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We have long been taught that we should nuture faith — The Book of Mormon teaches that we should look at faith as a seed that needs to be nourished. As we do this, be grow firmer in our faith, and stronger in our belief of the thing in which we are nourishing. I have seen this happen in many ways. For example, you can nourish a lie that YOU KNOW is not true, until you start believing it. We may have all done that at some point in our life.
Quote:Now, at what point does “nourishment” become fraud? When whatever we nurture, it seems, becomes a source of truth for us?
I think the comparison was the word to a seed… which is actually interesting considering that “word” is another way the bible makes reference to Jesus. I also think a bit about this SD. I have always been one to think about thinking. I naturally try to look at my situations and analyze them. I see others that don’t ever look at themselves in this way. I know several people that can’t even comprehend thinking about, “what if it all is false? What if every religion is just made up of man?” I have thought about it a lot and I look at nibbler’s signature and up until my faith crisis, the church felt good. So I was willing to buy in figuring, “if it all is for naught, what does it matter anyway? When I die it will all be over and not count for anything – other than how I helped others feel while alive.” I find it odd that others can’t even have this thought dialogue even as a believer. Our brains don’t all work the same.
LookingHard wrote:So I was willing to buy in figuring, “if it all is for naught, what does it matter anyway? When I die it will all be over and not count for anything – other than how I helped others feel while alive.”
I am really starting to harp on this LDS principle — that the object and design of our existence is happiness. So, if the church experience no longer makes us happy — aren’t we justified in seeking happiness in a new relationship with the church?
The last phrase in your comment above “other than how i helped others feel while alive”..reminds me of a quote by Marcus Aurelius (there is debate about whether he even said it, but the meaning is beautiful in my view):
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“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but…will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”If it turns out we go to dust at the end of our lives, then none of this matters, in my view. If we are sentient after this life, then we can enjoy the self-esteem and memories of having done good in this life — in the church, or out of it — wherever we choose.
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I find it odd that others can’t even have this thought dialogue even as a believer. Our brains don’t all work the same.Good point. The number of times I post something and it goes to 50 views and no one comments either means my thoughts are so specialized no one can relate, it’s so deep no one knows what to say, or they find it’s irrelevant. I’m thankful for those one or two people who at least nibble. Perhaps that’s why Nibbler is called Nibbler?
I’m thankful for deep thinkers….
I think there are more deep thinkers out there than we realize. Before my FC, I was just too afraid to admit to my deep thoughts. They scared me and made me think that satan was making me think them. They made me feel like I had weak faith. Now I realize many, if not most, people have these same kinds thoughts, but maybe LDS are too afraid to face them like I was. Faith really is just what we use to explain something when there is lack of evidence. So all faith in unseen things is a fraud to some extent. If we perpetuate a notion that is unlikely true, that borders on fraud I think. Then the question becomes if we really believe it are we perpetuating Fraud? Probably because we can not prove it. Faith is not fraud, ever – by definition. Faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is belief in the face of lack of knowledge. In one form or another, it drives every discovery, search, experiment, improvement, etc. in life. Fraud is the intentional perpetuation of something known to be false.
Faith can be incorrect / false, but it isn’t the intentional perpetuation of things known to be untrue. It is the substance of one’s hopes and desires, lacking solid evidence. “Solid evidence” is a subjective term that varies from person-to-person in many situations, even when someone is an eyewitness. People can see the exact same thing and reach different conclusions, which makes having faith, believing, knowing, testifying, etc. subjective – but none of that is fraud if there is no conscious, intentional attempt to deceive. When dishonesty enters the picture, faith is no longer part of the equation.
MockingJay wrote:I think there are more deep thinkers out there than we realize. Before my FC, I was just too afraid to admit to my deep thoughts. They scared me and made me think that satan was making me think them. They made me feel like I had weak faith. Now I realize many, if not most, people have these same kinds thoughts, but maybe LDS are too afraid to face them like I was.
Ditto for me.Old-Timer wrote:Faith is not fraud, ever – by definition.
Faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is belief in the face of lack of knowledge. In one form or another, it drives every discovery, search, experiment, improvement, etc. in life. But the thing hoped for, must be true — that is in the scriptures since we are quoting them. So when we tell ourselves things (church related or not) that are not true, then we are not exercising faith — it is some other phenomenon.
To get around the pejorative meaning of the word “fraud” — perhaps I should have asked
Quote:When is faith, really just self-deception?
I don’t quote the “which are true” part, since I think it’s an incorrect framing of faith. I don’t have a problem with that, given the “if there be mistakes, they are the mistakes of men” caveat. As I said, faith can be incorrect, but even “self-deception” carries implications I don’t like in a conversation like this. Really, we have no objective way to measure the substance of faith in most cases, so I try to focus on the practical results of faith. Does the substance of hope make people and/or their lives better – both individually and communally? If so, I try to be charitable in how I describe their faith; if not, I try to be charitable in how I talk about them, even if I criticize the practical results of their faith.
