On the philosophies of men, mingled with scripture

Summary: Mormons resist theology, thinking it to be the philosophies of men, mingled with scripture.  Instead, we ought to realize that the phrase originated in response to “orthodoxy”, and that it is orthodox dogma, not theology, that is to be avoided.  Indeed, theology gives us the tools to have dialogue about the nature of our spiritual experience, and helps us build loving communities of faith.

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In our temple creation narrative, we have Satan being asked what religion he teaches.  He says he teaches the philosophies of men, mingled with scripture.  In response, Adam rejects Satan’s teachings, looking for messengers from his Father in Heaven to teach him.

I see merit in this dialogue.  I grew up really delving deeply into philosophy and theology, not as a scholar, mind you, but more as a dilettante – a passionate hobbyist on understanding all the complexities of theology. 

Yet no amount of philosophy, no amount of analysis, could prepare me for life.  When my faith crisis came upon me years ago, my intellect could not save me from my self-destructive behaviors. 

Then, at some point in this Journey, I came to realize a relationship with a presence I have come to call Christ.  When I came to know this Presence, anything I could possibly know *about* god was complete nonsense. 

But to explain this presence, to understand what it means, when I go to church each Sunday and hear a correlated doctrine *about* god and all else, I am left to wonder why we must reject philosophical inquiry, why we must accept the correlated doctrine without question, when our personal experience – our truth – is so different.

Are we forbidden from exploring what our experience means?  Is talking about the nature of god so “sacred” that we must simply keep to the script, or not talk at all about it?

Eugene England grappled with the idea of who god is.  As he explored how god could once have been man and is now god, he pondered what this might mean.  Is god “progressing” he asked.  After all, it would seem that we are on a path of “eternal progression”, so when is it that we “arrive” at perfection?

When Eugene England opened up a theological discussion at BYU as to whether God progresses, Bruce R McConkie went on the warpath against him, declaring the notion the first of seven great heresies, and commanded England to echo what McConkie taught or remain silent.

In like manner, Orson Pratt was shut down by Brigham Young when Pratt explored the nature of God.

Yet here is the problem: Whether we like it or not, the notion of who or what god is, and how we come to believe it, is the work of theology.  And because “theology” is a kind of philosophical inquiry into the nature of god and our existence, LDS are doubly forbidden from exploring this line of thinking: both from the dogmatic statements by our leaders as well as our temple narrative.

But are we really forbidden? 

In 1990, the temple narrative was simplified, removing from it some elements that really were quite offensive to many.  While we cannot really talk about all parts that were removed, we can actually talk about the creation, garden, and telestial kingdom narrative – the interactions between God, Jesus, Adam, Eve, the Apostles, and Satan.

There was one more character in the pre-1990 account – a sectarian minister who was employed by Satan to teach religion.  While this was pretty offensive toward other religions – the minister was clothed in typical clerical garb – the narrative is important, because it sets the context of what is meant by condemning the “philosophies of men, mingled with scripture”.   Satan conducts an interview with the minister:

Satan asks, “Do you preach the orthodox religion?”

The preacher responds, “Yes, that is what I preach”.

Then, the preacher teaches the creedal, orthodox definition of god to Adam.  Although it is a bit of a caricature of orthodox belief, it is accurate enough to demonstrate how the orthodox definition of god is contradictory and confusing to most people. 

Adam’s answer is illuminating: “To me it is a mass of confusion”.

Then the preacher teaches Adam the orthodox definition of hell – one nearly verbatim from the beliefs of hell outlined in the Book of Mormon, to which Adam responds “I believe in no such place.”

All of the above dialogue was removed from the temple endowment in 1990.  But what remains in the endowment is the dialogue between the Apostles and Satan.  Satan is asked, “What is being taught?”, and Satan responds, “The philosophies of men, mingled with scripture.”

As I opened this post, I note that there is merit to this dialogue.  But the merit is significantly lessened when we lose the context of what the expression actually meant.  The religion being taught was *orthodoxy*: the religion based upon creeds and dogmas that had to be accepted without question in order to be “right thinking”/”orthodox” in one’s beliefs.

Properly understood, “philosophies of men” are not the problem here.  It is when a religion is based upon orthodoxy: the established dogmas and creeds derived from the “philosophies of men mingled with scripture”. 

So how is Orthodoxy the “Philosophies of Men, Mingled with Scripture”?

When we explore the history of Christian Doctrine – and the works of Jaroslav Pelikan are essential to understanding this, we realize that as the Christian church grew, it changed, it became institutionalized, and the idea of personal revelation needed to be set aside in order to create a consistent doctrine. 

The Council of Nicaea is illustrative. Hundreds of Bishops gathered together by request of Emperor Constantine, in order to systematize Christian doctrine so that it could be used to govern the empire.  There were too many controversies in Christian doctrine – too many schools of thought, and there needed to be order. 

The deepest controversy was on the nature of God, and how Jesus was both God and man. 

The reality is that no-one knew.  They were all administrators – politically connected men who were well established in Church leadership.  Many were smart, inspired, and paragons of thought and Christian practice.  Both Eusebius, the great church historian, as well as Nikolaos of Myra (St. Nick) were there.  They were good people earnestly striving to grapple with the most essential doctrine of the Christian religion: How can two persons, God the Father and Jesus Christ, be One God?

Much as they tried, they could not find an answer to this in scripture.  So they turned to the philosophies of men, or specifically, the prevailing Greek philosophy of the time: Neoplatonism.  In Plato, the essence of God is the Form of the Good – a concept outside of creation.  This essence is One, or in Greek, “homoousion” – “Single Essence” or “Singe Being”.  Thus, the Nicene Creed introduced that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit were three persons who shared one “homoousion” – One god in three persons.

And from that point going forward, Neoplatonic philosophy more or less formed the ideas around what the orthodox god is in essence:  Neoplatonism says the Form of the Good is incomprehensible, so thus, God is incomprehensible.  Neoplatonism says that the form of the good is outside of creation, thus god is outside of creation.  Omnipotence, omniscience, all the extremes of perfection and unchanging nature come from these same philosophies.  Then, scriptures are cherry picked to support the philosophies of men.  And voila!  Orthodoxy is born.

Then, around 1820, a fourteen or fifteen year old farm boy has a personal experience with god. In this vision, the young man learns that the orthodoxy of the creeds was an abomination to God, that those who profess such creeds are corrupted thereby, and they “teach for doctrine the commandments of men”.

These are strong indictments against orthodoxy.  Indeed, the beauty of the Restoration was the undoing of orthodoxy, opening up the singular idea that man could have a personal relationship with god and receive revelation.  In contrast, orthodoxy demands that if mankind receives revelation, it can only confirm that which has already been revealed – there is no concept of “line upon line, precept upon precept”, for in orthodoxy, we seek to preserve what was, rather than embrace what might be.

For many years, the LDS church eschewed orthodoxy.  There were generations of LDS amateur theologians, whether Orson Pratt, BH Roberts, John A Widtsoe, James E Talmage, OC Tanner, Sterling McMurrin, and Eugene England.  Yet try as they might, another camp exists within the Church leadership, taking their lead from Joseph Fielding Smith, to shut down any kind of theology that doesn’t conform to orthodoxy.  Smith’s son-in-law Bruce R McConkie wrote Mormon Doctrine, a catechism for Mormon orthodoxy, in parallel with Harold B Lee and Boyd K Packer’s development and enforcement of the Priesthood Correlation. 

And while LDS correlated beliefs do include Mormon-specific ideas, they also are meant to be amenable to the prevailing Christian definitions of god – the precise same ones that came from “the philosophies of men, mingled with scripture.” 

To Correlated Mormons, God the Father is an unchanging being from everlasting to everlasting, who has always been God, yet was once man like us.  God is all powerful, all knowing, and all good, yet allows evil (including random evil such as tsunami) because he does not intervene in free will.  God is present everywhere, but is a body of flesh and bones and cannot dwell in our hearts (an old sectarian notion). 

In other words, LDS have taken the creedal definition of god: unchangeable and omni-whatever, and added to it that God was once a mortal man and is corporeal.  We have taken an already internally inconsistent and logically impossible dogma and done the miraculous: we have made it worse.

