In Pierre Bourdieu’s The Logic of Practice I recently came across a reference to Bernard Williams’ essay ‘Deciding to Believe” that I find perfectly encapsulates the mind of many religious believers. Bourdieu writes that, “even if is possible to decide to believe p, one cannot both believe p and believe that the belief that p stems from a decision to believe p; if the decision to believe p is to be carried out successfully, it must also obliterate itself from the memory of the believer.” (Bourdieu, P., The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Polity Press), p.49.) A little convoluted, but it’s pretty much a perfect retort to what is for Mormon missionaries their rhetorical trump card, Moroni 10: 4 from The Book of Mormon: “(4) And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.”
The problem with this passage, of course, is that it’s as near perfect a statement of circular reasoning as one can imagine. If you are at the point where you're “ask[ing] God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ…with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ” whether the BOM is true then you've already decided to believe what it is you’re ostensibly asking to find out! As Williams and Bourdieu point out, however, for this to work requires that the initial choice to believe in it be excised from one’s conscious memory.
As luck would have it, only a day or two after I found this passage in the LOF two Mormon missionaries rang my doorbell. Being the friendly person I am I invited them in for a chat—I do like a good debate after all! After finding out that most of family are members and that I grew up one they of course wanted to know why I am no longer. The reasons are many, but what I told them is the point of this post: given the lack of archaeological, linguistic, anthropological (etc.) evidence of the BOM; given the reactionary political views of LDS Church leaders ever since its inception (polygamy and general subordination of women, support for slavery then merely not allowing blacks the priesthood, entrenched homophobia etc.); given the absurdity of the Word of Wisdom as a moral code; given the highly repressive and, therefore, guilt-inducing attitude towards sex that is promulgated by the Church; given that while I was a believing member I never felt like I belonged or, indeed, was ever really happy (and I could go on)—for what possible reason would I want to choose to believe in it so that I could pray about it with any of the qualifications that the text of the BOM itself demands to confirm my requisite pre-existing belief?
As one would expect the missionaries didn’t stay very long after they realized that I wasn’t going to be bowled over by their protestations of supposed knowledge and truths.
The problem with this passage, of course, is that it’s as near perfect a statement of circular reasoning as one can imagine. If you are at the point where you're “ask[ing] God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ…with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ” whether the BOM is true then you've already decided to believe what it is you’re ostensibly asking to find out! As Williams and Bourdieu point out, however, for this to work requires that the initial choice to believe in it be excised from one’s conscious memory.
As luck would have it, only a day or two after I found this passage in the LOF two Mormon missionaries rang my doorbell. Being the friendly person I am I invited them in for a chat—I do like a good debate after all! After finding out that most of family are members and that I grew up one they of course wanted to know why I am no longer. The reasons are many, but what I told them is the point of this post: given the lack of archaeological, linguistic, anthropological (etc.) evidence of the BOM; given the reactionary political views of LDS Church leaders ever since its inception (polygamy and general subordination of women, support for slavery then merely not allowing blacks the priesthood, entrenched homophobia etc.); given the absurdity of the Word of Wisdom as a moral code; given the highly repressive and, therefore, guilt-inducing attitude towards sex that is promulgated by the Church; given that while I was a believing member I never felt like I belonged or, indeed, was ever really happy (and I could go on)—for what possible reason would I want to choose to believe in it so that I could pray about it with any of the qualifications that the text of the BOM itself demands to confirm my requisite pre-existing belief?
As one would expect the missionaries didn’t stay very long after they realized that I wasn’t going to be bowled over by their protestations of supposed knowledge and truths.
