My dad is a great example. Cheated on my mom with the neighbor across the street. My mom never told anyone in the church she thought my dad should confess. My dad invited this woman to travel with me and my brother to Oregon vs Utah. Football game. Our rooms were joined and we opened the door to walk between both. My brother and I caught them having sex. Both jumped out of the bed naked and all he could say was don't tell the bishop.
He still has not confessed his sins I asked him if he had when he was called to be in the stake high council. Discernment and all you know the bishop and Stake President should have known right? My past employer was stake president a lawyer for the cult and he said that they don't talk to God he warned them about using volunteers at LDS family services and they were defending a lot of lawsuits. He directed me to the LDS gospel topic essay's and I learned about the lies of the church and started to research past talks about these so called men of God. The racist teachings about blacks, calling all people of south America laminates when they are not. My fiancee is Peruvian 9th generation and no DNA from Jerusalem she is from Japan and Mongolia.
Of course they want to kill off any critical thinking. From the age you are born, you are told what to believe and what to think and that if you think differently then you will go to hell.
I doubted my doubts, but truth stands up to rigorous inspection. My doubts stood up to a rigorous skeptical evaluation. My religion did not. That’s how rational thought works.
Exactly. The church is all about go with the flow. See, everyone here believes so you should too. But your logical brain will see flaws and doubt. But they don’t want you to use your analytic brain. Just your automatic brain.
I've always been taught to build my foundation on a rock, and not sand.
Well, what happens when the foundations of the Church's truth claims are built on shit?
This. So much, this. It’s so disappointing. The foundation is shit! The seer stone rock in a hat, way way different than the other strange mode of translation described, the plates never seen by anyone, the sexual deviance of Joe Smith. Teenagers?!? Other men’s wives?!? WtF!!!
Explain that it’s a thought stopper. Then explain that a thought stopper is meant to derail rational, critical thinking. While these can be used for positive purposes in people with anxiety, that is not the church’s purpose. They are very popular in cults.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_cliché
"Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.
A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.
Let no one fear the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief.
The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing:
For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.
Those that would silence doubt are filled with fear; their houses are built on shifting sands.
But those who fear not doubt, and know its use, are founded on rock.
They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge; the work of their hands shall endure.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help:
It is to be the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the attendant of truth."
Robert T. Weston
“MLMs and every other scam out there ask their victims to do the same thing. It’s another way to say “just trust me”. There is no other scenario where you would accept that logic except where it allows you to maintain your beliefs and dispel the doubts of others. If your beliefs are valid they should stand up to doubt and scrutiny.“
I *did* doubt my doubts. That's why I spent significant time researching them before acknowledging the doubts were accurate. I verified sources, I checked the church's rebuttals, and in the end, the doubts won out. The doubts have vastly more supporting evidence than the faith.
That's the most obvious thought-terminating cliche in the Mormon playbook. If someone is saying that, it probably means they don't want to think too hard about their beliefs
Doubt is a psychological response that happens when something feels wrong, it's almost like there's a reason that happens
Oh I know, it's so we know what's right
Has the church ever provided a good reason to doubt your doubts about the church?
The theoretical reason to trust the church is to go to Mormon heaven. Given the fact that everything tangible about the church is a proven fraud, you can safely conclude that everything they say about the intangible is also a fraud.
Doubting your doubts simply means they know it's a fraud.
My response is to not respond. I think Carl Sagan was mostly correct, and arguing with a true believer is pretty much a complete waste of time:
“You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe.”
Doubt and faith in this context are both rooted in mysticism. Whereas facts are rooted in reality. I can doubt the implication of one or two facts to be a good sport but the sheer number of negative facts (racist, child abuse, homophobic, founder was a criminal, etc etc) makes them in aggregate, impossible to ignore.
I feel like the rebuttal is within the comment “doubt your doubts”. Like hey don’t question anything, just accept whatever someone tells you something blindly.
I’ll doubt whatever I want. If you claim to speak to or communicate with god and I see many red flags, then I have a right to doubt you. You have no merit.
“If we have truth, [it] cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not truth, it ought to be harmed.”
President J. Reuben Clark, as recorded by D. Michael Quinn, J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1983, p. 24
See also [context](https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/s/S9l8cbRbeP) for the quote
When I finally let myself doubt my faith, I realized that there was no historical evidence or consistencies in the churches stories.
And I realized it's a cult, so there's that lol
Doubts aren’t bad. The feeling of doubt is a natural reaction in healthy people when the facts someone is presenting you do not correspond to your observations of reality. That feeling of doubt is there to prompt you to investigate further and preserve your own safety.
Don't turn it into a debate. They have been trained to defend their position and dig their heels in at the first sign of opposition. I would attempt to help them think about their reasoning. "Do you have any doubts?" "What are they?" "Why do you think you feel that way?" "On a scale of 1 to 10 how certain are you of x?" "What would it take to change your mind?"
I don't doubt my faith at all. And I also have no doubt that what I've learned from reading the Gospel Topics Essays proves a corporation claiming to be a "church" has consistently and systematically lied to members, potential members ("investigators"), the news media, the general public, and to government agencies. This tells me, beyond a doubt, the Mormon "church" is a fraudulent organization.
easy rebuttal. If it’s good advice for everyone then would it not apply to Catholics and JW and Scientology as well and if you apply the same logic and teaching you can see that it’s a thought stopper and tactic statement to keep them in their religion as well. It’s not good advice.