I have been dragged into my bishop’s office over my public statement: “In the beginning man created God in his own image.  In the image of man created he Him.  Father and Son created he Them.”  Yet I stand by my statement, because I was talking about orthodoxy: the creedal definitions of god, which I reject.  The philosophies of men, mingled with scripture, do not make for good doctrine.  It’s about how we *define* god, and whether we are free to have our own experience with god.

To me, this is the core idea of Mormonism: God lives and reveals him and her self to us personally.  And yes, this may stimulate us to think about theology, because the experience of god essentially calls into question any orthodoxy that defines god in defiance to personal witness.

So what does this mean to the everyday Mormon experience?

Rather than shunning theology as the “philosophies of men, mingled with scripture”, I believe we ought to embrace theology as a way to understand the personal experience with god that we all have in our own Way and in our own time.  Theology gives us the tools to discuss our experience with others, and to better understand our own relationship with god. 

Let’s take, for example, our testimony meetings.  The idea of a “pure testimony” is one which makes five claims:

1. I know that God is our Heavenly Father and He loves us.

2. I know that His Son, Jesus Christ, is our Savior and Redeemer.

3. I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God. He restored the gospel of Jesus Christ to the earth and translated the Book of Mormon by the power of God.

4. I know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s Church on the earth today.

5. I know that this Church is led by a living prophet who receives revelation.

For all intents and purposes, this testimony is fully correlated.  It is a creed, although instead of “I believe” (“credo” in latin), we say “I know” – asserting a certainty in place of faith/belief.  From a theological point of view, this testimony is fraught with serious problems.  There is no epistemological justification for saying “I know” such claims other than one’s personal feelings.  And a witness or testimony should not focus on the claim but rather, the observation.

A testimony is a personal witness, what I have observed to be true.  If I am to witness that God is my heavenly father, and that he loves me, it might be good to express why I feel that way.  How is the idea of god as “heavenly father” relevant to me?  In what way does he love me?  My experience with this is relevant, not my claim.  If I believe that God loves me, I have witnessed that love by some experience, and to bear witness is to explain the experience, not the certainty claim.

Theology gives us the tools of understanding our relationship with god in a common, shareable language.  To be sure, the personal relationship with god transcends any theological construct – if I have experienced god or spirit in some way, it’s not because I have the right theology.  At it’s core, the personal experience is ineffable.  That said, we share our experiences in dialogue, so how I *explain* my experience, how I dialogue with others, has everything to do with theology. 

Theology gives us a framework for discussing who god is (and is not) and who we are.  This is the discipline of Ontology: the study of the nature of being.  Theology also helps us properly define how we come to believe things.  This is “Epistemology”: the study of the nature of belief (literally, “pistis” in greek is “Faith”).  When we realize that epistemology and ontology are the First Principles of any theology, then, we can equate that to something more understandable to Mormons. 

In Mormonism, the First Principle is “Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ”.  This is a theological construct.  It is the idea that “faith” is our epistemology, and Jesus Christ is our ontology.  We must not simply throw off this First Principle as “I know Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer”.  While I accept this as what we profess, we need to go deeper. 

First, we must realize that faith is “not knowing”.  Faith is a life-long process and relationship with truth.  We ever realize we don’t know, and then in that realization, we hope for things which are not seen, which are true.  Faith is the basis of our lives, as we seek to live with uncertainties, yet act with charity and love in faithfulness. 

And as we suggest who Jesus Christ is as Savior and Redeemer, we must go further, deeper, probe what it truly means to follow Christ, to become One with Christ.  We realize, theologically, that Jesus Christ repeatedly equated himself with YHWH – the I AM.  The Identity of Christ – the very nature of his being, and his being God is worthy of the deepest contemplation.  If we are to be like him, if we are to follow him, we must come to an understanding of what that means to us, to me personally. 

And Jesus prayed that we might be One with Him in exactly the same way he is One with God.  Such an idea has profound theological implications, both for ourselves, as well as for the nature of God.  When we say, As man is, God once was, and as God is, man may become, we are engaging in the deepest theology of all.

If God is our *ultimate concern*, then we must seek with all of our heart, might, mind and strength to follow god, to embrace god, to understand god, and all we can do to know god as a personal experience.  This need not be formal theology, but it is most definitely theology. 

And in realizing the importance of this quest, when we repeat the Shema, “Hear Oh Israel, I AM our gods, I AM One”, we are invoking the singular idea that not only is God One, but we are also One in God as we struggle in our theological quest.

Three Simple Questions

I think there are three deceptively simply questions in life:

1. Who am I?
2. How do I know?
3. What am I supposed to do about it?

I think Mormonism has a unique take on the answers to these questions. My believing self answers these questions like this:

1. Who am I?  I am a child of God.
2. How do I know?  Because the key of knowledge has been restored through prophets who cannot lead us astray.
3. What am I supposed to do about it?  Follow the prophet.  see (2).

Yet these three questions are much larger in scope than the simple LDS reflexive answers can provide.  As our faith matures, we realize the need for greater clarity:

1. Who am I?

By itself, our simplified Mormon identity as Children of God gives us no sense of unique identity --
all humans on this earth are equally children of God.  So what does it really mean? What is the nature of being co-eternal with god as his spirit-intelligence children?  What is the nature of God's being, if he was once like us and we are to become like him?  Where is Heavenly Mother in all this?  Is gender and our family identity persistent in both directions?

The Who am I question points us to a "First Principle" in both the metaphysical discipline of philosophy as well as religion:

Ontology: What is the nature of being?  

Mormonism does offer a unique ontology, although poorly explained in the correlated materials.  This ontology is best expressed in Lorenzo Snow's couplet, "As man is, God once was, and as God is, man may become".  We are divine beings on a divine journey.  Although Joseph and Brigham speculated on what this means - and often created confusion as a result -- we have a divine nature, origin, and destiny.

This fundamentally must change how we view others.  "God" is not some being beyond being, but rather, "God" is exalted humanity.  We ought to really explore how that affects our daily walk.  When we embrace who Jesus Christ truly is -- as both god and man, and yet, one of us and our Friend, then we must embrace that Jesus, the I AM, is the key to life itself.

Once we realize the Christ, this concept of being is not just about who am I, but also, who are you, who is Christ, and how do we connect to each other in love.  Life is about this connection.  Christ's first, second, greatest, last, and new commandment was to love one another as he loves us. This is what it means to have life in abundance.

2. How do I know?

When we look in detail at prophetic answers, not only is there insufficient knowledge within the words of the prophets, but we observe how inconsistent they are from the beginning. Prophets today are not prophetic, but rather, in the position of authority -- the only ones authorized to pronounce doctrine, yet they are neither scholars, scientists, nor particularly imbued with prophetic visions.  Thus, our reliance on their words as trumping science and independent investigation seems antithetical toward truth-seeking.

The "How do I know" question points us to another "First Principle" in both metaphysics as well as the gospel:

Epistemology: What is the nature of knowledge?

Mormonism offers five important epistemological concepts:

1. Truth is knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come. 
2. All truth is circumscribed into one great whole.  That is to say that science as knowledge of the material/physical world, and religion as a kind of faith knowledge need not be opposed, but in fact, should harmonize -- not by relegating science to a second seat, but rather, by using the right tools for the right purpose.
3. While eternal truth may be unchanging and without question, mankind's understanding of such truths is limited to our ability to understand.  We receive revelation through our minds and hearts in the language of our understanding.  
4. We learn truth line upon line, precept upon precept, thus our understanding of truths must be both progressive and evolutionary.
5. We learn through our own experience and not by dogma and creed.  Alma 32 teaches an epistemic approach that allows us to work in faith to gain knowledge by experimentation.  

In our faith, we ought never to be afraid of the truth, nor in any way cover up inconvenient facts of our past and doctrine because they are not "faith promoting".  According to Alma, faith is not knowledge, but rather, hope in something that is true -- or at least "not false".  To believe something that is false in not faith, but rather deception, and ultimately will cause faith crisis.  As disciples of a God of Truth, we must be rigorously honest in our approach to learning truth.

3. What am I to do?

Mormon authority requires absolute, unquestioning obedience and uncompromising loyalty to the brethren and church in all things.  (see GBH: "Loyalty" 2003).  The basic principle is (1) the Love of God is the first and greatest commandment, (2) If we love god we keep his commandments, and (3) his commandments are expressed through the voice of his anointed servants -- the prophets, seers, and revelators.  All of Mormonism, today, can be reduced this simple principle: you love god by obeying the brethren with exactness.

