responding to challenging questions about church

Hi,
I haven't been participating for awhile, sorry about that. I enjoyed reading Alvins little post on the book by Millet, which I haven't read. But I have thought about the points about difficult questions about the church. My perspective is that before delving into all the these details and weighing evidence, etc, it's useful to ask, "Can the Church be proven to be not true". I like this question. When I ask it to Mormons the answer is almost always "no". If the answer is no, then it's really no use in losing much sleep over doctrinal issues or disturbing historical facts, etc. If the answer is yes, then before you make a serious study of these things, you have some idea of what kind of fact would prove the church isn't true. I haven't been able to come up with one that is very good. One person recommended to me that if the church ever asks me to do something that is wrong or bad, then that would show it's not true. But this isn't very satisfying to me. I could be a Methodist all my life without being asked to do something wrong.

So at this point, my working hypothesis is that it's impossible to prove the church wrong, and we live in a world of faith, and a world of hope, doing the best we can. I believe that we, humanity, are waiting for something more. From my reading of the scriptures and my understanding of what science is, I believe that the strongest truth claims are those that allow themselves to be proven false when contrary evidence arises. I think this is beautifully illustrated in the story of Elijah. The sin of the priests of Baal was that their belief in their false gods could not be proven wrong, regardless of any physical evidence that Elijah was able to show. If Elijah had failed to bring the fire from heaven, then he would have less cause for condemning the priests for their unbelief. there are many examples in the scriptures in which the prophets put themselves on a limb and say effectively, "if such and such doesn't happen then you don't have to believe me." I'm thinking of Nephi and prediction of the death of the chief judge, and samuel the lamanite saying that Christ would come in 5 years.

Similar patterns hold in Science. The laws that we are most certain of are those that we know how to disprove. I know how to disprove the law of energy conservation, I just have to find one repeatable experiment where it doesn't hold. Relativity makes predictions, precision calculations that can be quantified. These can be used to predict future events with precision. These predictions can be brilliant like when somebody (Einstein I think?) predicted that relativity predicted that some astronomical event would be late by like 3 minutes or something. And he was right! Prophets in the scriptures have claimed the ability to make accurate predictions of the future, to heal people, to transport people large distances, to see into people's minds and hearts, to save and take life in large quantities, etc. Our prophets of today set a really high standard for themselves by claiming an equal footing with the prophets of the past. Today we see all of these "powers" being performed by "Godless" scientists. Many in the church would say that the scientists are inspired by God without knowing it. Maybe that's true, but if all of this great science is inspired by God it's important not to be dismissive about it. For example one should take evolution seriously, and not dismiss it as nothing. Evolution is a great example of something that does raise profound questions about God and faith and what it means to be human, but most Mormons are convinced that these questions are irrelevant to their existence, and I think this is unfortunate. Joseph Smith was a great prophet because he took the major dilemmas of the day, the really big problems, and he made sense of them, he resolved the problems for those peoplpe. How can we proselyte to the world when we refuse to even understand the questions that they are asking? How can we learn if our attitude is that "If we don't understand it, then it isn't important." This latter belief is taught quite often in church, if you listen carefully.

I've written much, and I should stop, but I'll add one more point: I've studied how scientists work and I live it, and the methods and values of science are very different from the methods of faith, as I've learned them in the church. I could write for a long time about these differences, but not here.

Also, I would like to say something about outreach, I have been attending a bible study group at a methodist church with a bunch of older men, mostly retired. Many are former academics. The discussion is frank and honest and I really have been enjoying it, learning how others think, and it has developed my faith. In some ways it is more nurturing to my faith as a Mormon than listening services at my own church. It took a lot of courage for me to get involved with this group, so if you are thinking about doing something similar, I would highly recommend it.

Thanks for reading this, and have a great day!
Ryan Larsen