Reason

Church teachings place a strong emphasis on faith, revelation, and spiritual experiences as the primary means of gaining knowledge about religious truth. However, it is also important to engage in logical reasoning and critical analysis when evaluating religious claims. Reason and faith need not be in conflict – in fact, they can and should work together to help us arrive at a more complete understanding of spiritual and religious matters.

The Role of Reason

Reason, or the use of logic, evidence, and critical thinking, is a valuable tool that can complement and enhance our spiritual experiences. Reason allows us to:

1. Examine religious claims objectively
2. Identify inconsistencies or contradictions
3. Evaluate the reliability of sources and evidence
4. Draw logical conclusions based on available information
5. Reconcile apparent conflicts between faith and empirical knowledge

Using reason to analyze your faith does not mean you are betraying or rejecting that faith. Many faithful church members have found that carefully examining their beliefs through the lens of reason has actually helped them develop a more nuanced, well-rounded understanding of their religion. If religious claims stand up to scrutiny, reasoning should be a means of refining and deepening your spiritual convictions, not undermining them.

In fact, church members have been encouraged throughout history to try to reason about their beliefs:

If [Joseph Smith’s] claims and declarations were built upon fraud and deceit, there would appear many errors and contradictions, which would be easy to detect.¹

With this in mind, I spend the remainder of this chapter reasoning about church beliefs and teachings. I point out logical flaws in specific aspects of the church’s doctrine, and I discuss apologetic and antagonistic reactions to those flaws.

Reasoning Skills

Throughout this chapter, I refer to and utilize a number of reasoning techniques, which I describe in greater detail in this section. The key is to approach these logical analyses with an open and curious mindset. Engaging reasoning skills does not have to undermine your faith – in fact, it can actually help you develop a deeper, more nuanced understanding of your beliefs.

Building a Rational Argument

Building a rational argument is a systematic process that requires careful consideration of claims, evidence, and logical structure. Great care should be taken to avoid producing falsifiable claims.

Some people spend their entire careers evaluating the components of a rational argument. It is impossible for me to provide a comprehensive resource; however, this resource relies primarily on simple arguments that are straightforward to construct and analyze.

Considering Alternatives

Because religion can be an emotional topic, it is easy to show a bias toward a certain conclusion. For example, apologetic work often assumes a claim from religious leaders is true before building an argument around it. It is important to consider multiple possible explanations or interpretations, rather than immediately accepting the one presented. Exploring alternative viewpoints can lead to a more nuanced and well-rounded understanding of the issue.

There is little point in reasoning if the purpose is to justify a statement that you are unwilling to change your thoughts about. The human brain is capable of amazing reasoning feats, but there is no point burning sugar to reason about something if it does not have the potential to make a meaningful impact.

Logical Reasoning

Many of the church’s claims can be evaluated using the principles of (Boolean) logic – that is, breaking down ideas into simple statements that are either true or false. For example, the statement “There is a dog in the room” can be logically analyzed as either true or false based on the actual presence or absence of a dog.

Logical Proof Techniques

One powerful logical proof technique is proof by contradiction. Let’s say you want to prove the statement “There is a $100 bill on the table.” To do this using proof by contradiction, you would:

1. Assume the opposite is true – that there is no $100 bill on the table.
2. Then, look at the table. If you find a $100 bill there, you have contradicted the assumption.
3. Since it’s impossible for there to both be and not be a $100 bill on the table, the original claim is true.

Proof by contradiction allows the logical establishment of the truth of a claim by showing that the opposite cannot be true. This technique can be surprisingly useful when evaluating religious teachings and claims.

Deductive Reasoning

Deductive reasoning involves drawing specific conclusions from general premises. For example, if the premise is “All dogs have four legs” and the specific case is “Fido is a dog”, the deductive conclusion would be “Fido has four legs.” This type of logical inference can be a useful tool for evaluating religious claims, since it can be used to create a convincing proof of the truthfulness of a statement.

Inductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning works in the opposite direction, drawing general conclusions from specific observations. For instance, you may notice that every church member you’ve met has been kind and charitable and inductively conclude that church members are generally kind and charitable people. Inductive reasoning can provide valuable insights, but it’s important to be cautious about making generalizations. Inductive reasoning has an important limitation: it cannot be used to craft a convincing proof.

Identifying Logical Fallacies and Cognitive Biases

Logical fallacies are common errors in reasoning that can undermine the validity of an argument. They are commonly introduced because of cognitive biases. Recognizing these fallacies can help you think more critically about religious teachings and claims. A well-constructed argument should be free of fallacy. An excellent resource to explore logical fallacies in-depth is RationalWiki, a community-driven resource that promotes rational thought.

