NOM

There are some people who crave certainty like a drug, although they may be unconscious of it. They are on both sides of many arguments, and they take the fun out of the search for truth, because they often go ballistic if they think they are losing an argument.

Agreed.

One question I have which I hope isn't a threadjack is do people here believe there is absolute truth? I agree that some things are absolutely true and some of those things we have a decent handle on. Other things probably have an absolute truth but we're still figuring it out. But there are many things, maybe much more than we give credit, that are relative.

As a TBM I thought in black and white. When I first started my exit I continued to think in black and white. Now that I've been out for a while I find I see so much gray. And trust me, those "nuanced" thinkers used to drive me nuts because I saw how some would use the gray to hijack truth for their gains. Your apologists and alternative practitioners and conspiracy theorists and the like, who occupied the other side. It all felt so polarized. Now I think the truth is probably in the gray somewhere.

I think you can have absolute truths for questions like, did Joseph Smith receive physical gold plates from a resurrected being.

But many simple-sounding questions are not so black-and-white. For example, does God exist? It depends on whether you define God as an exalted man sitting on a throne marking down smiting demerits every time someone sips tea, or whether you define God as the entirety of the universe and the laws of nature that govern it. It is much harder to deny the pantheist's God that that of the Mormon.

LaMachina wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2017 12:52 pm As a TBM I thought in black and white. When I first started my exit I continued to think in black and white. Now that I've been out for a while I find I see so much gray. And trust me, those "nuanced" thinkers used to drive me nuts because I saw how some would use the gray to hijack truth for their gains. Your apologists and alternative practitioners and conspiracy theorists and the like, who occupied the other side. It all felt so polarized. Now I think the truth is probably in the gray somewhere.

The TBM group, of which I once was a FULL BLOWN MEMBER OF, thinks in absolutes. The BofM and other documents support and abet this type of thinking as well. Consider the fruit that Lehi and Nephi ate. "It is the most desirable above all other fruit..." The word "most" is an absolute...and is Black and White as it were.

Since leaving, and prior to my exit, I began to think about truth and error, realizing I was missing the elephant in the room. There are not 2 options...there are and have always been 3 options. You have true....you have false,...and in the middle you have "I DON'T KNOW".

The more I learn (and I know way more than I did a year ago as I have been reading like crazy); like I said, the more I learn, the more I am finding my middle ground of "I don't know" growing. I can lean towards true or false with that middle ground,...but I don't do that unless I have solid reasons.

I can't believe I founded my entire conclusion on a feeling. "I felt the HG"...therefore I know that God lives, the church is true, the BofM is true, the apostles are lead by God, the prophet is true, the scriptures are true, the teachings in the Ensign are true, going on a mission is true, wearing a white shirt is true, not drinking coffee is true, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc....<gazillion more etc>...

What I felt was a feeling. But now the only truth I have is "I did feel something". But, what does it mean?...."I DONT KNOW!"