My online life consists of exmormons and atheists and multiculturalist liberals, except for my facebook account where my family, extended family, and life-long friends are all very much the opposite: Mormon, a few from other Christian sects, but all very very conservative and rural-minded besides being very religious. I am afraid to offend either side.

How did this happen? Stepping off the plane from my mission to the midwest and seeing Phoenix's barren mountains and desert landscape again was shocking. I hadn't seen them in two years, and although I'd grown up around them my whole life, they looked different. They were not as I remembered them. I remember a little kid who had just stepped off the same plane looking out the window of Sky Harbor International Airport, seeing the mountains, and turning to his dad and asking why they looked so funny. His dad said, "those are desert mountains." Hmm. I felt like I was being educated as well. This was supposed to be my home, and it felt so alien.

This 'fish out of water' feeling continued inside me. The midwest is a different place than the southwest. But it wasn't my surroundings only that had changed. I had had cultural exposure and intellectual conversations with people in the midwest that I had never had in Arizona. Maybe all those interesting kinds of people exist here too and I just didn't notice them before –– kind of like how the mountains looked different. Had I ever taken the time to recognize them and take them in?

I was changing culturally. I learned a good deal of the church's baggage on my mission, but I was a true believer with a testimony and I used my native ability to research and articulate to keep as many people in the church as I could. Because "the church was true, even if the people weren't." Why do missionaries say things like that? The Elders and Sisters out there, when they encounter deficiencies in the social fabric of the church, evidence that maybe the 'restored gospel' fails to capture some members' devotion as it does to others, they double down. Here's what they do. They draw lines. For example, there's a difference between the gospel and the church. Well, some of the Q15 don't like that distinction, so we say there's a difference between the people and the church (which doesn't make any sense at all if you think about it). We also try to denominate some gospel topics of conversation as "deep doctrine," as though they were dangerous, toxic materials only to be handled by trained professionals whose testimonies will not be shaken by them.

Well, I didn't like any of that. I just saw people who were afraid the gospel might not be true. I tried to challenge my fellow missionaries to engage in these topics, actually think about them, and even debate a critic every now and then. Not to beat the critics, because they won't we persuaded, but to show the innocent bystanders that the gospel could withstand scrutiny and that it had answers.

Previously, in high school, I had strong interests in science but knew to be skeptical of things like evolution and the big bang theory. For some reason, being presented with these topics sensitively was not as threatening to me as when they were taught matter-of-factly and in passing, as though my religion and my religious identity were nothing of substance to anyone but myself. Perhaps they were not, but it was terrifying. And I was not prepared by my church to know what to do or to say except to 'bear my testimony' that I knew the church was true and extend invitations to a friend here or a friend there to come to church or read the Book of Mormon. The members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are, for the most part and at least in my experience, ill-equipped culturally to understand that there are other ways of conceiving of the world that are just as meaningful and immersive to other people as theirs is to themselves.

So, pray tell, what is truth? I have been asking myself that for a long time now. In this world, the truth is getting hard to pin down in a way that most others would agree. I do know that our perception of the truth is informed by our personal histories and especially our emotional memories. When we disagree over facts and data, science advocates talk at length of the propensity of the human condition to be deceived. But this sounds in the ears of the other side like a great devaluing of what it means to be human, to exist, and to be part of creation. What new scientific fact is worth sacrificing those things? Or has science been politicized, even 'weaponized', by those forces that the scriptures always warned us about? That must be it. Christianity is under attack, just like it always was, but the adversary has stepped up his game in an unrelenting assault just previous to the end of all things.

Imagine that. If one's ability to see other points of view is crippled by fears of hell and the devil, then some Gallup poll that talks about a trending increase in the 'nones', the population that chooses to identify with no religion, looks very much like the end of times.

The Book of Mormon talks about there being no death before the fall. Evolution, then, is a competing idea, a rival. Thou shalt have no gods before me. Rival ideas are evil. Even trying to accept scripture while making room for as much science as you can tolerate is viewed as dangerous by many. Look at how many people tried to balance the two and fell into atheism anyway!

