Faith is a decision

[Analytics]

Somehow, this reminds me of that scene from Dumb and Dumber...

Lloyd: What do you think the chances are of a guy like you and a girl like me... ending up together?

Mary: Well, Lloyd, that's difficult to say. I mean, we don't really...

Lloyd: Hit me with it! Just give it to me straight! I came a long way just to see you, Mary. The least you can do is level with me. What are my chances?

Mary: Not good.

Lloyd: [worried] You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?

Mary: I'd say more like one out of a million.

[pause]

Lloyd: So you're telling me there's a chance... [ecstatic] *YEAH!*

[Scott Lloyd]

Somehow, this reminds me of that scene from Dumb and Dumber...

Lloyd: What do you think the chances are of a guy like you and a girl like me... ending up together?

Mary: Well, Lloyd, that's difficult to say. I mean, we don't really...

Lloyd: Hit me with it! Just give it to me straight! I came a long way just to see you, Mary. The least you can do is level with me. What are my chances?

Mary: Not good.

Lloyd: [worried] You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?

Mary: I'd say more like one out of a million.

[pause]

Lloyd: So you're telling me there's a chance... [ecstatic] *YEAH!*

I see you are a partaker of Scottie's dogmatism.

[Uncle Dale]

...

Lloyd: So you're telling me there's a chance... [ecstatic] *YEAH!*

When I was in high school one of the girls in a class I was taking

"decided" that she would fall in love with the captain of a rival

high school's football team.

I'm not sure how well her plans worked out -- she had previously been

in love with Ricky Nelson, and that didn't go so well.

Can we "decide" to admire a certain public figure, before we really

know that person's life story? Can we "decide" to fall in love with

some other person, based upon a brief "glance across the room?"

Perhaps so -- but it is not the sort of "decision" that I know to

be intimately connected with faith in God.

Perhaps I should try it out though. Perhaps next week I should "decide"

to worship Moloch, and then report back to you folks here how strong

my faith has become in that particular supernatural entity.

Chances are about "one in a million," on that experiment -- but since

everybody's so heated up over the proposition, it's worth a try, I guess.

UD

[Nathair/|\]

I hesitate to pull the "Bigfoot" card, but it fits here.

I don't think I could believe in Bigfoot, or leprechauns, or any number of mystical creatures. Do you believe that if we so chose, we could believe in these things? If it requires a great deal of effort, do you believe we SHOULD choose to believe in these things?

I don't mean to downplay your beliefs. I just want to point out that it is much more complicated than simply choosing to believe. Personally, I cannot choose to believe in Elohim any easier than I can any other mystical being.

I don't have a testimony of Bigfoot, etc., but I chose to believe provisionally in them because I prefer a world in which they or something like them exist. Also, the evidence for them, scanty though it may be, is in my opinion greater than the evidence against.

[HiJolly]

I was looking forward to reading Dr. Millett's testimony, and instead got a lengthy explanation of how he has managed to keep his testimony, based on a decision he made long ago. Ok.

Why did he make the decision to believe in the first place?

HiJolly

[3DOP]

As a young man, I was puzzled about why the religions placed such emphasis on a person's beliefs. It seemed to me at that time no one can be accountable before God for their beliefs. After all, our beliefs, I thought, were independent of our wants. In my youth, I reasoned with myself how I could not fail to believe that nuclear war was a threat by simply wanting it to go away. More than 30 years later, I am convinced that some beliefs are more shall we say, susceptible to manipulation. I have now thought that belief, particularly regarding matters of faith, morals, and philosophy are subject to a form of decision making process. To a significant extent, I could say that we end up believing in what we want to believe.

I do not mean we can ordinarily believe in things that we cannot persuade ourselves has any foundation in reality. But we have the ability to choose between various plausible and popular opinions. Belief is more than a mere exercise of the intellect. It also involves the will, our heart's desires. However, there are very few individuals whose heart's desire can be met by choosing to believe that which seems incredible intellectually. We usually have to maintain a balance between our heads and our hearts. In my life, I know of only one, and it is our self-proclaimed paradigm pirate, Tsuzuki, who if I correctly understand what he seems to say, has mastered the art of completely suppressing his intellect in favor of believing whatever he wants to believe. Perhaps he would describe it differently, and of course I invite him to do so if he should so wish.

