Zachary Wright: articles and tips | FAIR

by Zachary Wright

Introduction

For today’s introduction, I’d like to share a story from my own faith journey with you.  In High School, I found myself in a dispute with a classmate who consistently challenged my faith.  He didn’t believe in God, and he was very argumentative and combative regarding why he was right.  I found myself thrown into a loop…it had been the first time I was forced to really consider my faith.  I had deeply spiritual experiences, but those didn’t seem to answer his questions.  I felt like I was on the defense, like my head was on fire.  Everything I had ever believed in seemed to flip upside-down.  I began poring over everything I had learned, trying desperately to find out what I could trust, and clinging to whatever truth I could find.  In psychology, this is referred to as “Cognitive Dissonance,” and it’s something that critical thinkers need to be aware of in order to be successful.

Throughout this series, we’ve talked a lot about dealing with information, and processing it in a way that can help us to arrive at correct conclusions.  However, lots of the data (especially about people-centered topics such as politics, history, and religion) we have comes from differing worldviews, and is loaded with differing presuppositions about life.  This, naturally, will lead to some kind of conflict, because not all ideas are compatible with each other.  This is further complicated by the fact that sometimes people can be closed-minded, or otherwise are unwilling/unable to accept the points you bring across.  Critical thinkers need to learn how to deal with cognitive dissonance, because if you haven’t experienced cognitive dissonance yet, you will experience it eventually.  It’s important to learn how to effectively navigate your ideas being challenged in a way that doesn’t make you feel miserable all the time, but also doesn’t prevent you from continuously learning.  To do this, we’ll first explore what cognitive dissonance is.  We’ll then look at it from a more faith-based perspective, and then, we’ll discuss how to better resolve cognitive dissonance.  With our goals in mind, let’s get into it.

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance has been described as “the most influential and extensively studied theory in social psychology”(1)- and for good reason.  It was termed over 60 years ago (which in terms of modern psychology, is VERY old) by a psychologist named Leon Festinger.  He described it as “an antecedent condition which leads to activity oriented toward dissonance reduction just as hunger leads to activity oriented toward hunger reduction” (2).  This is important to keep in mind, because unlike the common colloquial usage, cognitive dissonance is not “holding two contradictory ideas at once” (3).  Instead, as Festinger indicated, it’s the mental condition that prompts us to want to reconcile conflicts in our minds.

A renowned fable may help illustrate this idea.  There was a fox walking through the forest, and he stumbled across some beautiful, delicious-looking grapes.  They were high up on a vine though, and so he tried jumping up and down to get them…to no avail.  He tried and tried again, eventually stating to himself “They’re probably just sour grapes anyway, I shouldn’t waste my time on this” or something to that effect.  He then gave up, having convinced himself to leave.  This actually explains this psychological phenomenon rather well.  The fox in this story was put into distress-cognitive dissonance-when he found that he was unable to get the grapes.  To resolve said dissonance, he convinced himself that the grapes were sour to “justify” himself giving up.

There are also some very interesting, real-world examples of this occurring as well.  In a follow-up experiment, Leon Festinger once again took it upon himself to explore the concept of cognitive dissonance.  He took 71 psychology students (one at a time), and had them take 12 spools, and place them into a tray using only one hand.  Then, using the same hand, the students were to take all of the spools out of the tray, and repeat the process for about 30 minutes.  Then, they had to do a similar exercise where they had to turn wooden pegs a quarter turn for another 30 minutes.  Basically, it’s designed to be boring.  At the end of the experiment, an experimenter would pull them aside, and tell the participants that they needed help convincing others how exciting the experiment was.  To one group of students, the experimenters offered $20, to another group, they offered $1, and to another group of students, they offered no compensation.  Take a moment to guess which group reported the highest satisfaction with the experiment.  If you guessed the group that was offered $20 gave the best report of the boring experiment, I don’t blame you.  Interestingly enough, that’s not what happened.  Instead, the group that was offered $1 rated the experiment most positively.

So, what happened?  Well, in the analysis, they explained the following.

1. If a person is induced to do or say something which is contrary to his private opinion, there will be a tendency for him to change his opinion so as to bring it into correspondence with what he has done or said.

2. The larger the pressure used to elicit the overt behavior (beyond the minimum needed to elicit it) the weaker will be the above mentioned tendency. (4)

Put another way, the conclusion arrived at was that the participants changed how they viewed the experiment and that the participants who were most heavily rewarded were less likely to change their behavior.  This makes sense…the students who got rewarded $20 (an amount that was far larger back in the 60s) didn’t need to change their opinion.  They were already compensated for their time, and the dissonance has been resolved.  However, those who only received one dollar didn’t get that satisfaction, so they had to resolve it a different way.  This is the crux of what cognitive dissonance is.

However, this still leaves us with questions like “What do you feel when you experience cognitive dissonance?” or “What specifically can cause cognitive dissonance?” Some writers indicate that a person suffering from cognitive dissonance experiences “anxiety, embarrassment, regret, sadness, shame, and regret” (5).  Some causes for cognitive dissonance include being forced to do something you believe is wrong, making decisions based on options that don’t seem appealing, or giving in to addictions (6).  Again, all of this goes back to the idea that something prompts us to feel “bad” about something that is happening that goes against what we believe, or challenges the presuppositions that we have.

Dissonance in Faith Contexts

Religious discussion, like many other topics, can prompt cognitive dissonance.  The example I used in the introduction is one of many stories wherein cognitive dissonance played a role in my behaviors and actions.  One author doing a qualitative study on the feelings behind these “faith crises” in Christianity noted the following:

In the words of Durà-Vilà and Dein (2009), a Christian is susceptible to a period referred to as the, “Dark Night of the Soul,” which is described as a “loneliness and desolation in one’s life associated with a crisis of faith or profound spiritual concerns” (p. 544). This crisis of faith can cause great suffering and emotional distress and can even resemble symptoms of a depressive episode (e.g., feelings of guilt, loss of interest, anxiety). Efforts to participate in spiritual activities such as prayer, attending church, or fellowship with other believers can feel overwhelmingly difficult. Additionally, these spiritual practices can lack the meaning they once held for the believer. These crises of faith can be short-term, or last years, and can potentially become as severe as an individual abandoning his or her faith altogether. (7)

Those feelings sound familiar, don’t they?  Basically, the argument being made is that those who are experiencing these feelings are having what many have called a “crisis of faith,” which prompts them to make decisions to resolve the negative feelings.  These “Faith Crises” are often described by both members and former members as being among the most difficult parts of their lives.  Remember, when someone begins to question the nature of their faith, they’re questioning the very nature of reality as we understand it.  The negative feelings that come along with such questions are very real, and should not be ignored.

As we’ve learned though, those feelings are only part of the story, seeing as how cognitive dissonance is manifested not by the feelings alone, but also how people set out to “resolve” those feelings.  Many members of the church who experience a “faith crisis” may have questions about whether or not Joseph Smith was a prophet, and so they might peruse the Joseph Smith Papers to help gain insight into who Joseph Smith truly was.  Others may have questions about whether or not God exists, and so they turn to the scriptures (as well as other sources), and ponder whether or not God exists.  Others may even choose to leave the church, believing that the reasons to believe in the church’s truth claims are unsatisfactory.  As you can see, when the dust settled in terms of my faith journey, I did not come to the conclusion that the church was false.  Even so, the final option of abandoning organized religion seems to be one that many people (especially in my generation) seem to be embracing. (8)

It’s worth noting from a cultural perspective though that some people have issues calling this a “faith crisis.” Critics of the church might be more prone to blame the church and not their own faith, and members of the church sometimes get self-conscious at the prospect of losing faith.  Instead, members of the church want to structure this as more of a “faith remodeling” focused on questions as opposed to some kind of crisis. (9)  I can get behind this rhetoric, as I believe that asking questions about our own faith and restructuring it seems like a good practice to me.  However, having been acquainted with my own feelings, and the feelings of others, of people navigating these issues, I also have no issue talking about it in terms of the strong emotions involved.  Regardless of how you view it, the relationship between cognitive dissonance and the feelings associated with what many people call a “faith crisis” is worth analyzing.

Resolving the Dissonance

With such powerful emotions at play, it almost goes without saying that this topic should be taken seriously.  There are a few things that people can do to resolve the dissonance.  For example, psychologists suggest that cognitive dissonance is resolved in a few different ways, including:

I think that breaking down the issue in this way is useful.  Objectively, we need to do some kind of reorganization of our thoughts, whether by adding to, changing, or ultimately changing the authority of those thoughts.  For example, I’ve made it clear that I don’t like raw tomatoes.  If I’m forced to eat raw tomatoes, I can resolve the ensuing cognitive dissonance by either:

Now, addressing cognitive dissonance from that perspective is certainly not a bad approach.  However, that still leaves us with the more practical question of “How can I help my friend or loved one”?  You can tell them to change how they’re thinking or feeling, but that alone probably won’t do much good.  As will soon be shown, a careful application of critical thinking in combination with spiritual direction can allow us to connect to those who are struggling in ways that are meaningful and effective.  Specifically, Latter-day Saints should understand and care about this topic so they can empathize with those experiencing a faith crisis, help them identify what the root of their faith crisis is, and eventually help them recognize that the feelings they have are a natural part of a healthy, progressing, and ultimately fulfilling faith.

While a technical psychological definition is still up for debate, empathy is usually characterized by “a complex capability enabling individuals to understand and feel the emotional states of others, resulting in compassionate behavior.” (11)  While it does not necessarily mean that you embody the anxiety, anger, or sadness that may arise during these crises, it does mean that you are emotionally present and that you are able to perceive the emotions that others are feeling accurately. (12)  Consider the following commentary stated during the Annual Seminary and Institute Training and Institute Broadcast:

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. Genuine empathy brings people together; it sparks connections and helps people feel they are not alone. It is a critical part of creating a sense of belonging. This attribute is a key to responding effectively to a student with a question and to effectively leading a group discussion where many students listen carefully with unspoken questions. (13)

An important aspect of empathy includes asking questions, and genuinely listening to people.  We’ve discussed the importance of asking questions in terms of critical thinking, but getting to the root of what a person actually feels requires careful questions, and patient effort.  Not only are you able to get to the root of what a person is feeling, but you in turn get to figure out exactly what a person is truly concerned about.  Put another way, by figuring out what they are feeling, you figure out what they truly care about.  In the last episode, I alluded to the idea that many people leave the church not because of historical issues or doctrinal issues themselves.  Rather, they leave because of the feelings that are brought about by these issues.  If you can address the feelings, you can figure out more how to help resolve the dissonance.

And that brings us to another very important facet to this conversation:  Cognitive dissonance is not necessarily a bad thing.  I’ve changed how I view cognitive dissonance (see what I did there?) in such a way that I now look at it as evidence of learning, and an opportunity to grow and develop my ideas.  This is true in just about every aspect of life, but it’s especially important to remember when we talk about faith.  I find experiences that we refer to as “faith crises” often work in a similar way.  We find something that prompts questions and challenges us, and it prompts us to learn more about the gospel of Jesus Christ, or the history of the restored church, and it can provide us an opportunity to cling onto the peace that is found with the Savior.  When we embody this pursuit of truth inherent within LDS theology, this aspect of critical thinking comes very naturally, and we should make full use of that advantage.  Although it’s difficult to navigate the complexities of cognitive dissonance, connecting with trusted sources, open communication, continual learning, and consistent connection with our Heavenly Father resolves cognitive dissonance far better than anything else I’ve found.

Conclusion

In conclusion, cognitive dissonance is an important and recurring aspect of our journey to become critical thinkers.  It has a long history, and pertains to many different contexts of our lives, including our identities as children of God.  Even so, there are a few options at our disposal that can help us, and others, navigate the complexities of cognitive dissonance.  Whether we are actively regulating our thoughts and opinions in a manner that is conducive to critical thinking, or we’re helping others by being empathetic, or even just becoming more comfortable with the complexities of life, cognitive dissonance does not need to be a stumbling block in our lives.  If we’re able to navigate those feelings well, we’re all that much closer to becoming the kinds of thinkers, and believers that God wants us to be.

References:

Further Study:

“On Dealing with Uncertainty” by Bruce C. Hafen, link here

“Faith is Not Blind” by Bruce C. and Marie K. Hafen, link here

“Questions of Faith, Not a Crisis of Faith” by Molly Ogden Welch, link here

Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT.  He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic.  He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history.  His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.

The post By Study and Faith – Episode 9: Cognitive Dissonance appeared first on FAIR.

by Zachary Wright

Introduction

Imagine for yourself for a moment that you’re face-to-face with a critic of the church who states “The church is lying to you about its history” or “the church is trying to cover up its past.”  When you ask them what they mean, they explain how the church has suppressed the details behind how a seer stone was used throughout the translation of the Book of Mormon.  They continue “It’s only until the advent of the internet where the church has been forced to be honest.”  What this critic does not know is that this claim is, for the most part, misinformation.  The unfortunate reality is that misinformation can be spread as simply as the example above, and it can have some devastating consequences.

Now, the vast majority of this series has been dedicated to arriving at correct conclusions, and I’ve mostly talked about us using data to build our own arguments and arrive at well-reasoned conclusions.  However, besides my episode on logical fallacies, I haven’t given all that much attention to teaching how to identify bad information.  So far, all my episodes have been working under the assumption that the information I’ve been presenting is accurate.  In reality, this isn’t always the case.  Reality is often very complicated, and the manner in which data is presented can be incorrect, misleading, biased, or otherwise presented in a way that can incorrectly sway our opinion.  Critical thinkers need to be aware of how data can be presented in ways that can lead to incorrect conclusions, so that we don’t fall prey to information that can have lasting negative consequences.  To start, we’ll discuss what misinformation is, and talk about how it can be combated.  Then, we’ll talk about propaganda in a similar way, and finally, we’ll discuss how to protect yourself against bad information.  Let’s get into it.

Misinformation

Before we can launch into describing propaganda, we first need to understand what misinformation is.  Misinformation is described as “incorrect or misleading information” (1).  This kind of information serves critical thinkers very little good because in order to solve problems, we have to acknowledge the effects those problems have in reality.  If we don’t understand the reality of a problem, that is, how that problem affects us in the real world, then we run the risk of implementing ineffective solutions.  Keep this in mind as we proceed through the sources we analyze.

Let’s jump back to the example in the introduction.  For those who don’t know what a seer stone is, the short answer is that it was a small, chocolate-colored stone that Joseph Smith used during the translation process.  This hypothetical critic made the claim that the church was actively hiding the fact that Joseph Smith used a seer stone during the translation process of the Book of Mormon (2).  If this was true, then members of the church who wanted to explain what happened would need to explain not only why Joseph used a seer stone, but also why the church was allegedly hiding the issue.  In other words, those kinds of details would need to be factored into whatever analysis we did on the church and its truth claims.  However, is it true that the church hid it?  Well, the answer is kind of complicated, but I’ve found that it’s actually pretty universally “no.”   For example, we have records of David Whitmer, a witness of the translation process, recording during his lifetime that Joseph Smith used a seer stone during the translation process (3).  We also have Emma Smith, another direct witness, indicating that he used a seer stone as well (4).

This is where things get tricky though.  These are both rather late sources, which if you remember from my article on evaluating historical sources, can sometimes make things a bit more complicated than we’d like.  This led some members and leaders of the church to disbelieve the idea Joseph used a seer stone.  Joseph Fielding Smith, for example, knew that Joseph Smith had the seer stone, but didn’t believe that it was used during the Book of Mormon translation (5).  This sentiment arguably dominated the rhetoric of the time regarding the translation.  However, this certainly wasn’t the unanimous opinion in the 1900s.  We have records of historians such as Richard Lloyd Anderson, alongside apostles Neal A. Maxwell and Russell M. Nelson, who affirmed that Joseph used the seer stone in the hat during the translation a few decades later (6).  As you can see, there’s far more nuance to this issue than meets the eye.

