Real and pseudo
Someone said:
The scriptures and modern prophets have given a recipe for gaining a testimony. I taught it on my mission, and I can testify that it actually works, pretty reliably. You start by hoping that something is true. Then you nurture that hope, and faith grows over time. Eventually you feel powerful, intensely personal, feelings that this thing is true. It does work.
The only downside is that these steps can help you believe in something, yes, but they don't do anything regarding whether or not that thing is objectively real. One person can get a witness of the Holy Ghost that infant baptism is a sacred ordinance, approved of by God. Another can have those same feelings, but for the opposite thing, that infant baptism is an abomination, that God detests the practice.
Here is a response:
I have spent quite a bit of time experimenting with and also conversing with others claims in regards to this experiment/concept.
Let me make a quick comparison before I make my point:
In psychiatry, sometimes patients claim that they have auditory or visual hallucinations consistent with psychosis. Initially, I would just take their word for it, however, now that I have had more experience and interviewed hundreds of people Ilearned i was often wrong-- I now have to ask a multitude of other questions in order to determine if the patient is actually experiencing real auditory or visual hallucinations. For example, just yesterday a patient said that they had, but after a series of follow up questions, it turned out that they had a nightmare and thought this was the same thing. Many other patients think that the voice in their head is the same thing as an auditory hallucination. I have also had patients who lie to me and I am often now able to determine this through collateral information and evaluating their claims in context to their other symptoms and the details of how they claim their experiences occurred. Sometimes it is obvious that someone is lying just by the way that their hallucinations are organized. This may sound not possible but when you are exposed to these symptoms every day, all day, it can very obvious when someone is faking it to get disability or get out of prison etc. Or when someone doesnt understand that what they are experiencing is not a hallucination at all.
Similarly, the same is true with spiritual experiences. I have analyzed people claims of such quite thoroughly (I spoke with over 8000 people on my mission alone, and many more since then).
Some people mistake emotional experiences for spiritual experiences, and after a relatively short conversation about their experience it becomes very evident that there was nothing spiritual about their claims at all. Just as it is very difficult for the medical students that I work with to discern between when a patient has actually hallucinated or not, it may be hard for individuals to discern between pseudo-spiritual (emotional) experiences and a real spiritual experience, if they have never experienced it or have lost all memory of having experienced it, or have had very little experience.
The scriptures and modern prophets have given a recipe for gaining a testimony. I taught it on my mission, and I can testify that it actually works, pretty reliably. You start by hoping that something is true. Then you nurture that hope, and faith grows over time. Eventually you feel powerful, intensely personal, feelings that this thing is true. It does work.
The only downside is that these steps can help you believe in something, yes, but they don't do anything regarding whether or not that thing is objectively real. One person can get a witness of the Holy Ghost that infant baptism is a sacred ordinance, approved of by God. Another can have those same feelings, but for the opposite thing, that infant baptism is an abomination, that God detests the practice.
Here is a response:
I have spent quite a bit of time experimenting with and also conversing with others claims in regards to this experiment/concept.
Let me make a quick comparison before I make my point:
In psychiatry, sometimes patients claim that they have auditory or visual hallucinations consistent with psychosis. Initially, I would just take their word for it, however, now that I have had more experience and interviewed hundreds of people Ilearned i was often wrong-- I now have to ask a multitude of other questions in order to determine if the patient is actually experiencing real auditory or visual hallucinations. For example, just yesterday a patient said that they had, but after a series of follow up questions, it turned out that they had a nightmare and thought this was the same thing. Many other patients think that the voice in their head is the same thing as an auditory hallucination. I have also had patients who lie to me and I am often now able to determine this through collateral information and evaluating their claims in context to their other symptoms and the details of how they claim their experiences occurred. Sometimes it is obvious that someone is lying just by the way that their hallucinations are organized. This may sound not possible but when you are exposed to these symptoms every day, all day, it can very obvious when someone is faking it to get disability or get out of prison etc. Or when someone doesnt understand that what they are experiencing is not a hallucination at all.
Similarly, the same is true with spiritual experiences. I have analyzed people claims of such quite thoroughly (I spoke with over 8000 people on my mission alone, and many more since then).
Some people mistake emotional experiences for spiritual experiences, and after a relatively short conversation about their experience it becomes very evident that there was nothing spiritual about their claims at all. Just as it is very difficult for the medical students that I work with to discern between when a patient has actually hallucinated or not, it may be hard for individuals to discern between pseudo-spiritual (emotional) experiences and a real spiritual experience, if they have never experienced it or have lost all memory of having experienced it, or have had very little experience.
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