It seems to me that the vast majority of us want to maintain a fairly even balance between our intellects and our wills/desires. There is no question, especially after years of sacrifice and investment, that I am intensely driven to want to believe that Christianity and the Catholic faith as I understand it are reflections of reality. I am definitely biased that way. But on the other hand, I also know that I would be abhorred to have any interior suspicion that I have tricked myself into believing what I want to believe. I know I also have a bias in the direction of objectivity and the desire to not fool myself. I am not infallible, maybe I have deceived myself, but I will die one day, and I really want to be right. I don't want to face God having lived most of my life, if I remain firm as I so hope, as a faithful child of the Holy Catholic Church, unless it is true. Even if my consciousness ended with this life, I would sincerely not want to spend it chasing an illusion.

So I think I have to admit, that I could, if I really wanted, find a way out of this belief, this faith in God and His Son and His Church. I have for the time being, decided for God, Christ and Church, and decisions carry a weight of responsibility. There are a couple of Scripture passages that perhaps are more convincing than all of my ramblings as how our dual natures (intellect and will/mind and heart) affect our beliefs, making faith a form of decision. I'll post them in closing:

But all do not obey the gospel. For Isaias saith: Lord, who hath believed our report?

In a flame of fire, giving vengeance to them who know not God, and who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

---Rom. 10:16, I Thess. 1:8 (italics mine)

It seems difficult to me to speak of obedience, unless there is a question of disobedience, and thus, faith is a decision.

Rory

[Obiwan]

I hesitate to pull the "Bigfoot" card, but it fits here.

I don't think I could believe in Bigfoot, or leprechauns, or any number of mystical creatures. Do you believe that if we so chose, we could believe in these things? If it requires a great deal of effort, do you believe we SHOULD choose to believe in these things?

I don't mean to downplay your beliefs. I just want to point out that it is much more complicated than simply choosing to believe. Personally, I cannot choose to believe in Elohim any easier than I can any other mystical being.

You are wrong.... Believing in those things would be based on the "evidences", the Faith, thus it would be a "choice".

[CV75]

In it, he makes the point that having faith in Christ -- and, more particularly, Christ's restored gospel -- is a decision.

Having seen some of the other posts, we may not have much of a choice over what we believe--it seems to come automatically, as the devils also believe as we do, evidently because we were all brought up before our Heavenly Father as spirits and actually had this knowledge thrust upon us. I think we call it belief in mortality because of the veil of forgetfulness and yet we sense the pull of the Light of Christ and its associated knowledge. Belief becomes faith as it develops into a principle of power--when we make and act upon a choice, or make the decision to act according to the Light of Christ, and then in deed act accordingly. So having faith in Christ is a decision because it entails a commitment to act, and actions worthy of that faith.

[salvar774]

I hesitate to pull the "Bigfoot" card, but it fits here.

I don't think I could believe in Bigfoot, or leprechauns, or any number of mystical creatures. Do you believe that if we so chose, we could believe in these things? If it requires a great deal of effort, do you believe we SHOULD choose to believe in these things?

I don't mean to downplay your beliefs. I just want to point out that it is much more complicated than simply choosing to believe. Personally, I cannot choose to believe in Elohim any easier than I can any other mystical being.

I enjoy reading this posts . It is so refreshing to see that others analyze and dissect . I am in a small branch and the members are baby members that just follow and try to understand . I miss the stimulus of others challenging my belief.

I like the subject of faith .

Yes I agree there has to be a decision to believe or not , but the difference in believing a lie or truth is that the truth produces fruit . So yes decide to believe in big foot and do things that you would do if that were true . When nothing happens ( no fruit ) then you should abandon the idea and decide something else .

As for me I made the decision The Catholic church was true but it did not change me or produce any fruit . Now I am a member of the LDS church ( for over 20 years ) . I have changed for the better . My belief in God and Jesus Christ have increased. It produced fruit. So here I am . So decide and act if as it is, then watch for faith to grow or truth to growth in you .

I like the big foot card !