Yet this kind of obedience does not save us, does not develop us, but rather destroys us by virtue of making us vulnerable to despotism and demagoguery.  This is not the Plan of God, but rather, the one who required absolute obedience. We really need a much better way to sort out what we are to do.

The "What am I to do" question leads us to a third "First Principle" in both metaphysics as well as the gospel:

Ethics: How are we to act?

Our religion has many ethical and moral standards, yet they are most often focused on separating our behavior from others in the world.  We do not have a strong, simple moral ethic that guides our living, other than "obedience" to the dictates of our Church leaders. We have created a kind of Mosaic/Rabbinical/Talmudic law unto ourselves.

Yet Christ had a much simpler concept: to love one another as he loves us.  And how does he love us?
 he forgives, he is our friend, he is unconditional in his love.  Others have said as much: Confucius, Hillel, and almost every ethical system in the world: "That which we find hateful when done to us, we should not do to others."  Or positively said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Jesus, and Hillel, correctly claimed that this simple principle is the basis of all the law and the prophets. It ought to be the basis of how we act, and how we thoughtfully hearken to those who sit in Moses' prophetic seat.

Our Mormon ethic clarifies this kind of love in a way we ought to take very seriously: We are to lift one another's burdens, that they may be light, to mourn with those who mourn, and to comfort those who stand in need of comfort.  We witness in Mormonism of a godly love when we serve without reservation our communities.  I have seen this miracle of Mormon service -- we can make a difference by being Mormon in the Way Alma taught at the Waters of Mormon.

So,

Who am I?
How do I know?
What am I to do about it?

Jesus answers our questions by saying, "I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life".

Who am I?  I AM, and in being One with Christ, I have Life in abundance.

How do I know?  Because I am here to learn through my own experience -- I will make mistakes, but as I test, doubt, and discover, the truth will become clear to our minds through objective, empirical experiments, and to our hearts, through our hope, faith, and love.

What am I to do about it?  As the first disciples called themselves "Followers of the Way", we follow not men and their opinions, but rather, Christ in his words -- the basis of all ethical systems: to love one another as he loves us.

Alma's Epistemic

In Greek, the word for faith and belief is the same: πίστις / pistis.  In English, however, belief includes knowledge as the extreme of justified true belief, and our LDS testimonies confess that "We KNOW", not that we believe or we "have faith".  Greek never equates pistis as knowledge ("gnosis").  Pistis implies more of a trust or hope that something is true.

The study of how we believe things is called "epistemology", coming directly from pistis.  Although we often impute epistemology as the study of "knowledge", it is most appropriately focused on how we come to have faith in something.

Remarkably, our LDS scriptures give us a study in how we move from unbelief, doubt, and uncertainty, to a specific faith and belief in things.  Eugene England proposed that Alma 32 constituted and "epistemic" -- method of sorting out faith/belief -- although in all my readings of England, I don't think he spelled it out explicitly.

I would like to suggest that the need for an epistemic is absolute in our quest for answers throughout our trial of faith, or what many call a "faith crisis".  Joseph Smith suggested that Faith was the very first principle of the gospel, and most philosophy would suggest that epistemology constitutes the very first principle of any rigorous philosophy.  Descartes also laid out a first principle of sorting out his beliefs, by methodically doubting everything he believed, but Descartes was a little lax on providing a clear reconstructive methodology.

Alma provides that reconstructive methodology in his epistemic, which in my impression is quite simply this:

Alma 32:21: "Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true."

As I see it, faith lives within the continuum between certain belief and disbelief -- it is not the assertion that "I KNOW", but rather something less than certainty, yet still "hopeful" that the thing in which we have faith is "true" in some material way.

Alma goes further, to suggest that faith does not require belief, and suggests that faith doesn't start with belief at all, if we can but "exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can do no more than desire to believe..." (v27).  He then suggests having a willingness to try something out to see if it is true, and not to "cast it out by your unbelief" (v28).

The outcome of the test is not always that the seed grows.  He flatly states that if something doesn't grow -- doesn't edify, then "behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away".  Belief in something that doesn't grow or isn't true isn't faith at all, but rather something else.  Faith needs to be in something that edifies, that grows, and brings forth good things.

Once our faith has proven to bring forth fruit on the specific test of *a seed*, some may think that the work is done.  If I get a good feeling about the Book of Mormon, then, inductively, the Book is absolutely true in all of its dimensions, literally historical, and the person that brought it forth must be a prophet of god.

Alma rejects this inductive reasoning.  He says, "Your knowledge is perfect *in that thing, and your faith is dormant...and now behold, after ye have tasted this light is your knowledge perfect?  Behold, I say unto you, Nay; neither must ye lay aside your faith, for ye have only exercised your faith to plant the seed that ye might try the experiment to know if the seed was good."

He finally suggests that the epistemic construction of faith and belief is a continual process, to be embarked throughout life, to nourish both our faith and our knowledge.

Alma's epistemic is a basic outline of coming to a type of truth-value of specific things: planting a seed in one's heart (emotions) and seeing if it "grows" creates a knowledge not that the thing itself is objectively true, but rather normatively and valuatively true for me.  I can "know" that something, like the Book of Mormon uplifts me, inspires me, and causes me to do good, because I can experience such things.  But to imply that a given thing is "objectively true" -- as in a literal and true history -- would be an inductive fallacy.  I don't think, however, most LDS realize this inductive fallacy, and from my reading of Alma's requirement that "you're not done" is a rejection of induction.

Visually, I have tried to represent the spectrum of certainty ("perfect knowledge" as being more than just a binary something is either true or false.  As I see it, there is a realm of "perfect knowledge" which may be a very small set of things.  For everything in between, we have beliefs, optimistic desires, hope for which we want something to be true.  Belief, at least in English, doesn't clearly distinguish itself from "certain belief" or "justified true belief", therefore the term is not a useful designation for "faith" but the scriptures cannot avoid this coming from a single word in the greek.

There is a negative side of this spectrum, the area of skepticism and unbelief/disbelief.  These two words seem a little different in nuance: unbelief seems to be softer, whereas disbelief is a rejection of belief, and is closer in the spectrum to "certain disbelief".  Skepticism, properly defined, should reside at the mid-point in the spectrum.

Doubt is not on the spectrum, it IS the spectrum.  The difference between certainty and uncertainty is the extent to which we doubt.  The scriptures often juxtapose "doubt" in contrast to "faith"/"belief", creating a confusion that there necessary doubt (epistemic humility), and there is disbelieving doubt, which betrays less than epistemic humility -- Given the broad spectrum of doubt, it's all in the context -- I might politely say "I doubt that" when I mean, inside, "I disbelieve that".  Such is the fungible nature of the English language.

In creating this spectrum of faith, uncertainty, and doubt, the one thing that concerns me is that "Faith" is spectral in and of itself.  When Jesus chastised Peter for faltering AFTER walking on water, he said, "O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt." (Matthew 14:31).  Indeed, the better translation here of "doubt" was to waver -- Peter neglected to continue to "trust" the Lord in his "walking on water" experience.  Taken as a metaphor of how we walk in Christ, trusting Him, it is a powerful statement.  Taken out of context that doubt is the antithesis of faith is not supported by the scripture at all.

But the question remains, what constitutes the strongest "Faith"?  In my impression, the strongest faith is one that trusts with the least amount of certainty.  To trust when one believes with certainty is not a matter of strength, but a fait accompli.   To trust the Lord when one truly doesn't know, and to act in that trust, is indeed, to me, the strongest "Faith".  

Why I don't like apologetics

The Greek term "ἀπολογία"/"apologia" means "speaking in defense", or more specifically, "to defend something by making an excuse for it." The idea of speaking in defense of something suggests that the thing is right and true to start with, and the counter-proposition is false.

Thus, "apologetics", by very definition, starts with a position that a received religious position is true, and everything is as it should be. There is no quest for truth here, there is only a combative stance: to defend the received position with whatever means possible.  "Good" apologetics, if there is such a thing, tries to defend with logic and reason.  However, most apologetics, especially that practiced by Mormons in their attempt to defend the indefensible, are not characterized by reason or logic.

