“I appreciated Craig and Ray’s sharing of undeniable, unexplainable miraculous experiences they have had, experiences that are still undeniable and unexplainable *after* they had lost their faith. This provided for me a fascinating twist on the old “put it on the shelf” motif we are familiar with: they swapped miracle stories from their personal lives that they cannot explain away, even given their current unbelieving orientation.”

Craig’s Reply Ummm…NO that is not what I was saying at all. I said that in light of my current non-belief in Mormonism’s claims…I have had to go back and reinterpret these experiences and “Explain” them through a natural lens rather than a magical Mormon prism.

These experiences were as real as the breath I breathe…they happened that is fact (at least to me)…so if the Mormon God did not intercede in my life, as I had once believed, then what did happen? In other words how do I come to terms with these experiences? I explain them…just as I did in my earlier post, through natural cause and effects…rather than the hand of a Mormon God.

Note to Allen: could you please contact me via my email address? “utah paxton at yahoo dot com” no spaces of course.

First, I really must protest the way that Louis has distorted my comments. He stated above that I “boasted” that I no longer believe certain claims made by the church. I certainly was not boasting, and I really can’t imagine what would prompt Louis to characterize my remarks in that way. I was summarizing the current state of my beliefs. If that is boasting, then Louis is surely a world class braggart. I don’t believe that about him, and I think it was quite unfair of him to make that accusation about me. Let me reiterate. My lack of belief is a cause of significant pain to me. It occupies my thoughts, and my prayers constantly. I am not proud of them, and I wish they were different. My beliefs may or may not be true, but I am certainly not boasting about them when I attempt to summarize them.

I also strenuously object to his caricature of me when he tries to reduce my argument to “if someone as morally qualified as B cannot get God to show him a sign, the God simply is not just”. That is a gross misrepresentation of my beliefs and my argument. My argument has been quite simple. I have prayed and pleaded for wisdom, just as Joseph Smith did. I have tried to knock, and I have sought God just as ancient and modern prophets have told me I should. I have not received a witness from God in a form that I can recognize that the LDS church is true. Louis would reduce me to a naïve (or worse), arrogant sign seeker who thinks that God should answer to my every whim. I have tried as hard as I know how to try. In fact, I continue to pray, study and serve to the best of my limited abilities. I am far from perfect, but I am trying to act in faith even if I cannot affirm certain beliefs. I am not your enemy Louis. I really want to believe that God has restored the true gospel, and that I am a part of his covenant people. It is frustrating, and not at all productive to have my concerns trivialized and dismissed in this manner.

As to some of the more substantive issues under discussion, I think that Louis has not effectively answered Thomas’ arguments. He continues to maintain that a lack of belief in the LDS church is indicative of a rejection of God and a lack of certain moral virtues. Surely that conclusion demands more support than he has offered thus far.

I agree completely. Which makes me wonder whether we’re not thoroughly misunderstanding each other’s arguments.

Louis, what you wrote sounds quite a bit like Sections 847 and 848 of the Cathechism of the Catholic Church, in which the Church maintains its teaching that it has exclusive teaching and sacramental authority, but also allows that men of good will who are not Catholics can nevertheless be considered part of the universal Church, and be saved:

“847 …Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.

848 “Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men.”

But how do I square what you’ve just said, with what I understood you to say earlier — namely, that a person who was not convinced of the exclusive teaching and sacramental authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must lack faith in God?

I see in many at BYU an interesting variant of fideism, whose defenders urge people simply to believe the Church’s teaching regardless of rational objections. BYU scholars’ evident fascination with the work of the Arab fideist thinker al-Ghazali doesn’t surprise me.

Now, I’m not a Thomist, as you probably noticed. I believe that God can not be discovered by unaided human reason. But I think strong fideism goes too far, in that it seems to suggest that not only does reason have its limits (duh), faith is so superior to reason that it should prevail in the case of conflicts. I’m oversimplifying mightily here, but something happened in the High Middle Ages that gave us a good data point on the practical effects of strong fideism: The Islamic world listened to al-Ghazali, turned its back on progress, and proceeded to stagnate until pretty much this day. The West — although it remained shot through with unreason — didn’t throw reason quite so thoroughly out the door, and proceeded to conquer the world and invent indoor plumbing, religious freedom, and the Internet. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind as to which approach is superior.

“If controversy and lingering doubts over Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon are the real reasons for holding back, then who do that must have specific objections to possibility that a frail human being could actually encounter real messengers from the heavens.

Non sequitur. The question is not whether heavenly messengers can speak to prophets; the question is whether they did on a particular occasion.

You, like I, doubt that the nutso who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart was the authentic prophet he declared himself to be. That does not mean you don’t believe in prophecy — it just means that you doubt one particular prophetic claim.

As I wrote earlier, the vast majority of people who claim to be God’s exclusive prophetic mouthpiece, are false prophets. They must be, because their claims are mutually exclusive. If Mohammed was the last prophet, then Joseph Smith was not a prophet. If Warren Jeffs is the true living prophet of the Restored Church, then Thomas S. Monson is not — and vice versa. Given that any particular exclusive prophetic claim appears therefore to be more likely false than true, why is it not appropriate to recognize a rebuttable presumption against the authenticity of an exclusive prophetic claim?

“However, he does not believe that he is ‘putting God on trial’ by asking Him, in effect, which church is true–the one I was born into, or otherwise.’”

Then was not Joseph Smith “putting God on trial” in the Sacred Grove?

“I can, however, set out my key objection to what Doubting Thomas has written by pointing out that if one should only believe what is certain or only believe to the degree that one is certain, then it makes no sense to boast about having made a choice to believe in a loving God, when one also insists that there is no compelling evidence for or against that belief.”

I believe that’s not quite an accurate statement of my argument. I said [paraphrasing poorly-remembered Locke) that one should not entertain any idea with more certainty than can be justified. I did not say that “one should only believe what is certain.” There is a difference.

I’m sure the common LDS phrase “I know the Church is true” has been discussed extensively on this board prior to my butting in. That is an example of a certainty that I, myself, could not honestly declare. I could, however, say with full honesty that I “believe” in God, in the sense that with the evidence in equipoise, I adopt a presumption that He is real, and order my actions accordingly.

Could I, however, say that I “believe” that the earth is only six thousand years old? No. It is one thing to express “belief” in something that the best evidence of reason can’t answer one way or the other. It is another thing to reject clear evidence (or as clear as anything can be in this world; let’s hold the relativistic ideas that nothing is certain until later) in favor of a mere desire to believe. William James, with his “The Will to Believe” thought this was permissible; I (being a naive young whippersnapper) still insist on thinking Truth is not so flexible that we can each create our own truth as we go along.

We can choose to believe in the uncertain. We can even, I suppose, choose to believe in the improbable. But to say one “chooses to believe” something that you are fairly convinced is false is effectively a declaration that truth doesn’t matter. From Locke, again:

“Reason is natural revelation, through which ·God·, the eternal father of light and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth that he has put within the reach of their natural faculties. Revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated immediately by God, the truth of which is supported by reason through the testimony and proofs it gives that they do come from God. Thus, someone who takes away reason to make way for revelation puts out the light of both – like persuading a man to put out his eyes so that he can better to receive the remote light of an invisible star through a telescope!”

That’s what I meant, and thought I’d expressed. Faith without rational certainty is the only true faith. “Faith” in defiance of reason is not of God. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Faith and reason are the two means by which God reveals himself to man. If they appear to conflict, we’ve made a mistake somewhere, and need to rethink.

I had never considered this angle before, but it appears that even those who find themselves in the agnostic/atheist/unbeliever/etc. camp have their “put it on the shelf” issues, too.

I have lots of “put it on the shelf” issues. For example in regard to near death experiences. It’s a very complex subject with few answers, but one that still interests me.

That’s not quite the same as determining whether Jews living in 600 BC actually practised Christianity. I don’t have to put that one on the shelf.

Well, going back 33 years when I first went to the New Zealand temple (as Oz didn’t have one then), something Lou would know all about. Maybe he even remembers Brother Penny (I think that was his name), a mostly-blind man who used to say, “just direct me to the portrait of the Prophet (in the temple), and will find my way from there”. Anyway, I have to say that temple experience was quite extraordinary. I was literally “floating” for at least two days.

When I later went into Hamilton to do some browsing and shopping, I felt like I had just stepped from a Celestial world back into a Telestial. The difference, for me, was very marked. But I don’t see any way of distinguishing between what my Muslim friend felt, and expressed, to what I did. I can’t call it unique. One must also contemplete why people like Yusif Ali (the former Cat Stevens) would be so enrapt in Islam. But if you listen to Steven’s songs before he converted to Islam, you’ll hear a distinct “longing” for where he eventually ended up. It could have been Mormonism, but as fate would have it, it was Islam.

I consider these experiences universal, which Mormonism does not have a corner on. In regard to Thomas and B, I can only hypothesise why they didn’t have these sorts of experiences, and why, for example, a Muslim would. So maybe it has something to do with the personal make-up of an individual, and not something that would be frowned upon by God. My recollection is that Joseph Smith’s grandfather, Solomon Mack, was an unbeliever and skeptic, until very late in life when he was “converted to the Christian faith in an extraordinary manner”. So if there is some kind of “divine plan”, then I think only God is worthy to judge the desires and intent of the heart.

Same process, different outcome – one ends up a Mormon, the other a Muslim.

