Lisa: All through history, self-anointed seers have predicted the end of the world and they’ve always been wrong.

Homer: But sweetheart, I have something they didn’t have. A good feeling about this!

– Simpsons: ‘Thank God It’s Doomsday’

It’s April 6th, the day that Mormon leaders pegged as Jesus’ birthday, way back in AD 1. (How that works with different calendrical systems, I have no idea.) Three BYU professors have pointed out problems with this view, but they were just using the science of men, while not one but two prophets of God have confirmed the April 6th birthday. Take that, uninspired smarty-pants scientists!

And this year, April 6th is even a Sunday. Now I seem to remember that back in the 80s, some Latter-day Saints were handing around Xerox copies (just like they email each other now) that Jesus was going to come again when April 6th fell on a Sunday. They were pushing hard for 1986. I have a very clear memory of being in my girlfriend’s bedroom that morning, suddenly remembering that it was April 6th, and thinking, “If Jesus comes today, I’m toast.” And then 6/4/86 came and went, as it had in 1844, 1914, 1975, and every other year.

I suppose Doomsday is on my mind because of this very sad story:

Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Would you follow this man into a cave? Some people did. They stayed there for about a month because he’d told them the world was about to end. They’ve been trickling out ever since.

But since the failed prophecy, he tried to kill himself by beating his head against a log. He’s apparently schizophrenic, poor guy, but the religion probably masked the schizophrenia. If a schizophrenic guy says that John F. Kennedy is with him all the time, or that Ghengis Khan is his best friend and constant companion, you get him some psychiatric help. But if he says that Jesus Christ is always with him, he’s just a normal religious guy. It may delay an accurate diagnosis, perhaps until it’s too late. Think this guy’s followers would have spent so much time in a cave if he’d said that James Dean was going to come again soon?

There’s a book called ‘When Prophecy Fails’ by Leon Festinger that figures into the later stages of my deconversion. Back in the fifties, there was this lady who thought she was getting messages from space aliens. (Weren’t we all.) The aliens said that the USA would be destroyed by a massive flood, but that spaceships would rescue those who believed. Festinger et al. infiltrated the group, posing as believers and investigators, to see what would happen when the prophecy failed. Fun, huh? Back in the good old days before ethics committees.

[SPOILER ALERT!]

They found the following:

  1. The leaders regrouped and moved the date ahead, figuring this time it would work.
  2. Strangely, they began to proselyte vigourously, which they’d never done before. One might see an analogy in Christianity.
  3. The people who stayed with the other group members on the weekend after the ‘disconfirmation’ tended to continue with the group. If someone happened to go away that weekend, they didn’t come back.

The book really did a number on my head, I must say. I began to see things about my own faith. I realised that people could have deep belief in absolutely loony and false things, and argue passionately for them. Which I knew, but now I saw myself in that mirror. I also saw that groups use a variety of techniques to keep people believing, like communal reinforcement. And I saw some interesting things about how members may try to usurp power over the group (as happened there), and I reflected on how the LDS church has managed that problem admirably well.

Once I realised that, yes, even I could be wrong about my spiritual ‘impressions’, then it became important for me to be a critical thinker, and to make sure my beliefs were grounded in evidence. And that was the beginning of the end for my religious life. No more doomsday mystics. No more mysticism at all, thank you.