Good apologetics start with a thorough investigation of the facts, with an eye to defend, but not to deny facts that that are reasonably justified. In Mormon spheres, Brian Hales comes to mind, whose work on polygamy is very good. He still betrays huge confirmation bias in his conclusions, but at least he seeks honesty as to his facts.  In the Mormon world, he represents the best of apologetics, and is rare.

However, facts get in the way of defense, especially when facts are inconvenient.  I don't think there are many apologists anywhere that try to defend a "young earth" theory of creation, although the Bible is pretty clear on that.  One can always say that the Bible was written so long ago, that the ideas of time and space may not have been fully understood; so such things can be set aside as, well, not literally the case.  Defending biblical texts, and the historicity of biblical accounts has become as well a bit difficult, but then again, these events happened long ago, so any evidence to the contrary of the existence of Abraham or Moses, or what exactly Jesus said, is anyone's guess.  Apologists can defend, because there aren't many facts to the contrary.

Mormonism suffers from a different problem.  The founding events of Mormonism are very recent compared to events in the Bible.  What people said and did is much more accessible in historical accounts -- there are many "facts" about how Mormonism started -- many more facts than exist for Christianity in general.  And, not all these facts favor the received accounts.

Mormons grow up with a sanitized view of Mormon history -- very much made "holy" so as to promote "faith".  This might work well if the person lived 2000 years or so ago, but when modern history is sanitized, there are enough contemporaneous accounts to reveal the unsantized account to somebody.  And today, with the availability of the Internet and wide dissemination of information, the sordid facts of Mormon history, the origin of its doctrines, and the nature of its practices and rules are readily available to anyone who wants to look.

But Mormons are told not to look -- this is Rule #1 of Mormon apologetics.  Don't read that "anti-Mormon" literature -- it's all lies.  Except, that now that real live historians have had a chance to discover the inconvenient facts, Mormon apologists, the self-appointed defenders and interpreters of Mormon scripture, can avoid the bullet of the facts.

So they changed their strategy.  Today, a number of LDS apologists no longer attempt to create mind-numbing propositions to defend the historicity of the Book of Mormon.  Instead, they seek to discredit and smear anyone the temerity to point out these facts to believing members.  They poison the well of anyone who attempted critical investigation into church claims, by attempting to demonstrate that the person who is pointing out the facts is an anti-Mormon apostate, a "Wolf in sheep's clothing", or an Antichrist.. This tactic to label and smear their perceived enemies taints the entire Mormon apologetic profession.

Once a critic or historian has been labeled as "unworthy", then Rule #1 kicks in.

Oh this should not be so.  I grew up in the LDS church, in what was called the "Mission Field" where our LDS faith was something we cherished against a very non-LDS society.  We valued the idea that Joseph Smith and others who founded this religion were about restoring the "truth" of the gospel.  I learned from my LDS parents that should not be afraid of truth in the least.  J Reuben Clark, a prominent LDS Apostle and leader, said, "If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed."

To me, the Gospel of Jesus Christ starts with a quest for truth Alma called "Faith", then moves quickly to an open and inclusive understanding and relationship with Christ as the very "I AM", the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

What does "Faith" have to do with "Truth"?  To me, Faith is the epistemic Middle Way between knowing something is true and knowing something is false.  Faith is "not knowing".  Paul speaks of Faith as being the evidence of things not seen.  In our LDS scripture, we have a prophet Alma speaking about faith as being this:

Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.  (Alma 32:21)

This begins a discourse by Alma about faith, where he presents faith as an "epistemic" -- or a way of figuring out how to "know" something.  This realm of "epistemology" is critical to belief, and as Joseph Smith once said that the very first principle of the Gospel was faith, so also does all learning and philosophy begin with the "First Principle" of epistemology.  And well should it be the First Principle: "Epistemology" -- the study of "knowledge" comes directly from the Greek "πίστις", pistis, which means "Faith", and not "knowledge".  Hence, the first principle of all of our investigations should be to understand how we come to know things, reject things, and maintain an open mound about that which is in the Middle.  The epistemic Middle Way is thus "Faith".

Hence, according to Alma, faith does not start from a position of confidence or certainty. It starts with a desire to believe in something, and then to practice and experiment to explore that thing with an open mind (do not cast out for unbelief). Action is involved. And the outcome could to cast the seed away, not because of disbelief, but because the seed is not good. This negative aspect of Faith is never discussed in apologetics or in the church. yet it is right there in the Book of Mormon: "Therefore, if a seed groweth it is good, but if it groweth not, behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away." (Alma 32:32)

But let's say that the seed is good, and it bears good fruit. The typical missionary response is that this means that the entire belief structure is good and true. I read the book of Mormon, i ponder it, i pray about it, and voila! i feel good about it. This means, according to our "all or nothing, all true or all fraud" proposition, that every aspect of the book of Mormon is also true, that it is authentic history (why would god lie?), that Joseph Smith never committed fraud and was a true prophet (why would god pick a con-man for a prophet), and the Salt Lake church is true (god promised that this restoration would never be taken from the earth).

I don't think that I am exaggerating to say that this inductive method of asserting the truth of the church is based and dependent on a spiritual experience -- a good feeling -- about the Book of Mormon.

This position of asserted certainty is at the heart of Mormon apologetics. The credibility of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith's integrity must be defended at all costs, lest the entire assertive truth of the church falls.

The problem is the inductive leap from a good feeling to an acceptance of the aggregate factuality of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the Church is a horrifying example of fallacy by induction. Ironically, the Book of Mormon itself warns against such a leap:

"And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good. And now, behold, is your knowledge perfect? Yea, your knowledge is perfect in that thing, and your faith is dormant; ... now behold, after ye have tasted this light is your knowledge (of the whole tree) perfect? ... Nay, for ye have only exercised your faith to plant the seed that ye might try the experiment to know if the seed was good." (Alma 32:33-36)

If I read the Book of Mormon and have a spiritual experience with it, what does that mean? What seed am I planting? What does the plant I planted look like? Does my spiritual experience prove historical factuality? I have read Les Miserables, the Lord of the Rings, and many ancient Chinese myths, I have felt powerful experiences with them. My most powerful experience was reading Chapter 17 of Lao Tzu. Should I assert that Victor Hugo, JRR Tolkien, or Lao Tzu were prophets of God because I am inspired by them? (actually, I think they were, in a way) Did there have to be a real person named Jean Valjean? Bilbo Baggins? Do I have to accept the legend of Lao Tzu reciting his 5,000 characters of the Dao De Jing to the keeper at the Gate?

Of course not. Who would ever claim that I need to believe some prophetic calling of Hugo and Tolkien or some bogus origin story of Lao Tzu to realize that divine words are everywhere.

Yet to up the stakes, Mormon apologists have demanded that the only acceptable interpretation of the book of Mormon is a literal one. Those who leave the church accurately say that the church, writ large, insists on a literal interpretation of the Book of Mormon. The time has come that the evidence against the Book of Mormon as authentic history is conclusive -- it is only a matter of time before every LDS will learn of the facts. Many LDS will stubbornly ignore the evidence, being justified by the mental gymnastics and complete disregard for logic embodied by FAIR's apologists.

Yet for an entire rising generation of people entering adulthood, for those who are willing to look on the internet, and even read the LDS gospel topics, the facts are inescapable, and the literalized methods of FAIR do far more harm than good. At this point, there are no good tools, acceptable by the church, that helps people embrace the spiritual value of the Book of Mormon, divorced from its literalism.

By purporting to providing the answers to the factual issues in the Church, and only being able to discredit logically reasonable explanations, FAIR does much more harm than good.

The First Principle of the Gospel

It occurs to me this morning that the "First Principle" of the Gospel is "Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ". In my LDS experience, however, faith is not of any primacy, and while we speak of Jesus Christ, it seems that we are stuck in the literal and supernatural things he represents.

In Church. the first principle we teach is obedience, that we are here to be tested to see if we will obey, and we must do all we can do to be saved. Then, and only then, after all we can do, we are saved by grace. This obedience is not to the teachings of Jesus Christ, but rather, to the words and will of the Prophets, who speak in the Lord's name. Obedience to each and every pronouncement of the prophets is, by LDS definition, following Christ, because the Prophets are the Lord's representative. "By mine own voice or the voice of my servants, it is the same." (D&C 1)

Exploring a bit, I searched on "first principles of the gospel" in Google, just to see what came up. The first four links direct me to LDS . org, number 5 is the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, and number six is a speech given by a college professor at BYU on the topic.

