Doubt

Why do LDS members think doubt is the opposite of faith? Even if they only apply that to their beliefs in religion, shouldn’t doubt still be a critical factor in discerning truth?
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Kenneth Wedin
convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day SaintsTue

Epistemology: the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion

Anyone who has studied epistemology—including the tens of thousands of high school students enrolled in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program around the world—would be aware that there are various “ways of knowing.” The scientific method is only one means of arriving at a particular consensus, but I find it quite disingenuous. While claiming to be aimed at disproving hypotheses, the scientific method much more often seems to be aimed at proving preconceived assumptions in which a multitude of biases intervene, including how experimental results are interpreted and even how some results are actually excluded from consideration. This is quite clear whenever one reads about dieting or weight loss in which deeply entrenched camps (especially high-carb/low-fat vs high-fat/low-carb advocates) filter research in ways akin to how most readers typically filter and interpret news stories according to their preferred political allegiances rather than viewing them truly objectively.

Unlike other Christian fundamentalists, Latter-day Saints do not discount science but rather recognize its valuable role while embracing it as only one part of a larger truth, which can be discerned via various means not limited to the scientific method.

Even in the various other fields of philosophy, doubt is not the default departure point on one’s journey to discover truth. Doubt is not the foundation of logic or reason or even of critical thinking; in fact, I can’t recall doubt playing any role in classical logic or reasoning, and its role in critical thinking is more peripheral than central.

Latter-day Saints value logic, reason, rationality, and critical thinking in their approach to religious scholarship, including ancient scripture and Church history, as would be evident to anyone reading the multitude of articles published by Brigham Young University professors in diverse peer-reviewed scholarly journals. See Book of Mormon Central
, the Interpreter Foundation
, BYU Scholars Archive
and Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, FAIR

, etc.

The School of the Prophets in the early years of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints explored the nature of faith in the Lectures on Faith
. In the archaically named “Lecture First

,” you can read a discourse on how doubt (which I personally expand to include fear, doubt, and worry) and faith are binary opposites. The mutually exclusive relationship between the two is clear.

How many of us doubt that our parents are actually our parents? The evidence that most of us have is not irrefutable, but it doesn’t bother us even though it could be of great import to us. That’s true of the vast majority of truths in our lives. We just don’t doubt them, nor do we need to do so.

How do Latter-day Saints know what they know? It is not like Jehovah’s Witnesses, who supposedly rely entirely on the Bible and what they can logically deduce from what is written in their translation of that ancient compilation. Latter-day Saints know what we know through revelation—a combination of prophetic revelation and personal revelation. This is pure intelligence conveyed to the heart and mind from the Holy Ghost via the Holy Spirit. People who have not had such an experience discount (and even ridicule) it as something far less than it actually is. However, once you receive a spiritual confirmation of any eternal truth, it is undeniable. You know it more irrefutably than you know that your parents are your own parents. It’s something that you have to experience for yourself in order to understand what a powerful effect it has in the depth of your being.

As stated in the Lectures of Faith mentioned above, once you know something through divine revelation, there is no longer any room for doubt in your heart or mind. The spiritual impression from the Holy Ghost is much more powerful than the effect of seeing and hearing an angel speak before your eyes. It’s more powerful than witnessing a miracle being performed. It transforms the inner core of your being. It’s not a matter of wilful blindness but rather a powerful, deep, true knowing.

Does that mean that Latter-day Saints never doubt? No, faith must continue to be nurtured since spiritual impressions do not last if they are not acted upon in daily life.

When I was a new convert, I went to Bible bookstores and public libraries to obtain all the books that I could find about the Church—all of which happened to be critical, known as anti-Mormon literature. However, armed with the strong spiritual impressions that I’d received from the Holy Ghost regarding Joseph Smith’s First Vision and the Angel Moroni’s visit to the young Joseph, I was able to perceive the logical fallacies, outright lies, and wilful deceptions in books written by the likes of Walter Martin and Ed Decker. Their lack of integrity disgusted me. Working my way through these books entirely on my own while knowing only the doctrinal truths that I’d read from Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie as a new convert actually strengthened my faith rather than weakening it.

In more recent years, via the Internet, I’ve been exposed to various critical claims regarding polygamy, racial prejudice, the origin of the Book of Mormon, etc., but I’ve been able to see through them quite well. At times, I couldn’t answer every detailed claim, and some did come as a surprise and even seemed puzzling or even unsettling, but I was able to work through them. At no time, however, did any claim make me doubt the First Vision, which has always been the core of my faith. For me, everything else is built upon that irrefutable truth, and I interpret all other things from the perspective of my knowledge that the First Vision is true, which also logically makes a whole interconnected chain of other events and doctrines likewise true.

In short, I’ve had questions arise, but they haven’t caused me to doubt the things that I know to be true. I’ve just had to work through those questions or apparent contradictions (that some people might prefer to call doubts) while maintaining my assurance of Joseph Smith’s First Vision and therefore his prophetic calling and thus the true nature of The Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, etc.

While I’ve been able to do that, some Church members have not. Most notable (important to me because of my Swedish heritage) is Hans Mattsson. He let his questions about Joseph Smith’s plural marriages, the authenticity of the Book of Abraham, and the temporary priesthood ban on men of African descent fester and become actual doubts that undermined his faith. I don’t question his integrity or his sincerity about wanting to discover the truth regarding details that he apparently had not previously known, but it’s obvious to me that he had latched onto doubt so unshakeably that any subsequent clear, logical explanations of these various matters became insufficient to his mind. Doubt became his default stance. I can’t help but think that he threw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead of adhering to what he clearly already knew through revelation—assuming he really did have a sufficiently strong personal testimony—he let his questions (which became doubts) blind him to greater truths. Ultimately, his doubt and inability to reconcile these uncertainties with what he previously had accepted totally overwhelmed any other truth that he previously had believed. I think that’s a good demonstration of how doubt is the antithesis of faith and that allowing questions or uncertainties to degenerate into actual doubt can undermine faith to a spiritually fatal degree.

Nevertheless, it’s the obligation of every Latter-day Saint to diligently seek out truth from all reliable sources of knowledge, hopefully with a good understanding of the logical fallacies and cognitive biases that tend to taint others’ claims as well as with the spirit of discernment to recognize intentional deception. Unlike Jehovah’s Witnesses, we are perfectly free to read, watch, and listen to any critical publication, video, or audio clip that we happen to find. However, we should wisely fortify ourselves with ancient and modern revelation as the basis of our beliefs against which to evaluate any other claim, whether philosophical, scientific, logical, historical, anecdotal, etc. These investigations conducted upon the firm foundation of our solid conviction of eternal truths, as cultivated through personal revelation, tend to strengthen rather than weaken our testimonies of the truthfulness of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.