This is not a political post, but if we are going to talk about confident ignorance, we have to start with the best example available: the oh-so-public statements of Donald Trump. From the many examples available, I’ll take a recent one. Trump was visiting California, touring the burn sites from the recent fires that have swept through some Los Angeles neighborhoods. Afterwards there was a televised confab with Trump and a dozen or so local officials, including firefighting personnel. Trump was blathering on about why there wasn’t enough water in Southern California and how if they would just irrigate the grass and brush more there wouldn’t be any wildfires. These are uninformed and misguided ideas, but that has never stopped Trump from opining on any subject. Injecting bleach as a cure for Covid is another shining example of Trumpian ignorance. Thinking higher tariffs and trade wars are good for America is another example. The list is endless.
At the fire meeting, you could see the assembled officials just rolling their eyes and thinking, “This guy has no clue what he is talking about.” Trump was the least informed person at the table, but was holding forth as if he was the best informed. You might think, “That’s what we get for electing the dumbest president in history,” but that’s only part of the story. Some people who understand they are uninformed on a subject are willing to listen to experts or even a better-informed friend or neighbor. Unless you are an experienced handyman, I’m sure you do this if you have a leaky roof, a plumbing problem, or a fridge that stops working. But some people are simply unwilling to acknowledge they need good advice or an expert opinion. They think they know it all. They are confidently ignorant.
I’m sure you can think of examples of confident ignorance from your own life: a blowhard boss, a crazy uncle, Joey Tribbiani. What about the LDS Church. Does confident ignorance play a role in LDS leadership or LDS culture in general?
Here’s one clue: those who exemplify confident ignorance almost always denigrate and reject expert opinion in the relevant field. LDS leaders will listen to lawyers, accountants, and architects, but that’s about it. They give no credit to experts in a variety of fields related to LDS doctrine and practice. I’ll cite a couple of examples.
Where did Native Americans come from? (In LDS-speak, “Lamanites.”) Scholars, based on genetics, archeology, and genetics, definitively find the ancestors of the native peoples of the Americas came from Siberia, either by land (when sea levels were lower twenty thousand years ago) or in boats, coasting along the Pacific rim of what is now Alaska and British Columbia. LDS leaders and apologists steadfastly resisted these findings for generations, and only recently have acknowledged well, okay, maybe only some of their ancestors were Israelites (or, for the Jaredites, other Old World groups, but still doing ocean voyages in primitive boats across thousands of miles of open ocean). So a decade ago or so the wording in the introduction to the current LDS edition of the Book of Mormon was changed from “the principal ancestors of the American Indians” to “among the ancestors of …”. But I am fairly confident the large majority of rank and file LDS still affirm the traditional LDS claim. Imagine your friendly neighborhood Mormon, upon hearing a neighbor remark that he is 1/16th Native American, replying, “Oh, how lucky you are to have the blood of Israel flowing through your veins!” then proceeding to give a short lecture on the Israelite origins of Nephites and Lamanites. That’s confident ignorance.
How about coffee? LDS think it is bad for you, not because of any medical data but because of what it says in D&C 89 (which actually doesn’t say anything about coffee) and the leadership’s strangely stubborn insistence on claiming “hot drinks” means … anything they want it to. You can find a detailed critique of the development of LDS views on “hot drinks” at a fine BCC post, so I won’t rehash it all here. Here’s what AI has to say at the top of a Google search:
Coffee can have both positive and negative health effects. Drinking coffee in moderation can be part of a healthy diet. However, drinking too much coffee or adding too many extras can cause negative health effects.
Some studies have shown, for example, that drinking coffee reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s Disease. The Mormon habit of drinking a half gallon of Diet Coke before noon rather than a morning cup of coffee almost certainly induces negative health effects. Diet drinks have been linked to weight gain, for example. A fair percentage of younger LDS, apparently concluding the LDS coffee ban is both wrongheaded and silly, now feel fine having a cup whenever they are so inclined. At some point expect a revelation (sort of the LDS equivalent of an executive order) clarifying that “the Word of Wisdom” is actually just good advice — like it says in the text of D&C 89!!! — rather than a binding commandment (as interpreted by current LDS leadership) that can keep you out of LDS temples and LDS heaven.
You get the idea. Roll with it.
- Do you have any good examples of LDS confident ignorance? Just one or two, please, so others can have a pop at it.
- Any counterexamples, where factually-informed thinking changed LDS doctrine or practice before the ignorant thinking was so glaring and embarrassing that leadership was simply forced to change the LDS claim?
- What’s the best strategy for dealing with LDS confident ignorance? Ignore it? Give a gentle fact-informed response? Grab a bullhorn and shout, “This person is ignorant, but at least they are confident!” Write letters to Salt Lake? Start a blog?
Wheat & Tares 
I remember reading the transcript of the Tom Phillips interview on Mormon Stories. Second anointing stuff aside, the thing I found most curious about that interview was the scriptural literalism from Tom and others around him. I mean, he was so bought into the scriptures being inerrant and literally true that those very things were the things that took him out in the end. One interesting anecdote from his telling was that during his early period of starting to doubt, Gerald Lund gave him some apologetic material that “proved” the earth was 6000 years old in order to prove the truthfulness of the creation accounts in the Bible and PoGP. I remember being confidently ignorant in “knowing” the earth was 6000 years old. It’s same kind of contortionist thinking used to explain why homosexuals exist. It is really painful to go back and read an interview Elder Oaks gave in 2005 on the subject. At the end of the day, the ignorance comes, partially, from our inability to observe and accept the realities of the world around us. Our identities have become so tightly integrated with very specific dogmas that threats to those things become monumental threats. Who are we without these specific dogmas?
Having been in the mental health field, I have noticed that Mormons tend to be confidently ignorant about all mental illness or emotional problems. That carries over to LGBT issues. They just cannot imagine someone who is “unhappy” in ways they have no control over as in clinical depression, or someone who is sexually attracted to someone of their own gender, let alone someone whose brain is female while their body is male. So, since they never experienced it, it doesn’t exist. The fact that “so called experts” say these things are real is just the “so called expert” imagining things. The ignorance is religious in that they think spiritual things like guilt are real, so “depression” is really guilt and you must have committed some real bad sin. They deny the reality of trauma because they have not experienced it, so PTSD is not real and you just need to forgive.
Bless me W&T for I have sinned. Last Sunday, I attended Sacrament Meeting primarily to hear a close friend perform a piano solo (a sublime Chopin Ballade). Unfortunately, I stayed to hear the speakers. The second speaker was a sister in her mid-seventies who happens to be the ward busybody and snitch. You know the type – mother of 9 (3 of whom have left the church) and extremely orthodox. When I was bishop, she sent me quarterly letters criticizing ward administration and pointing out questionable social media activities of ward members.
Anyway, she included in her remarks a statement intimating the CA fires were God’s punishment for “acceptance of the homosexual agenda”. The congregation went silent and quickly left the chapel after the closing prayer. It was beyond bizarre.
Unfortunately, her confident ignorance permeates Mormonism. In the TBM mindset, every event is tied to an overt act of God and there are no coincidences.
So dear W&T, I will accept your punishment. At the very least, SM attendance for the near future is not on the agenda.
There was some pushback to changing the doctrine from a larger common sacrament cup (really, a goblet) to smaller individual sacrament cups — apparently, some amount of doctrine or dogma had built up to support the communal cup, and many saints were unwilling to let go of that dogma (notwithstanding the directive of the First Presidency). Although the First Presidency’s directive was in 1912 in response to a Utah Board of Health ordinance, change was slow — it wasn’t until the flu epidemic of 1918 provided the impetus for many (most?) to change.
https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/blog/sacrament-cup-influenza-epidemic-1918?lang=eng
Dave B,
You write your post is not political and then you immediately single out Trump as an example, despite Trump’s behavior being the norm of what politicians do. But the cherry on top of your post on “confident ignorance” is you repeat as factual a political lie. You write: “Injecting bleach as a cure for Covid is another shining example of Trumpian ignorance.”
This is a complete misrepresentation of what Trump said. PolitiFact has a page about this story and rates the claims about Trump and bleach “mostly false”.
Since I don’t closely follow political news I never understood why the Trump & bleach story was a thing. Trump never said “drink or inject bleach” and only an intentional misrepresentation of what Trump said yields that interpretation. And so it is that the source of the lie was Joe Biden! He’s the one that mischaracterized Trump’s comments!
PolitiFact writes: “Joe Biden said President Donald Trump told Americans that drinking bleach could help combat the coronavirus, but that’s not correct.”
This is a great example of your thesis, which is a very good one. Too often people are confidently ignorant about what politicians say and the media reports. We all must be diligent in the pursuit of the truth in order to avoid unwittingly repeating lies.
Attacks against evolution (specifically, Elder Packer’s attacks on it) come to mind.
The post mentions that LDS leaders listen to architects, and a funny story comes to mind. My great-grandfather, who passed away when I was a teenager, was the church architect during the time of President McKay. Once he was in a meeting with top leaders, including McKay, regarding the building of church schools in New Zealand. He expressed frustration in the meeting that there was no one present who was an expert in education.
