On the Midnight Mormons episode Why Engagement with the Book of Mormon is the Solution to Faith Crisis (April 1, 2021), in response to the accusation that the Church withheld historical information (so that some LDS feel duped and become exMormon), Kwaku makes a good point:
If I open a restaurant and it gets five star reviews and then I open a chef school (a culinary school) and I say this is the best restaurant in the entire world; and I teach all of my students the best recipes I can think of. They get a great education. They get landed as chefs all across the country; and one comes out and says, "You never taught me ratatouille. How are you supposed to be the best restaurant in the entire world? How are you the best chef if you forgot to teach me Ratatouille?" Does that mean all the recipes you taught me are bad and you're not actually the best restaurant? Well, it's up to your opinion if you think I'm the best chef in the country; it's up to your opinion if you think I have the best restaurant in the country.
I thought that was a really good point. When I think back to my own upbringing in the Church and all of the good ethical "recipes" of how to develop good character and have love/charity and a service-oriented attitude, it's clear to me that what the Mormon Church teaches is over 99% positive. Was I withheld some information in the 1980s and 1990s (like Smith’s use of a seer stone)? Yes, I think it's fair to say I was, or at least it was not readily available in the immediate sources and manuals provided by the LDS Church. The Mormon apologists are correct though that if I had done some really deep digging I would have found out most of the stuff in the Journal of Discourses, The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, or even in some Ensigns magazines.
I can also recall some of my more intellectually curious LDS missionary companions on my mission in the 1990s, mentioning things that seemed foreign to me at the time; like the LDS temple ritual having Freemasonic aspects; but I did not know what that meant and I did not investigate further at that time.
Kwaku continued to make a truly profound point that I agree with: that ultimately the most important question is whether or not the LDS Stories provide existential meaning in life; which according to Viktor Frankl is one of the most important things for a human being to have emotional well-being. Kwaku puts it this way:
Ultimately what the Book of Mormon suggests is that if an angel came to Joseph Smith and led him to [gold] plates, regardless of if the Book of Mormon is something that compels you, if that actually happened what does that suggest for humanity? That suggests that one, we're not alone in the solar system or the world, that there are multiple realms; that there is a level of mysticism that is real and that humanity is not alone. If that act alone happened everything we know and the way we know the world is different and everything is changed; and if you want people to be empty slates who are afraid to look forward to death because you don't believe they have any eternal worth and you don't actually matter [from a cosmic perspective], you would never ever want them to believe that those things happened to Joseph Smith. If you just want people to believe this is life, I die and that's it, and I don't really have much meaning [in this life], then by all means discount Joseph Smith. But if you actually want things to have meaning and there to be true beauty, you can't discount Joseph Smith. That's what it comes down to: does this world have meaning and do I matter [from a cosmic perspective, so that it ultimately matters if you died tomorrow]; ... because we're all going to clock out one day [and die].
The story of Joseph Smith is so much more important than just, 'well what about ... How'd ya get the name Nephi (did you steal him from Nephilim); and more of: if this actually happened, that changes the reality of everything; and [regarding] people like [John] Dehlin, or people like the ex-mormon critics (the Vogels' and everyone), ultimately you can have as much fun making as much money doing those podcasts as you want, thinking that you got duped by the church, but at the end of the day, once you reject that you've taken away true meaning from your life; and I don't want to be in that position.
Source: 24-27 minute mark
This got me thinking about how Kwaku is someone born with a natural disposition toward high confidence and well-being. He is also clearly intelligent, especially for his age, and so I think he has an intuition (that most don't develop until later in life) that when you remove the layers of meaning and purpose provided by your religion, and do a deep into extreme critical thinking and debunk your religious views; then existential meaninglessness will likely eventually follow. For, as you remove the layers of religious meaning and Life-purpose-giving foundations, you will eventually end up removing all the meaning- making scaffolding; so that you eventually remain spiritually "naked" in the cold, in the philosophical pit of despair, that is nihilism.
Kwaku knows this intuitively and so because his highest value seems to be his own personal power and well-being and thriving, he's not willing to subject his psyche to the woundedness resulting from extreme skepticism, cynical reductionism, and atheistic nihilism.
This got me thinking about how, unlike Kwaku, I myself was willing to remove the layers of meaning and purpose, because I had an idealistic notion of objective Truth when I began questioning the LDS Church around 2001. I was so obsessed with "Truth" with a capital T that I was willing to go through the Dark Night of the Soul and remove all meaning and purpose from my life and even question my very existence as as a self (as the Buddhists do); and my extreme skepticism did eventually lead me to denying the existence of a soul.
So at one point I had removed all of the former meaning and purpose in my life (I developed as a Mormon), and I'd entered a state of Existential Depression; for in my mind "I" did not exist (according to atheism) and everything was purposeless and so what was the point. So for a time I stopped dating and stopped focusing on money or a having family or anything really; because I was stuck in an existential sinkhole: believing I don't exist and nothing matters in the grand scheme of things. I remained in this existential funk for quite a few years just maintaining part-time work and spending all my time reading and philosophizing, which was the only thing that gave me any stimulation.
I was willing to go through this out of a romanticized notion of seeking the glorious Truth. However, what happened was I sank into a deep state of despair and meaninglessness for quite a few years; believing I had no soul, life had no meaning, and I became very close to being like the character Russ Cole in the HBO series True Detective season 1.
For me personally, the only thing that got me out of this funk was re-establishing some of my former Christian beliefs, even if it was done from a more scholarly, psychological and pragmatic perspective by reading the work of Marcus Borg and Jordan Peterson, and others. And this led me to reconnecting with my Mormon Heritage; and when that happened I began to feel my existential despair dissipate and feel more existential confidence and well-being reconnected to Something Larger than Myself.
So I think Kwaku is correct that the anti-mormon activist, on some level has to have a self-conceit and lack of empathy, to be so willing to subject people to this deconstructive path that so very often leads to deep existential despair and meaninglessness. Because most of these "anti-Mormonism types" are not reformers seeking to better the LDS Church or encourage the reversal of some policy or anything like that, for many of them want the wholesale deconstruction of the LDS Church and it replaced with something like far-left political ideologies. Of course there are exceptions, and not all ex-mormons are the same; but in my experience, after 20 years interacting with many ex-mormons, the most popular and loudest voices very often have very pessimistic, reductionistic and nihilistic worldviews, with a deconstructive attitude, rather than a more constructive or reformational attitude.
