So I went with DW to stake conference today and there were a lot of references in the talks to promptings. Common stories of either ignoring a prompting and someone died without being able to see them one last time, or following a prompting and it turning out to be an answer to prayer, etc.

It's pretty common for Monson to make this a theme in his talks (often felt self-promoting to me), and even my own mother felt a prompting to visit my grandmother, had a perfect day with her, and my grandmother died the next day (and my mom was inactive and non-tithe payer at the time).

This is of course always portrayed as something only enjoyed by worthy Mormons, so I got to wondering: who else regularly claims such promptings? I know it's often called intuition, but do any other churches regularly portray it as a heavenly gift?

Looking to answer those who use it as proof of the church by showing it's not exclusive to the church.

Why are there so many words for discernment? Because it's common out in the nonmo world.

This isn't exactly what you are talking about pretty close -they idea of feeling the spirit as a testimony is not unique to Mormonism:

http://www.theamateurthinker.com/2011/02/how-can-we-find-truth-part-4/

I saw it yesterday, but was too busy to read it or comment.

Like Cheryl said--intuition, instinct, insight--those are the ones I like. I've done a better job of listening to my instinct instead of suppressing it. There were times in my life as a mormon that my mind was literally screaming at me to run--and I didn't because leaders told me it was just satan working on me.

It is interesting when you allow yourself to listen. I keep most of my intuition to myself and just watch it happen, but once in a while I'll say something. It disturbs the 2 closest TBMs in my life--my daughter and my aunt. Since I'm a huge sinner--I couldn't possibly have any promptings.

You make a good point.

In a sense this was the "final proof" to me when I left Mormonism.

According to Mormon doctrine by resigning I have lost the Holy Ghost. Yet I feel absolutely no difference.

I think people who are particularly adept at understanding and perceiving nuance can appear as if they are inspired or as if they possess a 6th sense. This isn’t anything supernatural but they would excel at picking up and understanding certain cues – perhaps even subconsciously. I won’t say this explains all these phenomenon, but I think it explains some.

I do still think that there are times when a gut feeling (or "prompting" as mormons like to call it) shouldn't be ignored and is significant.

When my daughter was little, she became sick over a holiday weekend. I was hoping she would improve or at least not get worse until the pediatrician's office would be open again. Finally, she became bad enough that I felt I had to get her seen, and now. I took her to the emergency room. Though the doctor who saw her did say she was indeed sick, he gave her another dose of fever reducing medicine while she was there and told me to take her home, that basically she probably had a bad cold. Something inside me told me that it was more than this and I was reluctant to just take her home, but I did and I put her to bed. I continued to worry very much about her. She just didn't seem like herself at all, but not all of what I was seeing was something I felt able to verbally explain to the doctor....I just knew something was really off, and some of that just came to me from my gut...it wasn't something really straightforward I could tell the doctor like A + B = C. A couple of hours after bringing her home and putting her to bed, I went in to check on her. She was making these horrible grunting sounds as she struggled to breathe. She was so sick that mild pain stimulus (pressing a fingernail edge into her skin far enough that you would think she'd at least protest or withdraw from it) didn't cause any reaction whatsoever. I rushed her back in to the hospital, they immediately got her on oxygen and a bunch of IV medications, she remained under the care of the critical care department for several days, and we came close to losing her.

I'm not a doctor, but I ***knew*** something was really, really off and that we weren't dealing only with "a cold." I wish I had protested more about taking her back home with the first doctor who saw her in the ER because on some level I knew his conclusion was wrong. But at least I continued to have that nagging instinct inside me that told me to be prepared to rush her back in and I didn't end up losing her that day. The doctors told me during her hospital stay I was lucky I hadn't lost her.

I was out of the church when this happened and, by their teachings, should have had no access to "promptings." I don't care where it came from or how I knew she was in more trouble than that first doctor said she was. I'm just glad she made it through that!!

One of my friends was a member in a large Southern Baptist church in suburban Atlanta. He was approached by another member saying, "God told me you & I need to go into business together."

My friend is a successful banker. He tried to act appreciative, but what can you do when confronted with such blatant BS? My friend told the guy he thought if that were true then God would've informed him the same thing.

The latest atheist experience podcast mentioned that William Lane Craig admitted that if he were able to find jesus' tomb, very that the body was still there, verify that it was really jesus and that he never resurrected, that he still wouldn't believe it because the holy spirit has told him it was true.