He quickly realized he’d made a mistake, and immediately after the meeting apologized to President McKay, who had been a high school teacher and principal.
There is a bill in the Utah Legislature, HB267, that will hobble Unions and the Teacher Union/Association in particular. The sponsor who went to BYU, a mission, and then law Degree from BYU and finally a job at the church feels that unions stifle education. I hesitate to bring it up here because there is so much misinformation about unions not only in the church but in our society.
In Utah, a right-to-work state, people join a union because they want to, of their own free will. They do so because they feel by organizing together they will have a great voice in improving their working conditions and making, in the case of teacher unions, schools better. The union is administrated by democratic principles (majority rules, Robert’s rules, and secret ballots or group consent). Their belief statements, platforms, policies, and governing have teachers in charge, and is done through advocating for positions and voting. The leader of the union is a teacher and they can not speak their own opinion for the organization but must speak in alignment with the aforementioned belief statements, platforms, and policies.
The legislators sponsoring the bill misrepresent the union by saying people must join and that the union speaks its own values and not the values of the teachers. He also states that since teachers are paid with state money and then use that money to belong to the union, it is a misuse of state funds. I don’t get that one because after they get paid, it’s their money.
Anyway, the bill passed the House. At the committee hearing, there were three rooms filled with pro-union people, many of who testified for the union. It fell on deaf ears. There were thousands of emails written, including mine, which fell on deaf ears or completely ignored what we had to say. Considering the legislature is between 85-90% LDS, there is a lot of willful ignorance displayed. It doesn’t matter what issue is being talked about either, particularly if it’s viewed as a moral stand against something like transgender individuals or the Federal Government.
What do I do? Keep writing and struggle not to feel helpless and ignored. I also have limited my church attendance because it doesn’t help getting the rude and insensitive comments week after week either to me or over the pulpit.
A Disciple, from the BBC, 24 April 2020 (there is video as well as a transcript, link below):
“And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?”
The man has no filters. He says any stupid thing that pops into his head.
Coronavirus: Outcry after Trump suggests injecting disinfectant as treatment
As we get older and a little wiser–hopefully we will have earned some of our ignorance.
I will never forget watching Dallin Oaks’ BYU devotional in the fall of 2022: https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/dallin-h-oaks/going-forward-in-the-second-century/. He spoke about how BYU needed to remain unique. Using his typically opaque, lawyerly manner, it wasn’t clear to me at the time exactly how he wanted BYU to be unique. However, with the recent revelations on the crackdown at BYU led by Clark Gilbert, what Oaks was talking about is now clear as day. He was simply introducing and warning BYU faculty and students, though veiled and tempered language, that Gilbert’s crackdown was imminent.
However, that’s not why Oaks’ talk is so unforgettable to me. The part that is ingrained in my memory has unfortunately been removed from the official video posted on BYU’s website. I’m not sure exactly why it was removed–perhaps it was due to copyright concerns, or maybe Oaks/BYU/the Church actually has some smart PR person that flagged that part of his speech as potentially embarrassing. As I recall, somewhere towards the beginning of his remarks, Oaks showed this video, or a video very similar to this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw2Y3dUm7Mc. The video shows several actors entering an elevator and intentionally facing the back of the elevator (most people face the front of an elevator, where the doors are located). Next, a person who isn’t aware that he is surrounded by actors, is shown entering the elevator and being quite uncomfortable being the only person facing the doors. Most (all?) of the time, the person ends up choosing to conform and eventually turns to face the back of the elevator like everyone else.
The reason Oaks uses this video in this particular talk is to claim that BYU/the Church/himself is standing in an elevator facing the right direction (facing the doors) while all the universities/organizations/experts of “The World” are often facing the wrong direction in the elevator (facing the rear) and that BYU/the Church/himself must be strong and avoid the temptation to turn around and face the rear of the elevator by adopting the views and beliefs of “The World”.
Oaks does have a valid point. When a person/organization/church really, truly believes in something that runs counter to conventional wisdom or current trends, then the right thing to do is to follow what one believes/knows is right. The history of science is full of examples where new scientific theories that we now embrace were initially mocked by the public/science community. Heliocentrism, evolution, continental drift, and germ theory are a few examples of this phenomenon that immediately come to mind. We all owe a debt of gratitude to the scientists, who were truly experts in their field, who discovered something new and were willing to endure ridicule to bring their findings to the world. These scientists really were facing the front of the elevator while everyone else was facing the back.
