stelf

This is bold claim for which you have no evidence. If it is possible to progress sufficiently in a pre-mortal state that exercising agency in this life is not needed then I see no reason why anyone should be sent to earth before reaching that state. Additionally, this would imply that God specifically places these "special" spirts into those situations in which they will die young. No, I completely reject your reasoning. This is not a God worthy of trusting. This would be saying that we should trust God loves us, but we don't really have any idea what love even is.

I think whenever we discuss the problem of evil in the lds context there seems to be a heavy emphasis on agency and it pretty much always focuses on the agency of the perpetrator of evil and not on the agency of the victim. If someone murders a young child it is presented that they are saved. But this removes the agency of these children. They never get to make any decisions about their eternal welfare. This bypasses all the "essential" parts of life other than gaining a body.

I hope what I say does not come across as negative to you @bluebell or @Calm. I have a lot of respect for both of you and have found your comments both thoughtful and insightful. However, what these messages seem to be implying is that even God, the greatest of all, is unable to overcome our human inability to understand. I do not think this is true. I have communicated with other people in my life. I know I have not always done so successfully. I also know that I have improved and that currently I am able to both clearly and accurately communicate and understand communications from other people. I do not accept that an all powerful God cannot clearly communicate to me simply because I am human.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I think I understand better where you are coming from. I also appreciate that you do not lump all criticisms into the groups of "genuine" and "disingenuous outcry" as to me it leaves room for other options or expressions. I would simply counter that one need not be personally harmed in order to be upset at a perceived wrong.

So basically you don't think there is a problem. Other people do think there is a problem.

I'm going to push back on this. You ask if there is any reason to assume divine communication should be better than human communication. I would say absolutely! Even among humans there are vast differences in ability to communicate. I would absolutely expect a perfected human that has access to all facets of human experience to be able to communicate ideas better than just a regular old human. I do not consider myself an excellent communicator, but I do have many years experience as an educator and a scientist. I would argue that my ability to function professionally has been dependent on communicating things accurately. Teaching a bunch of high school students how to solve algebraic equations required communicating. My job performance was in part based on how accurately I was able to do that. Were there problems? Of course. But not with most of them. Now it sounds like you are saying that even the very best and brightest of God's children (I'm assuming you are referring to lucifer) "misunderstood" even while in his presence. If this is true, you are making a very strong case that we really can't trust anything we think we understand from God. You also discuss God not interfering. I think this is largely true, but it breaks down for me with multiple counter examples. Now in each of these I do not think we have evidence that God is removing someone's will, but he certainly seems to arbitrarily intervene to stop the action. Alma the younger was stopped by an angel and struck dumb. This had nothing at all to do with what he was seeking or wanted. The man that was going to kill Ammon was instead struck dead before he could exercise his agency. Amulek wanted to exercise power and save innocent women and children from burning. He was told no so that when God used the lamanites to come wipe out the people of Ammonihah his anger would be justified. There are of course many many more stories from scripture that follow this pattern. Outside the scriptures I think of children abused by a trusted adult. At times these children then grow up suffering the consequences of extreme trauma and then themselves committing atrocities.

Yep, there seems to be an ever distant point where we can understand, but no one has ever actually achieved it. That's why we have to dismiss or minimize so much of what past prophets have spoken. They were just speaking as a man those times. I mean it sure seems like they thought they were speaking God's will because they actually claimed to be doing that, but we know better now.

I can understand this as a framework if you have a presupposed belief in Christ. But what if you don't? This just kicks the can down the road so to speak. Also, this would require a "correct" knowledge of Christ, but where do we get knowledge of Christ? From the scriptures and teachings of those who claim to have knowledge of Christ, but why should we trust those sources? Again, just shifting the problem in my opinion.

I suppose true equipoise is as you describe, a balance. However, my point is more about the practicality. We are not really ever truly balanced. We have biases, inclinations, suspicions, or hopes that cause us to lean one way or the other.

