I have been intermittently visiting this RFM web site for over 13 years. A fairly common topic of discussion is the problems that arise in a marriage when one spouse learns new information that convinces him/her that the Mormon Church is not true. The reaction of the other True Believing Mormon (TBM) spouse is inevitably highly negative. A possible response, but one that is never heard, is “that’s wonderful that you have an inquiring mind and are constantly seeking new information and I am very interested in hearing what you have learned.”
Instead the actual reaction of the TBM is (1) to go into defensive mode, (2) be angry and disappointed that the other person had the audacity to go looking for new information, (3) criticize the person for daring to change their mind, (4) feel like their eternal happiness in the Celestial Kingdom has been forever lost, and (5) consider the possibility of getting a divorce. This may not describe your opinion, but it is certainly typical of what we often see here on RFM.
The underlying assumption when two TBMs get married seems to be that their religious outlook will be frozen-in-time and can never change. Such an attitude is, in other words, “my mind is already made up – don’t confuse me with new facts.” When one spouse learns new information that changes their viewpoint, the other spouse tends to look at that as an almost unforgivable sin.
We live in “The Golden Age of Information.” The Internet has facilitated the ease of access to information in a way that could not have been imagined in our wildest dreams twenty years ago. However not everybody thinks that is a good thing.
My TBM sister, who was born and raised in the Church, strongly believes that she had all the religious information that she will ever need back in 1965 when she was 20 years old. She practices “willful ignorance” and totally closes her mind to the idea of learning anything new about religion.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Willful_ignoranceIMO when one spouse is willing to be open-minded and finds important new information about the Mormon religion, it should not be viewed as a violation of trust. On the contrary, it is an admirable human characteristic to realize that in this new age of information a person might learn something important that they did not already know at age 20. The expectation that people will freeze their world view at age 20 and not ever learn anything new is unrealistic.
So Ms. Ihavequestions, my question to you is this -- is that the way that you want your husband to be? If you have the same attitude as my TBM sister then I fear that your future in a happy marriage is at risk.
I will finish this post by showing you an actual example of what I am talking about in the way of “new information.”
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Here is the opening of an address given at LDS General Conference in April, 1975:
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/1975/04/the-book-of-mormon-is-the-word-of-godSermon given in General Conference, April 1975
The Book of Mormon Is the Word of God by
Ezra Taft Benson, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
I speak to you today on a most vital subject. As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “we believe … the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.” (A of F 1:8.) God has so declared it, so have its writers, so have its witnesses, and so do all those who have read it and received a personal revelation from God as to its truthfulness.
In section 20 of the Doctrine and Covenants the Lord says that he gave Joseph Smith “power from on high … to translate the Book of Mormon; Which contains … the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ … ; Which was given by inspiration.” (D&C 20:8–10.)
Nephi, one of the prophet-writers of the Book of Mormon, testifies that the book contains “the words of Christ” (2 Ne. 33:10), and Moroni, the last writer in the book, testifies that “these things are true.” (Moro. 7:35.)
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The following is some more recent information about the Book of Mormon:
The Book of Mormon is the cornerstone of the Mormon Church. The BoM describes events that allegedly happened about two thousand years ago. Archaeology is a branch of science whose purpose is to study ancient history. Encarta (online dictionary) defines it as “the scientific study of ancient cultures through the examination of their material remains such as buildings, graves, tools, and other artifacts usually dug up from the ground.”
The world's foremost authority on archaeology is the Smithsonian Institution. A few years ago, some LDS believers circulated a false story claiming that the Smithsonian was using the Book of Mormon as a guide book. The Smithsonian acted to refute that misconception by publicly issuing the following statement:
STATEMENT REGARDING THE BOOK OF MORMON
1. The Smithsonian Institution has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide. Smithsonian archeologists see no direct connection between the archeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book.
2. The physical type of the American Indian is basically Mongoloid, being most closely related to that of the peoples of eastern. central, and northeastern Asia. Archeological evidence indicates that the ancestors of the present Indians came into the New World - probably over a land bridge known to have existed in the Bering Strait region during the last Ice Age - in a continuing series of small migrations beginning from about 25,000 to 30,000 years ago.
3. Present evidence indicates that the first people to reach this continent from the East were the Norsemen who briefly visited the northeastern part of North America around A.D. 1000 and then settled in Greenland. There is nothing to show that they reached Mexico or Central America.
4. One of the main lines of evidence supporting the scientific finding that contacts with Old World civilizations if indeed they occurred at all, were of very little significance for the development of American Indian civilizations, is the fact that none of the principal Old World domesticated food plants or animals (except the dog) occurred in the New World in pre-Columbian times. American Indians had no wheat, barley oats, millet, rice, cattle, pigs, chickens, horses, donkeys, camels before 1492. (Camels and horses were in the Americas, along with the bison, mammoth, and mastodon, but all these animals became extinct around 10,000 B.C. at the time when the early big game hunters spread across the Americas.)
5. Iron, steel, glass, and silk were not used in the New World before 1492 (except for occasional use of unsmelted meteoric iron). Native copper was worked in various locations in pre-Columbian times, but true metallurgy was limited to southern Mexico and the Andean region, where its occurrence in late prehistoric times involved gold, silver, copper, and their alloys, but not iron.
6. There is a possibility that the spread of cultural traits across the Pacific to Mesoamerica and the northwestern coast of South America began several hundred years before the Christian era. However, any such inter-hemispheric contacts appear to have been the results of accidental voyages originating in eastern and southern Asia. It is by no means certain that even such contacts occurred; certainly there were no contacts with the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, or other peoples of Western Asian and the Near East.
7. No reputable Egyptologist or other specialist on Old World archeology, and no expert on New World prehistory, has discovered or confirmed any relationship between archeological remains in Mexico and archeological remains in Egypt.
8. Reports of findings of ancient Egyptian Hebrew, and other Old World writings in the New World in pre-Columbian contexts have frequently appeared in newspapers, magazines, and sensational books. None of these claims has stood up to examination by reputable scholars. No inscriptions using Old World forms of writing have been shown to have occurred in any part of the Americas before 1492 except for a few Norse rune stones which have been found in Greenland.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/22/2012 05:51PM by saviorself.