37.
on 06 Apr 2007 at 4:35 pm Lynnette
Hofnarr, apologies for the rather late response, but I appreciate your contribution to the discussion. Just a couple of thoughts in response.

Yes, that’s exactly what I was trying to get at. We are historical beings; we live in history. And what we know of God, we know in the context of our personal life histories. What confuses me (and the separation I was talking about in my post) is the assertion which I do in fact occasionally hear that we know things through the Spirit instead of through history; in other words, that historical knowledge is irrelevant to faith, because the latter is entirely based upon spiritual experience.

That’s quite all right. It was a long post among many long posts on this thread.

As far as people saying “historical knowledge is irrelevant to faith because [faith] is based on spiritual experience”, I don’t even know where to begin with a statement like that. I think what they’re trying to say is that there are observable facts, and there are feelings. But to me “feelings” are history. I guess if someone wants to have a discussion with me about how they’re using the words “history”, “spiritual”, “faith”, and “knowledge” I’m certainly willing to do that, but as far as I’m concerned everything we experience is history. That’s a non sequitur to me, or if not, then it just sounds specious–a bunch of words with enough amiguity that depending on which meaning you choose for them, that statement either makes sense or it doesn’t (kind of like some of Deepak Chopras’ stuff. I kid, it’s just that I recently had a discussion about his speaking style with a friend of mine)

I like your link between faith and trust. I think there’s a difference between faith that God exists, and faith that God is good, as one could believe the former but not the latter. And maybe trust gets more at the latter requirement? It’s one thing to firmly believe in the existence of a Supreme Being. But it’s quite another to be in relation with that being, to trust in his ability and desire to save, and so forth. For me personally, the leap of faith is often not to believe in God, but to trust him.

I’m no expert, but certainly. If by this distinction you’re refering to a comment like “I have faith in God”, which could mean either, “I believe he exists”, or “I believe he is good and will help me”. I assume that’s what you’re refering to, or something similar.

In either case I’d say they’re still forms of trust [If they're talking the existence of God, they're refering to trust in those experiences that led them to believe in his existence, like feelings, history etc. If they're talking about his goodness, they're refering to beliefs they've had which lead them to believe he was good.] But people are free to argue with me based on how they use the word trust. As far as I’m concerned belief, trust, and faith can all be used exactly the same way, they’re pretty ambiguous words, in part I simply choose to focus on the word trust because there are associations and feelings that people typically have which they may not have with the word “faith” or “belief”. I think it’s a cleaner less ambiguous word that defines almost all of the dynamics, while adding further understanding to them.

[As a tangent, a word like "Love" is a great example of ambiguity in action. A word imbued with so much honor by all of us, that it can be really powerful, but also so incredibly ambiguous as to be almost useless in conveying the author's meaning on some occassions. Which is a pretty big aspect of what I'm talking about in my post. "Do you 'love it' like your first born, or like a cookie?" How is it different than "like"? Ambiguity is useful for establishing consensus, and most people love consensus when they're trying to convince others of some notion they have. So when you have a word that is both extremely emotionally powerful and amibiguous, you have a word that people will just love to use. Pun intended. Swear words are like this too. It seems to be a pervasive pattern across all forms of persuation, poets use it, politicians use it, sophists use it, lawyers use it, oh wait, maybe some of those are the same thing, but anyway...]

“So it’s not unreasonable to note the possibility that much of what we believe may be a series of self-protective mechanisms designed to sustain our faith by having these mechanisms vetted through hundreds of years of human interaction, discussion, and analysis, not just by some of the most brilliant minds to have lived, but by a community of millions of individuals all trying to come up with solutions to problems, conflicts, and arguments for and against their Faith. The solutions they come up with are likely to be pretty compelling to a lot of people if they’re going to survive.”