I find this fascinating, especially in light of the central question that has emerged in this thread about whether faith or unfaith is ultimately a choice. Craig reported still “getting goosebumps” just thinking about his experience, and Ray said that he has asked for and gotten over 30 opinions from fellow skeptics to explain it away, but all for naught.

I had never considered this angle before, but it appears that even those who find themselves in the agnostic/atheist/unbeliever/etc. camp have their “put it on the shelf” issues, too.

Is it possible that the discomfort of unbelievers’ “put it on the shelf” issues might rival or even exceed the discomfort of believers’ “put it on the shelf” issues (in light of human pride and psychology, resentment over “being duped,” etc.)?

This was a completely new train of thought for me in considering this.

Well, what was Locke talking about? I will not use his technical jargon. What he was saying is that we know with certainty what we encounter without any mediation of a theory or explanation. If we taste bitter when we place alum on our tongue we instantly know with certainty bitterness. But when we surmise that we have been poison or that a devil has done something to us, we cannot be certain about such secondary matters. We might, if we were disciples of Locke, say that when we encounter God, we are certain of that fact. But whether this encounter was an illusion or delusion or whether that God we encountered was kind and loving and so forth, is something about which we cannot be entirely certain.

I find it interesting that Lou used this analysis of Locke’s position in reference to a statement made by Thomas, but it also has direct applicability to a statement I made earlier and subsequent comments by both Craig and Ray. Here’s what I had said:

Now, as to the one data point for which, I believe, you cannot provide an alternative explanation: Personal interaction with the divine. I know my experiences, and the reality of those experiences cannot be explained away by others unless I allow them to be explained away.

If I say that I have received some divine intervention in my life (heard heavenly voices, had a vision, or hosted heavenly visitors), I cannot provide empirical evidence of such nor is such experience repeatable. But the lack of such evidence or repeatability doesn’t change the reality of the situation. I know what I know, and nothing can change that knowledge.

Note that I am talking about “personal interaction with the divine.” I am talking about talking with God, actually hearing God speak, or being visited by heavenly messengers. I am talking about things for which the world has no explanation (other than madness or deception) and for which it will not accept the possibility of such interaction.

Craig shared an experience that was very close to his heart. (Thanks, Craig. I could sense the feeling in your recounting.) However, that experience does not fall into the category of which I spoke. There was physical evidence for the event; Craig was able to retrieve something physical from his locker. Craig also (at least in this recounting) had no interaction with the divine, but a desired answer to prayer without any interaction.

This is what Lou refers to relative to Locke, above. Because there is no direct interaction, there is room for reinterpretation at a later point–just as Craig has done. I suspect (admittedly without evidence) that had the door not only opened for Craig but been accompanied by a heavenly visitor on the other side of the door pushing the crash bar to facilitate the opening, Criag’s later reinterpretation would have been less likely–just as Lou reports concerning Locke.

Communication with the divine is a data point that cannot be proven, cannot be repeated on demand, and cannot (if one is honest with oneself) be denied. It can be related to others, but then the others must either judge the individual as mistaken, as a deceiver, or as a madman.

-Allen

I am genuinely concerned about DT because his opinions seem rather odd coming from a returned missionary. I notice that he thinks I am an old goat, which is true. And he thinks my own missionary experience was so long ago that I could not possibly be aware of the immaturity of missionaries or the world opened before their eyes. He is wrong. My own second mission, during which I could observe missionaries closely, and talk constantly with very recently returned missionaries, as well as the 36 years I taught the history of philosophy to mostly returned missionaries, have given me, I am confident, much opportunity to observe closely returned missionaries. They are as a group, like everything else in this disconsolate world, a mixed bag. Unfortunately some went on their missions, learned the steps, did the dance, and six months after they were back they had lapsed back into gentile ways and soon some even begin to disengage from the faith they once sort of proclaimed. But the Church moves on even while some straggle behind or go missing for a host of reasons, some easily understandable, if not exactly laudable.

1. In one place Doubting T. opines as follows: “should not any virtuous religious desire be first and foremost the desire to believe what is true? I suppose, but I am not sure what he means by religious desire. What is not generally known is that the word “religion” had in Europe a profoundly negative meaning until well after WW II. The great Swiss-German Protestant theologian insisted that religion was a skillfully administered narcotic. He lumped all the evils in this world under the label “religion.” And one ought to recall that Karl Marx insisted that religion was the opiate of the people. Even C. S. Lewis had a very negative opinion of what that word signifies. How ugly a word, how hard to imagine on the lips of the Savior, and so forth. Outside of the UK and the USA, the word religion right on through the history of Christianity identified either the pagan cults, and it was always contrasted with revelation and faith. The word identified either or both the works of man or of the demonic. But Doubting T. may consider this merely an academic matter raised by a nasty old professor who insisted that his students pay attention to intellectual history.

2. Then Doubting T. makes the following rather curious statement: “Alma 32:21 states that a belief in something other than truth is not even faith.” Ok, this is how that verse reads: “And now as I said concerning faith–faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” I wonder how DT gets from these words what he wrote. For us to understand what is being taught by Alma, we must grasp the context, and not merely gloss a proof text. It seems to me that part of the context–the textual material in which a passage in embedded–it seems to me to be relevant that Alma (see v17) mentions that “there are many who do say: If thou will show unto us a sign from heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we shall believe.” I take that language to mean that faith comes long before we know much of anything. Please keep in mind that Doubting T. is appealing to a text that truth of which he doubts or perhaps even denies. This conclusion seems to follow from the following: “If the Church is true, I want to be convinced of it sufficiently to honestly believe it.” Perhaps DT has not been clear, but what I take that statement to mean is that he wants proof from God–that is he wants to be “convinced before he will believe.” However, he does not believe that he is “‘putting God on trial’ by asking Him, in effect, which church is true–the one I was born into, or otherwise.”

3. DT is nothing if not emboldened by what he insists are justifiable reservations about faith. He seems to rest his case on John Locke. Hence the following: “John Locke wrote, and I agree, that the mark of one who loves truth is that he entertains no idea with greater certainty than can be justified. I cannot accept what seems to be the implication of some here that it constitutes ‘faith’ to outwardly declare myself convinced of things of which I am not.” Well, what was Locke talking about? I will not use his technical jargon. What he was saying is that we know with certainty what we encounter without any mediation of a theory or explanation. If we taste bitter when we place alum on our tongue we instantly know with certainty bitterness. But when we surmise that we have been poison or that a devil has done something to us, we cannot be certain about such secondary matters. We might, if we were disciples of Locke, say that when we encounter God, we are certain of that fact. But whether this encounter was an illusion or delusion or whether that God we encountered was kind and loving and so forth, is something about which we cannot be entirely certain.

4. Now please recall that DT earlier asserted that he has chosen to have faith in a loving God. But he did not thing that the evidence for or against this choice compelling either way. This does not seem to trouble him. But he is profoundly skeptical about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Church that is built around faith in the redemption from sin and death that defines the community of Saints. He insists that before he will have faith in the Holy One of Israel as redeemer and savior, he wants to be convinced before he will believe. And he seems to me to be insisting that his desire be gratified before he will have faith.
5. It is not at all clear if the loving God that DT says he has chose to have faith in is the in any sense one can find at work, from virtually every Christian perspective, in human history striving to redeem his children from sin and death. To begin to imagine that God is such a one that it will reward virtue seems to fly in the face of virtually every version of Christian faith. My own opinion is that God is not only loving, forgiving and merciful to those who put their trust in him–that is, exercise faith–but also just. What this means is that God will justify those who genuinely came unto Christ, entered into his Kingdom, and who diligently strive to keep his commandments. So I believe that the choice we make is exactly as Terryl Givens described it: ” “what we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is, in the final analysis an action that is positively laden with moral significance.”

6. DT asserted that “it is just as critical to be faithful to Christ the Truth as to Christ the Way, the ‘way’ being defined by the Gospel as declared by the Church.” With that sentiment I fully agree, if by “declared” what is meant is what is found in our scriptures and taught in our pulpits and by missionaries and so forth. No one is asking DT to proclaim anything that is not found at the very core of our scriptures. So Jesus of Nazareth is the longed for Messiah (Christ) and the redeemer and savior of all who will come unto him. Hence is the Way, the Light, and the Truth, the only name under heaven that can forgive our sins and so forth.

Perhaps DT for some unspecified reason holds back from or even rejects this wonderful message, since it comes primarily to the Saints through Joseph Smith to the assembly of Saints or Covenant People of God–that is, the Church of Jesus Christ. Perhaps DT, like my friend from Oz, wrongly assumes that the Saints both individually or collectively are somehow infallible, inerrant, morally perfect or all-knowing or the exclusive possessors of Christian wisdom or virtues. There are in every nation and place peoples to whom God responds in his own way and according to the genuine desires of his children. If controversy and lingering doubts over Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon are the real reasons for holding back, then who do that must have specific objections to possibility that a frail human being could actually encounter real messengers from the heavens. But such objections are slight, when compared with the enormous pounding that Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions have taken from various clever critics. Despite every evil that preachers and popes have inflicted on this world, there are still many admirable examples of faith and the virtues flowing from faithfulness that can be seen in most versions of those traditions. If deeds are what really count with God, then the Saints can and must overlook the vast variety of differences in theologies and creeds. The reason is that we are not saved by such things, but by keeping the commandments–by deeds of love rather than mere words about love, and so forth. But we need the heavens to have been opened and we need to be open to the heavens for any of this to have the possibility of transforming our hearts and minds.

