Tracey, that is an excellent question, and I hope the kind Bishop will forgive me barging over here to answer it.

Faith is a funny thing. Where does faith come into any evaluation of truth? It comes in at the beginning, but should not come in later. Let me explain.

Let’s say we want to evaluate if continental drift is real. We have faith that it is; and that faith causes us to take an action. Namely we go forward with an experiment. But once we the faith to start the experiment, we cannot tamper with the results with faith, or we make our experiment invalid.

i.e. if I want to test if I am actually a rabbit, if I start the test, believing I’m a rabbit; that’s just fine. But when I find that rabbits have long ears, and I don’t have long ears, if I apply faith that I will have ears one day… well, I’ve just invalidated the test I was running.

You can see how someone can come to any conclusion using “faith”.

I prefer to use the word “Trust”. In place of faith, to remove ambiguity. Trust in God; which is what I think you really mean, is a much more solid question; and if that is what you are getting at, I’d be happy to explain why I lost trust in God, in the church leadership, and in the local leadership.

But faith shouldn’t be applied in the middle of an experiment (Which the book of mormon and the leadership encourage) only at the beginning.

Some suggest that faith is a belief in something in the absence of evidence to support that belief. This is CLEARLY not what the LDS Church intends it to mean because they offer LOTS of evidence: Book of Mormon, Sunday School manuals, General Conference talks that purport to “prove” one point or another of the gospel, testimony of leaders, etc. Clearly, the definition of faith sought by the LDS Church is something that relies on evidence (even if it is not sufficient to PROVE the point).

Taken out of the church setting, I can say that I have faith that my wife loves me. Because I cannot get inside her head and KNOW absolutely that she loves me, I look at the evidence (she’s stayed married to me for nearly 30 years, does nice things for me, tells me she loves me, is intimate with me, works with me on common goals, etc.) and that suggests that she loves me, but it doesn’t prove it. I could, for example, hire a woman to do all the things my wife does, who would do it all for money. Based on my long and close observation of my wife’s behavior, I have faith that she loves me. If there were clear evidence to the contrary, however, my faith that she loved me would be significantly lessened, and perhaps shattered altogether. So, if my wife left me to live with another man, and became hostile or violent any time our paths crossed, if she told all of our friends that she hated me and wished me dead, etc. that evidence would rightfully damage my faith. It might be possible that my wife still loved me, but in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, it would be foolhardy to believe this, unless there was some other compelling evidence that accounted for her behavior (a brain tumor, etc.)

So, in the case of the Church, in the 19th Century it told its members that the American Indians were descendants of Lamanites, who were in fact Israelites. That was reasonably plausible among a certain group of folks in the 1840s and 1850s. Now, however, DNA testing shows unequivocally that American Indians are NOT descendants of Israelites. Similarly, linguists have said that the languages of the American Indians are NOT related to any Middle Eastern language (which would clearly be detectable after 1500 years). There was no steel or iron in the New World before Columbus came. No horses, etc. Had there been battles where tens of thousands of Nephites and Lamanites fought with steel weapons on a hill in New York state, some remnants and relics would still be there to be discovered. There are dozens or hundreds of other examples that could be cited as evidence AGAINST the historical accuracy of the Book of Mormon.

Faith should not be used to believe something that all reasonable evidence tells you is untrue. Faith in something that has no credibility whatsoever is not virtuous. If I had great faith and therefore believed in both Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny (who you cannot prove do not exist), you would not think my beliefs were worthy of veneration and respect. You would think my beliefs were just wrong, and possibly even harmful if my obsession was too strong.

There is no credible evidence to support the existence of Santa Claus, and much evidence and rational thought to suggest he is fictional, therefore you don’t believe, even though if Santa existed that would be really fantastic. Still, you can’t make yourself believe in him now (as you may have as a child).

Faith should be used to go the “extra mile” to believe something supportable and probable (i.e. my wife really does love me) not to support a belief in something the evidence utterly contradicts (i.e. the Book of Mormon is historically accurate; Santa is a real; etc.)

As to mocking you, I have made it clear, that I find the beliefs you hold to be worthy of being mocked and ridiculed. They are baseless, senseless, will not withstand investigation, cannot be explained in a rational way, etc. They are literally ridiculous. You, as a human being, have value. You have the ability to love and to be loved, to think for yourself, to read, to write, to produce something of value for your family and community. You are not ridiculous. You may believe some ridiculous things, but that is not a reason to ridicule you personally. Children who believe that the sun goes around the earth, or that the earth is flat, are not to be ridiculed for their beliefs. They are to be taught. Some may never believe the earth is round, but that would not detract from the person’s inherent worth.

