Mktavish wrote:So here we are ... with your question ... and it is a valid one !
exactly how is it valid? the thread title is problematic enough without parsing through the silliness of the OP.
self-persuasion? seriously? exactly what self-generated argument is being presented in the OP premise? Besides most self persuasion arguments are positive outcome arguments, not as positioned by Moroni's promise. The widely accepted theory behind self-perception has been that: 1. forced advocacy decreases agreement with the position advocated 2. advocacy in the absence of external pressure results in agreement with the advocated position 3. forced advocacy results in attitudes held by similar others.
none of this agrees with a premise of missionaries exhorting one to pray about the Book of Mormon. This whole silliness about proattidunal and counterattidunal positions with regards to self persuasion is hardly appropriate for this topic.....jus sayin
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
I'd like to go back to the beginning, if I may. Is there any degree of self-persuasion involved in faith? Of course there is; some of us are just more self-conscious of it than others. For example, when asked why I believe in (God, Mormonism), my response is "because I choose to." I'd refer an interested party to William James. For me, it really is that simple. At least, it can be reduced to those terms.
However, we don't really need to make any appeals to Kierkegaard or James to realize this. All we have to do is realize we bring a matrix of psychosocial factors to bear when we look at any topic. These include, but are not limited to: life experiences, education, and culture. I don't know if, as bcuzbcuz asserts, that the fact of asking a question determines the outcome. However, it is that matrix that leads to the question in the first place. To take a very simplistic example, one can't ask a question like "Is the Book of Mormon true?" without having encountered the work. Once the question is asked, we again bring our psychosocial makeup into play when we try to answer it. We can try to set those factors aside and be objective, but we are never fully successful. So there is a sense that we do wind up getting the answer that we want.
It also means there really isn't any mental process that can be generally prescribed for putting doubt aside. Nor do I think there should be one. I agree with moksha that "leaving doubt intact ultimately leads to a more reasonable and satisfying version of faith." Indeed, I think that if a lot more people left room for doubt, the entire world would be a much better place. The only 100% way of leaving doubt aside is to become omniscient, and that ain't happening anytime soon.
If faith isn't following with what you are doing, my suggestion for you is that Mormonism may not be for you, at least not at this time. Tobin's advice really is the best. Do what you know, keep your options open, and you will do well.
{edit to delete redundant line}
Last edited by Guest on Sat May 25, 2013 12:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
tagriffy wrote:If faith isn't following with what you are doing, my suggestion for you is that Mormonism may not be for you, at least not at this time. Tobin's advice really is the best. Do what you know, keep your options open, and you will do well.
Tobin does not think one should believe unless God shows up and tells you to. He has revised this somewhat to having an entity show up but not identify itself or telling you what to believe. He doesn't really follow the idea of follow what you know since he really doesn't know.
While most members claim to know, they don't really know the church is true. Should they stop believing? I do tend to agree that going with what we know is a good idea, but what we really know is so limited it would not leave much if any room to believe. It might be better to go with beliefs that don't do real harm and don't have good evidence against. I do agree to keeping ones options open and willing to reevaluate any belief.
Themis wrote:Tobin does not think one should believe unless God shows up and tells you to. He has revised this somewhat to having an entity show up but not identify itself or telling you what to believe. He doesn't really follow the idea of follow what you know since he really doesn't know.
I am not going to get in the middle of your argument with Tobin, thank you very much.
Themis wrote:While most members claim to know, they don't really know the church is true. Should they stop believing? I do tend to agree that going with what we know is a good idea, but what we really know is so limited it would not leave much if any room to believe. It might be better to go with beliefs that don't do real harm and don't have good evidence against. I do agree to keeping ones options open and willing to reevaluate any belief.
I agree most members don't really know the Church is true; or at least they don't really know what is true about the Church. Most of them just don't think about what they know or how they know it. Nor do they need to. They should not stop believing unless and until the task of believing the Church is true becomes too overwhelming. Before the question is asked, I have no general prescription for that, either.
I would probably put my full stop at "don't do real harm." "Good" evidence and "bad" evidence is also weighed through the psychosocial matrix we use to establish our faith (or lack thereof). Otherwise I basically agree with you as well.
tagriffy wrote: I am not going to get in the middle of your argument with Tobin, thank you very much.
What argument? I am only going by what tobin has said.
I agree most members don't really know the Church is true; or at least they don't really know what is true about the Church. Most of them just don't think about what they know or how they know it. Nor do they need to. They should not stop believing unless and until the task of believing the Church is true becomes too overwhelming. Before the question is asked, I have no general prescription for that, either.
Not sure what you would mean by need or overwhelming. I did not stop believing due to being to overwhelmed. I stopped believing first due to an understanding of the unreliable nature of the spiritual experience and that it is likely biological in nature, and then looking at much of the evidence surrounding LDS truth claims.
I would probably put my full stop at "don't do real harm." "Good" evidence and "bad" evidence is also weighed through the psychosocial matrix we use to establish our faith (or lack thereof). Otherwise I basically agree with you as well.
