Kishkumen wrote:harmony wrote:And you think you can see the BIG picture, but people who don't agree with you can't? Good to know.
This is yet another fine Mopologetic strategy at work. The picture always extends to eternity when they get into a rough patch, because only there can one place it out of mortal reach. No problem is too big for the scope of the eternal, no answer required the moment it gets there. My guess is that many a liberal Mormon resides in this mental realm, where it all works out and makes sense
someday.
This is quite an accurate assessment, and reminds me of the "it's turtles all the way down" argument. All the nonsense somehow has to be rationalised. Peg them with the Adam in the Garden of Eden Missouri and watch the fumbling and spin, or just non-answers. Continental drift becomes possible within a year "in the days of Peleg". The formerly literal becomes non-literal, but within certain boundaries.
The key point is: "It will all work out."
This brings me to the term "fideism":
Fideism is the view that religious belief relies primarily on faith or special revelation, rather than rational inference or observation (see natural theology). The word fideism comes from fides, the Latin word for faith, and literally means "faith-ism."
So faith in the irrational is "faithism", or fideism. If I board an aircraft I have a fairly rational faith that the pilot is licensed, well-trained, experienced if flying a 747, for example, and I can have a strong and reasonable faith that I will arrive safely at my destination.
But Pascal observed:
Who then will blame Christians for not being able to give reasons for their beliefs, since they profess belief in a religion which they cannot explain? They declare, when they expound it to the world, that it is foolishness, stultitiam; and then you complain because they do not prove it! If they proved it, they would not keep their word; it is through their lack of proofs that they show they are not lacking in sense.
Luther wrote:
"All the articles of our Christian faith, which God has revealed to us in His Word, are in presence of reason sheerly impossible, absurd, and false." and "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has."
Modern apologetics is the attempt to make the absurd sound reasonable, or at least be given some sort of legitimacy. And that's possibly why testimony bearing "Chapel Mormons" mostly have little time for it. When your faith has to be brought into the arena of scientific or academic legitimacy, it simply is no longer faith.