Everyone Has Faith; That is the Only Option

[honorentheos]

A bus you just watched come to a stop to let you on requires as much faith it's brakes will work now you are on the bus as, say, believing the Book of Mormon is a record of an ancient Hebrew migration to the Americas despite the immense amount of evidence to the contrary?

Are you sure?

To be clear, on of those sits on the side of probably so while the other is in the side of probably not. It's not a medium size gulf as it's a choice to ignore the probabilities for some other reason than evidence.

Most people aren't using the Book of Mormon as a historical text. They are using it to draw closer to God. So yes, if they read a passage and feel a little closer to God, they might trust the missionaries and get baptized in an effort to start a journey toward God. That is similar to the bus analogy in that you have one data point on its brakes when you step on. The person has one data point on how the Book of Mormon can draw them close to God.

And yes, I periodically get on a bus in LA trusting they are in good mechanical condition despite all the visual evidence to the contrary. (smiley face)

I'm not sure the analogy with the bus is improved here. It strikes me as more akin to the tightrope walker analogy from earlier, only the rope is on the floor and the person being encouraged to "walk" across it. The risk of falling being nonexistent, the actual risk is in disavowing the illusion the person isn't just walking on the floor and engaging in theater. Praise for enthusiasm in pantomiming balancing carefully, courageously, builds confidence in continuing to engage in the play. As the risk of falling is non-existent the options are not between falling or maintaining ones balance on the rope. The choice is to step off and away or continue the act.

[Gadianton]

I don't think faith as risk assessment is a convincing framework for what religious people generally mean when they say to have faith. I definitely don't believe the actuarial definition of faith is compatible with what's in scripture.

A long time ago I decided the best exegesis of faith is found in horror movies. Disbelief in the supernatural and especially, mocking the supernatural or disbelieving a report about the supernatural is a death sentence. Believing in the supernatural won't necessarily save you, but it is a necessary condition, because it requires you to think in terms of whatever random supernatural logic is in play. You have to beat evil by it's own rules.

The Bible isn't a philosophical text. Faith is tied only to its narrative, it isn't an abstract principle. You can't wonder if the people who worshipped Baal had faith. They didn't. If you believed and followed Jehovah or Christ you had faith. While worshipping darkness and trusting the arm of flesh is something that occurs in a way that mirrors how people follow and worship God except to a bad end, it still isn't ever described as faith. If you believed in Christ's resurrection but didn't see, you had faith, if you believed in Satan's -- whatever his thing is -- but didn't see, you're just deceived. There isn't an "anti-Christ' version of faith aside from basic deception.

Even in James or Alma 32 what seems potentially abstract is never hinted at being applicable to anything but the gospel in the exegesis. Showing your devotion to Satan by works of darkness cannot be called faith. And of course, in the scriptures, disbelief and mockery is a ticket punch to damnation and eternal hell.

What is most striking then about the commonality between horror movies and the gospel of Jesus Christ, is both deal with literal worlds, not hypothetical ones. How ever that particular world is in the horror movie mirrors how the particular world is in the gospel. If you laugh at supernatural or religion that isn't true in that world, the intent in the abstract is meaningless, there is no penalty. If you laugh or ignore the true religion you are screwed. From a modernist standpoint it sounds like I'm saying all evil is existential evil. If you walk by a dark cave and laugh and flip it off and a bear happens to be there and comes running out, that seems to be a very similar fate to the fate of laughing at the report of a demon but then whoah, there really was a demon. But that's because we're so used to thinking in counterfactuals, we want to say that it can only be a fate deserved in principle if it works across all possible worlds -- if disrespecting a dark cave is bad universally. But that's imposing a framework that is false for the sake of horror movies or the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you happened to disrespect that dark cave that had a bear in it, and the bear attacked you, it's a fate justified by the narrative of that world. End of story. And if you didn't believe Jesus, but two weeks ago you also ignored some other guy who sounded similar, then you reap damnation in the one case and it's justified, while not in the other. End of story.

[Marcus]

...Most people aren't using the Book of Mormon as a historical text. They are using it to draw closer to God...

I find this to be an incredible statement, completely outside of my experience having grown up in the lds church.

Could you clarify--are you referring to investigators? Or lds members? Or people overall?