I enjoyed your analysis of how conflicts are dealt with and beliefs both survive and are revised over time. On a bit of a tangent, I’m intrigued by how religious organizations deal with change, which I suppose is somewhat similar to how individuals account for change in their own lives. What does it mean to have a continuous sense of identity if you keep changing things? I think one common approach is to look for ways in which the new belief or approach was there all along. For example, it wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I decided to become a theologian. But once I’d decided that, I found myself looking back for earlier “clues” in my life that I would end up on this path. And that seems at least somewhat similar to how Mormons (and Catholics and others) account for seemingly new ideas and approaches: we attempt to locate them in antiquity, or explain that they have existed in the tradition all along. So I guess what I’m thinking is that part of this process you’re describing, in which we deal with contradictions and contemplate alternate interpretations, also involves somehow fitting our conclusions into our historical narratives.

Yup, that’s part of what I was describing. I mean I guess if I were to make a list of what I was trying to describe it would include some of the following and some relationships between these things:
How institutions deal with ambiguity
How institutions use ambiguity
How institutions manage change
My definition of Faith
Some properties of language
Some ways in which people use these properties to help propagate their ideas, and increase their survival.
How institutions deal with conflict
My definition of history
My definition of testimony
As well as subsituting “individuals” for “instituttions” in these instances.
And, People’s threshhold of “acceptable answer”

Regarding your comments on identity. In one sense I’d say, yes, these are ways in which both institutions and individuals maintain a sense of identity. On the other hand, I don’t believe identity exists in the way most people use the term. And if I go further, I’m not even sure what the term means (but it’s wonderfully ambiguous. So it’s great for developing consensus or causing conflict, depending on how the actors perceive each other at the start of the process).

In other words, if I try to understand the way most people use the term it would probably include another somewhat ambiguous term “personality”. Well, I think the personality (or more broadly– identity) that we believe we have throughout our lives is largely an illusion. There are some interesting studies that seem to back this up. There are also studies that indicate that our personalities when we’re angry vs. happy (and various other states) are often more different than the personalities of one person to the next.

Really, my own preference would be to divide discussion of people’s personalities (or identity) into learned behaviors and inherent (born, physical etc.)tendencies, but even that isn’t clear cut because all creatures, especially we, are so adaptable. So if you want to make this “sense of identity” thing work, in my opinion you have to say that those aspects of our personality which are least adaptable could define our “sense of identity” and everything else changes. Not very helpful in my opinion for a variety of reasons. For one, what are these “least adaptable” aspects, and haven’t we just used essentially the same words to define the word itself. It seems pretty circular. Also, if for example we think about all the cute, unusual, strange beliefs we had as child about how the world operates, it’s a pretty amusing set of beliefs which I believe have a significant effect on personality. A critic might say, “yeah. But beliefs aren’t your identity/personality!”. Oh? How do you, or I, know my personality? Through observation perhaps? Memory? And if I have a lot of strange beliefs are they likely to affect my behavior? They certainly will. And what if I develop strange beliefs about proper behavior itself?

Anyway, it would be easy enough for me to say at this point that this is a tangent that doesn’t relate to the original subject. I understand well enough that everyone has a different threshold for “how much of an answer” they’re looking for. The difficulty with that is that often the better answers to the most simple questions need this kind of exploration. It’s the kind of thing that historically has gotten us closer to some decent answers, and it’s the disinterest or acceptance of simple answers or disinterest that have caused problems. I’m a big believer in simple answers, it’s just time consuming to explain them sometimes if they’re different from the typical modes of thought.

When it comes to discussion, we want the length we want. Not too much longer or shorter.

And finally, there are a couple of upsides to this:
–Most of the very few people who read a post this long are the intendend audience anyway, and we enjoy having conversations with each other. So it works out well for us.
–Because my preference is to spend a lot of time exploring a single issue and it’s connections, rather than briefly exploring many seperately, the explorations tend to be longer.
–Because it is so long, it doesn’t happen often. Consequently people aren’t subjected to this torturous length all that often. Lucky them.