But no matter. As Allen suggested, our ideas stand or fall on their merits, irrespective of our character. If Dr. Midgley or I should declare that two and two are four, it remains true even if we enjoy kicking puppies. So here goes; please pardon the length:

It’s been argued that the declarations of those who have lost confidence in the LDS Church that they desperately wanted the Church to be true, must be false: Those who really want the Church to be true will move heaven and earth to make sure they stay true to it.

That’s probably true. Yet isn’t that equally the case of anyone who desperately wants something to be true? I believe, for example, that young-earth creationism is thoroughly indefensible — and yet there are those who do indeed move heaven and earth to maintain that belief, even if they have to mount Adam and Eve aboard dinosaurs. Why is our desire to believe the teachings of our heritage more virtuous than theirs?

Ordinarily, we have a word for people who approach a question with a preference that the answer be one thing rather than another. The word is biased. It’s not a compliment — because that mindset so often keeps us from the truth. For example, there are some people who deeply want to believe in the prospect of catastrophic manmade global warming, because it provides justification for their preexisting desire to increase the power of government. In many cases, that desire motivates them to make dire predictions that are simply indefensible scientifically.

(N.B.: Doubting Thomas is, perhaps contrary to some expectations here, politically and morally conservative and a proud supporter of Proposition 8.)

Why should bias — a vice in any other context — become a virtue in the religious context?

Ken Kyle quoted Terryl Givens: “What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is, in the final analysis an action that is positively laden with moral significance.”

Yes — up to a point. Not all choices to believe have moral significance. For instance, there is probably not enough evidence to know one way or the other whether or not Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag. We can choose to believe yes or no. But that choice has no substantial moral significance, does it? A person is not a moral stinker because he chooses to believe the Ross grandkids made up or misremembered the story. God’s judgments are just, not capricious. We may be judged by our thoughts, but not as they bear on moral irrelevancies.

When Givens says a choice to believe has “moral significance,” he’s not exactly saying that the choice to believe is virtuous in itself. He’s saying, in effect, that you can tell a good person by his choice to believe in things a good person ought to believe in. The choice doesn’t make a person good or bad; it’s more accurate to say that the choice reveals what is already there.

I can understand an argument that God could justly judge a person for his choice to believe — with the evidence in equipoise — that there is no God. Such a belief is effectively a surrender to the world — an acceptance of the suffering, injustice, and wickedness and disappointment that will always be with us, no matter how hard the agents of secular progress try to make the world a better place. (Which they have done, in many ways — I won’t sell them short — but there will never be a shortage of evil while the world lasts.) It is also a declaration to be bound by no law but one’s own will, which an honest reflection must acknowledge is fallible at best and self-centered at worst. It is, in a sense, the sin of despair — of accepting less than we are meant to accept. It is the turning of one’s back on eternity. A virtuous person should rage against such a sentence.

Thus, faith that there is a God in heaven, who has overcome the world, could be understood to be inherently virtuous.

But why should faith in a particular religious sect, to the exclusion of faith in the others, be similarly virtuous? Is the virtuous basic confession of faith in Deity necessarily pregnant with the conclusion that one particular sect must be right? Why should I not prefer a universally accessible faith, to one that only a tiny fraction of humanity will be lucky to stumble upon?

Why should a virtuous person choose or desire to believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is what it declares itself to be — in particular, the authorized administrator of certain ordinances that it declares are necessary to salvation? And by extension, wouldn’t it therefore follow that a person who desired, instead, to believe that the Roman Catholic Church was the true church must be morally inferior?

I can imagine a Father O’Midgley, in another time and place, furrowing his bushy dark eyebrows at someone who questioned, say, the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, and telling him he lacked faith in God, and that his manifest lack of desire to believe such an inherently worthy thing marked him as one of the goats on the Lord’s left hand.

Most of us here, I presume, have no desire to believe in the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Why not? And why aren’t we judged for our unbelief? Sure, there are plenty of reasons not to believe in Catholicism. They have a much higher body count than we do, even accounting for their thousand-plus-year head start. And yet, as Dr. Midgley reminds us, we shouldn’t expect the true church to be infallible, or hold it to account for poor conduct by its members or even its leaders. Is Mormon theology more self-evidently consistent than Catholic theology? That depends who you ask. Are Mormons’ experiences of the Spirit more infallible than the Catholic mystics’ claims to have experienced the same? How would Teresa of Avila do against our Jared, above, in a visionary steel-cage match?

I suspect many Mormons’ desire to believe in the faith of their fathers has the exact same basis as many faithful Catholics’ desire to believe in their own tradition — a sense of familiarity, the natural desire to be on the right side, a fear of the family and social consequences of a change. Are the Mormons blessed for wanting the right thing for the wrong reason?

I see on this thread justifications for fidelity to Mormonism, that could be used as justifications for allegiance to any other faith. Doubt of the organization is equated with doubt of God, and met with more hostility than persuasive response. Par for the religious course, the triumphant, mocking atheists of our day would say. How could we respond? What is better about Mormon faith than the other man’s faith? What is different about Mormon faith?

At the very least, should not any virtuous religious desire be first and foremost the desire to believe what is true? Alma 32:21 states that a belief in something other than truth is not even faith. It is just as critical to be faithful to Christ the Truth as to Christ the Way, the “way” being defined by the Gospel as declared by the Church. John Locke wrote, and I agree, that the mark of one who loves truth is that he entertains no idea with greater certainty than can be justified. I cannot accept what seems to be the implication of some here that it constitutes “faith” to outwardly declare myself convinced of things of which I am not.

As for those who have received what they can honestly believe to be an infallible witness of the Holy Ghost that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has the authority to proclaim and administer necessary ordinances, I respect your faith. I have not received any such experience. Neither can I quite understand why I should want to, or why my lack of such a desire should speak poorly of my moral character.

If the Church is true, I want to be convinced of it sufficiently to honestly believe it. I do not believe I am “putting God on trial” by asking Him, in effect, which church is true — the one I was born into, or otherwise.

So I’m not saying there’s anything “faith-promoting” here, or even “miraculous”, but one thing I do believe, quite firmly, is that some things we now consider “impossible”, are not impossible at all. We just don’t understand yet how it happens.

I won’t be pursuing this publicly anymore. And I probably won’t answer any questions about it, with good reason. What happened to Craig may well have a natural explanation, or it may be in the same category of what I experienced – “file under unexplained”.

In my lifetime I have had three “physical” experiences with the divine. Experiences that when viewed through the Mormon prism…are faith confirming. Following the collapses of my faith I have had to revisit these experiences and reframe them. I will share one of these experiences…but the other two are even more physical and direct….and ultimately can also be explained away through my current worldview.

As a youth, I played the drums in my Jr high school marching band. One of the high lights of our band experience was being able to march in the 24th of July parade (back then they let Jr high’s march in the parade)… As I prepared to go to the parade I realized that I had left my uniquely colored necktie in my locker at the now locked up school. I remember riding my bike to the school in the hopeless hope that somehow, someone would be at the school on a holiday and let me retrieve my necktie. I approached the first locked door…rattling and banging in a futile attempt to open it. It remained locked tight…I then ran frantically from door to door hoping that somehow that door might have been left ajar or I might attract the attention of someone who might let me in. But with each attempt I sadly came to realize that the school was in fact locked tight…dare I say, as a drum. Just when I was about to give up and return home I had the thought to offer a prayer (I get goose bumps even now as I type this out)…following the prayer I decided to return to the first door I had tried and give it one more tug. I closed my eyes, put my hands on the door knob and pulled…and just like the mythical boy Arthur and the Sword-in-the-stone…the door miraculously opened. I ran to my locker, retrieved my tie and made it to the parade just in the nick of time.

Throughout my life…this experience has been a touch stone of my personal experiences with God’s direct intervention in my life.

So how do I view this now as a non-believer? I view this through natural eyes. One of three conditions took place that day…either God opened a locked door for me, the door had been left open all along or someone WAS in the building that day heard my rattling and door pounding and opened the door…and then it remained open…till I found it ajar. For most of my life I only considered the first option…I now see that in fact there were other more probable possibilities to my finding that door ajar that day.

J. Ruban Clark once said regarding faith and belief that:

“…I came early to appreciate that I could not rationalize a religion for myself and that to attempt to do so would destroy my faith in God. I have always rather worshipped facts, and while I thought and read for a while, many of the incidents of life, experiences and circumstances, which led unaided by the spirit of faith, to the position of atheist, yet the faith of my father’s led me to abandon all that and refrain from following it..For me there seemed no alternative. I could only build up a doubt. If I were to attempt to rationalize about my life here I would be drowned in a sea of doubt.”

Clark made the decision to stop subjecting his Mormon faith to rational analyses, fearing that it may not endure an intellectual test. One the other hand, I subjected my faith to an intellectual test…and lost mine. So I guess Clark was right. Faith subjected to an intellectual test, often is lost.

So Allen perhaps we should ask the reverse question …how is it that in light of all the difficult issue you see God…where I see man? What is the difference?

You already said the difference: “Where you see the hand of God…I see the hand of man.” That is choice, exactly as Givens stated.

I choose to see and believe; you choose to see and disbelieve. I cannot make you believe, because for every data point I would raise you could provide an alternative explanation. (Except one, which I will discuss shortly.) You cannot make me disbelieve, because for every data point you would raise I could provide an alternative explanation.

The difference is choice.