Unfortunately, the historical track record of Church leaders shows that they are almost never like the brave scientists standing up for the truth that only they have. This realization is exactly why Oaks using this video in his speech is so ingrained in my memory. Dallin Oaks/the Church is so frequently facing the back of the elevator when the rest of the world is facing the front. Indeed, It’s his smug, confident ignorance that keeps him stubbornly facing the rear.
I’ll give a few examples. Oaks is the most outspoken of the Q15 on LGBTQ issues. In 1984, Oaks wrote:
I think we’re approaching the point where we’ve had a generation of homosexual marriages, yet people are still having children. If this isn’t a prime example of confident ignorance, then I don’t know what is.
Here’s another classic from when Oaks was BYU president:
The Church supported a recent law that strengthened the legality of gay marriage in return for some guaratees of religious freedom.
Oaks also demonstrated his confident ignorance when, as an apostle, he defended the contents of the Salamander Letter:
In one breath, Oaks is touting his spiritual powers of discernment, while in the other he defends the strange contents of the Salamander Letter which was later revealed to be a fraud.
Who can forget Joseph Fielding Smith’s claim that man would never reach the moon just 8 years before a man stood on the moon:
Joseph Fielding Smith is also the man who wanted his anti-evolution book to be used in seminaries and institutes. He certainly let his own personal religious dogmas take priority over actual experts in space travel and biology.
Ezra Taft Benson also stated:
This would actually be great if we could actually come up with some examples (even one example?!) in the last century where a prophet actually spoke on a subject that he had little training in, that was contrary to the consensus of experts in any given field, yet he turned out to be right. Instead, all we seem to end up with are a series of statements that are eventually revealed as confident ignorance whenever our Church leaders speak on things that they are not experts in. Over and over and over again.
The church it seems has added a new confident ignorant belief that of the height of the temple spires and temple itself being very important to God. So much so that the church is willing to sue the town the temple is being built in because Heaven forbid the church is being denied their religious rights and their ability to do what God has asked them to do!
Jack, how about changing your statement to:
As we get older and a little wiser–hopefully we will be more aware of and more humble in our ignorance.
Church leaders haven’t “earned” the right to inflict their personal views on the body of the Church just because they are old and confidently and ignorantly think they are spreading “wisdom”.
The church leaders and members are full of confident ignorance. Isn’t that what the leaders have been preaching all along? Just assert that you know it’s true, never doubting.
The apologists regularly assert to members that there is all this “evidence” for Book of Mormon historicity. And this makes the members confidently ignorant. The other day, somehow my family got talking about Guatemala and Quetzalcoatl and my mother-in-law proudly asserted, “well that’s Jesus Christ isn’t it?” I politely refused to validate and told her that the differences are quite stark. But then she politely refused to validate what I had to say. Does my mother-in-law know anything about ancient Mayan religion? No. Does she know that ancient Mayans has a pantheon of animal-like gods and that Quetzalcoatl was a feathered serpent god? No. All she knows is that some apologist somewhere sometime made that connection. Does anyone in the wider academic community think that Quetzalcoatl is Jesus Christ? Why would anyone in their right mind make that connection? The apologists’ desperate grasping at straws goes unnoticed by the rank-and-file. They eagerly gobble up any loose connection that some apologist finds. Chiasmus, Hebraisms, NHM, and dozens of other Joseph Smith couldn’t-have-known-about-isms. Before you go there, why don’t you first ask how ancient Americans could have known about Jesus Christ before he was born.
mountainclimber479,
To me “earned ignorance” means that with time and experience we come to know that we don’t know.
And just sos ya knows–Elder Oaks was not defending the Salamander Letter per se. He was wondering (rhetorically) about all the hoopla over the idea of a Salamander having something to do with church history. The media played it up as something goofy in order to sling mud at the church–whereas Oaks suggested that it did indeed have religious iconographic value. But even so, he carefully and plainly avoids taking a firm stance on the document’s provenance.
And as to some of the earlier quotes–we have to remember that those were horrific times for the American family. It was being absolutely shredded–with divorce rates doubling in less than one generation. It was frightening. If I had been old and wiser in those days I too might’ve called for such seemingly drastic measures as outlawing adultery.
