Faith vs knowledge

- I borrowed this because I like it -

If faith is believing in something that you can't see or something that you don't have 100% knowledge of, then if you know something, or are presented with verifiable facts, your faith in the matter disappears. Most members acknowledge that it works this way, but only acknowledge it in the positive sense. "The brother of Jared didn't have faith in god anymore because he saw god. He now KNOWS".

If it is proven that something isn't true, your faith also goes away in the matter, regardless of which side (true/false) your faith rested on. In the Church, this negative aspect is completely ignored and dismissed.

For example, you present the fact that Joseph Smith was a liar. FACT: Joseph Smith lied about polygamy (and cite your sources, especially the church-sponsored ones, b/c everyone knows that everything about the church that doesn't come from official sources are anti-mormon lies from the devil intended to drag you down to the gulf of endless misery and wo). Believing members would say "I still have faith that he was a prophet of God." They won't even accept the FACTS that you presented to them.

I think if they did accept verifiable FACTS, and if they still chose to have faith in something that would still make Joseph Smith a prophet in their minds, their testimony would have to go something like this:

"I have FAITH that Joseph Smith was somehow a prophet of God, even though I KNOW he was a liar, a bigamist, an adulterer, etc"

It'd be nice if everybody on fast Sundays was completely honest about what they KNOW and what they only have FAITH in. It's sickening hearing people say that they KNOW things in testimony meeting when they merely HOPE and have FAITH. It'd be much more entertaining if they didn't lie.

I gave up on the church because I accepted verifiable FACTS that made my FAITH in the church evaporate. I tried to keep going, to read the apologist's rebuttals, to somehow make it work in my mind so we could all stay on the same page, but it was sickening because I KNEW.

I KNEW the facts. What really pushed me over the edge were the facts that I hadn't heard of before, like polyandry, and JS translating by putting a stone in his hat and putting his head in it, and some of the major changes in the BoM and D&C, the Book of Abraham, and the Kinderhook plates. It wasn't the fact that I hadn't heard of a lot of them before that bothered me. The first time I read them I dismissed them because they seemed so outrageous and different from what I had been taught and everything I had heard. The clincher for me was when I saw church friendly sources confirm the FACTS, that they actually occurred.

From that point on, it didn't matter to me what the conclusions were that people from both sides drew from the FACTS, even though I did side almost entirely with LDS-critical conclusions.

My FAITH in the LDS church is gone, and won't ever come back, because now I KNOW.