An Update to My Faith Crisis
I must admit that I am still going through the motions of my thoughts on this matter. The gist of my faith crisis I suppose is the lack of scientific adherence and overbearing scriptural literalism that I see so prevalent in the church today. I find that most of what was written in the Old Testament to be fables rather than historical events that so many members subscribe to in their learning. And it’s this fuzzy line between historic event and fable in the scriptures that makes it difficult for me to discern what is truth. I have watched and read a lot of commentary addressing various arguments for and against the existence of God. One piece of literature I have found in favor of God and the LDS church is the Light and Truth Letter by Austin Fife which is a document written by a faithful saint in response to the CES Letter I previously mentioned.
Fife, makes a lot of good arguments in favor of the church. One of the most compelling arguments he writes of is about the Book of Mormon. Particularly the chapter titled Archaeology, DNA, & Anachronisms. The anachronisms at the bottom of the page are really interesting to me. I will update what I find concerning this chapter at a later date as I want to dedicate more time to research this.
However, from Fife’s most compelling arguments being the Book of Mormon, I’d like to address one of Fife’s least compelling arguments and the one that I struggle with the most. It is titled Prophets and Ongoing Revelation. In it, Fife responds to a passage from the CES letter about following the prophets. He writes:
I see what Jeremy Runnells is trying to do, but what if I used the same logic to judge the scientific method and scientific consensus at large? I was taught in grade school that Pluto is a planet, wrong. It’s a dwarf planet. It was once believed that the universe was our solar system, but that is incorrect. Conventional wisdom used to be that the earth was the center of the universe, also wrong. The Blank Slate theory, incorrect. A static universe proposed by Einstein, not true. Spontaneous generation by Aristotle?Supplanted by germ theory. Maternal impression, also wrong. Aristotelian physics superseded by Newtonian physics. The Hollow Earth theory? Nope. Phrenology? That is not true either.
I sadly find this completely off the mark. There is a distinct difference between scientific truth and religious truth. Science is fine with being proven wrong. It’s part of the Scientific Method to change our understanding when new information backed by evidence is presented. Sure, there may be scientists who oppose the new theories and cling onto the older theories until more evidence is provided, but science is not written in stone. That is the beauty of it. Science proposes new theories based on the outcomes of experiments or mathematics. When those outcomes appear to be stable or explained by the theory purposed, we accept the new theory and progress with the field of research. Often times a new theory provides us with more questions than answers which scientists get extremely excited about.
On the other hand, religious truth is held as something sacred. That God Himself and His word is unchanging. Words or scripture not to be questioned or doubted because it was given to us by authority from those who claim to be chosen of God. And those authority figures claim that this form of truth must be believed or you will be lead astray. And overtime, Gods rules and law seem to change depending on cultural relevance.
I’ll reiterate my earlier example. Modern prophets of the LDS church taught that evolution was an evil, incompatible theory that denied God and His creation. This was the church’s position on the issue back then. If it weren’t, the church shouldn’t have let so many talks against the theory go through at General Conference. Every talk given at general conference is reviewed before being given. That means that the brethren read what these apostles were going to speak on and approved it. If that’s not a formal position of the church, then what is? Today, the church claims to have no official position on evolution and its university teaches it as a scientific theory.
So what is it then? Do we take the prophets words to heart on everything said at General Conference or cherry pick what we want to believe in and follow? In the wake of a new scientific theory, are our leaders going to take a stance claiming that the theory is false and in a hundred years drop the claims and issue a “no official stance” statement. Are the church’s claims of truth it derives from the scriptures going to change as more scientific or historically accurate information is discovered?