted on to
  produce lots of cognitive dissonance.
• So, as long as the gap between the two groups is
  too wide, it is unlikely that people will try to
  play both sides.
• Some liberal Mormons in this position. The cost
  of open disbelief is too high even through they
  dont see a lot of value in the LDS system.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• These people are up on the sides of a steep
  attractor basin.
• Painful cognitive dissonance.
• Mind warping.
• A recent email from former bishop who has known
  about LDS Inc.s problems for many years
  described how his continual bowing to corrupt
  authority has made him a weak thing.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• What about the situation shown just below?

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• This is a risky position for the religious
  organism.
• If the basis for the perception of value comes
  undone, many people will perceive that as a loss
  and may defect on that basis alone.
• The Internet has dramatically increased the risk
  that this may occur as more people learn about
  the foundational problems of their faith and
  realize that most religions operate on the basis
  of similar values.
• Will hopefully have time to talk about phase
  transitions tipping points where social systems
  suddenly change social landslides.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• From a global social point of view, it will be
  healthy for religious groups to gravitate toward
  the kind of relationship to society, and
  relatively shallow attractor basins, that are
  illustrated below.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• Mature religions and ant colonies are less
  erratic and aggressive.
• Shallow attractor basins mean that religious
  institutions will lose power and individuals will
  gain it.
• The World Value Survey has identified this trend.
• Institutions will resist.
• Think of the Catholic Church.

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• What makes for steep v. shallow attractor basins?
• Social Capital
• David Oler and his group of Jewish atheist
  synagogues .
• Difference in objective utility is small, but I
  wish to remain within my tradition and enjoy
  its unique aesthetic experience and meanings.
• This creates enough utility to keep a religious
  group together.
• Consistent with the evaporation of creed trend.

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• Belief maps and hierarchies

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Complexity Theory and the Evolution of Religious
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• Why do Mormons accept for the most part the age
  of the earth and biological evolution, while
  being ignorant of the history of human migration
  as described by DNA research, linguistic
  research, etc.?
• Tower of Babel is the Book of Mormon and so must
  be true.

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• Why put science first?
• Galileo.
• Gays.
• Word of Wisdom as a health code.

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• Religion does not have a good batting average
  when it steps up to the plate while science is
  pitching.
• So, why not make that part of your religion?

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• Why put science first?
• Jon Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis and Martin
  Seligman, Authentic Happiness on living the
  good life.
• John Gottman on marriage.
• James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds on
  decisions making.
• For example, when should I get married Should I
  stay married?

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• Dont make decisions while impaired.
• The you only have enough blood to run one of
  your two heads applies to women as well as men.
• Understand why you feel the way you do.
• Choose the kind of life you want to live.

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• John Gottman on relationships.
• Degree of resonance.
• Disrespect.
• 80 post-Mormon divorce rate where one spouse
  remains in.

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• The edge of chaos

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• Biological evolution
• Change occurs by generation.
• Human capacity for learning makes many changes
  possible with an individual.
• But learning from one generation to the next is
  probably key to human dominance.

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• The edge of chaos in
• Democracy
• Market economies
• Societal evolution
• Personal evolution
• Relationships

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• The edge of chaos in
• Mythology This shows how pervasive the edge of
  chaos has been in human life.
• Joseph Campbell Master story teller

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• The hero myth
• The hero is called.
• The hero leaves safety (order) and goes into the
  unknown (chaos)
• Alternative sources of wisdom or power within
  society authorize the adventure.

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• The hero myth
• The hero often displays childlike qualities, and
  in particular is open to learning and doing new
  things.
• The hero is changed by his adventure, and often
  returns with a treasure quite different from the
  one he set out to find.
• The treasure is often found only upon arriving
  home.
• Near Eastern myth - treasure was buried under the
  heroes own porch.

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• Stages of the heros journey
• Separation A time of great excitement or angst
  as the hero leaves or is torn from the known and
  thrust into the unknown.
• Liminality
• Hero is outside society.
• Rules of normal behavior do not apply.
• Chaos requires new behavior.
• This combination causes reconstruction.
• Reintegration
• The hero rejoins his social group.
• The hero has changed and sometimes his group has
  as well. This causes difficulty.