Now, as to the one data point for which, I believe, you cannot provide an alternative explanation: Personal interaction with the divine. I know my experiences, and the reality of those experiences cannot be explained away by others unless I allow them to be explained away.

If I say that I have received some divine intervention in my life (heard heavenly voices, had a vision, or hosted heavenly visitors), I cannot provide empirical evidence of such nor is such experience repeatable. But the lack of such evidence or repeatability doesn’t change the reality of the situation. I know what I know, and nothing can change that knowledge.

Now, those who no longer believe might say at this point “see, those Mormons always fall back to testimony.” That, to me, is a cop-out, as it does nothing other than limit the “playing field” to what the person finds acceptable. And, in the long run, it doesn’t matter whether someone else tries to limit the field, as (again) I know what I know, and nothing can change that knowledge—not even the efforts of another to discount or dismiss that knowledge.

But, to pull this back from my excursion down this side tangent, the difference between you and me—relative to seeing God in the acts around us—is a matter of choice.

You know, I have very much enjoyed this conversation. I suspect that I would enjoy, just as much, sitting across lunch some day ruminating with you about the vicissitudes of the universe. You do well at presenting your thoughts.

-Allen

That, my friend, is stereotyping.

Craig’s Reply:

Actually Allen, I was not speaking to those who are able to maintain belief in the church at all. I applaud and envy you and other likeminded faithful believers who have become fully informed and yet are able to retain faith and belief in the church’s claims. In fact I have great respect for your ability to do so. I was only speaking to those who have come to the same conclusions as myself….they either leave the church…or are left to live a lie as a non-believer…acting as a believer for the sake of family, culture, business, status, ego or whatever other reason THEY have to live their life as a lie. You my friend, are not to be counted among this sad group of active-non-believing Saints.
Where you see the hand of God…I see the hand of man…perhaps an example would help.

I’m a fan of the TV show “Lost” rather than get into the details of this show…let me try to describe two of the main characters. John Lock…is a believer; he sees the invisible hand of some mysterious force moving the chess pieces of his life…quietly behind the scenes.

Jack, a doctor, is struggling to believe…and I’d refer to him as a doubter or a pragmatist.

During last night’s episode, John, who was looking all over the place for Jack, was involved in a terrible automobile accident that landed him in the hospital. When he awoke from having been knocked out…there sitting next to him was Jack. John saw this as a sign…as providence…as that invisible something moving his chess piece. When John pointed his reality out to Jack…Jack responded with his own view of reality, when he said. “John, you were involved in an auto accident here in west Los Angeles…the probability that you would be brought to this hospital where I just happen to work are pretty high…SINCE it is the closest hospital to where you had your accident. “

John sees the hand of providence…Jack sees the sum of probabilities…who is correct?

Recently I was in attendance at a fireside where a familiar GA spoke. As he bore his testimony he shared a very faith promoting spiritual experience. During a recent mission tour to South America, he met a young missionary who had recently discovered a cancerous tumor growing on a part of his body. He was preparing to return home to have this issue resolved. This GA gave this young Elder a Priesthood blessing and promised him that 1. He would be fully healed and 2. He would return to serve out the balance of his mission. Pretty heady, bold promises don’t you think? Well guess what…the tumor turned out to be fully contained and easily removed with minor surgery. The missionary was able to return and serve out the balance of his mission just as he had been promised…a seeming miracle…God himself had intervened in the life of this young missionary. Priesthood power works right?

Well, all I could think of as I was listening to this story was that this outcome would have been exactly the same with or without the priesthood blessing…and who’s to say that it wouldn’t have? But the mere fact that the blessing had been given…strengthened the testimony of believers…but would it have been as faith promoting had the story turned out differently? How many times have priesthood blessing promises NOT resulted in the promised outcome? Yet we never hear about these…why? Because they promote doubt rather than faith.

Case in point: As a youth James E. Talmage blinded his younger brother with a pitch fork in a farming accident. Many years later, after he had been called as an apostle, Talmage along with other members of the 12, laid their collective hands on Talmage’s younger brother and in the name of Jesus Christ promised him that he would be healed and have his sight restored. Despite the collective priesthood power of these anointed men…Talmage’s brother died many years later, a blind man.

But of course we have an escape clause…now that he was dead…he could can now see and of course his sight would be restored after the resurrection….but that was not the blessing he had been given. He was promised that his sight would be restored during his life.

Why is this story NOT heralded from the roof tops of Mormonism? Well it doesn’t hold the same cache as the previous faith promoting story.

So where I see the hand of man in Mormonism, you see the hand of God and somehow you are able to accommodate all of the seemingly difficult (for me) issues despite knowing the details and still see God…while I only see a man made church making unsubstantiatable claims. (In my view)

So Allen perhaps we should ask the reverse question …how is it that in light of all the difficult issue you see God…where I see man? What is the difference?

In your own way you are using almost as broad a brush as Craig. While your analysis of how Church members view leave-takers is interesting—and probably spot-on for some members—I can’t help but see it as a nice, tidy box that you’ve created into which members can be placed.

The fact is, not all members view leave-takers in the way you mention.

It is true that not everyone fits into the “tidy box”, but in my experience most do. From Section 121:

16 Cursed are all those that shall lift up the heel against mine anointed, saith the Lord, and cry they have sinned when they have not sinned before me, saith the Lord, but have done that which was meet in mine eyes, and which I commanded them.

17 But those who cry transgression do it because they are the servants of sin, and are the children of disobedience themselves.
18 And those who swear falsely against my servants, that they might bring them into bondage and death—
19 Wo unto them; because they have offended my little ones they shall be severed from the ordinances of mine house.
20 Their basket shall not be full, their houses and their barns shall perish, and they themselves shall be despised by those that flattered them.

This, by the way, doesn’t offend me. I’m only analysing the mindset. I also realise that the above verses apply to a particularly aggressive type of apostate, those who “lift up the heel” against the Church and its leaders. (And I think I’ve expressed more than a few times how I disagree with this) But D&C 19:

20 Wherefore, I command you again to repent, lest I humble you with my almighty power; and that you confess your sins, lest you suffer these punishments of which I have spoken, of which in the smallest, yea, even in the least degree you have tasted at the time I withdrew my Spirit.

I think the conclusion is obvious – if you “lose the Spirit”, you will be punished. There are many other scriptures like these. To step outside this “box” you have to believe there won’t be any consequences for leaving. In the final outcome, I have not found that to be the case. In fact I found a richness of variety in others who never experienced Mormonism, and will never be drawn to it. I have many Muslim friends and they can’t even conceive of ever leaving Islam, even the nominal Muslims. And I see no reason at all to consider them only having “a portion of God’s light”. My experience with Muslims has been a rich one, and I’ve grown to appreciate them in a way I never could until these close associations began about two years ago (before that I held many of the stereotypes). Like Mormons, they are often stereotyped, and some of them do believe Islam is “the only way”. In short, I have come to appreciate both Mormons and Muslims, but I am “the man in the middle”, who won’t step into their respective “boxes”.

In your own way you are using almost as broad a brush as Craig. While your analysis of how Church members view leave-takers is interesting—and probably spot-on for some members—I can’t help but see it as a nice, tidy box that you’ve created into which members can be placed.

The fact is, not all members view leave-takers in the way you mention. I have a member in my ward who had his named removed from the records; he used to be the Young Men’s Secretary when I was YM President. I still see him periodically as our paths sometimes cross. (He lives about a block from me.) We are friendly with each other, and I feel great happiness for him when he does well and when he does good in life. I empathize with him when life doesn’t go so well.

In short, while I may be anecdotal, I don’t fit so neatly into the box you created.

Craig noted that those who leave are not shallow; that they are complex and have different stories. It is the same with those who stay. They are nowhere near as shallow or as monolithic in thought as some assume.

-Allen

Can you please show how your analysis of how members of the

Sorry folks but, from my perspective, Givens has totally missed the mark. His assertion that people leave the church, lose faith and belief in Mormonism is once again just the stereotypical explanation of why people leave…once again it’s because we have such huge egos or have appetites to fill or that somehow our personal values were somehow not in sync with the teachings of the church. Once again Given’s has failed to list the one reason knowledgeable faithful active members of the church are leaving…it is because they discover that the church they have given their lives to is not what it claims to be.

I can understand believing that Givens stereotypes in his analysis, but might I suggest that you are just as guilty of stereotyping in your response?

To posit that “knowledgeable faithful active members” leave because of something they “discover” about the Church is to discount, entirely, those “knowledgeable faithful active members” who learn the same things and then choose to stay. That is where the stereotype comes into play. That is the quandry, Craig—why did I stay and you leave?

You haven’t come to terms with that seemingly simple question. I continue to believe, despite having read everything that you have read (based on comments earlier in this thread) and experienced everything you have experienced (except the excommunication) that the Church is what it claims to be, while you claim it is not.

The only difference I can think of is that we may both see the claims of the Church differently; that is certainly a possibility. (I’m talking about seeing them differently at the time we were both on the same path, not seeing them differently now that we have been on different paths for years.)

Come on folks…those who leave the church are not the shallow people that you may want us to be.

Point taken, with the notable exception of some I have run into over on RfM. <g>

We leave because we conclude that it simple is not true. Many still love the church even after making this extremely difficult decision…but conclude, based on the evidence, that it is better to live honestly outside the church rather than live a lie inside it.

Mind you, other like minded thinkers make the decision to live the lie inside the church as well…

More of the stereotype. I hope that you are not suggesting that I, having “uncovered” the same things you have, are somehow living a lie. If so, I would suggest that you are mistaken; I know myself better than you do. If not, then you may want to reconsider the presentation of the stereotype.

