Understood. But man's perception of reality and truth through academics is, without inspiration from God, inherently limited.
I'm not disagreeing with or for that matter even really addressing that. My point is that there are inherently academic and inherently unacademic approaches to things, regardless of the personal faith of the researcher(s). One of my old advisers when I was an undergraduate was a Bulgarian Orthodox Christian, and the man who replaced her when she went on sabbatical was an atheist. They both did fine, scientifically valid research in the field because they followed the proper scientific methods and practices to produce reproducible, falsifiable results -- not because of anything related to their faith or lack thereof.
So it is not a foolish thing at all to allow one's academic understanding to be shaped or influenced by those spiritual things God gives him.
It all depends on how you mean that and what the actual effect is on the person's work. No doubt there are millions of grad students, professors, etc. who might be praying for sanity during certain high-stress times in their professional journeys, and many who would thank God for the inspiration and guidance to studying whatever it is they are studying. That's all okay, but it's significantly less okay when a researcher's personal belief or non-belief in a God colors the
conclusions they make, their presentation (or non-presentation) of supporting evidence, etc.
The Bible says "Come, let us reason together", not "Come, let us come up with a cover story for inconvenient facts".
On the contrary, he is a most ungrateful beneficiary (and a fool?) if God gives man knowledge which he then subordinates to man's puny reasoning; whether his own or someone else's doesn't matter. So while I do understand your point, I fail to see that such shaping is inappropriate. As Paul taught, the spiritual comprehends all things, whereas the temporal comprehends only the temporal.
And you can certainly research and publish on spiritual things, but if you're going to be publishing something which conforms to a religious narrative as a matter of your own fidelity to your religion, then it better not be presented as solid and impartial academic research, in the same way that it would be very inappropriate for a biologist or a botanist or whatever to be publishing scientific papers through a Church-related publisher of spiritual materials. It's not that the two are not or cannot be related -- it's that the truly comprehending person knows the difference between faith promoting research (again, "Come, let us reason together") and faith
-promoting research (note the hyphen), which is usually several rungs below where it would need to be in order to even qualify as research in the first place.
Again, understood. But any self-respecting individual of faith—real faith—must admit that there can come a point at which the intersection of academia and faith requires him to set aside a particular incompatibility, either real or perceived, and rely on the fatih God has given him.
Yes indeed. That's why those who we have who are servants and also academics (which is not unknown, since backgrounds in medicine and other technically advanced fields are prized among Coptic people) will publish in both Church publications and non-Church publications, keeping distinct the barrier of entry for either. Doing good academic work and good spiritual work are not always the same thing, and there is a long history of Coptic people publishing on Coptic topics outside of Church-run publications (mainly for archaeological and historical journals; I don't wish to turn this thread into a discussion on that, but rather am only using them as an example to show that it is possible), which does not seem to be the case so much for Mormonism. I believe it is because of this confusion concerning the role of the faithful academic, as exemplified in Holland's speech.
For is not faith given to man to anchor him against "every wind of doctrine," academic or otherwise? If not, of what lasting use is it?
I don't know about you, but my faith is not as it is so that I can cause or win arguments in the academic world or whatever. So no. That's not why we are given faith.
Several times Elder Holland acknowledged the difficulty that the members of his audience faced. There is no indication that this was mere lip service, but the opposite—that he really understood how difficult it is, at times, to both honor the truth God gives one, and honor academia.
This does not seem to be a problem for other people of faith. As much as propagators of that religion nowadays love to talk about "Islamic science" these days, the truth is that the proof of the various Muslim mathematicians' theories is not dependent on their religion. By the same token, there is no specifically Christian, Mormon, Jewish, etc. science which relies on the religious identities of its practicioners.
Such is the burden of Gospel truth: you can't always be taken seriously by the world. This is not new; this has been the heritage of the believers since always.
This hasn't been a problem for the Christian Church, or at least it arguably wasn't until various theories on the makeup and functioning of the universe began to cause controversy in the Roman Catholic Church in particular, e.g., what supposedly happened to Galileo. But such medieval excesses cannot erase what was earlier established by the many philosophers found Christianity in the early days, e.g., St. Justin Martyr, Ibn Zur'a and his teacher Yahya ibn Adi, Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, etc.
Same old song and dance:
