Something bugs me...

[_Tarski]

Something bugs me a bit right now. Help me put my finger on it.

Consider three people:

Person A. This person has put many years of study and thought into religion and is a Christian. He attends Episcopal services. He has studied philosophy, the arguments of atheists, and the competing doctrines of the various Christian sects. He has a respect for science but does not make an idol of it. He has studied the scriptures in depth and has studied the creeds, and the history of Christianity, the influence of Greek thinking and has even gone so far as to take up ancient languages. He has delved into deep questions about the doctrine of the trinity and other questions about the nature of God. His understanding is subtle and hard won. He can converse intelligently with professors of theology. He is a theologian of sorts.
He also lives a simple and ethical life and his politics are informed by his religious convictions. He spends time defending his religion in various forums and is clever with words and a good debater.


Person B This person is a housewife and Sunday school teacher who is disinterested in intellectual matters. She reads the Bible in English and takes it fairly literally. She believes in Noah's ark. She thinks that homosexuality is wrong and is convinced the Bible backs her up. She thinks science is boring and for geeks.
Her real passion is painting landscapes but she also does a lot of charity work and is a much beloved mother. Truth be known, her IQ is such that she couldn't delve into philosophical matters with any clarity even if she wanted to.

Person C This person loves science and is a biochemist. She is not so much against religion but it just bores her. Her parents were not religious in any serious way and the common religious beliefs she has heard strike her as myths or just so stories. Once in her life just after her daughter died she felt briefly interested in the possibility of a God and afterlife. However, she only poured her heart out to God in her mourning and never really studied religious doctrines or metaphysics. That part still bored her.

Person D This guy is not intellectual at all. Not that bright actually. He has a sort of intrinsic tendency toward mischief. He digs cars, football, and was a bit of a playboy until he married at 42 years of age. He works hard and can't be pushed around. He has a simple sense of fairness and can be found sticking up for the little guy. He says he believes in God and country. He never goes to church and has only read bits of the Bible as a child. He served in the Navy and had some occasions of quite valiant behavior.

Person E
This guy is similar to person D above but a little bit more intelligent and quite a bit more ambitious. His is rich. He is the owner of a national chain of restaurants. He says he believes in God if asked but doesn't pray or attend services except special occasions.



Now, my question is this. Given that the good news of the gospel is supposed to be for everyone and assuming there is some common denominator to what God wants of us, who is in better shape from God point of view? In particular, was there some advantage for righteousness and authenticity that accrues to a person like Person A?

In short, wherein lies the virtue from God's point of view in the attitudes and lifestyle of person A (The theologian). Does God somehow encourage or favor intellectual sophistication? Is Person A, in any important sense, "closer to God" or given an open heart, more likely to be closer to God?

More generally, does God want us to "figure things out"? Notice that even Nightlion seems to do a lot of studying and pondering and intellectualizing.

[_sock puppet]

More generally, does God want us to "figure things out"?

Is there a value to God in sifting out those who figure out a puzzle from those that do not, a puzzle that more likely does not exist, given the dearth of positive evidence and clues?

If God wanted us all to know, why not just tell us, straight up?

If God doesn't want us to figure things out, why not? Is it defiance of God, then, to figure things out?

If God doesn't care if we figure things out about God, then why trifle with such matters?

[_mentalgymnast]

Something bugs me a bit right now. Help me put my finger on it.

Consider three people:

Person A. This person has put many years of study and thought into religion and is a Christian. He attends Episcopal services. He has studied philosophy, the arguments of atheists, and the competing doctrines of the various Christian sects. He has a respect for science but does not make an idol of it. He has studied the scriptures in depth and has studied the creeds, and the history of Christianity, the influence of Greek thinking and has even gone so far as to take up ancient languages. He has delved into deep questions about the doctrine of the trinity and other questions about the nature of God. His understanding is subtle and hard won. He can converse intelligently with professors of theology. He is a theologian of sorts.
He also lives a simple and ethical life and his politics are informed by his religious convictions. He spends time defending his religion in various forums and is clever with words and a good debater.


