"i've Come To The Conclusion That The Church Is Not True!"

[wenglund]

Nice discussion! I think we have some differences, but probably more commonalities than differences, it seems. The bolded part above is key, IMO. I'm okay letting others have their "spiritual experiences," as long as it doesn't interfere with my life, directly or indirectly.

I am even fine with certain minor and somwhat benign or innocent "interferences"--like with JW's knocking on my door, or Evangelicals praying that I will accept the right Jesus, or athiest publically questioning the existence of God, or some conference protestors respectfully objecting to my faith, etc. It is when things step over the line of civility and respect, and lack consideration or purposely cause harm, that I think preventative action is warranted.

But, perhaps this is getting a bet far afield of the topic of discussion--for which I apologize.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Abulafia]

David, thankyou for this post. I don't know that I can add much to the discussion that hasn't already been covered, but here is my take..

Is there ever a good reason to abandon Mormonism?

Yes, I would say there is. A number of good reasons. Whether one is right or wrong is another thing.

If one decides, prayerfully, that given the weight of the evidence that Joseph Smith is not to be trusted and that for whatever reason, he made a lot of it up, then that's a good enough reason to go, on spiritual, intellectual and philosophical grounds. It's also a good reason socially, if one has no active family in the church - no children, spouse or parents to hurt.

If one has a 'witness' that the church is just one among the great many churches and that it has no exculsive

claim to truth then that is a good enough reason to go, on logical and spiritual grounds alone, since the church does not profess to be one of many, but 'the' one.

If one has a 'witness' that the church is no longer the place to be for one's optimum development, then regardless of whether it is true/false, partly true/false, then that is a good enough reason to go. I think all of us have that 'light' within, some call it the Holy Ghost, the non-religious would call it something else and I know that I spent six wasted years really, dilly dallying simply because I 'didn't' want to let go of something that I had always held sacrosanct. (My basic belief that the church, no matter what, if you like, was fundamentally true)

I think also, David, that people are in the church for a variety of reasons, they join or belong for a variety of reasons and those reasons will in turn effect how they handle new information or even whether they will be interested enough to take on new information in the first place.

Many, many of my friends are basically happy. They are happy spiritually, intellectually and socially within the church. I think that unless they get an intellectual or spirtual boot upside the head then they'll remain that way. (I'm not sure that the UK or even many of my UK friends have access to the 'new' more controversial history for instance that seems to be unfolding with programs like the PBS documentary, and those that watch it might dismiss it as anti-mormon fodder, ...including in that comments made by Daniel Peterson, if I remember rightly)

Speaking personally, I view paradigm shifts as a far superior course of action than abandoning oneâ??s spiritual convictions.

Sometimes the most difficult paradigm shift of all to make is to abandon 'some' of ones spiritual convictions particulary ones belief, as I commented before, that the church no matter what is 'true'.

I found that one to be the most difficult and I had built lots of mental walls in order that I couldn't approach it. This is where I would use the more controversial language of 'thought control' and by that I don't necessarily mean 'thought control' from without, but also from within. No matter what we hear from outside, it is the stories that we tell ourselves that can often prevent us from thinking clearly about an issue. The walls were high and they were strong, but it has been interesting to analyse how they were built.

I hope you won't be too hard on us folk that leave. From what I understand of Mormon Theology, it isn't given even within the sacred compounds of a testimony, to know for certain that Joseph Smith's version of christianity is the right one. When most people say they know, in my opinion, they really don't. They just hope and believe and trust.

Kind regards

Mary

[Kevin Christensen]

Paradigms always involve a network of assumptions. At the top, in religion, is the assumption that God may actually exist. Beneath that high-level assumption are lots of lower-level assumptions. For example, the expressed idea that God is spirit may conceal hidden assumptions that God is only spirit and nothing else, or that the Bible text is infallible, and that one's interpretation of that Bible passage has been miraculoulsy inflused with the same infallibility that one confidently attributes to the Bible. The conviction that God is One may conceal unexamined assumptions about how God is One. The networks of assumptions always exist, whether or not they are acknowledged.

The danger is in presuming that one has falsified the existence of God when the problem may simply be that one has approached the question with faulty ideas. For example, the LDS views of pre-existence changes the assumptions that creation from nothing brings to the problem of evil. And the same circumstances apply to things like the divinity of Jesus Christ, the authority of Old and New Testament scripture, the Book of Mormon, and Joseph Smith.

Personally, over my 53 years, I approach my LDS faith with the idea that I periodically need to re-examine my assumptions, that I should give my questions time, and keep my eyes open. So periodically, my paradigm changes at various lower levels.

