22 Months Down. 38 To Go.

[wtfluff]

...
She's listened to the entire YoP podcast with no real affect on her belief in the church.

That is truly amazing.

[Keewon]

That is truly amazing.

It doesn't sound amazing to me, even as i reflect on my own path out of the Church. People aren't computers; there is nothing that makes their reasoning conform to truth and evidence. Confirmation bias is a real thing. One of the things the brain does best is to explain away the inconsistencies in the evidence in front of us, and to believe our own explanations.

I think of a story I read about in years past- A woman lost her felt connection to her left arm as the result of a stroke. When the neurologist showed her her left hand and asked "Whose hand is this?" the woman replied "It's your hand". When he asked "Isn't this your wedding ring?" she replied "Why are you wearing my wedding ring?" Her brain seemingly accepted the most consistent explanation she could come up at that moment.

I don't believe - to the degree I can even have an informed opinion about this- that faith-related denialism is necessarily even intentional, although people naturally tend to fight to hold onto their beliefs. But it is also the natural result of an inability to even see what we're not ready to see, to think what we're not ready to think. We can't get the right answers until we are able to ask the right questions.