Alvarado

[cinepro]

We can indeed choose to believe the moon landing was a hoax and, with practice, become very well convinced of this belief.

Maybe there are just different kinds of people in the world when it comes to "choosing" what we believe?

Because I know that no matter how hard I tried, I could never, ever believe the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked.

But I could probably raise my kids to believe it was faked.

[Uncle Dale]

Maybe there are just different kinds of people in the world

when it comes to "choosing" what we believe?

...

Although none of my ancestors ever followed Strang, they had some neighbors

who did. I think that those first Strangites truly did simply choose/decide

to follow him and to believe in his Voree plates, etc.

I cannot fathom how promptings of the Holy Spirit would have caused anybody

to have had faith in the pronouncements of J. J. Strang. So, yes, there are

different sorts of people in the world -- and some of them will choose on

their own, to believe certain propositions, because they want to believe.

No gifts of the Spirit necessary for that sort of "faith."

And, if that is "faith," then I've been deceived for several decades now.

UD

[Bunk]

Antoher example of a choice in belief. You could believe that the Lord designed it this way on purpose, or that it more or less naturally occurred.

Can I choose to believe God would not obscure eternally important truths behind such a veil of sophistry?

[Nathair/|\]

Can I choose to believe God would not obscure eternally important truths behind such a veil of sophistry?

You can chose anything you want...as long as you are willing to accept the consequences.

[Uncle Dale]

You can chose anything you want...as long as you are willing to accept the consequences.

I'm not sure it works that way.

I decide to believe that 2+2=5, but almost immediately I'll

know that was a bad decision, and will doubtless change my mind.

Not too many people in this world who chose to believe such

an absurdity and then stick with that belief.

So, perhaps, we need to distinguish two sorts of decisions here --

(1) Decisions which are quickly discovered to be faulty; and,

(2) Decisions that we stick with, even if told they are faulty.

In the second sort of decision I can see your logic played out.

I decide to believe that I can build a flying machine. I make

several attempts, and eventually crash and burn (consequences).

Or --

I decide to be baptized a Mormon, and beyond the veil discover

that the LDS are indeed the one true church (consequences).

UD

.

[elguanteloko]

Maybe there are just different kinds of people in the world when it comes to "choosing" what we believe?

that is how propaganda works. even if you know something is a lie if you repeat it to yourself continuously and act based on it you will become more susceptible to that idea.

[Nathair/|\]

I'm not sure it works that way.

I decide to believe that 2+2=5, but almost immediately I'll

know that was a bad decision, and will doubtless change my mind.

Not too many people in this world who chose to believe such

an absurdity and then stick with that belief.

So, perhaps, we need to distinguish two sorts of decisions here --

(1) Decisions which are quickly discovered to be faulty; and,

(2) Decisions that we stick with, even if told they are faulty.

In the second sort of decision I can see your logic played out.

I decide to believe that I can build a flying machine. I make

several attempts, and eventually crash and burn (consequences).

Or --

I decide to be baptized a Mormon, and beyond the veil discover

that the LDS are indeed the one true church (consequences).

UD

.

What would happen if you were an engineer for Virgin Galactic and decided to believe one day that 2+2=5 and acted on that belief?

[Uncle Dale]

What would happen if you were an engineer for Virgin Galactic and decided to believe

one day that 2+2=5 and acted on that belief?

Possibly my best hope would be that the faulty design

would propel my craft into a wormhole in space that

led to Kolob, or some such desirable destination.

But first of all, I'd have to decide to believe in

"Virgin Galactic" like I believed in fairies -- so

that Tinkerbell would not die.

Lots of deciding to be done, coupled with a double dip

of hoping, all put into a carrying case of absolute belief.

UD

[Daniel Peterson]

I'm happy to see that Bob Millet's entry on Mormon Scholars Testify is generating discussion. That's great. And there have been, and will be, plenty of other entries on the site that are worthy of attention, as well.

I was looking forward to reading Dr. Millett's testimony, and instead got a lengthy explanation of how he has managed to keep his testimony, based on a decision he made long ago. Ok.

Why did he make the decision to believe in the first place?

