Mormons place great emphasis on being guided by "the Spirit." They rely on it for major life decisions and for proving that their religion is true. I used to operate the same way, believing that certain feelings were God's way of speaking to me and verifying truth. My "testimony" was cemented by emotional experiences based around Mormon doctrine.
A few years ago, I began to deconstruct my reasons for believing. Among other things, I concluded that my "feelings of the Spirit" were nothing more than conditioned emotional responses due to creative emotional manipulation during my childhood and teenage years. Here's how the process works:
Lifelong mormons are conditioned as children to associate certain good feelings with the church. When church doctrines are taught to children in an atmosphere of comfort and love, they learn to associate those doctrines with feelings of comfort and love. Later, they are told that what they are feeling is "the Spirit" telling them that the church's teachings are true. In this way, emotional triggers are implanted so that believers feel "the Spirit" when they attend church, read the mormon scriptures, meet LDS general authorities, or see a mormon temple. Mormon teenagers are also conditioned to feel shame and guilt related to things like masturbation, premarital sex, homosexual attraction, and even sexual thoughts. Many mormon teens grow up feeling tremendous amounts of guilt over things the rest of the world considers normal.
This is similar the story of Pavlov and his dog. Pavlov conditioned the dog to associate a sound (a ringing bell) with good things (food). Eventually, the dog learned to salivate at the sound of a bell, even without food being present.
Mormon missionaries attempt to replicate this conditioning process when teaching prospective converts, or "investigators." The missionaries attempt to establish rapport with prospective converts and steer the conversation toward topics that trigger feelings of comfort, love, and trust. They try to maintain these feelings and bring them to the attention of the investigator. Once a prospective convert acknowledges the he or she feels peace, or love, or one of a myriad of other pleasant emotions, the missionaries will announce, "What you are feeling right now is the Holy Spirit testifying that our message is true." Everything the missionaries do is designed to elicit pleasant feelings and condition the investigator to associate those feelings with the Mormon Church. Over time, new converts are also conditioned to feel guilt over unapproved pleasures.
Don't be intimidated when a mormon claims to "know" that their religion is true. They don't know any better than you do. They are just suffering from the delusion that their emotional experiences are the voice of God.
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