Does Faith HAVE to be a belief in TRUE unseen things?

[Anonymous]

wayfarer wrote:

Forgotten_Charity wrote:

Thus we see that our “faith” in the teacher or teaching or hymn is incorrect and not true. Is it no longer faith now? Do we throw out our “faith” in the teacher, the lesson, the hymn book? Is the faith we placed in this incorrect teaching now called belief? Do we change the term we use after the fact that we know it’s no longer true? Thoughts?

Faith in a teacher is a complex proposition. “The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue” is a molecular proposition made up of three atomic propositions: “red is a primary color”, ‘blue is a primary color”, and “Yellow is a primary color”. Two out of the three are ‘not true’, therefore we fix the atomic propositions, but do not need to throw out faith in our teacher.

Not only that, your little four color watercoloring kit didn’t have something called ‘cyan’ or ‘magenta’, or if it did, it might have been called ‘blue’ meaning cyan and ‘red’ meaning magenta, because they’re kind-of close. When I was a kid, I didn’t know what cyan and magenta were, but I might easily have called them by the more familiar blue (bluish-greenish-blue = cyan) and red (reddish-purplish-red = magenta). How precise does our language have to be here?

Does the LDS church practice polygamy? The answer could be “yes” or “no” but the problem is that the word ‘practice’ is not specific enough to form a concrete simple proposition with a yes or no answer. But nuance is too difficult to express to the press, so the church quckly answers “No”. Well, that’s not entirely true, because in our belief in celestial marriage, we are still married to a dead wife, so in marrying another woman after my wife’s death, I’m practicing polygamy according to the mormon definition of marriage, but not according the more common secular definition.

Paul expressed it very well, “Now we see through a glass darkly”. Let’s give ourselves a break and recognize that truth is an ongoing process. Faith, aggregated into sweeping absolutes like “My teacher is true” leads to disaffection when we figure out that she should have said “cyan and magenta” instead of “blue and red”. And such dualistic thinking is absurd.

Well ya, it is. In fact it was all I ever knew at home, at church. That was the point of the example is that it isn’t helpful in light of what I heard this Sunday. This version of faith and truth persist as I learned in PQ this past Sunday. What was absolutely established in the lesson by the teacher and volunteers was this. 1. Truth is only from god(ok great, I love it I agree:-) 2. God sends angel to administer truth only by authority to his chosen few prophets 3. In lack of the angels god has the prophets declaring truth and the ONLY source from which truth comes from. 4. Therefore if it comes not from the prophets it is not the truth and of the devil. 5. We have established that you can ONLY trust the truth from gods angels and his prophets with proper authority. Where if the “truth” comes from some other place it is not the truth and of the devil. 6. So we have established that this is the only place where truth comes from and therefore faith in any other thing but the autherized Propeht is vein and not real faith. Everyone in PQ agreed shared there testimonies to this and the lesson ended. I went from feeling great to a massive headache at even thinking of the implications that this infers to faith and truth and everything learned from sources not of the autherized prophets. The only healthy view I have ever had in faith and truth is by planting the seed and watching what fruit or kind of fruit comes forth. Sometimes it bears good fruit, sometimes not. But at least I learned for myself and thereby grew from it.

[Anonymous]

wayfarer wrote:

We need to explicitly address that the church takes advantage of the naivite of its members in asserting the church is true when they don’t nearly have enough data to make that claim.

The “church” as ?correlation, Pres. GBH, BKP, CES, the editorial staff at church magazines, mid level functionaries trying to be more Mormon than the prophet, the missionary department. It’s just that when I hear statements like this I’d like to know who’s out to deceive, lie, manipulate, or otherwise keep me in line. All said with minimal humor but it would be nice to identify the mystical “they”.

[Anonymous]

GBSmith wrote:

wayfarer wrote:

We need to explicitly address that the church takes advantage of the naivite of its members in asserting the church is true when they don’t nearly have enough data to make that claim.

The “church” as ?correlation, Pres. GBH, BKP, CES, the editorial staff at church magazines, mid level functionaries trying to be more Mormon than the prophet, the missionary department. It’s just that when I hear statements like this I’d like to know who’s out to deceive, lie, manipulate, or otherwise keep me in line. All said with minimal humor but it would be nice to identify the mystical “they”.

my use of “they” meant “the members”. “the church” is the whole schmear, from prophets down to local leaders. the entire culture creates pressure to assert knowledge without any other evidence than feelings and what we tell you is true.

[Anonymous]

wayfarer wrote:

GBSmith wrote:

wayfarer wrote:

We need to explicitly address that the church takes advantage of the naivite of its members in asserting the church is true when they don’t nearly have enough data to make that claim.