I invite people to contribute. They write what they write. His entry is a bit different than others on the site. Which is another way of saying that most if not all of the others are more along the lines of what you say you were looking forward to. But his approach is fine, too. It will speak to somebody, very probably, to whom the others would have little to say.

[Mortal Man]

I just read Robert L. Millet's recent contribution to Mormon Scholars Testify.

I just read it as well, though I wish I hadn't.

In it, he makes the point that having faith in Christ -- and, more particularly, Christ's restored gospel -- is a decision.

I'm sure it's a decision for many people, but for many others (including me) it is not.

In my mind, a corollary to that point is that abandoning one's faith is likewise a decision, or in other words, a choice one makes and that one is not forced into.

I did everything I could to salvage my faith. I clung to it like a liferaft. It was ripped away from me against my will.

I have made that assertion in the past on this board and have been criticized for it, most recently a few days ago on the Compound, where there was a link posted to a thread I started last year.

You are free to speak for yourself. I accept your assertion that, for you, belief is a choice. In return, I ask that people accept that, for me, belief in certain foundational claims is no longer a choice.

Briefly stated, I said that so long as we can plausibly defend the restored gospel, our burden has been met, because that maintains a milieu where an individual truth seeker can decide to have faith, as Millet puts it.

I can mostly go along with this. I think what you are saying here is that, when the essential facts concerning some gospel claim are largely unknown, then there is room for faith.

Conversely, I would say that knowledge of the evidence dispels opportunities for faith. (I'm using "faith" here in the sense of belief in foundational religious claims not in the sense of an action principle.)

I think that the ability to choose one's beliefs must be largely genetic. I suspect there's a gene for the ability to limit your attention to what's served in Sunday School and ignore all "troubling" information. This seems to work for ~95% of the population and makes it possible to run a church. I also suspect there's a gene that grants unlimited flexibility to the minds of apologists; thus enabling them to perform awesome feats of mental gymnastics without losing their authoritative composure. I lack either of these genes.

[Daniel Peterson]

I'm sure it's a decision for many people, but for many others (including me) it is not.

I'm not sure that it's always (or even typically) a conscious decision, or a simple one-shot choice.

And I think many, many factors go into gaining and losing faith. But I'm extremely skeptical of any claim that the human will has nothing to do with it.

I think what you are saying here is that, when the essential facts concerning some gospel claim are largely unknown, then there is room for faith. Conversely, I would say that knowledge of the evidence dispels opportunities for faith.

You look at what you call "the evidence," and see it as making faith impossible. Others, looking at the same evidence, not only retain faith, but see the evidence as supportive of their faith.

Why the difference?

Several possible answers suggest themselves. You opt for genetic inferiority on the part of those who fail to see things your way:

I think that the ability to choose one's beliefs must be largely genetic. I suspect there's a gene for the ability to limit your attention to what's served in Sunday School and ignore all "troubling" information. This seems to work for ~95% of the population and makes it possible to run a church. I also suspect there's a gene that grants unlimited flexibility to the minds of apologists; thus enabling them to perform awesome feats of mental gymnastics without losing their authoritative composure. I lack either of these genes.

But you're apparently more than adequately endowed with the superiority gene. Lucky man, to be so awesomely awesome.

[DonBradley]

Scott,

As you know, I am one of those who strongly disagreed with you when you previously argued this idea. I strongly disagreed with you then as a nonbeliever. I will strongly disagree with you now as a Latter-day Saint.

You and I surely share more common ground on the subject of faith now than we did in our previous discussion, and so my degree of disagreement with you on the present topic has very probably diminished. But I continue to find the position you advocate, at least in the form you have previously advocated it, to be both too simplistic to be accurate and too judgmental to be useful.

Certainly belief, and particularly religious faith, have motivational and volitional elements in them. Research demonstrates effects of motivational, as well as evidentiary, factors in the formation and modification of belief. But volition is not, as your model would seem to have, supreme in belief formation and maintenance.

This post is too long for me to take the time to proofread, particularly this late at night; so, I'm sorry, you will have to suffer with my grammatical errors and midstream changes of direction. But I hope to here offer some strong reasons why the case you've propounded that people always and only choose, and unrighteously so, to disbelieve in the Church, is wrong-headed, unfair, and counterproductive.