[Physics Guy]

You have to beat evil by its own rules. …

If you laugh at supernatural or religion that isn't true in that world, the intent in the abstract is meaningless, there is no penalty. If you laugh or ignore the true religion you are screwed. … If you walk by a dark cave and laugh and flip it off and a bear happens to be there and comes running out, that seems to be a very similar fate to the fate of laughing at the report of a demon but then whoah, there really was a demon. But that's because we're so used to thinking in counterfactuals, we want to say that it can only be a fate deserved in principle if it works across all possible worlds -- if disrespecting a dark cave is bad universally. But that's imposing a framework that is false for the sake of horror movies or the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you happened to disrespect that dark cave that had a bear in it, and the bear attacked you, it's a fate justified by the narrative of that world. End of story. And if you didn't believe Jesus, but two weeks ago you also ignored some other guy who sounded similar, then you reap damnation in the one case and it's justified, while not in the other.

I don’t want to stand up for religion as magic, but consequences depending on specific conditions rather than general ones isn’t just a feature of horror films or gospels. It’s how the world really works.

There really isn’t anything dangerous about laughing at dark caves. The danger is in disturbing bears. It’s not true that every red fruit is good to eat. Red apples are good, but some red berries are poisonous. You can ignore false laws of nature with impunity. Nothing has to be below as it is above; you don’t need to balance your humors. Ignore that one similar-sounding law of gravity, though, and you fall to your death.

You have to beat the real world by its own rules. The fact that horror films and manipulative religions reflect this principle isn’t the problem with them. In fact I think the only real problem with them is just that they get the rules wrong. They’re telling you to fear the wrong cave. Insofar as they’re telling you the general principle that some things might be vitally important, even though they don’t seem so different to you from unimportant things, they are telling the truth. The real world really is like that.

[PseudoPaul]

So the title may have just a little bit of clickbait in it, but the statement is generally true. Hear me out.

At a very basic level, faith is a word that signifies trust in God or trust in religious leaders. The secular version of the word is even more general. It just means strong trust in someone or something (e.g. I have faith in the banking system).

When I get on an airplane, I don't demand to see the oil pressure gauge or carefully look over the safety checklist. I trust someone else has done that. When I get on the internet, I do check to make sure my news feed comes from a trustworthy site. When I read a scientific paper, I usually don't repeat the experiment to check their work. I trust someone else will do that. I do, however, repeat their experiment when it is related to my current research and it challenges my previous results.

You see, we all have faith or trust in things. Life is just too short and our brains are too tiny to know everything before we do something with our lives. We have to trust in someone and move forward with the information we have. This can be true in both secular and religious realms.

Why is this important in a forum like this? I sometimes hear people give a terrible definition of faith. This definition goes something like this: faith is believing in something while ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Yes, many of my fellow religionists follow this sort of definition, but it doesn't make it any less wrong.

When I was struggling with my faith a couple decades ago, my problem was that I had a problematic definition of faith. How could I believe in the church now that I knew all this difficult information? It just happened to be that I was taking my first graduate-level quantum physics class at the same time. I found myself asking the same questions of quantum physics. I know church doctrine and policy is not the same as quantum physics, but there were enough similarities to lead me to the epiphany that faith and trust have to be siblings. In both cases, I found myself able to trust in something that just didn't make complete sense to me at the time.

I'm curious what your thoughts are, especially considering this concept is one of the main reasons I kept my testimony during my own struggles with faith.

That's broadly true, but an even better term than trust might be allegiance or loyalty. In the ancient world it wasn't a controversial thing to say that some figure rose from the dead or some god performed some amazing feat. The question was to which of these beings had you chosen to give your allegiance.

[JohnW]

JohnW, I primarily wanted to thank you for being an example of congenial dialogue. It certainly helps my internal compass of curmudgeonality (not a real word, but I'm going to claim it).

I want to pre-empt the following that it is not only coming off-the-cuff from memory, but it is from a memory that has suffered a series of ongoing cognitive limitations. So, a grain of salt, and all of that jazz.

I think one aspect that may be missing in this, which doesn't carry over into modern Christianity/religious language is that faith in early Christianity (at least given the time, location, and language choice of the gospels) was potentially footed within the Greek reciprocity system, and a continuation of the God of reciprocity that Jews had a relationship with.

Faith in a religious context wasn't just a trust, or belief. It was faithfulness. It was emblematic of the relationship between a Lord and those under their charge. "Faith" implied loyalty. Faith in Christ wasn't a trust that He was God (or God's son), but rather loyalty to him as Lord, and the reciprocal relationship associated with that loyalty (i.e. "I can't provide myself with x, but my Lord can, and will provide me with x, if I am loyal and do y.")

Basically, I guess to extend this, somewhat loosely with your OP is that in a more direct sense, we all have a similar loyalty/faithfulness is relationships. I am loyal to _____. I trust that they will _____. I think that this type of "faith," that everyone has, is generally more in line with the faith of early Christians in regards to the divine. Similarly, it probably suffers from the same shortcomings of trying to draw a direct comparison (as the loyalty/trust reciprocity is physically measurable in the immediate in one instance, and not so much in the other).

