Doubt Not “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.” This scripture, Doctrine and Covenants 6:36, is one of the many scriptures that encourage the people of the world to be believeing. As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are constantly encouraged to never doubt the gospel. Some claim that the truth is set in stone, and people with other opinions are evil and wrong. But how can we be expected to know the truth if we can’t find out for ourselves? The answer is simple; it is not wrong to question gospel doctrines. The problem lies when doubts are set into your hearts. The difference between questions and doubts is real. A question is something that you ask, and then try to find an answer to. Doubting is when you think something is unlikely, and therefore are less likely to search for an answer. If you didn’t think something was true, why would you care to find out you were wrong? If you wanted to know something was true, of course you would search for an answer. There would be no other way to feel content. …show more content…
Monson said, “Faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind at the same time, for one will dispel the other.” Faith is the opposite of doubt. One can still be faithful, but still question, but doubt drives away the faith. In John 20, Thomas, one of the twelve apostles, doubted that Christ had been resurrected. He said, “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.” When Jesus came to the twelve, Thomas had his proof. He saw Christ with his very own eyes, and had no room to be disbelieving. Then, once Thomas called out to him, Christ said, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” Although he had no room left to doubt, he didn’t allow room to have faith,
The definition of faith is, as a strong belief or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. The fact that someone has faith doesn’t mean that they won’t face difficult circumstances, such as renunciation, the loss of a loved one, or deception; rather they trust in their god or gods to carry them through their troubling circumstances to the other side. The Great Aten, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Hebrew Bible all includes, aspects of faith; including creation, love, and the loss of a life.
When the others told Thomas about the resurrection of Jesus, he refused to believe it and said he would only believe it if he saw and felt the hands of Jesus. It was then that Jesus came back down to Earth and took Thomas's hands, which convinced Thomas of God’s existence.
The book A Prayer for Owen Meany brings forth various themes and questions that can't be answered easily. One of these questions is "Can religious faith exist alongside doubt, or are the two mutually exclusive?" There are several different possible takes on this question may be answered. How a person answers this question is related to their belief in faith.
In Paul Tillich’s 1957 work Dynamics of Faith, he mentions that there are six major components of faith. These six components of faith describe the Franciscan perspective of “faith”. According to Tillich, the first component of faith is “the state of being ultimately concerned”. The second component of faith is that it is supposed to be at the center of all of our personal lives and everything that we do throughout our own individual lives. The third component of faith is that we should have an awareness for “infinite” things such as God himself. The fourth component of faith is that we need to understand that faith can act as fear, fascination, or both of these qualities at the same time. The fifth component of faith is that doubt is a major product that will always exist with faith. The last component of faith is that we need a community in order to have a “language of faith”.
Summerized from The Believing Game Peter Elbow “people learned systematic doubting with its logic reasoning and critical thinking, we might forget what believing is. Because the culture’s believing don’t have a methodological discipline, we had to learn to not trust believing and believing can seem a scary word. The believing game is not much honored.”Summerized from The Believing Game Peter Elbow “people learned systematic doubting with its logic reasoning and critical thinking, we might forget what believing is. Because the culture’s believing don’t have a methodological discipline, we had to learn to not trust believing and believing can seem a scary word. The believing game is not much honored.”Summerized from The Believing Game Peter Elbow
I believe Thomas did a subpar job of executing logos, ethos, and pathos in his “This I Believe” essay. The essay had its strong moments especially in how easily the audience could relate to Thomas’s belief; even with this being so, the essay lacked depth in many areas which caused the essay to have a too simplistic and dull feel to it. This same belief Thomas holds and believes in so strongly has been the cause of great history changing wars and for millions of people to leave their homes and lives behind all for a single belief. Overall Thomas’s belief is incredibly rooted in to his very being causing the person he is today because of this I believe he will hold this belief for most if not all his life however the manner in which he wrote about his belief, unfortunately, was not as strong as the belief itself.
