Matthew Mason

My Faith Crisis

28 min read

I’m having a faith crisis… and I want to talk about it.

A Curious Mind

At an early age, I’ve always had a love of learning. My favorite books to read were encyclopedias that my parents would buy for me. I loved flipping through the pages, learning about how things worked and what science could explain about the world around me. But there was one subject that completely enraptured me. That subject was of course dinosaurs. At one point I could name every dinosaur, where they lived, when they lived, what they ate. My mind was filled with images of their world, fueled by documentaries like the Walking With series. Through my love of dinosaurs, I learned about many fields of science; paleontology, geology, astronomy, and biology just to name a few. It was at this early age when I began questioning science against my faith.

A Religious Up-Bringing

I was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My parents taught me the scriptures, took me to Sunday school, and brought me up in the religion. I have a love for the church and of course my parents. But even as a young boy, I could see that there were conflicts between scripture and what I had been learning in my encyclopedias. Conflicts for me that especially arose in the very first book of the Bible; the Book of Genesis. If evolution was true (which I believed was the case even back then), then how does the church resolve this conflict? If the earth is billions of years old and dinosaurs lived and died in the Mesozoic era as scientific evidence would suggest, then how did they fit into the scripture that says that God had created all living things at roughly the same time and that there was no death before The Fall of Adam and Eve? There’s a ton of evidence to say the contrary. And what about Noah’s Ark? That entire story is extremely difficult for me to believe as an actual historical event, yet for my parents it was as true as the Roman Empire. These questions nagged in my mind throughout high school. But at the time it wasn’t that important. To me, the answers would come as I kept exploring, learning, searching, and even praying.

That would halt for a time. In my senior year of high school as my mother lost her fight to breast cancer. While difficult, I took solace in the teachings of the church and the gospel. Teachings that told me that we were an eternal family; that I would be reunited with my mother after this life. Before her passing, my mother had made it clear to me that I did not have to go on a mission. That I should only go if I wanted to and not to be pressured. After high school, I would wait for a year before making that decision. To me at the time, believing that my mother’s death was only a temporary thing brought me an incredible sense of joy and comfort. I wanted to share that joy. After a year, I applied for a mission as most young men do. I served my two year mission in the Philippines on a couple of small islands. My mission and those two years were some of the best two years of my life. I would not trade the experiences I made there for anything. Sure, my mission had its low points, but ultimately I loved my time learning about and serving the Filipino people and the church.

Continued Conflict

Towards the end of my mission, I fully believed in the church and its teachings. My questions about the sciences weren’t yet answered, but I felt spiritually full. So much so that I ended my first serious relationship because she had no desire to become a member of the church. But these questions still nagged in my mind. How does evolution fit in? How does God fit in? Is the Intelligent Design theory a legitimate theory? Was the story of creation what really happened? Where do my beloved dinosaurs fit in with the Book of Genesis?

I scoured the scriptures, encyclopedias, and YouTube in search of answers, reading, watching and listening to every young earth creationist vs evolution debate, every Christian and Mormon apologist in support of intelligent design or evolution. I listened to hours and hours of this content. For me it felt strange. I had the knowledge of how evolution functioned with a strong belief in God and scripture, but could not figure out how to make the two ideas coexist. Either the theory of evolution was hogwash, or the Book of Genesis was a work of fiction used to explain the origins of humanity in the only way the people who wrote it knew how.

