The Shattering & Picking Up the Pieces

It's been a long road...gettin' from there to here.

Lulz. No really though. I'm back. First a quick explanation. I am in a place where I can actually feel like I know where I'm sitting at the moment with regard to my faith.

Going through a faith transition is a funny thing. It messes you up. I still feel pretty messed up about it. I feel like I have gone through the first phase of my transition: The Shattering. Yes, the World of Warcraft reference is intentional. For those who are unfamiliar with WoW, the Shattering happened when a huge dragon that lived underground named Deathwing was so angry and nasty that he broke the Earth when he came to get all angry above ground. The entire planet literally shattered as he flew around the world. Seriously, just imagine a huge black dragon flying overhead and completely obliterating your home.

I feel like I am in the tail end of the Shattering right now. I'm not even in the rebuilding phase yet. I am in the phase where you just wander around the wreckage of your once glorious home. Gee, I sure wish this house would have been built better. I wish I would have known about its imperfections. At least I wouldn't have been so jarred when this all happened.

I have been wandering around the rubble if my former faith home for a while now. I see pieces of it that I pick up and hold close to me. I remember cherished, sacred events that I can't explain outside of my previous framework. As much as I would like to just bulldoze the entire lot and start building a new house from scratch, I can't. There are too many important parts of who I am in this rubble. What if I throw out something valuable? Something essential? Something irreplaceable?

I have become so disenfranchised with the functional church. Once, I believed in a prophet who spoke with God face-to-face today. I believed in a church that celebrated its history in an honest and upfront manner. I believed that the Church was the definitive source of moral guidance on the Earth today. I believed that the general authorities spoke for God, and that when they said that something was a sin, that meant that God was saying it. 

But then I started to realize how messy everything is. Church history is full of stuff that will shake your testimony to the core. I keep coming back to how terribly messy everything is. The church is a mess and it always has been. The patriarchy is thick, and I have a serious problem with it. Most of all, members of the church are so sure of there place in the eternities that they've lost the wonder of it all. They're so worried about missionary work and being good little Mormons that they have forgotten about the search for truth. They think they know it all. They are so worried about saving the world from themselves (or themselves from the world) that they don't stop and just appreciate the journey. They don't try and learn from others. Heck, they don't even learn from the Spirit most of the time. They just "Follow the Prophet," and assume the thinking has been done once it's been said over the pulpit.

At the same time, I'm seeing the greatness of people and religions I never would have approached before my house was decimated. Meditation has been a very cool new part of my life, and I hope to make it an even bigger one. I am expanding my views on a number if different issues.

Yet here I stand, at the pieces of my house all around my feet. I am trying to figure out what pieces are worth salvaging. I am sorting through the rubble, piece-by-piece. I try to apply the principles taught in D&C, to study it out in my mind, and then make a decision. If something is said over the pulpit, I don't take their word for it anymore like I used to. I take it to meditation and prayer. Where appropriate, I do some personal exploration. However, I find myself every once in a while just sitting there in the debris, remembering how awesome my old house was. It made me feel safe. It made me feel warm, and protected. It provided me sustenance, and an anchor, and a support. Man, I sure loved living in that house.

Focusing on the Good

I haven't posted in a while, but that's mostly because my faith is changing lately and I'm really searching for the voice I want to have moving forward. I'm not sure if Ezekiel Evanson is the part of me that should be speaking, mostly because I feel like my real voice should be a voice that encourages understanding and cooperation between Mormons and everyone else. I feel like I should be an advocate for the Church, mostly because we focus on the negative things more than we should. I'll post more later, but I wanted to share a small thought from conference. A couple different talks spoke briefly about how some people on the Internet overemphasize the faults of the Church and church history. Initially I thought, "Oh sure, there's the church defending itself and tearing down its critics." Then I evaluated whether or not it really was true or not.

Here's my conclusion. The church is NOT the church I was lead to believe growing up. However, it does a lot of good. It's not perfect, nor are its members, but its still beneficial. Religion is super personal, and I think that if the LDS Church can bless the lives of its members, that's a good thing. Critics tend to be extreme, and focusing on anything negative too much taints your vision of how things really are. I'm going to stay a member of the Church, but I'm doing it my way. I report to God, but will respect the leaders of the Church. I don't see the leaders of the Church as these highly esteemed holy men like I once did. I see them as men like me who have greater responsibilities than I have. My job is to make the world better within my sphere.

Keep It Real, Yo!

This is nothing more than a short rant, so don't expect anything too amazing. :)

I have recently begun to demand excellence from my religion. If we are going to be making claims as members of the LDS Church, we need to have two different possible answers: a well thought out declaration of official doctrine, or an "I don't know, but here's how I understand it." All too often, people (including general authorities) don't preface their opinions with the fact that it's their opinion, and their comments quickly spiral into the realm of pseudo-doctrine as they are quoted in sacrament meetings around the world. All too often, these opinions are not very well thought out, and even fly in the face of the way things really are. It's not the speaker's fault they are uninformed, they just don't know the research of the day.