@Jack,
You said,
I disagree. Again, Elder Oaks said this:
as part of his explanation of why the text of the Salamander could actually make sense if it were an authentic document. The most straightforward reading of Oaks here is that the discernment of Holy Ghost failed him, causing him to be just as duped as almost everyone else both inside and outside the Church (interestingly, notable “anti-Mormons”, Sandra and Jerald Tanner, were some of the only people this did have the gift of discernment in this case). Oaks is trying to provide a way for members to preserve their faith under the incorrrect assumption that the Salamander Letter was authentic. Sorry, but Oaks is literally defending the Salamander Letter here. Sure, perhaps Oaks is open to the document being a forgery, but if Oaks had the discernment of the Holy Ghost, he would have just told everyone it was a forgery to begin with instead of providing an apologetic defense. In fact, Oaks is on the record as being willing to “sacrifice everything” in defense of Joseph Smith as a prophet:
So, for Oaks, extremely shaky apologetic defenses of the Salamander Letter are perfectly fair game if they help retain the legitimacy of Joseph Smith as a prophet. That’s worse than confident ignorance–it’s approaching willful “lying for the Lord” in my estimation.
Jack, the assertion of “we don’t know” is deployed in two different ways. First, there is the genuine “we don’t know,” said as a concession of a lack of evidence that would point us in any direction to the truth. It separates known knowns from known unknowns. We know gravity exists and how it behaves, but we don’t know why it exists and are still searching for evidence as to why.
The second way of deploying “we don’t know” is as a diversion to avoid conceding a lack of evidence for a firmly held, but rather extraordinary, view. In this way it is a disingenuous “we don’t know.” Unlike the first instance, which is forthright about what is known and the evidence for those knowns, the second instance is often more coy about what it claims to know and the evidence behind it. Instead of saying forthright something akin to, “we know the Book of Mormon was written by pre-Columbian Americans, we just don’t know where exactly they wrote it,” it often likes to omit the first part. It says instead, “we don’t know where it was written.” Thus, saying “we don’t know” is deployed as a deflection away from an underlying implication. Sorry, there is no evidence that the Book of Mormon was ever even translated from a language other than English or that it was conceived by pre-Columbian Americans. So the question of where it was written is absolutely irrelevant. The church and its members claim to know all sorts of stuff for which they have zero evidence. How about you grapple with what you’re strongly asserting that you know before we grapple with the unknowns. For if the claimed knowns cannot be established, then the unknowns are irrelevant wastes of time. And your deployment of “well, we don’t know” is nothing more than a defense against any sort of penetration of a rather large body of claimed knowns that lack any evidence whatsoever.
I’ve dealt with “well, we don’t know”s time and again from conspiracy theorists. We don’t know how the twin towers collapsed, although it couldn’t have possibly been from terrorists hijacking planes and crashing them into twin towers. Sorry, conspiracy theorists, but you guys don’t get to arrive at “we don’t know” if you can’t own up to the fact that you’re coyly asserting a number of very extraordinary propositions (that the US government or Mossad, etc. is behind the 9/11 attacks) for which you have no evidence. We know and we know damn well that you guys are full of crap.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. It’s obvious (to me) that the full article is about how the media could be very irresponsible in their reporting of “facts” having to do with the church–and the Salamander letter was just one of several examples that Elder Oaks used to get his point across. And I think the primary reason as to why he used that example is because it was all the rage at the time he gave the talk. Certain outlets were running with the assumption that the letter was authentic–which gave them a load of fresh ammo to aim at the church: the silliness of some wonky salamander rearing its goofy head in church history.
That said, I have no problem with the idea that Elder Oaks may have been open to the possibility that the letter was authentic. It would be no different than Joseph not rejecting the Kinderhook plates out of hand. But we have to remember that, in the end, neither were ever fully embraced by the church–and both were ultimately proven to be fakes.
Brad,
I know that my wife loves me. How do I prove that to you? I can offer what I believe to be good evidence–but nothing that can objectively verify my claim.
I think the problem we’re talking about here has less to do with what we don’t know and more to do with the conflict that sometimes arises between disparate ways of knowing.
Example: evolution. I attended BYU in the 90’s and except in the Widsoe building, most students thought evolution was a heresy.
Counter example: Covid prevention protocols at church. Living in a conservative area of Arizona I’m sure the stake leadership would have confidently blazed forward without masks and in person if SLC and Dr Nelson had allowed.
I don’t know how to effectively challenge confident ignorance at church. At work I’ll schedule a topic meeting with subject matter experts or appeal to my boss but at church simply because someone is in a leadership position signifies that they represent God.
An example of confident ignorance is A Disciple saying that Trump is like other politicians. Trump is not like other politicians. He is entirely unique.
An example of Church confident ignorance are all the promises about happiness if you obey the commandments. Church leaders had good lives, and they attribute this to obeying the commandments. They have no real understanding of how obedience can harm others. I was going to talk about LGBTQ issues, but Anna said it better.
Honestly, Church leaders are so often confidently ignorant that I could be here all day. The Fourteen Fundamentals talk (which is so laughable that I still can’t believe it wasn’t relegated to the dustbin of history) even says that they are “right” and to be followed even on secular matters where they have no expertise. Who on earth would think that’s a good idea to put in writing, let alone think?
