The Choice to Believe

Sophisticated Mormon apologists today understand that very little in the traditional narrative of Joseph Smith and the restoration can be taken literally. Instead of defending Mormonism as the One True Church because God demonstrably ordained it as such, they defend belief as something to consciously choose.

I would include Mormon scholars like Richard Bushman and Armand Mauss in the category. Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s Come, Join With Us also has this flavor (and so much more than the oft-quoted “Doubt your doubts, before you doubt your faith”).

But the ones who have farthest developed this thinking are Terryl and Fiona Givens, most notably in The Crucible of Doubt:

The greatest act of self-revelation occurs when we choose what we will believe, in that space of freedom that exists between knowing that a thing is, and knowing that a thing is not.”

Importantly, the Givens do not see doubt as necessarily negative. They would agree with Robert Weston:

Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.

Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery. A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief. Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.

Let no one fear the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief. The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing: For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.

Those that would silence doubt are filled with fear; their houses are built on shifting sands.But those who fear not doubt, and know its use, are founded on rock. They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge; the work of their hands shall endure.

Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help: It is to the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the attendant of truth.

The Search for Truth

We may legitimately choose our beliefs when we have exhausted the facts. But having done so, intellectual honesty requires that we adjust those beliefs as new facts become available.

For example, Mormon apostle (and future president) Joseph Fielding Smith taught in 1961,

We will never get a man into space. This earth is man’s sphere and it was never intended that he should get away from it. The moon is a superior planet to the earth and it was never intended that man should go there. You can write it down in your books that this will never happen.

When Apollo 11 landed on the moon eight years later, Smith could have joined the ranks of conspiracy theorists insisting that the landing was faked. Even the reflectors deployed by Apollo 11, 14, and 15 that can be detected with terrestrial lasers can be discounted with sufficient creativity.

But when questioned at a press conference, Smith simply replied, “Well, I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

Applying Intellectual Honesty to the Restoration

How does this play out when examining one of the foundational claims of the Mormon church? Let’s look at some actual examples from Church publications and apologetics:

1. Missionary lesson: Joseph Smith was a prophet because he translated the Book of Mormon from the golden plates with the Nephite interpreters.
2. But: Joseph dictated the Book of Mormon with a seer stone. He didn’t use the plates.
3. Apologetic response: Lots of people believed in seer stones then. And anyway, rumors of Joseph scrying for treasure with his stone are exaggerations.
4. But: Joseph was extensively involved in treasure seeking and stood trial for fraud in relation to this activity.
5. Apologetic response: Maybe Joseph’s stone was like a holy ipad.
6. But: nobody ever dug up any of the treasures he claimed to see in it. Did God trick Joseph with false visions at first? Or were Joseph’s visions of treasure from some other source — no more legitimate than the other 19th century scryers?
7. Apologetic response: Maybe Joseph made up the treasure visions but tapped into legitimate revelation when it came to the Book of Mormon.

So yes, we can come up with a scenario that lets us continue to believe that Joseph was a prophet. But is that scenario the most likely explanation? If our goal is to justify a preconceived idea, it doesn’t matter; we can stop there. But if our goal is to seek the truth without fear, we should look for other information that could shed additional light on the question:

• Do the American technologies, ecology, linguistics, population genetics, and events described by the Book of Mormon match what we know of pre-Columbian history?
• What do we know about the witnesses who claimed to have seen the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated?
• How accurate were Joseph’s post-Book-of-Mormon prophecies?
• Most religious frauds use their position to gain power, money, and/or sex. Did Joseph follow this pattern or repudiate it?

Facts are Stubborn Things

Once we learn the truth, we can try to ignore it. We may be cowed into disavowing it. But we cannot truly make ourselves believe that which we know is not so.

Instead of trying to bury the truth, instead of denying it even to ourselves, let us embrace it. As Thomas S. Monson said,

Let us have the courage to defy the consensus, the courage to stand for principle. Courage, not compromise, brings the smile of God’s approval.

Eppur si muove.