Paul, your story is “true” in the sense that it happened. No one would deny that it did. We could, of course, quibble over the cause, but why bother? If you want to attribute it to some unexplainable, supernatural source, that is your prerogative and little I can say can convince you otherwise. It sounds like you already know all the arguments about the power of the mind, so, again, why bother?

It sounds to me like you’re right in the “stage” (I hate all things “stage” theory, particularly Fowler’s BS) of wondering whether you’d be better off staying in the LDS Church or not. No one can answer that for you but yourself. As you’ll see on this forum, there are plenty of people who have left who are quite happy. There are, of course, plenty who stay who are happy as well. I honestly can say that it doesn’t matter to me what way you go, so long as it is the best decision for you.

So, if we can help you make a good decision for yourself, just let us know.

As a final quibbling point – yes, little “t” truth does seem to change. That is even true for science – what we “know” today may change tomorrow. But the point of this discussion is that there are different ways of “knowing” – science relies on empirical, verifiable evidence. Religion, which doesn’t lead to “knowing” in the same sense but rather to belief, doesn’t. You can choose which you prefer. I like the reliability of science. I don’t like the unreliable nature of religion (e.g., pray for an answer and 99 times out of 100 you get nothing). The reliability of the “knowledge” is, of course, tied to the method of arriving at said knowledge. Ergo, you want reliability, go with science. You want answers to metaphysical questions that are basically wishes, go with religion.

   0 likes

My quibble was really with the idea of “certainty,” not “knowing.” While I don’t think people can “know” anything that is untrue, I think we can feel “certain” of things that are untrue (and often do). Other than that, I agree that, at best, testifying Mormons conflate belief with knowledge.

   0 likes

Well then, I also know that my wife loves me (because she tells me and shows that she does)… today, but tomorrow? Who knows what *that* ‘truth’ will be some day? Let’s hope, though, that this too will remain an extreme improbability. However, there is something that did change: I know that at one time I ardently ‘knew’ the LDS church was what it claims to be. So, did my knowledge or understanding of that affirmation or ‘truth’ undergo some sort of reconstruction? Or is it that perhaps I fell from grace because the scriptures state, “my Spirit will not always strive with man;” and isn’t it by the ‘spirit’ that we ‘know’ the things of God for all things with God are spiritual — “1. And now it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had read these things which were engraven upon the plates of brass, my brethren came unto me and said unto me: What meaneth these things which ye have read? Behold, are they to be understood according to things which are spiritual, which shall come to pass according to the spirit and not the flesh?
  2. And I, Nephi, said unto them: Behold they were manifest unto the prophet by the voice of the Spirit; for by the Spirit are all things made known unto the prophets, which shall come upon the children of men according to the flesh”

This is my — our religion under the umbrella of our church — The Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-day Saints, not “The Academic Academy of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Scholars.” The premises and foundation upon what our church is built is that of ‘spiritual knowing’ based on faith, hope, belief, prayer and meditation, scripture study, personal feelings or perhaps ‘revelations,’ and striving to live as Christ would have us conduct our lives.

I am not qualified to assert *what* Joseph Smith or any one else, including current GAs, ‘knew’ or *how* they knew or know; I can only speak for myself. And what I have to say about this whole matter is that for a long time now I feel as though I have been like the way in which, “chaff is driven before the wind, or as a vessel is tossed about upon the waves,”.

I recall listening to Paul Toscano (one of the ‘September Six’) on John’s podcast interviews and hearing him state something to the effect that, “I lost my faith.” I took note of that statement because I knew ‘Elder’ Toscano while we were serving our missions in Italy at the same time. He was an extremely powerful, spirit-filled speaker at zone conferences — rock solid. So, was he lying when he spoke to us at that time? I don’t think so, and I don’t think he was in some way deluding himself or just acting out a role, either. I think it’s simply a matter that he really believed he ‘knew’ that the Church is what it claims either by spiritual means, or maybe it was only by reason and study alone, or a combination of the two. To be sure, I was certainly impressed at the time. But now, how does he impress me? I won’t go there, although I’m sure we can explain it as having been the naiveté or exuberance or expectations of circumstances of a young, full-time missionary who had a gift for public speaking, or maybe he really was blessed with a ‘spiritual’ testimony at the time, but, like he said, ended up losing it.