That brings us back to the topic of misinformation.  With this in mind, is it really fair to say that the church as an organization was actively trying to hide the fact that Joseph used a seer stone?  As you can see, this critic’s claim had information that was either misleading or even outrightly untrue.  We have multiple general authorities affirming that Joseph Smith used a seer stone during a portion of the Book of Mormon’s translation.  Was this detail contested?  Sure, but that’s very different from saying that the church was actively, knowingly, and deceptively lying or hiding this issue from the general membership.  Even so, we see this issue rehashed by critics of the church time and time again, despite the claim’s misleading nature.

Before we move on, it’s worth noting that there is some distinction between misinformation and its more devious cousin Disinformation.  Disinformation is described as “false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth” (7).  To put it another way, misinformation is just information that is incorrect, while disinformation is the intentional use of incorrect information.  Now, I don’t like accusing people of spreading disinformation, because that would be assuming the intent of another person, which is very VERY difficult to prove with any degree of certainty.  I think that Hanlon’s razor may be useful, or at least a variant of it:  Don’t assume malintent when human frailty can account for the same behavior.   Impracticality aside, it’s an important (albeit theoretical) distinction to make, seeing as it entails that we see the purveyor of disinformation in a different light than we see the purveyor of misinformation.

Propaganda

Now, misinformation is definitely a problematic thing, and its presence is felt in a lot of aspects of life and is often implemented in the realm of propaganda.  Propaganda is described as “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view” (8).  Another source described propaganda as being “dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumors, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion” (9).  As you can imagine, this is often an instrument in much of political discourse, but as you can imagine, propaganda can also be found in a lot of other areas of life, such as in religious discourse.

If we study those definitions carefully, propaganda is focused on this idea of swaying people to agree with you, using a carefully selected concoction of facts and/or misinformation and fallacious reasoning to get people to agree with you.  Researchers seem to agree with the idea that propaganda is information that is disseminated to elicit emotional responses, often using rhetorical devices and vaguely defined terms (10).  However, as some writers have noted, there aren’t a lot of great ways to determine the difference between genuine persuasion and overt manipulation, and consequently, it’s difficult to define propaganda well (11).   For our purposes, we’ll be working off of the definitions above wherein propaganda is more manipulative, biased, and misleading, even when it contains partial truths.

For example, consider this comment I saw on social media recently (source available upon request):

This is an excellent example of propaganda.  It’s a claim made about the church that attempts to elicit an emotional response:  A feeling of unfairness.  It wants us to actively distrust the church, and leave behind the organization that is allegedly extorting money from us “under duress”.  However, if we take some time to unpack this claim, we find it’s stringing together points that don’t make much sense.  I don’t pay tithing because I’m under duress. I pay tithing because I love God and I want to give everything I can to him. I hope my family will do the same, but I recognize that some of them may choose not to. If they don’t want to be around me in Celestial glory, then they don’t have to be around me. I won’t do anything to force them to, and neither will the church.  Think about this for a moment: How could anyone force them?

Now, more could be said on this topic from a theological perspective.  For instance, according to LDS theology, if someone I love doesn’t want to live a Celestial life, our scriptures indicate that I’ll still be able to minister to them, and consequently be around them (12).  However, this example shows how a deeper dive into propagandistic claims can expose the kind of half-truths inherent in a lot of these kinds of arguments.  By oversimplifying the issue, and targeting the emotional response of the reader, the critic employing this kind of argument may cause serious doubt to a genuine believer.

Fighting Bad Information

How do we avoid falling victim to misinformation and misleading propaganda?  Well, analyzing the data very much like I did now may prove to be useful.  It’s helpful to go back over the primary sources, see what different people are saying, and then draw conclusions about the data.  Drawing on the first article I wrote, a pattern of asking questions may also be useful.  Asking questions like these may be helpful:

We can use tactics like these to analyze information regarding just about any topic, and there are definitely benefits from using these techniques when analyzing church history.  While we should always be open to being wrong, following these patterns can lead us to be wrong less often, and consequently be more able to resolve problems in a practical, powerful way.

Luckily for us, critical thinking is also helpful in discerning what is true and what is not true in regards to propaganda as well.  As it is with misinformation, asking questions can prove to be useful, and having at least a cursory grasp of the discourse behind the issues at hand is just as helpful.  By knowing a thing or two about the topics being discussed, it can become easier for us to understand where the people presenting arguments are coming from, and consequently discern between bias, truth, and especially assumptions.

Honestly, as someone who has spent a significant amount of time parsing through arguments for and against the truth claims of the church, I’ve found that the most prominent thing that brings people out of the church is assumptions and negative feelings.  The idea that Joseph Smith used a seer stone for portions of the Book of Mormon’s translation doesn’t necessarily bring people out of the church.  More often than not, it’s the assumption that church leaders lied about their history, and often the negative feelings that follow thereafter (13).  Manipulative propaganda thrives on assumptions, inferences, and fallacious reasoning.  To avoid being misled, think about the presuppositions you have, so that you can study them out, and not allow your emotions alone to guide your behavior and thought processes.  Figure out what presuppositions other people have so that you can parse through bias more effectively.  In this series, we’ve talked about several tools now that can help us identify good information, and differentiate it from bad information.  I hope those tools can be useful.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it’s valuable to us as critical thinkers to practice discerning between good and bad information.  Misinformation runs rampant in every corner of our society, and manipulative, deceptive propaganda can cause just as many problems.  Luckily for us, there are ways to combat misinformation, and to protect ourselves from those who would deceive us (intentionally or otherwise).  Critical thinkers have a plethora of tools to help them find truth, and with those tools, we can develop the confidence we need to make decisions that will help us accomplish what we need, and to solve the greater problems in today’s world.  As always, I’m of the opinion that doing so will help us become the kinds of thinkers, and believers, that God wants us to be.

References:

Further Study:

Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT.  He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic.  He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history.  His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.

The post By Study and Faith – Episode 8: Misinformation and Propaganda appeared first on FAIR.

by Zachary Wright

Introduction

Imagine for yourself, for a moment, that a critic of the church stumbles across some quotes about the Adam-God theory.  “Brigham Young taught this, and seeing as he was a prophet, this must be what Mormons believe!” they reason to themselves.  They post these quotes on social media, proclaiming that “Mormons believe that Adam was God the Father!  Your leaders taught it, it’s what you profess to believe!”  However, what this critic did not know is that as early as 1897, we have records of church leaders stating that Brigham “no doubt expressed his personal opinion or views upon the subject,” supporting the idea that members of the church are under no obligation to support the notion that Adam was God the Father (1).  The critic doesn’t retreat from their position though, doubling down on how members of the church believe it.  At the end of the day, their bias led them to an incorrect conclusion about what members of the church believe.

For those who are well acquainted with criticisms of the church, I’m sure that you can recall with ease similar instances wherein bias led people to incorrect conclusions about our beliefs.  However, unlike most of the previous cognitive biases we’ve discussed, the bias outlined above can’t necessarily be learned by simply taking time to think about it.  It’s a little different, and has been classified by many researchers as being called The Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is what we’ll be discussing today.  Critical thinkers need to be aware of cognitive biases due to their possible impact on our daily decision-making and behavior, thus affecting our ability to arrive at conclusions and solve problems.  So today, we’re going to be going over the Dunning-Kruger effect, it’s quasi-reverse bias (often referred to as Imposter Syndrome), and afterwards we’ll talk about what we can do to combat these biases.  Let’s get into it.

How Confidence Relates to Bias

Now, I need to lay some groundwork for the rest of the article to make sense.  It’s understood that confidence is related to bias in a few different ways.  For example, the Overconfidence Bias is understood to be “the tendency people have to be more confident in their own abilities.” (2)  This is demonstrated in a plethora of studies, such as one wherein it was shown that younger children rate their memory recall ability more highly than their older peers.(3)  This makes sense…we talked about how dominant emotions (such as high confidence) are associated with cognitive biases in our previous episode.  As we’ll soon see, however, the connection between confidence and bias goes a little deeper than that.  

So, a group of researchers set up a study where they had participants determine whether groups of dots moved left or right.  Sometimes the dots moved more noticeably in a given direction, and other times, the dots moved less noticeably in a given direction.  After the participants made decisions about what direction the groups of dots were moving, they were shown evidence that either confirmed their suspicions (when they guessed right), or went contrary to their suspicions (when they guessed wrong). They then used magnetoencephalography, which is just a fancy method of scanning brain activity, to see how areas of the brain related to confidence behaved throughout this process. At the end of the study, the researchers stated the following:

As hypothesized, we found that after high confidence (vs. low confidence) decisions, accumulation of neural evidence was facilitated if it was confirmatory, but largely abolished if it was disconfirmatory…In other words, our MEG analysis reveals that high confidence leads to post-decision accumulation becoming “blind” to disconfirmatory evidence. (4)

To translate that, it basically means that when the participants were super confident in their decisions, it led them to be blinded to evidence that went against their decisions.  If that sounds familiar, it should, because in our last episode this phenomena is described as being confirmation bias.  This study was super useful in being able to demonstrate how our confidence can relate to bias in ways that we may not expect, and it’s important to retain this in mind as we proceed talking about more confidence based biases.

However, I do want to caution against any inference that confidence is a bad thing, or that confidence indicates weakness in a position.  As we talked about in our article about epistemology, there are ways to be epistemically confident in something that leave us less susceptible to errors.  We don’t have to associate confidence with bad ideas, and in my opinion, we shouldn’t!  As we’ll discuss more later, a lack of confidence can lead to just as many, if not more problems in the long run.  Even so, critical thinkers should be aware of how certain biases related to confidence can affect our ability to make decisions, and solve problems.  As we’ll soon see, the effects of these kinds of biases can be long-lasting and far-reaching.

The Confidence Biases at Large

To begin explaining more concretely how bias and confidence may be related, an excellent place to start is to explore the Dunning-Kruger Effect.  The Dunning-Kruger Effect earned its name from a pair of psychologists named David Dunning and Justin Kruger.  They published a very famous paper in 1999 wherein they tested people on their social and intellectual skills.  Later, they tested the participants again, asking them to rate themselves on how well they actually did.  What did they find?  They found that those who scored on the bottom percentile rated themselves as being much more competent than they actually were (5).  Since that time, psychologists have referred to this effect as being the Dunning-Kruger effect, and it’s been a well-studied phenomenon ever since.

Those who are familiar with my previous article are familiar with the aspects that make up a cognitive bias.  While each cognitive bias is different, it usually stems from people focusing on drawing patterns, prioritizing the information that correlates with what we already know, focusing on dominant/impactful data, and ignoring seemingly irrelevant information (6).  Unfortunately for those who fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, one could make a convincing argument that they are victims to all four of these heuristics in seemingly negative ways.  First, they recognize the pattern that they’ve been able to accomplish tasks such as “deductive reasoning” before.  However, there’s no guarantee that because they’ve successfully done something before, that they’ll successfully do it again.  Next, they draw on the information that they already know, prioritizing this information, seemingly at the expense of other information.  However, this leads to other problems, seeing as the information that they are seemingly missing is often important, and may complicate the simplicity of the answers they’re looking for.  This becomes increasingly apparent as time goes on, but by the time that they realize it, a lot of the effects have already had long-lasting consequences.

To explain why this is, I first need to explain a common way that the Dunning-Kruger effect manifests itself.  Let’s use myself as a hypothetical example.  Arguably, I happen to be one of the few people right now doing a series on critical thinking in regards to LDS theology and history.  Let’s say that I suddenly get a lot of popularity for my discussion about critical thinking.  I suddenly gain thousands upon thousands of views on my videos, and chart a lot of internet traffic on my articles.  People start reaching out to me, asking me questions about obscure aspects of LDS history, which I may know less about.  I can tell you about the things I’ve studied (Epistemology, Evaluating sources, Logic, etc), but I’m less equipped to tell you about every single pioneer story ever recorded.  However, because I want to be successful, and because I want to make people happy, I start exploring other topics that I have less experience in.  Consequently, I begin saying more things that are wrong; but because I was right about some things, I have the confidence to keep persisting in my incorrect ideas.  However, any attempts to correct my incorrect ideas would fall on deaf ears, because I would be far too inexperienced to recognize how I was wrong.  This is the Dunning-Kruger effect in its purest form, and they (Dunning and Kruger) reported the principle in the following way:

Those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. (7)

In the formal business world, this idea is referred to as The Peter Principle, which indicates that managers will “prioritize current job performance in promotion decisions at the expense of other observable characteristics that better predict managerial performance.” (8)  In other words, the managers look at what the employees do, and assume that their current performance will predict how well they will perform in a position that, in reality, would be too much for them.  It’s events like this that often lead to the Dunning-Kruger effect, where the person being promoted (either formally, like in a business, or informally, such as on social media platforms), will suddenly begin to feel confident about their abilities, despite the often obvious lack of ability they may have in a given area.  The bias here is evident.  We’re recognizing patterns of our success.  We focus on the dominant and impactful ideas that agree with our own ideas.  We also ignore or downplay the issues that challenge our own ideas.  After all, if we were right before, who’s to say that we won’t be right again?  However, if we put that into syllogistic form, it falls apart rather quickly.

The premises, in this instance, do not support the conclusion, and I hope you can do some research to find out what fallacy this is ;).  Proficiency in one area of study does not guarantee proficiency in another.  I’m sure that the reader can imagine a plethora of examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect being present at work, in politics, and of course, religious discussion.

Now, I certainly hope that I’ve stated things that are accurate and useful to critical thinkers, but regardless of how well-intentioned I may be, this does not change the fact that the internet as a whole is a breeding ground for the Dunning-Kruger effect in ways that have been previously unprecedented.  Normal, ordinary people with little to no formal training in a given field, are suddenly given power and influence over hundreds, if not thousands of people.  They can be proclaiming utter nonsense about a given topic, and not a single person will realize that they have no idea what they’re talking about. This is why critical thinking skills are as important as they are.  We need to be able to parse through information ourselves and recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments at play.  If we don’t, then it becomes all the easier for us to fall victim to cognitive biases, and otherwise fallacious thinking.

Now, I will introduce one caveat here, just to cover my bases.  There is a bit of controversy right now regarding whether or not the Dunning-Kruger effect is actually a psychological bias.  There are some writers and researchers now who are advocating for the idea that the Dunning-Kruger effect is more statistical in nature. (9)  The question as to whether or not this is a psychological issue or a statistical issue is important to consider.  However, the authors of these articles don’t deny that these behavioral patterns exist.  Instead, they attribute it to other factors, such as the Overconfidence bias.  Whatever the underlying cause is (whether that be psychological, statistical, or otherwise), I think these patterns of behavior and thought are worth mentioning and analyzing.

Flipping the script

We’ve talked about how people who are low-achieving tend to rate themselves as being much more proficient than how they actually are.  However, that still leaves us with the question of how people who are proficient in their field of study view themselves.  Now, you’d initially think that people who are proficient in their fields would likewise rate themselves as being significantly better than their peers in their profession.  However, we actually find the opposite to be true.  High-achieving, competent people often rate themselves as being less competent than their peers. (11)  It’s my understanding that this doesn’t happen all the time, but one study estimated that it happens to about 70% of the population at least once in their lives. (12)  Some authors note that this is often cited in association with Dunning and Kruger, though those two psychologists never expressly talk about it in their studies. (13)  Even so, I do think that exploring this issue may prove to be useful.