For example, I've periodically posted how I've changed my concept of "only true church" to the more tolerant and robust notion expressed in D&C 1. Nibley changed my concept how how to read the scriptures by demonstrating how much more emerges from a text when it is placed in the appropriate context. Starting in the 1980s, Sorenson, Gardner, Poulsen, Wirth, and others have changed many of my assumptions in approaching New World Book of Mormon texts. My encounter with Margaret Barker completely changed many of my assumptions about the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon. I once did a comprehensive study of tests for prophets in the Bible, and I found that the single best known test (about fulfillment) was the one most abused in practice and qualified by example even in the Bible. This mattered little because the other 28 or so tests served to very quickly narrow the field of candidates down to Joseph Smith with no visible competition. I used to wonder whether Alma and Paul were too special. Then I explored Near Death Experience literature, and found that rather than being too special, they were appropriately typical. Hugh Nibley's 1980 essay "Before Adam" radically changed my assumptions about the supposed tension between evolution and creation. The way that the DNA controversies have been resolved has involved the demonstration of the faulty initial assumptions of those who presumed that DNA meant check and check mate, and game over for the LDS. When I saw Brent Metcalfe emotionally announce that LDS belief was doomed by DNA back in 1999, he clearly did not imagine things like the Iceland Study would be forthcoming. (I'd already been arguing in print for many "others" in the Book of Mormon (RBBM 7:2 in 1995), so I was never rattled in the slightest.)

I've kept up on the controversies about Joseph Smith's first vision, having my understanding changed several times. I'd assumed that not much more could be learned, and then Matt Brown produced several wonderful new insights in his recent FAIR presentation. Sometimes its fun to find out that I'm wrong.

A few years ago, I read David Wright's approach to the Isaiah quotations in the Book of Mormon. It was obvious to me that his conclusion was based on his assumption that if there were a God, that God would do things the way David Wright would if Wright were in charge. That struck me as a rather presumptious notion. An assumption that I need not embrace. Other approaches to the same data, say by Kevin Barney and John Tvedtnes, seemed much more viable, perceptive, and promising.

Previously on this thread, I mentioned that one of the fundamental kinds of personal religious experience is

"Reorientation and Reconciliation with respect to personal sin, guilt, and weakness, the existence of evil, suffering, and death, and tensions between science and faith."

Much of what I have mentioned here could be placed in the category of reorientation and reconcilation in the tenstions between science and faith" where scholarship is a category of science. Reorientation is a change in one's thinking, and reconcilation is a change in one's feeling. These correspond quite neatly to the sacrifices of a contrite spirit (that is, one shows humility and a willingness to change one's thinking, rather than defiant pride that already knows it all, thank you very much), and a broken heart (a willingness to sacrifice personal wants, unlike, for example, the rich young man). Joseph Campbell explains that in the ancient world generally, these two notions are represented by temple guardians representing the fear and desire, what we think, and that we want. To enter into the Real represented by the Temple, we have to be willing to shed our preconceptions and desires.

Much of my personal religious experience has been outside the categories of science and scholarship, but it has been no less real and significant to me. Much my personal religious experience has been within those categories, and as such, they are very real and significant to me, though not the whole thing. My faith is built on many different threads woven together in a continuing, growing, ongoing process that I continue to find exciting.

All I need to do it keep my eyes open, periodically re-examine my assumptions, and give my questions time.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[juliann]

Kevin, you have expressed the obvious more beautifully than I have ever seen. I remain astonished that critics champion a binary mental life that starts or stops on one decision.

Where can I find your 28 tests of a prophet?

[John Williams]

Kevin, you have expressed the obvious more beautifully than I have ever seen. I remain astonished that critics champion a binary mental life that starts or stops on one decision.

I don't see it as binary, necessarily. Some of us have shifted our paradigms, but unlike what David is proposing, we don't consider any components of our paradigms inviolate. To suggest that would be binary, indeed.

[John Williams]

However, for those of us who believe cirmustances may contain interconnected elements of the physical and the spirit, then why would it be confusing to privilege spiritual methodologies in such cases, particularly if one believes the spiritual elements predominate, and/or if such cases lend themselves more to growth in spiritual than physical knowledge?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

You've hit the nail on the head, Wade. Confusion arises when people see interconnection where there is none. Say, for example, we consider whether the Book of Mormon is "true." We can examine scientific evidence and employ reason and logic to come to pretty solid conclusions. Another person might reach conclusions about its "truth" by appealing through prayer. Which conclusion is right, and how do we know? Well, we privilege one method over the other, generally. I have no problem with that.

[California]

On thinking about Nietzche, I came up with some parallels.