The down side:
Those few moderators who feel obligated to read posts of this length. You poor souls. I’m sorry. I thought you would have learned after the first post. Well, I salute you.

I would hope that people would not try to consciously separate the two, although I can’t discount the possibility that someone might do this and not realize that’s what they’re doing. For those actually attempting this, it seems a little bewildering to me, and perhaps to you, in that if you’re looking at history in terms of attempting to record events, then everything we believe in any area of our lives is built on history.

Yes, that’s exactly what I was trying to get at. We are historical beings; we live in history. And what we know of God, we know in the context of our personal life histories. What confuses me (and the separation I was talking about in my post) is the assertion which I do in fact occasionally hear that we know things through the Spirit instead of through history; in other words, that historical knowledge is irrelevant to faith, because the latter is entirely based upon spiritual experience.

It appears that in almost every instance of scripture Trust can be substituted for Faith quite elegantly, and that the Lord is essentially looking for ways to help us build our Trust in a principle, an individual, or through this, build our Trust in him (e.g. Alma 32).

I like your link between faith and trust. I think there’s a difference between faith that God exists, and faith that God is good, as one could believe the former but not the latter. And maybe trust gets more at the latter requirement? It’s one thing to firmly believe in the existence of a Supreme Being. But it’s quite another to be in relation with that being, to trust in his ability and desire to save, and so forth. For me personally, the leap of faith is often not to believe in God, but to trust him.

So it’s not unreasonable to note the possibility that much of what we believe may be a series of self-protective mechanisms designed to sustain our faith by having these mechanisms vetted through hundreds of years of human interaction, discussion, and analysis, not just by some of the most brilliant minds to have lived, but by a community of millions of individuals all trying to come up with solutions to problems, conflicts, and arguments for and against their Faith. The solutions they come up with are likely to be pretty compelling to a lot of people if they’re going to survive.

I enjoyed your analysis of how conflicts are dealt with and beliefs both survive and are revised over time. On a bit of a tangent, I’m intrigued by how religious organizations deal with change, which I suppose is somewhat similar to how individuals account for change in their own lives. What does it mean to have a continuous sense of identity if you keep changing things? I think one common approach is to look for ways in which the new belief or approach was there all along. For example, it wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I decided to become a theologian. But once I’d decided that, I found myself looking back for earlier “clues” in my life that I would end up on this path. And that seems at least somewhat similar to how Mormons (and Catholics and others) account for seemingly new ideas and approaches: we attempt to locate them in antiquity, or explain that they have existed in the tradition all along. So I guess what I’m thinking is that part of this process you’re describing, in which we deal with contradictions and contemplate alternate interpretations, also involves somehow fitting our conclusions into our historical narratives.

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/people/home/idris/Essays/Hedge_n_Fox.htm

There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing’. Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog’s one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classification, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second; Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Proust are, in varying degrees, hedgehogs; Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzak, Joyce are foxes.

Of course, like all over-simple classifications…

And since this might be fun, think of something you believe strongly. What’s the possibility you’re mistaken in some way? I can’t be sure, but my guess is that somewhere in our experience you came to the realization that our answer will never truly be 0%. When it is 0%, I believe we’re using a convention, more than this is your actual belief. As in, “I’m a 100% sure we can do it”, even if we’re only 99%, sure.

What a mess

This should read:

And since this might be fun, think of something you believe strongly. What’s the possibility you’re mistaken in some way? I can’t be sure, but my guess is that somewhere in your experience you came to the realization that the answer will never truly be 0%. When it is 0%, I believe you’re using a convention, more than this is your actual belief. As in, “I’m a 100% sure I can do it”, even if you’re only 99%, sure.

Hofnarr,

Your take on resolving ambiguities within the church is very interesting. I was struck by this part,

Most people painted with this brush are probably just sincere individuals looking for more satisfying solutions than the solutions which are otherwise perfectly acceptable to so many of their peers.