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• Frodo and the Ring
• Classic hero myth.
• Fits the post-Mormon journey.
• Frodo did not want to be the ring bearer.
• Others were stronger better suited to the task,
  etc.
• Discovered hidden strengths as faced chaos
  challenge.

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• The Night Passage
• Jonah and the whale.
• Jonah was an unlikely hero.
• God called him to a difficult mission, and he
  declined.
• God sent a great fish to swallow Jonah up
• Jonah reconsiders his options.
• Jonah accepts mission, and is transformed while
  performing his duty.
• The Jonah narrative has roots in many other
  preceding Near Eastern myths that I am not going
  to trace. However, a review of certain common
  themes is useful.

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• The Night Passage
• Heracles and Tiamat.
• Tiamat swallows Heracles.
• While in the belly of the beast, hero is stripped
  of powers.
• Heracles loses his hair, so becoming childlike.
• The loss of old powers causes new ones to
  coalesce.
• The hero emerges from this womb-like state
  humbled, reconstructed and ironically, more
  powerful.

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• Garden of Eden
• The Fall

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The Lone and Dreary World
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• Christ

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• The Matrix
• Star Trek
• Etc.

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• Being pushed into the unknown and then being
  reconstructed by a combination of personal choice
  and chaos is one of the most basic of all human
  stories.
• And it is the story of recovery from Mormonism.

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• The Mormon pioneers.
• You are a pioneer.
• Find your story.

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• The Rider on the elephant

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• Caring for your elephant
• Small group animals.
• Instinct is to stay with the group.
• Deeply mimetic Choose your context and you
  choose your behavior.
• Capacity for learning.
• Cognitive Biases.
• Responds to perceived necessity.

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• Caring for your elephant
• Hoarding.
• Overeating.
• Novelty.
• Fear and desire.
• Order and chaos.
• Survive, propagate, improve.

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• Got all that?
• Mostly unconscious rider and elephant flirting
  with deadening boredom and threatening but
  enlivening chaos as they wander around their
  valley (and very occasionally other valleys)
  looking for comfortable places.

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• I just told you a myth a meta-narrative based in
  science that is my best guess as to how it all
  works.
• This meta-narrative includes the idea that it may
  be wrong.

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• Meta-narratives are mostly unconscious, in spite
  of all we do to try to make them conscious.

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• Exercise
• Close eyes etc.
• Imagine the kind of landscape (path, river, etc.)
  that is the best analogy to your various stages
  of life child teenager young adult etc.
• This terrified me the first time I did it. I had
  to stop.
• This is a dominant image no one operates on the
  same imagery all the time.

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• Complex Systems Theory
• Universal graph Thanks to Guy Hoelzer
• Hierarchical graph
• Nodes on graph are agents, like individual
  humans, or ants, or molecules.
• Lines are connections communication between
  agents.
• Start a lowest possible level saw quarks and
  draw a graph.
• This will represent how agents relate to each
  other within a system.

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• Complex Systems Theory
• Universal graph
• Communication means information flows.
• Is messy often messy.
• That is, there is often a high noise to signal
  frequency in communication of all kinds.

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• Complex Systems Theory
• Universal graph
• Stand back and look for clusters. Atoms?
• Treat them as agents.
• Draw a graph of communication among them.

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• Complex Systems Theory
• Universal graph
• Stand back and look for clusters. Molecules?
• Cells, individuals, social groups, ecosystems,
  etc.
• Think of graph of solar system, galaxy, known
  universe.
• We end up with a set of nested, multidimensional
  systems.
• Systems within systems does not capture this
  complexity, and our graphic illustration helps to
  understand what is going on without accurately
  describing it.

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• Complex Systems Theory
• Universal graph
• It is connected all the way up and down.
• We can analyze systems in isolation to a degree.
• But some effects at every low levels ripple a
  long way up, or at high levels ripple a long way
  down.
• Changes in large scale patterns of social
  behavior can start with a neural tipping point
  caused by one bit of information.
• The formation of important patterns of neural
  connections can be tipped by a small change at
  the societal level and changes social patterns.