While I do think that the LDS church employs a bit of "Search Engine Optimization" on key themes important to Mormonism, it's interesting that our Mormon thought starts with a term "First Principles". One would and should think that such concepts are important. More importantly, if "Faith" is truly the first principle, then where does "obedience" actually fit in?

To read the BYU professor's talk, he starts with the topic in Preach My Gospel about Faith in Jesus Christ, but takes it a step further. To him, "Faith exists when absolute confidence in that which we cannot see combines with action that is in absolute conformity to the will of our Heavenly Father. Without all three—first, absolute confidence; second, action; and third, absolute conformity—without these three all we have is a counterfeit, a weak and watered-down faith."

"Absolute confidence"..."absolute conformity"...without these, we have "counterfeit faith".

I wonder. I truly wonder.

When we speak of "First Principles" in the quest for truth, usually we mean that there is something upon which our entire quest depends--something so important that we must embrace this before everything else. My fundamental question is whether "Absolute Confidence" is an appropriate beginning to any quest for truth -- I do not believe it is.

This, to me, is the heart of faith crisis: the idea that we think of faith as something it is not, and we have not created the right "First Principles" in our faith journey to properly navigate our Way.

We have been told, repeatedly, that our Church and gospel are an all-or-nothing proposition: "Each of us has to face the matter—either the Church is true, or it is a fraud. There is no middle ground. It is the Church and kingdom of God, or it is nothing." (Hinckley, 2003) While the term "true" could be an indicator of "direction" or "allegiance", the more common interpretation of "true" has a more epistemic (how we know things) meaning: that which is without material error or subterfuge.

As a result, we embrace a testimony in the church that makes epistemic claims about the truth of the church and gospel: I know that the book of mormon is an ancient record, translated by the gift and power of god, I know that we have a living prophet on the earth, I know that if we follow the prophets we cannot go astray. Such claims of "I know" do not allow for the humility of "I believe", or the recognition that something may be false. It is an expression of certainty, of knowledge. A "pure testimony" makes these claims.

Yet we come to a realization that within our realm of "Absolute Confidence" that there are things for which we realize do not justify such certainty. Perhaps, by doing a little digging among the LDS . org site, we find that the Book of Mormon wasn't actually "translated" at all, but rather, was somehow expressed through "scrying" -- peering into a seerstone in a hat. Perhaps we find that the Book of Abraham -- what it says it is in the Pearl of Great Price, and authentic translation of writings of Abraham by his own hand -- has absolutely nothing to do with the actual characters in papyrus or especially in the facsimiles in the book itself. There are dozens of things for which we discover that the Church and gospel are in some ways "not true".

What, then, happens to our "Absolute Confidence" in the Church when we discover there is a profound flaw? Is "Absolute Conformity" justified if we come to know that there are some things in the Church's teachings that are false?

Rene Descartes was faced with much this same problem. He had discovered as he matured in life that there were a number of things he held to be absolutely true in his youth that are no longer true. This profoundly disturbed him, so he set aside some time from his work and teaching to meditate on first principles.

Importantly, his first meditation was to discover that his entire schema of knowledge was potentially flawed, and being such, the only way to really build the proper foundation was a complete "destruction" of his schema of knowledge. He not only had doubts, but embraced them fully, realizing that only by doubting everything could he build the proper foundation.

Many who read Descartes' first meditation call this kind of doubt "hyperbolic doubt". The reality is much deeper. Descartes was suggesting a methodical approach to determining truth, and part of that method was to recognize, in humility, that we don't know. Methodical doubt is the first step on a journey towards truth.

But in this process of methodical doubt, the idea of completely discarding our schema of what we know is so profoundly unintuitive to members of the Church, it's never a good idea to muse in public. I frequently say, here, that I do not *believe* a single truth claim of the church. I do not *believe* in prevailing omni-whatever definition of god (although Descartes most certainly did). Such statements rapidly escalate into an emotional issue for members of the church, immediately labeling me as a "nonbeliever" or an "atheist", which, while technically accurate terms, do not mean the same thing for me than for those who are labeling me.

But the First Principle of the gospel is not doubt by itself. Doubt simply is the beginning of refining faith. To be clear, the First Principle of the Gospel is "Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ". I'm going to suggest that when we refer to this as a "First Principle", we need to fully understand what "Faith" and "the Lord Jesus Christ" mean, not in a dogmatic sense of "doctrinal" answers, but rather, in terms of how these two things, together, constitute a "First Principle".

When we think of First Principles in the pursuit of truth, it's important that we start with some basics:
1. We need to address how we can "know" things. This area of concern is formally called "Epistemology". Curiously, the greek term for "faith" is "pistis" as a noun, and "epistomai" as a verb. In short, "Epistemology" is entirely about "Faith": how we come to know truth.

2. We need to understand the nature of the how things are, how they exist. This area of concern, discovering the nature of being, is formally called "ontology". The identity of things, how we label them, is all part of this exploration of ontology. Ontology asks questions like "Who am I?" "Who or what is god?" "What is the nature of existence?"

These two disciplines are essential to our quest for truth.

With respect to Epistemology, we need to understand how we can make the claim "I know that X is true" or "I know that X is not true", and what our approach shall be for that which is between these two poles of "knowledge". We will discover that "Faith" is the epistemic Middle Way between these two poles: the idea that Faith is not certainty, it is the humble recognition that we don't know, but given that we hope for things, we are willing to try them and to discover the truth of them.

With respect to Ontology, we will come to embrace an understanding what it means to say "I AM", and realizing this, we will come to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as a being who was fully god and fully man, who marked the path and led the Way to an integrative oneness with all that is.

As LDS, we will discover along this journey that we have unique approaches to both epistemology as well as ontology. Alma 32 will express an epistemology that redefines "faith" away from assertive belief into an experiential reconstruction of both knowledge and faith. As we embrace the LDS view of the plurality and unity of gods, we will come to a unique ontology: we exist as eternal beings in an emergent progression toward godliness, as does the being we call "Heavenly Father". To realize the intimate name of God is "I AM", and eternal constants of the universe are its matter and laws, give unique ontological insight into our divine nature. Jesus revealed this nature in John as he spoke of us being in the present gods, and that he was "I AM".

Let us therefore explore the First Principle of the Gospel in a unique light. To embrace "Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ" is to recognize that I need to understand how I know things and what those things are in the first place. Such exploration cannot occur when the cup of our minds are full of preconceived dogma. We must cast aside everything we think we know, and come to a methodical deconstruction and reconstruction of faith.

This is the Journey of a lifetime.

Shall we walk upon this Way?

Doubt

-   Photo is courtesy of Amy Logan Wengreen, used by permission.

In Utah, the biggest parade of the year is the Pioneer Day parade on July 24th, celebrating the 1947 and later pioneers who came to Utah to be free of religious persecution in the east and midwest.  Each year, communities including religious groups march and exhibit floats, bands, and other stuff to represent something they're proud of. 

This year, a group in Springville, UT marched as the 2000 stripling (young) warriors of Helaman.  This story, from the Book of Mormon, tells of a number of very young men who were recruited to defend their country.  While untrained militarily, they were very believing and faithful, obeying each order with exactness, leading them to be successful in every battle with no loss of life on their side.

Now they never had fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them.  And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it.  (Alma 56: 47-48)

For some who saw this parade, the idea of not having any doubt was deeply troubling to them -- we all have doubts of one kind or another.  Doubt is a very important emotion -- it prevents us from accepting things that aren't true.  It helps us survive against deception.  It helps us question our assumptions, and move to a position of knowing truth, if the facts are available to us.

Unfortunately, our culture doesn't countenance doubt.  Within religions, particularly the fundamentalist kind, doubt is a sign of weakness in the faith.  So, the story of Helaman's 2000 stripling warriors is a signal to the doubters to cast aside doubts and march with the faithful...

And that can be painful, indeed.

I have a different view of doubt.  To me, "doubt" is a temporary, unresolved negative feeling toward a given belief. If I no longer believe a given thing, it's no longer in "doubt".  If I decide that the evidence is insufficient to make a belief decision, then I can suspend judgment, but again, I am no longer in 'doubt'.  Doubt is the moment of hesitancy, the point at which one feels that a thing believed may not be 'true'.  I see doubt as a necessary, temporary feeling, motivating me to resolve the area of doubt, and there is a time and place for doubt.

