“Psychologists talk about ‘Confirmation Bias’. You tell yourself a lie and then you ignore all the facts that contradict it. I’ve done that for 30 years. I know that every single thing my mother tells me about this man is a fabrication, but I confirm what I know to be false by clinging to every piece of plausibility presented by someone trying to protect me. It is so pathetic not wanting to know the truth.”

Lloyd Lowery
Breakout Kings, episode: ‘Like Father, Like Son’, A&E

Sounds very familiar.

People who exit the church generally come to this type of realization, but I doubt many know that it has a clinical diagnosis.

Perhaps if more doubting members understood what Confirmation Bias is (and how it applies to creating a testimony of the truthfulness things that are clearly false) it would help them to sort things out more quickly, and less painfully. Especially as they acquire information about church history, operations and practices from sites like RfM. :)