I think many of us on the bloggernacle are people who just can’t find some answers perfectly acceptable, when others aren’t even ruffled. It’s amazing to me how this happens. (I’m interested in your take on why this is, are people in different stages, do all undergo a crisis of understanding at some point?)

Thanks for your response Jessawhy. I’m really interested in these things as well.

I have to say that’s a really big question, simply because I believe there are so many reasons why someone may more easily accept an answer (e.g. strong negative experience involving a particular topic, bad mood that day, something they’ve thought about or feel they know a lot about, something someone they highly trust has mentioned, etc.)

The classic cop-out might be that it likely has to do with both individual genetic predisposition (e.g. greater openness or willingness to entertain new ideas), as well as upbringing.

But simply saying it’s both nature and nuture isn’t that compelling eh, at least not to me and I’d guess most everyone who swings by here. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I’m going out on a limb there. As an aside, the “it’s probably a little of both” answer we use and so often see in dialogue in its many disguised forms, while probably developed for consensus building, not only seems to create a false sense of having arrived at a solution, it also tends to shut down further examination. Even if you pick two factors, these things tend to span a continuum, and I tend to think it’s much more illuminating to give our opinions on where we think these things fall on a continuum (e.g. 70/30), than to say it’s both, or “more” of this and “less” of that, unless the parties involved are so sensitive that what you need is less precision and more consensus. Add to that, that rarely if ever is something on a continuum of two factors, so it’s helpful simply to let others know to what degree we think any and all of the factors play a roll, unless we’re in consensus building mode (which by the way is an easy way to rationalize not exploring an issue further. Heck, I do it all the time).

Anyway, I doubt I know the answer to this question, but just so I don’t leave you with a “little of both” answer, I guess I’ll try to consolidate the responses that come to mind into categories that seem to have common patterns from my perspective.

One of the first things that comes to mind is that people just seem to be naturally predisposed toward openness to new ideas or closed to new ideas. This shows up in a lot of psychological research and surveys whether that’s Fisk, Hogan, Myers-Briggs, etc. I tend to like the “big 5″ or o.c.e.a.n grouping that Goldberg and Costa and McCrae use, because it has a bit more granularity (25 categories instead of 16), and the terms seem to be a little more accurate, rather than something like the more culturally popular Myers-Briggs. They’re probably the modern day man’s equivalent of astrology, in that they meet some of the same needs (as does religion by the way), reducing uncertainty for example.

But whichever we prefer this week, doesn’t really matter in this particular instance in that I’m just trying to highlight that there’s an effect there, whether we call it judging vs. perceiving, or open vs closed to new experience. Some people like more certainty, some like things more open-ended. It may simply be that when we were children we were rewarded for making concrete, firm decisions, or we were rewarded for exploring all the options. It may be that when an adult claimed a concrete answer we were capable of recognizing and seeing a greater number of exclusions to this than the next person, and we rewarded or punished ourselves for this (or others did). Or, depending on whether we saw this as a good/bad, these kinds of things over time generated a greater sense of certainty or uncertainty about the universe and it’s rules. I tend to think these things are more genetic than learned, or above the 50% level, that we pick a lot of this up because our parents are predisposed with these tendencies, which means we are predisposed, and even if we aren’t it then becomes a learned behavior to some degree through our parents, which in some instances means we’re fighting internally with the learned behavior from our parents and our natural disposition.

The second thing that came to mind, which actually seems closely related to those just mentioned, is the love of thinking. It could be viewed a bit like a favorite hobby. So the example I’d cite, is something like: I enjoy thinking about these things the way someone else enjoys playing baseball. It may not necessarily be that we’re at different stages, although that’s possible too. But, I like that answer a bit less in that the term “stages” tends to denote some relatively clear-cut or drastic physiological change, like hormonal changes during puberty, or the learning of a new principle, that has drastic effects across a broad spectrum of behaviors (I don’t think most of the things we call “stages” are actually stages in the way I’d prefer to see the word). It’s that the discussion of ___ gospel principle for one person, is just dull at some point, just as their hobby may be to me. More precisely, we all seem to have thresholds of what is a “good enough” solution, and once we hit that threshold we become disinterested, and have difficulty relating to why others may still be interested. Thinking can be hard, and sometimes we’d just rather be playing baseball than talking about ___, even if others still want to.