Discovered in the twentieth century, The Gospel of Thomas was founded by peasants that were digging for fertilizer close to the village of Nag Hammadi, Egypt. The peasants revealed a container containing thirteen leather-bound manuscripts that were buried in the fourteenth century. The container contained fifty-two tractates that represented “heretical” writings of Gnostic Christians. Dated back to 200 A.D., there was not much known about the Gospel of Thomas besides that there were only three small fragments from Oxyrynchus. The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of literary works that contains 114 ‘opaque sayings’ of Jesus that were collected and written down by St. Didymus Jude Thomas, but nobody knows if St. Didymus Jude Thomas wrote the sayings down for sure, it is just said that he did. St. Didymus Jude Thomas was said to be Jesus’ twin brother, assumed by a few early Christians. Thomas is actually Hebrew for twin, and Didymus is Greek for twin as well. According to saying twelve, the disciples said to Jesus, “We know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader?” Jesus said to them, “Wherever you are, you are to go to James the righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being”(Gospel of Thomas: saying 12). As I was reading the Gospel of Thomas and read over saying twelve, I believe that Jesus is stating that his brother James is the go to guy, the leader, when they are to be departed. I also believe that saying twelve is evidence that, in the second century, someone who admired James had help write the Gospel of Thomas. Furthermore, I think that the writer of the Gospel of Thomas most likely has had access to the Gospel of John. This is because the writer references Jesus as being a light. Only John's Gosp...
...that what they believe might not be correct, it is what they believe but others do not have to believe that they are right.
Having faith is believing in things that you don’t see. According to the Meditations, Descartes gets rid of beliefs that he isn’t certain of and keeps the ones that are undoubtable. He tries to prove that God has must exist since we have such a clear and distinct idea of him. I believe it is impossible to prove without a doubt that God exists.
Being a firm believer in God, one must never question their faith. Things may happen
Cartesian Skepticism, created by René Descartes, is the process of doubting ones’ beliefs of what they happen to consider as true in the hopes of uncovering the absolute truths in life. This methodology is used to distinguish between what is the truth and what is false, with anything that cannot be considered an absolute truth being considered a reasonable doubt. Anything which then becomes categorized as a reasonable doubt is perceived as false. As Descartes goes through this process, he then realizes that the one thing that can be considered an absolutely truth is his and every other individual’s existence. Along with the ideology of Cartesian skepticism, through the thinking process, we are capable of the ability to doubt that which is surrounding them. This ability to think logically and doubt is what leads us to the confirmation of our existence.
There were many doubters, even among those who walked with Jesus for His three years of ministry. The best known is the story of Thomas, who didn't believe until he had touched the wounds on Christ's hands (Jn 20:25). There is also the fact that Christ revealed Himself to a group of people equaling 500 (1 Cor.
In exploring what faith really is, we must remove the stigmatism of being purely religiously based. Faith, in its truest form, is the reliance and complete confidence in a set of principles, standards, person, thing, doctrine, theory—anything that cannot be fully proven. While most of faith appears in a religious context, faith can be used in many different ways and in different subjects. The classic example of a chair comes to mind when exploring the meaning of having faith: scientifically, the person must retain the faith that the chair will hold him up when he sits down. This lies in true in science in discussing the forces of the universe throughout the galaxy, scientists cannot yet understand all the knowledge concerning the forces of space, but scientists have faith in the continuation of the forces and account for what is assumed will happen with the forces.
In Ludwig Wittgenstein's book “On Certainty”, he discusses his beliefs on Knowledge, doubt, skepticism, and certainty. One part in his book that caught my eye was a section in his book where he discusses doubt. Ludwig states “My life consists in my being to accept many things”(344). He believes that some things cant be doubted and must remain so for us to go on philosophically. Ludwig says “That is to say, the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn”(341).
Before beginning my first semester here at Vanguard I often found myself questioning why I believe what I believe. I had a hard time understanding the bible and an even harder time finding answers to my questions. It was difficult for me to find the courage to ask questions because I didn’t want to come off as someone who didn’t know everything about the bible. Once I started my freshman year I began understanding that I am not alone, every one has questions or things that they don’t quite understand. Encountering The New Testament broke down parts of the bible and made it much easier for me to understand.