NOM

As I have stepped back from the church, I've very often found myself wondering how I was so gullible to believe so much of what I now believe is false.

I recently read a report which looked into why people run away, or actually hide from facts. The report showed that when people’s beliefs are threatened, they often take flight to a land/place where facts do not matter. In scientific terms, their beliefs become less “falsifiable” because they can no longer be tested scientifically for verification or refutation.

The report, recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, examined a slippery way by which people get away from facts that contradict their beliefs. Of course, sometimes people just dispute the validity of specific facts. But it found that people sometimes go one step further and they reframe an issue in untestable ways. This makes potential important facts and science ultimately irrelevant to the issue.

The study took 117 religious participants and read to them an article critical of religion. Believers who were especially high in religion were more likely to turn to more untestable “blind faith” arguments as reasons for their beliefs, than arguments based in factual evidence, compared to those who read a neutral article. So, as I stated earlier, people run away, or actually hide from facts.

Members of the church that I have had discussions with push back with "blind faith" when the facts were presented to them. It is a natural reaction and from what I now see (with my new eyes open) the church plays on this reality through the Ensign, books "written" by GAs, and clearly conference talks. One would hope that objective facts could allow people to reach consensus more easily, but like in U.S. politics we are more polarized than ever. Could this polarization be a consequence of feeling free of facts?

I also recently read an article by Stephen Fry, and there were some quotes by him that made me think as well:

“The incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.”

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”

I always thought that if the gospel was really true, it should be able to stand up to any logical criticism. As it turns out, it can't. When I have tried sharing this with my DW, she quickly goes to "the land of magical thinking". I cannot believe in a god that does ridiculous and harmful things seemingly on a whim. Polygamy to me, especially the way Joseph and Brigham practiced it, is abhorrent and logically indefensible. Every time DW and I discuss it though, it's always, "we don't know, we'll find out on the other side, god is mysterious" when the logical arguments run out. It's maddening. I have to keep reminding myself that I once had the blinders on too.

Blind faith is.."yeah but...yeah but"...the instill ed gospel runs deep and one will actually go around anything that is logical to make it work. This is why I admire all of you because it is also a very painful and sometimes long transition.

I never really asked myself that question, I suppose it's possible but I think there was a stronger drive; for me it was more like "the wrong approach to evidence." What I thought was critical thinking or free thinking turned out to be something entirely different. It wasn't until heavy focus on mathematics that I began to really understand thinking from first principles, which led into approaching a more general type of logic the same way. It was then that I realized I had no solid foundation for belief in anything, and had to start from a "blank perspective."

I suppose that could be likened to "blind faith" because even though I thought I believed in god and the atonement and the church through good reasoning, I was just using simplistic internal rationalization for what just seemed more likely, not what reality was reflecting.

To am extent I think it was blind. It certainly was faith. That faith began when knowledge and proof ended. For example when the anachronisms in the BOM came up, I just imagined that the proof had just not yet been discovered. When BofA problems came up, it was just that JS was inspired. I just had to go with faith and close my eyes to hide the cognitive dissonance.

However for me, my shelf began to fall the hardest with the OT as I realized that A&E could not have existed 6k years ago, that a global flood was impossible, that evolution is true, and that the god of the OT was an A$$#0\€.

That let me further explore Mormonism with open eyes. All the FAIR and apologetics straw-grasping explanations just didn't work anymore.

So, yes, it was just blind faith. I once was blind, but now I see. I was lost along the straight and narrow, holding onto the Iron Rod, and now am found by truth which has set my soul free.

Sadly I still live in the middle of this village with believing family, so I have to deal with that.

Oh well. All I can hope is that DW follows at some point. I just don't know how much longer I can keep a TR.

Mad Jax wrote: ↑Sun May 14, 2017 7:17 pm I was just using simplistic internal rationalization for what just seemed more likely, not what reality was reflecting.

I honestly don't know how many times I taught Alma 32:21 "If ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true."

Now, from a logic stand point, the lesson should have focused on "What is in fact not seen but true, and how do we know then it is true?" Of course the response would be, "You just know, you feel the spirit."

Then how do you tell someone who is of a different faith that what they are "feeling" as to the truth of their religion is false? Again, logically we cannot know what they are feeling and therefore accept our feeling in blind faith.

To me it is a Catch 22 that is hung out there by the church, if you don't feel the spirit is telling you the truth then you are not living, or asking, correctly. You need to accept the church is true, based on blind faith.