This quote is typical of what I have seen in many other reactions from Church leaders to the perceived threat of science and scholarship in general to the LDS Church. Basically the general idea seems to be along the lines of don't worry about what the scientists say because faith in the revealed "word of God" is more important than any wisdom of the world."Should doubt knock at your doorway, just say to those skeptical, disturbing, rebellious thoughts: 'I propose to stay with my faith, with the faith of my people. I know that happiness and contentment are there, and I forbid you, agnostic, doubting thoughts, to destroy the house of my faith. I acknowledge that I do not understand the processes of creation, but I accept the fact of it. I grant that I cannot explain the miracles of the Bible, and I do not attempt to do so, but I accept God's word. I wasn't with Joseph, but I believe him. My faith did not come to me through science, and I will not permit so-called science to destroy it'"
However, for some members simply accepting the supposed "word of God" at face value is not so easy to do especially in cases where it appears to directly contradict overwhelming evidence. I can rationalize and shrug off questions about the Book of Abraham and other anti-Mormon propaganda but one of the hardest things for me to understand about the Church is the literal interpretation of dubious Old Testament stories such as the 6-day creation of the earth about 6000 years ago, Adam being the first man around 4000 BC, a global flood, the Tower of Babel, etc. by many of our past prophets and apostles. In fact some of the newer revelations given to us through Joseph Smith also appear to support a literal interpretation of these Old Testament stories as well (D&C 77:6-7,10, Ether 13:2, Moses 8).
It would have been nice if these new revelations had cleared up some of the confusion surrounding these Bible stories rather than adding even more questions to the mix. I don't have any problem with believing in miracles in general like Jesus walking on water and being resurrected when there is no real evidence to the contrary but when we already have significant evidence suggesting that some things just didn't happen the way the Bible says they did then it's a lot harder to deal with the cognitive dissonance.
I know that there are Mormon apologists and many active members who are fully aware of some of these apparent contradictions that have come up with explanations to resolve these issues to their own satisfaction. However, other members that keep running into one question after another can just as easily start to think that maybe it's just the accepted religious books that are wrong and then give up on the Church entirely.
It's not like people can always choose what to believe; sometimes after considering an idea we either believe it or we don't and there's not much we can do about it. It's hard to believe that God would give us eyes and a brain and then expect us to just ignore or deny anything we can see and understand for ourselves just because it appears to disagree with something some prophet supposedly said thousands of years ago.
Personally, I would like to see the Church tone it down a bit with the attitude of expecting members to just fall in line and agree with some pre-set list of accepted beliefs or else they are evil apostates. I doubt that this kind of rigid letter-of-the-law approach is going to work out in the Church's favor over the long run. People will vote with their feet and this will cause unnecessary divisions in families and communities. It seems like we could just make our suggestions while recognizing that there are different opinions that are perfectly reasonable as well similar to the way the RLDS Church has been more flexible about personal beliefs regarding the Book of Mormon.