The “church” as ?correlation, Pres. GBH, BKP, CES, the editorial staff at church magazines, mid level functionaries trying to be more Mormon than the prophet, the missionary department. It’s just that when I hear statements like this I’d like to know who’s out to deceive, lie, manipulate, or otherwise keep me in line. All said with minimal humor but it would be nice to identify the mystical “they”.

my use of “they” meant “the members”. “the church” is the whole schmear, from prophets down to local leaders. the entire culture creates pressure to assert knowledge without any other evidence than feelings and what we tell you is true.

As I learned at work. Everyone that perpetuates something that is wrong is responsible. Everyone that comes into contact with something not right or out of place and does nothing is responsible. This is posted all throughout my work.

Quote:

Once upon a time there were four people: Their names were Everybody, Somebody, Nobody, and Anybody. Whenever there was an important job to do Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. When Nobody did it, Everybody got angry because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Somebody would do it, but Nobody realized that Nobody would do it. So consequently Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Forgotten_Charity wrote:

Well ya, it is. In fact it was all I ever knew at home, at church. That was the point of the example is that it isn’t helpful in light of what I heard this Sunday. This version of faith and truth persist as I learned in PQ this past Sunday. What was absolutely established in the lesson by the teacher and volunteers was this. 1. Truth is only from god(ok great, I love it I agree:-) 2. God sends angel to administer truth only by authority to his chosen few prophets 3. In lack of the angels god has the prophets declaring truth and the ONLY source from which truth comes from. 4. Therefore if it comes not from the prophets it is not the truth and of the devil. 5. We have established that you can ONLY trust the truth from gods angels and his prophets with proper authority. Where if the “truth” comes from some other place it is not the truth and of the devil. 6. So we have established that this is the only place where truth comes from and therefore faith in any other thing but the autherized Propeht is vein and not real faith. Everyone in PQ agreed shared there testimonies to this and the lesson ended. I went from feeling great to a massive headache at even thinking of the implications that this infers to faith and truth and everything learned from sources not of the autherized prophets. The only healthy view I have ever had in faith and truth is by planting the seed and watching what fruit or kind of fruit comes forth. Sometimes it bears good fruit, sometimes not. But at least I learned for myself and thereby grew from it.[/quote]

was this what the teacher taught or is it in a lesson somewhere?

[Anonymous]

wayfarer wrote:

Forgotten_Charity wrote:

Well ya, it is. In fact it was all I ever knew at home, at church. That was the point of the example is that it isn’t helpful in light of what I heard this Sunday. This version of faith and truth persist as I learned in PQ this past Sunday. What was absolutely established in the lesson by the teacher and volunteers was this. 1. Truth is only from god(ok great, I love it I agree:-) 2. God sends angel to administer truth only by authority to his chosen few prophets 3. In lack of the angels god has the prophets declaring truth and the ONLY source from which truth comes from. 4. Therefore if it comes not from the prophets it is not the truth and of the devil. 5. We have established that you can ONLY trust the truth from gods angels and his prophets with proper authority. Where if the “truth” comes from some other place it is not the truth and of the devil. 6. So we have established that this is the only place where truth comes from and therefore faith in any other thing but the autherized Propeht is vein and not real faith. Everyone in PQ agreed shared there testimonies to this and the lesson ended. I went from feeling great to a massive headache at even thinking of the implications that this infers to faith and truth and everything learned from sources not of the autherized prophets. The only healthy view I have ever had in faith and truth is by planting the seed and watching what fruit or kind of fruit comes forth. Sometimes it bears good fruit, sometimes not. But at least I learned for myself and thereby grew from it.

was this what the teacher taught or is it in a lesson somewhere?

It was a lesson in the manual. With quotes from BOM starting in Moroni 7 to using the Joseph smith book quotes to prove it. I am hypoglycemic, I do very poorly on fast day or fasting. I couldn’t focus well enough to remember everything but the key points written on the board. Sorry if I can’t add more then this. I’m just to light headed while fasting to absorb everything.

[Anonymous]

This is a really interesting thread.

Like Wayfarer, I have been thinking a lot about faith lately. Almost to the point of OCD… ha!

Faith being in something that is not true seems like delusion to me.

One of the difficulties for me comes in ascribing a meaning or source to an event. As an example, many people follow a 12 step program. As part of the program, one looks to a higher power in which to turn the problems over to. You can call this God, the universe, Karma, whatever… and for a number of people it works. I used to think that clearly this was the hand of God working in the lives of his children. Through this enlightening experience of re-evaluating faith- I question this assertion. It might be- but it also might be the power within the human being. Some might still call this God- but it’s not the God I thought it was. Using Alma’s seed test- you test this methodology and it works- to what do you owe the miracle?

