Lots of words does not necessarily = convincing...

It seems like a lot of us struggled a bit with Robinson’s article. I found it to be fairly well-written, but half the time her prose made it too difficult to divine what she was trying to say. Some of the comments by readers at the end of the article helped sum up her points much more succinctly. I agree with the others who have posted that it seemed her article revolved around the interaction of science and religion; I’ll forego citing from her article, but I have my disputes with a number of her passages and we’ll leave it at that.

That being said, she does try to approach the topic of religion—and its interaction with science—in a respectful, though sometimes sort of snobbish, kind of way. I felt like she was trying to convince me, from her position of well-cultured moral superiority, that my belief in certain religious tenets was a little backward…or at least suppressed my ability to revel in the sacredness all around me. She did raise several points that were insightful, but how would her conversation relate to those who do believe that science and religion do not and should not intersect? Didn’t she spend approximately 27 pages talking about the need for both disciplines to intersect and share in the process of enlightening us to the wonder of the human experience? I guess there were some bits about fiction writing and college reading in there too…

In any case, enough about that. Respectfully engaging with belief involves giving said belief the chance to speak for itself--something Robinson didn't really set up, instead working with broad sweeping characterizations of either religion or science. In my experience, I don’t think this applies to missions, since that’s not really the purpose of that endeavor. Again, just my experience/opinion, but there’s SO MUCH work to do, we don’t usually have time as missionaries to have hour long give-and-take discussions where we both leave understanding one another’s religions much better. Hopefully the other party understands our religion much better, but missionaries shouldn’t be interested in full sharing. It just impedes the work. As regular members, now, we have the opportunity to fill in where missionaries cannot, and come to better understand where our brothers and sisters are coming from in their personal experiences. These discussions might not lead to conversion as often as missionary conversations do, but they help us bond with others who share belief—they just believe in something different.

My favorite “Meet Your Farmer” film talked about the love the farmers had for their professions and how it was the best thing they could be doing at that time. The pair of farmers discussed what it’s like trying to encourage local growing and purchasing, and they were clearly passionate about the matter. This is a case where their beliefs—which don’t always have to be religious—were alien to me, and I found it enlightening to listen to their portrayal of their belief. By the end I believed in how important is was for them, and even though I don’t know enough about the issue to really believe one way or the other about what they purported, I do believe that they personally believe it. And that communicates something sacred about their human experience.