God of the Gaps

It would be a few years of contemplation before I started to dive a bit deeper. Large language models (LLMs) began to appear and I was suddenly able to talk about these thoughts freely without the judgement of others. And I know, LLMs can and will spit out anything you want to hear and can be a large echo chamber if not used skeptically. Anything ChatGPT would claim to know I would verify. With that said, while attempting to gather my thoughts, I would use ChatGPT as a sounding board. I explained my predicament as follows:

Imagine each scientific field as a box and inside each box is the provable facts we can find inside each scientific field. For example, in the biology box we have facts such as DNA, anatomy, reproduction, bacteria, viruses, etc. Each fact is its own smaller box that can fit inside the biology box. Now, our scientific knowledge on a particular subject is not 100% which leaves gaps inside the biology box. As someone who is religious, I believed that God has some way of working within these scientific fields. To support this belief, I would create a God Box in my mind. An explanation for the things I (or even the scientific community) don’t have answers too. In these gaps, I could fit in the God box. I don’t know scientifically, so perhaps that’s where God fits in. This works for a time. But inevitably a scientific breakthrough occurs or I learn something new. Suddenly the gap filled with the God box no longer fits. I now have a new fact box to place into the biology box that fits most of the gap. Now, I can either throw out the God box, or I can change its shape and size to fit the other gaps of knowledge I don’t have yet.

These mental gymnastics was something I saw young earth creationists and apologists do constantly during their debates with the science community. Eventually I caught myself doing it as well which troubled me. To try and wedge belief between the cracks of scientific knowledge. After some time, I came to realize that this way of thinking was flawed. As I explained this to ChatGPT, the chatbot identified this way of thinking as what is known as the God of the Gaps concept; a term I had never heard before. This term sent me down a rabbit hole. It was exactly how I was trying to justify my intermingling of belief and reason. But I saw that this way of thinking was flawed. Scientific advancement and understanding is inevitable. The gaps of knowledge we have now will not persist forever. Someone more educated than those before will find a way to answer questions that eluded those previously. And when that happens, I’d rather not have to rewrite my entire belief in God concerning that subject or try to wedge God into a corner to fit my preconceived notions. I concluded that trying to find God—or the evidence of a God—in science was a futile pursuit. The universe is a playground and everything has a purpose.

Looking to the Church

If science couldn’t stitch together belief and knowledge, perhaps my religion could. After all, we claim to be “seekers of truth”. However, from the get-go I was disappointedly stopped in my tracks.

According to the church’s website, the church has no official stance on evolution. I found this odd because Brigham Young University (BYU)—the church’s own University—teaches evolution as the leading theory to explain the origins of life. And I could have swore I heard the contrary from leaders of the church. I researched what LDS prophets had said concerning the matter and what I found deeply saddened me. Apostle after Prophet gave talk after talk concerning evolution from General Conference and devotions past. Prophets such as Joseph F. Smith, Boyd K. Packer, Mark E. Petersen, and Bruce R. McConkie, just to name a few, who explicitly state that a belief in evolution is incompatible with the teachings of the church. That without Adam and Eve there would have been no Fall, and thus no death on earth.

Russel M. Nelson, our current prophet, reiterates that “some people erroneously think that these marvelous physical attributes happened by chance or resulted from a big bang somewhere. Ask yourself, “Could an explosion in a printing shop produce a dictionary?”; a quote that he continues to echo from earlier church prophets. In a Pew Research piece about Mormonism in Modern America, Nelson was asked about evolution to which he responded:

“Man has always been man. Dogs have always been dogs. Monkeys have always been monkeys. It’s just the way genetics works”.

To me, these statements were disheartening to hear. After years of wrestling with these ideas, thoughts, and questions, I am told by prophets of the past and present to stop with these questions and to “doubt my doubts before I doubt my faith”. How can I?

Those hours of listening to LDS and evolution apologists seemed to ring hollow now. Why do these apologists spend so much time trying to piece together two ideologies when leaders of the church chosen by God tell us not to or that it’s impossible? We are taught from a young age to follow the prophet. That a prophets word is that of God and to follow their counsel.

