This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
Explaining Phenomena
“‘I believed in Santa until I was 12. I refused to listen to my friends who discovered the truth much earlier… I just knew. However, once I learned the facts, feelings changed…'”
(quoted by CES Letter)
Where Do Christmas Gifts Come From? – At some point in their lives, a child observes their parents buying a gift that supposedly came from “Santa,” or they in some other way deduce that their parents are the source of the presents. We know Santa Claus isn’t real because our parents are the ones buying gifts and leaving them under the tree. So presents are a phenomena that is easily explained. But what if Christmas gifts mysteriously appeared under my tree one morning? Did someone break into my house and put them there? This would probably be the most logical hypothesis. This would be a hypothesis to test.
Miracles occur in our lives that we can’t explain and we must test to find the cause–did someone leave the present there, did it just magically happen, or did God do it? When we consider the existence of our environment, the entire universe is a phenomenon that arrived one morning, isn’t it? Who put it there? Did it just suddenly appear into being? Or was it just our parents tricking us into believing myths? The atheist answer is that it just happened. The Big Bang just created everything out of nothing. Does that make sense? Not to me. But even if you think the universe “just happened,” you must admit that there is a lot of reality beyond what we can see. Spirituality is the exploration of unseen reality.
Astronomists say the majority of the universe is “dark matter” which we can’t detect, but we know must be there because otherwise their scientific model of the universe falls apart. So even according to science, the vast majority of the universe must be believed based on “faith.” Science texts things based on natural observations–like if we did experiments on the Christmas presents, observed our parents, etc. Spirituality is the exploration of unseen reality–what inspires us to give presents? what does it teach us about morality? is the universe a “present” given to us by a person? etc.
Mixing Mythology & Religion
“‘…faith is an instrument to bridge that gap where science, history, and logic end, and what you hope to be true.'”
(quoted by CES Letter)
Spirituality Is Not Mythology – Twelve years old? That seems rather late to learn the truth about Santa Claus… but each to his own, I guess. I was one of those kids who knew it long before seventh grade. But even at that young age I understood it is not correct to compare spirituality with mythology like Santa Claus, because mythology is the human interpretation of physical phenomena while spirituality is the accessing of reality beyond obvious physical phenomena. Two different things. Spirituality can become superstition if we try to base our spirituality on a human interpretations of phenomena. But spirituality is simply testing unseen reality with real results.
Faith is not something that starts the moment science, history, and logic end. That is absolutely not what faith is, a baseless hope. When we get up in the morning and start our car, we have faith that it will start. Science, history, and logic indicate that the car will start, but our hope that it starts is the beginning point of that action, not the end point. This is what faith is: the beginning point of action. We want to drive to work, and logic indicates the car will take us there, therefore we start the car. Not the other way around. We don’t start the car and then hope that it will run. Likewise, we don’t observe a physical phenomenon and then derive a spiritual model.
This is important because the desire for faith, or hope, is what we are told in Alma 32 is the starting point for knowledge. Faith is there from the beginning and affects everything we do. We hear about something and it sparks our interest. We test it and see if it actually expands our intellect and enlightenment. We don’t just blindly believe what scientists or historians say, but we find out for ourselves. Mythology is actually the other way around, where a person starts with what science and history say, and then build their hopes for truth from there. It is where a person superstitiously starts out with physical pheonoma and then come up with a human explanation.
Is Faith In Spite Of Facts?
“Mormonism redefines faith as embracing what you hope to be true in spite of science, fact, and history.”
(quoted by CES Letter)
History is whatever the historians write. Isn’t that the saying? It is interesting that the skeptics who appeal to science so much claim we are denying historical “facts.” What is a historical “fact?” Isn’t history by definition something that we can’t know for a fact? You weren’t around to see what happened, so you assume based on the best evidence you can find. Like everyone else, Mormons gather the best evidence we could find and make reasonable, logical conclusions.