The imposter effect, also known as Imposter Syndrome, was initially described by Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, wherein it described that those who are extremely competent tend to downplay their abilities, feeling like they are less competent than they actually are. (14)  While this pair of researchers initially assumed that this phenomenon was exclusive to women, most researchers accept the idea that this effect is not exclusive to women. (15)  Some authors argue that it affects women more than men, while others suggest that Imposter Syndrome simply manifests differently among men and women. (16)  Regardless, this confidence problem inherent within the imposter effect contributes to the Dunning-Kruger effect, due to how the people who are less competent end up being given a larger platform due to the Peter Principle.  As demonstrated earlier, this can lead to a lot of problems within a short period of time.

The imposter effect can have some very negative effects on people and their performance. As you can imagine, it’s associated with higher rates of anxiety, depression. (17)  Those feelings are serious, and can cause problems in a variety of aspects in our lives, but something just as problematic is how the imposter effect can negatively impact critical thinkers in their quest to solve problems.  How so?  Well, let’s say that you have a brand new foreign-speaking missionary who’s afraid to speak up, because their trainer appears much more competent than them in terms of speaking, or even understanding the lesson content.  How about a bishop who resists a calling to become a stake president because he’s afraid that others will “discover his inadequacy.”  Examples of similar phenomena can be found outside of LDS culture, but you can probably already see the principle at play.  This can inhibit critical thinkers from making decisions that are genuinely going to solve problems.

That prompts the question though, how do we overcome the Dunning-Kruger effect and Imposter Syndrome?  Well, I think that the ways I mentioned in the last article are worth noting.  Slowing down, looking at things from a different perspective, and getting a multitude of opinions all may help decrease the effects and longevity of these effects.  However, I think it serves us to examine this from a more theological standpoint:  Both of these problems are resolved in a similar way.  True humility is the answer here.  To explain why, we first need to explore what humility is.  

Humility, in our theological context, is described as “recognizing our dependence on God.” (18)  I totally agree with that, and of course, an obvious application here is that humility would allow people to more easily admit when they don’t know something, hampering the effects of the Dunning-Kruger effect.  Why?  Because suddenly our eternal value doesn’t come from what we know, it comes from who we are.  Humility, when channeled in an appropriate way, can allow us to more easily admit when we are wrong.  If we really think about this, the imposter effect comes from basing our inherent value on the things we can do, instead of basing our value on who we are in relationship to God.

What about Imposter Syndrome though?  Surely that must be different, right?  Well, when we recognize that one of the most important aspects of our identity is that we are children of God, (19) it becomes much easier to recognize that we are not better than anyone else.  However, the opposite is also true:  no one is inherently better than us.  Instead of feeling like we’re letting people down, those who are truly humble recognize that even if there are imperfections in what they do, their imperfections do not make them less than other people.  Humility, in an ironic twist, decreases the fear that comes from failure.  When we realize that our true worth comes from our inherent, unalienable relationship with God, we open the door to true, enduring happiness.

Now, I’m not blind to the fact that humility exists in places outside the church.  General Christians, Atheists, as well as members of the church are all able to experience this kind of humility (though arguably for different reasons).  However, I bring this idea up for a few reasons.  First, obviously, I want to show how confidence and bias relate to each other, and likewise show a way that I think we can mitigate the effects of unhealthy confidence.  I want to show one of many ways of how looking at things from different perspectives can be useful.  This is the epitome of critical thinking:  the idea that we can bring together data of different types, analyze it, and then use it to help us solve problems.  This pattern is something that I hope everyone would try to emulate.  You don’t even need to be a member of the church to appreciate how this method of data analysis can be useful.  

In conclusion, I think that there are some important things to consider when we talk about how confidence can impact bias.  First, we need to know some of the mechanics behind how bias and confidence are related.  We also need to know some documented biases that relate to confidence, and we need to know how to fix them.  Again, I want to reiterate that certainty isn’t a bad thing, but like most things, it should be employed after careful consideration and restraint.  As we do so, it’ll be easier for us to arrive at correct conclusions, and eventually become the kinds of thinkers and believers God wants us to be.

References:

Further Study:

Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT.  He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic.  He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history.  His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.

The post By Study and Faith – Episode 7: Confidence and Bias appeared first on FAIR.

by Zachary Wright

Introduction

Someone I know, who is a very vocal LGBTQ+ advocate, once got into an argument with me about concepts behind gender.  I did everything I could to understand where they were coming from, seeing as this is a complex topic with differing perspectives.  However, they were trying to convince me (among other things) that gender is a social construct.  Having studied the issue, I pushed against their ideas, arguing that gender is more complicated than that and it certainly isn’t a mere social construct.  However, despite my best efforts, my research and perspectives fell on deaf ears.  Instead, my friend seemed to cling to the ideas of the people she agreed with.  I’ll be sure to go over LGBTQ+ perspectives another day.  However, my purpose in telling this story is to show an example of what researchers and psychologists call cognitive bias, which we’ll discuss today.

A few episodes ago, I explained logical fallacies – errors during logical reasoning – that can lead to incorrect conclusions.  Today, we’ll be talking about the equivalent of that, but in regards to psychological bias that we sometimes employ.  Cognitive biases are “errors in thinking that affect people’s decision-making in virtually every situation” (1).  Unlike logical fallacies, cognitive biases are negative brain processes (usually coming from intuition) that can affect our thoughts and lead us to wrong conclusions.  In other words, logical fallacies relate to arguments in the way that cognitive biases relate to intuitive brain processes.  Critical thinkers must recognize cognitive biases in their thinking in order to more objectively analyze the data they interact with and make more informed decisions.  Today, we’ll be going over where cognitive biases come from, explore some examples of cognitive biases, and then explore some principles that can help us avoid them.  Let’s take a look.

Heuristics:  The Brain’s “Easy Way Out”

Before we explore examples of cognitive biases, we must first understand where they come from.  Most documented cognitive biases come from “mental shortcuts” in our minds.  Psychologists call these shortcuts “heuristics.”  One group of researchers described heuristics in the following way:

A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows an individual to make a decision, pass judgment, or solve a problem quickly and with minimal mental effort. While heuristics can reduce the burden of decision-making and free up limited cognitive resources, they can also be costly when they lead individuals to miss critical information or act on unjust biases. (2)

Heuristics help us make decisions and arrive at conclusions easily and quickly.  Heuristics take information that seems familiar and draws a connection to something we’ve observed in the past.  These shortcuts often lead to good results… except when they don’t.

How heuristics can sometimes be misleading can be shown in some basic examples.  For instance, consider this video below:

If you’re like me, you initially see a series of dots moving around in a circle.  However, that’s not REALLY what’s going on.  It’s a series of points lighting up and growing dimmer in a specific pattern.  Our brains provide the illusion that it’s a circular-moving line of dots.  This example is one of many optical illusions that employ heuristics (3).  Another example of a heuristic is the “inattentional blindness” phenomenon.  Here’s another video example of a cognitive bias stemming from a heuristic (4).

In both instances, our brains are either making connections based on information that isn’t present or ignoring information that is present.  The accepted psychological theory states these intuitive (and I use that term very deliberately in light of my previous article) heuristics came from evolutionary processes and natural selection (5).  In other words, we’ve inherited instincts from our ancestors that protected us, enhancing our chances of survival.  This detail will be important later.

It almost goes without saying that this power of heuristics is nothing short of incredible, and one thing that I do want to stress here is that pattern recognition isn’t a bad thing.  I’ll be discussing how drawing inappropriate patterns can lead us to jump to conclusions, but not all heuristically-based decisions are bad ones.  One pair of researchers noted that “for many decisions, the assumptions of rational models are not met, and it is an empirical (after the fact) rather than an a priori (before the fact) issue how well cognitive heuristics function in an uncertain world” (6, parentheses added).  In other words, we often don’t know how well our heuristically-based decisions worked until after the fact.  However, they sometimes have unintended consequences that can cause problems in our thinking, as we’ll soon see.

Cognitive Bias:  Bad Processes, Worse Outcomes

There are multiple types of Cognitive Biases, each with observable patterns, chiefly focusing on drawing patterns, prioritizing the information that correlates with what we already know, focusing on dominant/impactful data, and ignoring seemingly irrelevant information (7).  I’ll be sure to link a more comprehensive list of cognitive biases below, as we won’t be able to discuss each one today.  However, we’ll cover some of the most important ones today, which may help outline some principles to help overcome cognitive biases.

The Anchoring Bias is “the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the “anchor”) when making decisions” (8).  When we see information and don’t critically think about it, we tend to allow that source to color how we see other sources of information.  For example, imagine someone learning from their parents that “the Mormons are just a cult.”  From then on, they cling to that information, allowing it to color how they discuss the church with the missionaries.  The problem with this kind of heuristic is evident:  It inhibits valuable analysis and thought.  It hyper-prioritizes information we already know at the expense of additional information that may relate to the issue.  

The Fundamental Attribution Error is the “tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional or personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the situational explanations.” (9).  In other words, we tend to associate certain attributes as being a part of personality rather than just being due to the surrounding circumstances.  An example of this is found in the hypothetical example of Member #1 and Member #2.  Member #2 is in a hurry and comes across as rude and impatient to Member #1.  Member #1 is offended at his impatience and then classifies Member #2 as an impatient person.  In reality, he’s in a hurry to get home to take care of his sick family.  As you can see, the situation was mostly governing Member #2’s behavior, not necessarily his personality as a whole.  Our heuristics focus on the dominant information in front of us and jump to conclusions as a result.

The Availability Bias indicates “The more available and relevant information there is, the more likely the event is judged to be” (10).  Put another way, we tend to prioritize more available information, even if it doesn’t tell the complete story.  For instance, there is a lot more critical information about the church than positive information about the church in places such as social media, where people talk about bad experiences they had in the church.  That information is often more accessible, and more advertised, than information about how members of the church end up being more generous (11), more pro-social (12), and have overall higher well-being (13) than most other populations of people.  This isn’t to say that it’s a contest.  However, it goes to show that there is evidence to go against the idea that church members aren’t happy, but it’s less available, so fewer people outside the church know about it.  This bias manifests from the intuition’s dismissal of seemingly absent or irrelevant information.

The Bias blind-spot Bias states “that most people believe they are less biased than their peers” (14).  In other words, we’re often able to point out other people’s biases more easily than notice our own biases.  Consider these statements (based on actual statements by critics)

The problem with these statements comes from appealing to an idea of purity that doesn’t really exist.  There is no such thing as “unbiased” sources.  As you can see, it’s easier for people to ignore bias in favor of what they believe, because our mental heuristics tend to lean in favor of the information we already know.

Confirmation Bias is characterized by “seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs” (15).  This can also be described as only looking for things that support your opinion.  Examples of this can be found in critics of the church only associating with people who agree with their assessments about church history while ignoring or dismissing organizations such as FAIR.  This, however, is problematic seeing as it once again prioritizes what people already believe at the expense of data that contradicts it.  This bias is prevalent (even among members), so watch for it.

The Framing Bias “refers to the observation that the manner in which data is presented can affect decision making” (16).  The way that information is initially presented to us can affect how we process that information and can lead us to incorrect conclusions (i.e. we make a decision based on how the issue was framed).  For example, “You belong to a manipulative cult” differs greatly from “You belong to a high-demand religion.”  (Lots of high demand groups exist, whether they be secular like the Navy Seals, or religious such as nuns, etc.)  This heuristic pulls on the idea that our brains focus on dominant, impactful data.  “Cult” is a very charged word often used with a negative connotation, so hearing it leads to conclusions that may or may not be accurate.  After all, depending on how you use the word, you could describe all religions as cults.

The Hindsight Bias is “the tendency, after an event has occurred, to overestimate the extent to which the outcome could have been foreseen.” (17).  This one is a little more well-known through the phrase “Hindsight is 20/20”, but its status as a cognitive bias is well-deserved.  This is often used against prophets and the mistakes they make.  It may be easier for us to say “How could Brigham Young have said X thing, isn’t it obvious that wasn’t true!?”  However, this just shows our bias…we have more information than Brigham Young did, and we’ve been able to draw patterns and make connections in ways that Brigham Young may not have been able to.  However, in such discussions, we have to remember that we are all human, we all make mistakes.  I try to be as charitable to people (past or present) as I imagine Jesus would be charitable towards me during Judgement Day.

Loss/Regret Aversion Bias was put by one researcher as “an expression of fear” (18).  Fear of what?  Well, fear of regret, pain, and loss.  This can manifest itself in a few different ways.  Perhaps a member is scared to take a serious look at church history because they’re afraid of losing their testimony.  Perhaps a critic of the church is scared of regretting their decision to leave the church, and so they double down on their criticisms.  These fears, even if somewhat justified, can impede our ability to understand the world around us.  Our brains tend to focus on dominant information and – let’s be honest with ourselves – we remember our failures.  Our mistakes/failures present themselves as very dominant information in our minds (19).  Keep this in mind as you’re making decisions.

The Stereotyping Bias is probably more familiar to most people.  A more technical definition of “stereotype” is “[the] category-based beliefs about a group that also involve affective–evaluative loading and behavioral tendencies” (20).  In other words, we put people with certain characteristics in a category in our minds, based on patterns we see.  For example, a critic might say something like “Mormons are raised to be bigoted and judgemental.”  Among other things, this is a stereotype placed on us by other people (21).  However, this bias comes from people’s tendency to over correlate data, that is, it’s easy for us to categorize other people into “being a certain way,” sometimes even if we don’t realize it.

Finally, in a similar vein, we have the In-group Bias, which is described as the willingness of members of a group to “treat their own group superior than others” (22).  In other words, we’re willing to hold those we don’t like to a higher standard than those we do like.  For example, I’ve seen instances where critics of church tend to give the benefit of the doubt to other critics, but not with those who defend the church.  When members of the church didn’t know something, it’s because we’re “ignorant,” but you’d be hard-pressed to find a member of that same community who would call another critic “ignorant.”  You’re far more likely to find them saying that the lay-members are ignorant than you are to find them saying that a member of their own ranks is ignorant.  Again, this kind of practice goes back to how people focus on dominant information, and for many people who have left the church, there are a lot of criticisms that are dominant in their minds.

Now, before I move on, I’d like to make one disclaimer:  I am not saying that those who have left the church are more susceptible to cognitive biases than those who have not left the church.  With just as much ease, I can find several instances where members of the church employ the same kinds of cognitive errors.  However, I do think that these examples of cognitive biases can demonstrate some of the ways that cognitive biases can affect how we interpret information, and consequently affect how members and non-members can be treated in negative ways.  It will always be in our best interest to avoid unnecessarily ostracizing other people.  See if you can identify cognitive biases in yourself, make note of which ones tend to cause you the most amount of trouble, and see if you can find ways to correct them.  As you’ll soon see, the first step to being able to combat cognitive biases is to identify them, and I hope that these examples can help you do that.

How to improve

That prompts the question:  How can we avoid cognitive biases?  There are a lot of sources out there that you can find that provide insights as to how you can prevent (or at least diminish) cognitive biases from affecting your life.  However, we won’t be able to go over all of them today, and even if I could, the ways that those practices can be applied vary from person to person.  Instead, I’ll cover a few principles that I think can help mitigate the effects of cognitive biases in our lives.  Hopefully that will provide insight as to what you can do to reduce the effect of cognitive biases, at least a little bit.

