When scientific evidence meets a strong belief, the evidence usually loses.

When I was Mormon I developed a wonderful talent of explaining away every criticism that might sabotage my beliefs. Any piece of evidence that might weaken my theological position was immediately scrutinized more than anything else in my life. For those who were not members of the church you may not quite be grasping the literalness of what I am saying. When I say immediately, that is what I mean. When I mean everything, I mean everything. This kind of behavior is important in order to support a world view that is unsupported. Lets give a few examples shall we?

I am living the gospel and not happy. Step one: Tell yourself you are not really living the gospel well enough, because it is a perfect divine system that brings happiness. I am OBVIOUSLY the problem here!!

I heard that wine is actually beneficial for those who drink it. Step one: Ask yourself how you can make this new discovery wrong. Step two: If unable to make this wrong, ignore it, and find ways to disprove it as you go along in life. Step three: One day I came across an article saying that drinking daily alcoholic beverages such as wine, etc, may increase the risk of throat cancer or breast cancer! PERFECT! I had my new information to completely dismiss this worrisome and 'threatening' knowledge that might weaken my religious views. I should point out that I am illustrating the process I used to retain my beliefs, not that wine is good or bad.

I heard that Utah uses the most anti depressants of any other state in the US. Step one: Ask yourself how you can make this new discovery mean that the church is true. Step two: Convince yourself that, since the church is true and people are tempted by the devil, you would expect the GREATEST amount of temptation to occur in Utah! Thus the greater instances of depressed people, account for the truthfulness of the church! PERFECT!

Someone left the church. Step one: Ask yourself 'what was their bad reason for leaving the truth?' Step two: Identify the most likely sinful behavior this person may have been involved with, or which doctrine they misunderstood etc. Step three: Once identified, laugh at their ridiculousness of leaving the church for such unfounded reasons and commit to never losing your testimony for similar wickedness.

Unfavorable church history: Step one: go to fairlds.org and see what they have to say about it. Accept their answer as the most correct, since they are obviously honest Mormons defending the truth. Step two: If the answer is unsatisfactory, try to ignore it by reminding yourself that the church had many enemies in its infancy and that the history of the church could have been altered to make the church look bad, and that it is really difficult to have solid information about what REALLY happened way back then. Step three: Remind yourself that the church is true not based on solid facts, but because you had an amazing feeling directly from God. Try to ignore that this mental process could be duplicated with any religious doctrine, and confirm any belief desired.

Learning that the temple endowments were ripped off of the masonic rituals. Step one: Recover from the shock. Why has no one told me this until my mission?? Step two: Frantically try to figure out how the church can still be true. Step three: Convince yourself that either the masonic rituals were based off of the original temple endowment from Jesus Christ's ministry, or that the temple endowment specifics ceremony) were not that important, just the covenants themselves were important (anotherwords allowing the all powerful God to rip off the masonic rituals just for for the sake of having a ceremony mixed in with the covenants). Funny how two unfounded answers is better than one true one. It always felt like when I can find more than one "answer" on fairlds.org it was a more solid answer, which makes no sense whatsoever- unless of course you factor in the REASON you are looking for an answer, (any answer) which is to "retain your belief system."

I watched a creationist video showing the "evidence" that the earth was not millions of years old, it was only thousands! Step one: Thats so cool! Just like the bible says!? Accept new belief as probably true. (to my credit I did wonder about it and didn't completely accept it as truth but I look back on how silly it was that I took it without really thinking for myself, it was just something I thought held validity because it supported my belief system)

Do any other members remember thinking in these ways? Give me some other examples in the comments!

Oh! And just for good measure, here is the best one, because it was the one that finally broke me out of this unreasonable cycle of convincing myself of something that wasn't true.

There are plausible explanations for spiritual experiences that do not require the existence of a divine being. Step one: Whatever, I believe anyway. Step two: Hmmmmm. Step three: Crap.


Here is a great video I recently saw, and if you think about patriarchal blessings while watching it, you will probably enjoy it more.

But think about those who are sincerely convinced that psychic powers are real. Just like in this video, they might be amazed and totally convinced because they actually experienced it! But the experience was misinterpreted! Luckily the video was made in order to EDUCATE people on this matter. But what if there was no education. The person continues on with their life amazed at the psychic abilities of Darren brown. How can you convince this person they were duped? It would be very difficult. And when it comes to a personal feeling that you attribute to God himself?? The difficulty level in convincing someone of more plausible alternative explanations increases dramatically (especially when coupled with weekly/daily "strengthening your testimony" exercises, a community of like minded friends, the habitual demonizing of those who have left the faith and a multitude of other practices that will aid you in retaining a completely unfounded belief).

A friend of mine said this:
"Which path is likely to be more deceived. The one that claims absolute truth and must make evidence conform to it, or the one that is open to the possibility of being wrong, and willing to incorporate compelling evidence into the belief set."