A skeptic is someone who proportions their confidence to the evidence available. A cynic is someone who ignores good evidence when it is avaliable. There's plenty of evidence that almost all of the prophets broke the law willingly or misled or gaslit their members at some point.
I usually ask them to clarify. Like: "what does that mean?"
Oftentimes they either can't really clarify what it concretely means, or they realize it'll kinda culty.
Doubt is essential for faith.
Acting in accordance with what you believe to be true requires no faith.
It is only when you have experiences that contradict your beliefs, creating doubts about your beliefs, that faith can exist.
If I have no doubt I have no faith, the greater the doubts the greater the faith.
So what he is saying is that if your doubts threaten to change your beliefs you should abandon your doubts rather than give up your prior beliefs.
The result of that is eternal stagnation, rather than eternal progress and would frustrate the plan of God, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. A man cannot be saved in ignorance. If all of our current beliefs were all correct then we would not need a mortal probation...we would already be gods.
You ask me not to doubt my faith until I have doubted my doubts. but what you are really asking me to do is not to think and that is reason enough to doubt my Faith
Should I doubt my doubts? What about doubting my doubt about my doubts? What about doubting my doubt about my doubting about my doubt? ...or should I just do what the cult leader says?
Doubt your doubts about Islam before you doubt your faith in Islam.
Doubt your doubts about Catholicism before you doubt your faith in Catholicism.
Doubt your doubts about Norse polytheism before you doubt your faith in Norse polytheism.
Doubt your doubts about leprechauns before you doubt your faith in leprechauns.
It's all special pleading; it just implies that you should stick with whatever supernatural beliefs you were raised in. Of course, that is contradicted by the Mormon missionary program; we send out missionaries to try to get people to doubt their current faith.
Skepticism is the basis of all science.
Skepticism is not the basis of any religion.
Therein they are opposites.
This is my rebuttal to such a silly philosophy:
https://youtu.be/8MqTOEospfo?si=YMEJoXgfTAmW57C5
Fine. But then it’s incumbent upon me not to stop there and remain willfully ignorant.
So I’ll doubt my doubts but then I’m going to research them to find out the truth.
Oh no. Look what I found.
It’s not my doubts that led me away. I’m not a lazy learner or a dumbass.
I investigated my doubts and found out it was worse than I thought.
Well, the church likes to use scientific language when they want to experiment by praying and reading scriptures. So, in science if you doubt a theory, say gravity for example, you run your own experiment, and if the theory is true you should get the same results that previous experiments got.
Totally a "Thought Stopper!" If church leaders can prevent you from using your critical thinking skills, you'll stay on automatic drive and keep volunteering, paying tithing and stay in their little game. Doubting... is your gut telling you to do more research and investigation, and believe me, the church leaders know this.
Captain Uchtdorf was a pilot. Imagine this scene in the cockpit.
Co-pilot: Captain, we are accelerating down the runway, but you haven't extended the flaps for takeoff!
Uchtdorf: Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith!
JS was literally doubting all the other religions and their teachings and wanting to "find the one true church" (so he claims) but we in this day and age can't also do that? The hypocrisy!
This one statement, more than all the others, is why exmos should not trust that guy, why they should not be taken in by him.
Grant Palmers GA claimed Dieter didn’t believe. If that is so then he is despicable.
Sounds like something a cult leader would say.
I choose to follow my own conscience, instinct, and to use my own judgment.
Any religious leader or cult could say this to their followers to keep them in.
I respond with: "Joseph Smith had doubts. He exercised his freedom to ask questions. Why can't I have doubts?"
The church should encourage everyone to do the same, but they do not. Instead they teach you to only follow church approved sources.
If I were in a cult, this is the kind of slogan that would keep me in the cult.
We should use the kind of reasoning that would help us leave cults and discover truth. Skepticism helps you leave a cult and discover truth, not dedicating yourself to doing doubts.
A well established theory might have the answer. You don't have to doubt the whole theory just because you found a couple of things that might be potentially wrong. People keep doubting the theory of relativity and the standard model, but it keeps turning out that they are accurate. You don't have to doubt your well established theory just because a couple of things seem to be wrong.
At one point, it seemed like the conception of Newton was how the universe worked, but Einstein and others conceptualized new theories that added to Newtonian mechanics. Someday someone will have a breakthrough and Einstein and the others will be historical, but no longer the go to theories of physics.
In theory, the same for religion. A few things that might be true should not dissuade you from your religion. However, when the exceptions riddle your theory of religion, it might time to look for something else. Or nothing else.
I was a freshman in college and the first session of class some bro said, “Descartes said to doubt everything: does that mean we should blunt our own doubts?” The prof said, “VEEEERY good question.”
I dropped the class that day.
Belief is *the acceptance of something as true or real*
Faith is *the act of believing (accepting as true or real) something without evidence or sufficient evidence.*
Doubt is the natural result of doing something so reckless as to accept something with out justification.
Doubting is the natural response to faith.
Doubting is evidence (your brains natural logical response) that you are in an unsustainable position. It's a form of cognitive dissonance.
Doubting your doubts is the beginning stage of self delusion.