People of every religious persuasion (including atheists) act on the same basic faith in differing ways. Generally speaking, it’s not the faith itself that is the issue; it’s what they do as a result of that faith.
Old-Timer wrote:Generally speaking, it’s not the faith itself that is the issue; it’s what they do as a result of that faith.
:thumbup: I can think of examples where what they do as a result of faith…makes the thing they have faith in
becometrue. One stayLDS member would use the term “functional illusion” to describe things that were not necessarily accurate and factual but that provide the results we want out of life and are therefore useful. I think that all faith falls into this category. At best it is belief in something that cannot be known. Faith may also be placed in something that is not objectively accurate but that produces good results. For faith to be sustainable in this latter case I believe that the particular person must find sufficient space for a suspension of disbelief. This can be done through shelving, mental gymnastics, confirmation bias, fuzzy logic, or any number of techniques that allow the individual to hold onto belief in the face of contradictory evidence. It can be important to note that what qualifies as evidence and how much weight to give to each piece of evidence is up to the individual to determine.
Fraud definately implies that someone is using ideas that they know not to be true to gain advantage over others. Self-deception also implies that deep down we know the idea to be false but we knowingly put our head in the sand. Both Fraud and self-deception do happen in religion but I assume that the occurance in very small across the spectrum of believers.
Courts traditionlly give significant leeway to religions in making claims that cannot be substantiated – yet even here there are cases where religious officials cross the line of coercing the believers. Generally these cases involve coercing individuals to give up their life savings in a way that the religious leaders personally and directly profit from.
This question has crossed my mind many times; what if it’s all in our heads? I honestly can’t say that “I know the church is true,” nor have I ever been able to. But despite still going through a FC, I can say that I believe that the church teaches a good lifestyle, for the most part. Sometimes, people take it too far by using what we’re taught to judge others heavily, but if you’re careful to be open and not so conservative in this way, then it’s very beneficial for us to go.
If people are happy going to church, and if it’s helping us to live a good and honest life, then why not continue going? Why not continue to believe the feelings you get in church is the Spirit speaking to you? Why not continue to believe that God loves all of his children?
If having faith is what keeps you going, keeps you happy, and makes you into a better, more accepting and kind person, then I don’t see why one should let go of their faith, even if it were fraud.
I just think fraud and self-deception are too strong of words for me to be comfortable with. I can deal with mystery and unknowable things expressed in faithful and hopeful terms. Perhaps I can’t prove it’s true, but I can’t prove it is false. I can’t prove the church lied but could realize they thought the right thing to do was not focus on controversial things and just ignored things without intent to deceive.
I bend my thoughts around religion and God being not of this world. It’s just not black and white. Therefore, not fraud, from what I can see. Perhaps there are mistakes and examples of fraud or neglect to members from imperfect leaders. But not a system wide fraud and lies with no truth and therefore deceit to cover untruths.
I agree with you, it produces good fruit so why not keep going. But there is a line that can’t be crossed for me to trust it. Perhaps that line is just different for different people.
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SilentDawning wrote:We have long been taught that we should nuture faith — The Book of Mormon teaches that we should look at faith as a seed that needs to be nourished. As we do this, be grow firmer in our faith, and stronger in our belief of the thing in which we are nourishing…I have seen this happen in many ways. For example,
you can nourish a lie that YOU KNOW is not true, until you start believing it.We may have all done that at some point in our life.
The whole point of taking a leap of faith is that people don’t know what the real answer is ahead of time but they are willing to act as if the answer that sounds best to them for whatever reasons is true. Even arch-skeptics like Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins have typically made assumptions that cannot be proven not only about the idea of God and life-after-death but also political opinions, ethics, how generally accepted historical facts should be interpreted, etc.
Personally I don’t believe that Jesus, Peter, Paul, Luke, etc. were intentionally trying to mislead people and more importantly I don’t see any convincing evidence that they were so I don’t think it’s fair to accuse them of fraud. Now maybe they were wrong or maybe others embellished or changed their original story and certainly accepting miracles like the resurrection and counting on your own future resurrection when making important everyday decisions is a significant leap of faith but I still wouldn’t call that believing in fraud, at best you could make a case that it is unlikely that some of these miraculous claims are true.
I do think that some beliefs like a literal interpretation of the 6-day creation around 4000 B.C., a global flood, and the Tower of Babel stories would be better described as a delusion than a reasonable leap of faith. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way at all even if the word sometimes sounds that way because delusion is quite simply by definition continuing to hold a false belief and I don’t think it’s unfair at all to say that there is already more than enough evidence to adequately discredit these beliefs at this point so if anyone prefers to call it faith and something positive they certainly can but at the same time I don’t see why they should be surprised that many people just aren’t going to take these claims seriously nowadays.
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