Basically, all religious folk will claim spiritual promptings in the face of lack of empirical evidence to support their claims.

These "promptings" do not come from outside your brain. They are just what one might call intuition. Most of what the brain is doing is behind the scenes to consciousness. It makes sense that if you are not depressed, are well and have a good attitude, these unconscious activities would be more active and able to connect with the conscious part of the mind. It has nothing to do with god or religion or "faith." The same healthy mind and states of mental well-being can be achieved in other ways, meditation and good health practices, for instance. The idea that there's a "Holy Ghost" or spirit communicating with you is ridiculous and a superstitious myth.

There is also a spurious sense of "deja-vu" that makes one think that they had a thought previously that relates to something happening now.. "I just remember I had a feeling I should have...." That's an illusion.

There are no ghosts, spirits or gods. All that exists is the material world and natural physical laws, and those are wonderous enough, and full of undiscovered mystery.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/2013 01:09PM by rationalguy.

I would add that most intuition is a learned behavior. It is a result of your brain analyzing past situations and applying past results to future situations. Intuition can also be a result of teaching your brain predetermined outcomes. For example I get nervous when I run a red light even though I have never gotten into an accident as a result of having run the red light.

Perhaps, and I'm even willing to believe that in my mother's case she felt like visiting, and then my grandmother subconsciously decided that was as good as it was going to get in this stage of her life, and shut down. Or that it was a massive coincidence.

That said, it's easier to acknowledge the existence of such things, and then show that they are not exclusive to the church, than to argue that such things do not exist.

It's called selection bias. We are flooded with thousands of thoughts, feelings, impressions, and promptings every day. Be we remember only the ones that left an affect -- we followed one and something good happened or we didn't follow one and something bad happened. Also, our brains are wired to construct cause and effect senerios -- even when they don't exist.

So that's why when one of the thousands of promtings that we get each day actually correlates with an outcome, a FPR is born.

+1000

You have a thought, one of thousands that go through your mind
in a day. Later something happens that is, in some way,
reminiscent of that thought.

WOW, a supernatural "prompting."

Of course the other 999 thoughts that didn't have a later echo
become totally forgotten.

Later when telling this story you re-remember it to make it even
more striking. This is done without any conscious guile; we
just like to fit patterns together neatly.

Did I tell you about the time that I was driving along and
suddenly, for no reason I could fathom, Jan and Dean's "Surf
City" started running through my head. I reached down and
turned on the car radio to the oldies station, and AT THAT
VERY MOMENT they were playing a totally different song.

From time to time the ENSIGN runs a story about a missionary who
had a prompting and didn't go a certain route etc. Later they
found out that there was some sort of violent event on that
route and the punch line is "we are rewarded for living close to
the Spirit."

If this is the picture they are trying to paint, then how about
the following. We go back through the ENSIGNs for the past 30
years. Collect all the stories about people being saved from
danger by "promptings" that they had because they were living
"close to the Spirit." Cut them out, paste them in a kind of
scrapbook and mail it to the parents of the next missionary
killed on his mission with the note: "I guess he wasn't living
close to the Spirit."

Of course, that would be extremely cruel for anyone to do
that. But that is what TSCC implies with all its FPRs about
"promptings" and "living close to the spirit."

It's a cruel thing to teach people because it's not true.

That's actually one of the things that kept me hanging on TSCC for longer than I should have - fear of losing "the spirit," because only good, active LDS church members can have it, right?

Well, I've been completely out for over ten years now and the "promptings" are just as strong as they ever were, only now I recognize it for what it is.

Intuition, your subconscious sending messages, or God not really caring what church you are a member of, take your pick depending on your preferred view! At any rate, the idea that only active LDS members get "guidance," is just another load of the crock they feed you to keep you under the hammer.

Intuition is what I was talking about. I just listen to my own feelings. I was always too quick to push my feeling aside in favor of a man with the priesthood as I was so well taught to do. And my intuition belongs to things happening in my life--not trying to coerce someone else to do something in their own. And I definitely don't share most of them with others. But then I didn't when I was mormon either.

But seriously...my Intuition is spot-on...when I can hear it through all the static from tscc, parental (& other adult) 'authority' figures which OVERRODE my precious inner resource...that's a hard one to forgive & shift, but at least I no longer wonder if good ole HG is putting *his* 2 cents in!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2013 03:08PM by brownie.