The criticisms that come against Christianity or any other religious faith usually are a matter of perspective. A believer will answer issues on the assumption that the doctrine of his faith is correct... and actually that is the story of experience of every human being, being considered religious or otherwise. That is our mortal inheritance, the fallacy of induction: since you cannot know everything, it is tempting to assume that that which you do not know follows the same logic as the things that you do know, which is illogical to assume (or at least, I assume so) as has been undeniably demonstrated by history. If we don't make this assumption, then you accept that anything is possible. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that seeming issues with Christianity are often seen in two major categories: it was God's will, or you're just paranoid and want to perpetuate your own sense of identity which has been built around the idea of God. As a Latter Day Saint, I feel I will add my input to the subject which happens to be a central pillar of my testimony. Some of the things that I am asked about when it comes to the veracity of the LDS church come to this standoff that I have talked about. Of course I have thought for a long time about such issues and my conclusions are, in the end, supportive of the Church and the Gospel. In trying to analyze my own bias in these issues, I realize that a few of my arguments do not conclude on what might be called empirical reasoning; as in, it usually involves phrasing of this sort: I don't really know for sure, but I am willing to believe there are reasons which we are not aware of for which these things happened. This same argument is not unusual at all in different contexts; this is how the idea of "scientific thought" grew out of spiritualistic philosophy and medicine. Indeed this is the argument that corrects spurious relationships - we acknowledge the fallacy of induction and (ideally) move to increase our understanding of the subject.
Still, so far I have not moved away from the ledge of perspectives. I was just reading the very first verse in the Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 1:1, which says: "I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father; and having seen many afflictions in the course of my days, nevertheless, having been highly favored of the Lord in all my days; yea, having had a great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God, therefore I make a record of my proceedings in my days." This caused me to reflect on my own testimony because I felt I could relate very well with Nephi's explanation. I feel I have had many, many spiritual experiences, ranging in intensity... but there are things that I have experienced and written down that defy all the natural logic I possess; these are what Tom Rogers might call "hooks", or what in this context might be called "things that unambiguously take you off the ledge". I brought up Nephi's words because he mentions "many afflictions" before giving his testimony. I suspect he might have used "highly favored of the Lord" as a reference to being blessed with divine help to interpret his afflictions wisely, although that's just a random guess. Anyway, I related to this because the "hooks" or "ledge-pushers" stored in my brain and paper all started out with something going wrong, in some cases very, very wrong. But they were core to the eventual positive outcome (which, in my opinion, is kind of an obvious point. I mean to say, I think the questions of "why does bad happen in the world/to me" requires not understanding what makes good things happen in the world, or, on a slightly different platform, why homeostasis is the antithesis of things like 'desire', 'drive', 'achievement', 'progress', 'dreams', 'joy', and all of the things that make the human experience enjoyable).
So I guess I just wanted to write what was on my mind, which is this: I believe in my faith, and my faith-supporting conclusions, not necessarily because of how solid each argument initially sounds, but because I feel I have been given more solid evidence for them than any evidence to the contrary.
I think that's kind of the idea pretty much the main purpose of the Book of Mormon. I don't see how this has passed over so many heads...
I think I've already expressed many of these things in former writings. Well maybe in this post I've connected and solidified some things.