Similarly- as Human beings- when we believe we cannot do something- then we cannot (the universe does not align, our perspective prevents us from taking the action that would make it happen, Karma, etc…). I see this with my kids all the time… when they believe they can- they do the little things that empower them to succeed in their tasks- they search for the lost item a little longer, they try a little harder, they don’t give up- whatever. To what do we owe these miracles?

Are the 2 examples different?

Lastly- to keep this all the more confusing- I was looking back at Moroni 10 based on Wayfarer’s comment about “truth of these things” quickly moving to “truth of all things”. I noticed something I had never noticed before in the scriptures. A little background first-

A few months back I read Grant Hardy’s “Understanding the Book of Mormon”. Fascinating book. One of the interesting things in it, is the author’s mention about the personality of Moroni. To paraphrase, he says that it is noteworthy that Mormon gets to the point in the history where they find the Jaredite plates and bring them to Mosiah, who translates them. Mormon says that a translation will be provided later- but never includes it before his death. The author surmises that this was not an issue of Mormon not having the time to do it- but HIS PERSONALITY AND WORLDVIEW COULD NOT RECONCILE WHAT WAS IN THE PLATES WITH WHAT HE HAD WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF MORMON. Mormon was focused on “proving” prophecy was made and prophecy was fulfilled- that his people knew of the prophecies of Christ before his birth, and the prophecies were fulfilled with his visitation to Mormon’s people. If you look closely at the book of Ether,with the exception of the account of the brother of Jared- anytime Christ is mentioned- it is Moroni speaking- not the Jaredites. Hardy theorizes that personality is key to understanding why this would be. To Mormon,it mattered that events translated into evidence of spiritual things. Moroni saw the world very differently- the spirit testifies of truth- not events. To Moroni- it was not a problem that the Jaredites did not speak of Christ- because they had his prophets and interacted with God. For him it was not an issue to “retell” the Jaredite story through a Nephite lens.

Getting back to my original point- Moroni talks about knowing the truth of “these things”, then that by the Holy Ghost we may know the truth of “all things”… now here is the part I had never noticed before… verse 6 “And whatsoever thing is good is just and true“. It seems to me that he is qualifying his previous statement. In the church, we often treat Moroni’s promise (and the Holy Ghost) like our personal GPS- that it will dictate each right and left turn at the precise moment we need to make it in order to arrive at our destination in the most efficient way possible. Perhaps Moroni means what it seems he is saying, that which is true and just is “good”.

Anyway- I hope there is truth here. More often than not- lately my agnosticism prevails…

[Anonymous]

blackout wrote:

Faith being in something that is not true seems like delusion to me.

’tis, and therefore not faith, but rather delusion.

blackout wrote:

One of the difficulties for me comes in ascribing a meaning or source to an event. As an example, many people follow a 12 step program. As part of the program, one looks to a higher power in which to turn the problems over to. You can call this God, the universe, Karma, whatever… and for a number of people it works. I used to think that clearly this was the hand of God working in the lives of his children. Through this enlightening experience of re-evaluating faith- I question this assertion. It might be- but it also might be the power within the human being. Some might still call this God- but it’s not the God I thought it was. Using Alma’s seed test- you test this methodology and it works- to what do you owe the miracle?

to the wondrous miracle of being human… Let’s say, for example, there are three people in the godhead: a father, providing us a divine nature, a son who goes by the name “I AM”, embuing on us our ‘being’/consciousness, and a Holy Spirit, a companion outside of our consciousness to guide us and manage our neural network of thoughts. when we pray to have addiction removed from us, is it possible, according to LDS theology, that the miracle is the holy ghost rewiring our neural pathways so that we are no longer obsessed with the desire to drink? And if this is the act of a god, either in creation, or in actual act, then how is it not a miracle? Yet, totally natural at the same time.

blackout wrote:

Similarly- as Human beings- when we believe we cannot do something- then we cannot (the universe does not align, our perspective prevents us from taking the action that would make it happen, Karma, etc…). I see this with my kids all the time… when they believe they can- they do the little things that empower them to succeed in their tasks- they search for the lost item a little longer, they try a little harder, they don’t give up- whatever. To what do we owe these miracles?

to the wondrous miracle of being human, again?

blackout wrote:

Are the 2 examples different?

not really.

blackout wrote:

Getting back to my original point- Moroni talks about knowing the truth of “these things”, then that by the Holy Ghost we may know the truth of “all things”… now here is the part I had never noticed before… verse 6 “And whatsoever thing is good is just and true“. It seems to me that he is qualifying his previous statement. In the church, we often treat Moroni’s promise (and the Holy Ghost) like our personal GPS- that it will dictate each right and left turn at the precise moment we need to make it in order to arrive at our destination in the most efficient way possible. Perhaps Moroni means what it seems he is saying, that which is true and just is “good”.

interesting comment — especially in light of the moroni personality theory…. I’m not quite sure this sorts out for me very clearly thought…

cheers!

