I don’t fully agree, jsyricklan, but find your construction so poetic and original that I must concede the point. Your heart is in the right place. Goodnight & amen.

Thanks again for great food for thought.

If of course the Book of Mormon proves ahistorical then you might have a point but at that point I think the Church would cease to be. However I, and most Mormons, strongly believe otherwise.

I see parallels between symbology and characters, like the virgin mother Mary, embedded in the B of M narrative, and similar phenomena showing up in native North American cultural stories. I realize this could be chalked up to confirmation bias in myself, and I’ll just have to live with that.

Jerry, I think a lot of this comes down to humility and recognizing we typically have to act with limited knowledge.

A lesson I learned, at least semantically, on my LDS mission had to do with an elder in my district who evidently felt he needed a testimony of the mission rules before he would adher to them. Our mission president reminded me that one obeys the rule(s)first, then obtains increased understanding and even testimony of the rule. This echoed what I’d read by Spencer W. Kimball in “The Miracle of Forgiveness.”

So for me, one can have doubts about LDS policy or theology, but one still obeys the commandments and heeds priesthood leadership counsel. As I’ve confessed, I’ve not always followed that concept too well, but, in my opinion, at least more recently, well enough :).

Clark G.

“Galileo’s initial discoveries were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be formally heretical. Heliocentric books were banned and Galileo was ordered to refrain from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas.”

Wikipedia

Jerry, I think you make some valid points there about distinctions between knowledge, faith, doubt, and humility. I especially appreciate the point about doubt not being an enemy to faith as much as complacency. Your explanation reminds me of Alma 32’s description of faith, which suggests that some doubt — something less than surety, at least — is absolutely necessary to the process. Closed-mindedness would be not watering the seed. Faith is “try all things, hold fast to the good.” Thanks for that little insight, it made my day.

I consider this the difference between knowledge and faith. Knowledge is not usually a motivation to change behavior, not by itself. I also don’t believe doubt is the opposite of faith, but rather wariness in light of faith, a form of humility. As stated on the poster in Fox Mulder’s office (X-files), “I want to believe.”

So historicity will not make the difference in converting anyone, any more than the superior argument will win a human mind. Faith is voluntary and personal, so you can’t impart faith to anyone. If faith could be imparted simply by competent argument, Nephi could have saved himself and succeding generations so much aggravation at the hands of Laman’s and Lemuel’s descendants by imparting faith to his brothers at the start.

Doubt is not an enemy, complacency is. Closed-mindedness keeps biases intact, and tacit agreement mostly reinforces bias. Humility, or being teachable, is usually the preferred state of mind for humans in the Book of Mormon, and allows continued revelation to be the guide in the face of circumstantial change.

I wonder if the problem is, in part, a problem in defining what is a doubt, and which doubts are acceptable and which aren’t, and Mormonism’s wild and woolly way of approaching that issue. No group can hold itself together without some borders on what is an acceptable level of agreement or disagreement, let alone a church, and especially a church with a mission as vital as the restoration. So there probably need to be borders to “in” and “out,” although (as you point out) perhaps we police those borders with more vigor than necessary. My question, prompted by the anecdotal experiences about “doubters” in this thread and the surprisingly low number of people who would tell a pollster they were doubters, is how do we go about defining what’s “doubt” and what’s just disagreement?

For example, your friend had more trouble continuing believing in Mormonism when the Stake President expressed his belief about (non)historicity. Why? Was someone “at fault” there — particularly since God has gone out of his way to *not* give us easy demonstrations of BoM historicity?[2] I don’t have easy answers on that. I’d be honestly interested in your perspective on it.

[1] Personally, I don’t think BoM historicity matters, but I used to strongly believe it was vital, so I can understand both sides, but it seems to me that a little more flexibility on that particular point would be helpful. For example, Richard Bushman has made some statements that he doesn’t care about historicity anymore, but I’m not worried about his testimony.
[2] … and Church depictions, so it’s not their fault, really.
[3] … or fundamentalist biblical historicity, but that is an entirely different discussion.