The Tension Between Faith and Reason

The Tension Between Faith and Reason is a central problem in the book’s account of religiously justified violence and high-control religious communities. It is not presented only as a contest between doctrine and skeptical argument: the book also asks how conviction acquires moral force, how authority can insulate belief from correction, and what happens when a person treats religious certainty as a command that overrides ordinary judgment. Its examples move from an individual act of violence to the structures of communal life and, finally, to the difficulty courts face when religious belief enters questions of criminal responsibility.

Certainty, Purpose, and Violence

The opening account makes the problem concrete through Dan Lafferty’s insistence that he felt no remorse for killing Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty. He understood his role in the killings as obedience to a revelation received by his brother, Ron Lafferty, and described himself as the person meant to carry it out. In the book’s framing, the disturbing issue is not simply that a religious claim was used to justify a crime. It is the apparent certainty with which an avowedly pious person could regard violence as divinely required and show no shame afterward.

The book proposes that extremism can be sustained by the experience of obsession itself, rather than only by a promised reward such as salvation. A concentrated religious purpose can make uncertainty seem to disappear; confidence replaces self-questioning, and the believer’s attention narrows around perceived sin and the failings of others. This is offered as an account of how conviction may become self-reinforcing, not as a claim that every religious believer is a fanatic. The danger arises when belief is joined to a certainty that no competing moral judgment deserves to be heard.

That analysis also complicates a simple opposition between faith and reason. The book argues that intellectual criticism alone is often poorly equipped to dislodge religious belief, since faith does not ordinarily depend on the same kinds of proof as historical or scientific claims. In discussing The Book of Mormon, it notes criticisms about missing archaeological evidence, historical anachronisms, and DNA, but emphasizes that such arguments do not necessarily determine what a sacred text means to believers. The book’s wide readership and enduring public appeal illustrate how a narrative can retain religious power even when critics dispute its historical claims.

Authority and the Boundaries of Belief

The tension becomes institutional in the accounts of the United Effort Plan community in Colorado City. Under Rulon Jeffs, the prophet’s authority reached into ordinary conduct: members were forbidden to watch television or read newspapers and magazines, and those who secretly acquired satellite dishes might surrender them after sermons warned of the spiritual danger. The cycle described by DeLoy Bateman—secret use, public denunciation, discarded dishes, and eventual renewed use—shows the difference between outward compliance and inward conviction. Prohibition could suppress behavior for a time while also making the forbidden media more attractive.

Information control was part of a wider boundary between the community and outsiders. Residents were forbidden contact with people outside the United Effort Plan, including relatives who had left the religion. The community also taught that the earth was seven thousand years old and that the Apollo Moon landings were a government hoax. In these examples, claims resistant to outside evidence sit alongside rules that restrict access to outside information and relationships. The book thus presents faith not only as an individual inward commitment, but as something shaped by who may speak, what members may encounter, and which authorities are permitted to define truth.

DeLoy’s departure makes the consequences of that authority personal. After confronting Rulon Jeffs over an accusation he believed false, DeLoy concluded that the prophet’s supposed access to divine knowledge did not match what had happened. He stopped attending the weekly priesthood meeting. Within a day, an emissary came to take his wives and children under the community’s rule that family members belonged to the priesthood and could be reassigned. Both wives refused to leave him, and all but the three oldest children joined him in apostasy. The episode exposes a sharp conflict between obedience to religious authority and the loyalties of a family: the authority’s claim was powerful, but it did not secure the obedience it demanded.

Doubt, Testimony, and Unequal Credibility

The book also shows that people do not encounter religious authority from equal positions. Its account of Ruby Jessop describes a fourteen-year-old compelled to marry an older relative after a minor act of affection, then allegedly taken to her stepfather’s home after she tried to leave. When a sheriff’s deputy came to investigate, church leaders said she was on vacation and the deputy left. Later, a social worker interviewed Ruby in the presence of a person alleged to have abducted her; she said everything was fine, and she was returned to members of the faith. She was later reported to have given birth at sixteen, and no one outside Colorado City had heard from her since the summer of 2001.

The contrast drawn by activist Lorna Craig between Ruby’s treatment and the state’s response to Elizabeth Smart makes the issue one of public judgment as well as belief. Craig argued that the community’s long-standing freedom from effective law enforcement and the obedience of local officials to the prophet left victims with nowhere to turn. The episode raises a question about whose account institutions accept when religious authority and a vulnerable person’s testimony conflict. It also shows how a community’s internal explanations can shape what outsiders see, investigate, or fail to pursue.

Religious Belief and Legal Responsibility

The same tension enters the courts in Ron Lafferty’s case. After his 1985 convictions, an appeal led the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate them because, although he understood the charges and their possible consequences, the court found that his paranoid delusional system prevented him from interpreting those consequences realistically. The court was troubled by his belief that answering to divine law exempted him from human law, and required the state to reassess his competence before trying him again.

The ruling did not settle the broader conflict between religious liberty and criminal accountability. Utah’s solicitor general warned that the decision might affect other cases involving religiously inspired violence. In the book’s presentation, the legal question is narrower and more demanding than deciding whether a belief is true: courts must assess a defendant’s capacity under legal standards without treating religious commitment itself as either a defense or proof of incapacity. Across its examples, the book returns to the same pressure point. Faith can furnish meaning and moral purpose, but when certainty blocks correction, authorizes control, or is invoked to place divine command above the claims of other people and the law, the boundary between conviction and dangerous delusion becomes a matter of urgent public consequence.