I've seen too many blogs lately that try to hold up archaic arguments with nothing but quotes and scripture verses without paying any attention to how the world actually is. I am open to other points of view, but please oh please make sense in your arguments. Just because you shoe-horned a scripture verse into your argument doesn't mean you're right. It just means you quoted scripture that was written thousands of years ago by a guy in a culture you don't understand, and in a language that contains figures of speech and idiosyncrasies
you don't understand. Even the best case scenario is that we are still reading the words of somebody who is bringing their own biases and culture to the word of the Lord. The philosophies of men mingled with scripture. That is really all we have in the scriptures, no matter what the ratio is. Due to this, we still need to rely on our own reason, as well as the spirit of the Lord, to understand things for ourselves. Please stop relying only on quotes and verses to back up your claims.

Don't be scared to look at an aspect of the gospel and say "This may actually be completely bogus, but I still like it, so I choose to believe it." All I'm asking is that we demand excellence from the things that can be excellent, and give our faith to things that can't be proven/disproven logically. I have absolutely no proof that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, but I believe he was. He did a lot of good in his life, as well as a lot of bad things. In spite of all the confusion surrounding his character and his history, I choose to believe that God restored his true church on the earth through Joseph Smith. I'm not asking for excellence by demanding perfection. I'm just asking that we be real with people. Let your Mormonism shine, and when we are able to look someone of the face and say "I have faith in God, even though I can't prove it," people will pay attention. Just don't lie to them, or make up some flimsy argument to protect your own insecurities. I can't stand that nonsense.

The Science and Religion of the Creation

I was reading MormonsAndScience.com, a blog that talks about...you guessed it, Mormons and Science. I'm sure this person it well meaning, but a recent post about evolution made me a bit steamed. I have a huge beef with a lot of the dialogue that goes on around the pursuit of science. The whole "science vs religion" rivalry that exists is so frustrating to me. During the first few years of my education as a student of the sciences, the cognitive dissonance drove me berserk. All of these things that professors were saying made so much sense, and yet it went against everything I was taught in seminary.

Then one day, I decided to Google what the Church's stand of evolution was. I think the FAIR Wiki has the best explanation of it (for those who don't know, FAIR is an organization of LDS apologists). So...the Church has never outright condemned the theory of evolution? The Church has never actually said that the Earth is only 6000 years old? Well I'll be...

So...I can believe that God created the Earth, AND that the current scientific theories? I've given myself the permission to do so, and I feel that my faith has become stronger because of it. It is the first time in my life that I have come face-to-face with a faith-challenging issue and resolved it. To help you, the reader, understand this topic a little bit more, I have broken down the Creation into 3 questions, each of which is really important in maintaining our faith in the face of apparently conflicting beliefs.

What is the Purpose of this Blog?

Over the past several days, I've had interactions with various people about the nature of this blog and my desire to get more involved in the conversation surrounding the Mormon church and the gospel in general. I've come to realize that I need to have specific goals in order to really get the most out of this blog. This blog needs a purpose in order to be useful to me, and I need to understand that purpose in order to get what I want out of it. This is what I've come up with:


Purpose #1: The LDS Brain will provide uplifting messages that will give strength and encouragement to members of the Church and those who want to hear our message. As I share my experience and thoughts with others, I really just hope that it helps somebody, and their life is improved because of it.


Purpose #2: The LDS Brain will clarify, to the best of my ability, concepts and misconceptions that may be confusing or controversial with regard to the Church. There are many misconceptions about the Church. They come in many forms, from the Atheist critic who says Joseph Smith was a liar, to the little old lady who heard that Cain is Bigfoot in a Sunday School class twelve years ago. I'm not a biblical scholar or a master scriptorian, but I am hoping that this will give me more motivation to become educated in some of the topics that some members either shy away from or don't understand. 


Purpose #3: The LDS Brain will, in a spirit of respect, correct lies and misconceptions that exist about the Church.  It should be noted my main intent is to help those that are open to hearing the Gospel message. I am really not interested in trading verses and getting drawn into a Bible bash. Everyone is willing to believe what they choose to believe, and I am not here to tear down other religions. I want this to be a place that we can come to an understanding about the Church together.


Purpose #4: The LDS Brain will be an open and honest look into my life, my thoughts, and my feelings. If I can't be honest about my own beliefs, I am in trouble. I hope to challenge my own testimony with this blog, and grow because of it. I will be honest and fearless is my search for truth, trusting that God will reveal his truths to me (and hopefully you as well). In approaching real issues that the Church faces head on, I hope to gain a better understanding of what God has done, is doing, and will do among the children of men.




And that's that. Its definitely a work in progress, but I think it will help to have a direction of where to go. I invite you to join with me as I study the gospel and learn. If you aren't convinced, that's alright. I hope to hear from everyone who reads the blog, and I am open to any respectful and open discussion that people want to have.

Welcome! - Science & Religion Can Be Friends

Welcome to The LDS Brain! This is going to serve as a place for me to talk about my feelings on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as well as my personal struggles and victories in everyday life.

A little bit about myself: First off, my name is not really Ezekiel. I want to be very clear on this. So why hide behind a pseudonym you ask? Privacy. Protection. I actually live a fairly public online life, and some of the things I may talk about on this blog may not be very popular among some of the geekier, more academic, and more liberal circles I tend to mingle with. I want this to be a place where I can speak freely without concern that something I have said may be looked down upon if I ever come across an anti-Mormon grant evaluator (unlikely, perhaps, but no impossible). In short, I think Egon said it best. "Don't cross the streams."

Having said all that, I am married to my beautiful wife, and we have an awesome son. They're names are not Jade and Eugene, but we can pretend that. Heck, their names might change as I write. :) Jade and I are looking forward to having another baby in the fall, and that's pretty exciting.

As for my professional career path, I am currently working on my Master of Neuroscience degree, and I'm focusing on different environmental factors and how the effect brain development. Which brings me to one of the topics I want to focus on with this blog. It seems like over the last few years there has been a huge surge of people who find Christianity to be absurd. More specifically, the LDS church has come under a ton of scrutiny. I'm sure we can all blame Mitt Romney for at least most of that. Let's face it, having a Mormon run for office is going to cause an increase in press coverage (both positive and negative).

The church takes a pretty hard stance on some major issues, and I can't make the claim that I completely understand all the reasons behind the Church leaders do or say what they do. I heard a great talk a while back, however, that made a great point that I have really taken to heart (darn it if I can't remember who gave it, but I believe it was a BYU devotional). The speaker talked about not knowing all the answers, and how moments that you question your own faith are critical in your time here on the Earth.

I faced quite a few of these during my undergraduate career, and looking back there were a few that really challenged me. In an Astronomy class, we went through the entire history of how the Universe began. At first, I entered the class thinking "Alright, here we go. Big Bang Theory, eh? Well, this is a bunch of crap. As long as I can spit it out, I can deal with it I guess." Soon, however, we started learning all about how gravity was the central creative force in the Universe, and that as mass grouped together, planets and stars were formed. My professor explained to me using science how the current theories on the creation of the Universe were as close as we could understand right now. The crazy part was that at the end of the course, I believed him.

Another class, Animal Psychology this time, challenged an even more controversial topic: evolution. For the longest time, I always battled this one. I had gone through several biology classes before. I had endured the evolution and natural selection bits, spit them out for the test, and pushed them back into the recesses of my brain. This time, however, my professor started showing us very specific examples (that I of course can't remember as I write this) of how obvious it was that some current animals had evolved via natural selection. By the end of the course, I could see the logic and was beginning to believe in the Theory of Evolution.

Here's the next obvious question then: why do I still believe in God and everything the church teaches? There's a few reasons, actually.

#1. I continue to have confirmation from the Holy Ghost that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, that Joseph Smith translated it through the power of God, and that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is His kingdom on the Earth. In short, I have prayed to Heavenly Father and outright asked Him if all of this is true. There are a lot of people who get so caught up in all the details and logic that they forget God. There are so many questions and details that we could get tangled in that we may never just stop and ask God if the church is true. I, however, always fall back on this. It is my foundation.

#2. I've learned to check my sources. One of the biggest things I've learned as I have ventured into the world of academia is that you need to know your facts. There are so many things that have been said by leaders of the church that are not considered doctrine. You may have a quote from an apostle that your Great-Aunt Whitney wrote down at a pot-luck once, but that doesn't mean that its doctrine. The truth of the matter is that even President Monson makes mistakes sometimes, and there's a difference between what he declares to the world over the pulpit during General Conference and what he says at a little Stake meeting. There have been a lot of things that have been speculated on by leaders of the church (especially in the early days), and its important to be able to distinguish between doctrinal statements and speculative conversation. You'll be surprised to find that some things you thought were hard doctrine end up being nothing more than LDS folk-lore when you track down the actual quotes and sources.

#3. I've learned that it's okay to say "I don't know." Let's get back to that talk I was talking about. There are things that will come along and challenge our testimony. Things that don't currently fit with our current understanding of the world, the church, and the Plan of Happiness. That is totally okay. We aren't nearly as smart as we think we are.

I'll be honest, I still don't know how I feel about evolution. Parts of it still clash with my spiritual understanding of God's plan for us, but parts of it make so much sense its scary. What I do know is that God created Adam and Eve, and that men are that they might have joy. I know WHY God created Adam and Eve, even if I don't entire understand how. Do I have my theories? Yes, but I am constantly taking my own personal beliefs and weighing them against what I know about science and what I know about religion. There is a place in the middle that I am creating my own understanding of the world. The church has made it clear in the past that the conversation of science will be left to the scientists, and that they will focus on talking about the salvation of mens' souls. I'm okay with that. Would I prefer a one-on-one with Heavenly Father, and have him just sit down and say "Alright, here's the answers to all your questions. This is the exact timeline from when the Universe started to when you were born." I believe that one day I will get my answers. Until then, however, I'm comfortable being where I am. Its okay to not know all the answers.

Wow, so I just started writing and all of this came out. Insane! I hope this blog will be as fulfilling for you, the reader, as it is for me. If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm @theLDSbrain, and if you want to e-mail me, and the LDS brain at gmail dot com.