http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky
"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right.' If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated."

Compare that with Mormonism that strives to remove peoples inner doubt about whether the church is right and sees doubt as a weakness. That is why in testimonies people have to say "I know."

Those are the words I have been searching for! I'm having a conversation with someone who thinks they know it all, and have no doubt. They are trying to play me as weak and lazy for questioning anyone and everything that I have let trample through my life.
How does that go? When the teacher arrives, the student appears. Or something like that. Thanks!

"When the student is ready the teacher will appear." Glad it was of help. I just happened upon it. The spirit must have whispered to me that you needed it. ;) I really like it too. I have often been hard on myself for doubting and questioning everything too much where others are content not to dig too deep. I heard it also describes as maximizers versus satisficers. Maximizers are always questioning their choices and trying to find the best solution. Satisficers settle for what is good enough. Unfortunately a maximizer personality can get stuck in analysis paralysis. I often wonder if the church's push for perfection contributed to this personality trait, but it is also the trait that contributed the most to me getting myself out of the church.

Some more quotes you might like for your friend:
"Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell you that this would be a disobedience to a divine command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious; and if I say that the greatest good of a man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which is unexamined is not worth living — that you are still less likely to believe." - Socrates

"I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet in law ought any man use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death, if a man is willing to say or do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs deeper than death." - Socrates

"When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you to trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing — then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands." - Socrates

I'm most certainly a maximizer! I've spent my life making people uncomfortable in their own shoes. I like to refer to it as kicking against the pricks. I never really fit into moism. I can't resist a little nudge here, and a little jab there. It seems to wake up dead people at the very least. I can't help it, I was born that way!

Yeah, many people have thought I didn't like them because I can be too blunt and questioning at times. It is rarely that I am trying to be rude I am just trying to understand their actions and it can come across as threatening or offensive I suppose.

Are you and Mia INTJs too? INTP? ISTJ, etc?

Me and my hubs are both INTJs, and maximizers. :D

you are already beyond the mind of any believing Mormon. How tiny they appear in the rear view mirror!

That is the best view of any misery!

Someone on PoMo used the phrase "handjob certitude" ...

In fact, no wonder MOST righties hate Alinsky in the same fashion.

Great quote. And absolutely correct.

You left out what he said directly afterwards:

"The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide."

Yeah that is a good quote

People turn to religion for answers, and it seems like the seekers aren't too picky about what the answers are, as long as they get to stop wondering and get to go through life not needing to think about it anymore.

Certitude is a form or arrogance, which is ironic considering how much religion also values humility.

Stray Mutt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Certitude is a form or arrogance, which is ironic considering how much religion also values humility.

I agree. In a individual, a dose of humility is an attractive quality. Lack of humility breeds arrogance.

It's the same for an institution. If a church claims to have all the answers, it is lacking in humility. Such institutional arrogance is neither attractive nor spiritual.

"Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell