I was hauling a little tyke around the house the other day, trying to expand his small vocabulary. I pointed out a picture on the wall: “Look, those are flowers.” Well, not really. I corrected myself. “Actually, that’s a picture of flowers.” I trot to the back door window overlooking the garden. “Those are flowers.” Back to the picture: “That’s a picture of flowers.” I’m sure the important distinction is not lost on readers. Funny thing is kids don’t seem to ever get confused by it. I don’t recall any story of taking a kid to the zoo, pointing out an elephant, and getting a reply: “No, papa, an elephant is a small two-dimensional image on a piece of paper, not a huge animal like that thing over there munching on grass.” Likewise, kids don’t get confused by small 3D action figures of lions and tigers when they stumble upon the real thing at the zoo. They get it.
It gets a little more complicated with depictions or models of imaginary creatures. But a unicorn figure or a 3D dragon that a kid plays with get sorted, without any particular difficulty, into the category “imaginary” or “make believe.” Little Josh can be having a battle between a lion figure in one hand and a dragon figure in another hand and, if properly queried, accurately explain that there really are lions, but this is just a pretend lion, and that there aren’t really any dragons out there, and this is a pretend dragon in my hand even though there aren’t any real dragons out there. Again, kids get it. We as humans are naturally capable of distinguishing images from real objects, and classifying some categories of objects as real (such as lions) and other categories of objects as imaginary (such as dragons). Those aren’t fixed categories. At some point just about every seven- or eight-year-old moves Santa Claus from the category “real person who lives up north and delivers presents at Christmas” to “imaginary person who lives up north and delivers presents at Christmas.” Again, kids do this fairly smoothly without much angst. Not-so-little Josh will say, “Oh, now I get it,” not “How could I have been so stupid?!” What is a little surprising in this short summary is how natural and easy these distinctions are to children.
Maybe we lose this ability as adults. Think about things that different adults place in different categories. UFOs. Bigfoot. Homeopathic medicine and the effects of other placebos. Religious objects and categories enter this discussion as well. Let’s avoid Mormonish things for the moment: Healings at Lourdes. Visions at Fatima. Images and depictions seem to persuade adults to classify as real objects many things that you or I might think of as imaginary. I’m sure you’ve seen images, even videos, of UFOs, Bigfoot, angels with wings, or the postmortal Virgin Mary. Images can be treacherous.
So can stories. Think conspiracy theories, which conspicuously lack much or any evidence to support them, but nevertheless attract belief by small groups of fringe devotees, or sometimes go viral and attract belief by millions or hundreds of millions. Now maybe adults don’t actually lose an ability that children have to make these distinctions. Maybe children are good at distinguishing real from imaginary only because the responsible adults in their life quietly guide them to the proper result. And adults don’t necessarily have a reliable guide to help them distinguish real from imaginary, so there are millions of adults who classify UFOs (as stealthy alien spacecraft rather than as strange terrestrial phenomena or secret military craft) and Bigfoot as real rather than imaginary. Adults sort of have to develop their own criteria for making those distinctions. Some of us are better than others.
There is a whole discussion about reality testing to be had here. We each take it for granted that we have a pretty good grasp on reality. Think Mr. Monk: “I could be wrong now. But I don’t think so.” Most people won’t even go so far as to acknowledge they could be wrong. We as humans plainly have the ability to form wildly inaccurate views of the real world. Just think of what humans thought about “the real world” ten thousand years ago. Two thousand years ago. A century ago.
Now let’s get to the Mormon stuff. I’m not going to take the easy approach and invite a conversation about Nephites (real or imaginary?) or golden plates (real or imaginary?). Let’s talk about topics that aren’t quite so emotionally charged and that the average Mormon might waffle on, with some going one way and some the other. First, the Three Nephites. I suspect in the 19th century the idea that Three Nephites were actually roaming the Earth doing good things for good people here or there was fully accepted by many mainstream LDS. I also suspect that in the 21st century that idea is regarded by many mainstream LDS as something like a set of entertaining folk tales.
A couple more examples. Some mainstream LDS believe that LDS garments have a supernatural ability to protect the wearer from physical harm. There are stories that are circulated within LDS circles to support that view. Other mainstream LDS quietly dismiss that idea (plenty of stories to refute the belief) and have different religious reasons for wearing LDS garments. Take another example: Blessing a meal before you eat it. Even for blessing the sacrament, LDS don’t attribute some sort of supernatural transformation of the emblems as some Christians do. But somehow there seems to be an LDS view that blessing a meal does something more for the food than simply offer thanks. We don’t say, “Thanks, God, for this nutritious and very tasty meal before us.” Mormons ask for a blessing, with the sense that God does something to the food on the table. But I’m sure there are some mainstream Mormons who see it simply as a giving of thanks or as a small religious ritual that has some positive effect on the participants.