Where "doubt" doesn't make sense.

The story of the 2000 stripling soldiers equates a lack of doubt with success in a military setting.  This is entirely reasonable.  "Doubt" can impair the warrior's ability to act decisively and courageously. If I have been given an order to take a hill, then my exclusive focus is to take the hill without questioning or doubting the merit of taking the hill. This does not mean that I think that there is merit in taking the hill: what I believe is irrelevant to the action taken in faith--therefore I suspend both belief and disbelief and simply do what needs to be done.

Yet, I wonder in a military situation whether 'not doubting' is appropriate in all military situations.  No soldier in a modern, ethical army should obey an order that violates law.  For example, I would hope that soldiers have enough doubt as to question wether their actions might harm civilians, and indeed, in modern armies, soldiers are trained over and over to recognize illegal and unethical situations, and to act accordingly.

Battle is often a difficult endeavor, and decisions are often clouded by the fog of war.  In the actual engagement of battle, the thinking has often to be set aside in favor of training.  In this sense, the training of the 2000 stripling warriors, paradoxically by their mothers, was effective in making correct decisions in the instant of the battle -- they did not doubt, because their training had been effective.  I suspect that part of that training, by mothers who did NOT typically go to war, was to make prudent moral decisions: their training had been sufficient to act morally and effectively without having to ponder and hesitate.

In leading people, establishing a direction for the future, I find that I often doubt as to what direction I should go, fearing failure if I make the wrong choice.   But to the extent that this doubt remains in my mind, hesitating my choices as a leader, I am also making a choice -- to do nothing.  And, such 'doing nothing' can be the wrong choice.  Leadership isn't being certain about the direction, it's about being decisive on the direction when such is necessary.  Leadership demands, at times, decisiveness, as noted by Paul:

For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for battle? (1 Corinthians 14:8) 

Yet, again, Paul is invoking the battle metaphor for a non-military situation.  In fact, when the metaphor is read in context, it has nothing at all to do with doubt or inability to take action: it's about the futility of speaking in tongues in a preaching situation, because the hearers won't understand the words -- it's about the opposite of doubt: clarity.

Another important battle metaphor from another faith tradition is that of the Bhagavad Gita, in a battle between two kindreds fighting for the right to rule, Arjuna, the leader of one goes with his charioteer to observe the battlefield.  His charioteer is Krisha -- god -- and he does not want to fight.  Arjuna has doubt.  But Krishna helps him overcome doubt to understand that there is a time and place for decisiveness - in any battle.  Later in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna that the "field" of battle is really "the body", or in other words, the battle is within us.  The warriors on the battlefield are our attributes -- our gunas -- the things that may serve in some time and place, and in others, not.  When it is time, it's important to kill, or cast aside, our "gunas" -- our desires, our appetites, our passions, and do what is needed. 

But these stories are myths and metaphors: whenever we literalize them, or take them too far, we run the risk of absurdity: we are not military.   For years I set aside the Gita as having a very narrow worldview of killing one's kindred -- I had been taking the text literally.  But when I realized that the Gita is absolutely metaphorical -- a myth that never was but always is -- I learned that the war we are fighting, if any, is with our own selves, to overcome the gunas (worldly attributes) that bind us down and limit our freedom to act with authenticity.
So, to the extent that doubt impairs our ability to act when action is demanded, then doubt is not appropriate.  I might go so far as to say that at this point, it is too late for doubt -- a decision is required, and the time for training has long passed.  In these moments, making a choice, being confident in that choice, and moving forward.  Yet these moments of decisiveness are few and far between.  Our lives are filled with time where we can make considered decisions, where we have time, and where that time allows us to...doubt.

 

Where doubt is absolutely necessary

Doubt is an integral feeling within our emotional mind.  It occurs when we encounter thoughts or sensory input that call into question what we have already stored in our belief structure.  To be precise, I will use the term "schema" to refer to the structure of our stored beliefs. 

We don't store information in our schema in nice neat folders.  We receive input from our senses and our thoughts, and our minds need to store them somewhere.  Instead of an image or recording of those thoughts or sensory impressions, we store associations to what we already have in our schema.  We see a chair made of brown wood in a particular location and we associate that object "this chair" with our sense of what "chair" means, as well as to other objects: wood, "brown", etc.  We may store this chair in our episodal memory -- with this place and time.  Each of these data add to our schema by association. 

Importantly, if we have discovered something about this chair, we may have a positive or negative experience about the chair.  As we sit on a chair, we learn it's usefulness -- we trust the chair.  This feeling of certainty is important, because we have identified "chair" as being something that keeps us alive, it helps us -- we trust it... We have faith in the chair.  As we have come to understand the neurological workings of our minds, "faith" is a neural link to the "certainty" emotion within our mind's schema.

What happens when we sit on a chair and it breaks?  We hurt ourselves, or we certainly see how we could have hurt ourselves.  Within our minds, this new data causes a negative emotional association within our schema about this chair, and potentially all chairs we have associated into our schema.  The link to "certainty" is now in conflict with the link to "fear".  In fact, our minds utterly detest this feeling of fear about something we formerly held as certain.  On a large scale, this feeling of contempt is called "cognitive dissonance", but on the scale of a singular event, it is called "doubt". 

Thus, we cannot avoid "doubt".  It is part of our ability to learn. It keeps us alive, as we learn, through our own experience, to distinguish things that are good for us, or evil for us.  While all other chairs may be ok, there is something now that causes us concern about the integrity and safety of that chair.

But here is the thing: if we allow this negative emotion to paralyze our feelings about all chairs, then we have made an incorrect association within our schema.  Curiously, the permanent neural associations are not made immediately within the mind -- neural connections take time to establish themselves.  Thus, in a learning experience, when something negative happens, it's important to sort out quickly what the cause of the problem was.  For example, when a child learns to ride a bicycle, if s/he falls, it's important to get the child back on the bike quickly in order to complete the positive nature of the experience.  Removing the child at the point of negative experience tends to leave in place a negative experience about bicycles. Thus, when we allow guilt to fester, to remain unresolved, there is a danger of extending the neural negative association beyond where it is appropriate.

Returning to the chair, if I allow the experience of the broken chair to sit in my mind, or to affect my impression of all chairs, then my doubt is harmful to me.  On the other hand, if I come to realize that "this chair" has a specific attribute or flaw, then my "doubt" is resolved: I have a justified belief that such attributes or flaws are the issue, and not all chairs. Once I know the truth, then my faith is restored in chairs, albeit with a new-found exception.  My schema has been altered by this experience, or in much simpler terms: I have learned something.

This is what I might call "experiential learning", or "learning through our own experience to distinguish good and evil".  It is a powerful method of teaching and learning.  It involves making mistakes, experiencing doubt, and by resolving doubt at the point of experience, we become more intelligent and enlightened beings.  Being open to doubt allows us to be humble: to recognize that we could be wrong, and then to correct it based upon the new facts.

Doubt as the Antithesis of Authoritarian Faith

 

In the military metaphor and in the example of the chair, "faith" was a learned behavior -- a trust in something that empowered action.  For stripling warriors, their action in faith, without doubting, empowered them to be successful in their military endeavors.  In the case of the chair, my faith in the usefulness of a chair means I can confidently act -- to sit down on the chair and make use of it.

I have no doubt that unresolved doubt is nearly the opposite of faith.   One cannot trust in faith that which one does not trust due to doubt.  But what kind of "faith" fears doubt?  If doubt is a necessary part of learning, then shouldn't doubt be part of the enhancement of our faith?  Once I understand what flaws there are in certain chairs, then is not my faith more mature in chairs?

To answer these questions, we need to go back to the concept of our mental schema -- how we construct what we believe within our minds.  There is another type of learning than "experiential learning".  We call it "indoctrination", and it is used by authoritarian systems to instill the principles required by the system. 

Authoritarian systems dictate a specific, hierarchal schema of knowledge and behavior.  The hierarchal nature of the schema is due to the underlying core principles of the authoritarian system -- the autocratic rule it must instill upon its adherents.  Within fundamental religions, the core principles are that an authoritarian god has dictated his will verbatim to his prophets, and that this prophetic word is infallible and inerrant.

