Rocked By Doubt

[_honorentheos]

An interesting RadioLab chapter on belief, feeling, and the search for evidence for the big things:

RadioLab "Rocked By Doubt"

Here's a spoiler - while the episode doesn't tell you this until a little bit in, the subject is on a guy who suddenly realizes he no longer believes in God and goes looking. Oh, and there is a very small Utah connection as well.

The results of his search and the story itself is...real. Yet maybe unexpected.

Hope someone else enjoys it as much as I did.

[_Kishkumen]

Thanks for sharing that. I enjoyed it very much.

[_bcspace]

Hope someone else enjoys it as much as I did.

Are you bearing your testimony?

[_honorentheos]

Hope someone else enjoys it as much as I did.

Are you bearing your testimony?

No. I meant what I said, stated it simply and didn't flower it up with false "I knows". That puts it in an entirely different phylum from a testimony.

[_bcspace]

Oh I get it. It's one of those travelogues or mental histories then.

[_honorentheos]

And I see where you're personal confusion introduced testimony into the discussion. You failed to actually listen to the source material, yet felt the urge to stand up and voice your opinion on the subject to the congregation.

[_beastie]

Thanks for sharing that. I love radiolab in general. Here's an episode that really "rocked" me. (apparently they were part of the same program)

http://www.radiolab.org/2013/mar/26/reasonable-doubt/

It's an incredible story, almost too incredible to summarize, but I'll try. Penny Beernsten was brutally raped in 1985, and identified her assailant as Stephen Avery. He had a problematic, violent history already and the police had been watching him. Despite having an alibi provided mainly by family members, he was convicted on the strength of Penny's certainty. He had been jailed for 18 years when DNA evidence exonerated him from this crime, and identified a different assailant altogether. Penny was devastated by the experience. She had been so certain Avery was her attacker and didn't recognize the real rapist at all. She worked through the guilt over sending an innocent man to jail, and even met with him to ask forgiveness. She was struck by the generosity of his spirit.

Yet, within a year or so, this same man went on the brutally rape and kill another woman. There was no doubt at to his guilt this time. His co-rapist/murdered confessed and there was plenty of physical evidence. So now not only is Penny rocked by the fact that her certain memory of the assailant was completely wrong, but rocked by the fact that her second reaction to Avery - that he was a wonderful person with a generous heart - was also completely wrong.

It's all about trusting your own senses, and how sometimes they mislead us. I defy anyone to listen to her story and not be rocked themselves.

[_honorentheos]

Thanks for sharing this beastie! I agree, that the entire episode "Are You Sure?" left an impression on me.

I've had a difficult time conveying this to people who haven't gone through it. On occassion I've been asked by never-mo friends and acquintances if I wished I could go back and relive life without the LDS church as a part. When I tell them I considered the difficult process of discovery and worldview reconstruction that follows wrestling with LDS history perhaps the best experience a person could have they completely fail to understand what I mean.

But I do. There is something transformative about having one's certitude about the world completely revealed as false, having to grapple with this issue, and realize how fraught with illusion our worldviews tend to be.

The key to why I think this way is two-fold: First, the process seems to be critical in developing a nuanced, more realistic understanding of the world. No one's worldview is immune from the same flaws we find in Mormonism. Everyone should, at some point, have some place where they have to struggle against what they assumed to be true and where it creates heat and friction with broader evidence. My current understanding of the world could be just as flawed as my TBM worldview. Finding the balance between uncertainty and determined action/thought is in my opinion a critical mark of a true mature mind.

But second, so many people go through life with absolute certainty that they are somehow unique in having the "Right" understanding of the world. In some ways, the obvious flaws in Mormonism can be seen as life throwing us a "meatball" right over the plate ready to be hit. And it's like this issue after issue, pitch after pitch in case we miss one or two. That's not to diminish the very real pain and challenges that come with the discovery of the issues in Mormonism and the difficult social/family/other issues people go through. But inside of the difficulty there was something very real to be thankful for, at least in my own experience.

[_sock puppet]

...I considered the difficult process of discovery and worldview reconstruction that follows wrestling with LDS history perhaps the best experience a person could have they completely fail to understand what I mean.

But I do. There is something transformative about having one's certitude about the world completely revealed as false, having to grapple with this issue, and realize how fraught with illusion our worldviews tend to be.

* * *
But second, so many people go through life with absolute certainty that they are somehow unique in having the "Right" understanding of the world. In some ways, the obvious flaws in Mormonism can be seen as life throwing us a "meatball" right over the plate ready to be hit. * * * inside of the difficulty there was something very real to be thankful for, at least in my own experience.

No matter the social construct, whether Mormonism or something else, some people think broadly, peeling back the assumptions and challenging them. If the assumptions on which the social construct is built do not withstand that type of investigation and scrutiny, then the person that had done the digging will logically reject the social construct or at least view it as somewhat more of an arm's length than before.

Others never seriously look or challenge anything, simply accepting whatever the social constructs in which they are.

For some in the middle, it takes being in something as bizarre and foundationally infirm as Mormonism for them to be piqued in the first place to be inquisitive in this manner. Some that would dig up the issues because they are in Mormonism might never give serious thought to doing so if they were instead in a more mainstream religion that involves more tolerance and less rigidity.

For these middle spectrum people, there is something to appreciate in how over-the-top Mormonism is. If not for that, many of them never would have taken a close look but just went along with it throughout their entire lives.

For those that are naturally inquisitive and probing, were once in Mormonism and have since left it, I don't think there's as much to be 'grateful' for about Mormonism as an 'eye-opening' experience. They would probably have scrutinized Methodism too, had that been the religious social construct in which they had found themselves.

[_honorentheos]

For those that are naturally inquisitive and probing, were once in Mormonism and have since left it, I don't think there's as much to be 'grateful' for about Mormonism as an 'eye-opening' experience. They would probably have scrutinized Methodism too, had that been the religious social construct in which they had found themselves.

...so many people go through life with absolute certainty that they are somehow unique in having the "Right" understanding of the world.

How is your post not an example of what I was speaking of in my quoted section above?

Religion is only one facet of a person's worldview. Perhaps a person may be inquisitive in this one area of life experience, they can be just as dogmatic or apathetic in others with just as significant an import as Mormonism has in the average Mormon's life.

ETA: I've noticed a broad divide between people who leave the church in my last decade or so partisipating in online Mormon discussions. On the one side are those who have embraced another view with fairly strong conviction. I've seen examples that include atheism, apathism, or another religion. There was a lady on a board I frequented around 2004 who seemed to have jumped from Born-Again Christian to Mormon back to Born Again in a single year with equal zeal in her posts regardless of her position at the time. Others cite science almost religiously with just as much zeal as any TBM, and with just as much faith given the difficulty in gaining an informed understanding of the thing they believe in.

On the other side seem to be those who have a harder time saying the ex-mo equivilent of "thus saith the Lord". Their actual beliefs seem to matter less than their recognition that any position is subject to modification given new information. This also includes those who are somewhere on the religious spectrum as well as atheists and agnostics. The belief system isn't the thing that is critical here. It's the thought process.