On the Need for Faith

[Anonymous]

Quote:

I guess I prefer to take the positions when there are no facts to sustain a belief I choose just to not know. The burden of not knowing is much lighter than the burden of faith in the unseen.

Yes, you can take the Analytical strengths description as a complement.

See, I think the burden on acting on faith can be lighter than the burden of not-knowing. The burden of non-knowing implies a lack of action. And with a lack of action comes a lack of knowledge and learning.

You can act on some of the most imperfect theories, and then still gain additional enlightenment you would otherwise NOT have achieved if you retired to the armchair of agnosticism and inaction about the topic.

For example, Freud’s theories about human unconsciousness have been refuted over the years, with new ones taking their place. But during the period they were widely accepted and applied, he still did a lot of good in applying them, improving people’s problems with hysteria and other mental illnesses. He also contributed significantly to knowledge about mental disorders of the field, and spawned whole new fields of thought, leading to new insights.

I’m sure we could cite a number of theories in the scientific realm that were once accepted as the de facto standard, but which have since been proven wrong. However, even pursuing these wrong theories during their infancy leads to greater knowledge an enlightenment, and can help the user make greater sense of a disorderly and confusing world. In fact, pursuing a particular theory, even though one knows it may not be perfect or scientifically proven, often leads to the discovery of new and more perfect knowledge and enlightenment — often leading to revision of the theory itself toward greater truth.

In fact, one might argue that having a scientific mind involves embracing theories which are not yet scientifically proven, when they are all we have available. Such is the nature of inquiry and the creation of new knowledge.

My theory is that feelings of the spirit are the best available theoretical means of arriving at truth we have so far. For me, I feel those feelings very powerfully — over and above any tendencies I might have toward emotion.

That’s why I chose to accept that my spiritual experiences are personal guidance to engage with the theory of Mormonism. Because reason has proven faulty on matters or religion and even history, I accept spirituality as the next best piece of evidence I have. In the process, I have a learned a number of principles which I would not have otherwise learned. (Just so you know I’m not not making this up, here is one — about the goal of leadership at Church, in family, and even industry is to eventually get the behavior you want from your target group flowing to you without any follow-up or controls — see the last two verses of D&C 121).

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

My theory is that feelings of the spirit are the best available theoretical means of arriving at truth we have so far. For me, I feel those feelings very powerfully — over and above any tendencies I might have toward emotion.

That’s why I chose to accept that my spiritual experiences are personal guidance to engage with the theory of Mormonism. Because reason has proven faulty on matters or religion and even history, I accept spirituality as the next best piece of evidence I have. In the process, I have a learned a number of principles which I would not have otherwise learned. (Just so you know I’m not not making this up, here is one — about the goal of leadership at Church, in family, and even industry is to eventually get the behavior you want from your target group flowing to you without any follow-up or controls — see the last two verses of D&C 121).

All I can say is we will have to agree to disagree. Divining truth through feelings is just not viable to me.Truth becomes to abstract, it can be molded and manipulated to the person recieveing the witness. Again I would say if the spirit was the best way to find truth more people would get the same answer. As it is the answers are endless and varied. Each individual getting what is best for them. If that is the spirit OK, but me getting one answer and you getting another seems a flimsy path to a higher knowledge.

[Anonymous]

Quote:

All I can say is we will have to agree to disagree. Divining truth through feelings is just not viable to me.Truth becomes to abstract, it can be molded and manipulated to the person recieveing the witness. Again I would say if the spirit was the best way to find truth more people would get the same answer. As it is the answers are endless and varied. Each individual getting what is best for them. If that is the spirit OK, but me getting one answer and you getting another seems a flimsy path to a higher knowledge.

Agreeing to disagree is a way of life to me, so I’m OK with it. But I want to make sure what I said is clear. The quote above implies that I think spirituality is the BEST way to discern truth. I didn’t say that. I’m now of the belief that it’s the NEXT BEST thing when objective data and hard facts are unavailable.

If I can draw an analogy — in business we have to make decisions without complete information all the time. Often, we have to make a decision based on the best information we have. Often this can be conclusions we infer from other data, or use historical analogy — using data from a similar situation that may have significant differences to our situation, but provides the best approximation we can find.