Authoritarian systems often try to monopolize the education process.  We see examples of this in the way the Taliban have attempted to terrorize teachers and children within secular schools, and the push toward teaching creationism or "intelligent design" in order to preserve the infallibility of the literal interpretation of the Bible. 

Authoritarian systems use the process of "indoctrination" to create in the minds of adherents their specific hierarchal schema, or tree-structure, of knowledge of good and evil.  Concepts such as infallibility and inerrancy are used to connect this schema with the emotional feeling of certainty.  Distinctly illogical concepts and behaviors are taught as being essential, in order to alter the adherent's ability to use logic as a means to determine truth -- instead, "truth" is defined within the bounds of the schema, and anything else is suspect.

Doubt in the authoritarian teaching is considered a weakness, and is never countenanced.  Thus, adherents in an authoritarian system tend to have to put aside feelings of doubt, and embrace the authoritarian schema without questioning or doubt.  Manipulative techniques such as splitting ("You're either for us or against us", "It's either all true or the biggest fraud in history"), combined with lock-in techniques holding entire families into the system and shunning those who doubt create a hostile environment for any doubt.

When Doubt Leads to Faith Crisis

Authoritarian control over doubt does not last forever, particularly in today's climate of open information sharing via the internet and other means.  As the adherent to an authoritative faith schema shelves doubt, at some point, the doubt is too overwhelming to ignore. 

I think of this moment of faith crisis is a collapse of the authoritarian schema.  When the core principles of infallibility are questioned and found wanting, and when the authoritarian approach has been to split the adherent with the false, "all or nothing" dichotomy, then all the values and doctrines associated with the hierarchal, dogmatic schema are likely to collapse as well.  The adherent in such a condition finds him or herself without an anchor within the faith.  To those friends and family still within the authoritarian system, such a faith collapse is seen as simply the working of evil "doubt" or the influence of "Satan", "the World", or other such sources.  To those still in the system, faith collapse and doubt are simply weaknesses or trials to overcome.  Friends and family will hope and pray that the doubter will return to the blissful position of full faith.

This forces a choice on the doubter: either to ignore the cognitive dissonance caused by flaws in the core principles of the authoritarian system, or to leave the system entirely, if no middle ground is found. 

Let me explore concrete examples.  For those in Christian fundamentalist systems that insist in biblically inerrancy, infallibility, and literalism, the creation stories are not to be questioned.  Miracles stated in the New Testament that are clearly outside of scientific possibility are literal facts.  When a person within that system learns the history and origin of scripture as taught by sholars, coupled with legitimate science, then the literalism becomes untenable: The earth was not created in six days or even six thousand years.  Adam and Eve did not live at the same time based upon DNA analysis, and death was not introduced into the world by virtue of partaking of forbidden fruit.  These are clearly and unambiguously myths, embraced by a semitic tribe and incorporated into the Torah used by Jesus and his followers.

To Mormons, the sacred experience is the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham.  These are posited as absolute evidence that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God and restored the original Church of Jesus Christ on the earth.  Doubters in the literalism of the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham are effectively shunned in the Church: the former apologists who left the Maxwell Institute to form their own self-appointed "Interpreter of Mormon Scripture" categorically reject any non-literal approach to the Book of Mormon as incoherent and apostate.  Yet, the evidence against Book of Mormon literalism is overwhelming, and the evidence against the Book of Abraham is concrete and absolute: Joseph Smith did not know how to translate egyptian heiroglypics.  Period.

Mormons are particularly attuned to prophetic infallibility.  Questioning leaders or doubting that which is proclaimed at General Conerence will find one on the way to apostasy and within a church court if one is not careful.  Statements like "The Lord will never lead the prophet astray" must be reconciled with flawed principles such as "Adam-God" and "Blacks and the Priesthood" -- indeed the Prophets did lead the the prophet astray and all the members along with him in many occasions.  Early leaders warned against the principle of prophetic infallibility, but today's church instills it in children from the earliest years of primary.

Where does that lead the person who no longer can accept scriptural or prophetic infalliblity?

As I see it, there are some ways through this faith crisis:

1. I can return to full faith, ignoring the evidence that these texts are mythological qne that prophets have always been fallible.  The challenge is that doubt will always be in the my schema.  I will have to live with unresolved doubt, trying to reconcile scientific fact with scriptural and prophetic infallibility and literalism.  Living with such cognitive dissonance and doubt can adversely affect the soul, and prevent me from embracing the full spectrum of truth and life.
2. I can pretend.  This is to live in constant conflict with the faith system, and to struggle constantly with personal integrity and authenticity.  While I may have resolved cognitive dissonance by simply rejecting faith, the lack of authenticity of this path is cancerous to the soul.
3. I can leave the faith system entirely.  True, there may be consequences to friends and family who remain behind in the faith, but if personal integrity is important, then perhaps my friends and family will understand.  They often do not, and this path often does not retain those family and friend relationships.
4. I can adopt a Middle Way -- one where I am in charge of my spirituality, and while I may participate in a given faith system, I no longer am bound to its authoritarian control of my personal faith schema.  I am honest about my personal beliefs or lack thereof, but at the same time, compassionate and accommodating of those who don't share my beliefs. Of the three, this is not only the least common, it may be the most difficult.

It may be obvious that I favor the Middle Way approach.  I have tried all of them, and found them wanting.  On the other hand, the Middle Way has helped me embrace the good things of my chosen religion, while being open to many possibilities from many different sources.

The Mormon Truth Heuristic

This is a work in process -- I'm posting to save it and get initial thoughts.

Mormons often state in their testimony, "I know the Church is true".  It's a remarkable claim, full of hope, passion, and certainty.  To those outside the culture, particularly from other, competing faiths, it seems to be arrogant as well.  It isn't intended to be, but rather, it intends to be a confession of faith (not knowledge) that the Church (what Mormons call their religious organization, culture, and everything else with it) is true and relevant to testifier, personally.  Those may not be their words, but that is the intent. 

Those of us trained in critical thinking and in epistemology find the statement also to be deeply problematic.  To know something is to have justified true belief in it -- proof from evidence that the thing being testified to is indeed 'true' and not in any way false.  Yet the statement of 'knowing' something to be true when there is no proof has deep precedent:

Examine Job's claim:

 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.

Job 19:25-27

This powerful witness is Job's prophetic utterance: he 'knows' by some means that an unseen being exists, will stand on the earth, and that after death, in the flesh, Job will see his redeemer.  This "I know" (hebrew "yada", and in the Septuiguint "oida") is quite certainly "knowledge".  From the point of view of evidence, of epistemological validity, Job has no basis, not justification for this belief, therefore he has no "knowledge" of it, yet he says he "knows".

Moving forward to the Gospels, both Peter and Martha are found to testify that about something that is not apparent from the evidence.  They do not use the term "know" but it is quite certain language:

Jesus saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.

Matthew 16:15-17

Although Peter isn't saying he knows, he makes a propositional, definitive truth cliam, "Thou art the Christ".  How can he make this claim?  He makes it not through tangible evidence, but through exclusively a spiritual kind -- the witness of the "Father which is in heaven."  Again, the critical thinking epistemologist may not be satisfied, because such an intangible witness might as well be a personal feeling of certainty.  While valid and important to Peter, it does not provide evidence except to the Peter himself. 

 

In the case of Martha, she states unequivocally the following to Jesus upon the death of Lazarus:

Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.
John 11:27

The critical thinking epistemologist might approve of the term 'believe' in this case.  Even moreso, the writer of John uses the verb "πιστεύω"/pisteuo, which means more of "faith" rather than belief.  This expression is quite distinct from Job's "yada"/"oida" of certain knowledge, but it is also not "belief".  Pisteuo involves a working trust in something: more like "I trust (accept, agree, hope) that thou art the Christ".  As evidence of that trust, she was finished with the conversation expressing her concerns about Lazarus' death, and went back to her business.  She acted on her faith by turning over her concerns to Jesus and moving on, trusting that he had things under control.

 

These three ways of expressing faith-based knowledge -- Job in saying "I know", Peter in making a certainty proposition, and Martha in expressing faith -- all are part of the way religious people confess their faith.  It should be no surprise that Mormons make similar claims about their own faith.  But how do Mormons form their truth claims?  