I agree with you, in the quote above, that you reached a decision and that it was no doubt a particularly difficult decision. And, as far as that goes, the recognition and ownership of your decision in the matter is in agreement with what Givens stated (to a point).

I disagree with you, however, that had you stayed you would have been “living a lie.” You may have been living a life with which you no longer felt comfortable or living a life with which you found no common ground or living a life that, for whatever reason, no longer worked for you. But suggesting that life in the Church is “living a lie” is to implicitly color all those who do live that life with a very broad brush.

That, my friend, is stereotyping.

-Allen

Sorry folks but, from my perspective, Givens has totally missed the mark. His assertion that people leave the church, lose faith and belief in Mormonism is once again just the stereotypical explanation of why people leave…once again it’s because we have such huge egos or have appetites to fill or that somehow our personal values were somehow not in sync with the teachings of the church. Once again Given’s has failed to list the one reason knowledgeable faithful active members of the church are leaving…it is because they discover that the church they have given their lives to is not what it claims to be.

I think this is what it boils down to. The Church is true. It’s the only true Church, with the only true authority, and the only Church which can give you the continuing benefit of having the Holy Ghost. So, when someone leaves there must be something wrong with them to reject, after all, the only way to full salvation.

Those who remain see themselves as enduring, not always happily, because guilt and “daily struggles” for perfection can often make life much more difficult. So the parables of Jesus comes into play – no Prodigal son is as good as the faithful son, and those who labour in the vineyard during the heat of the day will receive a greater reward. It would be unjust of God not to punish the leave-takers, because they have become faulty and fallen saints. Sickness, death, financial problems which befall the leave-takers will all be seen as “God’s punishment”. And a sense that their own deserved rewards for “hard work” will eventually pay off. The apostates have, plain and simply, become “defective”.

The problem is, the real world doesn’t always work that way. When the Saints see happy leave-takers, they wonder why. So step two of the theory takes place – they will be punished in the afterlife. Either way, the Saints win (at least to their own sense of satisfaction, for all the hard work).

What accounts for the difference in outcome? LDS scholar Terryl Givens makes an important point:

“I am convinced that there must be grounds for doubt as well as belief in order to render the choice more truly a choice.

The option to believe must appear on our personal horizon like the fruit of paradise, perched precariously between sets of demands held in dynamic tension. One is, it would seem, always provided with sufficient materials out of which to fashion a life of credible conviction or dismissive denial. We are acted upon, in other words, by appeals to our personal values, our yearnings, our fears, our appetites, and our egos. What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is, in the final analysis an action that is positively laden with moral significance.”

Craig’s Comments:

Given’s analysis seems to make the assumption that there is a point of choice between two equally balanced options and the tipping point in making a decision between these two equal options comes down to …”our personal values, our yearnings, our fears, our appetites, and our egos.” He then asserts that…” What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love.” Arggg…nothing could be further from the truth…

Sorry folks but, from my perspective, Givens has totally missed the mark. His assertion that people leave the church, lose faith and belief in Mormonism is once again just the stereotypical explanation of why people leave…once again it’s because we have such huge egos or have appetites to fill or that somehow our personal values were somehow not in sync with the teachings of the church. Once again Given’s has failed to list the one reason knowledgeable faithful active members of the church are leaving…it is because they discover that the church they have given their lives to is not what it claims to be.

Come on folks…those who leave the church are not the shallow people that you may want us to be. We leave because we conclude that it simple is not true. Many still love the church even after making this extremely difficult decision…but conclude, based on the evidence, that it is better to live honestly outside the church rather than live a lie inside it.

Mind you, other like minded thinkers make the decision to live the lie inside the church as well…

As a fellow bishop, I have to say that my first thought when reading your posts in this thread was “have you presided over any disciplinary councils? Have you counseled any of your members who need to work through painful and involved repentance?”

I take your posts at face value, and give you the benefit of the doubt that you are currently serving as a bishop. But when you say such things as

“The real question is whether I can trust that there is a God at all who has any interest in me.”

“But I can hardly be existed to trust God in the absence of a conviction that there exists such a being.”

“What do I want? Just about any communication will do. Just let me know that he actually exists and cares. I want to be able to confidently state that God has reached down to me and has assured me of his reality and his love. That alone would be great, but I would really like him to go one step further, and let me know that Jesus really is resurrected, and that the atonement is real”

“It is a very strange God indeed who miraculously intervenes in the life of a wretch like Alma the Younger but who ignores others who would be quite content with a simple spiritual impression of peace and assurance that the scriptures they are reading are actually true.”

I find it hard to reconcile this with your insistence that

“I am a closet doubter. I am also the Bishop of my ward. I was a doubter when I was called four years ago. I was terrified, but I accepted and I have done my best. Surprisingly, I am actually quite a good bishop. I think my weak faith has actually made me a better bishop in many ways. I am able to relate to my ward members in ways that some of their previous bishops could not.”

In my experience, you cannot “fake” these things to people who desperately need the power and authority of your priesthood keys as a judge in Israel. Based on my experience just as a bishop alone, to say nothing of my previous testimony experiences, I simply cannot understand how you could preside over disciplinary councils or wrestle with the hard and nigh impossible problems and dillemas that confront bishops, and be able to say that you have absolutely zero spiritual or empirical evidence that God is there, is mindful of you and your flock, responds to your pleas, etc.

The most powerful spiritual experiences I have had in my life have come in this context, and I cannot share the details of them with anyone, including my wife.

My main question for you is, do you confront or have you confronted any difficulties in the line of your calling that leave you sleepless, worried, etc. concerning members of your ward? Or has it been pretty smooth sailing because you find yourself able to relate to members better than would be the case if your faith were stronger, as you put it?

Louis:

That’s certainly not it at all, quite frankly I didn’t expect you regard my comments at all. I was referring to Allen’s defense of you in light of dhogge’s initial post where he expressed discontent for your candor. My point was that your approach from the beginning of this discussion has been to take the offensive, rather than to just say “Thomas, I don’t have an answer on that one, but I do reject the notion that our salvation is pre-determined”.

One thing I must try to end is this business of calling me Dr. Midgley. I have, it is true, a Ph.D. I am tempted to say: “you have found me out, I am with child.” I find that title or the title Professor to be stuffy. I very much prefer to be known simply as Brother Midgley or as Louis. But I suspect that some who have posted on this thread have some other preferences in names.

I notice that Cowboy noticed what he thought was a badly wounded Midgley and could not resist inflicting still another wound. And so he proclaims that I call it like I see it, “which has generally been more convenient for his arguments,” while Cowboy, of course, presumably has that rare gift of calling it like it really is. I notice an effort to stack the deck. So how does he call it, whatever it is? Well, I did not answer some questions. For example, according to Cowboy, “never once did [I] answer Thomas’s question regarding the origin of desire spoken of in Alma 32, which [Cowboy] thought was a fairly neutral question.” I guess I did’t realize I was taking an exam. The reason that I ignored that question is that I simply do not know the answer. I suspect that the desire has a host of sources not all of which are available to the one who has the desire.

I am not, however, as Thomas darkly hints, someone who believes in some strong notion of predestination. I don’t think in those terms. I flatly reject and consider demonic every element of Five Point Calvinism (aka TULIP), and I am simply astonished to be suspected of holding ideas I abhor. I have glanced at what I have posted and can see nothing that would suggest that I might believe that God determines at the moment of creation or before we embark on our probation who will have faith and hence who will be saved. I think that our scriptures teach us that we are genuine moral agents who are here below in mortality to be tested so we and God can find out some things about us.

So I believe that anyone can turn or return to God–that is, repent–and then begin to put their trust in the Holy One of Israel. I like to think that right to the end even Hitler could have had a profound, genuine change of heart. I like to imagine that God’s mercy is such that he could have granted redemption. I have spent time ministering in a prison and have witnessed the mighty change of heart that can take place. So I have wondered if even someone like Hitler might have done so subsequently. But for a host of reasons, many of them obviously not especially praiseworthy, but some also understandable, many of those in the chains of darkness do not choose to respond to the Light–that is, Gospel.

One can hardly read a newspaper, or glance at a shopping mall, or visit one of those dreadful WW II death camps in Europe, or notice the suffering inflicted by humans upon themselves and others, and even on their own spouses and children, or have heard of Inquisitions and so forth, without being overwhelmed by the evil in the world and the sin that causes it. In one sense this is an amazing and beautiful place, but in anther it is, as someone once said, the moral privy of the universe. Only God can save us. But we have to realize that we need to be healed and to do this we need radical doubt, especially about ourselves.

So I am tethered to radical doubts about human things. These doubts have driven me more and more with a passion to preach the good news that whatever grinding wheel we may find ourselves in–that is, tribulation–God has overcome the world. But we must, whatever questions we have and however much we do not understand this and that, remain faithful to end.

When one can see the host of competing ideologies, all of which in different ways, challenge what I have called, see above, naive faith, and hence generate a crisis of faith,then and only then can faith begin to be grounded in a mature, somewhat more fully informed moral choice. But our faith in anything must begin before we know very much.