[Anonymous]

wayfarer wrote:

Old-Timer wrote:

Just a couple of nit-picky things first:

Quote:

the book of mormon is either exactly what it says it is: a historical document, and entirely the word of god in every sentence

That’s not what the Book of Mormon says it is. Actually, the Book of Mormon says explicitly it’s not that type of document.

Quote:

when we accept the Moroni promise that a single positive spiritual experience confirms the entire church schema

That’s not what Moroni’s promise says.

I know you know what I just said, wayfarer, and I’m sure you meant to frame the above in terms of assumptions by people who misunderstand the Book of Mormon and what it actually says, but I just want to make that point clear – since your original wording is easy to misunderstand.

Ah, but my dear Ray, if it’s said in General Conference, then it must be true, right? While I accept and agree that the book of mormon does not claim to be historical

..

Do i listen to wayfarer and Ray, or Elder Callister of the 70 who said pretty well the exact opposite from pulpit in GC?

If we were on MAD you would both be called to repentance for pride and thinking you know more than the Lord’s annionted.

I’m glad we are not on MAD. Carry on. Nothing to see here.

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk 2

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

We know the scriptures say that one definition of faith is a belief in things unseen that are TRUE…I challenge this definition. I don’t necessarily belief things have to be TRUE for their belief in them to qualify as faith…People throughout history — tyrants, entrepreneurs, godlike people — they have all had faith in certain things such as their vision of the future, and it motivated them to action –which faith is — the moving cause of ALL action. I repeat — ALL action. Not only belief in the truth, but belief in shysters, dictators, benevolent people, and people who love us — all those sources. Not all are true…This question has always bothered me as people always insist the thing you are believing in must be true for it to be faith. Otherwise, it’s just belief. To me, the distinction is academic….and given how hard it is to discern absolute truth, an unecessary distinction…Comments?

To me, half the point of saying you have faith in something is admitting that you don’t know if it is true or not but you are intentionally suspending your disbelief and giving it the benefit of the doubt anyway. Maybe whoever wrote this scripture was trying to say that if you stubbornly put your trust in something that turns out to be false then it wasn’t really a righteous example of faith because you were deceived in hindsight but personally I think this distinction is somewhat presumptuous and unnecessary regardless of the reason it was added to the Mormon definition of faith.

It looks like the relative value provided by faith (or any damage done by it) can be and quite often is completely separate from the actual truthfulness of what people have faith in. For example, some people could be zealots about something that is true in principle and easily end up doing more harm than good to themselves or others as a result of this conviction and some people could have faith in a complete myth and never experience any negative consequences as a direct result; in fact it could actually help them cope with their lives better than if they are forced to face the facts before they are ready to deal with it in an appropriate way.

[Anonymous]

Well I taught a lesson The Strengthening Power of Faith, which I retitled “The Strengthening Power of Belief and Faith”. I distinguished between belief, which can be in anything, and faith, which is true principles leading to actual salvation.

I talked about how we have choice in what we believe about our world, and quoted the beliefs of positive people — permanence of good things, good things attributed to God and their own actions, and how good things are global and everywhere. How pessimistic people believe good things are temporary, bad things are the result of their own actions, and how bad things are global and everywhere.

And how we can choose our response when we don’t know for sure the causes of hte good or bad things that happen to us — consider them temporary, due to outside forces (without taking reasonable responsibility for our actions) and not general in the world — and then reap inner peace.

Then, talked about Faith, how keeping commandments increases faith, and then qualified how lack of faith is not always due to sin. I used Ray’s articles on the woman who lost faith because of unfulfilled promises, and how loss of faith can come from mental illness to which some people are predisposed.

Overall, they sat there absorbing it all and at the end, were very quiet. It was more like a lecture than an interactive discussion like I normally do.

At a couple points the HC and HPGL interjected questions for discussion from the manual, which may have meant they were trying to redirect what I was saying. I felt like the lesson was a dud overall. Too heady. But then two people — an engineer and manager of human resources told me it was a good lesson. The engineer said after years of believing that our actions flow from our belief, he was questioning if perhaps beliefs come from actions (as I had spoken about cognitive dissonance in the lesson and how it causes a strengthening of belief when we act with high levels of commitment to something).

So, it seems that I touched some of the intellectuals and left everyone else in the dust….

[Author]

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