Yes, I'm pretty sure you are right. I think faith originally had a connotation of master-servant in there based on the widespread culture of just about everyone back then. God would vouch for us in return for our loyalty. This is definitely another weakness in my comparison in the OP. In fact when discussing this sort of comparison with other active members, that is usually what they dive into first. They would describe it another way, something along the lines of faith is a word of action. Which isn't exactly the same as what you describe, but I think it is hitting on a similar theme. Loyalty implies action when the object of loyalty requires something of you.

[JohnW]

Most people aren't using the Book of Mormon as a historical text. They are using it to draw closer to God. So yes, if they read a passage and feel a little closer to God, they might trust the missionaries and get baptized in an effort to start a journey toward God. That is similar to the bus analogy in that you have one data point on its brakes when you step on. The person has one data point on how the Book of Mormon can draw them close to God.

And yes, I periodically get on a bus in LA trusting they are in good mechanical condition despite all the visual evidence to the contrary. (smiley face)

I see the question as not whether people are using the Book of Mormon as a historical text (there being little evidence that they are - at least, not that I'm aware of) so much as people coming to accept the Book of Mormon as a religious text partly based on the teaching of the LDS church that it is historical, and that it was miraculously translated into English from gold plates that contained a genuine history.

Genuine science-based organizations like The Smithsonian make a good case (for me) that there is no scientific basis on which to claim that the Book of Mormon is a historical text.

Gedankenexperiment
Suppose that the missionaries taught that science-based case, but said that in spite of there being no good evidence for the Book of Mormon as a historical text, it can still be used to draw closer to God. What do you think would happen? Would it work in converting people to Mormonism? What would they then teach about Joseph Smith?

If the Book of Mormon is truly inspired by a real god, and Moroni's promise is still true, should it matter about the rest of the story? Should it not stand on its own merits?

Yeah, I was worried you might push the historical button a bit more. I was trying to not divert the thread. I can make a couple comments, but I don't really have the expertise to comment much. I understand your concerns about the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Those were some of my same concerns the entire time I was struggling. To tell you the absolute truth, I still get a little uncomfortable when thinking about it because I don't have any good answers. I can give you the short answer of how I got through the historicity struggle. I don't think it will highjack the thread, because it is rather simple and (spoiler alert) I don't expect it to be satisfying to anyone here.

Around the time I was struggling with my testimony, Elder Holland gave a talk saying that if people are going to leave the church, they would have to go under, around, or over the Book of Mormon. Those weren't his exact words, but that should trigger a memory in many of you, because I recall people here making fun of that talk. I remember that talk vividly, because I was in the process of having that happen to me. I was beginning to lose my testimony, so I did what any good scientist does. I said to myself, "Assuming the Book of Mormon is false, how would I explain that some farmer kid came up with it" (yes, I became familiar with the various theories along those lines). I never found a completely satisfactory answer as to how he could have done it. I'm not saying that there is overwhelming evidence for the Book of Mormon, but there was just enough evidence in favor of the Book of Mormon that I decided to continue on with my faith for a little longer. After a year or so, I decided to go a little bit longer. I kept doing that until I realized that I had the beginnings of a testimony again. Eventually, for various reasons, it far surpassed anything I had before my struggles.

Anyway, I know that isn't a satisfactory answer, but that is how it happened to me. Sure, there are still historicity issues with the Book of Mormon, but it doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I guess my testimony just outweighs any residual issues in my mind.

[JohnW]

Most people aren't using the Book of Mormon as a historical text. They are using it to draw closer to God. So yes, if they read a passage and feel a little closer to God, they might trust the missionaries and get baptized in an effort to start a journey toward God.

JohnW, assuming there is a god, why do you assume that the Book of Mormon actually helps readers of it to 'draw closer to God' rather than to something other than the actual god? One has to not only believe that there is a god rather than no god at all, and secondarily that the Book of Mormon god is the actual god rather than such super being as described by thousands of other religions across the planet. But, why if the Book of Mormon does describe the actual god, why does that god need to imbue this 'manual to draw closer to god' with so many fabrications?

