SANDY, Utah — It used to be you had to go out of your way to find anti-Mormon material."Now, how many members (of the LDS Church) that are doing
research for a lesson or a talk stumble across it on the Internet?"
said Mike Ash, author of "Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One's
Testimony in the Face of Criticism and Doubt."Ash was speaking to a crowd of about 320 people at the 10th
Annual Mormon Apologetics Conference presented by the Foundation for
Apologetic Information & Research (FAIR) on Thursday at the South
Towne Exposition Center.By "syndrome," Ash doesn't mean a disease, but a pattern of reacting to information."LDS-critical material can and has shaken the faith of Latter-day
Saints," he said. "It has killed testimonies, has damaged testimonies
to the point of near death."Doubt is not a sin, according to Ash. The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints is wide enough to hold many people, even those
with serious doubts. So why do some people abandon their convictions
when they encounter something that challenges their beliefs?Much of the problem comes not from the doubt-causing material,
but from the mind-set of the person who encounters it. "It seems that
those who are prone to fundamentalist, dogmatic or closed-minded
perspectives about the gospel or early LDS history are more likely to
suffer from shaken faith syndrome when they encounter challenging
issues," Ash said.By "fundamentalist," Ash is referring to someone with "rigid belief." Everybody has some rigid beliefs to some extent.So what happens when you come into contact with a conflicting thought?Ash talked about the concept of "cognitive dissonance," or
thoughts that are not in harmony. These simultaneous conflicting
thoughts make people uncomfortable. That level of comfort relates to
the level of importance of the issue at hand.A person may have a preconceived notion of what type of clothes
Joseph Smith wore or what he looked like. Learning that he wore
different clothes or looked different would create cognitive
dissonance, but these conflicting thoughts would probably not cause a
lot of emotional turmoil because they are not that "weighty," according
to Ash."It probably would matter, however, if you discovered information
that implied that Joseph Smith was a fraud or delusional or that the
Book of Mormon was merely fiction," Ash said. "Each person assigns
different levels of importance or weight to their various beliefs."Because religion is so important, challenges to beliefs carry a
lot of weight and cause great discomfort or emotional upset. People
look for a way to resolve the conflict.Ash described several ways that people attempt to resolve conflicting thoughts. 1. Reject the new information as false.
A member of the LDS Church might dismiss anti-Mormon claims as being
made up or pulled out of context. "By brushing the stuff aside we
resolve the emotional discomfort," Ash said. "And that approach many
times works because a lot of times it is pulled out of context or
(critics) made it up." 2. Reject the new information as unimportant. People
decide the new discovery from sources we do not trust or understand is
not as important as how we feel about the gospel inside. "That is not
necessarily a bad thing," Ash said.Ash noted that these two approaches are compelled by emotion or
spiritual witness and do not come from serious examination of the
issues themselves. The results may be correct, but come from avoidance.Critics claim that Mormons always choose these two methods. "They
say that any rational person that reads the supposedly disconfirming
evidence would have to conclude the church was not true," Ash said. But
he added that the anti-Mormons also do the same thing when they are
presented with evidence that supports Mormonism. 3. Reject the original belief in favor of the new information. People
feel there is enough weight and that the sources of the new information
are credible, and they choose to abandon the original belief. This
comes when the two beliefs are close to equal in importance. This
causes extreme discomfort. They feel they have to choose. Many people
who reject their belief in the LDS Church say that they feel so much
better. "Well of course," Ash said, "because you have resolved the
issue. But people that struggle and say, 'I've come to have a stronger
testimony' also feel better."Once the conflict is resolved by rejecting the church, they will
avoid and explain away any evidence that would support the church.
"They often decide from the start that LDS scholarly studies are
biased, unreliable or ineffectual before even reading the material," he
said.They will do anything to avoid that cognitive dissonance again.
"It's ironic that many of these people claim to leave for intellectual
reasons, but they refuse to examine LDS intellectual arguments for
non-intellectual reasons," Ash said. "It's again driven by emotion." 4. Add more information that validates the original belief. People
add supporting information to tip the conflict in favor of the original
beliefs. Ash gave the example of some critics saying that the Book of
Mormon plates would have been about 200 pounds if they were made out of
gold — and so were too heavy for Joseph Smith to have carried them
around as he claimed. If you add the information that they were
described as gold "in appearance" and that Mesoamericans used a gold
alloy, so that the plates were likely much lighter, "then it is a minor
paradigm shift," Ash said.According to Ash, problems come from the "fundamentalist
mind-set" that makes them more vulnerable to testimony damage. Some
testimonies are based on "sandy foundations," such as folklore,
traditions or family pressure. But even stalwart members can leave the
church. "Nobody is completely immune," Ash said.The most common factors that lead people to apostasy include
"unrealistic expectations of prophets, confusing tradition with
doctrine, imposing our (modern) views on (ancient cultures) and
unrealistic expectations of science and scholarship.""To the fundamentalists there is no middle ground," Ash said. "If
they discover what they believe to be persuasive information ... their
entire ideology crumbles beneath them. And when some people become
disaffected, even over false assumptions, further enlightenment or
counter evidences may fail to resuscitate the testimony."Ash quoted President N. Eldon Tanner that members of the LDS
Church should use "thought, judgment and inspired confirmation that
genuine internal dialogue with the written or spoken word makes
possible."
E-mail: mdegroote@desnews.com