Okay, let’s cut to the chase. I know I’m in a state of perturbation right now. I know that I am somewhat afflicted with the dis-ease of cognitive dissonance, but I also know I am afflicted with the results of not fully and earnestly balancing human reason based upon historical data with that of seeking confirmations (to ‘know’) by way of the spirit, i.e., personal, spiritual revelation. I also know that I am smart enough to know that I am not very bright, otherwise I’d be more foolish than I already am. I don’t know — both spiritually and cognitively, a lot of things and I never will in this life even if I were to live another three score plus years. If Hugh Nibley ever did say anything that I thought was definitely tenable (I sometimes wonder about some of the things he has said and wrote) it was something to the effect that, “There is far, far more that we don’t know (re: church history) than we ever will.” And I trust he was referring to empirical evidences and the like.

Let me conclude with a story. People like stories, so here’s one about me regarding a ‘spiritual’ experience I had that is germane to this subject of ‘knowing’.

I was reading John L. Brooke’s book, The Refiners Fire – The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644, 1844 (I am currently reading something similar and very well researched: A Republic of Mind and Spirit – A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion, by Catherine L. Albanese). This was quite a few years ago, when I was actively participating in the church (attending regularly and serving in a calling at the time, I am sure). I was reading this fascinating stuff, things I was never even remotely aware of regarding the Smith family’s early history, and aspects of hermeneutics and cosmology, etc, involving Joseph Smith, and it was having a sort of jawing dropping affect — a sort of, “Whoa! What’s this all about?”. Then one day, while I’m reading this book, a ‘vision’ — a visual image ‘flashes’ or ‘pops up’ in my mind, along with a sound and ‘vocal message’. In this ‘vision’ or in my mind I saw this old, brass cash register just like the ones I used to see all time in the local shops when I was boy. I then ‘heard’ the ‘ching-ching’ sound you would hear when the cash drawer opened, and where you sometimes saw the words “No Sale” I clearly saw the word, “BUT” pop up concurrent with the ‘ching-ching’ sound. And then I ‘heard’ a very soft yet very distinct message — yes, you could describe it as being a “still, small voice.” It said something very close to these words: “Yes, this is (or, “that is”) very interesting, and a lot of this may (I think the word was “may,” or it could have been “is”) be true (or “correct”), BUT (there was slight emphasis and pause) the Church is still true.” And that was it. Brief, but very pronounced.

Okay, that’s what happened. This was an experience I had and it remains very vivid in my memory to this day. So, what can you infer from this experience? Perhaps a lot of things. I think secular, atheistic psychologists, psychiatrists or even sociologists would have something to say about it. But they’ll never ‘know’ the real ‘truth’ of this matter. They will only have their theories. And you know what? I’ll never fully ‘know’ the ‘true’ aspects, dynamics, or *real* facts of this matter either, notwithstanding it was a real, and true experience that had implications attending it.

So things like this (there are other ‘things’ as well) persist in my mind, and up until now these sorts of things have prevented me from throwing the baby out with the bath water, i.e. completely leaving the church. So, to come full circle, this is partly why, for me, anyway, truth has been a constantly moving target, in that sometimes I hit something that ratifies my faith, and sometimes I hit something that detracts from it.

   0 likes

In short, GAs can be very confident in their beliefs, but the second they claim they have “knowledge” of a god or some other doctrinal claim they have lied. They can’t “know” that god exists, even if they are very confident that god exists. They also can’t know god’s will. At best they can be fairly confident of it. Ergo, any GA who claims to “know” anything supernatural (e.g., god’s will) is lying. He believes that he knows god’s will, but he doesn’t actually know it.

Now, is it really lying? Well, if lying is willfully saying something you know is not true, then I guess this may be grey territory as GAs likely aren’t educated enough about philosophy to know the difference between belief and knowledge, but they should be. So, it may be stretching things to say they are lying, but they are certainly misleading people by claiming they have knowledge when they clearly do not.

   0 likes

I’m not sure that’s correct. It seems to imply that no one can be 100-percent certain of things that aren’t true. I don’t think that’s right.

For example, for eons people were certain that the Sun rose in the east and set in the west. Yet now we know that that is actually an illusion, that it is actually the Earth’s rotation that makes it so that the Sun appears to rise and set.

Did the fact that they were wrong make those people any less certain? Or did it merely mean they were certain of something that is false?

And could that not be the case with at least some GAs? Regardless of the ontological truth of their claims, might not some of them be 100-percent certain of those claims in their own minds?

   0 likes

chansons’ point is well-taken – they don’t meet the criteria of being liars regarding what they believe as they are not intentionally not telling the truth. So, they aren’t necessarily “lying” about exaltation and all their beliefs. But they are lying when they say they “know” these things are “true.” At best they believe these things to be true, but they don’t have knowledge. If they did, they would not require faith. They speak as though they have “knowledge” because that is more compelling to followers, but they don’t. I’m guessing they know the difference but also know that speaking in terms of “knowledge” is more compelling to followers, despite the fact that it is dishonest.

Thus, there is a flaw in your question to Madame Curie. Your starting assumption is that the GAs have “knowledge” and that Madame Curie’s embrace of uncertainty makes her different from them because she is embracing “not-knowledge.” So, when you say, “Are you 100% certain?” you are actually using a different criteria for non-believers than you are for believers. The GAs aren’t 100% certain about their beliefs – that would be knowledge and they lack that. So, at best, they can very strongly hold their beliefs, but they aren’t 100% certain.

I, on the other hand, am 100% certain that the GAs contradict the “truth” claims of thousands of other religious acolytes (as chanson pointed out). And I am 100% certain that this fact (which is knowledge) underlies the probability of all such truth claims being true. So long as all truth claims differ and exclude all others, then, at most, only 1 can be right. However, it is just as likely (if not more so) that none are right.

But it is at this point that I move from certainty into uncertainty. I cannot be absolutely certain that any given truth claim is absolutely untrue (though I can be very confident that one is depending on the claim and its concomitant logic). So, once I assert that I don’t believe something, I have moved into the same realm of uncertainty that exists in religion. Just as the GAs strongly hold their beliefs (despite their dishonest claims of “knowledge”) I strongly hold that their beliefs are not true.

While I don’t think it’s actually possible to calculate the probability of most truth claims actually being true (see our earlier discussion of these on here), I do think uncertainty regarding metaphysical truth claims is the most defensible logical position. If we turn to a classic issue – the existence of a deity (not omnipotent, not omniscient, and not actively involved in current affairs), a strong atheist who denies the existence of such a god is in only slightly less treacherous territory than is the theist who claims the existence of such a god. The agnostic who claims to lack any knowledge of such a god is in the strongest philosophical and logical position as that position is most strongly supported by the lack of all evidence for such an entity.

Ergo, “uncertainty” is actual more plausible when it comes to metaphysical beliefs than is “certainty.” As a result, as Madame Curie argues, once you embrace this, it actually gives you a sense of peace. It doesn’t seem like it should, but it does. Why? Because once you admit uncertainty you have admitted that humans don’t know everything. And once you embrace that, the unknown is no longer something to fear. That is peace. That is enlightenment.

   0 likes

Oh crap – we’re all going to hell. No one can live up to EVERYTHING the church requires.

How do you deal with this notion that we are a “covenant people” chosen or called by God or have made the choice ourselves to take up His cross and to do a special work, although “the workers are few”?

How do you deal with the fact that the Jews were the “covenant people” before the LDS? How many covenant people are there? Shouldn’t all of God’s children be his “covenant people”? Maybe God just wants all his children to get back to him, so he sets up lots of religions that allow him to appeal to a large variety of people. Maybe God is just a human idea, although it has shaped civilizations and forever altered the history of the world, making it the most powerful and enduring human idea that never actually existed.

   0 likes

   0 likes

You wrote:
“For me personally, I feel no real need to define any church as “true” or “false”. I think there are a lot of good religions that do a lot of good for people.”

Yes, that’s fine for you if have come to some resolution, but the *Church* (with a capital ‘C’) feels a real need to *define itself* as not just ‘a’ true church, but the ‘the one and only’ true church.

Surely you agree that from the Church’s POV the implications of this are enormous being that the tenets and solid doctrines of the Church as explicated especially in the Doctrine and Covenants and to some extent in the Peal of Great Price, have ‘defined’ what’s going to happen to me (and to you, I fear as well) if we apostatize; if we “rob God” by not paying His Church “a full and honest tithe”; if we don’t sustain His chosen leaders as prophets, seers, and revelators; if we don’t attend *all* our meetings faithfully, do our home teaching faithfully, accept all callings when extended to us, “lengthen our strides,” hold a valid temple recommend and search out our dead and do their vicarious saving ordinances work, etc. And these are just some of the *must do’s* if we don’t want to jeopardize our “calling and election” in order to live in the presence of God the Father and our family in the eternities. There are also all of the *should and shouldn’t do’s* like do not view R-rated movies, constantly pray and read the scriptures, attend the temple regularly, visit the sick, widows and similar others, give “all that you can” in time and money offerings to the Church, (and ‘all’ period if asked to, even your very life) etc.

You say you are at peace with uncertainty and no longer a slave to absolutes, but the Church *is* absolutist in its declarations — its ‘Constitution of Dependance’ you could say, about where it stands in the WHOLE scheme of things and where we need to be standing along side of and with it.