1) I can see how it appear to you from the scriptures that such is the case, at least when it comes to faith. They can appear to say that faith and non-faith are merely matters of choice, that the issue is one of black and white choice without much "gray" in it. But the scriptures generally appear to speak in this way, about most things, even when such stark and literal readings are demonstrably wrong.

Jesus said God would clothe you like the lillies of the field if you are not of little faith. No people of true faith die naked (or starved, etc.)?

D&C 82 declares: "I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when you do not what I say, ye have no promise."

This passage--which sounds perfectly absolute--applies to a great many things He says, including the many scriptural promises of blessings.

Less than a year later in the Word of Wisdom, He gave a promise: "all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones. ... and shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint. And I the Lord give unto them a promise, that the destroying angel shall pass by them, as the children of Israel, and not slay them."

Taken with as much literalism and absoluteness as you insist on applying to teachings on the volitional nature of faith, or even on a merely straightforward reading, it follows that no one who keeps the Word of Wisdom and the commandments generally will be crippled, suffer fatigue, or die before the term of a full life. Thus the teenaged boy with MD, a young mother who dies of liver cancer, and the man with chronic fatigue--no matter how loudly they may protest their righteousness--are too blame for their condition.

We reject such an interpretation only out of empathic observation of real lives, not because the scriptural promises sound an uncertain note.

The scriptures also say we are free to choose--to act and not to be acted upon save by the judgments of God. Yet, again, few of us (blessedly) really believe either that the severely mentally ill are making all their own choices and are not truly "acted upon" by some mental malady or that their affliction is a just punishment for their personal transgressions. Such a view would not only seem grossly inaccurate, but cruel, and inhibiting of the empathy and care we ought to extend to those thus afflicted.

The point is not, of course, to suggest that beliefs are tantamount to mental illnesses, but to demonstrate that how we interpret the scriptures--even where they seem quite stark and absolute--very often, and very rightly, depends on what the reported experience of other people tells us about how absolutely to take them, and also to demonstrate that too "straightfoward" an interpretation can stunt our empathy toward those who need it.

2) A second point to consider regarding your argument on the chosen nature of religious faith is that if people can choose to believe in something true, they can also choose to believe in something false; and the same arguments that can be used to bind them to believing the one can be used to bind them to believing the other.

Someone who abandons Catholic beliefs because of implausibilities in them has, on your same logic, no call for doing so, so long as there are arguable possibilities that those beliefs may be right. Of course, with a couple millennia and myriad bright theologians and apologists of experience in this area, the Catholic Church can make a reasoned case for and argue well the plausibility of any of its beliefs. And even if an individual Catholic is not familiar with such arguments and reasons, or they have yet to be made, it does not follow that they don't exist. He or she therefore merely chooses to not believe, and ultimately for motivational reasons alone, and not because of genuine "intellectual" reasons.

Thus my dad, for example, who stopped believing in Catholicism well before he encountered the Book of Mormon, merely chose to do so. Yet had he accepted such reasoning as yours, which can as well be---and is---made by Catholics as by Latter-day Saints, he would not have abandoned that belief at all.

Of course, for Catholicism one could substitute here just about anything: Islam; Jehovah's Witness faith (they have all sorts of rationales for their failed prophecies); six-day creationism (after all, an omnipotent God could have just planted those fossils; you name it.

The reasoning you use could potentially box anyone into just about any belief, irrespective of its truth or falsity. And any "logic" that can as well support falsity as truth isn't worthy of the name, and could as well--and perhaps much more easily--damn people as save them.

3) People can come to believe something untrue even while devoutly wanting it to be true. A mother, for instance, whose son went missing in action in Vietnam in 1968 during a pitched battle could believe that her son is still alive. She might, for instance, think he will eventually be released from a secret POW camp, or that he decided to stay and married a Vietnamese girl and is now a grandfather--but has just never chosen to contact his family in the US. (Maybe he got hit in the head and has partial amnesia....) There is no logical argument that would show such a belief wrong. It is pragmatically irrefutable. And there are no doubt comparable cases in which something like this has happened. Many a mother would no doubt want desperately to believe that in some such way her son is yet alive.