I don't know if I can satisfactorily answer this, but I can give it a try. I personally believe there is a God. That is the difficult one (in my mind). Once you get past that, it is a rather easy step to assume God is willing to inspire or help people who are trying to reach out to him regardless of their religious preferences. Look at it from God's perspective. Assuming there is a God who cares about humans, why would he not reach out and uplift or otherwise help someone who is praying to him and trying to be a better person. I know this makes quite a few assumptions, but bear with me for a minute. If the above is the case, then God is willing to be there for people who are trying to draw closer to him. At that point, the main problem for him would be that some just aren't drawing closer to him in an efficient manner (definition purposefully left vague). He would probably like to help them optimize their methods of drawing closer to him, so he would probably have something to say about process. That would be a reason for scripture. Of course, there is scripture all over the world. This isn't really providing much evidence that the Book of Mormon is more efficient at drawing mankind closer to God than any other book of scripture, but I don't know if I can really provide much evidence. It seems to me to be a personal quest of sorts. I'm of the opinion that the Book of Mormon is true, but I would be the first to admit that the way I came to that conclusion is not scientific.

Long story short, yes, scripture brings us closer to an idea of God that is more or less compatible with the real God, assuming such a being exists. I just don't think it is as important that we have a perfect idea of God before we start building our relationship with him. Most things in life are like this. There is always some learning along the way.

[drumdude]

I just don't think it is as important that we have a perfect idea of God before we start building our relationship with him. Most things in life are like this. There is always some learning along the way.

Unless you’re a child who God decides to give childhood cancer to and you die at age 9 after years of painful and fruitless treatments. Then you don’t get a chance to learn anything.

Once you believe in God and start to look at the world God created, you quickly believe he either can’t exist or if he does he is a monster.

[Rivendale]

I see the question as not whether people are using the Book of Mormon as a historical text (there being little evidence that they are - at least, not that I'm aware of) so much as people coming to accept the Book of Mormon as a religious text partly based on the teaching of the LDS church that it is historical, and that it was miraculously translated into English from gold plates that contained a genuine history.

Genuine science-based organizations like The Smithsonian make a good case (for me) that there is no scientific basis on which to claim that the Book of Mormon is a historical text.

Gedankenexperiment
Suppose that the missionaries taught that science-based case, but said that in spite of there being no good evidence for the Book of Mormon as a historical text, it can still be used to draw closer to God. What do you think would happen? Would it work in converting people to Mormonism? What would they then teach about Joseph Smith?

If the Book of Mormon is truly inspired by a real god, and Moroni's promise is still true, should it matter about the rest of the story? Should it not stand on its own merits?

Yeah, I was worried you might push the historical button a bit more. I was trying to not divert the thread. I can make a couple comments, but I don't really have the expertise to comment much. I understand your concerns about the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Those were some of my same concerns the entire time I was struggling. To tell you the absolute truth, I still get a little uncomfortable when thinking about it because I don't have any good answers. I can give you the short answer of how I got through the historicity struggle. I don't think it will highjack the thread, because it is rather simple and (spoiler alert) I don't expect it to be satisfying to anyone here.

Around the time I was struggling with my testimony, Elder Holland gave a talk saying that if people are going to leave the church, they would have to go under, around, or over the Book of Mormon. Those weren't his exact words, but that should trigger a memory in many of you, because I recall people here making fun of that talk. I remember that talk vividly, because I was in the process of having that happen to me. I was beginning to lose my testimony, so I did what any good scientist does. I said to myself, "Assuming the Book of Mormon is false, how would I explain that some farmer kid came up with it" (yes, I became familiar with the various theories along those lines). I never found a completely satisfactory answer as to how he could have done it. I'm not saying that there is overwhelming evidence for the Book of Mormon, but there was just enough evidence in favor of the Book of Mormon that I decided to continue on with my faith for a little longer. After a year or so, I decided to go a little bit longer. I kept doing that until I realized that I had the beginnings of a testimony again. Eventually, for various reasons, it far surpassed anything I had before my struggles.

Anyway, I know that isn't a satisfactory answer, but that is how it happened to me. Sure, there are still historicity issues with the Book of Mormon, but it doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I guess my testimony just outweighs any residual issues in my mind.

It seems like you have not looked into the details of various methods that he could have used. This is exactly what Brian Hales uses as an apologetic. Even worse, you are simply using an argument from ignorance.....I can't see how he could do it so I will continue. At least you are brave enough to admit it in this forum. Have you looked into the variety of religious experiences going on during his time? How his first vision experiences match many others? His material he used matches a 19th century perspective regarding Christianity? His use of the Adam Clark Commentary regarding the Bible? His use of Swedenborg regarding the levels of heaven? His fascination with the Native American culture that resulted in stories being told to his family as a young man? There are many contemporary sources now that have a legitimate scholarly approach as to how it was done. Visions in a Seer Stone for one.