Person B This person is a housewife and Sunday school teacher who is disinterested in intellectual matters. She reads the Bible in English and takes it fairly literally. She believes in Noah's ark. She thinks that homosexuality is wrong and is convinced the Bible backs her up. She thinks science is boring and for geeks.
Her real passion is painting landscapes but she also does a lot of charity work and is a much beloved mother. Truth be known, her IQ is such that she couldn't delve into philosophical matters with any clarity even if she wanted to.

Person C This person loves science and is a biochemist. She is not so much against religion but it just bores her. Her parents were not religious in any serious way and the common religious beliefs she has heard strike her as myths or just so stories. Once in her life just after her daughter died she felt briefly interested in the possibility of a God and afterlife. However, she only poured her heart out to God in her mourning and never really studied religious doctrines or metaphysics. That part still bored her.

Person D This guy is not intellectual at all. Not that bright actually. He has a sort of intrinsic tendency toward mischief. He digs cars, football, and was a bit of a playboy until he married at 42 years of age. He works hard and can't be pushed around. He has a simple sense of fairness and can be found sticking up for the little guy. He says he believes in God and country. He never goes to church and has only read bits of the Bible as a child. He served in the Navy and had some occasions of quite valiant behavior.

Person E
This guy is similar to person D above but a little bit more intelligent and quite a bit more ambitious. His is rich. He is the owner of a national chain of restaurants. He says he believes in God if asked but doesn't pray or attend services except special occasions.



Now, my question is this. Given that the good news of the gospel is supposed to be for everyone and assuming there is some common denominator to what God wants of us, who is in better shape from God point of view? In particular, was there some advantage for righteousness and authenticity that accrues to a person like Person A?

In short, wherein lies the virtue from God's point of view in the attitudes and lifestyle of person A (The theologian). Does God somehow encourage or favor intellectual sophistication? Is Person A, in any important sense, "closer to God" or given an open heart, more likely to be closer to God?

More generally, does God want us to "figure things out"? Notice that even Nightlion seems to do a lot of studying and pondering and intellectualizing.

When everything is stripped away and if God IS love, it may well be that this is all that matters. Everything else is window dressing to add variety and interest to life/existence. Categories may be of very little import. ALL can progress, or have already progressed, at learning how to love. Doesn't matter whether one is an educated genius working in an ivory tower or a bar keeper in Brooklyn. What in the universe could be more important?

Regards,
MG

[_Some Schmo]

More generally, does God want us to "figure things out"?

I don't know about that. The more I think about god, the more he fades out of existence.

So there's a definition of god: the one who wants us to realize he's not there. Maybe I'm a Buddhist and don't know it.

[_Gadianton]

Tarski,

I don't think you'll ever get a straight answer. I've asked similar many times. Well, there's no way you can get a straight answer.

[_Bazooka]

Tarski, it depends on which God....

[_ldsfaqs]

God want's us to seek after Light and Truth.

Everyone however has their own compass and interests. Some are interested in more light, less truth, or more truth and less light, or all of both. Or they are interested in other things with a little or a lot of one or the other, or even all.

I don't know if any of you have done those pschological tests in college or otherwise, but you'll note that most people fall into certain category's of thought and behavior, but there are the rare like me who endevor all aspects.

But anyway, the point is that God qualifies according to the light and truth of a person. Truth will not save a person, but if a person has gained the greater of light with what they do have as truth, they will be better off than the person who had the truth but less light. This life is to demonstrate whether we will be and follow good or evil. The man who has simple honor, does good his whole life (thus mastering the "spirit of the law, even if not the letter", but not interested in religion will be God's own, because in his heart and actions he is of God. The man who has maybe more knowledge, if he also is able to conform to what he knows, will also be of God.

But a danger also is that the more a person knows, if they don't strive to conform to what they know, then they are also judged by it.... So, while knowledge and truth is good and useful and important, it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is do we live according to light and truth.

[_EAllusion]

Tarski,

I don't think you'll ever get a straight answer. I've asked similar many times. Well, there's no way you can get a straight answer.

I think this informs a related practical argument against the value of sophisticated apologetics. Suppose an unbeliever presents an accessible argument for disbelief in a religion. Maybe its the problem of evil. Maybe its skepticism in the Book of Mormon as authentic history. Most people can grasp those arguments. There are lots of apologetics that take the form of saying, " Sure, it might at first reasonably seem like this is a good argument, but once you consider this intellectually sophisticated set of arguments, you'll see that it can be resolved."