Here’s the bigger question: What sort of thought process or reality-testing algorithm to modern Mormons use to resolve these “maybe / maybe not” questions? It’s too easy to just wave your hands and say “Science!” because if you are 101% into Science and dismissive of all religious claims, you’re not really in the Mormon conversation. If you’re that person, you have to come at it from the other side of the spectrum and question your own Scientism, not someone else’s religious questions. In the informed Mormon conversation, the question would be: How do you distinguish the science you accept from the science you don’t or the science you regard as informative but nevertheless contingent. And remember, all science is contingent. Any and every science discipline will look different in a hundred years. If you are a 101% Science person, reflect on the fact that a hundred years from now many or most of your Sciency beliefs will be rejected and replaced by something else.
I’ve used the term “mainstream Mormons” here because I imagine most W&T readers cluster on one end of the Mormon belief spectrum and are likely to view Three Nephites, supernatural garments, and enhanced food from a blessing prayer as “imaginary” rather than “real.” The point is that these are topics where the average member might fall either way. Imagine the conversation to be had in an adult Sunday School class if you asked, “What exactly happens to the food when you offer an LDS blessing on the meal before eating it?” I cannot imagine an LDS manual offering “Well, nothing really” as a valid response. But some members of the class might offer that answer.
So: How does the average Mormon do reality testing? Since something like 60% of active Mormons accept The Loser Donald Trump’s Big Lie, you might reply that the average Mormon doesn’t really do any reality testing. I admit my sense of faith or confidence in the average Mormon’s judgment or rationality has taken a hit over the last year or two. I suspect some readers may have, at some point, switched their classification on one of these topics from real to imaginary, or even from imaginary to real (I expect to hear a UFO story or two in the comments, maybe even a Bigfoot encounter). What thought process did you go through? What algorithm did you use? Or can you even explain why you changed your mind? Sometimes people just wake up one morning and find that a category has flipped, without ever understanding why.
Wheat & Tares 
I take as my text:
re:elephants. “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
re science:. “If you are a 101% Science person, reflect on the fact that a hundred years from now many or most of your Sciency beliefs will be rejected and replaced by something else.” Because that’s the way science works.
My reality testing has revealed that the Church’s doctrine is indeed the philosophies of men, mingled with scripture. We use that phrase in a pejorative sense to describe other religions but doesn’t it apply to the COJCOFLDS perfectly? No? What about “white and delightsome”? We now disavow that. What about becoming Gods and having our own worlds? We now disavow that. I could do this all day.
Once you accept that the Church’s doctrine was invented by man, you are free to evaluate what we’ve developed and determine whether it is good or not. If you a “validity Mormon”, that won’t be enough. But if your a “utility” Mormon”, a good church might be enough for you. And your reality test may simply be that it works for you and your family. That doesn’t work for me, but I respect your right to determine that it works for you. Just remember, yesterday’s philosophies by Brigham Young and Joseph Fielding Smith and BR McConkie have been largely disavowed today and perhaps RMN’s will be tomorrow. That’s the reality for me.
To quote Dave, “If you are a 101% Science person, reflect on the fact that a hundred years from now many or most of your Sciency beliefs will be rejected and replaced by something else.” I would prefer this sentence read: “If you are a 101 percent science person, reflect on the fact that a hundred years from now our scientific knowledge will have evolved.”
If you believe that religion fills the gaps in science, a hundred years from now there will be fewer gaps for your religion to fill. What will that mean for the BoM and PoGP? For the Creation (or creating) or human evolution? Will it mean a drastic decline in religion? A continued rise in secularism?
“If you are a 101% Science person, reflect on the fact that a hundred years from now many or most of your Sciency beliefs will be rejected and replaced by something else.”
