I am no logician or theologian.

My memory is slowly going.

I'm sure my IQ is average at best.

But when the LDS Church tells me I need to choose to believe, I feel like the smartest guy in the room.

Choose to believe what?

If I choose to believe that Joseph Smith met with a Floating Moroni, or translated a set of gold plates whilst looking at a rock at the bottom of a hat...couldn't I just as easily choose to believe that:

Space Aliens are on their way to pick me up or that,
I am Jesus or that,
men live on the moon and they are 9 feet tall?

I may be dumb, but I see right through it...

What they really mean is to not choose to disbelieve them.

Stray Mutt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What they really mean is to not choose to
> disbelieve them.

Nicely said!

Brilliant, is all I can say.

It's the Double-Bind (as I understand it).

Choose to "believe" even though you don't, or choose to be guilty because you don't believe while choosing to believe that your disbelief is a function of your efforts, or lack thereof, or lack of worthiness, leading you to complete depression, or leading to a state of ignoring truth and choosing to believe the unbelievable in an effort to save yourself from the impending doom of depression your true disbelief will bring upon you. In other words, you're going to Mormon hell because you don't believe, whether you "choose" to believe or not.

Does that make sense?

I think I may just be trying to make the point that even the simpletons among us...me included, should have our antenna involuntary shoot out of our heads when a religious salesperson says..just choose to believe.

But especially so when the basis of the belief is so questionable.

The LDS Church is playing on our need to belong, when it says choose to believe.

It is saying ignore the crazy shixx and choose to have a community that "cares" about you.

Isn't that the real reason Jones was able to gather a following, or Koresh or any seller of "good news"?

Aren't they really saying..you want to be accepted and loved by as many people as possible right?

So just ignore the fact that I am batshit crazy?

You cannot choose to believe. Choosing to believe is another term for faking it. In Mormonism, that's just as good as actually believing. Behaviour that matters more than belief, more than truth.

+1

I am frequently asked: "How come you don't believe [in TSCC]?? Can you think of a better way to bring up the children?"

Because I don't. And yes, I can.

I'd like to see anyone try to choose to believe that space aliens are on their way to pick them up, or anything else for that matter. I have searched far and wide and have not found evidence that anyone is capable of choosing to believe anything. As far as I can tell, belief is merely the involuntary result of perceived likelihood. It can be influenced by willful ignorance or by controlling the information and arguments in one's possession, but I have yet to find any evidence of someone simply choosing to believe something that is not a perceived likelihood. Now faking it, that's something else altogether.

Whenever someone has challenged me on this, I challenge them to sincerely believe that unicorns live on the far side of Pluto. No takers yet. Someone ALWAYS has a reason for believing something, and that reason ALWAYS outweighs the evidence against the belief, according to their perception. With Mormons this evidence is ALWAYS the spirit. They believe in the LDS church because the spirit told them to, and they have been conditioned to believe that the spirit is the most reliable source of information there is, therefore they have a perceived probability that the LDS church is true, and truly have no choice but to believe until they allow themselves to question the underpinnings of their conditioning. If they manage to discover that evidence in favor of the church is not as strong as the evidence against it, they have no choice but to stop believing. That's my working theory, anyway, until I find some sort of evidence to prove otherwise.

My husband used to say something similar: You have to WANT to believe. Why would I want to believe? But why would I want to believe? Mormonism is a lot of work and sacrifice and being estranged from the human race and not necessarily being respected and a lot of church with very little spiritual reward. Why would anyone want to believe in anything that dumped all that on you?