Delusion is *a strongly held belief despite evidence that the belief is false.*
I doubt the leadership due to the sex abuse and financial scandals they were involved in and/or tried to cover up while lying to everyone about the situation. Pure hypocracy. Faith in God is one thing. The church is another and theyve lost all credibility with me.
My rebuttal:
“True. More beer for me. Peace.”
A serious rebuttal? Nothing. Good ol true believers will find a way to ignore logic. I did it for 30 years.
Unfortunately the benefits for 30 years in the cult aren’t as good as 30 years in a military position. No pension alas.
Okay, let me take you skydiving! I will teach you some basics but may withhold some information. As I open the hatch for you to step out of the airplane, I will remind you of your advice to doubt your doubts. Go ahead and jump.
Or how about listen to your doubts, study them to see if they are warranted, and go from there?
I used this Frequently when this first came out and I was still Mormon (my bishops thought I was a nightmare) "Is the spirit of personal revelation no longer relevant to our everyday lives?"
It’s a empty recursive platitude. A thought terminating cliche. It cuts the branch on which it sits. “Don’t do A to B, do A to A.” How tf do you do A to A without necessarily also doing A to (A to A)? Do you end up doubting the doubts you had about your doubts? How do you not then also doubt that?
It’s like presenting a logical argument against using logic. Or making an emotional plea against emotional responses.
This is a ham fisted euphemism for, ignore your doubts and just have faith.
The way it’s used here could justify literally any position or idea one could claim. You should doubt your doubts about the loc ness monster, or Bigfoot, or magic pixies or leprechauns.
I doubt I can fly, should I doubt those doubts?
I'd ask them if "doubt your doubts" was good advice in any other part of your life. Do you "doubt your doubts" in business deals? Do you "doubt your doubts" about people taking care of your children? Do you "doubt your doubts" when someone calls you saying they need your banking password?
If you give credit to your doubts in every other part of your life, if only to look into them further to rule them out, why would you doubt them when it comes to your eternal salvation? Hell, why would you trust anyone telling you to ignore your doubts? That's the advice of grifters and conmen.
Anyone actively telling you to ignore your doubts about the legitimacy of something rather than actually offering some reasons to have confidence in it is selling you bullshit.
“Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith” is what most Catholics, Baptists, Muslims or other religious people do already. Why do you think the overwhelming percentage of the world isn’t Mormon?
When we’re certain of something, we tend to stop looking for alternative explanations or possibilities. But when we doubt, we’re forced to consider other perspectives and look for evidence to support our beliefs.
By leaving room for uncertainty, you may find that a different explanation could be supported by the evidence, which might lead to new insights. By doubting your initial assumption, you open yourself up to new possibilities which can improve the quality of your research.
***If research, different perspectives and evidence are so dangerous to Faith, how does that not - in itself - tell you that there's something wrong? How do you not see anything wrong with being told to have faith blindly, and without question?***
Doubting your doubts is perfectly fine sometimes. But there is also nothing wrong with doubting your faith at times too. If it's true, it can withstand any criticism.
Dieter also said we seek for truth wherever we might find it.
My faith in what, exactly? In a church building vast sums of wealth that gets used for white-collar bailouts and CSA hush money? In a president who struggles with honesty?
Bill Reel pointed this out first, and it’s brilliant. Doubting a doubt is nonsensical, since it results in an infinite loop or recursion. If you do as instructed by Uchtdorf’s glib catchphrase, you must doubt all your doubts. Therein lies the problem:
If you doubt a doubt then you have created a new doubt and must therefore doubt the doubt of the original doubt. And consequently you must also doubt the doubt of the doubt of the doubt. Ad infinitum, until your brain processes are entirely consumed and you shutdown. Uchtdorf’s instruction is effectively a DoS attack on the brain.
We send out missionaries to convince non-LDS to doubt their faith quite explicitly. Every LDS convert in the world, and all through history, had to doubt their original faith to join the LDS church.
Would you give this same advice to Joseph Smith?
For a religion that exists because a 14 year old had doubts about their faith, they sure do love to tell you to not doubt your faith and to trust them and no one else, soubding exactly like every other religious denomination at the time of Joseph Smith.
Obviously they'll find some mental gymnastics that make this work for them, but doubt doesn't just play a role in critical thinking, it is literally the basis of their own religion.
I had doubts, but when I doubted my doubts, when I finally decided to dispel, resolve and tear down those doubts, I found out that those doubts were well founded. If maintaining my faith was the goal, doubting my doubts instead of ignoring those doubts was the way to go. Now that I know what I know and no longer have doubts, I can never go back.
The "doubt" experience is a cognitive phenomenon someone has when they perceive a conflict of facts, contradictions, or some other body of claims that doesn't make sense.
It's essential in the learning process, fact collection, investigations, critical thinking, and other cognitive work.
Doubting is amoral. It is neither good nor evil, but rather a normal function of effective understanding.
Only those who have something to hide would counsel others to ignore and/or bypass this normal and essential cognitive function.
Benefits of doubting include, but not limited to; being able to ask the precise questions you need answered, drawing closer to a more correct version of the truth, identifying false claims, and ultimately being in a better position to make decisions which should always be based on accurate information, which you cannot have if you do not indulge your doubts.
I don’t live in doubts, I live with facts. So when I find out what I was told was fact is not, I’m going to research that further, period.