But if you are like me and no longer *feel* it (the Spirit??), what do you do? I mean escaping the karmic wheel of samsara pales in comparison with attempting to escape the wheel of LDS cognitive dissonance. At this point in my life I’m old. Some would say, “Nah, you’re oldER, not old.” No, the end is just around the corner and for many years I’ve been able to endure and turn a blind eye to a lot of things that have occurred to me personally (and to my family in certain ways as well). But especially now that I have had time to read more and have had more resources made available to me (the Internet and books, books and more books), and unburdened time to contemplate more, in a sense I feel like I have blown a fuse in my brain rather than turning on more light switches. These opportunities have not given me peace, but a great deal of angst. It’s interesting to note that even before I began more arduously attempting to enlighten my mind (or polluting it, a TBM would affirm) I’ve always had some sort of natural suspicions about the Church that bothered me.

So, when you stated: “When the church became toxic for me, that was all the “proof” I needed that it wasn’t a good place for me.” is what finally happened to me and my wife when we moved into a new area and were not really accepted, and after a long time gave up trying to be. Sure, they were nice and flashed their plastic smiles and greetings, but that was it — so different from the other ward. And so, every Sunday it became more pointless and even hurtful to go. This, I might add was compounded by the painful effect of those inane and often mis- and dis- informative Sunday School and Priesthood lesson manual lessons (I think you stated something along this line as well).

So, again like you we had our own particular “proof” (socially and doctrinally) that it wasn’t a good place to be either, but that still doesn’t mitigate the *implications* of our decisions to dissociate ourselves with the Church that claims it is the *only* one that can lead us to highest degree of salvation, i.e, be with our families and in the presence of God in the eternities. And no other religion teaches this *so emphatically and definitively*, which on the face of it makes for a neat and complete package for most of us (unless you have been a victim or affected by a temple cancelation of sealing involving your children, as well as some other ‘complications’ that the official Church has no explanation or remedy for, but sloughs it off with, “The Lord will decide and sort it out when the right time comes along.”).

You speak of “the rub” and I speak of “the rub,” but all this does is ‘rub me the wrong way.’ That’s why I put forth the implication regarding ‘liars.’ The GAs say they KNOW. They say “lean on our testimonies until you get your own.” They, at the very least, *imply* that they have a ‘special’ knowledge commensurate to their ‘special’ calling. Hence, if indeed the Church is NOT what they claim it to be, then these aspects make them complicit by promulgating falsehoods for the purpose of deluding (duping) people. The only way to cut them any slack about this is that they are totally clueless about the effect their over zealous (although well-intentioned, some would state) words, be them sermons, declarations or what have you, have on the minds of the Church’s members both young and old, BIC or as a convert.

I take my personal salvation and that of my family serious. That’s who I am. But at the same time I like and acknowledge what you said in a previous post “As an artist must create, so must an intellectual think, read, and question.” as being very germane in this case. Not to say I am by any means an ‘intellectual,’ but I do have a brain that I don’t want to, as someone once said, “check at the door when I go to church.”

How do you deal with this notion that we are a “covenant people” chosen or called by God or have made the choice ourselves to take up His cross and to do a special work, although “the workers are few”? What are we jeopardizing if we drop the ball and one day when we no longer look “through a glass darkly” discover that they were not liars, but just men called to a particular work trying to do the best they can “under certain circumstances”? Are we really that smart, that spiritually attuned and enlightened to conclude with certainty we have it figured out, or discovered a “man behind the curtain,” or that the emperor really doesn’t have any clothes on (although HE may think he does)?

At the present moment I don’t see any real, actualized peace on my horizon either in this life or in the one coming up fast after it. Maybe that’s why I am thinking that perhaps I should just go back and pay up and shut up.

Still, this tentative resolution (or accommodation), which may be viewed as a self administered lobotomy pursuant to mythos, logos, modern-day revelation inaugurating *the* divine, last dispensation, or parts of all three, is much easier said than done.

Viewer discretion advised! It’s going to get messy — my brain is coming out!

I’ve written too much.

   0 likes

Thank you for sharing this. I too have faced this uncertainty ‘monster’, confronted it, and now almost rejoice in my not being certain. It forces me to re-examine my thoughts and motives – to be good for goodness sake.

Paul: Is teaching someone to lie just as bad as lying? Nearly every general conference ‘the Brethren’ instruct the members to bear false witness in the form of “If you do not know that it is true, then bear your testimony until it becomes true”. Can you imagine a witness in a trial receiving this instruction?

   0 likes