I do however prefer not to be too global about categorizing “thinking” as a hobby or favorite past-time, and thus allowing the categorization of someone’s behavior. I don’t want people to get the idea that “her talent is thinking, his talent is ___”, and that explains why they are behaving the way they do. I see this as both a true and false statement dependent on the specific intended meaning being applied by the speaker. “Thinking” is a really broad word.

The objection to one use would be, “Well, he really enjoys thinking about baseball, does it extremely well, so how can you say his hobby isn’t thinking” The counter to this is the kind of “thinking as a hobby” I’m talking about here, and that is, some people just really enjoy analyzing almost anything, and for longer, than the average individual. It’s as enjoyable as a sport is to the next person, and can be on any subject.

To summarize on this “second thought” that came to mind, what I’m essentially talking about here are the concepts of “enjoyment” and “good enough” and their relationship to each other. Another way of phrasing your question might be, why is something “good enough” for one person and not the next?

So that’s some of what comes to mind on “good enough”. While I’m at it, let me address my use of the word “enjoyment”. I’m not really all that locked in on this term, or any of the terms I’ve used, so if someone wants to suggest others that’s cool, particularly since it’s easy to raise the objection, “The exploration of ___ gospel principle isn’t ‘enjoyable’, in fact it’s been fairly painful to me.” The reason I use this term is mostly just expediency, but comes from a perspective something like this: why does someone subject themselves to something extremely painful? Because they believe that not doing so would make them feel even worse.

Why did Jesus sacrifice so much for us, because he perceived not doing so would make him break some principle he believed in. Doing so is “enjoyable” (following a belief).

“Lately I’ve been thinking more about the contradictions, and it seems that whenever I bring them up, there is always a “vetted solution” that someone supplies to keep the conversation comfortable.

For me, I find more growth by considering the question anew, without the predetermined solutions. It is very freeing to have all of the answers available to me and to think of the most likely possibilities and even those that seem very unlikely, and still not end up with a solution.

Life isn’t a tidy sitcom (or RS lesson) where all of our problems and questions are resolved in 25 minutes.

Faith as Trust is an interesting idea. It does seem to me that you had some doublespeak in your claim that God is always right. How do you believe this and resolve the situation you explained about vetted and ambiguous solutions? I don’t understand how you are reconciling these ideas.”

Yes, I do. I’m glad you noticed. I’d say it’s seemingly self-contradictory. So if that’s what you meant, then doublespeak works too.

I’m not sure how to explain this in the most concise form, so here goes: I don’t discount multiple posibilities, so I’m just providing arguments for a couple sides. I’m using my education to deal with cognitive dissonance.

And since this might be fun, think of something you believe strongly. What’s the possibility you’re mistaken in some way? I can’t be sure, but my guess is that somewhere in our experience you came to the realization that our answer will never truly be 0%. When it is 0%, I believe we’re using a convention, more than this is your actual belief. As in, “I’m a 100% sure we can do it”, even if we’re only 99%, sure.

It’s that classic kind of, “I don’t discount the possibility that I’m an cute little pig floating in a giant vat of milk. My fuzzy adorable little ears have electrodes clipped to them, pink ones, feeding sensory information to my brain. This is my reality.”

If we take a somewhat weaker belief, one that feels about like there’s a 70% chance it may be accurate, and a 30% chance it may be wrong, how do we express the opinion? We may express them both, we may say “I think” and share just the more likely of the two, or we’ll probably use a word like “probably”. I think when people express their thoughts on something they generally just express the option they feel is more likely to be true, unless they’re belief in the probability of two or several options is fairly close, or they’re torn for some reason. I tend to have a lower threshold for sharing other options, but I’m also somewhat torn (we all are in some way. I’m 99% sure).