Christ, Nietzche (we'll use him, but it's more his type that I'm talking about), and Satan:

All charismatic, influential, and very intelligent people. (One infinitely more so, but they all are/were)

So we know what is similar between them, but what is dissimilar?

Satan: rationalized that the Plan was faulty. If you can save more souls using his method, why save only a few using God's method? Thought he knew more than God, which is called pride. Did his intelligence really help him at all? He rationalized himself to Hell.

Christ: Thy will, not mine, be done. Could He have thought similarly to Satan? Maybe, but his hallmark is humility. He knew He did not know better than God.

Nietzche: â??Your god is dead and only the ignorant weep. And if you claim there is a hell, then we shall meet there!â? Apparently. Still, a smart guy. He just wasn't able to think outside the box of the blatantly obvious.

I think this is part of the paradigm shift that needs to happen: humility.

[wenglund]

You've hit the nail on the head, Wade. Confusion arises when people see interconnection where there is none. Say, for example, we consider whether the Book of Mormon is "true." We can examine scientific evidence and employ reason and logic to come to pretty solid conclusions. Another person might reach conclusions about its "truth" by appealing through prayer. Which conclusion is right, and how do we know? Well, we privilege one method over the other, generally. I have no problem with that.

But, John, on what basis do you claim that there aren't interconnections between the physical and spiritual?

You can't use science (or the physical senses) alone to make that determination since, as you said, science doesn't apply to the spiritual, and thus science wouldn't be able to confirm or deny whether there is a spiritual component of the supposed interconnection.

The same is true in using spiritual methodologies (or spiritual senses) alone--which wouldn't be able to confirm or deny the physical component of the supposed interconnection.

It requires both science (or physical senses) and spiritual methodologies (or spiritual senses). Right?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Kevin Christensen]

Kevin, you have expressed the obvious more beautifully than I have ever seen. I remain astonished that critics champion a binary mental life that starts or stops on one decision.

Where can I find your 28 tests of a prophet?

Thanks Juliann. I do appreciate you saying so.

My collection of Bible passages that offer tests for a prophet remains unpublished. I have some xeroxes of type-written pages sitting in a dusty folder at my desk, but nothing in electronic form. Someday I'll get round to it.

One thing I did learn from doing the study is that most people aren't at all interested in finding out what a prophet is, but only in justifying themselves in relation to their preconceptions about what a prophet is or should be (that is, Fear and Desire on that topic). All I did was read the Bible and collect passages that highlighted some criteria. Everything positive had corresponding negatives, making it all very clear. Anyone could have done it, and yet no one had. I found that telling. I also studied Bible passages that described various justifications for rejecting Bible prophets, and found that of the 73 or so, all boiled down to fear and desire (not what I think or not what I want) and none had gone out of fashion, and all had been enlisted in attacks on Joseph Smith. That came as a shock. I also studied Bible passages that described what a person should do to find truth. These turned out to be rather open-ended and ongoing, and very rational. Not at all what Carl Sagan would have imagined in the Bible, via his "teddy bear against the darkness" theory of belief. The total emergent picture eventually spilled out in my "Paradigms Crossed" essay in RBBM 7:2 and my "Model of Mormon Spiritual Experience."

I remain impressed by Massimo Introvigne's description of Book of Mormon critics being locked into Enlightenment paradigms, versus the defenders having absorbed Post-Modern approaches.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[John Williams]

But, John, on what basis do you claim that there aren't interconnections between the physical and spiritual?

You can't use science (or the physical senses) alone to make that determination since, as you said, science doesn't apply to the spiritual, and thus science wouldn't be able to confirm or deny whether there is a spiritual component of the supposed interconnection.

The same is true in using spiritual methodologies (or spiritual senses) alone--which wouldn't be able to confirm or deny the physical component of the supposed interconnection.

It requires both science (or physical senses) and spiritual methodologies (or spiritual senses). Right?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Perhaps I'm not as clear as I should be, but you have misunderstood me. I have never said that there are no interconnections, but rather sometimes we mistakenly see interconnections where there are none.

[Abulafia]

Juliann, in all the following quotes...what I see are examples of the 'binary' thinking that you mentioned. All quotes are from Gordon B Hinckley, Orson Pratt, Joseph F Smith and Jeffrey Holland.

None of these paradigms allow for the church to be partly true and partly false for instance (or even better partly constructive and partly destructive), a position that I would be much more comfortable in taking and perhaps returning to activity.

Well, it's either true or false. If it's false, we're engaged in a great fraud.

"Each of us has to face the matterâ??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."

â??The Book of Mormon is the keystone of [our] testimony. Just as the arch crumbles if the keystone is removed, so does all the Church stand or fall with the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.