But how many of us would say that an MIA's mother who does not so believe has "chosen" to think her son is dead. And how many would approve of the woman's husband berating her for making such a "choice" when--in fact--she doesn't have to? Should probability as well as possibility have some bearing on the woman's beliefs? Certainly not--if we apply the same logic to this belief that you apply to, say, belief in the antiquity of the Book of Mormon. (But why would the logic that works for one belief not apply to another? Does agency exist for some beliefs and not for others?)

4) Another factor is readily raised by this last example: people might reject a belief because they feel they could only maintain it by self-deception, self-dishonesty. As much as the bereaved mother may want to believe her son is alive, she may recognize that such a belief is probably only believing what she wants, rather than what is probable. She might thus, out of a desire to be honest with herself and to not buck up against evident reality, accept the great probability that her son is gone.

wanting to believe a loved one is still alive

At some point along the probability spectrum every self-honest person is going to accept it as probable that something they don't want to be true probably is true. People will differ in where along the spectrum that point lies. And they will also differ in their assessment of what the probability of a given belief is. Thus one person might feel obligated to reject a belief as discredited where another might still comfortably retain it. Perhaps the former individual is wrong in his or her assessment, but it is quite possible to be wrong about such things while being quite honest to oneself, or even because of trying to be honest with oneself.

Here, whether you choose to accept it or not, I speak from experience. While I certainly do not see my formerly coming to disbelieve as a process in which I was free from errors, both intellectual and spiritual, I can tell you that I considered the very sort of thinking you advocate and rejected it out of a desire to be both accurate and honest.

I read a book some time back called How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life by cognitive psychologist Thomas Gilovich. Gilovich says virtually nothing about religion, but documents from numerous studies (some of them his own) how we fall for "cognitive illusions" as easily and systematically as optical ones. Our minds have "blind spots" as it were--and we now know where many of them are.

One of these your posts on the role of choice in religious faith have described, or exemplified, alarmingly well: Gilovich talks about how for something we do not wish to be true we implicitly ask ourselves, when examining evidence on it, "Do I have to believe this?" while for those we wish to believe we usually ask ourselves, "Can I believe this?"

Note again that Gilovich's discussion of this style of thinking had nothing to do with religious faith; rather, he was talking about the biased thinking we tend to bring to any favored or unfavored belief--unless we explicitly guard against such bias.

Discovering that I used exactly such distorted thinking more often than I would have cared to admit, I began to try to root out such thinking, recognizing that such thinking was not about obtaining truth, but merely about pretending reality conformed to my wishes. Wanting truth, and to know that I was being honest with myself, I self-corrected such thinking--in religion as in other areas, and this disallowed me from using some of the apologetic arguments that allowed many others to maintain their faith while mine, at that time, collapsed.

I can see now--with 20/20 hindsight how I might have retained faith all along. But foresight is not 20/20, and I could not then see how to honestly do so.

5) As a final consideration, I'd raise to you the issue of the empathy and usefulness of your approach.

You do not know what each and every doubter or person of lost faith goes through, nor how they arrive at that place. And to pretend otherwise would be as arrogant and foolish as thinking you know what every other person's trials are like, or what it's like to hold every other paradigm or viewpoint under the sun. Last I checked it was Christ, not Scott Lloyd, who took upon himself the pains and afflictions of all that he might understand and know how to succor them. And it makes a mockery of every principle of righteous judgment for you to absolutize about things well outside your own experience.

Rather than really know what happens in cases of lost faith, you infer from absolutistic premises, much as one might "reason" from scripture that Tourette's aflictees "choose" to "act" impulsive ways rather than being "acted upon" by an inner condition or that all who run and are weary-or cannot run at all, or who are taken by the destroying angel, are too wicked to live up to God's promises.