I do not, however, think that it is wise to tell children or naive, childlike adults more than they can understand. Only equals or what he ancients called friends can communicate fully. But whatever one can say about this matter, we all must strive own our faith and not live by borrowed light. I detest the expression “what does the Church teach.” The content of my faith is what I believe, what I currently see as true. The old “I was told in Sunday School” business irritates me because it manifests some measure of foolishness on the part of the person who was far too smug or lazy or both to do more than shuffle along dancing a dance whose point they have not even thought seriously about. So I see Craig Paxton’s problem, see Allen’s initial item above, as having believed too much but not wisely, to quote someone who was a master of the English language. And I am pained to see the results. But I am next to certain that some of those like him simply would not have been open to having their illusions corrected or supplemented. They started out believing they were the best Saint they had me, and then the bubble busrt or the snapped and now they are a sort of inverse mirror image of their earlier dogmatic selves. How and why this happens is a mystey to me. It is also painful to observe.

“I am convinced that there must be grounds for doubt as well as belief in order to render the choice more truly a choice.

The option to believe must appear on our personal horizon like the fruit of paradise, perched precariously between sets of demands held in dynamic tension. One is, it would seem, always provided with sufficient materials out of which to fashion a life of credible conviction or dismissive denial. We are acted upon, in other words, by appeals to our personal values, our yearnings, our fears, our appetites, and our egos. What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is, in the final analysis an action that is positively laden with moral significance.”

As I was going through the process of losing my faith and belief in Mormonism and trying to make all of the fractured pieces of my former faith fit together…I remember thinking to myself…everyone of these difficult mis-fitting pieces simply disappears and goes away, if I accept the fact that the church is simply not what it claims to be. Believe it or not…the thought that the church was not true had never entered my mind before this point. To me this was not even a possibility, nor an option. Yes, I had had doubts but it was ME who was the problem not the churches claims. But the crystallization of the idea that Mormonism was not what it claimed to be…was a new concept I had never entertained before.

Although this was a conclusion I had fought hard NOT to accept…I cannot deny the fact that everything basically fell into place and all of the problems I was struggling with to make Mormonism believable again…simply disappeared when I finally accepted this premise.

No longer did I have to struggle to make the reality of evolution fit the Mormon paradigm. No longer was the historicity of the Book of Mormon a problem. No longer were Joseph’s changes/additions to scripture an issue. No longer were the many conflicts of living prophets with their deceased predecessors a dilemma. No longer did polygamy matter. No longer did I have to hammer the Mormon round peg into the square hole of reality. In one single flash of enlightenment…everything became crystal clear to me. Mormonism was simply not what it claimed to be…and all of the problems simply melted away.

Now as a caveat: Coming to the conclusion that Mormonism was not true…did in fact create a whole new set of problems for my life…involving my loved ones. But as far as solving my struggles with making Mormonism believable…that problem was resolved…I was finally at peace.

I recognize that I was quite disturbed by the posts and for this reason I may have expressed myself stronger than I wished. I do not wish to comment on Dr. Midgley as a person because I don’t know him (God will judge him and his heart) but I can comment about his abilities as an apologist and the effects that I believe emerge, in my imperfect opinion, from his way of being an apologist.

I sensed that you were disturbed; it came across in your post. I do have a simple question for you, however. What if I changed a single word in your comment so that it read, instead, as follows:

I do not wish to comment on B as a person because I don’t know him (God will judge him and his heart) but I can comment about his abilities as a bishop and the effects that I believe emerge, in my imperfect opinion, from his way of being a bishop.

What is the difference? Cannot Lou (or anyone else for that matter) judge B on his abilities as a bishop based on his comments in the same manner that you judge Lou and his abilities as an apologist based on his comments?

People come to apologetics with different approaches and different abilities. You may not approve of Dr. Midgley’s approach to apologetics anymore than someone else may approve of B’s approach to bishoping.

Civility demands, however, that we look past the approach and try to get behind it to see the issues being raised. You seem to find it easy to understand the issues that B has raised, but obviously find it hard to understand the issues that Lou is raising. All I am saying is that Lou’s issues have merit. Treat the issues, civilly, without regard for the approach; use the same charity in evaluating Lou that you are using in evaluating B.

For me an LDS apologist in a direct exchange with another should be first of all concerned with the individual. I feel my first concern as an LDS Christian should be to help somebody who comes in search of help, if he is indeed doing so sincerely as he/she seeks for understanding. In the bishop and others I see individuals who have come to this post because they want to find some help and possible solutions to problems and doubts.

I can only accept B and Thomas (and everyone else on this thread) at face value. They haven’t expressed a desire for help in resolving their doubts. They’ve only expressed that they have doubts and that they understand others who also have doubts.

There are plenty of places that people can go to get information to allay doubts. There are plenty of places people can go to get information that will raise doubts. The effect of the information (regardless of the source) will depend on he individual. That is, after all, the purpose of this thread—to recognize that two people can read the same information and come to entirely different outcomes.

I can’t give B, Thomas, Craig, Lou, Cowboy, or you information that will allay doubts. I can only give you information that I have found helpful in dealing with any issues I may have faced or that others have found helpful. How that information affects the other person is (pardon the metaphor) a crap shoot. Much of it will depend on the person’s paradigm, how reliable they view the source, their ability to assimilate information, and their ability (in some cases) to recognize and live with paradoxes.

I say this because I have several friends among LDS intellectuals who feel similarly. How are we going to help them? By talking about how hypocrite they are and judging them and making all kinds of assumptions about what they should and should not do? It is not our place to judge in that way and responding in this way, with accusations about worthiness is only going to push people further and increase the tension within them.

I agree that it isn’t helpful to judge another and express concerns about another’s worthiness. I certainly didn’t see that in Lou’s responses on this thread. In fact, I just went back and did a search of all responses for the words “worthy” or “worthiness.” Neither of them, when it comes to righteousness of the individual, is found in Lou’s comments. They are found, however, in B’s comments, Jared’s comments, and my comments.

As the bishop had said he already feels this condemnation which is exactly the problem at the root of the tension and that inner tension is a problem among many who want to believe but struggle. Many are indeed wonderful people who have given a lot to the church. Why should we begin with the assumption that people have broken their covenants or are lying if they are sincerely struggling?

We shouldn’t begin there, and I haven’t read that into any of the comments on this thread.

As I had previously stated your comments at the beginning of the posts did not express the kind of judgment towards the bishop that Dr. Midgley instead showed in a couple of his posts. Now, I’m puzzled by your change of attitude which seems to come in defense to Dr. Midgley’s approach. I can sympathize with you that I was not as cordial toward Dr. Midgely as I should have and for this I apologize but I’m wondering if you are advocating the kind of judging approach that he seems to show.

I haven’t gathered such a “judging approach” from Dr. Midgley’s comments, so it is not a matter of taking sides. I will suggest, however, that if you are reading his comments as overly critical or judgmental, that perhaps you are misreading him.

Midgley wasn’t just wondering whether “the bishop should be in leadership positions while possessing doubts” and he didn’t express himself to say he was just sad for him. Maybe because I don’t live in America and I don’t really know anything about Dr. Midgley I read too much into his words.

Perhaps.

I am just trying to understand what your objectives are in this blog because I learned about it with enthusiasm, both for my own research and for what I thought would benefit some of my friends.

Hopefully I am correct in assuming that you are asking about my objective in this blog post and thread, and not in the blog as a whole, which expresses lots of different views. In this post and subsequent thread, my objective is simply to understand others’ feelings relative to the original post—why we can all read the same things, go through the same process, and still have wildly different outcomes with some stronger in the Church and others out of it entirely.

I have several friends who have left or are leaving the Church with great pain and difficulty and when they look for help they receive condemnation. I feel they are often only pushed further and being kicked when they are down with their questions and doubts.

That is a shame. I am sorry for their pain. I know several, as well, who either have gone through the process or are going through it now.

Note that I said “the process.” I can tell you that in my studies I’ve read some things that really rocked my view of things I thought I had previously understood. (Things like God, prophets, the Church, or people I had thought I knew.) Learning those things, assimilating them into my views, and coming out the “other side” was not an easy, enjoyable, or pain-free process. I can really feel for the pain your friends and mine have experienced.

But I can’t take it away from them. I can only be there to help them or be there as a resource for them. When it comes to “the process,” they really are on their own. I liken it to the “wrestle” which Enos had before God. Nobody else could do it for him; he had to tread the path alone and figure it out for himself.

I know that is how they would have read the comments by Dr. Midgley and that is why it hurt me because I felt as if he was talking to some of my friends who are in the Church and trying to decide what to do. I agree with you that you don’t need to leave the Church to deal with your doubts and I also feel sad for the bishop. But it is not my place to worry about the members in his ward, that is the Lord’s job, his stake president, and who in authority. After all it is the bishop who posted and not his ward members.

Understood and agreed.

But I want to make a strong statement that from my experience we need more people who can at least ‘understand’ why somebody does not believe. It does not seem like Dr. Midgley can. I looked at this blog to see if I could recommend it to these struggling friends but I must recognize that Dr. Midgley’s made me wonder about doing it.
So let me restate what I said previously. Probably Dr. Midgley is sincerely trying to help others deal with doubts and problems. I’m sorry but I fail to see its efficacy.

Understood.

Could you also please explain what you mean that dismissing what he says is to one’s peril. A blanket statement like that seems to raise him to a level of authority that I guess I have missed.

Not a problem; I’d be glad to explain.

First, let me say that it has nothing to do with “authority” in an ecclesiastical sense. I refer to my personal experience with Lou. I have spent many, many hours sitting and talking with him. I have spent time eating with him. I have spent time reading his writings.