Mormons certainly do not believe in embracing things as truth in spite of evidence. Quite the opposite, we follow a method for truth. Alma 32 says we gain knowledge beginning with hope and by testing a hypothesis. This is a long, gradual process where one proves every claim through testing cause and effect. “Now, as I said concerning faith—that it was not a perfect knowledge—even so it is with my words. Ye cannot know of their surety at first, unto perfection, any more than faith is a perfect knowledge. But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words… And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good… for ye know that the word hath swelled your souls, and ye also know that it hath sprouted up, that your understanding doth begin to be enlightened, and your mind doth begin to expand. O then, is not this real? I say unto you, Yea, because it is light; and whatsoever is light, is good, because it is discernible, therefore ye must know that it is good.”(Alma 32) 
This is similar to Plato’s allegory of the cave. In his parable, Plato said knowledge starts with mere allusion to truth like a puppet show casting shadows upon a cave wall. This is the “hope” Alma speaks of. Then, a person turns around and sees the fire projecting the shadows. This is when a person gains a rhetorical belief or conviction of the source behind allusions. Next, they walk out the door of the cave they are in and see how the same principle of light and shadow operates all around us. When Plato calls this a “mathematical” or discursive understanding, he means this is a person understanding the nature of operation. As Joseph Smith put it, this is understanding the character of God and a knowledge that your own character is in alignment with it. Finally, a person fully understands that the sun is the source of all visible objects. This is the use of reason with which we approach divinity. Mormonism is different from Platonism in that the visible realm overlaps the invisible realm. The allusionary puppets that we started out with are not tossed aside as we exit the cave, but fundamental seeds of knowledge that are part of our spirit.
The claim “I just knew” sounds like a certain dehumanizing Book of Mormon musical that ridicules Mormons. “Mormons just believe.” Those who like the ridicule Mormons say this about us because we use spirituality as the starting-point for our testimonies while superstitious people use spirituality as their ending point. We start with the hypothesis that the Bible and Book of Mormon are true, and the principles inside are eternal truth. Superstitious people start with the physical reality, as they perceive it, and try to piece together a spiritual explanation. Atheists do this even if they say they are above spirituality.
Faith Does Not Bridge A Gap – Skeptics follow a twisted method of dialectic to find truth, which we see in CES Letter‘s contradiction strategy. They constrain the context, deconstruct whatever doesn’t fit their narrative, and then change language to fit their ideology. For example, skeptics set a context where the word “horse” in the Book of Mormon couldn’t mean anything but the modern E. cabalus and where horses couldn’t possibly exist in north America at the time of Nephites. Next they deconstruct other Mormon beliefs through logical connections: they point out further contradictions of archaeology and the Book of Mormon. Before we know it, there is not a single bit of archaeological evidence in support of the Book of Mormon, and we consider “science” as the superior alternative for historical truth, or what fake science tells us, rather. Finally, they replace the deconstructed beliefs with their own ideology.
Faith is not something that starts the moment science, history, and logic end. What an ignorant and dangerous thing to say! Think about what this actually means. You are supposed to start out with whatever you read in your school textbook, blindly believe it, make logical connections, and then hope for whatever else you want to be true? This is how people thought during the Dark Ages and why it took them so long to discover that the world is not flat. Science, history, and logic told them that the world was flat, therefore it was true. It wasn’t until people were willing to test new theories and consider unconventional ideas that they uncovered new evidence.
| See also: | CES Letter Contradiction Strategy |
So now, suddenly, people who refuse to learn about Santa Claus until middle school are the authorities on what is truth and what is myth? The contradiction strategy that is used here to attack Mormonism does not follow the scientific method of deduction and induction. This is why skeptics hardly ever present their alternative ideas to the Mormon ideas they attack. They first deconstruct faith and then insert their fundamental ideology. The truly scientific way is Alma’s faith method, of testing through trial and error.
Mythology Is Still Important – I find it interesting that those who refused to learn about Santa Claus until middle school are now lecturing the rest of us about believing myths. When full grown adults talk about Santa Claus as an experience of great disillusionment, I find that some kind of childhood trauma is usually involved and Santa Claus has become just a euphemism for some kind of traumatic childhood event. The important role of mythology tends to be different for them because perhaps Christmas time became a time of pain and despair. Such childhood disillusionment–having to confront these questions in such an emotion, personal way at such an early age before a person has a chance develop their methodology for find truth–messes a person up so that they don’t know how to base unseen truth on physical evidence. They tend to have a hard time telling the difference between mythology and spirituality.
Mythology has an important place. As long as we place mythology in its proper place, it can be extremely useful for unifying as society and learning moral truths. The best mythology we have now-a-days are comic book stories put to film, and they are pretty entertaining, but they are nowhere near as effective as the epic tales of ancient Greece or fairytales of Germany. It is unfortunate that atheists demonize mythology and we lose out on this essential, human device of communication.
Even if we haven’t experienced tragic childhood trauma, each of us must experience our own renaissance and step out of the Dark Ages. Be independent and consider new ideas. This goes for Mormons as well as Atheists–it goes for anyone. Ask yourself what is truly important and how to get there. Stop clinging to your defensive ideologies, the walls you built to stop the pain as a child, the knee jerk reactions. It’s time to open up and grow.
Notice that CES Letter says their “feelings changed” once they “learned the facts.” I believe them. Testimonies involve three things: intellect, feelings, and spirit. One affects the other, even if we don’t like to admit it. Feelings of the heart affect what we know in our brain, and in our spirits. All three areas need to be addressed together, so that we know what we know together in our hearts, brains, and spirit. In fact, I think one of the most neglected parts of our testimonies is what we feel in our hearts, because we try so hard to make sure that we aren’t mistaking enlightenment for positive emotions. It is quite insidious, therefore, when people stoke our apprehensions and further alienate the feelings of our heart from our testimonies. It is tragic when a person becomes so battered and defensive that they cling only to obvious observed phenomena and what textbooks and TV tell them, and refuse to find out for themselves the answers to less-obvious phenomena and existential questions. The universe and all other good things in life are Christmas presents that showed up one morning. Did our parents put it there? Did an invisible man put it there? Or should we just not care and engorge ourselves on the treats found inside?
CES Letter Logical Fallacies
| False Analogy | Actually think about this Santa Claus analogy… Kids attribute physical phenomena to a mythical man while really their parents are responsible. The presents didn’t just evolve into being. They weren’t created by the Big Bang. So really, this sounds more like the “ancient aliens” idea, where God is really space aliens causing a bunch of inexplicable miracles. This analogy of Santa Claus does not really address the issue of what causes a Mormon’s testimony. If our lives are a Christmas present, who put it there? |
| Non Sequitur | Mormons gain knowledge by testing spiritual hypotheses. This does not mean we deny logic or science. |
| Appeal to Tradition | Much of what people call science is just tradition. |
| A Priori Argument | This entire argument assumes that Mormons deny common sense logic. |
| Big Brain/ Little Brain Fallacy | CES Letter is essentially telling us that our way of thinking is inferior and we should let someone else do the thinking for us. Just accept “science,” and then hope your hopes from there. |
| Appeal To Mystery | When we start questioning the validy of anything, people tend to believe the negative answer. |
Faith liberates us from dependence on a supreme dictator who does all the thinking for us. Stop thinking for yourself! Your faith is just a bridge when science, logic, and history end! This is what every great innovator has heard just before he made a great discovery. This is a close-minded and immuring narrative that takes us to a cold dark place. There is a huge world of unseen reality that begs to be explored, and the simple test of cause and effect can tell us the answers if we only have the courage to try. Maybe we can’t know the answer to every question, but then again, maybe we can.Complete answers to CES Letter questions about Mormons: