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I have made these same comments before but I just listened to a comment on a podcast (it was something like “I can’t choose what I believe”) and thought we may have a discussion on the topic. Are we compelled by our beliefs? Are there differences in types of belief (soft to solid)? Does it do any good if we desire or try to change or modify or current beliefs?
I have said before we can choose to believe some things (soft) but can’t effectively deny our “knowledge” of other things. I think I used the example that I can choose to believe any given team will win or lose on Sunday — because it is an unknown. It becomes a lot more difficult to “choose” to believe against something that appears obvious and knowable.
When the topic is the church it becomes much messier. I believe I can choose to see Joseph Smith as a prophet, even if I can’t choose to see him as an always honest and steadfast man. This would obviously be very difficult if my personal vision of “prophet” necessarily included “honest and steadfast” as qualifiers, but my choice lies in how I view and define “prophet.”
There are many other examples. For me, most things spiritual are subjective by nature. I don’t worry about objective truth when talking about spiritual things because I think that discussion completely misses the point of spirituality. I feel like I have the freedom to shape my own spiritual views, even if I can’t choose to deny objective facts. I realize it is the result of a long process and the idea would have frustrated me to no end when my crisis was close and fresh, but I was reflecting on how I view this question today and thought I’d throw it out.
I only have one more minute – my fast answer is… I believe we do. We may not realize we do, but I am coming to the conviction that everything in our life has choice wrapped in it.
Yes, to some degree. I think the problem is that we don’t know how much is choice and how much isn’t – and that inability to understand causes all kinds of issues for us, in every way imaginable.
So, my own stance is not to worry about what we can or can’t choose but, instead, simply focus on choosing to the extent we can – and being gentle with ourselves and others when what we do doesn’t match what we want to be done.
My take is that we believe based on what we know. Knowledge (of something) comes first…then we continue to think and analyze to believe beyond what we know into the unknown. This is where science and religion have common ground, even if where they go from there may part ways.
I cannot believe in “God” if no one has taught me the concept of God. Even if I have a pure desire, I can’t believe in concepts I have no knowledge of. But when I get some truth and knowledge, that gives me the ability to believe in something based on that knowledge.
Here is an example from Ammon and Lamoni:
Quote:Alma 18:
4 And now, when the king heard these words, he said unto them: Now I know that it is the Great Spirit; and he has come down at this time to preserve your lives, that I might not slay you as I did your brethren. Now this is the Great Spirit of whom our fathers have spoken.
5 Now this was the tradition of Lamoni, which he had received from his father, that there was a Great Spirit. Notwithstanding they believed in a Great Spirit, they supposed that whatsoever they did was right; nevertheless, Lamoni began to fear exceedingly, with fear lest he had done wrong in slaying his servants;
Lamoni believed something based on what he was taught.
Quote:22 Now Ammon being wise, yet harmless, he said unto Lamoni: Wilt thou hearken unto my words, if I tell thee by what power I do these things? And this is the thing that I desire of thee.
23 And the king answered him, and said: Yea, I will believe all thy words. And thus he was caught with guile.
24 And Ammon began to speak unto him with boldness, and said unto him: Believest thou that there is a God?
25 And he answered, and said unto him: I do not know what that meaneth.
So…the King can’t really believe in God when he doesn’t know what that means. [Side note: kinda funny that God curses the serpant in the Garden of Eden for guile…but is OK with it if the guile is to trick people to listen to missionary discussions
Quote:26 And then Ammon said: Believest thou that there is a Great Spirit?
27 And he said, Yea.
28 And Ammon said: This is God. And Ammon said unto him again: Believest thou that this Great Spirit, who is God, created all things which are in heaven and in the earth?
29 And he said: Yea, I believe that he created all things which are in the earth; but I do not know the heavens.
30 And Ammon said unto him: The heavens is a place where God dwells and all his holy angels.
31 And king Lamoni said: Is it above the earth?
32 And Ammon said: Yea, and he looketh down upon all the children of men; and he knows all the thoughts and intents of the heart; for by his hand were they all created from the beginning.
33 And king Lamoni said: I believe all these things which thou hast spoken.
…and the story goes on from there. Lamoni couldn’t believe in Heaven until he has some knowledge.
He believed in a Great Spirit…but needed knowledge to connect the teachings of the Great Spirit to the new knowledge of God Ammon was talking about.