That raises another interesting question. Have we talked about why testimonies decay if left alone? Aren’t we taught to continue “building our testimonies”, or “A testimony can’t stand still, it’s either growing or diminishing”, even of specific principles?

I’m sure I’m not coming up with anything new here, but I don’t have to continue building my belief in the moon landings. If I let time pass, will my belief that they happened weaken? At the same time, I don’t discount the small possibility that I could be presented with information that would make me think differently, but that possibility doesn’t cause my “testimony of moon landings” to weaken over time.

Probably too much to cover here, but I think this has to do with the frequency and type of contrary evidence we’re presented with (one type effect being: trust), and the fleeting nature of “feeling” and how memories of “feeling” are recorded differently in our brains than some other bits of information.

“Thanks for your comments, quite a lot to think about.”

Yeah, you too.

Most people painted with this brush are probably just sincere individuals looking for more satisfying solutions than the solutions which are otherwise perfectly acceptable to so many of their peers.

I think many of us on the bloggernacle are people who just can’t find some answers perfectly acceptable, when others aren’t even ruffled. It’s amazing to me how this happens. (I’m interested in your take on why this is, are people in different stages, do all undergo a crisis of understanding at some point?)
Lately I’ve been thinking more about the contradictions, and it seems that whenever I bring them up, there is always a “vetted solution” that someone supplies to keep the conversation comfortable.
For me, I find more growth by considering the question anew, without the predetermined solutions. It is very freeing to have all of the answers available to me and to think of the most likely possibilities and even those that seem very unlikely, and still not end up with a solution.
Life isn’t a tidy sitcom (or RS lesson) where all of our problems and questions are resolved in 25 minutes.
Faith as Trust is an interesting idea. It does seem to me that you had some doublespeak in your claim that God is always right. How do you believe this and resolve the situation you explained about vetted and ambiguous solutions? I don’t understand how you are reconciling these ideas.
Thanks for your comments, quite a lot to think about.

“And while we’re at it, it might be nice to remember to avoid “playing the faith card” (Dennet), by saying “It’s right”, or “You should do it”, because “God told me so”. That’s fine for those of us who already believe in the “same God”, but how would you feel if people told you to do something because their friend Fred told you so, and Fred is always right?”

I think it leads to so many potential areas of interesting exploration: the process of developing faith and testimony, the meaning of faith, the importance of transparency in human interaction, honesty, how we protect our beliefts, and on and on.

So thank you. It made me think of a lot of things, a few of which I’ll mention below. Starting with your first paragraph, we’ll see if I make it any further than that.

“A couple of recent discussions have gotten me thinking about the relationship between history and faith. Not every person takes the same approach to navigating the challenges posed by historical problems, of course, and I respect that there are a variety of ways of conceptualizing the interplay betwen the two. What I can’t quite make sense of, however, is the idea that they can be completely separated, that one can talk about faith without reference to history or dismiss history as being irrelevant to faith. (In other words, the “if you have a testimony, then history doesn’t matter, line of thought.)”

I would hope that people would not try to consciously separate the two, although I can’t discount the possibility that someone might do this and not realize that’s what they’re doing. For those actually attempting this, it seems a little bewildering to me, and perhaps to you, in that if you’re looking at history in terms of attempting to record events, then everything we believe in any area of our lives is built on history. Our lives are a series of events, a thought, a gesture, a sneeze. We have our own personal histories which may not be written down, but are still recorded through our memories (however flawed these may be), and our memories influence our actions.

So, if we take this a little further, for example when we ask a question in our prayers about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, or something more mundane like, “can you help me get over this cold before the big meeting?”. If you then feel the Lord has promised you that you will, and you do get over your cold, that’s probably a faith building moment. It’s also a series of events, and history, whether or not we record it.