I look at spirituality the same way since reason and analysis often fails when there are no facts, or no way of validating its conclusions. Does that mean I abandon reason when there is sufficient data to feed it? Definitely not — but in the absence of clear data, I’m going to go with the next best thing — my spiritual impressions.

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

…I think the burden on acting on faith can be lighter than the burden of not-knowing. The burden of non-knowing implies a lack of action. And with a lack of action comes a lack of knowledge and learning…You can act on some of the most imperfect theories, and then still gain additional enlightenment you would otherwise NOT have achieved if you retired to the armchair of agnosticism and inaction about the topic.

…My theory is that feelings of the spirit are the best available theoretical means of arriving at truth we have so far. For me, I feel those feelings very powerfully — over and above any tendencies I might have toward emotion…That’s why I chose to accept that my spiritual experiences are personal guidance to engage with the theory of Mormonism. Because reason has proven faulty on matters or religion and even history, I accept spirituality as the next best piece of evidence I have…

I agree that taking a leap of faith is sometimes easier and more satisfying than typically withholding judgment and waiting for more information as a general rule. However, the problem I have with the idea of considering spiritual feelings the best available theoretical means of arriving at the truth is that this will often result in different “truth” for different people. So is it really truth at all or is it just a personal opinion? For example, I have heard Catholics say that they have very strong spiritual feelings in their own church but that they didn’t really feel anything in ours without even needing to hear any moving stories but simply based on the environment alone. They interpret this as confirmation that their church is inherently better than ours and maybe for them it is.

Emotional appeals are a common rhetorical trick used to gain support for arguments that are not very strong or convincing based on their own merits. Moreover we see that peoples’ emotions can often be manipulated by certain completely fictional books, movies, music, etc. in a way that really has nothing to do with generally accepted facts. Faith and what people have faith in are two entirely different things. For example, some people have faith in the Bible, tradition, popular ideas, other peoples’ testimony of events, their own experiences and intuition, etc. Personally, I don’t have that much confidence or trust in any one of these things by itself and of all the things to have faith in I would probably rank feelings as one of the absolute last things I really trust. For me, my faith in God and an afterlife is based on a combination of everything I see or know about up to this point, not any one thing in particular.

Some people like to disparage tradition (including me sometimes); however I can’t help but respect beliefs that have stood the test of time. It’s not so much a confirmation that they are “true” to the point that everyone should be expected to believe in them as much as a demonstration that they are beliefs that work for many people to the point that they can feel comfortable with them. Sure there are pointless and false traditions that survive much longer than they should, but if there is no convincing evidence to clearly show that this is the case then I would always have more faith in popular traditions or conventional wisdom than in feelings. Of course, most of our strongest traditions are relatively new like the WoW, tithing, and temple marriage so it will be interesting to see how well they work for the next 50 years or so. Personally, I don’t have much faith in some of these uniquely Mormon doctrines and I fully expect them to fail miserably eventually if the Church doesn’t really change anything.

[Anonymous]

DevilsAdvocate wrote:

I agree that taking a leap of faith is sometimes easier and more satisfying than typically withholding judgment and waiting for more information as a general rule. However, the problem I have with the idea of considering spiritual feelings the best available theoretical means of arriving at the truth is that this will often result in different “truth” for different people. So is it really truth at all or is it just a personal opinion?

I think we are in violent agreement about this. I too recognize that there are problems with spirituality as a basis for determinging truth. First, it’s not generally observable. Any physiological characteristics of spirituality (tears, peaceful countenances, sometimes even surprise) can be triggered by emotions or other stimulii that have nothing to do with spiritual communication. In fact, I think I could join with you and Cadence in throwing spirituality into the discard pile when it comes to a valid and reliable source of determining truth.

But I have a follow-up question — if reason is insufficient for determining the truth of spiritual matters, and spirituality is wholly unacceptable to you, then what other alternatives do we have to discern truth?

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

DevilsAdvocate wrote:

I agree that taking a leap of faith is sometimes easier and more satisfying than typically withholding judgment and waiting for more information as a general rule. However, the problem I have with the idea of considering spiritual feelings the best available theoretical means of arriving at the truth is that this will often result in different “truth” for different people. So is it really truth at all or is it just a personal opinion?

