Doubting Thomas and Doubting Everything

On a side note, all the apostles doubted Mary when she came back and told them Christ had returned from the dead. I think Thomas is singled out because he was the last one to see Him and so Christ was there to reprove him of his doubting, even though all of them doubted initially

On the subject of “doubting everything”, Renes Descartes may have suggested that, although there is some question if he really meant to doubt “everything” or just pretend to doubt everything so you go through the exercise.

René Descartes (1596-1650) is an example of a rationalist. According to Descartes, before we can describe the nature of reality (as is done in metaphysics) or say what it means for something to be or exist (which is the focus of ontology), we must first consider what we mean when we say we know what reality, being, or existence is. He suggests that it is pointless to claim that something is real or exists unless we first know how such a claim could be known as a justified true belief. But to say that our beliefs are justified, we have to be able to base them ultimately on a belief that is itself indubitable. Such a belief could then provide a firm foundation on which all subsequent beliefs are grounded and could thus be known as true. This way of thinking about knowledge is called foundationalism.

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In order to determine whether there is anything we can know with certainty, Descartes says that we first have to doubt everything we know. Such a radical doubt might not seem reasonable, and Descartes certainly does not mean that we really should doubt everything. What he suggests, though, is that in order to see if there is some belief that cannot be doubted, we should temporarily pretend that everything we know is questionable. This pretence is what is called a hypothetical doubt. To make sure that we take the pretence seriously, Descartes suggests that there might be good arguments to think that such doubting is justified (and thus more than simply something we should pretend to do).

Sometimes we just need an adjustment to our viewpoints, and look at what our foundation is, and rebuild from there. Like layers of the onion, we can peel back the things that maybe we doubt until we find our foundation of what we do believe or choose to believe because it benefits us to do so, and then find that building on that foundation is doable…so we don’t have to resign ourselves to no belief in anything ever.

If we doubt everything, we also must doubt whether we are truly doubting. But that gets us into an endless regress (doubting that we are really doubting that we are really doubting and so on). So the effort to reach an indubitable principle through doubt is doomed from the outset. The only way to find out that we are correct in doubting is to appeal to a public understanding of what doubt means, and that means assuming that there is a really existing world.

Link here

Perhaps this was what Pres Uchtdorf was teaching us when he says

We must never allow doubt to hold us prisoner and keep us from the divine love, peace, and gifts that come through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

I believe that after the pain of being disappointed on prior beliefs, doubts are natural to avoid repeating the actions that led to a painful result. It is part of learning, and shows intelligence.

“Never doubting anything” is very risky and perhaps weak. “Always doubting everything” is lonely and perhaps cowardly. Believing in things again after a broken relationship is also risky, for obvious reasons.

The balance of allowing yourself to intelligently doubt with the courage to believe again is the building blocks of our character.

Doubting Thomas will get a bad rap by those who hold up certainty and faith as the inspiring quality to teach in sunday school.

The unthinking faithful believer who never questions authority or never doubts teachings will be given a bad rap by those who hold up individualism or deep searches for truth as their inspiring quality.

Balance doubt and belief.

There’s a big difference between skepticism and cynicism, IMO.

This is a very painful point for my wife and I — for her, belief and faith are ultra-important. If my faith crisis had ended with the Church, I think she could’ve dealt with it pretty easily. But the idea that I might not believe in Jesus really broke her heart. And I completely get it, because I lived the first 35 years of my life in her exact shoes.

I have another friend who talked to me about faith and belief. One day, he asked me, “What do you believe??” The underlying implication was that if I didn’t believe something, then “I’d fall for anything”, or however the adage goes. And I thought about it. And if you define faith as “believing in something for which there is no evidence”, then I realized that I simply don’t have faith. It’s just not a part of my makeup. And I don’t see any inherent virtue in it, either. I don’t see how believing in something for which there is no evidence somehow makes me a better person. I don’t think that makes me cynical. Now that I’m allowing my brain to enter these new thought patterns, I’m realizing how insane it is to presume that God would put us here, allow us to be bombarded with 100,000 different “one-true” belief systems, none of which has any verifiable evidence, and that he’s expect us to find the exact right one and then force our minds to believe in it. And all the while, certain of our brains (mine, certainly) have a STRONG disposition against believing in random things. If I could really and genuinely force myself to believe things on demand, I would. My life would be SOOOO much easier. But it’s not.

I didn’t realize how much faking faith was a drain on my soul. Now, I’m agnostic about most things, and I realize that it’s totally 100% okay. I can live in the moment, and in a way, I feel like I cherish my time and relationships even more. I’m filled with wonder at the magnitude of the universe, at the near 0% chance of my own existence; I’m in awe of the powerful feelings we feel as human beings, and our ability to connect with each other in a way that brings joy and happiness; I love music even more now for it’s ability to express depth and emotion; and in general, I’m filled with more wonder and amazement at how this all works than I was before.