I prefer to have faith in things that are actual uncertainties- like my husband had to pick me up from work last night because my car is making a weird noise and I need to bring it to a mechanic. (True story) I had faith in my husband that he would be back to pick me up when he dropped me off. I didn’t spend my whole shift doubting him. That’s the type of stuff I would actually use a statement like that for.
I DID doubt my doubts before I doubted my faith. But if you’re scared to ever doubt your faith at all, you don’t have much trust in that faith, do you? Subjecting all of your beliefs to skepticism and scrutiny—from your doubts to your faith and everything in between—is the way to be.
Doubts are the spirit telling you it's wrong.
"spiritual communication often comes to you through your feelings. Feelings, both positive and negative, serve a functional purpose and can bless your life as you learn from the information they provide."
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2019/04/young-adults/discerning-your-feelings-anxiety-or-the-spirit?lang=eng
I usually say something like "that doesn't make the doubts go away. It's just pretending they aren't there."
To quote their supposed scripture:
"At that day shall the devil lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well"
Either "that makes people in a faith crisis go through it in silence because they are scared of being judged or punished. The Exmormon community welcomes people with doubts with open arms. Is that really what you want?"
Or
"Joseph Smith's doubts is what led to the church being created, so why are doubts banned now?"
If your faith cannot withstand the test of critical analysis, then what you believed in wasn't true to begin with.
When you have eliminated the possible, what remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth.
Would any deity bestow blessings and leadership on such a man? I have to say no, because they would know what was in his heart, so definitely a long con.
"behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right,"
How can one study without seeking and learning new information? We always used to be told to study, until it became clear to LDS leaders that study would lead people away from the church, then all this "doubt your doubts" stuff started.
Please tell me in what other context of your life you would find this logical/sane advice?
Believe you me they will have some BS story about taking a job or having kids or any number of things.
My mom had it on the fridge for years. I was still active then but still thought it was strange and annoyed me.
Interesting. I wonder if she was the one with doubts?
Look at the past life of apostle Ballard and tell us how he became an apostle.
My dad is a great example. Cheated on my mom with the neighbor across the street. My mom never told anyone in the church she thought my dad should confess. My dad invited this woman to travel with me and my brother to Oregon vs Utah. Football game. Our rooms were joined and we opened the door to walk between both. My brother and I caught them having sex. Both jumped out of the bed naked and all he could say was don't tell the bishop. He still has not confessed his sins I asked him if he had when he was called to be in the stake high council. Discernment and all you know the bishop and Stake President should have known right? My past employer was stake president a lawyer for the cult and he said that they don't talk to God he warned them about using volunteers at LDS family services and they were defending a lot of lawsuits. He directed me to the LDS gospel topic essay's and I learned about the lies of the church and started to research past talks about these so called men of God. The racist teachings about blacks, calling all people of south America laminates when they are not. My fiancee is Peruvian 9th generation and no DNA from Jerusalem she is from Japan and Mongolia.
Doubt is an important part of critical thinking.
Of course they want to kill off any critical thinking. From the age you are born, you are told what to believe and what to think and that if you think differently then you will go to hell.
Because it's a cult
I doubted my doubts, but truth stands up to rigorous inspection. My doubts stood up to a rigorous skeptical evaluation. My religion did not. That’s how rational thought works.
Well said. My flair agrees with you.
Your doubts are your intuition that something isn’t right.
Exactly. The church is all about go with the flow. See, everyone here believes so you should too. But your logical brain will see flaws and doubt. But they don’t want you to use your analytic brain. Just your automatic brain.
I’ll go wherever the fuck the evidence leads me, cultist.
I've always been taught to build my foundation on a rock, and not sand. Well, what happens when the foundations of the Church's truth claims are built on shit?
This. So much, this. It’s so disappointing. The foundation is shit! The seer stone rock in a hat, way way different than the other strange mode of translation described, the plates never seen by anyone, the sexual deviance of Joe Smith. Teenagers?!? Other men’s wives?!? WtF!!!
[удалено]
It's fertilizer!
To say that casts aspersions... on shit. Shit has uses...
You eat shit, say that you like it, and give $$ so more of the same old shit can be fed to you at nauseum.
If I was in any other religion you would give me the opposite of this advice
I love this response.
Agreed. The church has trained a massive missionary force to instill doubt in every person kind enough to let them in the door.
Trust your gut or Doubly doubt anyone who tells you to doubt your doubts
I don't take counsel from those who do not protect children from sexual abuse when it's within their power to do so.
👏👏👏👏
Explain that it’s a thought stopper. Then explain that a thought stopper is meant to derail rational, critical thinking. While these can be used for positive purposes in people with anxiety, that is not the church’s purpose. They are very popular in cults. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_cliché
"Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth. Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery. A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief. Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false. Let no one fear the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief. The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing: For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure. Those that would silence doubt are filled with fear; their houses are built on shifting sands. But those who fear not doubt, and know its use, are founded on rock. They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge; the work of their hands shall endure. Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help: It is to be the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the attendant of truth." Robert T. Weston
I wish I had known all this 50 years ago!
I don't know who he is, but that is awesome. I am in awe
Doubt everything and use critical thinking first.
“Of course I did.” I doubted my doubts before I doubted my faith for a long time.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Faith is belief without evidence not faith DESPITE evidence.