Although Lamoni believed Ammon was the Great Spirit…that belief went away when he learned more, and with new knowledge came the choice to believe in new things.
But it doesn’t make sense to choose to believe in something that is unknown.
I think this applies to our church experience. Raised a mormon…I believed based on what I was taught (traditions of my father). When I found things that did not fit in with the things I was taught, I didn’t know what to believe…and a faith crisis or faith journey is born. I don’t know what to believe or if I can believe, or if believing is futile and worthless. I couldn’t choose to believe in something that didn’t feel right because of my inner voice, but I couldn’t choose to believe in something else until I find something else to believe in.
Is there a choice? Yes…but it is based on some knowledge.
With more study and thought and people to discuss things with on this forum…I can get more knowledge about religion and church history and prophets and imperfect church people and how God uses imperfect mortals and alternative views of things, when I learn these things…I can take knowledge of new things and return to believing the church and teachings in a new light based on new knowledge that were difficult for me to consider when I previously was limited by limited knowledge of the church.
I can choose to stay LDS and believe in it…when I have a foundation of knowledge that fits my life and experience and then still allows me to stretch out beyond the knowledge into an unknown area of belief…new belief based on new knowledge that perhaps God knew I needed and couldn’t get when I was stuck where I was before.
If I can’t find new knowledge, a choice to believe in something I know is false is duplicitous and not sustainable.
Orson wrote:I have said before we can choose to believe some things (soft) but can’t effectively deny our “knowledge” of other things. I think I used the example that I can choose to believe any given team will win or lose on Sunday — because it is an unknown. It becomes a lot more difficult to “choose” to believe against something that appears obvious and knowable.When the topic is the church it becomes much messier. I believe I can choose to see Joseph Smith as a prophet, even if I can’t choose to see him as an always honest and steadfast man. This would obviously be very difficult if my personal vision of “prophet” necessarily included “honest and steadfast” as qualifiers, but my choice lies in how I view and define “prophet.”
Heber13 wrote:My take is that we believe based on what we know. Knowledge (of something) comes first…then we continue to think and analyze to believe beyond what we know into the unknown.
I agree with this. Our knowledge is based upon our life experiences. We can interpret our life experiences in different ways and build faith upon our interpretation. This may be similar to our assumptive worldview.
It is the easiest thing in the world to choose to believe what we have been taught our entire lives. We may have interpreted various special moments into spiritual experiences that bolster our worldview. This is just going downstream with the current of our environment. It is harder to swim upstream and maybe imposible to visit a far flung stream in a foreign land.
For example – I could choose to join ISIS but why would I want to? What would it take for me to have faith in the Islamic Caliphate and sacrifice everything to put my shoulder behind that cause? I do not think that there is a path to that belief from where I am now. I cannot choose to believe it. However there are people that do believe it honestly and sincerely.
OTOH, I could conceivably convert to Islam and become a moderate/or progressive Muslim. That still seems like an odd choice for me but I suppose if the stars alligned in just the right way I could choose to believe that message. I would need to have some contact with Muslims and opportunity to be impressed with their lives and teachings.
So yes our choices are limited to the framework of our worldview and our worldview is heavily influeced by our life experiences (and our own interpretation of them). Worldviews can make large changes but that is very timultious and not very common. That is why we call it things like an “assumptive world collapse” or the similar “Faith Crisis.” I believe that we do not choose ourselves into such a condition. It happens when what we “know” because of study or life experience contradicts what we believe to such an extent that the whole thing comes crashing down.
I am therefore a proponent of limited choice.
Old-Timer wrote:I think the problem is that we don’t know how much is choice and how much isn’t – and that inability to understand causes all kinds of issues for us, in every way imaginable. So, my own stance is not to worry about what we can or can’t choose but, instead, simply focus on choosing to the extent we can – and being gentle with ourselves and others when what we do doesn’t match what we want to be done.
I agree. What I have the most control over is making good positive choices within my own framework – leading to positive action. Because I can somewhat understand multiple view points I am in a position to be patient, gentle, and forgiving to the worldviews of others. I can also recognise that not everyone has this ability. For those that can see only from the vantage point of their own woldview I need to be extra patient, gentle, and forgiving because they may be severly limited in their ability to “choose” to understand me and my perspective.
People believe what they really WANT to believe until they are forced to reconsider by the facts. Even then you can choose to view the facts in a biased way. There are different drivers in different people’s lives that make them want to believe one thing or another. All of us are perseverating on Mormonism because of our history and heritage with it and because of our family, friends, and associations who take your belief in it as a membership pass card (literally) for their acceptance of you into their community. If all of us were born and raised Muslim, or Orthodox Jewish, or any other religion, we would be here trying to talk ourselves into believing that set of beliefs or world views. What is really true often takes a back seat to what we want to believe.
And if believing those things, regardless of what they are, makes your life better, then that is a pretty good reason to try to believe.
Orson wrote:I have made these same comments before but I just listened to a comment on a podcast (it was something like “I can’t choose what I believe”) and thought we may have a discussion on the topic…Are we compelled by our beliefs? Are there differences in types of belief (soft to solid)?
Does it do any good if we desire or try to change or modify or current beliefs?…I have said before we can choose to believe some things (soft) but can’t effectively deny our “knowledge” of other things.I think I used the example that I can choose to believe any given team will win or lose on Sunday — because it is an unknown. It becomes a lot more difficult to “choose” to believe against something that appears obvious and knowable…When the topic is the church it becomes much messier. I believe I can choose to see Joseph Smith as a prophet, even if I can’t choose to see him as an always honest and steadfast man… For me, most things spiritual are subjective by nature. I don’t worry about objective truth when talking about spiritual things because I think that discussion completely misses the point of spirituality.I feel like I have the freedom to shape my own spiritual views, even if I can’t choose to deny objective facts. I realize it is the result of a long process and the idea would have frustrated me to no end when my crisis was close and fresh, but I was reflecting on how I view this question today and thought I’d throw it out. It depends on the situation and individual; sometimes people can easily guess or choose between different answers that all make enough sense to them to at least consider as a possibility and in other cases they already strongly believe something and are not very likely to ever change their minds about it (wrong or right). It reminds me of the movie “Life of Pi” where I suspect that most people didn’t have that much difficulty suspending their disbelief about the idea of these animals living as long as they did in the lifeboat with the boy and getting caught up in the story but then when they got to the bizarre island I think many of the same people suddenly thought, “No way, that’s ridiculous.” Basically there are definitely limitations on how much people can really choose to belief and sometimes they either believe something or they don’t without having any real control over it.
That’s why I don’t believe that Uchtdorf’s suggestion to, “doubt your doubts” is ever going to help much because many of the people that like this idea the most already don’t have very serious lingering doubts but many disaffected Church members already tried to doubt their doubts as long as they possibly could but that didn’t prevent them from eventually moving past the uncertainty and finding answers that are already satisfactory enough (for them); but Church leaders obviously don’t want to accept these answers as reasonable and valid simply because they are different from the Church’s truth claims. Telling people they simply need to choose to believe what the Church currently teaches doesn’t sound like a good long-term solution at all, at best it will help prolong the inevitable. The only possible lasting solution I see would be to demythologize the teachings to some extent and back away from some of the claims they continue to make that are fairly easy to discredit or prove false to the satisfaction of many Church members nowadays that mostly give the Church the benefit of the doubt as long as they do simply because they are not aware of many of the worst problems with the Church’s official story.
Good thoughts DA. I think it also matters in social settings. Believing something on my own is one thing. Professing beliefs in front of others, and being rewarded for beliefs that fit the group, or have raised eyebrows for beliefs that are different…are reinforcers or bias factors that make it more complex. It’s not just what we believe, but what we believe others will react to our belief that makes religion interesting. And not all bad.
Regarding “doubt your doubts”…I think that message was just a nudger. Meaning…nudge people to remember to doubt doubts too…not just focus all doubts on beliefs. Nudges some super critical people to stay balanced, and nudges super positive people to remember that the apostle is acknowledging we all doubt…just how the doubt is done is the nudge.
Yes, good thoughts DA. If the message had been, in its entirety, to doubt our doubts, I would have an issue with it.
Its wasn’t, so my issue is with the people who sound-bit it and altered the meaning of what he actually said.
