By KAMBER HON
Cultivating a searching, questioning mind is important in distinguishing between different world philosophies, said Martha Moffit Peacock at Tuesday's Devotional in the Harris Fine Arts Center.
Peacock, who is an associate professor of art history, spoke about trusting personal logic and reason to draw appropriate conclusions from information other sources offer.
Instead of absorbing everything authority gives as truth, pondering and examining the information for valid content is a more appropriate approach to learning, she said.
It is necessary to integrate a questioning process into reasoning in order to more fully adapt collective knowledge on an individual level, Peacock said.
'We must each develop a carefully cultivated questioning mind,' she said. 'One that stops to examine carefully ... probe deeply, and carefully ponder.'
To properly channel received knowledge, individuals must have a 'genuine, grounded understanding' based on the personal questioning and reasoning, Peacock said.
That understanding comes most fully when the knowledge can be channeled with 'direction and purpose ... through the gospel of Jesus Christ.'
If individuals never learn to question, 'the long-term consequences may indeed be harmful.'
Peacock compared the search for truth in knowledge to the story of Korihor from the Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ.
In chapter 30 of Alma, when Korihor was leading people away from the gospel and the truth, people would not have been lost if they had stopped to seriously question the doctrines he was teaching.
'Yet, how modern it must have sounded to a people founded in a tradition of faith,' she said.
The same doctrines apply to individuals today, Peacock said.
Individuals can increase knowledge and capacity 'by evaluating ideas presented to us both here at the university and throughout our lifetime journey.