"I am suggesting that we make exactly that same kind of do-or-die, bold assertion about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the divine origins of the Book of Mormon. We have to. Reason and rightness require it. Accept Joseph Smith as a prophet and the book as the miraculously revealed and revered word of the Lord it is or else consign both man and book to Hades for the devastating deception of it all, but letâ??s not have any bizarre middle ground about the wonderful contours of a young boyâ??s imagination or his remarkable facility for turning a literary phrase. That is an unacceptable position to takeâ??morally, literarily, historically, or theologically."

"Mormonism must stand or fall on the story of Joseph Smith. He was either a Prophet of God, divinely called, properly appointed and commissioned or he was one of the biggest frauds this world has ever seen. There is no middle ground. If Joseph was a deceiver, who willfully attempted to mislead people, then he should be exposed, his claims should be refuted, and his doctrines shown to be false..."

" 'The Book of Mormon' must be either true or false. If true, it is one of the most important messages ever sent from God... If False, it is one of the most cunning, wicked, bold, deep-laid impositions ever palmed upon the world, calculated to deceive and ruin millions... The nature of the "Book of Mormon" is such, that if true, no one can possibly be saved and reject it; If false, no one can possibly be saved and receive it...

Mary

[Cold Steel]

I recently read a great short story by Poul Anderson called "Beyond Eternity" (I recommend it highly!), about a spaceship that is unable to decelerate and eventually is going so fast that it crashes right through the end of the universe! This story was written in 1967, and included the latest known about the Big Bang and Big Crunch. It is now out of date, because around 1997 it was discovered that the universe will never go into reverse and hit a Big Crunch... Still it is better than James Blish's Cities in Flight (circa 1957) which featured a Steady State Universe. And on and on it goes...

Splendid post, sir. Now I've got another story to search for. One of my favorites is Asimov's "The Last Question." It's on the web and is a classic.

The argument that atheist scientists like Dawkins make is that religious people have beliefs set in stone and CANNOT make paradigm shifts. This is a short-sighted view of religion (because they assume that religionists are ALL fundamentalists, hence my irritation at Carl Sagan's depiction of a Christian minister in "First Contact") that people like David Bokovoy (and myself) completely refute with our broader views of what constitute religiosity and God's interactions with Man.

It's the close-mindedness of people like Dawkins and Sagan that keep them from being truly open minded!

[leblonDRZ]

Although I am coming late into this conversation, I took the time to read all the posts.

It has been great to read all the different positions and belief systems that we all share.

My belief system states that â??truthâ?, and truths within it, is ever changing based on our physical and spiritual experiences.

For example, the Church is true, but since we donâ??t yet have all knowledge that God can bestow us, this truth is still flowing, not by becoming necessarily false but changing. Just like when Jesus completed the Old Testament period and introduced a new shift with a new higher law. It did not negate what was previously taught but changed it for the better.

Now, if someone does not believe that â??truthâ? is flowing or can change without loosing its form; then this â??changedâ? truth cannot be accepted.

About the BOM, I donâ??t see how we can prove it â??trueâ? using history, archeology, and science. And even if it was possible to prove it to be an invention/forgery/con, the teachings contained within it can still be accepted as correct and truthful (and Joseph a genius for writing it and crazy enough to put his and his family lives on the line for it).

If Joseph was proven to be everything he is accused of, con-master, murder, pedophile, cheater, etc; many of his teachings and examples will still be valid.

If Hitler told me that he would loose in Russia and that 2+2=4, it would not make him a prophet and it would not invalidate the calculationâ??s result.

So, if Joseph Smith acted in some way that we do not consider prophet-like, it does not mean that God did use him to bring to pass his work. We are just using our judgment on him and making our own connections about Godâ??s purposes.

It is easy to make â??forâ? and â??againstâ? judgments against historical figures and their personal lives. Just like the accusations of Joseph Smithâ??s pedophilia because of his sealing to young girls without concrete evidence of sexual involvement. It is almost the same as saying that Jesus was married and had kids. We can assume both cases â??forâ? or â??againstâ? but does not change the fruits of their work. And how we judge their fruits is up to us individually.

The same can be applied to the DNA evidence against Semitic blood in the Americas. We are assuming that Lehiâ??s great-grandchildren were an inbred result of his own group, but they could have intermarried already to other natives without mentioning these natives at all, specially in the case of Labam and Lemuel. The scriptures were concerned with the people of the covenant and might not have needed to mention encounters with non-Semitic peoples. I donâ??t remember the Bible spending too much time on non-Hebrew peoples, but it did mention Hebrews that fell by the wayside.

My point is; the LDS Church is based on faith alone â?? and I donâ??t think that will change despite all our research, bickering, and discussions.