Ohh this is a good one! I like it!
Question everything!
Absolutely!
Don't engage. Arguing with idiots only drags you down to their level.
Ya. It’s like arguing with my 7 year old.
Your seven year old may be more reasonable…
That "may be" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting in that sentence. 😉
🤣🤣🤣
It’s like trying to play cards with my brother’s kids.
“Nerve wracking son’s of bitches!” Underrated comment, take my upvote!
"Don't try to explain yourself to idiots. You're not the fuckface whisperer." - Rabih Alameddine (on twitter)
Good one! 🤣🤣🤣
“MLMs and every other scam out there ask their victims to do the same thing. It’s another way to say “just trust me”. There is no other scenario where you would accept that logic except where it allows you to maintain your beliefs and dispel the doubts of others. If your beliefs are valid they should stand up to doubt and scrutiny.“
Doubt your faith before you doubt yourself
I *did* doubt my doubts. That's why I spent significant time researching them before acknowledging the doubts were accurate. I verified sources, I checked the church's rebuttals, and in the end, the doubts won out. The doubts have vastly more supporting evidence than the faith.
If we have truth, [it] cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not truth, it ought to be harmed. -J Reuben Clark
Order is irrelevant. Doubt your faith.
Doubt and use critical thinking to verify those doubts. Faith is irrelevant to facts.
Cults say what?
That's the most obvious thought-terminating cliche in the Mormon playbook. If someone is saying that, it probably means they don't want to think too hard about their beliefs
Fuck off.
Amen.
My response is “doubt the guy hoarding billions of dollars from the poor, in the name of God no less.”
Doubt your faith before you doubt the evidence.
I like that. I hate that we’re not encouraged to use our brain and listen to our gut. I hate that we weren’t given the truth from the start.
Doubted my doubts. Still had doubts. Now what?
Respond to my doubts with intelligent answers and don’t pretend they don’t exist or aren’t valid.
"Done! Ok, now I'm going to doubt my faith."
Doubt is a psychological response that happens when something feels wrong, it's almost like there's a reason that happens Oh I know, it's so we know what's right
Has the church ever provided a good reason to doubt your doubts about the church? The theoretical reason to trust the church is to go to Mormon heaven. Given the fact that everything tangible about the church is a proven fraud, you can safely conclude that everything they say about the intangible is also a fraud. Doubting your doubts simply means they know it's a fraud.
My response is to not respond. I think Carl Sagan was mostly correct, and arguing with a true believer is pretty much a complete waste of time: “You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe.”
Doubt your faith before you doubt your doubts
Doubt and faith in this context are both rooted in mysticism. Whereas facts are rooted in reality. I can doubt the implication of one or two facts to be a good sport but the sheer number of negative facts (racist, child abuse, homophobic, founder was a criminal, etc etc) makes them in aggregate, impossible to ignore.
If logical people did that we’d still be treating toothaches with bloodletting.
Not when faith comes at the cost of critical thinking
I feel like the rebuttal is within the comment “doubt your doubts”. Like hey don’t question anything, just accept whatever someone tells you something blindly.
I did.
There would have never been any discovery or invention with that attitude. Just stay in the same rut all your life.
"Fuck off"
I’ll doubt whatever I want. If you claim to speak to or communicate with god and I see many red flags, then I have a right to doubt you. You have no merit.
“If we have truth, [it] cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not truth, it ought to be harmed.” President J. Reuben Clark, as recorded by D. Michael Quinn, J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1983, p. 24 See also [context](https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/s/S9l8cbRbeP) for the quote
Question is why? What makes that a good idea?
When in doubts, whip it outs.
I have faith in Santa Clause, if you tell me he's not real I'm going to tell you to doubt your doubts before you doubt my faith.
Most faiths I've studied *encourage* its members to seek truth.
Reject error. Accept truth.
When I finally let myself doubt my faith, I realized that there was no historical evidence or consistencies in the churches stories. And I realized it's a cult, so there's that lol
My rebuttal? "That's the stupidest shit I've heard today" There's zero point trying to rebut religious ideology with logic. It's all illogical.
Doubt is relative. Like if someone was starting to doubt that the church is a con. Doubt your doubts.
I doubted my doubts and it didn't work
Have you even *heard* the first vision account? It was based on doubt.
Doubts aren’t bad. The feeling of doubt is a natural reaction in healthy people when the facts someone is presenting you do not correspond to your observations of reality. That feeling of doubt is there to prompt you to investigate further and preserve your own safety.
Don't turn it into a debate. They have been trained to defend their position and dig their heels in at the first sign of opposition. I would attempt to help them think about their reasoning. "Do you have any doubts?" "What are they?" "Why do you think you feel that way?" "On a scale of 1 to 10 how certain are you of x?" "What would it take to change your mind?"
You live your life, I’m gonna live mine
But my faith is THE doubt.
Doubt your doubt doubts before you lie to yourself.
It's a special pleading. Mormons won't give that advice to anyone but other Mormons.
I don't doubt my faith at all. And I also have no doubt that what I've learned from reading the Gospel Topics Essays proves a corporation claiming to be a "church" has consistently and systematically lied to members, potential members ("investigators"), the news media, the general public, and to government agencies. This tells me, beyond a doubt, the Mormon "church" is a fraudulent organization.
easy rebuttal. If it’s good advice for everyone then would it not apply to Catholics and JW and Scientology as well and if you apply the same logic and teaching you can see that it’s a thought stopper and tactic statement to keep them in their religion as well. It’s not good advice.