As we celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the discovery of insulin, I think rogerdhansen’s version of this statement is much more on the nose than Dave B’s. It is absolutely the case that science continues to evolve, but I can’t identify a lot of models that had broad consensus from 100 years ago that have been outright rejected. (Lots of models that were in competition with other models 100 years ago have failed, but that is exactly how science is suppose to work.) I can think of a lot of 100 and 200- year old consensus models that have been sharpened with more complete details, deepened, and nuanced extensively. But even when there have been major paradigm shifts, I wouldn’t say the original models were rejected. More that what was once broad strokes with significant black boxes have come in to focus, revealing larger inter-connections, and what once seemed like puzzling inconsistencies have begun to be worked out with more data snd constant probing.
So much of Mormonism seems just the opposite. The more you probe the more the foundational ideas just don’t hold up. The ideas seem more built on human imagination than any actual human experience with the divine or other people. So much of what seemed reasonable to think might not be imaginary 100 years ago just doesn’t seem to stand up to serious scrutiny any more. Some of the human relationships within the context of church service and activity are definitely worth holding on to, but most of the broad strokes and key novel concepts ascribed to Mormon Christianity like Native Americans as Lamanites or the Book of Abraham as an actual translation of an ancient record or polygamy as a new and everlasting covenant or the moral authority of a men-only / whites-only priesthood or the importance of temple work to connect human families or homophobia or Mormonism as the one true church, those broad strokes just seem more and more like the wishful thinking / fantasy / speculation of 18th and 19th century men.
Maybe scripture is just the philosophies of men mingled with divine revelation.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Hey, I’m not anti-science — far from it. I’m just trying to keep things in perspective. Yes, science evolves, but not in the smooth “inevitable march to truth” way a simple understanding of the phrase suggests. Old theories die not because data triumphs and opponents are convinced. Old theories die when the entrenched senior scientists defending it finally die off and the younger rebels in the profession with new and sometimes better ideas finally get a fair hearing. Science evolves by fits and jerks, with institutional factors playing a non-negligible role in that path followed.
Religion evolves, too. With institutional factors playing a non-negligible role. In the LDS Church, a strong factor is how long a particular senior apostle lives. So the dropping of the priesthood and temple ban for those of African descent happened in 1978, not later (as it would have had Harold B. Lee not died suddenly) and not earlier (as it might have happened if someone like Hugh B. Brown had been President earlier). So just saying “Science evolves” isn’t a trump card. Everything evolves. I will certainly acknowledge that science has better mechanisms for, in the long run, discarding discredited theories than, say, politics or religion.
rogerdhansen, yes the God of the Gaps approach had a lot more to work with in prior eras, but no so much in the modern era. Most science and religion scholars who don’t just dismiss God nd religion out of hand look for a different approach.
10ac, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of 19th-century science has been discarded. And a lot of 19th-century religion has been discarded. Science seems better at discarding this or that discredited idea than religion. Of course, when we say “Science” we generally mean an elite group: highly educated scientists. We’re not generally talking about the beliefs of the average person, who may follow current science in some or many areas or who also may embrace a variety of odd folk beliefs about how the world works. When we say “Religion” we generally refer to the beliefs of the average person, or even the least-informed average person, not an elite group of highly educated theologians (who often reject the very beliefs caricatured by critics of religion). So a fair comparison would be elite scientists with elite theologians, or scientific views of the average person versus the religious ideas of the average person.
Dylan, maybe part of Mormon reality testing requires adjusting the percentages of philosophies of men versus divine infusion. Someone who goes from 10/90 to 90/10 opens up a lot of room for themselves to discard wrongheaded religious doctrines or policies. Reading the Old Testament carefully (this is the text for next year’s LDS curriculum) helps in this process. It’s easier for the average LDS to critique Israelite religion that Mormon religion.
“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas Kuhn is well worth reading. He originated the idea of paradigm shifts in the scientific world. It’s less an issue of old scientists dying off and more that new models emerge that hold greater value in describing and predicting phenomena. Old paradigms aren’t seen as foolish, just less valuable for describing what nature is unfolding before us. As they take hold, the scientific community moves toward the newer paradigm. It’s been too long since I’ve read the book so I can’t give more detail but it has stood the test of time in describing how scientific thinking works.
Outdated models in the scientific world are still taught and are still seen to have utility. An example is Newtonian physics. It has ultimately been upended by quantum theory but still holds utility in day to day calculations that scientists and engineers make; it provides a useful simplification of complex phenomena.
This might have parallels in how we see certain gospel concepts which may hold great metaphorical value but are easily falsifiable.
Scientists generally hold great thinkers that preceded them in high esteem, even when the ideas they developed begin to be seen as outdated. Ideas build upon one another until they ultimately, in many cases, lead to a new paradigm altogether. This does not mean the earlier scientists were foolish or unintelligent, just that they were working with more limited data.
