I want(ed) to believe
But that desire kept me from finding the truth I was looking for.
“I Want to Believe.”
Occasionally during episodes of the 90s TV drama The X-Files, viewers saw those words (and a UFO) on a poster in the office of FBI Agent Fox Mulder, who specialized in looking for space aliens and other oddities. In its best moments, the X-Files left us wondering whether Mulder was actually uncovering hidden truth, or being pulled into delusion by his need to explain and give meaning to the tragic loss of his sister.
Sometime into my third decade as a minister, I started to wonder something similar about my own thinking. I’d always wanted to believe. But I also wanted to know the truth. Did the two conflict?
I’ve written about this previously, first regarding a podcast that shook loose some of my previously-held beliefs, and then in a description of discussions with two Mormon missionaries whose presentation of their faith showed me some problems with my own thinking.
During one such discussion, I noticed a problem in the case for faith made by these young Mormons. Their holy book describes a centuries-long civilization that supposedly reigned in the Americas between the times of Christ and Christopher Columbus. This history is unknown outside Mormon teaching and, to an outsider like me, seems like complete fiction. Their problem, as I saw it, was that there could be no archaeological evidence for this history because it never happened.
In contrast, the famous cities of the Bible — Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Rome — exist to this day and are some of the most studied places on earth. And many of the people in the Bible — Augustus, Herod the Great, Pilate — are well-attested historical figures.
I didn’t realize then that the major figure in the New Testament is unknown to the contemporary history of his day. I mean, of course, Jesus of Nazareth. Outside the Bible itself, Jesus is unknown and unmentioned until later when the church begins to establish itself. Also unmentioned, of course, are the miracles and teachings of the Gospels.
For most of my life, I assumed that Jesus was well-known in his own day. The 1961 film King of Kings shows Jesus as a man whose every move was tracked by the watchful eye of Rome. This was my impression too, and it’s why popular apologetic books once convinced me with questions like: “How do you explain the empty tomb? Jesus was in no shape to escape, and his disciples were in no state of mind to steal his body”. Such questions assume that the crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus is established historical fact, so the only question is “Why was the tomb empty?”
But in truth, no secular history of the day mentions Jesus at all in his own time. The well-known stories about his life are part of the religious texts called the Gospels, just as the history of Mormonism on the American continents is based solely on their sacred texts.
But still, I thought this lack of physical evidence put my Mormon friends at a real disadvantage. How could they expect me to buy their tales of an unknown civilization without some archaeological evidence that it ever existed?
I did win a short-term victory with that challenge. The guys seemed to have never considered this before.
Never considered this?! How could it be? How could you accept such an incredible story without even thinking of whether there is evidence? Ah, but these are the questions of an outsider, not of people within the plausibility structure. From the inside, it’s not about the historical evidence, but about the whole network of family and friends and rituals that make it believable.
In my childhood, I accepted the beliefs of Christianity at face value. Before I left for college, I don’t think questions of historical veracity entered my mind. This, I believe, is the experience of the vast majority of believers. We simply don’t look for the kind of evidence for our own beliefs that we demand of others.
So my missionaries told me they’d look into the archaeology and get back to me. When they returned, they brought with them several books on “our archaeology”.
But these weren’t archaeology books. They were travelogues, photo essays of the ruins of Mayan and Aztec civilizations, topped off with a large helping of what I now recognize as confirmation bias — something like this: “Notice the shapes carved into the top of this pillar. Doesn’t this call to mind that well-known passage in our beloved book which says…”
This wasn’t archaeology. It was devotional literature, written by and for those who wanted to believe.
To be fair, maybe Mormon archaeology is stronger than these books indicate. I haven’t had the inclination to study it since this encounter. But the thing that struck me that day and keeps me thinking about this decades later wasn’t archaeology. It was recognition — of my own way of thinking.
Confirmation bias is our ability to see most clearly the things that confirm our already-formed opinions. If I think, for example, that young adults are disrespectful, I tend to notice the rude acts, and disregard any courtesy.
Confirmation bias is a deeply-embedded human trait and, often, a great weakness. Once we think we know something, we tend to see only the evidence that supports it. Epictetus, the Stoic writer, said that “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” I’d add that it’s impossible for him to unlearn it too. Or NEARLY impossible, because I was at least beginning to see this tendency in myself.
Forget the Mormons for a minute. How did I use MY faith to explain the world? How did I deal with science and explain mystery and unravel the complexities of the world? How did I decide what was really true and valuable?
It wasn’t by evidence. It wasn’t by honest inquiry. It wasn’t by searching out the truth and following the facts wherever they might lead. All of these are things I thought I valued. But now I began to recognize that I practiced none of them, not in the big questions of life that framed all of the rest. What I did instead was to take the Bible as the lens through which I saw everything else, the Rosetta stone I used to interpret life. I wanted to believe.
This, by the way, would not be considered a criticism to Bible-believing Christians. “This is what we are SUPPOSED to do”, they would say. But when I saw someone else doing it, I began to see how such a practice prevents evidence from ever getting through. What kind of method is that for finding the truth about things?
I mentioned in an earlier article that other Christians warned me against speaking to Mormons, saying that they were very well-trained and manipulative. They were right that there was a “danger” to my faith, but wrong about what the danger was. It wasn’t that I might be convinced by their dogma. The danger was that I would begin to see in them my own fallacies.
From my many years in church, I’ve concluded that the vast majority of the faithful are like Agent Mulder — they want to believe. By contrast, very few are what I call True Believers. It’s the True Believers who eventually shook my faith the most. More on that here (The danger of true believers).
