{"id":25923,"date":"2014-09-01T10:24:36","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T14:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=25923"},"modified":"2014-09-01T10:24:36","modified_gmt":"2014-09-01T14:24:36","slug":"doubt-and-conspiracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/09\/doubt-and-conspiracy.html","title":{"rendered":"Doubt and Conspiracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

A\u00a0couple of posts struck me as insightful and quotable, and related to the same theme, so I will share links to and quotes from them together. First, Carson T. Clark wrote<\/a>\u00a0about doubt as a Christian virtue:<\/p>\n

Many Christians see doubt as the opposite of faith. This I find rather bizarre because I see doubt as the opposite of certainty. With that understanding, I would suggest that doubt is a reality of life.<\/span>\u00a0Experience tells me that all people have doubt. It\u2019s only a matter of whether you\u2019re intellectually honest and emotionally secure enough to acknowledge it. The question, then, is not whether you have doubt, but what you do with it. That is, how do you channel your doubt? Do you push it down deep, doing everything in your power to pretend it\u2019s not there? Do you militarize it, advocating that anyone who believes anything is an idiot? Do you simply ignore it, embracing a lifestyle of cognitive dissonance in which doubt is a constant irritant? Do you wallow in it, passively accepting a kind of default skepticism? Or do you acknowledge its presence and assertively address it, utilizing doubt\u2019s life-altering and life-giving potential? To my mind it\u2019s a natural, cyclical progression. Curiosity leads to doubt. Doubt leads to questioning. Questioning leads to truth. Truth leads to maturation. Maturation leads to healing. Healing leads to worship. And worship leads back to curiosity. Unless you\u2019re willing to turn off that basic human trait of curiosity, doubt is an inevitability. Too often we presume doubt is a vice, failing to understand its potential as a virtue when it\u2019s synthesized with honesty, security, humility, and grace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then Fred Clark<\/a> had a lot\u00a0to say about conspiracy theory thinking, and why belief in Biblical inerrancy is an example of it. Here is a short but insightful sample:<\/p>\n

Conspiracy theories don\u2019t arise from facts. They arise, rather, from an epistemologicalchoice<\/em>\u00a0that prescribes which facts will be accepted and how those facts will be interpreted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Next, Jim Spinti shared a quote from Zoltan Schwab\u2019s book, Toward an Interpretation of the Book of Proverbs<\/a>\"\"<\/i>:<\/p>\n

The opposite of trust in God in Proverbs is not so much \u2018doubt\u2019 in God (which is seldom mentioned if at all, at least not explicitly) but trust in oneself (cf. 3:5 vs 3:7; 28:25-26.) No wonder the reader of Proverbs is so often reminded about the dangers of pride.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So often, those who insist that doubt<\/a> is a sin have precisely the sort of self-confidence in their own understanding and interpretation that Proverbs and the rest of the Bible warns about. Rarely do they see the irony.<\/p>\n

Carlos Bovell writes about inerrancy<\/a> in a guest post on Pete Enns\u2019 blog:<\/p>\n

Post-inerrantists are not trying to\u00a0sever<\/em>\u00a0the relationship between God and scripture but rather to\u00a0establish<\/em>\u00a0it by critically investigating scripture\u00a0and conceptually clarifying it. It is not \u201cperverse\u201d or \u201cunproductive\u201d when a\u00a0believer suspends judgment on inerrancy, takes a searchingly fresh look at the Bible, and\u00a0concludes that inerrancy simply does not do justice to what the Bible is and how the Bible behaves.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See also Brandon Withrow on finding GOD in an eggplant<\/a>, and believing and seeing. And let me recommend a book that seems never to have gotten the attention it deserves, Robert Davidson\u2019s The Courage to Doubt: Exploring an Old Testament Theme<\/a>\"\"<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0couple of posts struck me as insightful and quotable, and related to the same theme, so I will share links to and quotes from them together. First, Carson T. Clark wrote\u00a0about doubt as a Christian virtue: Many Christians see doubt as the opposite of faith. This I find rather bizarre because I see doubt as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":24315,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[2153,2819],"class_list":["post-25923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-religion","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-doubt"],"yoast_head":"\nDoubt and Conspiracy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A\u00a0couple of posts struck me as insightful and quotable, and related to the same theme, so I will share links to and quotes from them together. 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