Composer Roger Sessions wrote “I also remember a remark of Albert Einstein, which certainly applies to music. He said, in effect, that everything should be as simple as it can be but not simpler!”
This also might apply well to religious communities. If we wish to build our religious communities on foundations of stone rather than sand we cannot build our teachings on outdated and falsifiable ideas. When members are one Google search away from discovering the foundation of sand their testimony is built on, it’s not the internet that is the problem. We cannot continue setting future generations up for failure. We have some beautiful teachings (along with some not so beautiful teachings) that could be placed in a framework that doesn’t lead to faith crises or require the abandonment of rational thought processes.
(The not so beautiful teachings referenced in the above comment need to be discarded and disavowed so that no one confuses them for truth—it was clumsy of me to put that parenthetical line where I did)
Dave B. I deeply appreciate your work toward putting forth the idea that we cannot encourage the abandonment of rational thinking. I see this idea throughout your writing both directly and indirectly and appreciate it more than you will ever know.
The embrace of rational thinking by many (often early) early church leaders has led to some of our greatest strengths and the discouragement of it by some has led to some of our most serious issues. I’ve learned so much by reading the points you make on so many issues. Thank you.
Thanks so much for the comments, MW.
I had Kuhn in mind when writing my last comment. One thing to draw from Kuhn is that the actual history of science and how it progresses is much messier, with fits and starts and a few dead ends, compared to “the story of science” that appears in most textbooks and summaries, which tend to smooth out all the bumps and lurches. I think the same can be said for religious history and LDS history: the textbook version directed to the members in the curriculum and LDS-friendly books smooths out all the bumps. The real history is messier, but instructive in the real-world sense of how things actually happen.
As for rational thinking in the Church, there was sort of a golden age toward the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century when Roberts, Talmage, and Widtsoe were General Authorities. The leadership now is largely drawn from business, law, and education. Throw in a general or two. We desperately need a few scientists in senior leadership.
Another thing that kids seem to understand well is things being bigger than another. My 6-year-old understands what “rare” means. Heck, my three-year-old understands that one ball is bigger or smaller than another. And yet whataboutism and false equivalence are logically fallacious diseases consuming so many human minds now. How many comparisons do we hear people make of people they don’t like to Stalin or Hitler? How many people have I conversed with during the 2020 election who overreacted to pecadillos of Biden while saying that Trump was not that bad. It boggles my mind. Once I made a post on the ex-Mormon sub-reddit about how comparisons of the church to oppressive dictatorships such as North Korea (common on the sub-reddit) were ridiculous, out-of-place, insulting, and did a disservice to actual victims of those regimes. The backlash I got was incredible. All kinds of people claiming that the comparison was legit. I was floored. Suffice it to say I don’t interact much there anymore.
There are some excellent points here. Images certainly can be treacherous.
Sadly, many of today’s youth are growing up in constant exposure to treacherous images. The modern entertainment industry produces one show and video game after another that is full of images of sexually explicit activity and drug abuse. This has led many impressionable youth to believe that this behavior is normal, which has destroyed their spiritual lives.
“And remember, all science is contingent. Any and every science discipline will look different in a hundred years. If you are a 101% Science person, reflect on the fact that a hundred years from now many or most of your Sciency beliefs will be rejected and replaced by something else.”
Reading this was actually pretty refreshing, but as soon as I did I suspected you’d have to add clarification, which you did. This, coupled with your clarification, largely spells out my own attitude on science–a subject I enjoy more than most others–but one that has often got me slapped with an anti-science label, even on this blog. I sometimes wonder if humanity has become so drunk with the exhilaration of scientific progress of the last century that it has ignored some of the built-in cautions and tentative nature of the various scientific disciplines. I personally find that a form of scientific illiteracy that competes with those so often associated with conservatives (sometimes rightly, often not).
As for your question, after giving it some ponder time, I’ve got to admit it was difficult to form an answer that didn’t sound like a standard Mormon one. I suppose I take life in relatively equal parts Holy Ghost, reason and analysis, and some instinct. Very rarely have I ended up having those conflict with each other, but when they do, time usually works it out.
@ Dave, I love this comment you made describing how we should compare science and religion: “So a fair comparison would be elite scientists with elite theologians, or scientific views of the average person versus the religious ideas of the average person.” Thank you.