That's not a good enough reason to not try and weigh the evidence for or against a truth claim. We cannot stop being human, but we can try and limit our bias and prejudices.
tagriffy wrote:I agree most members don't really know the Church is true; or at least they don't really know what is true about the Church. Most of them just don't think about what they know or how they know it. Nor do they need to. They should not stop believing unless and until the task of believing the Church is true becomes too overwhelming. Before the question is asked, I have no general prescription for that, either.
Themis wrote:Not sure what you would mean by need or overwhelming. I did not stop believing due to being to overwhelmed. I stopped believing first due to an understanding of the unreliable nature of the spiritual experience and that it is likely biological in nature, and then looking at much of the evidence surrounding LDS truth claims.
In this case, what I mean by "need" is that most Church members are never confronted with anything that would cause them to call into question the psychosocial matrix that led them to believe the Church is true to begin with. Over in the thread "Fallacy of Too Much Information," J Green was putting it much better than I can. As I already said, I have no prescription for when the task of believing becomes too overwhelming. Perhaps "overwhelming" is the wrong word, but it seems to me that is exactly what you experienced. If I am reading you correctly (and I have a feeling I'm not), something made you start questioning the assumptions that made you believe the Church was true, so you pursued it from a different angle, then concluded the Church really wasn't true. Somewhere along the way, there was a tipping point. I'm not sure whether it was the realization of the subjectivity of spiritual experiences or the further looking at the evidence that served as that tipping point. That tipping point is where it became "overwhelming." I hope this is a little bit clearer than mud.
Themis wrote:That's not a good enough reason to not try and weigh the evidence for or against a truth claim. We cannot stop being human, but we can try and limit our bias and prejudices.
I agree that we can and should try to limit our biases and prejudices. I probably should have mentioned the dangers of using our psychosocial matrices in evaluating a given topic; I just couldn't find a good place to do it. They can be illuminating, but they can also be blinding. This is why I think room should be left for doubt, why we should be willing to keep our options open, and why we should be willing to reevaluate our beliefs. To be sure, we are still going to be bringing our psychosocial matrices into play. But the thing about is that we will have an expanded matrix to be working with--hopefully one that is a little more illuminating than it is blinding.
tagriffy wrote: If I am reading you correctly (and I have a feeling I'm not), something made you start questioning the assumptions that made you believe the Church was true, so you pursued it from a different angle, then concluded the Church really wasn't true. Somewhere along the way, there was a tipping point. I'm not sure whether it was the realization of the subjectivity of spiritual experiences or the further looking at the evidence that served as that tipping point. That tipping point is where it became "overwhelming." I hope this is a little bit clearer than mud.
Realizations about the spiritual took many years. I remember someone commenting on how we don't really know, but believe. I remember when ever he bore his testimony he never said he knew, but always believed. It became obvious the method has major flaws. This just prepared me for when I was ready to look at other evidences. These could be described as overwhelming evidence showing Joseph made it up. I think this helped so that the movement in beliefs was not that traumatic as it has been for many.
Nelson Chung wrote:Hi Tyresias, There are other ways to experience God aside from just a feeling, the way missionaries told you about. For me, my faith is grounded upon a stock of spiritual experiences in the LDS Church. I always knew this, but did not think about it until I read Kierkegaard. This applies to any faith, but Mormonism is particularly appealing because of its ability to transform people's lives.
What is it about Kierkegaard that helped you. I find his writings difficult but interesting. I suppose you use his ideas about faith. In a christian apologetics book , Introducing Aplogetics says using Kierkegaard " from a standpoint of faith, reason in the form of objective historical reasoning is a bad thing" Another " If one based one's faith on these arguments alone, then one would foreever postpone absolute commitment to Christ"
Themis wrote:Realizations about the spiritual took many years. I remember someone commenting on how we don't really know, but believe. I remember when ever he bore his testimony he never said he knew, but always believed. It became obvious the method has major flaws. This just prepared me for when I was ready to look at other evidences. These could be described as overwhelming evidence showing Joseph made it up. I think this helped so that the movement in beliefs was not that traumatic as it has been for many.
There was an article in Dialogue or Sunstone (I've lost my collections and I'm too lazy to look it up online right now) that talked about how talk of "knowledge" in testimony bearing can be a detriment. In a sense, saying something like "I know the Gospel is true," is about sharing a sacramental language; probably most of the people who say "I know" really just mean something like "I believe." I've used the language of "knowledge" in bearing my testimony, but usually the context was an attempt to counter someone else's "knowledge." I don't think I ever had the courage to simply say, "I believe ...." Usually, I preferred something like, "I have a testimony of ...." I my mind at least, that basically split the difference.
Tyresias wrote:I've been considering the advice the missionaries have given me to pray, go to church and read the scriptures and then faith will follow. But it doesn't seem to be working. Is there any kind of mental processes that help you guys put doubt aside?
Read the Bible and pray. Tell God that you are not aware of Him and be honest. Ask for wisdom and understanding concerning God. Ask for direction concerning an event in your life and then let God guide you. If there is no God ---- He can not do these things. You live in a modern world where God is excluded. You were not taught how to live with God. Tell God this (He knows). You need to become dependent on God for everything, including buying a car, house, job, clothes, pets and even finding a spouse... And then you need to be honest with yourself. There are people who would rather not believe in God and they look for excuses.