Young children might for example believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, etc. largely because their parents who don’t actually believe in the reality of these things have taught the children to believe them. The parents have their reasons for telling the children about Santa, some of it is for fun, and sometimes (like in December) they can extort good behavior out of the children by telling them Santa is watching. Should we mock or ridicule the children? No, of course not. They will figure it out soon enough. But, we don’t have to seek them out and tell them either. However, if children come to my home and directly ask me if I believe in Santa, I tell them no.

I didn’t seek you out, Tracey, you came here to my website.

Interestingly, in the LDS Church there is a close analogy to the parents knowing that Santa isn’t real, but telling their children he is real. In the early 1920’s an LDS General Authority named B.H. Roberts (who was also the church’s Assistant Historian) did some exhaustive research to prove the historical accuracy of the Book of Mormon. He was distraught to find out he couldn’t do it, and in fact made a two-day presentation of his findings that the Book of Mormon is NOT historically accurate to the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The FP and Q12 did not dispute any of his findings, but rather filed the report away, never to see the light of day until long after everyone present was dead. His report was published in 1985 by the University of Illinois Press, (notice it was NOT published by the church or any of its official organs). The book is called Studies of the Book of Mormon.

So, to me, the interesting analogy is this: Just like many parents know there is no Santa Claus, but tell their children there is, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles know that the Book of Mormon is NOT historically accurate, but they claim that it is.

I am not mocking or ridiculing you. I don’t think you are dumb. I do think if you would seek out for yourself to learn the truthfulness of various Mormon claims (Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, etc.) that you would learn quite a bit. And, consider one additional thing. If I have a book “Flat Lander’s Book of Truth” and I claim it contains the great truths of the world and you will learn a great deal by reading it and following its precepts, that’s a pretty bold claim. If you chose to read it, and found it said things that were both impossible to verify and highly improbable, you would be unlikely to believe it. But, if my book had a special test that you could apply to this book, and that test was the only way to know of its truthfulness, you might be a little suspicious that I’m fudging something. You would probably want to use the same skills and methods you have for determining truthfulness of other things. You would use reasoning, logic, etc. If my book made claims that could be tested scientifically or through well-established academic procedures, you might want to use that science or those academic procedures to test my book. If my book failed those tests, you would be unlikely to believe it, EVEN if my book said “but I have this special test for you to use, and this test is the ONLY way to know this book is true, don’t trust science, don’t use any form of critical analysis, just use the test.” Here’s the test. After reading this book, if you smash your thumb with a hammer, and your thumb hurts, then you know the book is true. If you smash your thumb and it doesn’t hurt, then try smashing your pinky finger or some of your toes.”

So, I’m sure you can see where this is going. Check it out. Find out what the linguistic evidence, the archeological evidence, the metallurgical evidence, the record of animals and crops in the Western Hemisphere, and many other things can teach you about the historical accuracy of the Book of Mormon. Find out about the actual translations by Egyptian scholars that have been made of some of the Book of Abraham scrolls. Do some research to see if the claims made in Mormonism hold up. Many, many early church leaders made all sorts of claims that the teachings of the church would withstand any scientific or other scrutiny. The church leaders don’t say those things nowadays, because they know unequivocally that the teachings are false, and are provably false.

But, as I said, I’m not mocking or ridiculing you, personally. Just mocking the silliness of wearing magical underwear. (And, for the record, I’m wearing a garment top under my shirt right now.)

Best wishes.

I recently heard of a Native American woman who converted to Catholicism at the age of 20 (in 1676), and died at 24. Now she is being made a saint in the Catholic Church in part because a boy in Seattle got well a few years ago after he was expected to die, and people prayed to this dead woman to intercede with God on the boy’s behalf. Since the boy got better, obviously it was because the dead Native American woman heard the prayer and talked to God on behalf of the boy, and then God decided to let the boy get better.

What do you think? Does this pass the test of rational thinking? If this doesn’t pass the test of rational thinking, then why would wearing 50/50 cotton poly underwear with special Masonic / Mormon symbols have some special protective power pass the test of rational thinking?

Although I have no animosity toward you whatsoever, I believe absurd religious beliefs deserve to be mocked and ridiculed. Magic underpants and crediting a dead Native American woman with a miraculous healing seem equally ridiculous to me. But, please, don’t take offense personally, it’s not just Mormon and Catholic beliefs that are wacko. Many (if not most or all) other religious beliefs are pretty silly as well.

Best wishes.