This might satisfy the apologist, but it creates a problem. If in order to reject ostensible reasons for disbelief you have to have the educational background and intellectual sophistication to grasp the apologist's arguments, then where does that leave people who don't have that? This is both true of people today who lack those traits and people in the past who didn't have access to Kuhnian philosophy or whatever the apologist is invoking.

So has God created a situation where reasonable belief is only accessible to a few sophisticates? Or has God created a situation where people are expected to believe even when what is accessible to most people rationally compels disbelief? God providing only enough reason to believe to a few intellectuals or God wanting irrational belief are both ethically dubious positions for the apologist to endorse.

It would appear that apologists are in a bit of a bind. They have to come up with counterarguments that both are good and are accessible to the minds of all reasonable disbelievers. Of course they can always try to argue that things like the problem of evil and skepticism in Book of Mormon history aren't reasonable to begin with, but that makes their position just that much more dubious.

[_EAllusion]

It also just occurred to me that the age of accountability in Mormonism is 8. 8!

Think about that next time you read an apologist trying to invoke postmodernist philosophy of science to get around obvious problems with the faith.

[_Gadianton]

This might satisfy the apologist, but it creates a problem. If in order to reject reject ostensible reasons for disbelief you have to have the educational background and intellectual sophistication to grasp the apologist's arguments, then where does that leave people who don't have that? This is both true of people today who lack those traits and people in the past who didn't have access to Kuhnian philosophy or whatever the apologist is invoking

Mormonism doesn't need to have this issue because it's notoriously anti-intellectual. When I was around 14, in a general interview, the bishop referred to me as "you intellectuals" -- this bishop was very nice but it was meant as an insult -- and I have no idea where it came as it didn't fit me at all, I didn't read or study or even do well in school, and I didn't question anything in church. I wouldn't have been able to define the word, but I intuited he didn't mean I was smart. The important thing is that he revealed his disdain for "intellectuals." The next bishop, when I did question a few things in priests quorum, gave me a real talking to about getting "off the wall" in class. By that time, I was being a little sarcastic, it wasn't out of disbelief, but what they were teaching was so outrageously fundamentalistic -- and for the record I didn't even accept evolution until my 20s, which tells you how out there this stuff was -- that I couldn't bring myself to tell them what they wanted to hear. This bishop had a successful medical practice and I was by no means dealing with someone dumber or less educated than I was. Then the next bishop, who came after a BYU stint and pre-mission, in regard to the interest I had developed in FARMS, told me the story I've told here before about the "intellectual" he knew who had every church book and a enviable library, he was a go-to-guy, to borrow from Schryver, and after a while he quietly, one by one gave his books away and that was that.

Then, the pre-mission stake president told me regarding Hugh Nibley, "I'm sure he's really something (paraphrased) if you can follow him (exact)". He was playing dumb, as he was an electrical engineer, in order to dismiss. Then on my mission, my mission president, a man with big connections to the brethren and extremely successful, told me when I asked what church books he liked, told me he didn't read any. He only read the scriptures, wrote talks based on the scriptures, and if in a pinch would consult Mormon Doctrine. Even at BYU, when I finally brought a list of concerns to a counselor who was one of my teachers, one who received scathing reviews from students for denying part of the Old Testemant in class even he didn't encourage me to study the church. To my list of concerns, he said, he didn't know the answer, scribbled down a name within FARMs for me to speak to if I wanted, but -- good luck!

So when a Mike Ash talks about members having the responsibility to study out the issues on their own, he's plain wrong. Only very recently could I even put the burden of intellect on the Church as it appears they are formally commissioning papers. So as far as internal consistency goes, the Church just has to say to pray harder and quit sinning because intellect will not help. The apologists are in the bind because they do believe intellect is imperative. I'm not sure Thomas Aquinas had the problems the apologists do when he said that faith is fully justified, even for those who can't follow a proof. He wasn't on the defensive. In a time when religion is majorly on the defensive intellectually, it's difficult to grant simple faith as pleasing to God, as the apologists do, and do so consistently. No doubt we've seen the lectures from FAIR telling simple believers what they are and aren't allowed to have a testimony of. inevitably, in a climate of criticism, simple faith will contradict the self-appointed scholars. And God's criteria for sorting it out gets in the bind you suggest.