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• Complex Systems Theory
• Organization within level
• Agents must be simple relative to system.
• This requires that agents give up some
  properties, or ability to choose, to be part of
  system.
• Giving up much of the agents individual
  adjacent possible.
• These constraints on agent behavior are required
  for the complex interaction that creates
  creativity at the system level.
• Must dumb down, in a sense.

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• Complex Systems Theory
• Humans in social groups.
• Social rules reduce decision making capacity of
  individuals.
• Denial, lack of consciousness etc. makes it so
  humans do not even know that they have the
  degrees of freedom they do in social contexts
  thus making complex social interaction possible.
  Denial is hence adaptive to a degree.
• And as is so often the case, an adaptive trait is
  used within the system by exploitive purposes.
• Commercial sales techniques.
• Cheaters, freeriders and parasites of various
  kinds.
• We see the same behavior in this regard in the
  business, religious and other communities.

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• Complex Systems Theory
• Humans in social groups.
• Rules structures are required to strain cheating,
  parasitic etc. behavior.
• Rules, mores etc. of this type are a form of
  wisdom.
• Democracy.
• Securities laws.

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• Complex Systems Theory
• Definition of agent relative to system as we
  work up and down the clustering scale works on
  the basis of information flow.
• Lots of information flow within agent, and
  relatively little between agent and the system
  that contains it the environment.
• Information flow within a cell v. inter-cellular
  communication.
• Information flow within a human individual v.
  inter-cellular communication.
• Information flow within a small social group v.
  inter-group communication.

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• Complex Systems Theory
• Boundaries between agents and systems, and
  between attractor basins within system, are
  areas of low information flow.
• These information differentials create
  differences between the properties of agents and
  behavior between attractor basins.
• Attractor basins are conditions that cause a
  certain type of relatively consistent behaviour
  among agents, like the weather patterns in the
  Artic v. the US Gulf Coast, or Federal voting
  patterns in New England v. Utah.
• Attractor basins create clustering that could
  lead to something that would be defined as an
  agent at a higher order of analysis in the
  universal model.

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Think of the basins between the peaks as
attractor basins. Or think of the peaks as
fitness peaks in an evolutionary landscape.
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• Complex Systems Theory
• Traffic example.
• Driving on right hand side or left hand side.
• Make decision on the basis of first few
  interactions. Ripple out.
• If homogenous environment, pockets of left and
  right would develop, with turbulence between.
• In real environment
• traffic would tend to go one way within a
  particular populated region,
• sparsely populated regions would be turbulent and
  hence dangerous,
• clear boundaries would reduce turbulence.
• England and Europe.
• Need for safety and proximity to other drivers in
  densely populated areas creates an attractor
  that causes a consistent behavioral pattern.

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• Complex Systems Theory
• Traffic example.
• A phase transition occurs when the state of the
  system changes radically.
• For example, gradually increasing traffic flow in
  the relatively empty chaotic state between
  cities would eventually produce a systematizing
  of traffic flows there.
• This change would likely be sudden, even though
  traffic flows increased slowly.
• This can be thought of as a movement from one
  attractor basin (dominant pattern of behavior) to
  another.

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• Complex Systems Theory
• Phase Transition
• For smart humans in denial to keep a social
  system running, phase transitions often relate to
  changes in perception more than changes in
  reality.
• Kuhns paradigm shift describes this in global
  terms and its used colloquially to describe for
  individuals.
• The abused spouse who finally realizes she is
  being abused
• Human phase transitions are often painful.

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• Social Science relevant Complexity Models
• Communications Networks
• What kind of disturbing information might be
  distributed?
• Joseph Smiths untrustworthiness.
• The Book of Mormons likely 19th century origins.
• Smiths deceptive history when trying to get his
  followers to do what he wanted is well
  documented.
• Lying about his sexual activities takes the cake
  here.
• His history as a treasure seeker/charlatan for
  hire runs along same lines.
• The simple question is, Should this man be
  trusted?
• His perceptions were wrong so often that it does
  not matter why they were wrong whether he had
  epileptic visions was a pious fraud was a
  fraud etc.

