"We believe in being honest..." (from the 13th Article of Faith)

There are many controversies surrounding various aspects of the history and practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“the Church”), and I’ll try to address many of these individually in future posts. But what I want to address here is the way that the Church is misleading at best, and overtly deceptive at worst, in its treatment of these issues.

The Church claims that its teachings and practices are based on God’s word, which is Eternal, and doesn’t change, and that members can rely on those teachings and practices as a secure foundation for their lives. Members are thus counseled to obey Church leaders as if that counsel came directly from God Himself (see D&C 1:38). But they hide the fact that basic doctrine and practices have seen profound changes over time, while still expecting members to obey current teachings as if they were eternal and not subject to change or debate.

Maybe I’m overly idealistic, but I would expect any religious organization that claims to possess absolute truths, to be absolutely committed, privately and publicly, to the cause of truth, with a strict policy of honesty and openness, avoiding even the appearance of dishonesty. This is not what I find as I have studied the Church and its history for the last several decades.

To give just a few examples of these changes, ranging from fundamental doctrine to day-to-day practice:

• Birth Control was once condemned, and included in the same condemnation as Abortion; now it is left up to the discretion of the couple.

• Families were once counseled to not have “playing cards” in their homes; now this practice is no longer even mentioned by Church leaders.

• Polygamy was once considered to be an essential part of the Gospel; now the Church distances itself from this practice as something purely from the past (although it is still an integral part of Church doctrine - see D&C 132).

• Temple Ceremonies and Garments were originally declared to be revealed directly by God, and therefore could not be changed; the fact is both have seen continual and substantive changes over time.

How does one justify these examples of changing, conflicting teachings and practices that are presented as “God’s unchangeable word” at the time that they were proclaimed?

One typical Church response emphasizes the concept of “continuous revelation” where God is in constant communication with His Prophet on earth, so he can then communicate to the Church members the things that need to be understood and done at that particular point in time.

Now, if these teachings provided greater detail and depth over time, or provided new insight which expanded upon, but didn’t contradict, previous understanding, that would be one thing, and would not raise fundamental questions. But when they directly contradict previous teachings, that is quite another, and this thoroughly undermines any claims to their being ‘eternal’ truths directly from God’s mouth.

Another strategy taken by the Church and its apologists in addressing statements by previous Prophets that are no longer accepted as true, is to say they “were speaking as men and not as Prophets.” This is not tenable, however, as they said those things during official Church Conferences and meetings, in their role as Prophet, and declared that they were in fact speaking the words of the Lord. If previous Prophetic statements made in that context could be false, then we must similarly disregard any counsel given by current Prophets, even during General Conference, or in the official Church publication, The Ensign.

The Church is thus in a bind. In order to prevent its members from becoming aware of these changes and conflicts, it produces teaching manuals and other materials which effectively ignore previous contradictory teachings. These manuals often contain ‘mis-quotes,’ either overtly edited or taken completely out of context, very reminiscent of George Orwell’s “1984.”

Following up on one of the examples above, a member could thus study the lives of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young in Sunday School for 2 years, and have absolutely no idea that they not only practiced polygamy (not to mention Polyandry), but taught that it was an essential part of the Gospel, and a requirement for entry into the highest degree of Heaven in the Celestial Kingdom.

Further, the Church also actively discourages members from even looking for information in any sources other than currently ‘Church-approved’ publications, invoking the term “anti-mormon” to discredit any and all of those materials. (With the advent of the Internet, however, this is becoming increasingly difficult.)

Thus, the bind is that if it acknowledges that the doctrine and practices taught by previous Prophets and Apostles were in error, then it has absolutely no basis to expect members to accept current teachings as true. The whole edifice simply falls apart.

For many who leave the Church, it is as much this feeling of betrayal, that they have been lied to by those they trusted, that is the cause of their disaffection, perhaps even more than the knowledge of the actual facts and history.

The Value of Doubt and the Danger of Certainty

This is one of the most important themes underlying my thinking, and it also helps illuminate the general topic of Science versus Religion.

“Conventional Wisdom,” especially from a religious perspective, would generally view Doubt as a negative thing, and Certainty as something to be celebrated, but I think this is completely backwards. This can easily be understood when considering human nature - people generally long to have absolute certainties in their lives, which can be relied on in times of crisis. Great emotional satisfaction and peace can be experienced when one anchors their world view on matters that they see as rock-solid, beyond doubt, even ‘eternal.’

 

This naturally leads into the topic of Epistemology. There are many definitions, but on a practical level, it asks the question of how do we know what we know (or think we know). I have always been intrigued by optical illusions, where our sensory system is fooled into mis-perceiving reality. This is one of my favorites:

 

 

The squares marked A and B are actually the same shade of grey. The first time I saw this, I was “certain” this couldn’t be true, based on my very clear-cut perception. I had to open up the image in Photoshop in order to prove to myself that my senses were in fact deceiving me, and these were identical shades of grey. And even now that I know the truth, there’s still no way I can persuade my brain to “see” these squares as the same shade of grey.

 

If we can be so easily, and so fundamentally, fooled by our senses, which are at least somewhat “objective” how much more can we be fooled in our thought processes, which are much more ephemeral. As with our visual perceptions, we rely quite a bit on our memory, which we initially think is an accurate representation of reality. It turns out that human memory is quite different from the recording of a videocamera, and is in fact quite susceptible to the cognitive equivalent of optical illusions. One can look at the various personal tragedies from a few years back, associated with the recovery of false memories of child abuse, to see how devastating the results can be if you naively assume that memories are a reliable source of objective truth.  Memories are continually shaped and re-shaped over time, as we recall them, experience new things, etc.

 

If we then enter the world of ‘spiritual experiences’ which are even further separated from objective reality, we can begin to understand how and why these phenomena, whatever their source, origin, or validity, simply can’t be implicitly trusted as objective truth.

 

On this basis, “doubt” should be the starting point when attempting to establish what is and isn’t true, with “certainty” basically being a form of mental illusion.

 

As I have studied the variety of human religious experience, I quickly saw that there are people who are absolutely certain, totally convinced that they have the ‘Truth’, that their subjective, inner experiences, have somehow transcended doubt. The problem is, the various ‘Truths’ that these people teach are typically mutually exclusive. This being the case, how can we possibly base our own understanding of what is objectively True on our own personal, subjective experiences, regardless of how intense, or real they seem to be?

 

The scientific method, however imperfectly utilized by scientists, where conclusions are based on actual evidence, reproducible by anyone who would want to verify them, has an incredible track record of increasing humanity’s knowledge of the world around it, as well as of humanity itself. And because it recognizes that ‘Certainty’ can never be achieved, it is self-correcting, as the relatively recent Einsteinian revolution in Physics demonstrates.

 

The general approach of religious institutions is the exact opposite: it starts with the conclusions. The problem with religious dogma is that it establishes “Truths” which by definition cannot be challenged, with no evidence whatsoever backing it other than the inner experiences and perceptions discussed above. Religious certainty is thus seen as an illusion, however well-intentioned it might be.

 

The following books can be quite helpful in fleshing out the various ideas briefly presented above:

 

• The Seven Sins of Memory - Daniel L. Schacter
• In Praise of Doubt - Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld
• On Being Certain (Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not) - Robert A. Burton, MD
• Why We Believe What We Believe - Andrew Newberg, MD and Mark Robert Waldman
• How We Believe - Michael Shermer
• Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) - Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson