Faith and the lack of literalism

[moksha]

Do you believe that a literal interpretation of the creation story is essential in your own version of the LDS faith? I know it is both unessential in my version and that literalness actually diminishes its worth by adding a needless degree of superstition.

I want a faith that gives me both comfort and meaning without resorting to pretzelized explanations. When I take a leap of faith I want to land in clear warm water rather than on thin ice.

[didyoumythme]

I need to have a reasonable degree of certainty that my "faith" represents reality. I expect things I believe in to have a solid basis in reality. Too many members of the church will cite evidence to support their faith...until the evidence doesn't support their faith. Then they abandon reality for the sake of maintaining faith in a story. Members find it admirable when someone can ignore all the evidence that opposes their belief and still profess faith, but I find it insane.

I find more meaning in honestly confronting what I know and don't know and moving forward from there. I expect to be challenged on my beliefs and try to welcome change in perspective. There is too much we don't know about our existence to claim much certainty about the big questions in life, and I am comfortable with that.

[Anon70]

But I find it insane.

I think I need it to at least be logical and rational. When I look back at when I was kind of TBM, I just wouldn't talk about things that didn't make sense. Like the gold plates disappeared in the ground.... Especially when TBMs say God must follow laws of nature etc

[deacon blues]

When I take a leap of faith I want to land in clear warm water rather than on thin ice.

I love the metaphor. What does it mean?

[Emower]

I find that literalism cheapens my faith as well. Faith means something different to me these days. It use to mean belief in something I didnt understand. It seems that now it means to give an added weight of seriousness to something that already has some support.

[Ghost]

I don't know about the creation story specifically, but I think that my faith, to be valid, requires some degree of literalism. I don't see myself ever graduating to the "spiritual but not religious" camp without anything concrete. But that, of course, leaves me in kind of an awkward place as I come to question the foundations of every supernatural claim that I once embraced.

When I listen to or read experiences of others in which they discuss their doubts with others but are able to soften the blow by saying that they at least still believe in some of the fundamental tenets of Christianity, I wonder how I might handle such a discussion. (Which I guess is one reason I avoid getting myself into that situation until I've figured it out.)

For now, I basically try never to state that I believe or don't believe any particular thing, even as I remain a practicing Mormon. I lean toward the supernatural claims being simply stories. But I can't help but see absolutely everything else that way as well at this point, which keeps me from getting worked up about whatever historical or doctrinal claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Neither does any other fundamental element to how I approach life, so why single out Mormonism or even religion and rail against that?

[moksha]

When I take a leap of faith I want to land in clear warm water rather than on thin ice.

I love the metaphor. What does it mean?

When you are a literalist you are on thin ice. When you embrace the allegory you are in for a refreshing and cleansing experience.

[Hagoth]

I find that when I close my eyes I tend to bump into things that hurt.

[redjay]

not even as a tbm

[Corsair]

Do you believe that a literal interpretation of the creation story is essential in your own version of the LDS faith? I know it is both unessential in my version and that literalness actually diminishes its worth by adding a needless degree of superstition.

I have met plenty of LDS believers that hold a literalist view that manifest in Young Earth Creationism. I will grant that many Christians also support this view. The Intelligent Design crowd usually allows for an 4.6 billion year old Earth and God gently guiding evolution. However, many YEC proponents view the ID crowd as being faithless heretics. This happens in the LDS church also.

[ulmite]

As a scientist, I cannot believe that anything in Genesis is literal. There are man-made pots in the Louvre that predate Adam, and for the creation story to be literally true, God would have to have been seriously messing with us when He created the Earth with archaeological remains, fossils, and radioactive isotopes all pointing to a planet which has been here for thousands, millions, and billions of years.
For me, taking a literal position on this is a dumb fight to pick with reality.

[1smartdodog]

Literal or not. Faith to me must provide significantly more advantages than baggage. Hence I resort to nature or the outdoors. It demands so little of me. Leave no trace respect the land so others can enjoy. And so far there is no baggage attached. I would call that a very literal faith.

[LaMachina]

This is one of those questions that bounced around my brain for a long time and once I settled on my own answer I think I understood a little better why some people hold so tenaciously to literal interpretations.

Once I settled on an allegorical view of creation and the garden of Eden etc. it really deepened the story for me. It became profound and meaningful rather than just a list of things that happened. The problem was I could not apply the same allegorical framing to Jesus and his life. I'm not sure what the difference was...maybe the way Genesis just reads so much better as allegory while I find the gospels read much more as someone reciting literal moments?

But whatever it was, my viewing Adam & eve as allegory had a drastic effect on my faith in Jesus. Jesus seemed unnecessary if the fall was just a story. The gospels had all the fantastical elements of a fairy tale or morality tale but to me they lacked the deeper layers that such stories can have. It seemed pretty straightforward...man had fallen, Jesus redeemed them. Pretty simple but still requiring belief in the fantastic. And I just couldn't do it.

I know there are plenty who do not have issues holding both the view that creation is allegory and that Jesus is literal but I wasn't able to. My experience leads me to understand people like Ken Ham and Eric Hovind a little more...but I still think they're nutters.