On the mission, I noticed a passage in the Book of Mormon in the book of Helaman where Mormon starts into one of his narrative commentaries, explaining how it is the earth that moves around the sun and not the sun around the earth. He refers to Joshua's miracle where the sun stood still for a day. Joshua commanded the sun to stop, but God, knowing the true order of things, commanded the earth to go back that it lengthened the day out for many hours, for surely it is the earth that moves and not the sun.

This passage stuck out to me. I knew that Galileo was convicted in a court of Inquisition by that very scripture. And here the Book of Mormon was, the book that was supposed to restore many plain and precious truths, giving us the clues we needed to reconcile science and religion. Mormonism to me was very much about embracing all truth, come from where it may. Buried somewhere in the great whitewashing of Mormon history and the smelly slop called correlation is this intellectual tradition, and I know there must be a few who still follow it.

There must be the freedom to question one's religious convictions. There must be. Mormonism itself, according to its own First Vision story, owes its very existence not only to 'freedom of religion' in a can, but the freedom to part ways with your religion and boldly go where no one in your Sunday school class has gone before, keeping what you would of your previous education and adding to it with a new education in any form or fashion that suits your conscience and your intellect. It was this very phenomenon that made Mormonism a uniquely American religion in the first place.

I could never have found the courage to question my faith in the church except in the tradition of faith in the church. We tell people that we are not a dogmatic religion, that we are ready to embrace whatever the will of the Lord is at any moment and any truth, come from where it may. My loyalty was always to the truth, to what I esteem the truth to be. I esteemed the church because I thought it was all true. Then it grew more complicated. There are falsehoods in the church. I don't know how to defend the statement anymore that "the church is true", as in ALL true. And if it can only be on those terms that I may deemed in "full faith and fellowship," I must withdraw mine. But I extend the same kindnesses to Mormons that we always extended to other faiths: it has some truth, and there are good values here and there between the mantras that Joseph is a prophet and the church is true. If it is any consolation to a true believer, I understand. Oh you may not believe me, but I understand. I know more and I see more now. Not more than you, per se. Just... more than I, myself, knew before, and it has changed my feelings about a lot of things. I try to keep my old friendships and relationships alive by telling myself that people are full of surprises and always have something to teach me, even if they don't know it.

I went to BYUI originally to rekindle my testimony, but I lost it anyway. I made it through BYUI by telling myself that I was participating in one of the greatest anthropological experiments of my life. I became an observer of people. I think I am a humanist. I must then reject anti-humanist scientific rhetoric that views us all as a virus on the earth. New scientific communication in the future must dare to mix humanist values with itself. I love people. I need people. People are all that matter. Science is a tool to make our lives better and expand our knowledge of the earth and the many obstacles that stand between us and a better life.

I don't know what the forward path entails. I thought it would be as simple as communication. It's not that simple. But it would be worse if I had not tried to communicate my position to folks as well as I did.

That was terrific. Thanks for sharing it.

Might I make just one comment?
I would disagree with the idea that science is a tool to make our lives better.
We *can* use it that way, and we often do...but there's nothing inherent in that tool that implies "better," which is subjective (and not objective) anyway. It's just the best way we've come up with to gain knowledge rather than assumptions, superstitions, and fantasies.

We have to discuss and argue and fight (non-violently, hopefully) to put the knowledge we get from science to uses that make our lives "better." And if we're not vigilant, nasty people will use the same knowledge to make our lives worse. The same chemical and biological knowledge that lets us make antibiotics can be used to make poison gas. It's up to us, not the tool of science, to push for "better." :)

What a nice review CD. I enjoyed reading and feel your growth and understandings. You have come a long way from your early posts of desperation and seem more accepting and okay with where you are today. I think that is great. I would hope one day I could meet you in person. Perhaps, if/when I get to Phoenix I will drop you a line and we can do lunch. Thank you for sharing.