I hope there’s a God. I hope when I die, I find myself floating through space as a Spirit. I hope that if that’s the case, that I can somehow claw my way through the eternities to being with my amazing family. I hope that God will understand that my pea-brain did the best with what it was given. If God is there, he knows how paltry the evidence of his existence is. He knows how bad the Church looks on paper; and he knows how unreliable feelings are for determining ultimate truth (at least for me). So, I’m hoping that if he’s there, he’ll extend me some mercy.

Anyhow, sorry… that was all about me. Just be you… eternity is a long time. Learn to live and love life as if there’s no afterlife. If there is no afterlife, you won’t spend a millisecond being sad about it. If there is an afterlife, then HALLE-FREAKING-LUJAH! Don’t be cynical… be a kind, loving, happy, and patient soul.

I hope there’s a God. I hope when I die, I find myself floating through space as a Spirit. I hope that if that’s the case, that I can somehow claw my way through the eternities to being with my amazing family. I hope that God will understand that my pea-brain did the best with what it was given. If God is there, he knows how paltry the evidence of his existence is. He knows how bad the Church looks on paper; and he knows how unreliable feelings are for determining ultimate truth (at least for me). So, I’m hoping that if he’s there, he’ll extend me some mercy. Anyhow, sorry… that was all about me. Just be you… eternity is a long time. Learn to live and love life as if there’s no afterlife. If there is no afterlife, you won’t spend a millisecond being sad about it. If there is an afterlife, then HALLE-FREAKING-LUJAH! Don’t be cynical… be a kind, loving, happy, and patient soul.

Beautiful. Just Beautiful!

My shelf simply can not hold one more thing to accept on faith that goes against what feels right or true to me. How do you and your DW reconcile your skeptical beliefs that break her heart? This is something I really struggle with and it’s hard for DW and I to even talk about.

In regards to Jesus, I love the metaphor of our Heavenly Father condescending to be born as a helpless baby, to experience the trails and vicissitudes of this mortal life, and finally to die horribly in order to fully redeem all of His wayward children. What an awesome depiction of a Father God. That is someone I would gladly worship with songs of joy and praise. Is any of it real and what does any of that have to do with the historical Jesus? I have no idea. “Jesus” for me becomes shorthand for my hope in this type of invested, loving, saving god. I am totally agnostic about a resurrected Jesus with physical body (including a beard and the torturous marks of his death) looking down from heaven.

I love the idea that the most important personal relationships that we experience in this life will endure in some form beyond this life.

I hope in faith for things that I have no conclusive evidence for but that do feel “right or true to me”. They resonate with me and help to bring meaning to my life.

I’m just thinking of them sitting around drinking, intoxicated, and talking gospel principles. Is that what was happening?

Regardless, maybe to more to your point, was secret knowledge given to the person who doubts that he might learn? Maybe.

Good post, DC. Thanks for sharing.

Hi StayLDS community:

I feel like I should apologize. I’m a big time lurker here, although posting for me comes in spurts. So often this community has given me wonderful feedback and I don’t reply. I often have varying reasons for not responding but most often it’s a busy schedule followed by a period when I decide I need to take a step back from associating with the “Mormon world.” However, I always go through and read responses after I’ve posted. Thank you to everyone who provided their thoughts.

Hey university,

From your previous posts, I think we may be roughly the same age, and in the same boat. So I can’t offer you any promise of any beautiful islands I’ve landed on, but I can commiserate on how rough the seas feel and what living on the ocean has felt like for me.

DancingCarrot,

I feel the same when I read your posts. It’s nice to at least have someone to commiserate with

For months and months, I told myself that I wasn’t angry at the Church or any of the members, but that was mostly because I didn’t want to identify as an angry ex Mo. But I’ve found that we can’t run far from ourselves for too long, if even we can at all. Granted, my anger is indeed coming out. But because I was so hell bent on making sure I wasn’t bitter, I’ve learned coping skills to see where I need to own up to responsibility or defect to circumstances beyond any of our control (etc…). I do want to let you know that it’s not bad to be angry and if your anger is expressed as cynicism, then express it. It’s a part of you, for whatever reason, and the more you allow yourself to be a full range of a human being, the quicker you’ll be able to see what’s really you, what you really need in your life to be whole, and what’s outer fluff that you don’t need to pay any attention to.

While I think I’m out of the “anger stage” right now, I did experience it in the earlier stages of my faith crisis…but it was more of a love-hate thing occurring when I was finally accepting how frustrating “the Church” had become for me. However, it didn’t build up into the cynicism I was feeling at this point when I made this post for a long time. I suppose it took me years to finally boil into the “anger/cynicism” stage that I was in a few months ago. I also have never wanted to be the “anger ex mo” which I think has been mostly a good thing for me in impacting how I behave and how I handle my relationships.

I can’t say the cynicism is completely gone now, it’s just shifted. I’m definitely in the mourning process and boy, is it excruciating. But the words of encouragement to allow myself to feel the full range of a human being were what I needed to hear. Thank you.