I have identified a selection of fallacies that tend to arise in religious conversations, as well as examples and strategies to avoid each fallacy.

Confirmation Bias

Identification: Confirmation Bias (sometimes known as motivated reasoning) is the tendency to seek only information that conforms to their existing viewpoints, ignoring information that contradicts them. Everyone experiences confirmation bias, but it is crucial to consider diverse perspectives to construct the most complete argument possible.

Example: People tend to read news media that aligns with their existing political views rather than exploring diverse interpretations of events. Further, religious arguments sometimes rely heavily on confirmation bias to encourage members to stay in the faith. For example, leaders might encourage only seeking “church-approved” resources.

Defense: When you notice yourself avoiding an opinion that differs from your own, it might be worth exploring the other party’s perspective.

Appeal to Emotion

Identification: An appeal to emotion (argumentum ad passiones) occurs when a speaker seeks an emotional response rather than reason. It often includes loaded terms that invoke feelings of fear, guilt, shame, excitement, or other intense emotions. It appeals to a listener’s prejudice rather than offering a sober assessment. Appealing to emotion is not inherently harmful, but it does not produce a rational argument. Appeals to emotion are extremely common in religious settings.

Example: If we didn’t have the church, imagine how many people would be murderers and rapists.

Defense: When you notice yourself experiencing an emotional response to something, consider if that emotional response forms the basis for your conclusion.

Lying

Identification: Lying is the most obvious logical fallacy. If a statement is a lie, it is false.

Example: There are no lakes in Idaho.

Defense: To avoid lies, it is important to consult a number of sources, preferably with varied interests (i.e., opinions from many people in support of vs. in opposition to an issue).

The Fallacy Fallacy

Identification: The fallacy fallacy (argumentum ad logicam) occurs when one assumes that because an argument contains a fallacy, it is false. Because true statements can be made using faulty logic, it is important not to dismiss a claim solely on the basis of a bad argument.

Example: The statement “God exists because good people believe in God” is a fallacy, so God must not exist.

Defense: If you find a fallacy in an argument, it is important to evaluate the claim without considering the fallacious argument. If the claim still holds water after the fallacy is removed, the fallacy did not matter. If the argument relies on the fallacy, however, it is important to pursue a better argument for or against the claim.

Argumentum Ad Hominem

Identification: An argument against a person rather than a claim (argumentum ad hominem) is one of the most egregious fallacies I encounter from any side of a religious debate. It involves an attack on one’s character rather than their claim. It serves to distract from the original argument by switching the focus to character, not truth.

Example: You shouldn’t trust an exmormon, they’re just angry at the church.

Defense: Watch out for Ad Hominem anytime the stakes are high and parties seem desperate to make their point, as it is often someone’s last resort. If in doubt, consider whether an argument is focused on the claim or the speaker.

Appeal to Hypocrisy

Identification: An appeal to hypocrisy (argumentum ad hominem tu quoque) is the ugly cousin of Argumentum Ad Hominem. It involves arguing against a claim because the speaker has acted in a manner inconsistent with it.

Example: You can’t criticize someone’s dishonesty when you’ve been caught lying yourself.

Defense: Watch out for Tu Quoque if someone is calling someone a hypocrite, and evaluate if the claim of hypocrisy renders the original argument false.

Special Pleading

Identification: Special Pleading involves claiming that something is an overwhelming exception to a rule, without justification for the exemption. While special cases do exist, Special Pleading specifically involves moving the goalposts because a claim was shown to be false.

Example: The church never misled members about their finances. Except for the SEC scandal, but that doesn’t count. They are still as transparent as they can be.

Defense: In religious settings, Special Pleading arises especially frequently in apologetic work. Because the goal of apologetic work is to attempt to resolve problems with religious claims, the argument often needs to be molded to fit the claim. This can increase the attractiveness of insisting on exceptions to the rules.

Truth vs. Counsel

In religious settings, truth and action are often conflated. James 2:20, after all, teaches that “faith without good deeds is useless”². There is a tendency to draw a conclusion like “the Book of Mormon is true” and interpret that statement as an imperative to act.

In this chapter, I evaluate only truth. That is, I do not have any idea what you should do with the information I present. I advocate for empathy, respect, and nonviolence, but beyond that, I don’t really care what action you take. What I do care about is giving you the information you need to choose a course that aligns with your own values.

For example, if you find my argument convincing that the church’s claims regarding The Book of Abraham are not true, there are myriad possible resulting actions: you may decide to leave the church, you could continue believing in the church’s other claims, you might disregard truth entirely and emphasize the symbolic message of the book.