There were many such examples in the Arrington biography that showed church leaders confidently making wrong assertions about pretty much everything where they had no expertise. There was an example recently where temple design in a hot, humid climate was done according to church leader preference over the advice of the architects, and it had to be closed down and redone because of structural damage. Oaks does it all the time, and not just on the topic of homosexuality. Nelson confidently asserted that the Big Bang theory was wrong (so much for a man of science) in 2012. Oaks stated that we use “thee” and “thou” pronouns to show respect, which contradicts the origin of these pronouns. Church leaders are also pretty poor scriptorians, claiming that books were written by Paul that undoubtedly weren’t, or that the stories of Job and the woman taken in adultery definitely happened when nearly all Biblical scholars disagree. A recent survey asked members if they think that sometimes a male spirit is put in a female body and vice-versa, which is a complete misunderstanding of: 1) human development, 2) theological explanations of transgender experience (there are certainly a lot more available than this), and also ignorantly skips both intersex people and non-binary people.
Lots of blind spots. Lots of unwarranted confidence. I am constantly reminded of the scene in Inside Out where Bing Bong is carrying boxes of Opinions and Facts, drops them all, and then just starts throwing them in the same box saying “Oh, nobody can tell the difference between these anyway!” That’s for sure.
There are so many things church leaders are particularly bad at knowing, and instead use outdated stereotypes or tropes or strawperson arguments. They don’t seem to have a lot of very useful parenting experience, they don’t understand women well at all, they really don’t get ex-Mormons, they don’t seem to know people of other faiths very well, and they also don’t understand progressives or liberals much–in all of these cases, their ability to understand these things seems completely out of reach because there’s really no effort whatsoever to listen to them. When you think you know more than everyone else, why would you ever consider what they might have to say?
Thank you Dave B.
I remember the moment in vivid detail when I heard Trump suggest injected bleach could fight covid. It started the very beginning of my faith transition. Before that time I confidently (and ignorantly) voted Republican. I didn’t study it because if I did read about it, I talked about it, and political talk upset my husband. But when the pandemic came I had 3 asthmatics in the household, and a child who had been hospitalized many, many times for pneumonia. I became totally focused on the news. I was listening to every White House briefing and reading about it from multiple sources. I was very very educated on respiratory infection because of my family’s situation. When Trump made his suggestion I was horrified imagining people hurting themselves by injecting bleach. I was horrified that he set no example that would help counter covid spread and the deaths of vulnerable people like my family members.
It was at that moment I knew I could not vote for Trump. At that moment I knew it wasn’t good enough to vote Libertarian. I knew I had to vote to oppose him and that meant voting Democrat. At that moment I wasn’t sure that voting Democrat was moral and consistent with my church membership. I began examining every issue associated with each party in depth. I joined MWEG. I studied many different points of view and many contradicting media sources. And while I was doing that I started studying the various church issues in question and the church history behind those doctrines. I was driven to study, ponder, pray until I knew about all these issues fully. It was the biggest most earth shaking changes in thought and identity that I have ever suffered in my life.
So no, Disciple. It did happen.
Jack,
About this statement: “And as to some of the earlier quotes–we have to remember that those were horrific times for the American family. It was being absolutely shredded–with divorce rates doubling in less than one generation. It was frightening. If I had been old and wiser in those days I too might’ve called for such seemingly drastic measures as outlawing adultery.”
Please consider the following events:
1963: Equal Pay Act. Equal pay becomes law although obviously still work to do here.
1964: Title VII bans employment discrimination based on race, religion, national origin or sex. This means that women couldn’t be denied a job based only on being a woman.’
1969: California legalizes no-fault divorce. It’s not until 2010 that every state in the U.S. has a no-fault option.
1970: Federal appeals court rules that it is illegal to change a job title in order to pay a woman holding that job less than a man.
1974: Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Women can have access to credit without a male co-signer. Also, banks/creditors can no longer discount a woman’s earnings.
1988: Women’s Business Ownership Act ends the requirement for female entrepreneurs to have a male cosigners on business loans.
So was the family getting shredded or did men finally allow women legal ways to support themselves financially which meant that women didn’t have to stay in marriages that were not working?
A good example of confident ignorance: the statement in last year’s Relief Society broadcast that “There is no other religious organization in the world, that I know of, that has so broadly given power and authority to women.” It takes only minimal awareness of other religious organizations to know that statement isn’t true.
A counter-example of factually informed thinking is Spencer Kimball changing his mind about priesthood restrictions in part after reading an article in Dialogue.