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• Social Science relevant Complexity Models
• Communications Networks
• Research testing the Book of Mormons claim to be
  a history of the Americas from 600 BCE to 400 CE
  has been tested in many ways and found to be
  highly improbable.
• Some of the best has used DNA data to test the
  BofM claim that Amerindians have Israelite
  ancestry.
• Research by a bio-tech profession at Stanford
  will be published later this year or early next
  that uses complexity based pattern recognition
  programs to show to a high degree of probably
  that an identifiable person other than Joseph
  Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, plagiarizing
  another identifiable person.
• Steve Farmer at Harvard uses complexity theory
  based pattern recognition programs to
  approximately date purportedly ancient documents.
• Farmer has expressed interest to me in using his
  program to date the Book of Mormon.

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• Social Science relevant Complexity Models
• Communications Networks
• Growth rate in wired world already plummeting
  due to fact that much of sales pitch has a high
  probability of being false, and this information
  is available to potential converts on the
  Internet.
• At the same time, JWs and Evangelicals are
  growing rapidly through the use of a much harder
  to falsify message.
• I hasten to add that I do not see this as a good
  thing.

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• Social Science relevant Complexity Models
• Communications Networks
• Respected members like me regularly leave or
  quietly reduce their levels of commitment.
• This information is suppressed, formally and
  informally, but still echoes to a degree.
• Often speaking out is treated by both Mormon
  leaders and family members as a greater offence
  than the worst sins.
• Studies re. suicide and many other social trends
  indicate that this giving of permission by
  respected community members is crucial to the
  spread of behavioral trends.
• Hence, the Mormon effort to suppress this
  information, and to tar those who leave with a
  black brush.
• Rumors re. my immoral behavior spread like
  wildfire.
• Social psych research indicates this is to be
  expected.
• This internet makes suppression of this type much
  harder.

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• Social Science relevant Complexity Models
• The Mormon attractor basin is maintained by a
  perception of utility.
• This depends on a combination of absence of
  information and distorted perception (denial).
• The information leveling function performed by
  the internet will put great pressure on this
  attractor basin.
• There are limits as to how much in denial can
  restrain.

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• Social Science relevant Complexity Models
• Mormonism Model
• Pressure - Awareness of disconfirming information
  related to Mormonisms advertised utility (the
  probability that only Mormons will go to Heaven
  and live with their families, for example).
• Temperature Perceived net cost of Remaining
  Mormon
• Density Likelihood of continued adherence to
  Mormonism

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• Social Science relevant Complexity Models
• Mormonism Model
• The trump factor in most cases is likely the
  effects of the closest associates.
• Mormonism wont collapse.
• It will mutate.
• Loss of founder.
• Loss of polygamy.
• Loss of racist policy.

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• Social Science relevant Complexity Models
• Mormonism Model
• Think of the side of an attractor basin
  collapsing.
• Mormonism has one or two generations to fix this.
• Unlikely to go toward greater fundamentalism.
• Too old and large.
• Hard to grow.
• Radical change would likely break it apart.

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• Social Science relevant Complexity Models
• Mormonism Model
• Likely to follow the lead of the Seventh Day
  Adventists, Mennonites and to an extent the
  FLDS/Community of Christ.
• De-emphasize J. Smith and the Book of Mormon.
• Allow creed to evaporate.
• Dont talk about it anymore.
• When pressed, plead postmodernism and humble
  agnosticism as required.

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• Social Science relevant Complexity Models
• Mormonism Model
• Likely to follow the lead of the Seventh Day
  Adventists, Mennonites and to an extent the
  FLDS/Community of Christ.
• Emphasize importance of tradition.
• Focus on praxis.
• Emphasize science friendly aspects of Mormon
  dogma.
• Keep cost of membership as high as possible while
  generating more goods and services that would be
  perceived by secularly oriented people to have
  value.
• Follow the Evangelical Christian model.

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• Social Science relevant Complexity Models
• Mormonism Model
• These changes will not be planned.
• Mormon leadership very unlikely to surrender
  power.
• Internet and other alternative sources of
  authority will gradually put them in a position
  like the Catholics.

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• Social Science relevant Complexity Models
• Mormonism Model
• What is the difference between Mormons and
  Catholics?
• They disbelieve opposite dogmas.
• Catholic dogma states that the Pope is infallible
  in certain conditions, and virtually no Catholics
  believe that.
• Mormon dogma states that Mormon prophets are
  fallible, and v