Again, I have no ill will towards the church, but what the prophets are teaching doesn’t align with the scientific evidence and knowledge I have come to learn. They also seem to contradict each other. Statements made by church leaders during general conferences past might be looked on as socially incorrect now, such as statements of race and skin color. Apologists and members of the church chalk this up to church leadership being fallible human beings or that the culture of the times were just different, but in the same breath tell us to follow the prophet as they won’t lead us astray and that we shouldn’t question their authority on any matter. Both of these statements cannot be true. Are these leaders speaking their mind or the mind of God? Are we required as individual members of the church to arbitrarily draw a line through their words and determine for ourselves the will of God? Which statements do we hold onto as truth and which statements will we throw away as mistakes? We seem to be making a lot of excuses for our prophets, seers, and revelators who claim to know the truth.

Shaky Foundations

If you have doubts about evolution, that’s fine. But I find it odd that in the 200 years of the theory being taught and heavily ridiculed by the religious that no one has come up with a better theory. Evolution has the evidence to back it up and has lead the path to many other fields of studies within biology. Intelligent design seemed like a good alternative (as it was my mother’s preferred theory over evolution), but it too eventually fell flat. Intelligent Design theory felt like the official God of the Gaps explanation, but written down and taken seriously. To say the least, I spent many years of my life researching before accepting that evolution included human evolution as well; i.e. apes to man. Before that conclusion I believed mankind really was created by the hand of God and that we were somehow different than the other creatures who lived here on Earth. But the evidence is there and we have made great progress in the theory of human evolution. Science breeds innovation and encourages different viewpoints on our understanding of the universe. On the other hand, religion does not hold these same values. Questioning the fundamental ideologies of religion is shunned. Doubting your faith is seen as weak and sinful.

COVID-19 brought out the worst in humanity. We had front row seats these past few years on how the scientific method process occurs. Every week, I heard people complaining that scientists kept “changing their minds” about COVID-19. One week they’d say masks aren’t helpful, the next week they’d say masks are necessary. To those who understood that science is a process weren’t too worried about the back-and-forth. But to those less informed, this was seen as malpractice and claimed that medical researchers didn’t have the foggiest idea what they were talking about. And when researchers did pin down the virus and release a vaccine, this misinformed distrust spread there as well. Claims that the vaccines were rushed into production spun throughout the media and thus the public. Claims that vaccines were causing autism and other health issues are still rampant. On the podcast Science Quickly, Dr. Anthony Fauci on the episode titled Why Anthony Fauci Is Concerned about Bird Flu and Public Division goes over the issues scientists and medical professionals faced during the COVID pandemic.

On top of the lack of understanding from the public about the scientific method, misinformation made it nearly impossible to get the most accurate up-to-date information. That catchy headlines would undermine scientific fact. That political authority figures were too quick to provide answers to the public without evidence. I hope that we (the public) look back on the pandemic and learn from it.

We are extremely lucky that COVID-19 was as dull as it was. A respiratory virus that caused flu-like symptoms and extreme complications to those with pre-existing conditions. Imagine if the virus had been anything worse than a really bad flu. Our response as a species to this minor plague makes me extremely worried for any virus that might come bringing worse symptoms and greater mortality rates.

During the pandemic, I was keenly watching how the church responded. To be upfront, I was really disappointed. General Conference after General Conference went by without any real guidance for members who were navigating this climate of misinformation and public health crisis. For those members who were on the fence on taking the vaccine, there wasn’t any guidance given in the during general conference after the vaccine had been made available. The first two years of the pandemic, the church and its leadership seemed more worried about religious freedom than the safety of its older, more vulnerable members. In my home ward, members argued with one another about the need to wear masks and whether or not the vaccine was safe and effective. They were frustrated with the back-and-forth answers given by scientists and medical professionals. And they were angered by the governments suppression of religious gatherings. For a church whose promise is that members will no longer be tossed to and fro in times of calamity, I didn’t see that promise come to fruition during this time. During each talk at General Conference I listened and waited for some kind of direction. Instead, we got the same messages we usually get such as the importance of the sacrament, the temple, prayer, and scripture study, with an emphasis on how important religious freedom is to the church. Had I not been so eagerly looking for any sense of guidance concerning the pandemic, I would have missed the church’s official news article about President Nelson getting the vaccine and encouraging the use of masks. Why wasn’t this topic brought up in general conference? I doubt a quarter of the church saw that news article. But everyone in the church watches General Conference. Where was the promised leadership? Why was I witnessing countless members suffer from their own ignorance while church leadership preached about the need for religious freedom? They had four general conferences during the pandemic. You’d think that at least in the fourth general conference towards the end of the pandemic that they would have given at least some direction concerning the health and wellbeing of their members. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. For those members who would argue that the church only looks after our spiritual wellbeing and not our physical, I would argue that Jesus Christ cared as much for our physical wellbeing as He did our spiritual. What of Moses and the bronze serpent or the times Jesus Christ healed the sick? Does God not care about our individual physical needs now that we are a larger congregation? I find that difficult pill to swallow.