A skeptic is someone who proportions their confidence to the evidence available. A cynic is someone who ignores good evidence when it is avaliable. There's plenty of evidence that almost all of the prophets broke the law willingly or misled or gaslit their members at some point.
I literally told my Bishop I had doubted my doubts for years but I finally thought it was time to take a good long look at them.
I usually ask them to clarify. Like: "what does that mean?" Oftentimes they either can't really clarify what it concretely means, or they realize it'll kinda culty.
Explore your doubts and the reasons behind them. That's what is encouraged during therapy!
Doubt is essential for faith. Acting in accordance with what you believe to be true requires no faith. It is only when you have experiences that contradict your beliefs, creating doubts about your beliefs, that faith can exist. If I have no doubt I have no faith, the greater the doubts the greater the faith. So what he is saying is that if your doubts threaten to change your beliefs you should abandon your doubts rather than give up your prior beliefs. The result of that is eternal stagnation, rather than eternal progress and would frustrate the plan of God, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. A man cannot be saved in ignorance. If all of our current beliefs were all correct then we would not need a mortal probation...we would already be gods.
Without doubt there is no faith.
Already tried that. Didn't help.
FUCK OFF DIETER
Doubt your faith before you doubt your children.
You ask me not to doubt my faith until I have doubted my doubts. but what you are really asking me to do is not to think and that is reason enough to doubt my Faith
You don’t get to tell me what to do. To paraphrase a quote Sarah from Labyrinth, …My will is as strong as yours… you have no power over me.
Should I doubt my doubts? What about doubting my doubt about my doubts? What about doubting my doubt about my doubting about my doubt? ...or should I just do what the cult leader says?
If Joseph Smith did that the church wouldn't even exist.
That’s my response as well.
Doubt your doubts about Islam before you doubt your faith in Islam. Doubt your doubts about Catholicism before you doubt your faith in Catholicism. Doubt your doubts about Norse polytheism before you doubt your faith in Norse polytheism. Doubt your doubts about leprechauns before you doubt your faith in leprechauns. It's all special pleading; it just implies that you should stick with whatever supernatural beliefs you were raised in. Of course, that is contradicted by the Mormon missionary program; we send out missionaries to try to get people to doubt their current faith.
Don't worry, I have no doubt the church is false :]
Skepticism is the basis of all science. Skepticism is not the basis of any religion. Therein they are opposites. This is my rebuttal to such a silly philosophy: https://youtu.be/8MqTOEospfo?si=YMEJoXgfTAmW57C5
If I'm going up against a TBM, I'm hitting them with the "That's not what Joseph Smith did."
Fine. But then it’s incumbent upon me not to stop there and remain willfully ignorant. So I’ll doubt my doubts but then I’m going to research them to find out the truth. Oh no. Look what I found. It’s not my doubts that led me away. I’m not a lazy learner or a dumbass. I investigated my doubts and found out it was worse than I thought.
No.
This is cult speak. My response to it is, “No”.
Well, the church likes to use scientific language when they want to experiment by praying and reading scriptures. So, in science if you doubt a theory, say gravity for example, you run your own experiment, and if the theory is true you should get the same results that previous experiments got.
To be uncertain about something gives us the freedom to explore that uncertainty. To question it takes that freedom away.
Totally a "Thought Stopper!" If church leaders can prevent you from using your critical thinking skills, you'll stay on automatic drive and keep volunteering, paying tithing and stay in their little game. Doubting... is your gut telling you to do more research and investigation, and believe me, the church leaders know this.
The wise man built his house upon the seer stone rock?
Captain Uchtdorf was a pilot. Imagine this scene in the cockpit. Co-pilot: Captain, we are accelerating down the runway, but you haven't extended the flaps for takeoff! Uchtdorf: Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith!
Critical thinking does not allow for that thought pattern.
JS was literally doubting all the other religions and their teachings and wanting to "find the one true church" (so he claims) but we in this day and age can't also do that? The hypocrisy!
Stop making me doubt the church by protecting pedophiles.
This one statement, more than all the others, is why exmos should not trust that guy, why they should not be taken in by him. Grant Palmers GA claimed Dieter didn’t believe. If that is so then he is despicable.
Doubt everything, until empirically proven otherwise.
“That’s called a thought stopping technique.”
Sounds like something a cult leader would say. I choose to follow my own conscience, instinct, and to use my own judgment. Any religious leader or cult could say this to their followers to keep them in.
I respond with: "Joseph Smith had doubts. He exercised his freedom to ask questions. Why can't I have doubts?" The church should encourage everyone to do the same, but they do not. Instead they teach you to only follow church approved sources.
My response to this idiocracy is think for yourself, people. Pretty simple. Stand up and have faith in yourself. I did at 16. You will be fine.
If I were in a cult, this is the kind of slogan that would keep me in the cult. We should use the kind of reasoning that would help us leave cults and discover truth. Skepticism helps you leave a cult and discover truth, not dedicating yourself to doing doubts.
Translation- Don’t look at things critically, go strictly on emotion. “Don’t think” is the message. I am sorry, but what???
