Maybe more than any other religion, Latter-day Saints give lip service to the virtue of critical thinking.
We are supposed to study it out in our minds and then ask God if it is right.
I loved this. It taught me that it was okay to value thinking and reason. But it can also create a false sense of reasoning. It creates the illusion of judgment.
In his recent video about discernment, D. Todd Christofferson inadvertently illustrates why with an anecdote about a toddler who wants two graham crackers.
His mother says, “Give me the one you have and I will give you two.” She takes the cracker out of view, breaks it in half, and hands it back to the child. The child is happy; he now has two crackers.
Pres. Christofferson tells this story as a nod to the need for critical thinking. But to me, the story demonstrates the problem with the LDS conception of epistemology.
No matter how much critical thinking we do, if we eventually hand that graham cracker of truth over to some cosmic friend and take back whatever he gives, that isn’t a combination of faith and reason – it’s just faith. It doesn’t matter how much thinking you have done up to that point; it’s all wiped out in that moment.
Having a cosmic friend with the answer is not the same as having the answer. And there just is no way to abdicate the responsibility of judgment.
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