As I said before, I loved the church. I had found great comfort in the gospel throughout my life. The community of the church and how it feels like a family is reassuring to me. However, these experiences damaged my faith. I can’t imagine church leadership acting in any different manner than they did if faced with a larger health crisis. It deeply troubles me. Especially for those who pin their whole belief system on the church and God.

Even so, evolution and the pandemic are just small parts of my doubts in the church. It would seem that any scientific ideas put forth before members of the church are heavily argued against. In addition to evolution and medical science, I have seen climate change receive major push back from members of the church. And not even just our church, but Christianity and religious communities as a whole. An air of scientific skepticism permeates in the church that’s no doubt influenced by the teachings of the leadership and prophets I mentioned earlier. There’s this hopeful belief that The Second Coming of Christ is just around the corner and that we will be saved from our own fates. I find it ironic that members of the church are looking to Christ to save them in such a way. It didn’t work out for the Jews who sought freedom from the Roman Empire as they would have hoped. I doubt it’s going to work out for us anytime soon.

I love Carl Sagan’s response to the possibility of a savior. The question to Carl Sagan was as follows: “As our understanding grows and it becomes harder and harder to prove or believe that a God could exist, where does that leave us?” His response:

“On our own. Which to my mind is much more responsible to hoping that someone White will save us for ourselves so we don’t have to make our best efforts to do it ourself. And if we’re wrong and there is someone who steps in and saves us—Okay, that’s alright. I’m for that, but we hedged our bets.”

I fully agree with Carl Sagan on this point. It is much more responsible for us to take care of ourselves, our planet, and to learn as much as we can than it is to solely rely on the hope that some outside force will come save us from ourselves.

But again, why would believers of the church think any differently? Our leaders tells us constantly of the second coming. It is The Church of Latter-day Saints after all. According to the teachings of the church, the second coming is not a matter of if, but when. And as much as I want to believe, I feel like this belief is more dangerous than beneficial when members tend to throw their hands up at difficult problems stating that the savior will come to fix things so why bother.

Official Positions

As of writing, the LDS church “has no official position on the theory of evolution”. But as I pointed out earlier, that hasn’t stopped church leaders from preaching against scientific theories behind the pulpit. And when these viewpoints are shared to the masses during General Conference or BYU devotionals, what are members to takeaway about our stance on the science? Perhaps these viewpoints aren’t the official position of the church, but to a believer who has been told not to doubt the validity of the leadership of the church and their words, what other conclusions are they to come to when they read or listen to these talks? One might say that it doesn’t really matter what church leaders say regarding science at the end of the day. If they are right or wrong, then so be it. However, I find that their statements cause a great deal of harm. The LDS church’s official position on evolution is laughable. The church says they have no position on evolution, yet they publish, disagree, mock, and ridicule scientific explanations of our world if they don’t align with our religious views. It is detrimental.

Their statements breed distrust against science. There is a reason the political party in America that claims to support religious values is becoming the anti-science party. How many generations of bright minds that have been shutdown and smothered by their upbringing for questioning the word of God or His prophets? How many Einstein’s or Sagan’s could we have raised as a society if the general consensus wasn’t blind faith towards a religious worldview, but rather support and encouragement of the abundant evidence we have found through dedicated research and exploration?

Science does not fear being uprooted in its belief; it encourages it. Skepticism is fundamental to the scientific method. It is good to question the theories we have today, but if you plan to do so, you must provide adequate evidence to support your claims. For example, there are fascinating developments in astronomy that question our entire model of the universe. Timescape theory is a recently published paper that claims that dark matter is not needed when explaining the expansion of the universe. If it holds up to be true, this could shift our entire understanding of the origins of the universe. There are experiments to be had and many more years of research to be run before we can definitively place dark matter or theories against it on the chopping block or inside of textbooks. But It’s captivating to me.

Coming Conflicts

Science isn’t done. Far from it. I foresee a future in which the debate about evolution and religion are seen as settled much like the geocentrism of a bygone era as our understanding of the human mind increases. The debate of whether or not we have agency is on the horizon. Neuroscience is already attempting to unravel the mysteries of consciousness and whether or not we have free will. Agency is a pivotal plot device in Christianity. How is one to sin if we are unable to choose? In the book Determined, Robert Sapolsky makes the argument that free will is just an illusion. That we are just biological machines reacting to our environment and self. For me, I loved his book. His ideas matched thoughts of my own. What is the difference between a child kicking a rock down the road and flash flood washing it down a hillside? Both are made of atoms. One could argue that the child is his or her own force of nature and kicked the rock of their own free will for a bit of fun. However, when we peer a bit deeper into this scenario or zoom out to see the big picture, could we see how the child and the flash flood could be determined to move the rock in the same way so that it inevitably winds up in its new place? In the same way a storm forms and brews before releasing its water down to the ground below, so too is a child raised to the point of irresistibly kicking rocks in their path.

It seems to me that determinism or the idea that agency is just a biological illusion will become a greater topic of debate as neuroscience and quantum mechanics reveals more about their respective mysteries. Some arguments against determinism claim that tiny molecular tubes within the neurons of our brain have the ability to use the randomness of Quantum Mechanics to create options in our brain causing free will. Sapolsky suggests that the effects of Quantum Mechanics is too minute to cause any changes in consciousness. I am not an scientist, so I’ll leave the more complicated discussions to others. Even so, as time moves on, I see debates about the origins of species and mankind becoming more trivial compared to debates for and against determinism, free will, agency, consciousness, and soul.

A Rough History

The church’s history is full of things that are questionable. The CES Letter outlines a good portion of these questions and concerns, although I don’t agree with Jeremy Runnells way of dealing with his loss of faith. It is clear he was hurt and felt betrayed or misguided in his beliefs. I don’t want to attack the church or its leaders. I don’t feel betrayal in the same way Runnells seems too. (Since I wrote this, a CES Letter 2.0 with a less snarky attitude was released recently). But I do express much of the same concerns he does, especially when it comes to modern day prophets contradicting one another—which is something I addressed earlier. When the Saints series of books released, we were asked by church leaders to read them. I remember my father expressing concern over some of the revealed history when he read the first and second volumes. It does seem like the church is becoming more transparent about its past, but why wasn’t it transparent to begin with? Why the short-sightedness of its leaders in not addressing these issues before things like the CES Letter came out? Why did these issues even occur when the church has been lead by a prophet of God who knows all things? I don’t know if the Saints volumes were in direct response to the criticism of the church’s hidden history, but it does seem plausible. For a church that’s supposedly directed by Christ and God Himself through His prophets, it sure does seem strange to me the amount of back pedaling or explaining the church has to do for early church leaders. And we don’t even need to go back that far. For example, the the whole “I’m a Mormon” campaign sponsored by the church while under Thomas S. Monson just to do a complete 180° with the next Prophet and condemn the name Mormon altogether, effectively burying the “I’m a Mormon” movie and website that was paid for by members tithing. That’s estimated to be around 160 million dollars of tithing money just washed down the drain over differing opinions around the use of the name “Mormon” when referring to the church and its members.