You haven’t had that advantage; I understand that. And perhaps because I have had that advantage, I can give him more “slack” than you have expressed a willingness to do. In my experience, Lou understands the relationship between faith, the Church, God, and the atonement. He understand the limitations of the knowledge of men. He knows that power of stories and their place within the Restoration.

Many of these things are areas in which people like B and Thomas have expressed doubts. They are also areas where people like Craig have analyzed the available information and jettisoned their faith, claiming greater freedom and happiness after the outcome.

To dismiss Lou’s comments and insights because one doesn’t like the approach used is to sell him short and cut oneself off from a valuable resource. That is what I meant.

I wish you the best with your own studies (in what area are you seeking your PhD?) and in your struggles with your friends. I know the pain you (and they) face.

-Allen

I fully agree with you that, as you put it, “we can keep believing in the Church but also ‘understand’ why others may not choose to.” And I fully agree that it is, again as you put it, “a matter of faith and faith is not exclusively a matter of worthiness.” I have witnessed those in prison for very serious crimes who turned to God (repented) and came to trust him (faith). If worthiness were a sufficient condition for faith, then none of us could have faith. And none of us could have hope of redemption. One of many reasons is that only God can save us from our sins. When we have faith, even a tiny bit of trust in God, are we not seeking God’s mercy?

But something is obviously irritating you. You are, for reasons that escape me, terribly troubled by what I have posted on this thread.

You claim to speak for “dozens and dozens of us faithful members of the Church who are involved in graduate studies that relate to religion.” And you claim that those graduate students “feel increasingly alienated by people like Midgley and others at FARMS who seem to be saying that we should be out of the Church if we do not believe as they do.” Who, I wonder, are those at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship who are annoyed by the Maxwell Institute? And why? Do you have in mind John Gee? Morgan Davis? Kristian Heal? Matt Roper? George Mitton? Jerry Bradford? Dan Peterson? I wonder how familiar you are with the Maxwell Institute. What exactly have you read that it has published? At last count this includes 117 books, and over one hundred thousand printed pages. The FARMS Review has been in print for twenty years. I wonder if you are familiar with the academic work of the 250 different authors whose essays we have published. Are all of these, from your perspective, objectionable in the way you have lashed out at me? Which of my essay has offended you? And why? Need I point out that it is not exactly wise to have opinions about books or essays one has not read. We have published the work of graduate students. And a great many of the authors we have published started out like you as graduate students. Need I remind you that it is not prudent to insult a potential publisher for what one might produce in the future.

Those involved with the FARMS Review, among many other things, defend Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon from criticism. In doing this we follow scholars like Richard Bushman and Terryl Givens. We do not thereby seek to drive people out of the Church; we seek, instead, as well as we can to deepen and defend the faith of the Saints. In doing this we may, of course, offend or annoy those who for various reasons desire a different Church–perhaps one in which Joseph Smith has been turned into a liar or lunatic and the Book of Mormon reduced to frontier fiction and so forth.

I probably can speak for my associates in saying that none of us believe the Brethren are or were infallible, or that the Saints both individually and collectively are faultless. And, of course, there are a host of interesting and challenging questions that face thoughtful Saints. We love questions. We live in a world filled with questions. And we can tolerate ambiguity. Our history is messy precisely because it is a real history of real people. But it is also a history in which divine beings have been actors.

Just as it is obvious that many are converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and are transformed by it into new beings, it is also true, for a host of reasons, that some cease to believe and go missing. It pains me greatly to see this happen. Here below there are real gains and also, unfortunately, real losses. No one can boast of having their celestial seat locked up. And none of us can be confident that God has accepted the offering we place on the altar. We hope for divine mercy.

I await your response. I really would like to know what has irritated you, since your remarks leave many questions open. I genuinely would like to know what it is that is behind your comments above. If you would prefer not to spell it out on this thread, then please–I beg you–right now phone me at 801-225-6680. Then you can lay out your objections. I really want to know what led to your remarks above.

Welcome to the blog.

I, for one, do not agree with you concerning Dr. Midgley’s contributions to this or to any other conversation in which he and I have taken part. You may not like the way he says what he says, but my experience has shown that one dismisses what he says at one’s own peril.

For example, the last post by Lou was, I believe, spot-on. It addressed doubts and their place within the Church, which is a valid area of discourse. I, like him, have wondered how someone like B could be a bishop and have the doubts he expressed.

Doubts are real; they are all around us and sometimes they are a part of us. Thomas has those doubts. B has those doubts. Lou has said that he has had doubts. People shouldn’t necessarily be out of the Church because they have doubts, but isn’t it reasonable to ask whether they should be in leadership positions while possessing them? It isn’t a worthiness issue; it is a matter of leadership—we always do well to follow those who can testify, through personal experience, of the way that we should follow. B and Thomas, by their own statements, are not able to so testify because they haven’t had those personal experiences.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying that B should not be a bishop because of his doubts. His continued service is entirely up to his leaders. But I cannot help but feel sad for both B and his congregants when he cannot testify—with knowledge—to the validity and reality of the atonement.

B may be a good administrator and get along great with people. Only a small part of what most bishops do is related to administration, however. The majority of a bishop’s call is to counsel with members, help them to recognize their errors, and steer them to forgiveness that only comes through Christ. The atonement, of course, is central to that process. If a bishop cannot tell his congregants, with certainty, that the atonement is real, that Christ lives, and that forgiveness is possible then both the bishop and the congregants are the poorer for it.

Dhogge, you find fault with the approach that Lou used because he was “insulting” B and Thomas. Yet, you then turn around and label Lou as “a very poor apologist” and as possessing “arrogance.” Why are alleged insults to be shunned when they come from Lou but to be accepted when they come from you? The civility you see as lacking in Lou’s posts is certainly not promoted in yours.

All are welcome to post here—including Dhogge and Dr. Midgley—provided they are civil. Please try to exemplify the level of discourse that you wish to see in others.

-Allen

I note you avoided the invitation to explain yourself concerning the contradiction I caught you in, denying you conflated faith in God with faith in the Church when you had done exactly that. No honorable explanation being forthcoming, and upon your compounding the deceit by sweeping it under the rug, I call Alma 11:36.

It seems that when I mentioned that some who pick a fight with God end up as functional atheists, Thomas turned for support to our admittedly unfaithful B, who has told us, in a modest understatement, that he is “a closet doubter,” though presumably an LDS Bishop. B does not believe the church is true in the sense that faithful Latter-day Saints do. What exactly does he not believe? “I do not believe,” he boasted, “the Book of Mormon is a true account of real people.” So he must consider that Joseph Smith was either a liar or lunatic. B also boasted that he finds “many of the church’s teaching to be in conflict with the way I see the world around me.” That goes without saying. He provided illustrations. When he prayed about the Book of Mormon, he got nothing by negative impressions–”if God was speaking at all, he was telling me it is not true.” What could he expect, given his disposition? B operates with profound objections to what he calls the Church. Take the following as an example: “one of by [my?] big objections to the Church, is exactly this inconsistency. If the church is true,” B concluded, “then I think God should be morew [sic] consistent.” So his problem is God. Later B. clarified what he meant: “if the heavens are closed to people like me, where is God’s justice?” So it turns out that God is B’s target. And not “believing” in the Church is his way of setting out complaints about God. His argument runs as follows: if someone as morally qualified as B cannot get God to show him a sign, then God is simply not just. B flatly denies the very core of the gospel of Jesus Christ: he boasted that the atonement “does not make sense to me. I don’t know why it was necessary or how it works.” The gospel is just “so weird,” B insists. B seems not to have considered either death or sin. He apparently cannot see the point to any of the talk about the need for redemption from either than is packed into our scriptures. Well, what would one expect, since he brushes aside the Book of Mormon.

Thomas wants to justify his own agnostic stance. He complains because he senses that I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ “constitutes God’s true covenant people.” Thomas will have none of that. He tells us that he has “not reached that point. (‘yet,’ perhaps–or perhaps not.)” So much for his desire to believe. Since he waffles on his own desire to please God, he thinks that we must have, before we can begin to trust God, a final answer to the question: “where does the desire to believe come from”?

Thomas ends with what he considers profound questions. “What is it about the Church, that a randomly-selected person–say, a good Catholic, raised in a faithful family, and raising a faithful family of his own–[would?] want to believe that the faith of his fathers is false, and the implausible message from the two palefaced guys at his door is true? Why should he not want Catholicism to be true–or Islam, or Buddhism?” To me this is a silly question. It seem obvious that what we call the tradition of one’s fathers, coupled with a vast host of subtle temptations, cultural and intellectual influences, including those agents seen and unseen who are, I am confident, fighting against God make this question absurd. The Book of Mormon identifies the problem as the “chains of darkness.” The Light (aka gospel) shines into the darkness of this world, but the darkness rejects the Light. So only those who are or choose to be anxious to receive the Light respond to the Gospel. Is there not overwhelming evidence of the demonic in our world? And the mockery or sneering by Thomas about “two palefaced guys” is unseemly and unwarranted.

In addition, I admit that I was not previously been aware that a genuinely devote Roman Catholic, who is open to the fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is asked to believe that “the faith of his fathers is false.” Thomas goes too far. Instead, they are invited to bring with them whatever is good and true in their faith tradition, of which there is much, and enjoy the blessings that can follow fidelity to a covenant with God. The fact is that many who are devout and deeply desire to serve God, who are busy seeking for light, are prevented from doing finding it by a vast host of things, one of which is the kind of infidelity to Jesus Christ manifested by B and by our doubting Thomas. I have encountered some who are not willing to listen to the gospel, or who are decoyed into going missing, precisely because they see dissidents and cultural Mormons stinking up the place. Nominal Latter-day Saints are a kind blight on our efforts to bring the gospel to those who desperately need and even desire to be God’s covenant people. Recognizing that our flaws tarnish and frustrate the building of the Kingdom of God, should cause those with moral earnestness to be kind and cautious but that does not mean that they must validate the ideology of those in that not yet and probably never group.