The best strategy for dealing with overconfidence I’ve found is to ask lots of questions of the over confident person. Eventually, it gets them reevaluating their perspective.
I think a good example of “confident ignorance” is the way we celebrate the good that happened during 60s & 70s without taking note of the cost. IMO there should be nothing more sacrosanct than the needs of children–and yet they’re the ones who bore the brunt–and are still carrying the burden–of the massive social upheaval of those days. As is often the case the adversary piggybacks on virtue–and before we know it our (collective) vices far outweigh whatever virtues we may have acquired.
Jack,
As a child of the seventies and eighties, I am extremely glad for the changes to laws made in Tina’s comment; without them my mother would have had very little recourse to leave a marriage/husband that was actively harming us as children.
Your appeal to “think of the children” is myopic to a very patriarchal worldview.
i also feel that giving women the ability to choose a partner who will actually treat her with more equality is infinitely better for male and female children in those marriages than those where women and girls are discriminated against (and boys are taught that this is not just okay but mandated by god as the true order of families), even if the discrimination is done in a spirit of “kindness”. Benevolent patriarchy is still tyranny.
James,
I agree that no fault divorce was a great blessing to women in abusive marriages. Nevertheless the over all effect of no fault divorce and the new culture of sexual liberation was disastrous. This little graph is an indicator of just one problem caused by the shredding of the family:
Jack, I am one who was harmed before that 60’s -70’s upheaval that you think damaged children so badly. My father was abusive and my mother could not leave because of the difficulty of proving wrong doing to get a divorce. So, she stayed consoling herself that she was the only one being abused. She honestly thought he was a good father, even though he was a bad husband. But, sexual abuse is done behind the mother’s back. So, she just didn’t know that he was also abusing children. But even if she did, how could she prove it and get a divorce so she could leave.
The high rate of divorce that happened after the laws changed was because of all the women who could not escape abuse or really bad marriages were finally starting to escape. Things settled down to a more normal divorce rate after a while.
so, only men were better off or happier when they could abuse their wife and children with no consequences. Children are more harmed by parents staying together and fighting than divorcing. Not divorcing does not equal good marriage.
And, Jack, your little graph shows men murdering their wife because she tried to divorce. Do you really want to prove that so many men are jerks that it shows that statistic?
Spencer W. Kimball’s statement in the October 1960 General Conference definitely fits the theme of confident ignorance:
“ I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today … they are fast becoming a white and delightsome people…. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised…. The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation.“
It’s sad to hear church leaders teaching unscientific and racist views.
Jack, I don’t think your go to argument that you know your wife loves you even though you can’t prove it carries the weight you think it does. Maybe you can’t definitively prove it, but you can surely give lots of evidence either for or against your position. On that basis alone, it is not a meaningful argument. Nonetheless, I’m glad you have such a firm belief in her love. That’s a blessing.
Oops, I just realized that Jack already said what I did. That’s another problem with constantly making the same comment. I didn’t really read it. I’m sorry!
Jack, learn the difference between correlation and causation. Your graph says nothing about other societal factors that may have caused a rise in the homicide rate.
Jack, You chart stops about 1998. A New York Times chart from 1950s to 2020s shows U S. homicide rates in 2020 at close to 1960 levels. The 1990s peak seems to be an aberration, and I’m glad those days are behind us.
i don’t know how to post an image, so let me try a link to the NYT article:
i recommend using current information whenever possible.
For my buddy, Dave B.:
“At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child — miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
I recall an older member in Bloomington, Minnesota (this conversation was 25 years ago) telling me about the construction of the chapel in that Minneapolis suburb. The Salt Lake folks came out with their plans, which included water pipes running inside the outer walls, uninsulated. Locals told them that it might fly with relatively mild Wasatch Valley winters, with their freeze/thaw cycles and temps hovering around the freeze point, but it was a recipe for disaster in Minnesota. They were firmly told that the Lord’s chapel plan would be followed and that they needn’t worry about it.
The next winter, of course, Minnesota did her thing and the pipes froze and broke, flooding the meetinghouse.
@Jack, I can’t imagine a worse example to use to claim that the Church “eventually comes around” than the Kinderhook Plates, a 19th-century hoax that Joseph Smith enthusiastically endorsed as a genuine Jaredite genealogy. As late as 1979, Mark Petersen of the Q12 was writing a book (“Those Gold Plates!”) in which he claimed that “most experts agree” that the Kinderhook Plates were of ancient origin. “Eventually” generally means “when forced,” and of course no acknowledgement of years of error is ever made.