 

The Mormon Truth Heuristic -- Short Form

 

There are two terms in this that need to be defined: Truth, and Heuristic.  First, from Joseph Smith:

Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.
Doctrine and Covenants 93:24

A remarkable statement: simple, precise.  It is controversial in using the term 'knowledge' in it, but whatever is that truth of things as they are, were, and are to come is ineffectual unless we know about them.  Truth is simply things as they are.  Truth in history is things as they were.  Truth in the future?  if we say with certainty that X will happen, and we have justified belief that it will happen, and it happens, then for purpose of this discussion, it is true.

 

The second term, heuristic, literally means the means to find something out.  In modern use, especially in the field of computability, a heuristic solves problems with a short-cut, a trial-and error method, when a finite, deterministic algorithm is impractical.  By using the term "truth heuristic", I mean how LDS explore truth through a specific trial and error testing process, and the tendency to use that method to short-cut an exhaustive investigation of truth.

 

The first version of the truth heuristic is encountered in the very first missionary discussion, where missionaries present the Book of Mormon, and encourage investigators to ready, ponder, and pray.  Here is the "Moroni Challenge" universally accepted as the means to test the truth of the Book of Mormon:

I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, ... and ponder it in your hearts.

And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.

Moroni 10:3-5

So the investigator is to read, ponder 'it', and pray, and the outcome is that teh truth of 'it' will be manifest by a feeling of certainty that Mormons call, "the Holy Ghost".  I have emphasized 'it', because the term is non-specific.  'it' could refer to what is read, or the entire book.  'it' could refer to the spiritual 'truth', symbolic in nature of what is read, or that the events in the book literally happened as reflected.

 

Reading, pondering, and praying about something to assess whether it has spiritual value to you as a reader is certainly a valid test.  But as for whether the events in the book literally happened, or whether the book as a whole can be proposed as 'true', meaning without material flaw, accurate, god-given, etc., 'it' becomes a bit problematic.

 

This is where the heuristic becomes a short-cut.  When missionaries return for a second visit, they ask about the experience the investigator had about the verses they were asked to read.  These verses are spiritually powerful in the text, and many investigators, if open minded, will have a positive, comforting experience with the text.  Because many who grew up believing the Bible to be the word of God tend to relate to King James English as being 'scriptural', they may even have had a very powerful emotional and spiritual experience with the material.  At that point, the missionaries describe these feelings as the "Holy Ghost" telling them that the Book of Mormon is true.  Without being specific, they have taken spiritual value associated with specific verses and generalized that evidence to the entire book and by implication, its history and divinity. 

 

Now that the heuristic has determined that the Book of Mormon is true and divine, then the means whereby the Book of Mormon came about must also be true and divine.  After all, it is impossible for a thing of God to come out of anything other than a true Prophet.  In glowing terms, the story of Joseph Smith and his position of Prophet of the Restoration is laid out.  The investigator learns of the miracle of a farm-boy with very little formal education translating this divine book by the gift and power of god.  The investigator is asked, "Could any man have written this book?", and the the investigator remembers the spiritual feelings and believes that Joseph could not have been a normal man, but indeed a true Prophet.  And from there, a True Church -- the ONLY true and living church -- because that was the content of the First Vision.

 

So from a very basic and essential spiritual test of whether the Book of Mormon has spiritually valid content, the investigator inductively concludes that the Church as presented by the missionaries is "true".  Having had a spiritual awakening, the associated bond to the missionaries, the Book, and to the Church is complete, and the investigator becomes a member.

 

Conversion is an emotional/spiritual process.  Seldom does anyone become converted by virtue of logic and reason.  Yet, the disturbing part of this short-cut heuristic is that the conclusion of truth of the whole is inductively derived from a specifc test of a specific reading of the Book.  In making the inductive leap from that specific test to the truth of the whole is glossed over. 

 

The heuristic itself is valid, when it applies to investigating a specific issue, to working it through in one's mind, and then to seek spiritual guidance as to whether that specific issue has merit, is true, or is relevant.  The outcome of this is a type of experiential knowledge -- a justification that the belief is true.  What is invalid is the movement from specifc to the general, from a subject claim of value to an objective claim of truth.

 

What really happens with the short-cut heuristic

 

Before going in to what is happening in the mind with conversion, it is important to recognize that to LDS thinking, all spiritual reality is material as well.  Thus, the spiritual processes of conversion are coupled with physical processes in the brain.  To investigate what is happening physically with conversion does not minimize the spiritual reality thereof, but it does help us understand why it happens, and what it means to be converted.

 

When the missionary asks the investigator to ready, ponder, and pray, the reading creates a set of mental pictures from the narrative, as we would get from any book with a narraative story.  As we form these mental images in our short-term memory, our mental processes need to stop input and process the information in order to commit it, place it, into our long term memory.  Moroni's promise asks us to ponder, not just what is read, but also, a deeply embedded narrative in Western culture:

Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.
Moroni 10:3

The narrative of the mercy of God to the children of men is deeply embedded in every active Christian from early childhood.  These stories have a parallel emotional context in the child's brain -- emotions of security and how god protects them from fear.  The "emotional context" is found in another part of the brain than logic: it forms the limbic system of the brain, where primal fears and desires are located.  By bringing into the Book of Mormon context the emotional context from a Christian's childhood, the investigator is planting a seed of associations between the visual images of the Book of Mormon narrative and the emotional context of scripture stories.  Even the use of King James English re-enforces this religious/emotional context.

 

By pondering these things together, the investigator is triggering an event within the nonconscious part of the mind -- that which helps us implant long-term memories through dreams and other mechanisms.  After pondering, and perhaps stepping away from the Book and sleeping on it, the nonconscious mind makes neural associations between the act of reading the Book, the visual images, and the positive experiences from the investigators' youth about biblical stories.  As the investigator prays about this, particularly after some time for the non-conscious mind to extend the neural associations, the investigator feels a spiritual comfort about the Book of Mormon.  That comfort is located in the limbic mind, in the amygdala, right in the same general location as "love", "comfort", "happiness": it is a feeling of knowing that something is true -- an emotion, not a logical construct. 

 

It's as if the investigator has fallen in love with the Book of Mormon, and all things associated with it.  And quite similar to falling in love, the objectivity of the cerebral cortext -- the locus of conscious, rational thought, takes a secondary seat to the feeling of knowing and love for all things Mormon.  This feeling of knowing, of comfort, can be extraordinarily powerful.  It creates a strong dependency of all things mormon to and through the primary emotional chain that started with an emotional/spiritual experience after reading, pondering, and praying, to the core truth claims of the church, to the existence and relevance of the entire church structure and teachings.  By falling in love, and making a deep, personal commitment, the limbic mind creates a bond between the investigator and the church -- one that is very hard to break.

 

While this may sound illogical to make such a life choice based upon an emotional bond, the origin of this bond in evolution is quite critical to the survival of species.  Humans are social animals out of necessity: the survival of individuals is greatly enhanced in the extent to which humans are part of a tribe, flock, or group of people.  The emotional bonding of the investigator to the Church is by no means a bad thing -- the Church is a very suitable tribal structure, with extensive support for the survival of the individual who fully commits to it.  The need to be part of such an organization is vital to any human, as it has been for millions of years. 

 

So there is benefit to joining the Church, tremendous benefit.  But maintaining the same type of short-cut truth heuristic for all decisions within the Church is deeply problematic.

The problem with the Short-Cut Truth Heuristic

In a sense, the idea of converting to the church through a single experience with the spirit is a bit like falling in love with a person, and the moment

In sorting out truth of things, it is helpful to have a testable proposition.  Take the statement "The Book of Mormon is true": This is a testable proposition, provided we first define what the word "true" means.  One definition would be absolute truth: every word, statement, claim, history, origin in the book is exactly what it says it is - an accurate history of the Native American people, translated from golden plates written a language called "reformed egyptian", etc.   Every claim about the book needs to be true in order for the claim of absolute truth applies.

Proving an absolute claim is difficult, because it requires that all aspects of the book be shown to not have any flaws or falsehoods.  In a book with 500 pages, with a history that cannot be fully verified, the ability to prove it to be true in an absolute sense is impossible.  However, it is quite easy to prove it is not true.  A single fact that is not possible would bring down the claim.  For example, if it is not possible for a beheaded individual to sit up, struggle, then expire, then the book at least has some things in it that aren't strictly 'true'.

But most LDS will be satisfied with a feeling that it is true. 
 

 

 

 

 

truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come
D&C 93:24