“Thomas…insisted that I have been guilty of ‘denying in one place that the Church and God are identical, and conflating them in another.’ Really? …. I certainly do not conflate the two.”

Louis, Feb. 15 at 9:43 p.m.:

“How can [B], I wonder, expect God to answer his prayers, when he has fiddled the truth about his unfaith in God?” (Emphasis added.)

And finally cf. B’s post of Feb. 15 at 10:00 a.m. (to which Louis @ 9:43 p.m. responded):

“I do not believe the Church is ‘true’ in the way most people use the term.”

B clearly expressed doubt in the Church, not in God. In response, you, Louis, characterized him as lacking faith in God. Sure looks to me like you’re conflating the Church and God, if lack of faith in the one is equivalent to lack of faith in the other. This looks to me like a dodge, but I’m happy to hear explained why I’m mistaken.

Louis, the “platitudes and pious sentiments” against which you’ve deployed your rhetorical artillery are (as Cowboy noted) not Cowboy’s but mine. You ridicule my faith — of which you have but a synopsis — as simplistic. Which it might well be — though not for lack of study, pondering and prayer.

Louis, you may disagree, but I see in you the original sin of sectarian religion: the conviction that another man’s different belief can only be explained by that man’s personal unrighteousness. The other man is either spiritually lazy, morally cowardly, or obstinate. Deep Down Inside, he knows what he should really believe — or at least, that he should experiment further upon a particular Word — but he defies the Spirit and refuses to come to the altar.

Do you deny this?

I will understand if you do not, and not hold it against you. The whole point of my coming here — the preeminent LDS apologetic forum, as far as I can tell — was to see if I could find a persuasive argument that LDS epistemology could allow any other conclusion, apart from an extreme predestinarian one.

You wrote earlier, Louis, that “Faith in God begins with a choice. Faith must necessarily come before any of us really know much of anything.” (Feb. 19, 1:12 p.m.) I agree. That was what I meant when I wrote that ” choose — in the absence of compelling evidence either way — to believe that there is a loving, just God in heaven, who is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.” (Feb. 19, 2:01 p.m.) We start at the beginning with a binary choice: Is there more to existence than can be known by unaided reason? I choose to believe yes. I’m still trying to understand why, but I do. Quite possibly, it’s because the world would be horribly unjust if that were not the case, and so I “against hope believe in hope.”

So far, so much on the same page, as far as I can tell. You have had experiences and thoughts which expand on that basic premise, to the point where you are convinced that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints constitutes God’s true covenant people. I have not reached that point. (“Yet,” perhaps — or perhaps not.)

Then you say, “When we confront the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are faced with a choice to experiment by growing the tiny little seed of faith.” (Feb. 18, 10:06 a.m.) And there it is — the source of the question everyone keeps ignoring. Alma 32:27 indicates that the “particle of faith” — the ultimate seed for a mature faith — consists of the “desire to believe.” Where does this desire to believe come from?

Perhaps God only equips an elect with this seed — the predestinarian position. Or perhaps all of us have it inherently — the Pelagian doctrine. Or perhaps God equips everyone with that seed.

The Third Article of Faith declares that “all mankind” have the potential to be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel. So it can’t be the first possibility. In either of the latter two circumstances, under LDS doctrine, having that seed to plant is an essential ingredient for salvation: We emphasize the hard work of digging and dunging about the seedling, but without the seed in the first place, we’re just moving dirt around.

So I have to conclude that it is fundamental to LDS doctrine that every man has, somewhere in his mind, a “particle” of desire to believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the one institution in which he can obtain salvation. At this point, I’m willing to waive semantics, and wrestle either with the Church or with God Himself on this question: Why should this be so?

What is it about the Church, that a randomly-selected person — say, a good Catholic, raised in a faithful family, and raising a faithful family of his own — want to believe that the faith of his fathers is false, and the implausible message from the two palefaced guys at his door is true? Why should he not want Catholicism to be true — or Islam, or Buddhism?

Louis, I’ve tried to understand your argument that LDS covenant theology is somehow the critical point. Is your argument that covenant theology is inherently desirable? That all men of good will should obviously want the true Faith to have a covenantal structure? Leaving aside the fact that covenant theology isn’t an exclusively LDS concept (see, e.g., Heb. 8:6-12), and is held in various forms by most Reformed churches as well as, apparently, the present Pope, why should a desire to believe in a covenantal tradition be among the critical elements of a saving faith?

You and I have reached a point where all we can do is trade jabs. Rather than continue, I will again withdraw and let my last remarks stand.

Cowboy is, he testifies, sort of “inclined towards the teachings of Jesus and The New Testament.” At this point Cowboy begins to touch on the question I raised about whether he imagines the divine in some way present in human history. But he neglects to identify which specific teachings or what part of the historical setting those teaching in the New Testament are placed in. Does Cowboy, I wonder, include among the teachings he admires the picture of Jesus as an exorcist and miracle worker, or as God incarnate, or as the once dead and now resurrected Lord? He does not tell us what in the New Testament fits his fancy? Nor does Cowboy provide reasons for his pious opinions. Instead, he declines to be specific about his religion, though he does assert that he “can even accept the general Christian doctrine surrounding Christ and the Atonement.” Notice the word “even.” I wonder what contents he includes under the label “general Christian doctrine”? Cowboy is nothing if not modest: he boasts that he cannot “nail any of this down to a defined religion.”

If Cowboy had been so inclined, he might have easily discovered that there is no “general Christian doctrine.” There is, instead, a host of specific teachings and history followed by an array of controversy over every detail. And he could have easily confronted the host of objections to the platitudes he paraded in his last post. He could have discovered that there are those who wonder if the God Christians and Jews pin their hopes on cares at all for human beings, given the obvious, enormous suffering in this world, and the evils in the hearts of those who sponsor and benefit from it. Is Cowboy, I wonder, aware of the objections to his platitudes and pious sentiments from those who don’t believe in God?

But Cowboy’s pious sentiments are the prolegomena to his clincher–an insult directed at me. He moans that I “can academically speak of Christian virtues”–he has in mind the little spanking I administered over his inept gab about virtue. But, he confidently opines, I “fail to display” these virtues on this blog. So it seems that his response to my importuning began with platitudes and ended with an insult. Instead of listening and learning, Cowboy seems to need to score points by issuing insults.

In response to your questions, I choose (keyword: choose) to believe this way because I find it productive and good. I find nothing inherently problematic with the belief that God exists, that he is good, and generally cares for the welfare of his children, and finally that he is a rewarder of his children. I hope that these things are correct, so I choose to let this line of thinking influence my perspective. Recognizing this, I claim to know with an absolute perfectness, nothing regarding deity as it has not been revealed to me in such a straightforward manner. I choose to see the order in creation, and the necessity of purpose, I feel inclined to believe that the human tendency towards emotions such as love (love of life, spouse, children, even fellowmen) must bare some semblance to the divine. Again, I hope based on this, though I cannot with certainty speak to the particulars of how God operates, thinks, influences, etc. I don’t have a religion outside of this, I am inclined towards the teachings of Jesus and The New Testament, and can even accept the general Christian doctrines surrounding Christ and the Atonement. That being said, I could not nail all of this down to a defined religion per se`. As for what to expect, how would I recognize God, I guess I don’t know but I tend to think that he understands that and has a solution figured out. I don’t expect to find him in the layered insults levied as a pretense to defense from someone who can academically speak of Christian virtues but fail to display them on a blog which in sincerity seeks to address differences.

Has, I wonder, Cowboy’s diligent quest yielded anything he might share with us, other than his bald assertion that about its reality there is no “compelling evidence either way”? He neglected to indicate, for those who might wish to follow his lead, what exactly is involved in his quest? It seems a tad bit unkind of Cowboy to have withdrawn from this conversation without even a hint about how he engages in his quest. How has he gone about seeking his God diligently? Or how he expects to recognize his God, if and when he finds it? Has, I wonder, Cowboy’s “loving, just God in heaven,” about whose reality there is no “compelling evidence either way,” ever been involved in human affairs or made itself known in human history? How, I wonder, does Cowboy explain to those who see the evils in this world as compelling evidence against a God of love and justice? Cowboy seems to have ridden off just in the nick of time–that is, before he even began to answer all the sticky questions about the contents and grounds of his religion.

While I can’t speak for everybody, I have a hard reconciling the above statement as a consistent perspective from a “functional atheist”. Your final critique places your arguments into a position where you are conflating God, who many here on both sides believe in, with the Church – which is under debate. The underlying assumption for you characterization in the fourth paragraph of the preceeding comment is “if the Church is true”. In other words, and to re-emphasize, nobody is placing God on trial here, they are placing the Church on trial regarding IT’s claims about God. To borrow your metaphor, the real question being asked is, why do some people feel that membership in the Church is paying them “dividends”, while others feel it is not.

As far as my comments go, I think we have gone the rounds here, and I do enjoy the dialogue but barring anything which enhances the conversation, I will withdraw from active participation in this topic.