Jonathan Haidt talks about the elephant and the rider as an analogy for our explanations of why we do what we do. From a post I did:
Quote:The elephant goes where it wants to go, and the rider acts as a PR person, explaining where the elephant went. The rider isn’t really telling the elephant where to go and doesn’t in fact know why the elephant went where it did. Likewise, our emotions go where they go, and we are left to explain to ourselves, and occasionally to others, why they went there. To some extent, we can hear this in Fast & Testimony meeting as people explain why they believe. Likewise, in online discussion forums, we hear people’s exit narratives. The story matches the elephant’s movements. Let’s say the elephant flattened a village on its way. Well, the rider’s got a story for that. Or the elephant ends up at a water source. Or the other elephants are pushing the elephant in a direction. All of these are stories about why the elephant did what it did, but we really don’t know. We don’t control the elephant. We sometimes imagine we do, or that we understand it. Haidt would say that’s an illusion.
Perhaps the best thing to do is to realize that our story may not be the whole story, and that our elephants don’t always go the same places as other people’s elephants.
hawkgrrrl wrote:Jonathan Haidt talks about the elephant and the rider
Quote:Perhaps the best thing to do is to realize that our story may not be the whole story, and that our elephants don’t always go the same places as other people’s elephants.
Brialliant! Reminds me of Tolle also…how we make stories.There is an interesting play in how we process things and make our story on what we believe, but based on what we believe, we then see further stories out of what is happening. It often leads to us being happy or sad depending on our beliefs…and we are choosing our beliefs, even at some root level, we may not realize we are choosing it…they’re just our stories of where the elephant is going.
I do think we can try to learn to do some things that help train and steer the elephants…choosing our beliefs and emotions…but are also sometimes reminded we are not as “in control” of them as we sometimes think we are.
And when our beliefs fail us and we see our elephant going somewhere else…we change our story and go with it, and choose a new belief to match where the elephant went.
Mine went to a place where the church is chill…not literal…not evangelical…but more loving and accepting. That’s my church I choose to believe in. I can see others, even members of my family, who don’t see the elephant going the same place, and choose to believe differently, which helps them build a story the church is literally true because it leads to love and accepting. We can be both focusing on the same thing (love, God’s love, being a good person)…even if the story of how we got there is different.
I think we have little choice over our initial impulses. That sudden temptation to eat, to criticize, etcetera. But we do have choice over our beliefs. Where we lose that choice is when we lack self-awareness. Narcissim, arrogance, cognitive dissonance, or other characteristics block self-awareness, making it hard to identify our beliefs so we can choose whether to accept them.
Quote:Tim wrote: People believe what they really WANT to believe until they are forced to reconsider by the facts. Even then you can choose to view the facts in a biased way. There are different drivers in different people’s lives that make them want to believe one thing or another.
The above quote reminded me of someone I know at church. This person wants a perfect extended LDS family. It makes them very happy to think of their family in those terms. The reality of their family is far different. So .. Their mother does something fairly toxic. And this person has a ready excuse for her actions. A brother works a financial scam on another family member. This person just says, ” Oh my dear brother is just being his normal silly self.” At one point, I was talking to this person about their family, and asked how they dealt with the issues. They replied that if they focused on the actions of their family members, it would change how they felt about them .. And that would make their personal happiness less, so they just decided to not think about those things … Because they wanted to have happy thoughts about their family.
I am not wired that way, but it gave me a lot to think about .. To just realize that some people are wired that way.
When people approach their feelings about the Church, I see some of this same patterning. Some do not want to know anything that would make the church appear less than perfect. To hear anything derogatory affects their personal happiness.
Others want to know facts and figures and details … To process through the data and come to a decision.
The two approaches are very different, and there isn’t going to be any healthy dialogue occurring between the two groups. Excellent fact finding is one group is just viewed as a full assault by another group.
Quote:“We don’t believe what we see; we see what we believe.”
I can’t remember where I read that, but it was a LONG time ago. Of course, there are exceptions when we are forced, in some way, to see things we didn’t believe, but, even then, we tend to construct our new view(s) more subjectively than we tend to assume.
I do believe in agency and the ability to choose, but I am not confident I know where the lines is in any given circumstance – even for myself, much less for anyone else.
That is a core reason why I try hard to err on the side of compassion and charity and mercy, if I am going to err. I also think the gap between what we actually are able to choose and what we think we are able to choose is the heart and soul of grace and atonement.
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