There’s also the changes to the endowment ceremony in the temple concerning the role of women in marriage. When the changes were made, I was a temple worker who officiated in many endowments. After the changes, I over heard many women praising the wording changes as being more inclusive and stressing the importance that the wife and husband were equal partners. And that it is no longer said that the wife must submit to the husband in all things. I admit the new wording did feel better, but why wasn’t it worded that way to begin with? Do all the married women who went through the endowment with the previous wording in spirit prison now have equal footing with their husbands too? Why did God reveal the ceremony incorrectly to Joseph Smith or Brigham Young in the first place? Shouldn’t it remain the same if it was directly revealed by God or is God changing His mind as our culture changes? It’s questions like these that really hurt my faith in God and the church. For a church that claims eternal, celestial truths, it sure does seem like we get a whole lot wrong a lot of the time. And when the prophet is wrong and the revelation is proven false or unfavorable to the general public, it is demoted from doctrine to policy, then quickly renounced and reverted. Take for example the revelation that children of same-sex parents couldn’t be baptized at age eight. It was revealed, then reverted within 6 months.

When questions are raised about the prophets, we are told to follow them because “they know the way”. When we question the harder stuff the leaders of the church refuse to give a definitive answer and we are told to use our best judgement and listen to the spirit who will guide us towards the truth. Why? Shouldn’t the prophet of the church answer these more pressing questions? Or God Himself through His prophets?

I’m not saying the church should have the answers to everything concerning science. But I don’t see why the church and its leaders willfully condemn scientific discoveries when those achievements seemingly misalign with the Christian or LDS narrative. Did the prophets not converse with God on the matter? Did their personal judgement and promptings of the spirit lead them astray from the truth? If church leaders can be lead astray from the truth in such a manner, then we as members are even more susceptible. And for a church that claims we will no longer be tossed to and fro from the truth, this reliance on personal revelation and promptings of a spirit to tell us what the truth really does feel like an unnecessary and potentially dangerous step.

Why’s it so hard?

I can’t say I take joy from this journey. All my life I’ve considered the LDS Church a staple of my identity. It feels like I’m losing a part of me by writing about any of this. Most stories I hear about those leaving the church are coming from a position of anger, frustration, or the desire to disobey certain commandments like the word of wisdom by drinking coffee or alcohol or the law of chastity by having premarital sex. For me, I’m searching for truth. And the truth that I know and the religion I’ve been raised in are beginning to conflict in ways I can no longer ignore or overlook. Even so, rejecting the church, the scriptures, the prophets, the gospel, Jesus Christ, and God feels wrong. Perhaps because it has been so engrained into my everyday life. In a sense, I’m losing a large part of what has made me who I am today. That identity and stability.

Thoughts of my peers and family spring to mind as well, many of which are devout members of the church. How would they react or view me if or when I announce my lack of faith? My—to them—sudden shift in belief would be quite the shock even if I have been struggling with these feelings for most of my life. How do I explain? After all, the church claims to be the source of all truth.

However, my own feelings or even my friends and family’s reactions is of lesser importance to me than that of my wife. I’m extremely fearful of her reaction. How will she see me after I denounce my faith? When after 3 short years of being together, sealed in the temple for time and all eternity, and promising one another that we would live together in a Christ centered home. Now while I believe we have failed in some of those aspects already—we don’t read the scriptures, pray together, etc.—the promise is still there. A promise I feel I am breaking.

Am I to live my life in a lie? Am I to live my life believing in one way while speaking in another? Can I even do such a thing? It’s bugged me most of my life and as the science becomes more sound in factual evidence, do I simply turn away and live my life in ignorant bliss? What of my son? Do I teach him of God, Christ, the scriptures, and the prophets in the same manner my father and his lineage did for him? For my son to go through the same confusion I have for so long? Do I do that to my son?

Resources and Works Cited

I have written a series of update posts as I navigate my faith crisis and spiritual deconstruction from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Christianity as a whole.

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