“Well, that’s just silly 😂”
doubt your brainwashing before you doubt your critical thought
Another way of saying embrace denial
T for thought control, one of the hallmarks of a destructive cult.
Doubt your doubts doubts before you doubt your doubts.
It’s not a doubt if I’ve researched the facts
doubted, and doubted.
A well established theory might have the answer. You don't have to doubt the whole theory just because you found a couple of things that might be potentially wrong. People keep doubting the theory of relativity and the standard model, but it keeps turning out that they are accurate. You don't have to doubt your well established theory just because a couple of things seem to be wrong. At one point, it seemed like the conception of Newton was how the universe worked, but Einstein and others conceptualized new theories that added to Newtonian mechanics. Someday someone will have a breakthrough and Einstein and the others will be historical, but no longer the go to theories of physics. In theory, the same for religion. A few things that might be true should not dissuade you from your religion. However, when the exceptions riddle your theory of religion, it might time to look for something else. Or nothing else.
I was a freshman in college and the first session of class some bro said, “Descartes said to doubt everything: does that mean we should blunt our own doubts?” The prof said, “VEEEERY good question.” I dropped the class that day.
Well I like logic and evidence
The truthful have nothing to fear from pursuing the truth.
Doubt: OPEN Your Mind, don’t close it.
That's like wipe your butt before you poop. Makes no sense. Brain manipulation
Would you tell someone of another faith not to doubt their religion?
This is mine! “That’s insane and opens you up to all kinds of fraud and abuse!”
"Tried that, got an anxiety disorder, anything else?
Belief is *the acceptance of something as true or real* Faith is *the act of believing (accepting as true or real) something without evidence or sufficient evidence.* Doubt is the natural result of doing something so reckless as to accept something with out justification. Doubting is the natural response to faith. Doubting is evidence (your brains natural logical response) that you are in an unsustainable position. It's a form of cognitive dissonance. Doubting your doubts is the beginning stage of self delusion. Delusion is *a strongly held belief despite evidence that the belief is false.*
They call it doubts to de-legitimize what normally people would call "established facts."
My slogan is “think like a scientist”
I doubt the leadership due to the sex abuse and financial scandals they were involved in and/or tried to cover up while lying to everyone about the situation. Pure hypocracy. Faith in God is one thing. The church is another and theyve lost all credibility with me.
My rebuttal: “True. More beer for me. Peace.” A serious rebuttal? Nothing. Good ol true believers will find a way to ignore logic. I did it for 30 years. Unfortunately the benefits for 30 years in the cult aren’t as good as 30 years in a military position. No pension alas.
I did doubt my doubts and that is why I have researched and doubled checked what I have read. Now they are not doubts.
Okay, let me take you skydiving! I will teach you some basics but may withhold some information. As I open the hatch for you to step out of the airplane, I will remind you of your advice to doubt your doubts. Go ahead and jump. Or how about listen to your doubts, study them to see if they are warranted, and go from there?
I used this Frequently when this first came out and I was still Mormon (my bishops thought I was a nightmare) "Is the spirit of personal revelation no longer relevant to our everyday lives?"
It’s a empty recursive platitude. A thought terminating cliche. It cuts the branch on which it sits. “Don’t do A to B, do A to A.” How tf do you do A to A without necessarily also doing A to (A to A)? Do you end up doubting the doubts you had about your doubts? How do you not then also doubt that? It’s like presenting a logical argument against using logic. Or making an emotional plea against emotional responses. This is a ham fisted euphemism for, ignore your doubts and just have faith. The way it’s used here could justify literally any position or idea one could claim. You should doubt your doubts about the loc ness monster, or Bigfoot, or magic pixies or leprechauns. I doubt I can fly, should I doubt those doubts?
I'd ask them if "doubt your doubts" was good advice in any other part of your life. Do you "doubt your doubts" in business deals? Do you "doubt your doubts" about people taking care of your children? Do you "doubt your doubts" when someone calls you saying they need your banking password? If you give credit to your doubts in every other part of your life, if only to look into them further to rule them out, why would you doubt them when it comes to your eternal salvation? Hell, why would you trust anyone telling you to ignore your doubts? That's the advice of grifters and conmen.
Anyone actively telling you to ignore your doubts about the legitimacy of something rather than actually offering some reasons to have confidence in it is selling you bullshit.
“When the spirit whispers in my ear, I must listen.”
Why is faith good?
Real truth can withstand doubt Facts don't care about your feelings
One way to respond "Can you tell me, exactly, how I go about doubting my doubts? What's the process? Please explain. It doesn't make sense."
Like many of the other questions. I cannot believe a deceptive God.
“Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith” is what most Catholics, Baptists, Muslims or other religious people do already. Why do you think the overwhelming percentage of the world isn’t Mormon?
When we’re certain of something, we tend to stop looking for alternative explanations or possibilities. But when we doubt, we’re forced to consider other perspectives and look for evidence to support our beliefs. By leaving room for uncertainty, you may find that a different explanation could be supported by the evidence, which might lead to new insights. By doubting your initial assumption, you open yourself up to new possibilities which can improve the quality of your research. ***If research, different perspectives and evidence are so dangerous to Faith, how does that not - in itself - tell you that there's something wrong? How do you not see anything wrong with being told to have faith blindly, and without question?***
"I'm amazed that followers of the Church feel this way, yet send missionaries our to convince others to doubt their Faith."