The interesting thing about this is that it can be a faith building moment, regardless of what happens. It just depends on how we tell the story in our own minds, or how others help us tell the story of these events (e.g. “I thought the answer to my prayer was clear, but it didn’t happen. Why? Hmm, let’s see, well, it must have been because I didn’t keep ___ commitment with the Lord”. Or, “Why does it seem like I’m not receiving an answer to my prayer? Perhaps I’m just not trying hard enough, not doing enough of ___, doing too much ___, I haven’t tried ___ yet, I’m not ready for the answer, and I’m sure you can come up with many more which we’ve all experienced at some time)
The reason things happen in this way, I believe, is based in part on a critical premise, which most of us who are religious believe: God is never wrong. And I would point out I don’t disagree with this premise, just in case anyone is freaking out right now.

This coupled with Faith, can lead to a huge series of other quite interesting beliefs. Additionally, I can better understand what these other beliefs are, why I have them, how I developed them, the degree to which I’m making errors in judgement–if I understand that Faith is essentially another term for Trust, a specialized form of trust. It’s the trust that we develop between us and our Heavenly Father. And more generally, it’s the trust that we develop in the truthfulness of gospel principles, events, and individuals (I’ll get to how this relates in a little bit).

In saying this, I do not mean to discount that “Faith” may sometimes, or apparently be used in a different way. But I think this only serves to highlight that in those instances we’re probably arguing about two different things, and the argument is based on our using the same word for a different meaning. It appears that in almost every instance of scripture Trust can be substituted for Faith quite elegantly, and that the Lord is essentially looking for ways to help us build our Trust in a principle, an individual, or through this, build our Trust in him (e.g. Alma 32).

I make this substitution in part, because I believe Trust is a clearer concept in many people’s minds than Faith, particularly the less religious.

Additionally, it helps me see what the Lord is looking and asking for, why Faith is critical, how it relates to other principles (e.g. Hope and Charity, which may then be understood as Goals and the perfection of our Characters), and it just generally answers a lot of questions about “Faith”.

Earlier I mentioned a series of “other quite interesting beliefs” that might come out of my belief: God is never wrong. Continuing there and adding my Faith (regardless of whether you find my case for trust compelling), where does that lead me?

Well, I’ve noticed it creates a dynamic that is very useful in reconciling conflicting beliefs, although from the outside can be seen as somewhat dubious. For example, we’re told in scriptures that we should pray in our closets, fast and pray in secret “not to be seen of men”, and many other instances where we should avoid having our otherwise positive acts seen of others. At the same time we’re also told that we should be the light of the world, don’t hide your light under a bushel, be the salt of the earth.

Well, for a non-religious person this could all be potentially confusing. But with my belief that God is always right, I and the people I know can come up with a solution that satisfies even the trickiest of dilemmas, not just a fairly simple one like this. In this instance for example I’ve decided, and had confirmed by scripture and conference talks, that these things are based on intention although I’m sure there are other explanations as well. Which solution right? That’s not explicitly clear.

The same dynamic happens in nearly every relief society and priesthood meeting I’ve been to. Someone raises two ideas which appear to be in clear conflict, but are ostensibly from God or one of his servants, we knowingly or more than likely unconsciously begin discussing a possible solution to this conflict based on our fundamental belief that God is always right (again, I reiterate that I’m not arguing against this belief), and eventually we come up with a solution as a class that most, although not all of us, agree on. The issue is then at least partially “settled” and we move on, and will likely raise this solution to the problem in a future class by stating, “Ya know, I had a religion class once where this came up, and the professor suggested that ___”, citing a source of authority.

Simultaneously however, there are other classes that ran into the same apparent contradiction, and came up with a completely different solution. So really, who knows to what degree either solution actually has merit. Whether or not we believe a solution will largely depend on which class we were in and how much we trust the sources cited in support.

The degree to which church members pass these along to others largely seems to be based on two factors

1) how simple/short/easy the solution
2) how emotionally intense (or compelling) the solution

The next class learns both solutions and the more compelling of the two gets passed along in higher frequency. They’re basically memes.