No one mentioned this yet, so I’ll throw it out there. Church leaders confidently relied on really bad biblical scholarship that had previously been used to justify slavery (the so-called curse of Ham and Cain ECT) to justify the priesthood and temple ban. The difference is they held onto these ignorant justifications for decades longer than most other churches, and never apologized or gave a satisfactory explanation, except to say “oops… um, well, you know, that Brother Brigham!…what a wacky character. Am I right?… Anyway, moving right along. How ’bout that Russell M. Nelson. Isn’t he great?”
New Iconoclast:
“I can’t imagine a worse example to use to claim that the Church “eventually comes around” than the Kinderhook Plates, a 19th-century hoax that Joseph Smith enthusiastically endorsed as a genuine Jaredite genealogy. As late as 1979, Mark Petersen of the Q12 was writing a book (“Those Gold Plates!”) in which he claimed that “most experts agree” that the Kinderhook Plates were of ancient origin. “Eventually” generally means “when forced,” and of course no acknowledgement of years of error is ever made.”
OK, maybe you’re right–maybe that’s a bad example. But still, I think we have to be careful not to assume that Joseph Smith did a “bonafide” translation of those plates. It’s pretty-well understood (today) that he used the GAEL–and not inspiration–to get a quick translation of sorts–and that his enthusiasm had to do with his keen interest in ancient writings and relics.
That said, what’s the worst thing that happened by the fact that some leaders believed the plates to be genuine? I think we need to allow room for prophets and apostles to have a sense of wonder and awe over ancient findings–even if some of them turn out to be bogus. After all, it’s been prophesied that many different writings from the past will be uncovered in the latter-days. That’s something to be excited (and cautious) about.
Ahh, our uber-tough, mature, and mentally healthy bear is upset and hear to rage-respond like all satisfied, disciplined, and constructive citizens. Poor boy.
On to the post. Amen. The confident ignorance of so many leaders in the church is rampant. Most apparent when they start to speak, like Jack, about gender issues. For me, perhaps the the greatest ignorant-confidence Church leaders exhibit is in their supposed not misogny. It’s mind-boggling.
grizzerbear55: Sounds like the corollary to the P.J. O’Rourke quote is that the core of conservatism is being an asshole to people then telling them to quit whining or they’ll really get something to cry about. As an independent, I like to think there’s a sweet spot in the middle. When we have been told at church not to be easily offended (a Brigham Young philosophy), I always try to remember that Jesus actually preached quite a lot against not offending others as well. I’m sure we can agree that both extremes are a poor way to live.
One of the most powerful things I’ve ever read was an exchange of letters between the 1947 first presidency and Dr Lowry Nelson, an anthropologist and sociologist who had in been tapped to consult on establishing the church in Cuba. Cuba’s predominantly non-white population presented a challenge to the church’s racial gatekeeping.
Dr Nelson explains in his letters why God isn’t racist. He lays out the evils of ethnocentrism, the social justice aspects of the teachings of Jesus, and the logistical absurdity of doubling down on racial gatekeeping in the church. His letters are beautiful, empathetic, profound, and so logically sound as to be incontrovertible.
The first presidency’s response?
“Under these circumstances we may not permit ourselves to be too much impressed by the reasonings of men however well-founded they may seem to be. We should like to say this to you in all kindness and in all sincerity that you are too fine a man to permit yourself to be led off from the principles of the Gospel by worldly learning.”
Essentially, you’re clearly smarter than us and we can’t refute your logic but you’re wrong anyway. Confident ignorance indeed.
Or those conversations devout Mormons have where they jubilantly tell that some specially designated patriarch has identified all the tribes of Israel in blessings he has given. That ignores that for generations, members in Utah with British, Scandinavian, and/or European ancestry have been told that they have the blood of Ephraim flowing in their veins. How many DNA tests on “pioneer stock” members confirm any ancestors from the Middle East?
To comment on the off topic Kinderhook plates, back when I was in high school when the priesthood ban was divinely inspired, I was impressed that the dude was a descendant of Ham. My youthful mind was like wow, millions of people with lots of drops of blood. No wonder it gets ignored.
Also, I find it a lot easier to recognize others confident ignorance than my own.
Kirkstall, reading that Lowry Nelson exchange was a shelf-crashing moment for me.
mat, the church leadership has not even gone as far as to say “oops” or to intimate that it was Brigham Young’s doing, as far as I know. They seem to be clinging to the idea that it was God’s will. Their credibility will remain compromised until they can finally admit that our prophets were wrong.
I pray that someday the Book of Mormon will NOT be given away freely at Marriott hotels without some type of consumer warning.