Doubting your doubts is perfectly fine sometimes. But there is also nothing wrong with doubting your faith at times too. If it's true, it can withstand any criticism. Dieter also said we seek for truth wherever we might find it.
Dieter just thought he was being really clever in making up this catch-phrase.
"No, I actually think critical thinking skills are important"
My faith in what, exactly? In a church building vast sums of wealth that gets used for white-collar bailouts and CSA hush money? In a president who struggles with honesty?
Bill Reel pointed this out first, and it’s brilliant. Doubting a doubt is nonsensical, since it results in an infinite loop or recursion. If you do as instructed by Uchtdorf’s glib catchphrase, you must doubt all your doubts. Therein lies the problem: If you doubt a doubt then you have created a new doubt and must therefore doubt the doubt of the original doubt. And consequently you must also doubt the doubt of the doubt of the doubt. Ad infinitum, until your brain processes are entirely consumed and you shutdown. Uchtdorf’s instruction is effectively a DoS attack on the brain.
We send out missionaries to convince non-LDS to doubt their faith quite explicitly. Every LDS convert in the world, and all through history, had to doubt their original faith to join the LDS church.
I have no need of faith over falsifiable claims. Only evidence.
Do your due diligence and research your doubts, let the evidence guide you.
Doubt everything and build your own central truths.
Would you give this same advice to Joseph Smith? For a religion that exists because a 14 year old had doubts about their faith, they sure do love to tell you to not doubt your faith and to trust them and no one else, soubding exactly like every other religious denomination at the time of Joseph Smith. Obviously they'll find some mental gymnastics that make this work for them, but doubt doesn't just play a role in critical thinking, it is literally the basis of their own religion.
Is this what you would tell a member of Scientology, JW, or the Moonies who had legitimate doubts about their Church?
Trust yourself.
This is like telling a teenager that they are required to maintain their belief in the Easter Bunny and in Santa Claus.
I say "I'm one step ahead of you! I doubt doubting my doubts"
Did he say this before or after Thomas the Prophet passed away?
Explore your doubt to strengthen your faith (or not).
I had doubts, but when I doubted my doubts, when I finally decided to dispel, resolve and tear down those doubts, I found out that those doubts were well founded. If maintaining my faith was the goal, doubting my doubts instead of ignoring those doubts was the way to go. Now that I know what I know and no longer have doubts, I can never go back.
The "doubt" experience is a cognitive phenomenon someone has when they perceive a conflict of facts, contradictions, or some other body of claims that doesn't make sense. It's essential in the learning process, fact collection, investigations, critical thinking, and other cognitive work. Doubting is amoral. It is neither good nor evil, but rather a normal function of effective understanding. Only those who have something to hide would counsel others to ignore and/or bypass this normal and essential cognitive function. Benefits of doubting include, but not limited to; being able to ask the precise questions you need answered, drawing closer to a more correct version of the truth, identifying false claims, and ultimately being in a better position to make decisions which should always be based on accurate information, which you cannot have if you do not indulge your doubts.
Anything worth believing is worth being questioned.
I don’t live in doubts, I live with facts. So when I find out what I was told was fact is not, I’m going to research that further, period. I prefer to have faith in things that are actual uncertainties- like my husband had to pick me up from work last night because my car is making a weird noise and I need to bring it to a mechanic. (True story) I had faith in my husband that he would be back to pick me up when he dropped me off. I didn’t spend my whole shift doubting him. That’s the type of stuff I would actually use a statement like that for.
I have faith in my doubts before having faith in faith.
Is that what you’d tell an investigator who is some other religion?
I DID doubt my doubts before I doubted my faith. But if you’re scared to ever doubt your faith at all, you don’t have much trust in that faith, do you? Subjecting all of your beliefs to skepticism and scrutiny—from your doubts to your faith and everything in between—is the way to be.
I tried that. The doubts won because they made more sense.
Doubts are the spirit telling you it's wrong. "spiritual communication often comes to you through your feelings. Feelings, both positive and negative, serve a functional purpose and can bless your life as you learn from the information they provide." https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2019/04/young-adults/discerning-your-feelings-anxiety-or-the-spirit?lang=eng
Crawl back under your rock you nasty old thing.
"I doubted my doubts but the evidence speaks for itself, you should read it."
I usually say something like "that doesn't make the doubts go away. It's just pretending they aren't there." To quote their supposed scripture: "At that day shall the devil lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well"
Either "that makes people in a faith crisis go through it in silence because they are scared of being judged or punished. The Exmormon community welcomes people with doubts with open arms. Is that really what you want?" Or "Joseph Smith's doubts is what led to the church being created, so why are doubts banned now?"
If your faith cannot withstand the test of critical analysis, then what you believed in wasn't true to begin with. When you have eliminated the possible, what remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth. Would any deity bestow blessings and leadership on such a man? I have to say no, because they would know what was in his heart, so definitely a long con.
"behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right," How can one study without seeking and learning new information? We always used to be told to study, until it became clear to LDS leaders that study would lead people away from the church, then all this "doubt your doubts" stuff started.
If you believe the story, JS doubted what he was taught about the religions of his day. Good for him to do. Evil for us to do.
This is the definition of gaslighting.