I think we are in violent agreement about this. I too recognize that there are problems with spirituality as a basis for determinging truth. First, it’s not generally observable. Any physiological characteristics of spirituality (tears, peaceful countenances, sometimes even surprise) can be triggered by emotions or other stimulii that have nothing to do with spiritual communication. In fact, I think I could join with you and Cadence in throwing spirituality into the discard pile when it comes to a valid and reliable source of determining truth.

But I have a follow-up question — if reason is insufficient for determining the truth of spiritual matters, and spirituality is wholly unacceptable to you, then what other alternatives do we have to discern truth?

I wasn’t really trying to say that spirituality is unacceptable to me; I actually have a strong preference for many faith-based beliefs that can’t really be proven to the satisfaction of skeptics. All I was trying to say is that I just don’t trust feelings as one of the best ways to determine the truth and to be honest I don’t even think it is very important for religious beliefs to be true in a way that everyone should be expected to agree with them to begin with. They are simply beliefs that people can feel comfortable about because they work for them. My suggested alternative to feelings for determining what beliefs you can live with is simply to evaluate some of the historical accounts, traditions, other peoples’ experiences as well as your own along with the expected consequences of being wrong in different cases any way you can.

Some people are content to just say they don’t know what all this means but I would rather speculate and make my best guess based on faith in what some people have said and what looks like the most likely explanation to me. That’s why I don’t think reason is necessarily incompatible with faith at all because you can use it to some extent to evaluate the credibility or reliability of some of the stories that many people have faith in without necessarily losing all faith. To me, this kind of reasoning is simply a way of trying to determine how much faith is reasonable or not and why on a case-by-case basis.

[Anonymous]

I’m in full agreement with what you say. Again, I don’t believe that spirituality is the best way, necessarily, for arriving at absolute truth. If I could have a visit with an angel, who shows an ID card verified by a known God-source, and he provides me with scientific evidence that a certain principle is true — how powerful that would be to convince me of the truth.

However, that would also lead to some pretty nasty consequences. For example, I would HAVE to live that truth, presumably, because of the accountability that comes with knowledge. So, at times I like personal truth because the murkiness of the waters spares me of knowing truths I am bound to fail at living — and spares me of accountability in the process.

I also like your idea of looking at the consequences of being wrong. We call it a min-max regret approach in business decision-making (sorry if I sound like a teacher). Essentially, when faced with a situation where truth is uncertain, you look at each alternative, and quantify the maximum amount you will lose if you are wrong when you select that alternative. This is called a Regret. Then, you pick the alternative which produces the smallest Regret.

In a way, it’s decision-making approach for the cautious pessimist who wants to minimize damage. I take that approach to my religion (although it’s not the only reason I stay). I see the possible NEGATIVE consequences of turning away from Mormonism as far huger than the negative consequences of staying with it. So, staying active represents the minimum of the maximum regrets posed by the alternatives of staying, or leaving.

[Anonymous]

One of the best answers I got once about why God asks us to live by Faith is this: If we knew for sure there was going to be a big punishment or big reward in the next life for being bad or good, people would be good for either fear of punishment or desire of the big reward. Not knowing for sure, God can look into your heart and see where the desires of your heart are. It’s kind of like the saying, “The true test of a man’s character is what he would do if no one would find out. I have often talked about this with my kids and said that “You have to decide what kind of person you want to be regardless of whether there is a God or not.

[Anonymous]

The only rational reason IMO that a loving God would require his children to live out their mortality in uncertainty, and therefore make wrong decisions, is if there is some benefit. I suspect that the benefit is to allow each one of us, Mormon or non, believer or non, to make those choices from whatever options life presents. It’s like a giant Roarshock Test where everyone can choose what he wants. So everyone can choose to be loving and kind to everyone he meets, from the atheist to the TBM. Christ said that love is the greatest commandment, and that all other commandments spring from it.

From this premise, I have faith that the atheist, Muslim, Jew, Catholic, Protestant, and TBM, and even us who are struggling with our faith, all have a real chance at at God ‘s highest reward, the Celestial Kingdom. From this I can take joy in, and honestly support others with different belief systems as they strive to live their faith’s, while I strive to live mine.

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