And not only is it morally and epistemically wrong for you to choose--and here we are very much dealing with a personal choice--to extrapolate so forcefully on what is 1) outside your experience and 2) not parallel to how any of us reason in applying the promises of the scriptures, it is also worse than worthless of you to do so from the point of view of positively influencing who disbelieve or doubt. You will no more win people back to faith by such judgments than the older brother would have won back his prodigal sibling by whining about how he alone deserved his father's approbation. Telling people they only stopped believing because they chose to--regardless of what they may have encountered or how little you know of their experience--is not charity, it is not concern, it is not even apologetics; it is foolishness, pride, or a breeding of the two.

Richard Bushman has recently pioneered a wiser approach: what he calls "pastoral apologetics." This isn't an effort to attack or blame the doubter or person of lost faith, but to gently help them see things differently. If you genuinely want to help people to believe, rather than be able to look down at them for not doing so--and continuing to not do so despite your most earnest personal condemnations of them for it--you would be far, far, far wiser to leave behind the vacuous and destructive argument you've been plying, and take up Bushman's trail.

I know this post is strongly worded, Scott. But I write it as you will read it--in full awareness that you have repeatedly written much more strongly worded things on this board--namely, that all who have stopped believing, regardless of how briefly or under what circumstances (details about which you have no concern)--have done so wickedly and under the direct influence of Satan.

To make such strident, and unjust, condemnations is to merit and invite strident, and just, rebuttals.

Cheers,

Don

[DonBradley]

I'm not sure that it's always (or even typically) a conscious decision, or a simple one-shot choice.

And I think many, many factors go into gaining and losing faith. But I'm extremely skeptical of any claim that the human will has nothing to do with it.

Dr. Peterson,

I share this point of view completely. From my own experience, of acquiring, losing, and then (re)gaining faith, supplemented with what I know of others--both personally and through research that has been done on the human mind, faith transitions are complex, with various factors--rational, experiential, motivational, social, moral, and spiritual--going into them.

I am wearied, and irked, when people, either apologists for religion or critics thereof, are certain that motivational factors are everything. Critics will sometimes make it out that believers believe only because they want to--that religion is simple wish fulfillment and nothing more; and defenders of a given faith (and I have encountered this in the Church, in Catholicism, in Evangelical Christianity, and Islam) sometimes portray those who believe otherwise as willfully resisting what they really know to be true. <SIGH>

So it is refreshing to hear a nuanced perspective on what is a complex reality.

Thank you!

Don

[Molloch]

Perhaps I should try it out though. Perhaps next week I should "decide"

to worship Moloch, and then report back to you folks here how strong

my faith has become in that particular supernatural entity.

UD

Aw, shucks.

[Nofear]

When I read the thread title, I was hopeful that it would be about what "faith" is. And, as I understand it, it is very much a decision. I put forth that:

Faith is the choice to believe in the unseen communications that God gives us.

It is not a choice about evidence, facts, figures, arguments, etc. The question is whether or not we'll be loyal to the information that God personally entrusted with us even when the temporal world and our rational mind present things that don't always fit together nicely. While I personally see precious little that is difficult to put together in the Restored Gospel, there are some things. Yet, I choose to believe -- have faith -- in the things God has told me personally.

Again, faith is not simply a choice about any ol' thing (like believing in Big Foot, Molloch, UFO's, etc. etc.). It is a choice about whether or not we'll believe and be loyal to the things God has communicated to us.

[Scottie]

In this, Scottie betrays the quality of dogmatism he finds so lamentable as expressed just a few posts ago with this statement:

I don't believe so. From my observations, it appears that apologists start with the endpoint of "the church must remain true" and make the evidence fit that. I let the evidence lead me where it will. For me, personally, it has led me to believe that the church is false.

Now, I will admit that there are a few perplexing issues which do not necessarily lead to the church being false. I know that some critics would do the exact opposite and start with the premise that the church must remain false and then make the evidence fit that.

I do have bias, just as everyone does, but I try very hard not to fall into that trap. For example, even though JS sealed himself to 14 year old girls, I have seen no evidence to believe that he was a pedophile. I don't know how the BoM was produced. I don't know why JS would rather die than renounce his beliefs.

The bottom line is that I can't just simply "choose" to believe that the troublesome issues don't trouble me. In my mind, that would be intellectually dishonest. I don't understand why anyone would want to choose to ignore troublesome issues and choose to focus on the faith promoting ones.