Right off the bat, it’s helpful to slow down the decision making process when possible.  As mentioned before, heuristics are basically “mental shortcuts” that help us make decisions quickly without spending too much time and energy thinking about it.  However, if we don’t need to make decisions quickly, then there’s no reason to take the shortcut.  Take some time to do research, and to “study it out in your mind” (23).  By taking more time, you’ll be more likely to avoid impulsive decisions.  If you’re able to, allow your intuition to be supported by other epistemic sources such as reason.

So, what should we do while we’re taking this “time out,” so to speak?  Before we can answer that, let’s take a step back for a moment.  We know that cognitive biases come from heuristics, which help us make decisions quickly.  It stands to reason, then, that in order to limit the cognitive biases we’re employing, we have to first recognize what heuristics are at play.  Asking yourself questions like “Am I focusing on some information at the expense of other information?” or “is there some kind of information that I’m missing?” can be helpful when analyzing what biases are at play.  By reviewing the presuppositions we have, it’s easier to see how our intuition may be helping us, or hurting us.

It’s also important to look at the issue from different perspectives.  Being able to seek further information, as well as receive feedback, may help reduce the effects of cognitive biases (24).  When you find something that confuses you, don’t just take the critics’ word for it, look at what FAIR has to offer, or consult other experts in different areas.  Not only is there likely to be information that you didn’t know (thus helping your intuition recognize true patterns and adjust to dominant information), but it can also be nice to analyze issues from people with different perspectives (25).  It’s also easier to verify your information too, so this practice of looking at what other people have to say can be useful in fact-checking your data, which is always going to be useful for critical thinkers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, heuristics can be a widely versatile tool that can help us resolve problems in powerful ways.  However, just like any tool, it can be misused, and can sometimes get in the way of our ability to arrive at correct conclusions and solve problems.  Cognitive biases come in many shapes and sizes, but they don’t have to define our thought processes.  There are good ways to avoid allowing these mental shortcuts to disrupt our analyses.  It’s imperative to recognize that these cognitive biases will never truly disappear.  They will always be a part of us, and no one is impervious to their influence (26).  Again, heuristics are important…even if we could ignore them we don’t have the time or energy to function well in this modern world without them.  Instead, it serves us to be patient with ourselves as we root out what we consider to be good and bad.  As we analyze where our intuition can sometimes lead us astray, it will become easier for us as critical thinkers to solve problems, and avoid common pitfalls that inhibit good reasoning.  In short, learning how (and how not) to use heuristics can help us improve how we learn, how we use our agency, and eventually help us become the kind of thinkers and believers I think God wants us to be.

References:

Further Study:

Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT.  He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic.  He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history.  His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.

The post By Study and Faith – Episode 6: Cognitive Biases appeared first on FAIR.

by Zachary Wright

Introduction

In my life, I’ve found that everyone has a specific philosophy that they live by, whether they realize it or not.  Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to the philosophical branch of epistemology.  Epistemology, while sounding complicated and boring to some, is just the fancy way of saying “the study of knowledge.” Consider the following:

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. It is concerned with the mind’s relation to reality. What is it for this relation to be one of knowledge? Do we know things? And if we do, how and when do we know things? These questions, and so the field of epistemology, is as old as philosophy itself. (1)

As we can see, this is a pretty deep topic, and I doubt I could cover everything about epistemology in this article.  For example, a branch of epistemology touches on whether or not it’s even possible to know anything, and we’re not going to be getting into that.  However, we will be going over the branch of epistemology that covers “how do we know what we know,” or in other words, “where do we learn what we know.”  Why does this matter?  Critical thinkers need to establish an epistemology so that they can develop levels of confidence about the validity of certain information.  With that confidence, it becomes easier for us to make decisions in light of the evidence, and solve problems.  In this article, we’re going to be explaining some terms, then go over some sources from which we can learn, and then explore how these concepts can relate to LDS theology.  Hopefully, that will help explain this complex issue in a useful way.

Knowledge & Certainty

Now, a brief definition of terms is warranted here.  Knowledge is a tricky thing to define, and there is a lot of discussion about how every epistemology fails to account for something at some point (2).  However, this does not mean that all epistemologies are created equal, and there are good ways to establish confidence about an idea regardless.  For this article, when I use the term “knowledge,” I’m going to be borrowing from philosophy professor Michael Huemer’s definition of it as outlined in his book Understanding Knowledge.  Michael Huemer suggests that there are four things that we need to have knowledge, which is referred to as the “defeasibility theory of knowledge.”  It’s outlined in his book in the following way:

This model, as with all models, has some presuppositions.  It presupposes that objective truth exists, and that it is indeed knowable through specific processes.  (Whether or not it does exist is another discussion; but to be fair, claiming the opposite would in itself be a claim of objective truth, so denying objective truth is a self-defeating proposition, and in my opinion, should be avoided.)  In short though, at least for this article, knowledge is an idea/conceptualization of something that meets those four criteria.  Otherwise, at least from this perspective, that idea is only classified as a belief, and not necessarily knowledge.

Now, this is where things get tricky because according to this model, knowledge is differentiated from certainty.  There are a few kinds of certainty defined by philosophers out there, but I’m mostly going off of the idea of “absolute certainty:” that is, the idea that we can know something without any kind of doubt whatsoever.  Absolute certainty, as I see it, implies the idea that we are 100% confident that something is true.  However, we can’t be 100% certain about anything, because even if we were to identify a way for us to be 100% certain about something, it would by necessity employ circular reasoning of some kind (4).  Consider this illustrative argument:

P1:  X Method teaches us how to be 100% certain about something

P2: This argument follows X Method

Conclusion:  We can be 100% certain that X Method works

The problem there is apparent:  the argument presupposes that X Method is true, and begs the question why it is true.  It’s the same thing as saying “We can be 100% certain of X Method because X Method states we can be 100% certain of X Method”, an argument we recognize as fallacious.  It’s worth noting too that absolute certainty is often associated with “psychological certainty”, and it can be had about beliefs just as much as it can be had about knowledge.  Consider the following:

Psychological certainty, for its part, is generally regarded as being non-factive. For example, John can be psychologically certain that it is raining in Paris even if it is not raining in Paris. In addition, psychological certainty does not require that a subject be in a favorable epistemic position. John can have no reason to believe that it is raining in Paris, and yet, be psychologically certain that it is raining in Paris. (5)

In other words, the confidence we feel about something provides no strength to our ideas.  With this in mind, absolute certainty is as worthless as it is impossible to obtain.  So, does that mean that we can’t have any confidence about anything?  Well, no, it just means that we can’t be 100% certain about anything.  This doesn’t mean that we can’t develop confidence in an idea at all.  The goal of epistemology is to provide a system of learning that can help us be confident about our ideas, an “epistemic certainty” if you will (6).  It is for this reason that I and others have no problem saying statements like “I know the church is true” when we bear our testimonies.  We’re not saying that we have absolute certainty that the church is true: rather, we’re saying that we have a high degree of confidence (due to the Spirit) that the church is true and that our testimonies are based on the prerequisites for “knowledge” described above.

The Umbrella Model

When we “Learn” something, I’m referring to two kinds of processes by which a piece of information ends up in our brain.  The first kind of learning comes from a more concrete psychological perspective, where learning is characterized by terms such as Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning, and Observational Learning.  Using sensations and perceptions, we’re able to receive signals from the outside world and translate them into thoughts (7).  Those thoughts are then put into our brains, and we have them at our disposal (though the mechanism by which this occurs is still lost on neuroscientists and psychologists).  The second form of learning is more abstract and has to do with consciously or unconsciously processing the information we’ve taken in (8).  I mention this because I classify my epistemology as being under these two umbrella categories: internal to the mind, and external to the mind.  Consider the following diagram.

This is a diagram of epistemology that I think suits the purposes and needs of all people, including LDS critical thinkers.  

Under the external umbrella, I’ve allocated each of the things that I reserve as being primarily focused outside of the self.  In other words, this is the umbrella where we have outside information being put into our minds.  Behavioral consequences or outcomes, for instance, happen outside of the body, and must be observed (and I have yet to find other things to put under this umbrella, as you’ll soon see).  When I use the term “observe” or “observation,” I’m not just referring to using your eyes; rather, I’m referring to the full spectrum of sensation and perception.  For example, if I were to take a bite of an apple, that’s an outcome of a behavior that I would observe and internalize through sensation/perception (9).  It’s worth noting that the scientific method falls into this sub-category.  Some basic examples of this include the following:

In the same realm as behavior outcome, we have communication or testimony.  Communication is unique among behavior outcomes in the sense that it is the only way for us to understand ideas that other people have in their minds, and the only way for others to understand the ideas in our minds (10). Some basic examples of this include the following:

As you can see, with communication, there is a bit of clarification that needs to happen, and a bit of cultural background and knowledge is required.  However, I wouldn’t put it outside of the external umbrella, as it is still very clearly the result of behavior outside of yourself.  However, that specific behavior seems to be subject to more complex, internal processes (more on that in a moment).

As for the internal methods of having ideas put into our minds, we turn to both the processes of reasoning and intuition.  The internal umbrella is characterized by our brains processing or adding information in our minds, (mostly) independent from their surroundings.  This is where I place Reason and Intuition as epistemic sources.  Now, I’ve already done two articles that explore logic, logical fallacies, and reasoning, so I won’t go into too much detail here.  However, suffice it to say that reason is the process of arriving at specific conclusions based on specific premises, analyzing the strength of ideas to arrive at new ideas.  An additional note I will add here is that these premises can be arrived at by any source of information, but reason allows us to arrive at new conclusions/ideas.  Intuition though is a bit harder to explain, and it has a kind of slippery definition.  Roughly speaking, it’s all the ideas that arrive in our head that don’t come from conscious reasoning (11).  Consider the following characterization of intuition, and how it differs from Insight:

Based on these examples, both phenomena – intuition and insight – may be conceived of as non-analytical thought processes that result in certain behavior that is not based on an exclusively deliberate and stepwise search for a solution. Non-analytical thought means a thought process in which no deliberate deduction takes place: individuals are not engaged in the consecutive testing of the obvious and/or typical routes to solutions that define deliberate analysis. Instead, intuitions are characterized by the decision maker feeling out the solution without an available, tangible explanation for it; insights are characterized by the fact that the solution suddenly and unexpectedly pops into the mind of the decision maker or problem solver being instantaneously self-evident. (12) 

There is a bit of debate as to where intuition comes from, but its ability to recognize patterns, its overall efficiency, and its impact on morality are all worth noting (13).  Some basic examples of intuition include the following:

As you look at the chart, there seems to be some kind of connection between each of the sources of information.  Intuition and Reason seem to rely on outside information often to recognize patterns, establish arguments, and arrive at conclusions/ideas.  Consequently, we see Intuition and Reason classify certain events a certain way, manipulating the authority they have as being stronger or weaker, thus affecting how we learn from external sources.  I can cite an example of this concerning a historical figure in the church.  

Those familiar with LDS history are familiar with the figure John C. Bennett.  Bennett was a friend to Joseph Smith and the mayor of Nauvoo for a brief period.  However, Bennett was cut off when Joseph found out that, among other things, Bennett was using his position (as well as rumors of plural marriage in Nauvoo) to trick women into sleeping with him (14).  From that point on, Bennett became a bitter, hostile critic of the church, making all kinds of claims against Joseph Smith and the saints (with varying degrees of veracity).  Here’s how one author described Bennett’s allegations against Joseph.

Bennett was touring the nation with a lurid, book-length exposé, charging Mormon leaders with “infidelity, deism, atheism; lying deception, blasphemy; debauchery, lasciviousness, bestiality; madness, fraud, plunder; larceny, burglary, robbery, perjury; fornication, adultery, rape, incest; arson, treason, and murder.” He said Smith and his followers “out-heroded Herod, and out-deviled the devil, slandered God Almighty, Jesus Christ, and the holy angels, and even the devil himself.”(15)

That’s quite the list of allegations, and the critical thinker will rightfully begin to question whether or not those claims are legitimate.  Some people think so, others not (myself included), but that debate in and of itself isn’t the issue.  The point I’m trying to make is that when we as critical thinkers read things like that, we are aware that our internal reasoning, or our intuition about Joseph Smith, affects how we view John C. Bennett.  Perhaps intuition suggests that Bennett may be acting out of rage, or perhaps we reason that there’s more going on in the story.  Whatever the case may be, our internal processes affect how we interpret external sources.  More on that in a moment.

This explores another important facet of epistemology: that is, that epistemology  shifts somewhat depending on the topic.  I’m not saying that it  changes without any standard; rather, I’m saying that outcomes of behaviors (both communication and otherwise), intuition, and reason all play different roles in different scenarios, and that what we give priority to needs to shift to be effective.  Why is that?  Because we only have so much information to work with for a given topic!  For example, as in math, reason may be more helpful than communication in some scenarios.  There are only so many people who talk about math, and the conceptualization of math is a purely internal, reason-based process done in our minds.  For historical analysis, while reason may be useful, communication is often more important when it comes to arriving at conclusions.  Communication provides more (hopefully accurate) details about past events, and the thought processes of the people who lived through them than reason does.  As critical thinkers, we need to apply the right sources of information for the right kind of job…and this is especially true when it comes to religious belief.

Epistemic Regress and the Spirit

This is where things get tricky though, because we begin running into a problem.  While the external umbrella sources are vital, most of the brunt work done in epistemology is done under the internal umbrella sources.  It doesn’t matter how many testimonies or behavior outcomes exist around somebody, if the internal sources are in charge of processing the information, they ultimately have epistemic superiority over the sources in the external umbrella.  But let’s say that we’re analyzing a complex topic such as “morality”…which one is better:  Reason or Intuition?  One may initially suppose that “reason” is the ultimate source.  However, we run into a problem there because reason requires an infinite number of premises to be acknowledged valid.  Consider the following:

Arguments are our model for how these reasons go–we offer some premises and show how they support a conclusion.  Of course, arbitrary premises won’t do, so you’ve got to have some reason for holding them as opposed to some others.  Every premise, then, is a conclusion in need of an argument, and for arguments to be acceptable, we’ve got to do due diligence on the premises.  This, however, leads to a disturbing pattern–for every premise we turn into a conclusion, we end up with at least one other premise in need of another argument.  Pretty soon, even the simplest arguments are going to get very, very complicated. (16)

This dilemma is referred to by philosophers as the epistemic regress problem.  However, before we can more fully explore the implications of epistemic regress, we have to explore some of the ways people have tried to solve it.

There are a few philosophical systems out there that attempt to resolve the problem (epistemic foundationalism, coherentism, infinitism, etc.). While there are notable differences between them, there is good evidence to support that they all derive their strength from a singular principle:  metaphysical grounding (17).  Metaphysical grounding tackles the question of “what grounds what,” or “what is the foundation or basis of something” (18).  Consider the following:

Metaphysical ground is supposed to be a distinctive metaphysical kind of determination. It is or underwrites constitutive explanations. These explanations answer questions asking in virtue of what something is so. For example, suppose that an act is pious just in case it is loved by the gods. Following Socrates, one might still ask whether an act is pious because the gods love it or whether it is loved by the gods because it is pious. This may be interpreted as a question of ground. (19)

In other words, epistemologists seem to converge on the idea that the true basis of something is grounded on a fundamental principle (either that or they just embrace skepticism).  After all, how can we expect to learn about topics like morality if we can’t identify the sources by which things like morality are learned from?  However, that leads us back to our question:  What is the ultimate source of knowledge about something like morality?  What’s the foundation of morality?  This is where I think Christianity, and specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, really begins to shine.  

