Blogger of Jared

In my previous post about certainty, I wrote that the feeling of being certain, of having the right answer, doesn’t necessarily mean that you have that right answer–that feeling certain is an emotion, one which can get in the way of humility and learning.

It’s natural to ask how this squares with having a testimony of the gospel.  After all, the gospel isn’t something which can be rationally proven, right?

Most of the attempts I’ve seen to prove or refute the gospel turn into appeals to philosophy.  “God is by definition perfect; one of the attributes of a perfect being is existence, therefore God exists,” and other such sophistries.  It’s all philosophy.

The problem with philosophy is that you can use it to prove or disprove pretty much anything.  Look at all the mistakes made by the philosophers–from the wandering of the uterus throughout the female body (Aristotle), to the famous quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, “I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones fell from the sky.”

It took a while, but over time, scientists realized that while philosophy was a useful tool for generating ideas and deciding the order in which ideas should be tested, it was useless for testing ideas.  The right approach for testing an idea was to simply observe, without prejudice, the workings of the natural world.  It didn’t matter whether what animals did or what the stars did or what subatomic particles did made sense; theory, and philosophy, had to bend to fit reality, not the other way around.

So a good scientist doesn’t judge a theory based on how beautiful it seems, on his or her feeling of rightness.  Instead, the scientist evaluates a theory based on observation, how well it matches the way the world actually appears to work.

I believe the same approach is applicable to religion.  (!)  All of the philosophical arguments for or against any particular church pale next to the reality.  Are the members happy?  Do they do good things, and eschew evil?  How do they treat each other?

And then, you can experiment with the gospel yourself.  Does following it improve your life, and the lives of those around you?

You can even apply this to the words of the prophets.  Here you have Mr. Joseph Smith Jr.; here are his words and his deeds.  Don’t argue about them; just look at what he said.  Some of it may be hard to accept, but can’t really be proven one way or another.  But most of what he wrote does make a lot of sense; as you live by those words, they prove a blessing in your life.  Eventually, you come to trust him as a source of wisdom; his track record is pretty good.  And so when he claims that something out of the ordinary occurred, rational evidence suggests that he just may be telling the truth.

I believe this is what Alma was talking about, in his famous comparison of the word to a seed.  A person has to start with the willingness to experiment on the gospel, to try living it, and to honestly observe its effects.  Most people who do this find that the evidence of the truthfulness of the gospel grows continually, in proportion to how diligently they follow the commandments of the Lord.

This evidence, combined with the feeling that the gospel is good and right, is a testimony.  It might not make “logical” sense; but neither does quantum mechanics.  It’s real, and testable; it’s part of how our world works, and all the philosophy in the world cannot disprove it.

Belief in Christ and the truthfulness of the scriptures is not like believing in pink polka-dot elephants; it’s like believing that the sun will rise tomorrow.