Beliefs in Abeyance (was: The L.A. Times on Richard Dutcher)
philosophy, religion No Comments »I began all the following as a reply to friend and visitor Hydralisk in my last post - but obviously this is so voluminous as to only issue a Warrant for an Entry. By the way I just installed a “commodore 64″-like theme I found - you can try reading this entry under that theme with this link.
Hydralisk, having missed your intended irony in a post at your blog recently (and making a fool of myself - no one will see this; I requested he take down my mislead comment), I’m not sure what tone to read in your comment. But, thinking anyway that I might see some clear arguments and implications, and whether I’m really responding to your comments or not, here are my thoughts:
This is why I personally make a point of believing in everything everyone tells me about anything unless I can produce proof to the contrary.
Surely that’s irony. Everything is true until disproved? If you mean that seriously I’d have to call it a straw man, as nobody argued that.
One of the mormon Articles of Faith is “We believe all things..”; which I don’t believe is literal: rather it is a statement that we believe anything is possible. As Nephi put it: “If God had commanded me to do all things I could do them.” So whatever idea we hear, no matter how outlandish, it never does any harm to think: “That could be true, that could be possible.” (By the way, this is a very effective tactic to deflect criticism. If someone tells you that you are an infantile demagogue bent on world dominion, one appropriate response is “That could be true.”) This is neither belief nor disbelief: it is holding belief in abeyance, pending any further experience that would seem to either validate or invalidate the idea.
And happy not all the time - maybe not even a lot of the time? - I’m sorry if that is so. God knows (and I admit I’m saying this to an avowed atheist) that any person’s life can be that way - for a lot of people there isn’t ever even a glimmer. There have been times I wondered where the glimmer is. And I would never presume to tell anybody who suffers that they simply don’t have enough faith (the all too common, too abstract, trite solution of well-meaning but misguided mormons), or that they should simply throw out anything that seems to them to go contrary to religious belief.
All religions are true? But that’s an extension of the earlier identified ironic straw-man. Of course truth, assuming it were absolute, could not be both absolute and relative: the same absolute question being true for one person and false for another. (Although strictly, there are provisions of mercy in mormon belief that can make that effectively true for individuals who for whatever reason never heard, or were never able to cling to, The Truth, as mormonism preaches it.)
Expressions of certainty in belief could be called arrogant? It could be (you observe here the use of the aforementioned deflective tactic). But I see unfortunate implications there. It would be arrogant to claim a religious belief or experience to be true if that belief could not possibly be true; that would be arrogantly seeking to prove the unprovable. But how could it be arrogant to conclude that something is or could be so, if it is also not arrogant to conclude that something is not so or could not be so? Both positions operate outside of what can be proved or disproved, so they must both be either arrogant or not arrogant together; not one the one and the other the other. So much for that contradiction. If a religious claimant truly did state “Even if this is not provable, I still know it is true”, I might agree that is arrogant. But I’d have to say at the same time it may be arrogant to claim someone cannot know it is true. So how about dropping either question and simply focusing on experience - sensory memory, feeling, apparent cause and effect etc?
The experience I argue for is that certain religious practices will lead one to happiness, and that this experience of happiness can be seen as proof of a loving God allowing us to experience grace and joy in our lives. Such a claim cannot be rhetorically proven true or false.* Such a claim is not an attempt to give proof, rather, it is an invitation for others to run the same experiments which gave the person witnessing their basis of belief - their own feelings, what they have experienced, what they have felt, what it seems to them has been divinely given or communicated to them as a result of their sincere efforts to live in a way that tries out the proposed truths.
Mormonism has doubt built into it. Mormons (ideally) are completely capable of turning everything they believe on their head, pending further revelation. This is in the Article of Faith that “..we believe that He [God] will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.” Contrary to what you conclude (and if you mean this as comic irony, I don’t see the utility of the punch line), nobody is about shifting any burden of proof (or disproof) onto anyone - Smith himself said he doesn’t blame anyone for not believing him; that he wouldn’t believe it himself if it hadn’t happened to him. To be rather blunt, it seems to me that atheists may usually be more concerned about proof or disproof than believers. I’ve started reading an article in this month’s Christianity Today claiming that the philosophy of verificationism (the burden of proof or disproof) was quite in vogue one generation ago, but that it died in part because its adherents realized verificationism itself could not be verified. Apparently the philosophy may be an undying favorite, as (CT also claims) it is the basis of a recent spate of best-selling books arguing for atheism.
This talk about being privy to proof that angels pass out golden books to farm boys**, this is rooted in more of the same straw man that anyone should believe anything without proof (or disproof). Of course nobody can prove Joseph Smith had any golden plates. That goes right back to what I began with: of course there isn’t proof. To say (as I have) that experience is the proof of religion, and that I know certain religious ideas to be true, this can only be to say: this is my experience. This is what I feel about this. I’m certain I’ve felt this (what I explain or believe to be the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost), and all the evidence seems to me to show that this religious explanation (the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) is the reason.
There have been times - and still are - where I ask exactly what started this whole discussion, the same question Dutcher reported asking himself in horror: “What if it all isn’t true?” I have only to think on my experiences to dispel that doubt. If everything I believe is wrong, this is still my experience: it all seems to be the foundation of all the genuine happiness I have ever known, and more than that, the foundation of overcoming every unhappiness that I so far have.
Nobody is proving or disproving mormonism. For all I know most or all of what I believe about my religion could be utter malarkey. I don’t care. It’s doing me good, and I’ll keep it, thanks. Amen.
Meanwhile, I still open the discussion on religion, so long as it focuses on experience - so long as nobody tries to steer the dialogue into any nonsense questions of proof or disproof. To be rather blunt, looking for signs - and I would call a quest for disproof a quest for sorts of anti-signs - it’s exactly the kind of nonsense the Bible itself (never mind the Book of Mormon) frequently throws down. Trying the experiments of religion, that is the point - and I’m not out to say the experiment has to work for everyone, either. Obviously, I’d like it to work for you. That’s my religious bias. But I don’t know enough about you yet 
to know whether I think I’d even suggest any specific experiments supposed to be tailored to your life, and I’d have to first prove, er, that is, substantially provide a basis for a belief in the probability of the truth, that I care enough to take seriously any and every thought you have for and against belief. Or unbelief.
*never mind that mormonism urges its adherents to avoid rhetorical, read contentious religious discussion, and instead focus on attempting to communicate in a way that invites the Spirit of God
**which, by the way, as stupid as the story may sound, is exactly what I love about it - the Lord works through the weak and simple, and by small, humble, and even absurd means brings about good - the God of all creation was born in a stable? Divine truth was given to a fourteen year old, uneducated farmer?
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