As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe that the foundation of everything good comes from God (20).  We also believe that every person is given the ability to discern what is right and wrong through the Light of Christ, which is described as being “in all things” (21).  This is where I believe that our moral intuitions come from (at least in part), though as we mentioned earlier, intuitions are affected by other aspects of our surroundings all the time.  I see the Light of Christ and the Holy Ghost interacting with the above-outlined epistemology in a few different ways:

This has all kinds of fascinating implications for what we find above.  If this is how the Light of Christ/Holy Ghost works, what does that imply for our souls?  Do they interact with intuition in a similar way to help us choose?  Or is there more than meets the eye?  As it stands, it’s impossible to say, but this umbrella model of understanding epistemology accommodates LDS theology rather well.

Now, there is one more thing that I’ll mention here, and it has to do with the grounding example found above.  Many people wonder whether something (let’s call it X) is good because God does X; or whether God does X because it is good.  Other people phrase the question in terms of “is God subject to laws, or does God make the laws?”  I find such discussions somewhat pointless (being a rather practical person), and a part of me thinks it’s a distinction without a difference.  There is room in LDS theology for people to disagree on this issue.  Regardless of your opinion, the point remains:  by grounding our moral epistemologies on God, we claim that we can learn about an objective moral standard and that through a relationship with him, we will continue to learn more about that standard.  Either way, God helps you gain access to that information.  A belief in God also helps add insight to a centuries-old philosophical problem, which is always a plus.

Conclusion

In conclusion, epistemology is an important topic with a complex history.   I hope that by discussing this topic, critical thinkers can be more equipped to answer questions and recognize where they’re getting their information from.  By doing so, critical thinkers can arrive at better conclusions more often.  LDS critical thinkers can also benefit from these ideas by being able to answer questions like “Do I know the church is true?” or “What are the sources of truth I can rely on?”  We all have a lot to gain from studying epistemology, and I hope that by educating people about it, we can make a positive difference in the world.

References:

Further Study:

Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT.  He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic.  He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history.  His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.

The post By Study and Faith – Episode 5: Epistemology appeared first on FAIR.

by Zachary Wright

Introduction

In the last article, I took some time to describe some of the basics of logic, and how to form good arguments.  However, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that not all arguments are created equal.  For example, when it comes to deductive reasoning, the premises need to support the conclusions in order to be valid.  When they don’t, the argument is called “fallacious”, that is, it’s based on poor reasoning.  While there is some variety in how someone defines the term “fallacy,” and a massive history behind its usage (1), it’s generally understood that fallacious arguments are simply bad arguments due to either a faulty premise or a lack of important information (2).  We’ll get into how that is in a moment, but it almost goes without saying that critical thinkers need the ability to discern the difference between valid and fallacious reasoning.  Without being able to parse through the validity of good and bad arguments, critical thinkers are unable to arrive at appropriate conclusions. Consequently, they’re unable to analyze information accurately, and thus cannot maximize their problem-solving efforts.  There’s not a ton of background information I need to provide that I haven’t already provided in my previous article, so we’re going to do things a little differently today.  For this article, I’m going to list common fallacies and give examples of them in relation to historical and theological topics relating to Latter-day Saints.  Let’s get into it.

Logical Fallacies:  Thou Shalt Nots

Logical fallacies are best understood as “thou shalt not” commandments of logical thinking.  They severely cripple your capacity to make key points and arrive at correct conclusions.  Those who have studied Jewish law would know that there are about 613 commandments found within the Law of Moses, with some more famous ones that are given more attention than others (3).  While there are not 613 logical fallacies (that I know of), there are many MANY fallacies that have been identified and studied that we don’t have time to go over today.  However, we do have time to go over a few more popular/notable ones that inhibit logical reasoning.  While I do so, I encourage you to ponder on some similarities that each of these fallacies share.  With that brief introduction, let’s begin listing them off.

Ad hominem is an excellent place to start, seeing as it’s both easy to explain, and common to encounter.  This fallacy is characterized by the arguer attacking their opponent, rather than attacking the arguments their opponent presents (4).  For example, just this last week, I was engaging in classic Facebook debates, when I was called “Hitler” because I wouldn’t allow spam to be posted.  This kind of personal attack tries to discredit me by associating me with one of the most evil people ever recorded in history.  However, as you can imagine, this doesn’t at all discredit my argument that spam posts contribute little to the actual discussion. This fallacy is unfortunately common in the realms of both political and religious discussion and is done by both members and non-members of the church, so be careful!

In a similar vein to the previous one is the fallacy of faulty motives, or “Argument from motives.”  This fallacy seeks to discredit an argument based on the motives of the person making the argument (5).  An example of this is when people attack how Joseph Smith presented polygamy.  Joseph Smith claimed that the command to practice polygamy came from God (6), but some critics of the church claim that Joseph was looking explicitly to satisfy his own sexual desires (7).  Even when we ignore the (many) quotes that come from those involved in Polygamy that tell a different story when taken holistically (8), attacking Joseph’s motives here does nothing to actually address whether or not the command to practice polygamy actually came from God.  It also, of course, presumes the ability to read people’s minds, which to my knowledge isn’t possible yet.

An ad-populum fallacy, more commonly known as the “bandwagon fallacy,” is where the arguer assumes that because many people have believed something, it must be true (9).  If you’ve heard someone say something like “Everyone’s doing it, so you should too!” or “How could it be possible for so many people to be wrong?” then they’ve committed a bandwagon fallacy.  For example, even if thousands of General Christians believe that the concept of biblical inerrancy is true, that doesn’t necessarily make it true.  This fallacy should also be avoided when it comes to scholarship.  While a consensus of scholars may provide a lot of confidence, the consensus of scholars alone does not automatically entail that something is true.

Circular reasoning, also known as “begging the question,” is a fallacy that is characterized by assumptions of the conclusion’s truthfulness being found in the premises of the argument (10).  That may sound confusing, and to be fair, it’s not just characterized that way, but it’s easier to show than it is to tell.  Consider this discussion (based on an actual argument I’ve read):

Question:  Why is the Bible inspired scripture?

Answer:  Because the Bible is inspired, and it follows the patterns of scripture outlined in the Bible.

You see the problem here?  The conclusion states that “The Bible is the word of God because the Bible says that it’s the word of God.”  The problem here is that deductive reasoning necessitates that the premises support the conclusion, not the other way around.  The conclusion can’t be used to prove the conclusion…that’s why arguments like this “beg the question” of why the conclusion is true.

The Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, also known as the “false cause” or “Texas marksman” fallacy, is a bit tricky to explain, but it’s committed when the arguer tries to make connections where a connection does not exist (11).  It gets its name from the idea that if a gunslinger shoots a wall 100 times without looking, there are bound to be a few clusters of bullet holes closer together.  The gunslinger could then paint the wall, putting the cluster in the bullseye, and declare himself to be the greatest shot in the west, despite the fact that he wasn’t aiming there.  With so many data points out there (bullet holes), it’s natural to find some similarities, but those similarities don’t necessarily mean that there is a connection.  For example, many people have made connections between The Book of Mormon and other books like View of the Hebrews or The Late War, due to certain similarities that can be drawn.  However, this doesn’t prove that Joseph Smith used these texts to fabricate the Book of Mormon; and in fact, certain textual evidence found within the Book of Mormon helps to challenge the assumption that The Book of Mormon is a 19th-century pseudo-archaic text (12).  While this shouldn’t dissuade you from making observations and connections, critical thinkers need to keep an eye out for the possibility that some things just happen by chance.

The “No True Scotsman” fallacy is an appeal to purity: that is, it’s an appeal to a specific definition of a term as being authoritative over all others (13).  The name comes from the example given by Anthony Flew where he says  “No true Scotsman puts brown sugar in porridge.”  In other words, the true members of X group don’t do/believe Y; appealing to a strict, limited definition of X.  Most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are familiar with this argument in terms of the debate of “Are church members Christians?”  I remember being told several times on my mission that real Christians “believe the trinity” or “test modern revelation (Like the Book of Mormon) by prior revelation (The Bible)” (14).  However, this kind of shifting of definitions does little to prove anyone’s point, and the arguer would need to demonstrate how their definition of “Christians” is superior to that of the church’s definition.

Another important fallacy to cover is that of the “Either/or” fallacy, also referred to as a “False Dichotomy/Dilemma” or “Black and White” fallacy (15).  This is committed when the arguer sets up a false binary in a discussion, reducing the outcome to only two options.  An example of this in relation to LDS theology would be someone being told to either denounce The Family: A Proclamation to the World or admit that they hate gay people.  However, critical thinkers would be able to state that there are a plethora of ways to support the proclamation without hating people who have same-sex attraction.  The arguer would need to prove first that those are the only two options before they can support the conclusion that those are the only two options.

The argument to moderation fallacy, also known as the “false compromise” fallacy, is kind of the opposite of the previous one (16).  This happens when one asserts that a position is correct or is an ideal answer simply because it’s a compromise between two extremes.  An example of this would be someone saying something like “Lots of people think Joseph Smith was a prophet, or he was a fraud, but the truth is that he was just a man that was sincere, but wrong.”  However, just because this is a middle position doesn’t prove that the conclusion was true…such conclusions would need to be supported by other premises.

A hasty generalization fallacy is characterized by drawing conclusions about a group of people due to the actions of a few people in that group (17).  This would be like someone saying “I found a few missionaries that were rude or ignorant about a given topic, therefore, all missionaries are rude and ignorant”.  However, this is making an assumption that would need to be shown about every missionary in order to be accepted as true.  After all, the fact that some missionaries don’t know something doesn’t mean that all of them don’t (in fact, quite a few of them know quite a lot!!!).  There are a lot more variables at play when it comes to anyone’s education, and hasty generalizations are characterized by their lack of accounting for all of those variables.

The Genetic fallacy, also known as “poisoning the well,” is similar to the ad-hominem fallacy in a way.  The genetic fallacy states that an argument is untrustworthy because of the background, education, or goals of the source.  A considerable example – pertinent to everyone reading – has to do with FAIR.  If I had a nickel for the number of times I’ve heard people discredit an argument because it came from FAIR, I’d have a substantial number of nickels.  However, as we learned in the previous article, conclusions are arrived at based on the premises…not the place where the premises came from.  Anyone is capable of making good arguments, and dismissing arguments and conclusions because of who they came from is the epitome of bias, and the antithesis of critical thinking.

The Tu Quoque fallacy is one that many people are guilty of, including members of the church.  The Tu Quoque fallacy is committed when someone tries to justify the shortcomings of their arguments by pointing out the weaknesses of their opponent’s arguments (19).  An example of this would be when someone asks about biblical (or BoM) archaeological evidence, and the other person points out the fact that the Bible (or BoM) has incomplete archaeological records as well.  However, those kinds of observations neither support nor protect anyone’s arguments/premises.  While we should be open to asking questions, clarifying the positions of others, and evaluating hypocrisy when possible, it’s important to not mistake that as defending our own arguments.

The Slippery Slope fallacy states that one decision will lead to one outcome, then another, and then finally arrive at a conclusion that is preposterous and/or terrible (20).  An example of this found in LDS theology is found in the idea of personal revelation.  A critic might claim that because we accept the idea of personal revelation, we may be inspired to break our covenants and break the law of chastity, therefore, the idea of personal revelation is bad because it leads to breaking the law of chastity.  Putting aside the fact that the spirit would not tell us to break covenants (21), this is a logical fallacy in the sense that personal revelation does not necessitate the idea that we’ll break our covenants.  Generally, it’s good practice to avoid large improbabilities and hypotheticals like that in a conversation…critical thinkers should focus on specific behaviors and ideas, and act accordingly.

 Special Pleading is a fallacy that refers to instances when an arguer would ask for an exception to the rule to be made in regard to a premise (22).  In other words, they “specially plead” that someone or something is an exception to a rule of some kind.  An example of this is found in LDS theology, where people state that there were no prophets after Jesus.  We’ll then cite that the term “prophets” is used repeatedly to refer to messengers for God in the New Testament and that those prophets are understood to be authoritative and foundational like apostles were (23), to which the critic would reply “that doesn’t count” (24).  Asking to change the rules when a premise is shown to be faulty does not make the premise any stronger, and thus does not support the conclusion.

Equivocation fallacies are characterized by using the same term in different ways, that is, changing the meaning of a term partway through the argument (25).  An example of this found in LDS theological discussion is when people are talking about “faith.”

P1: The Bible teaches we’re saved by Grace through faith (26)

P2: The LDS church teaches we’re saved by Grace through Faith and Works (27)

Conclusion: The LDS believe differently than the Bible

Now, at first glance, this may seem like a home run for the critics of the church in terms of proving that we disbelieve the Bible.  However, what they don’t know is that the definition of “faith” is very different in both of those premises.  The term “faith” in P1, according to scholars, is likely to be understood as an allegiance to God (28).  However, the term as used in P2 (and by most people in the 19th century) means something more like “belief” (29).  When you put both of those terms in their proper context, you come to find out that they’re not saying anything all that much differently.  This is a tricky one to spot though, so slow down and keep an eye out for it.

Red Herrings are characterized by bringing up something unrelated, or mostly unrelated, to your point in an attempt to distract from the real issue (30).  This fallacy can be characterized in the following conversation:

Critic:  Mormons believe that you’re saved “after all you can do” (31), it’s an impossible gospel!  Have you done everything you can do?

Member: Well hold on a moment…research shows that the term “After all we can do” really means something more like “In spite of all we do”.  Lots of non-members during Joseph’s time used the phrase “After all we can do” to mean “In spite of what we do” (32). 

Critic:  Well, that doesn’t change the fact that your Book of Mormon affirms the Trinity

As you can see, the topic shifted under the burden of additional scrutiny.  The discussion as to whether or not the Book of Mormon teaches Modalistic Trinitarianism is a completely different discussion from the discussion to be had about 2 Nephi 25:23.  This attempt to distract from the original topic does nothing to protect or maintain the strength of the original claim.

An erroneous appeal to authority is an equally inappropriate fallacy, and is the flip side of the “poisoning the well fallacy” we talked about earlier.  It’s characterized by inappropriately appealing to what something (or more specifically someone) says as being the be-all, end-all thing that proves something is true (33).  An example of this fallacy would be a Christian saying that because the Bible outlines a world shaped like a dome (34), we should believe it too because they’re authorities.  Unfortunately, similar to the well-poisoning fallacy, just because the argument came from a specific source, even an authoritative one, doesn’t mean that source is right.  While we should be willing to note the extensive time and effort that professors, researchers, historians, and other authorities have put into their fields of study, we need to remember that arguments are good or bad based on their premises and information…not based on who made them.

A loaded question is one that has no correct answer: that is, no matter what the answer to the question is, there is an unjustified or controversial assumption baked into the question (35).  An example of this is found in a hypothetical question that a critic of the church asked, “Have you always been a brainwashed member of that cult?”  No matter how you answer that question, it’s already making the assumption that first, you’re brainwashed, and second, that the church is a “cult” (36).  Both of those would need to be demonstrated in order for the argument to be valid.  Sometimes loaded questions can be methods of disguising ad-hominem attacks too, so keep an eye out for that.

The Gish Gallop fallacy gets its name from a skilled young earth creationist debater named Duane Gish.  His style of debate included long lists of points, and thus the fallacy named after him is characterized by attempting to bury the arguer’s opponents in many different (and mostly not very good) claims, sources, and arguments (37).  The assumption here is that it takes far less time to make a claim than it does to disprove a claim.  One of the devious things about this fallacy is that even if they make 100 arguments, and you’re able to successfully refute 99 of them, the critic can point to the one you weren’t able to refute, and “claim victory” (it’s difficult to refute every argument, regardless of strength, during a formalized time-delineated debate).  A very popular example of this right now in LDS culture is the CES letter, written by Jeremy Runnells.  Despite the fact that the claims made in the letter have been addressed (and debunked) over and over again (38), the CES letter’s tactic of presenting dozens and dozens of arguments makes it difficult for the inexperienced reader to parse through all the information.  The Gish Gallop is fallacious in nature because the strength of the tactic isn’t based on the premises itself: instead, it’s based on the fact that the arguer is manipulating the circumstances around the debate and discussion, rather than focusing on the specific arguments/premises itself.

The perfectionist fallacy describes an instance where a solution to a problem is rejected because it doesn’t solve the problem perfectly (39).  As those who are familiar with LDS history and theology know, this is a common fallacy used against prophets.  In LDS theology, prophets are used to fill the role or “solve the problem” of testifying of Jesus Christ, and have authority from God to teach us about him (40).  However, as per our theology, they’re not perfect (41).  However, just because they’re not perfect doesn’t mean that they don’t accomplish their job, or consistently testify of Jesus Christ’s divinity.  Pointing out the fact that prophets aren’t perfect doesn’t change the fact that prophets help solve the problem of bridging the gap that exists between God and us.

“Shifting goalposts” is a fallacy that’s similar to “Special pleading.”  It’s characterized by changing the complaint in such a way as to narrow the question so it can’t be answered, or so that an original answer is no longer included (42).  An example of this found in LDS apologetics refers to archaeological evidence about the Book of Mormon.  Consider the following conversation:

Critic:  There is no archaeological evidence that supports the Book of Mormon

Member:  That’s not really true.  Putting aside the fact that lots of things that were considered problematic in the Book of Mormon have now been verified by modern science (such as the use of metal plates used to keep records in the Middle East), there’s also discussion about places like NHM region, which matches the description of Nahom in the Book of Mormon.  Does that not count?

Critic:  Well that doesn’t account for the fact that there’s no archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon found in the New World.  For example, do you know where Zarahemla is?

You can see how the complaint shifted from “all archaeological evidence” to “New world archaeological evidence for BoM cities.”  Such attempts are used to evade the fact that the points were defeated and do nothing to protect the premises found in the original criticism, change the kind of answer that needs to be given, and are consequently found to be fallacious.

An Appeal to Nature fallacy is a type of “erroneous appeal to authority” fallacy, in which nature is set as the ultimate standard of right and wrong.  In other words, an appeal to nature states that because a behavior/observation is found in nature, it must consequently be a good thing (43).  An example of this is often found in LGBTQ+ discussions.  Many proponents of LGBTQ+ relationships will point to instances where different species of animals engage in homosexual activity in order to show that homosexual activity is morally acceptable (44).  However, this point presupposes that Nature is the highest moral authority, which would need to be demonstrated.

An Appeal to ignorance, simply put, is a claim that because there is no evidence to the contrary, something must be true, or because something has never been proven true, it must be false.  An example of this given by the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is “Nobody has ever proved to me there’s a God, so I know there is no God.” (45).  This is also found in reference to exclusively LDS theology when it comes to things like Book of Mormon archaeology or DNA in the Book of Mormon.  Just because we don’t know where the city of Zarahemla is doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist (46).  While we should always be willing to look for new information and use critical thinking skills to evaluate the possible validity of claims, we should be wary of saying that because we don’t know something, it therefore definitively exists or does not exist.

One fallacy that I find to be particularly devious is gaslighting.  Based on the 1944 film Gaslight, this fallacy is characterized by attempting to call into question the sanity of the arguer’s opponent by challenging their experience, or by distorting established facts (47).  For example, I remember being in a discussion with someone and me explaining to them that Joseph taught about the concept of a council of gods, and citing the sources where he made that claim (48).  The person I was debating with promptly replied, “No, he didn’t talk about it there!”  Admittedly, I was thrown for a loop; going over my sources again, double-checking each of my points – based on the fear that I was missing something.  I later found that Joseph Smith did, in fact, affirm that there was a council of gods, as per my cited source, but it was already too late…the tactic had succeeded in derailing my conversation.  I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but in reality, gaslighting can be either purposeful or unintentional (49).  Gaslighting doesn’t actually disprove anyone’s premises, making it as fallacious as it is manipulative.

An unfalsifiable claim is somewhat tricky to deal with and employ, due to its limited context.  Unfalsifiable claims are fallacies found in scientific discussions where claims that cannot be verified are made (50).  This is most commonly used in discussions about God, where for instance, one person may say that something happened because God made it happen.  This is unfalsifiable because we have no way to objectively prove that God did or didn’t do something, at least using scientific methods.  I’ve found a lot of discussions about this to be somewhat futile for just this reason.  It’s equally unfalsifiable to say that “X thing happened because of God” as it is to say that “God can’t exist, because the universe doesn’t need God to function.”  We can’t prove either of those things objectively as it stands, so we must find other ways to talk about God’s existence or non-existence.

Finally, we have the fallacy fallacy, the great equalizer of all the different fallacies.  This fallacy states that even if fallacious reasoning is used, the proposed conclusion may still be true (51).  For example, and in the spirit of the previous fallacy about unfalsifiability, even if we concede that a belief in God is unfalsifiable, the mere fact that a fallacy is used doesn’t make it impossible that a God exists.  This is why Critical thinking is so important:  We have to be willing to understand what our assumptions are, and limit the amount of fallacies we employ, but realize that sometimes, fallacies exist in our thinking and in ideological discussion that just can’t be understood or traversed right now.

Conclusion

In conclusion, that was a lot of material to cover, and there are far more fallacies that have been unmentioned here that deserve serious attention.  However, the fallacies we’ve discussed today are common enough that mentioning them to LDS Critical thinkers is useful.  While there is a limit to how fallacies can help you, they can serve as guidelines for evaluating information.  Review these often, and see if you can practice identifying them in both religious and non-religious contexts. As you do so, I promise that you’ll be able to figure out how to parse through information more effectively, and more often avoid conclusions that are inaccurate.  Then, you can keep solving problems, becoming a more informed and decisive critical thinker.  As long as we act with charity, and the pure love of Christ (52), we can all become the kind of thinkers, and believers, God wants us to be.

References:

“Because the prophets appear after the mention of the apostles and because they are linked together in 3:5 as recipients of revelation about the church, they are to be regarded not as Old Testament prophets, but as New Testament prophets.”

I’ll also refer to the work of Jeff Lindsay, which you can access here.  While Mr. Lindsay is not a theologian by trade (not that his profession would disqualify him from making a good argument), it’s worth noting that his work here has been endorsed by theologians such as Robert Boylan, who cites Lindsay’s article here.)

Further Study:

Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT.  He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic.  He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history.  His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.

The post By Study and Faith – Episode 4: Logical Fallacies appeared first on FAIR.

by Zachary Wright

Introduction

If you’ve ever listened to an argument, you’ve probably heard someone angrily protest to the other “You’re not being logical!”, or something to that effect.  When I heard the term “logic” previously, I usually thought of things like “facts” or “math,” or even more vague ideas like “things that make sense.”  This is mostly true, but there’s a bit more to it than that – and that “bit more” is what we’re going to talk about today.  Logic, at its core, is a methodology for creating and evaluating arguments (1).   Of course, when I say “arguments” I don’t mean shouting matches like the one in the previous example, rather, I mean “a reason given for or against a matter under discussion” (2).  We make these kinds of arguments daily: at work, at home, and even in church. You see, we as people run into problems, and have to make decisions all the time to survive, maintain relationships, and accomplish the tasks we set for ourselves.  As critical thinkers, it’s important to understand what “logic” is, because logic is key in helping us convince other people of our ideas, evaluate the arguments of others, and can help us make those decisions based on the information we have obtained (like from the good sources we learned to evaluate in our last article).  No matter who you are, logic can help you accomplish your goals, make informed decisions, and be the kind of people God wants us to be.  That being said, there is a lot of information to cover.  First, we’re going to be talking about the history and basics of logic, then we’re going to talk about how to make a logical argument, then finally we’ll talk about the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning.  Let’s begin.

Logic: Terms and Tomatoes

The roots of logic trace back to Greek philosophers, specifically Aristotle.  Most of you watching have probably heard of him at some point in your educational lives, but suffice it to say that he lived through a LOT of significant Greek history.  For example, he studied at Plato’s (another very important philosopher you’ve probably heard of) academy for 20 years (3) and also got to see Greece transition from being a Republic to being an empire under Alexander the Great (whom Aristotle personally tutored) (4).  More important to our discussion today, though, is the fact that Aristotle is one of the forefathers of modern logic as we now understand it.  As one website put it, “Aristotle’s logic, especially his theory of syllogism, has had an unparalleled influence on the history of Western thought.” (5)  As I explain what Aristotelian logic is, you’ll probably begin to understand why; but first let’s take some time to build the foundations of logic by defining some terms.

Now, there are a lot of explanations of logic out there, and a lot of them have some pretty complicated figures and materials if you don’t look at them carefully.  Here are some things that we can say though:  Logic is based chiefly on propositions.  Consider the following synopsis from British Philosopher A.C. Grayling:

“Aristotle took it that the fundamental unit of logical interest is the proposition, the ‘what is said’ by an utterance, this ‘what is said’ being either true or false.” (6)

Okay, that’s easy enough…Aristotle focused on what each claim was actually saying, and what the parts of a claim are.  What are the parts of a claim?  Well, that’s where tomatoes come in handy.  I’m personally not super fond of tomatoes in their raw form, but it’s actually pretty easy to describe tomatoes, especially ones like this:

Ignoring the stems and seeds, if I were to say “The tomato is red,” that would be a proposition.  A proposition can be a singular sentence, or expressed in multiple sentences.  For example, if I were to say “The tomato is red” and “The redness quality is shown by the tomato,” those two sentences would share the same proposition:  in other words, they make the same claim.  I borrow this description from Grayling’s book again, where he makes the same point using “white” and “snowflakes.” (6)  Easy, right?

Next, we need to talk about the subject phrase and predicate/verb phrase (7).  The subject is the chief noun that’s being discussed or described by the predicate.  In our statement “the tomato is red,” the subject phrase would be “the tomato,” and the predicate phrase would be “is red.”  As you can see, the subject is described by the predicate phrase.  Try playing around with descriptions of things in your head, and identify the subjects and predicates of each proposition or statement you make.

Next, we have universal/particular propositions (8), and affirmative/negative propositions (9).  This part is a little more self-explanatory: universal/specific propositions have qualifiers that describe the subject, and affirmative/negative propositions have qualifiers found in the predicate.  Let’s explore what that looks like for a moment.  A universal proposition is one that explains that all of the subjects have a specific predicate.  For our tomato example, it would be like saying “all tomatoes are red,” not just “some tomatoes are red.”  Particular propositions are the opposite – they just refer to specific subjects, very much like our example of “the/this tomato is red.”  Not all the tomatoes are red…just this one.  Affirmative and negative propositions describe subjects as having (or not having) specific characteristics or qualities.  “All tomatoes are red” would be a universal affirmative proposition, seeing as it affirms that all of the subject does have a specific description.  The proposition “all tomatoes are not red” would be a universal negative proposition, as it’s negating the idea that the subject has the predicate’s description.  Consider this example here about birds (10):

In this chart talking about propositions about birds, “A” describes a universal affirmative proposition, “E” is a universal negative proposition, “I” describes a particular affirmative proposition, and “O” describes a particular negative proposition.  You can do a decent amount with propositions like this, but there are a few more things we need to go over as we build our logical foundation.

We’ve already touched on “quantity” (universal/particular) and “quality” (affirmative/negative) classifications, but there are a few more that might be useful to discuss before we learn how to build an argument.  Grayling states that Aristotle had several categories that he classified things into when he was looking at propositions (6).

To wrap this section up, there are a few things to keep in mind as we continue our discussion about logic and arguments.  

With this baseline information, we’re now ready to explore the basics of making an argument.

Syllogism:  The Art of Making an Argument

We’re going to be shifting to the topic of syllogisms.  Propositions when used as a part of an argument (not just a mere description), are referred to as “premises,’, and syllogisms are defined as “the simplest sequence of logical premises and conclusions, devised by Aristotle.” (11)  In other words, we can use propositions to make arguments and arrive at a conclusion.  Consider this example of a syllogism (12).

P1. All A is B

P2. All C is A

Conclusion: All C is B.

We can go back to our tomato example here, too.  Let’s just pretend that “A” is “tomatoes”, “B” is “fruit”, and “C” is “cherry tomatoes”.  Let’s apply that to our syllogism.

P1. All tomatoes are fruit

P2. All cherry tomatoes are tomatoes

Conclusion: All cherry tomatoes are fruit

Each syllogism has the same kind of makeup.  For example, syllogisms always have a collection of premises that are understood and agreed upon as true.  In this example, we have two premises, but you can have any number of propositions here if you’d like.  Conclusions are also important for every argument based on syllogism, because if we don’t have a conclusion, then all we’re doing is making observations.  That’s not a bad thing, mind you: we need to be willing to gain knowledge.  However, if we want to make decisions, we need to be able to learn – or, in other words, arrive at conclusions.  Just don’t forget to make sure that your premises actually support your conclusion (we’ll talk about Logical Fallacies another day).

In the introduction, I made a syllogistic argument, in a way.  It kind of looked like this:

P1. We run into problems

P2. Logic helps solve some problems

Conclusion: We may use logic to help solve some problems

These are super basic examples, but I’m sure you can see how they can be expanded to make more complex arguments.  Consider practicing looking at syllogisms in work, at church, or even in just the daily mundane statements of life.  These are literally the building blocks of learning and making decisions on a daily basis.

Let’s use an example from church history.  In the original 1830 edition of The Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith is labeled as being the “Author and proprietor of the Book of Mormon.”  Some critics have asserted that this is actually Joseph Smith admitting to having “authored” The Book of Mormon himself.  However, not only does that contradict what Joseph Smith wrote about in the next few pages, but it also ignores the important context of New York publishing laws at the time (13).  The argument against the idea that Joseph was claiming to the the “author” in the sense that he made up The Book of Mormon can be summarized in the following syllogism:

P1. Joseph needed to publish The Book of Mormon

P2. To publish The Book of Mormon, he needed to secure a copyright, which involved him labeling himself as “Author and Proprietor” according to New York laws at the time

P3. Translators for the 1824 KJV Bible, claimed to be “authors” of their work for copyright purposes (14)

Conclusion: Joseph labeled himself as the “Author and Proprietor” to publish, and secure copyright for, The Book of Mormon while clarifying throughout his life that he was merely a translator for the texts.

Now, I will caveat this discussion with a warning similar to the one I made in the last article.  With people, you can never really be sure what to expect, so it’s generally not a good idea to use universal arguments when dealing with people or people-based subjects…like history or religion.  If we believe in the concept of agency, we need to believe in the idea that people may choose to act differently than they previously have.  We can observe trends in behavior, but stereotyping and generalizing individuals or groups too much may lead to unnecessary conflict, limit your ability to work with others, and even sometimes lead you to make a wrong conclusion about how someone will act or react to a situation.  Critical thinkers should be willing to re-evaluate their arguments and should avoid hasty generalizations whenever possible.

Deductive vs Inductive Reasoning

This actually transitions rather well into the next portion of the discussion.  What we’ve discussed so far constitutes what most people refer to as “deductive reasoning,” or a system of proofs where the “premises logically entail its conclusion.” (15)  There is one other type of reasoning we should discuss, namely inductive reasoning.  Inductive reasoning works by making observations, and coming up with conclusions based on grouping together certain things/people.  Here’s an example:

P1. Most members of the church are nice

There’s a bit of a difference here in this argument.  With deductive reasoning, if we assume that both P1 and P2 are true, then P3 MUST be true, while with inductive reasoning, P3 is only “likely” true (15).  You would have to get to know me personally and make observations to confirm that for yourself.   This is why, in most debates and discussions, deductive reasoning is usually stronger than inductive reasoning (more on that in a moment).  Even so, in terms of definitions, inductive reasoning is best understood as observing patterns in specific groups and making a prediction based on those patterns.  

For those of you who have studied statistics, this kind of thinking should be familiar to you.  Observational studies are very closely related to inductive reasoning.  For example, consider the following phrase:

“Every raven in a random sample of 3200 ravens is black. This strongly supports the following conclusion: All ravens are black.” (16)

Like with traditional statistics, inductive reasoning can only give you a degree of confidence as to what to expect from individuals who are part of a group.  Like I was saying before, even if you’re looking at 1,001 people, and you see a thousand people do the same thing, that makes no guarantee that the last remaining person in that group will do what everyone else does.  This is actually really important to us as critical thinkers because we will run into inductive reasoning very often, especially in the realm of politics, personality, and religion (things LDS people have to deal with often).  People are complicated, so naturally, those with more subjective ideas will have more inductive reasoning involved, even if inductive reasoning is considered to be “weaker” when compared to deductive reasoning.  Even so, there is a use for inductive reasoning.  Consider the following:

“In an informal, or inductive, argument, the conclusion may be false even if the premises are true. In other words, whether an inductive argument is good depends on something more than the form of the argument. Therefore, all inductive arguments are invalid, but this does not mean they are bad arguments. Even if an argument is invalid, its premises can increase the probability that its conclusion is true. So, the form of inductive arguments is evaluated in terms of the strength the premises confer on the conclusion, and stronger inductive arguments are preferred to weaker ones” (17)

As we can see, using both inductive and deductive reasoning may help increase the strength of your arguments.  As critical thinkers, we should make decisions based on the best evidence available, look at things from different perspectives, and use coherent arguments.  As we do so, we’ll be able to make more informed decisions and analyze what other people say in a more effective manner, ultimately progressing on our path toward fulfilling our divine destiny.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we’ve covered a lot of material today – and there’s still so much more that can be said about logic, and the things we can do with it.  I recommend that you review this article a few times and take some additional time to study the topics presented in this essay:  understanding some of the foundations behind propositions, building your own deductive arguments, and supporting your claims with inductive reasoning. Logic can help you make decisions and strengthen your communication and problem-solving skills.  I’ll end with one note of caution though, bringing us back to the beginning of the article.  I started by giving an example of a couple of people angrily shouting at each other.  While this is definitely a form of argument, I strongly advise against it.  As Latter-day Saints, we have an obligation to speak truth, but we also have an obligation to be peacemakers (18), and to avoid contending with anger (19).  How we say things can be just as important as what we actually say (20).  It’s a difficult line to walk, but as proponents of faith in Jesus Christ, it is our solemn duty to teach and do as He did.

References:

Further Study:

Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT.  He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic.  He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history.  His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.

The post By Study and Faith – Episode 3: Logic appeared first on FAIR.

by Zachary Wright

Introduction

In the last article in this series, we discussed some elementary ideas behind critical thinking. We showed how critical thinking skills like asking questions and evaluating worldviews may help deal with controversial topics behind LDS theology and history.  Now, those skills are essential for approaching a controversial topic.  Even so, we still have a long way to go to improve our critical thinking skills and achieve our goal to learn “by study and by faith.”  That prompts some questions though:  What should we be asking questions about?  What worldviews can we practice identifying?  The short answer to these questions is “You can use these skills on whatever you want,” but to do that, we need to first go over how to evaluate which sources are good and which ones are not.  We’ll be focusing on that topic today.  Specifically, I’ll be going over what makes a good source in general, what makes a good source from a historical perspective, and then give an example of how I would deal with a historical source.  Let’s get into it.

What is a good source?

You may consider this an odd question to ask, but it’s worth diving into for a few reasons.  Last time, we talked about how critical thinkers are not just passive consumers of knowledge.  Rather, they are active participants in society that are able to use the knowledge they obtain to accomplish their goals and solve problems.  However, there’s a lot of information out there, and just as we would want to use the right tool for the right job (Hammer → Nail, Lawn mower → Lawn, etc.), we want to make sure that we use the right information for the right job.  In other words, we need good sources to rely on in order to accomplish those tasks.  So when I ask “What makes a good source?” What I’m really asking is “How can I determine what sources are going to help me solve a problem?”  Let’s explore that topic.

First, a good source has to be in line with the truth, that is, a good source needs to be in line with what occurred in the past, and what’s occurring right now.  Now, this presupposes that there is some kind of objective truth.  For example, putting aside the efforts of the wonderful editors of this series I work with, I can’t have both written this whole article and not have written this whole article.  One of those events had to have occurred: or in other words, one of those things is true, and the other is not.  This also works for more theoretical concepts…as long as we both have the same conceptualization of numbers, 2+2 = 4, not 40.  This is a presupposition that I’m bringing to the table:  There is some kind of measurement that provides us a sufficient level of certainty about something that occurred in the past or does occur now, regardless of whether or not that method is known to us.  That was a mouthful, but it roughly means that events happen, and they can be known with decent certainty and accuracy, even if we don’t know how to do that yet.  Good sources are in line with reality.

Secondly, the sources need to be applicable to what we are trying to do.  There is a lot of information out there for us to consume, but even if it was possible for us to learn all of it (in this life), it is unnecessary and impractical to do so.  Some of our problems are far too important and urgent to forego some kind of discerning process when looking at information.  For example, I could explain that the Sun is primarily composed of gasses, but that information in itself isn’t going to be very useful when you’re teaching your kids about basic addition.  Does that mean that the Sun isn’t made of gasses? Or that I’m lying when I don’t tell people about what the Sun is made of?  I would say “No” to that at face value, and I would hope that you would agree with me.

So there we have it, right?  A good source is both true and relevant.  Well, a critical thinker would rightfully answer “Yes and no.”  As I’m about to demonstrate, picking good sources is a process that is much easier said than done.  A lot of the time, and for different reasons, the sources that we read aren’t completely objective or aren’t fully comprehensive in their analyses.  This is because we are emotional creatures, and all of our experiences are primarily subjective by nature. Consider the following:

“The subjective is characterized primarily by [the] perceiving mind. The objective is characterized primarily by physical extension in space and time. The simplest sort of discrepancy between subjective judgment and objective reality is well illustrated by John Locke’s example of holding one hand in ice water and the other hand in hot water for a few moments. When one places both hands into a bucket of tepid water, one experiences competing subjective experiences of one and the same objective reality. One hand feels it as cold, the other feels it as hot. Thus, one perceiving mind can hold side-by-side clearly differing impressions of a single object. From this experience, it seems to follow that two different perceiving minds could have clearly differing impressions of a single object. That is, two people could put their hands into the bucket of water, one describing it as cold, the other describing it as hot. Or, more plausibly, two people could step outside, one describing the weather as chilly, the other describing it as pleasant.” (1)

 I like this explanation because it’s very realistic.  Someone who has transferred their hand from ice water to lukewarm water is going to react (and report) differently than someone who just transferred their hand from hot water to lukewarm water.  Neither of them is lying in their report, they just are reporting their experience, which is primarily subjective.  In this manner, if the source is primarily human experience (which is the significant majority of both historical and theological discourse), then it cannot be purely objective, which makes our job as critical thinkers much more difficult.  This, of course, isn’t talking about all the instances where a source can just be wrong, ambiguous, manipulated by bias, or otherwise difficult to deal with.  Please don’t misunderstand me though, I’m not saying that we can’t trust anything or anyone, as this would in itself cause problems for our goals of problem-solving.  All I’m saying is that there’s no “perfect way” to determine the validity and reliability of a source. In this sense, the trustworthiness of a source is somewhat subjective because we as people value different things, as we have to choose what to listen to and what to not (more on that later).  Even so, each of these should be considered when qualifying what makes a “good source”.

The recommendations I’ll make in the upcoming sections about sources are useful and practical guidelines, but this process isn’t a perfect science.  There is a bit of subjectivity here, and this is why I dedicated so much of the previous article to being willing to ask questions and challenge assumptions.  Those skills come in handy here when it comes to deciding what sources to value and what sources to not.  Sometimes, in this process of evaluating sources, we’re going to make mistakes.  I urge the reader to make those mistakes early and be patient with themselves as they learn to evaluate sources in a better way.

To wrap up this section, there are a few things that go into what makes a good source or not.  As critical thinkers, we should be looking for sources that are both true and useful for our purposes.  Furthermore, we should be careful when dealing with sources by acknowledging the imperfections of the writer’s report, both in terms of their bias and potentially incorrect viewpoints, but also acknowledging that they’re imperfect by how they can’t be comprehensive and entirely objective in their analysis.  We have to choose what to believe, taking into account the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of each source, and as critical thinkers, we need to choose the “good sources”, or if nothing else, find sources that most closely approximate what is true.  How do we do that?  Well, let’s examine some principles that might be helpful for looking at historical documents.

Good Historical Sources

Last time, we briefly discussed the historical perspective, and the goals that historians have while trying to work with what people say.  To review, good historians strive to construct a cohesive, accurate narrative using records kept by the participants and observers of certain events.  How do they do that?  There are a lot of great resources out there provided by universities and historians that provide insights as to what criteria make up a “good source” and I’ll be sure to link them below.  Some of the criteria we’ll go over here will be ensuring that we try to find sources that are primary, contemporary, have relatively little bias and that the claims that are there are corroborated by other accounts of the event.

A primary source comes from a first-hand witness of the event that occurred.  Primary sources may include letters, diaries, minutes, photographs, artifacts, interviews, or anything else that directly comes from someone who actually saw the event with their own eyes (2).  These sources are to be differentiated from secondary sources, where an event told by a primary witness is re-explained by someone else who listened to or read what the original witness wrote (3).  Now, primary sources have the advantage of having less filtered information, but can often be hefty and difficult to parse through.  Many of them have also not been digitized yet and may take more effort to find than many secondary sources (4).  Secondary sources often are easier to access and can be more direct than primary sources, but are considered to be less authoritative and authentic (5).  In my experience, secondary sources struggle to maintain every detail present in the primary sources and are more susceptible to manipulation than primary sources as a result.  It’s important that you make sure that the secondary sources that you use are well-informed and relatively unbiased (6).  As you can imagine, there’s a bit of subjectivity here, but generally speaking, primary sources are far more reliable, and provide the most accurate information compared to their non-primary counterparts.

However, critical thinkers can’t stop there when evaluating sources, seeing as the timeliness and contemporaneousness of a source are also important factors that help determine whether a source is good or not.  This is likely because the passage of time  distorts memory in a variety of ways (7).  However, such distortions can be minimized if an event is recorded within a short period of time (the sooner, the better).  A diary entry, for example, would have fewer memory distortions than an interview given 30 years after the event occurred.  Again, this doesn’t mean that late remembrances should be dismissed altogether, it just means that the critical thinker needs to be more careful when analyzing them, even if they’re dealing with an eyewitness to the alleged event (8).  

Relative bias can also play an important role in discerning whether or not the source is reliable or not.  We talked a bit about bias in the previous article, and I define bias as being a prioritization of one worldview over the other.  No one is completely immune to bias, especially when dealing with controversial topics such as religion or politics.  It’s normal to find bias (both positive and negative) in many of the sources that a critical thinker encounters, but extreme bias can either misrepresent information or simply avoid details that may go against what the author says (9).  A critical thinker is able to look at the bias of a source, noting if the bias affects the conclusions of the source (10).

Making sure that the claims of a source are corroborated by other sources may also be helpful in establishing a credible source.  If you find that multiple sources are affirming the same details of an event, it’s likely that those details did actually occur (11).  This aggregation of sources can also provide a broader scope of information that may or may not be contained in a singular source, and also eliminates potential bias (12).  Now, this does not mean that sources that have lots of unique material are untrustworthy…it may just mean that they witnessed something that no one else did (as many of us do).  Still, corroborating your sources can provide a great deal of strength to support that an event did actually occur.

Much more can be said about how to analyze good sources (for example, we’ll talk about putting sources in their proper context in a future article), but these principles are definitely a good place to start.  In short, you just want to make sure that you’re learning about events from people who were actually there, who talked about the events quickly after they happened, who aren’t extremely biased in their views, and that the details of a source are (mostly) corroborated by other sources.  As I said before, this isn’t an exact science and it’s likely that the criteria that people use will differ somewhat by the individual.  Perhaps some people will care more that a source is early than they’ll care whether or not a source has details that are corroborated in some instances.  Still, following these guidelines can help ensure that the sources that we work with are as accurate as possible so that we as critical thinkers can use the information therein to solve problems.

Evaluation in Action

That was a decent amount of content, and I hope I haven’t lost you yet.  I wanted to take some time now to show how I would evaluate the validity of a source.  Let’s practice with one that I think would be useful: Joseph and Hiel Lewis’ account of how Joseph Smith met Moroni.  Consider the following:

“He [Joseph] said that by a dream he was informed that at such a place in a certain hill, in an iron box, were some gold plates with curious engravings, which he must get and translate, and write a book; that the plates were to be kept concealed from every human being for a certain time, some two or three years; that he went to the place and dug till he came to the stone that covered the box, when he was knocked down; that he again attempted to remove the stone, and was again knocked down; this attempt was made the third time, and the third time he was knocked down. Then he exclaimed, “Why can’t I get it?” or words to that effect; and then he saw a man standing over the spot, which to him appeared like a Spaniard, having a long beard coming down over his breast to about here, (Smith putting his hand to the pit of his stomach) with his (the ghost’s) throat cut from ear to ear, and the blood streaming down, who told him that he could not get it alone; that another person whom he, Smith, would know at first sight, must come with him, and then he could get it. And when Smith saw Miss Emma Hale, he knew that she was the person, and that after they were married, she went with him to near the place, and stood with her back toward him, while he dug up the box, which he rolled up in his frock.” (13)

So here, we have a claim that Joseph Smith was actually dealing with a spirit who “appeared as a Spaniard”, whose throat was cut from ear to ear.  There are a few historical aspects at play here, chiefly we have Joseph and Hiel Lewis trying to tie Joseph Smith to treasure-digging practices, but let’s look at the claim itself:  That Moroni was a mere treasure spirit with bloody features.  Is that possible?  Well, let’s use the tools we have to analyze the quote in question.

Well, right off the bat this isn’t a primary source.  This source is, at best, a second-hand source, seeing as it is someone else describing an experience that someone told them.  We can also tell from the date that it was written in April 1879, over 50 years after the events of Moroni’s visit occurred.  What about bias, is there bias here?  Joseph Lewis was a cousin of Emma Hale, Joseph Smith’s first wife, and was a devout methodist and antagonist of Joseph Smith throughout his life.  In that same journal, he accuses Joseph Smith of being a “practicing necromancer”; in other words, Joseph prophesied by communicating with the dead (14).  I trust the reader can associate how necromancy would’ve been viewed negatively in the Bible-based culture of 1800s New England, and Joseph and Hiel Lewis didn’t want any association with him for his association with Moroni (15).  Do other sources corroborate Joseph and Hiel Lewis’ account?  Well, one kind of does…Fayette Lapham reports a story about Moroni having bloody clothes (16), but it suffers from similar problems of being a third-hand, late source with some very incorrect details (17).  As we can see, comparing this source by Joseph and Hiel Lewis with the historical criteria outlined in the earlier portions of this paper shows that this source may have some problems with it.  It may not mean everything is wrong with it, but it shows that a critical thinker should exhibit serious caution when dealing with the source.

Conclusion

To wrap up the article for this week, it’s clear that there are some sources that are better than others, and that we can have a general idea as to what a good source is and what it is not.  First, a good source is one that is both accurate and able to help us answer questions about what we’d like to find out.  We can help establish the accuracy of a source by analyzing whether or not it is a primary source, a contemporary source, whether or not it is significantly biased, or whether the details in it are corroborated by other accounts of the event, in spite of the human error that inevitably creeps up in just about every document.  While this model isn’t perfect, and there is likely going to be some disagreement about what makes one source better than another, the tools and questions embedded in this model of evaluating sources can help us gain insights into the value of a historical record.  Practice using these guidelines as you study LDS theology and history.  What you find might just surprise you.

References:

Further Study:

Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT.  He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic.  He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history.  His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.

The post By Study and Faith – Episode 2: Evaluating Sources appeared first on FAIR.

by Zachary Wright

Have you ever wanted to problem-solve better? Not just the daily issues we deal with, but the massive world-changing problems we deal with constantly? What about wanting to be more effective in your study? Have you ever wanted to learn to differentiate between what’s true and what’s not? Maybe you’re not as ambitious, but you want to be a better disciple of Jesus Christ and learn more about Him and His gospel. All these skills, and more, apply at least some form of critical thinking skills, and I’m here to help you learn how to be a more effective critical thinker.

Throughout this series, we’ll explore some basic principles behind critical thinking and practice critical thinking about LDS theology and history, answering questions about them. We’ll discuss basic logic principles, learn to evaluate sources, and become informed about topics orbiting the restored gospel. Join us every other Sunday to learn how to become a better thinker, debater, and advocate for your beliefs. With the skills you learn in this series, you’ll be able to be more effective in every single field of your life and find ways to help other people in meaningful ways.

I invite you to join me as we learn together, starting our journey of learning “by study and by faith.”

Episode 1: What is Critical Thinking?

Introduction

When I began my research on Critical Thinking in preparation for this series, I came across an article that described “The Emerging Crisis in Critical Thinking”.  Consider the following:

“Unfortunately, rather than creating a generation of “super-geniuses,” there are emerging reports that although modern students are quite adept at memorizing and regurgitating facts presented in class or in reading materials, the ability to reason, think critically, and problem-solve has actually been dramatically reduced in recent years.” (1)

 I didn’t need an article to tell me that critical thinking is something that modern schools struggle to incorporate.  I went to charter schools for most of my life, but while it seemed that my teachers seemed to pay lip service to the almighty “critical thinking skills,” I don’t recall them ever sitting down and explaining to the students “Critical thinking includes X, Y, and Z”.  Why would they?  It’s not in the syllabus.

It wasn’t until I was about 18 that I began picking up on what it actually meant.  Critical thinking has far more to do with how you go about learning and solving problems, and far less to do with what you’re actually learning.  You don’t need a college degree in American Religious History to think critically about Joseph Smith’s religious and cultural background, and you don’t need a degree in Biblical Greek to think critically about the New Testament texts.  While such knowledge may be helpful, it is not essential to employ critical thinking skills.  Latter-day Saints should know and care about these critical thinking skills to help others, solve problems, become good citizens, and “contend for the faith” (Jude 1:3).  So, what does it mean to think critically?  Let’s explore that topic for a moment.

What is Critical Thinking?

If I had to boil down the concept of “critical thinking” to one concise statement, I’d probably summarize it as “Us making sure that we have good reasons for what we believe” (2).  How is this done?  Well, according to the University of Louisiana, the process of critical thinking includes an ability “to question; to acknowledge and test previously held assumptions; to recognize ambiguity; to examine, interpret, evaluate, reason, and reflect; to make informed judgments and decisions; and to clarify, articulate, and justify positions” (3).  Fair enough; but consider this for a moment, as you were reading this list, did you stop and consider what each item of the list meant?  Did you think about how this list may apply at home?  School?  Work?  Church?  Such practices are important aspects of critical thinking, but if you’re like me, you probably didn’t the first time around…and that’s okay.  Critical thinking does NOT come naturally to people any more than running a marathon comes naturally to people.  Like with any skill, it comes with deliberate practice, and experience…lots of it.

If I’ve succeeded today, you will be able to practice these critical thinking skills more effectively than you were able to before.  This doesn’t mean that we’ll go over every aspect of this definition here, but we will be going over some of it.  Specifically, we’ll talk about how to ask effective questions, look at events from different perspectives, and then discuss what it looks like to be a critical thinker in conjunction with the spirit.

Asking Effective Questions

An essential aspect of critical thinking is the ability to ask important questions.  One pair of researchers noted that in relation to critical thinking, asking questions can: stimulate the brain, open communication/create an exchange, prompt discovery of what others know, encourage listening, provide the opportunity to acknowledge other ideas, and lead to the process of discovery (4).  Consider the following:

“Not only do questions and critical thought have an appropriate place in the Church, but as President Dieter F. Uchtdorf has pointed out, the Church would not exist without it. He explains that the doctrinally loaded and foundational experience of the First Vision came as the result of Joseph Smith’s critical thought toward existing churches and a desire to know which he should join. Knowing for ourselves if the church that was restored through Joseph Smith’s efforts is truly the “only true and living church” (D&C 1:30) can be done only by following his lead and “ask[ing] of God” (James 1:5). “Asking questions,” President Uchtdorf said, “isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a precursor of growth.” (5)

With both secular and religious voices united in the call for asking questions, it almost goes without saying that we should be willing to ask important questions when dealing with important subjects.  Why should it be any different when dealing with theological and historical questions regarding the church?

So, what kind of questions should we be asking?  Well, cursory internet searches may be helpful here (6), but it may be best to begin by focusing on the basic idea of critical thinking:  How do we know what we know?  This may include questions such as:

A case study of how a critical thinker may approach a subject with good questions may be helpful here.  Consider how a critic of the church may assert that Joseph Smith manufactured a set of fake (not gold) metal plates, and presented those plates as the ancient record of the Book of Mormon.  Is that possible?  Sure, but a critical thinker would ask questions like:

I could continue, but this should suffice.  Do you see how all of these are important questions to ask when dealing with historical issues in LDS history?  Anyone making the claim that Joseph was fabricating the plates would need to answer these questions in order to make a more compelling case.  

Note that asking these questions doesn’t  counter their arguments; it gives the critic the opportunity to support their position.  Questions, in this manner, are not to be confused with arguments (we’ll deal with logic and arguments another day).  You can support your questions with other sources, but it’s important to recognize that this method of asking questions can be more impactful in the realms of apologetics and research than practically anything else.  If a faithful believer can learn to ask pertinent questions about LDS history and theology, it will make the conversation go much more smoothly.  However, in order to improve your questions, it’s important to understand how to look at things from different perspectives, which is what we’ll discuss now.

Looking at Problems from Different Perspectives

A worldview is described as “a set of values and assumptions about the world, through which we interpret our experiences” (7).  In order to ask important, pertinent, and even faithful questions, it’s essential to understand what ideas your questions are based on.  A worldview is also described as “a collection of attitudes, values, stories and expectations about the world around us, which inform our every thought and action” (8).  In order to be an effective critical thinker, it’s important to be able to differentiate between, and look at, different perspectives or worldviews.  In truth, we do something similar all the time, almost daily, most of the time without us ever realizing it just by going about our day.  A faithful church-going man who wakes up and goes to work may be looking at things from a variety of perspectives:  his perspective as a father, his role as a husband, his role as an employee, his role as a child of God, etc.  All of these perspectives have different ways of manifesting themselves and have different questions and goals.  Similar analyses may be applied to how we critically think about certain topics.  Consider the following:

“Furthermore, since belief and belonging are intricately interconnected, these changes in identity will often be accompanied by cognitive forms of restructuring, which allow the coexistence of faith and of secular knowledge of religion. One such form may focus on the recognition of two distinct layers of explanations of reality: a faith-based one, with supernatural foundations, and a secular one, with a focus on human dynamics within the phenomenon of religion.” (9)

I appreciate this analysis because while it’s careful to maintain that the secular and spiritual are connected, it is keen on pointing out that there are two different viewpoints to look at events that both answer different questions and have different presuppositions.  We’ll go over a couple of these viewpoints now.

The restored gospel perspective is one that we Latter-day Saints are most experienced in.  This viewpoint is primarily focused on things like our relationship with our Heavenly Father, the morality of our choices, and how Jesus Christ established, re-established, and guides his church today.  It looks at this world as being a step along an eternal path, one with divine potential, where God’s purpose is to bring about “the immortality and eternal life of man” (10).  This perspective assumes that those who deal with it believe in God, believe Jesus Christ is the Savior of mankind, believe that God has called prophets (like Joseph Smith) to teach us, and that those who make and keep covenants will return to the presence of God.  (This is not a comprehensive view of this perspective, but it will suffice.)

As you can imagine though, other perspectives can be useful.  Consider the Historical perspective, which is primarily focused on gathering data from various sources in order to synthesize an understanding of what occurred in the past (11).  This perspective is focused on trying to figure out what occurred by studying what people before them wrote and thought about events.  They are primarily concerned with finding out what people make what claims and interweaving each of the accounts into one coherent, plausible, and accurate narrative of events.  This perspective presupposes that the events are able to be known by the people who record them, and they know there are gaps in the data that are irrecoverable as it stands right now.  Even so, they are able to study documents as a means to the end of learning about events in the past with varying degrees of certainty.

Another perspective that Latter-day Saints encounter is the scientific worldview.  Tracing its roots back to the Renaissance (and Greek Philosophy), it seeks to establish causality for everything that occurs in the world.  Much can be said about the history and assumptions of empirical science, but suffice it to say that it is assumed that knowledge can be obtained through direct observation of the material world (12).  In this perspective, scientists are concerned about how different things interact with each other, what causes different reactions, and what variables can be manipulated to bring about what result.  Assumptions made by scientists vary, but it wouldn’t be untrue to state that they assume that everything is a long string of “cause-effect” reactions.  This perspective, when taken to its extreme, may result in the acceptance of determinism (13).

The perspective of this very article and series is worth mentioning…I wrote this under the belief/assumption that God exists and that concepts such as morality and libertarian free will (14) are true.  With those presuppositions in mind, I hope that I’ve been able to show that each of these perspectives is based at least somewhat in reality and may be useful in determining the truth, that is “knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come;”.  Practicing looking at things from different perspectives may be challenging, and it may push you out of your comfort zone, but it is infinitely worth it (15).  However, every one of these perspectives can be warped, leading to conclusions that are unhealthy, harmful, and not conducive to the moral life we try to build.  This doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with the worldview itself, any more than it would mean that a hammer has something wrong with it because it can’t mow the lawn.  The purpose, assumptions, and answers each worldview provides are different, and I posit that each one should be used to answer questions in its respective domain.

Now, how does this relate to critical thinking?  I mention this because a critical thinker is able to take information from multiple perspectives to find ways to solve problems and make decisions with data from a variety of worldviews.  Ignoring one or more perspectives in favor of another is referred to as “bias”.  For example, when discussing controversial topics such as the relationship between members of the LGBTQ+ community and the church, it’s important to understand what perspectives are at play and to avoid bias in any format.  For example, LDS critical thinkers should be careful to not ignore what role genetics might play in homosexuality (16), and the critical thinking members of the LGBTQ+ community should be careful to remember the role that traditional families play in the afterlife (17).  Allowing one perspective to cloud another will lead to contention, frustration, and a lack of intellectual and spiritual engagement with all parties involved.

To recap, a critical thinker needs to be aware of the inherent worldviews/perspectives of every source being analyzed.  While not separating the perspectives or allowing bias to cause them to distort or ignore other worldviews, critical thinkers are able to collect, synthesize, and evaluate data from different sources.  After all, we believe in anything that is “virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy” (18).  Latter-day Saint critical thinkers will then be able to look at the problems and questions of others, and either ask questions about, or provide answers with, the differing worldviews/perspectives in question.  In this way, I believe that being able to differentiate between the worldviews (and assumptions) of different people, will prove to be yet another essential aspect of LDS apologetics and research.

An Invitation to All

That was kind of long, I hope you’re still with me.  In our discussion above, I’ve alluded already to the idea that I, the author, am carrying a few assumptions with me as I’m writing, namely I believe in God, agency, and moral law.  The critical thinker will rightly be able to point out that no one can prove empirically that these things are real with a scientific perspective…and they would be right.  There are limits to every worldview, but the careful reader will be able to realize that these very limitations are exactly why I’m writing this article in the first place.  We can’t just use “one worldview” as the be-all-end-all standard by which we are to view the universe, any more than we can expect a plumber to be able to perform heart surgery.  We need to be willing to look beyond mere bias, and thus, I have an invitation to every critical thinker out there, both church members and non-members alike.

For members, I invite you to study LDS church history and theology, employing critical thinking skills as you research.  I invite you to listen to the spirit, and accept truth from all sources.  I invite you to redouble your efforts to “Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him” (19).  Do things to increase your faith as you increase your knowledge of other domains.  As you do so, I promise that both your spiritual and intellectual capacities will increase and that you will find greater happiness and confidence as a result.  In other words, continue your efforts to seek learning by study and by faith (20), and share the blessings of such efforts with everyone that you know.

For those who are not members of the church, I assert that there is a spiritual domain and that it can be known through spiritual methods.  These methods include meditation, prayer, and the study and application of the words of the prophets.  Over time, upon acting on these spiritual exercises, I claim that you will begin to feel a rejuvenated sense of power and confidence and that you will feel the inert “good” that comes from each of these (21).  I testify that this spiritual perspective will not contradict truth, but will help you embrace it wholeheartedly.  I invite you, in this sense, to seek God, and to believe in his Son, Jesus Christ.  I invite you to study the words of the prophets, both ancient and modern, and look for the spirit to testify to you of this higher plane.  I invite you to Come and See, Come and Help, Come and Stay (22), and most importantly, I invite you to follow Jesus Christ’s admonition to follow him (23).

Hopefully, you’ll take the skills I’ve presented here about asking questions and examining things from different lenses to heart as you do this.  I also hope that you don’t dismiss this invitation off-hand.  I promise you that as you look over the collective history of God allegedly working with people, you will see His hand, and you will feel Him calling you.  I further promise that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can help you find a relationship with God that you cannot find anywhere else.  If you have questions throughout your spiritual endeavors, please contact us!  We’d love to help however we can.

Conclusion

In conclusion, much more can be said about critical thinking, and those working on this series will spend most of their time finding ways to foster critical thinking, and demonstrating that these skills inevitably leave room for faith.  The irony of writing a series on critical thinking is apparent though, seeing as I would hope that you would thoughtfully examine, and even challenge the ideas presented here when appropriate.  Even so, I hope that I’ve been able to show the utility of asking good questions, understanding differing worldviews and perspectives, and inspire everyone to more deeply study LDS theology as a means to the end of building faith in Jesus Christ.  While I make no claims of omniscience, I do think that these skills will bless lives in both spiritual and secular domains.  I look forward to helping pave the road to a far better future as a result.

References:

Further Study:

Zachary Wright was born in American Fork, UT.  He served his mission speaking Spanish in North Carolina and the Dominican Republic.  He currently attends BYU studying psychology, but loves writing, and studying LDS theology and history.  His biggest desire is to help other people bring them closer to each other, and ultimately bring people closer to God.

The post By Study and Faith – Episode 1: What is Critical Thinking? appeared first on FAIR.