This goes on from class to class with each side citing their favorite authorities, and can go on indefinitely if the conflict stays at a sufficiently low level. If some level of leadership sees the conflict as becoming sufficiently large, a statement resolving the conflict will be issued. This statement will be more precise than previous statements, but will still have a fair amount of ambiguity in many members minds, it will however serve to resolve the conflict to enough people’s satisfaction, that the conflict dies back down to a low level. Repeat process if conflict arises again.

The dynamic this creates however, from an outside perspective, would be that these statements are considered the word of God in perpetuity among the members, if not for the fact that so many of these statements in the past have then been redefined by future generations. I’m sure the words of brother Brigham were considered the word of God by most members at the time, and quoted as a source of authority to resolve conflict, but later were said to be his personal opinion.

So if you’re an outsider, without the belief: God is always right (or more specifically, “our God”), what appears to be happening in this whole process is that new beliefs are being vetted by the community, and those that stand the test of time are cited as official, although still contain enough ambiguity that they can be re-interpreted by future generations should this be necessary.

Anyone seen as a critic, will also run into many self protective mechanism that have been developed over hundreds of years to deal with them. These include stories of sophists so evil they not only had the most base of intentions imaginable (money, power, trickery, and anything else considered particularly evil), but were so evil in fact that they spoke directly with Satan himself.

Now I can acknowledge that all of this may be the case, but I can also acknowledge the following:

Most people painted with this brush are probably just sincere individuals looking for more satisfying solutions than the solutions which are otherwise perfectly acceptable to so many of their peers.

And, when pushed to the wall, our faith is ultimately based on feelings we’ve had, and sustained by our favorable or unfavorable interpretation of events, and the support of others (e.g. Testimony meeting, people and feelings we trust).

So it’s not unreasonable to note the possibility that much of what we believe may be a series of self-protective mechanisms designed to sustain our faith by having these mechanisms vetted through hundreds of years of human interaction, discussion, and analysis, not just by some of the most brilliant minds to have lived, but by a community of millions of individuals all trying to come up with solutions to problems, conflicts, and arguments for and against their Faith. The solutions they come up with are likely to be pretty compelling to a lot of people if they’re going to survive.

So hey, although this may be a slightly different direction on History and Faith than Lynnette’s comments may have intended, I felt like throwing down a few things that it made me think of, particularly when it comes to conflicting opinions.

And while we’re at it, it might be nice to remember to avoid “playing the faith card” (Dennet), by saying “It’s right”, or “You should do it”, because “God told me so”. That’s fine for those of us who already believe in the “same God”, but how would you feel if people told you to do something because their friend Fred told you so, and Fred is always right?

Well, I hope this is all still in the spirit of the discussion. I’m a little tired now, so I’m off.

But we care about this experience because it is part of a theological world-view; not because it is history or an historical event.

I’m not sure how you can argue on the one hand for the mutuality of history and theology, but on the other assert that theology is prior to history. I understand what you are saying in regards to the fact that we bring our “theology” with us in the interpretation of history. And so if theology is “prior” in the sense that it is part of the tools we bring to the retrospective understanding of history, then fine; but theology is always historically situated. The theology we use in constructing meaning for historical events has a history it self. I’m guessing we agree on this point?

But it seems what you are pushing toward is a separation between historical-fact and theological-value. History happens first and we secondarily assign value to it. I’m not sure such a gap exists. IMO facts are embedded in value and there is no such thing as “bare history”. While it is true that value changes depending on time and location, there is no fact that stands without meaning. I don’t think the fact that there were many similar claims of visions in the 19th century to be “mere history”. While our theology assigns little to no value to these competing visions there is no reason that our theology could not be amended on the basis of these visions (not that I’m actually taking this position). In short by separating these two things you borderline on a situation where history is read according to a certain theological hermeneutic, but that hermeneutic somehow transcends its historical situatedness.