Well, I have a hard time seeing where anything I said implied I would be any different had I lived then. I simply said that they were terrible. I agree with @The Nehor that they were also just normal. That's kinda my point. My wife likes to read regency romances (I must admit that I too enjoy reading them). They romanticize the time period, but every time I read them I can't help but think that the situation of women was terrible in a lot of ways. Doesn't mean that it was out of the ordinary for the time. In essence, I don't think most past church leaders are any worse than I would expect any human leader to be for their time. However, I would hope that direct communication with an almighty, loving God would have elevated them a bit.

I appreciate this very much and as a paradigm I think it could work for me. However, it does not work for me within the teachings of the LDS church. You are of course free to disagree, but we indoctrinate our children to "Follow the Prophet" with a catchy song. President Nelson recently stated that prophets will always speak the truth. I think that claim is objectively false. So, then the question return as to how do we know what the prophets get right or wrong, and we are back to relying on the spirit to teach us the truth.

I don't think it's about not having faith or doubts. If there was no faith at all then we would never investigate new drugs or treatments. I think equipoise is much more about a lack of certainty. I believe @Navidad recently posted in a different thread about this. I think we run into trouble when we are so certain of things that they can't be challenged. I have many people in my life that are this way. Their conclusions are what comes first and so they dismiss anything that challenges those. I see this in my work at times as well. A researcher is convinced that a particular treatment will be effective and is resistant to the analysis we perform. As for spiritual truth, I feel the same way. I was brought up to be certain about the gospel and the church. I think we are explicitly taught this by the church leaders. I think the stories of Abraham, Moses, and Nephi are about demonstrating unflinching loyalty even when confronted with commandments that seem immoral. To me this is blind obedience. It is saying that we should trust in our conclusions even when everything is telling us to doubt. I no longer see this as a virtue. So, I was never spiritually neutral and I am not now.

I honestly can't fully express how grateful I am for the very thoughtful replies everyone has provided. I really couldn't expect less from this group though. As many others have said, I can count on one hand the number of "transcendent" spiritual experiences that I have had. Similar to @JVW one of mine was very similar in that was how l learned to let go of the shame and self-hatred I had carried for most of my life. I would also guess that many on this board would fully support and understand if my spiritual understanding led me in a different direction. What I am dealing with is very similar to what @bluebell mentioned above. I attached a certain narrative to my spiritual experiences that led me to the conclusion that I should trust the scriptures, the prophets, and that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the one true church. In essence, I really truly believed what the church claims about itself as a result of these experiences. However, I am now forced to reevaluate that narrative. As I said previously, I am not questioning the reality or power of those experiences, but I know that the story around them cannot be what I originally thought.

I think about this thing a lot. In my professional life I am a biostatistician that works in all areas of clinical trials. A key piece of being able to proceed with a clinical investigation is something we call equipoise. Basically, we can't have too strong a conviction one way or the other about how the results of the trial will go. I am convinced that this state of equipoise is the one we should maintain in order to best place us to discover truth. It is the state in which we are most likely to "objectively" look at data and allow actual evidence to update our beliefs. I know that my experience in the church, although common, is not universal. But I was never given any opportunity for equipoise regarding church doctrine. Instead I was essentially told what was right by my parents and church leaders from a very young age and I grew up with "church is true" as my default position. If we have a worldview that makes us unwilling to even entertain the idea that our beliefs could be wrong I think we are set up to not reach the truth.

I feel like I understand what you are saying and respect this interpretation. However, this does not resolve any issues for me as this kind of explanation relies on understanding long after the fact what the spiritual impression was actually about. Additionally, it flies in the face of many teachings that we are given about the simplicity of following God. So basically, we get promptings and we attach meaning to them. The meaning we attach is either right or wrong, but we don't know really. Then later we might learn more and rethink the meaning we attached. In some cases like you describe above we decide that the prompting was still from God, but our attached meaning was wrong. In others, I think we could decide that it wasn't really a prompting from some other source. So, taken as a whole this paints a picture in my mind that we as humans have these kinds of feelings and we create the meaning.