Changing what you believe

Honesty doesn’t just require adherence to your beliefs, but also dictates how you form and modify them.

Beliefs should not be unthinkingly adopted or received dogmatically. Most beliefs are inherited from family or adopted from friends. There is no reason to block beliefs from these sources, but in order to be honest and to gain the kind of confidence required to live a set of beliefs to their full benefit, you need to know what other alternative beliefs exist and choose the ones that have the strongest evidence. Are your beliefs the best in outcome and evidence compared to available alternatives?

The set of available beliefs will be found in other people.¹ While we can try to generate our own beliefs, it’s unlikely we will even begin to replicate the set of beliefs already possessed by others. Are you aware of what other people believe and why? Where conflicts exist between your beliefs and theirs, have you thoroughly and honestly compared the strength of each side’s argument, and do you hold the stronger of the two? When you meet a credible person who disagrees with you, do you respond by launching into an argument, or do you carefully and open-mindedly listen to their reasons?

Beliefs should be compared using reason. It is dishonest to believe something without sufficient reasons. As Paul counseled, “...Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” (Romans 14:5). Belief is not an alternative to understanding, even in religion, where it is frequently treated as such. You should be able to explain why you believe what you do, and your reasons should make your belief better supported than any alternative of which you are aware.² If you do not understand an idea—whether secular or spiritual—you should ask God,³ do all you can to use the earthly resources available to you to learn more,⁴ and try to understand it.⁵

Honesty requires you to live up to your present beliefs, but only until and unless you’re given sufficient reason to let them go. Honesty creates an interesting dynamic, because on the one hand it requires tenacious fidelity to your beliefs as they presently stand, but it also requires instant change to your thoughts, feelings, or actions the moment you encounter sufficient reason to! The Lord instructed that we accumulate and use wisdom by becoming wise as serpents but harmless as doves.⁶ In a similar fashion, we must be as tenacious as a cat who digs its claws into the lap from which it does not wish to be removed while being as quick to change as a dove who is startled.

Is your confidence in a particular belief based on actual evidence or is it arbitrary? When your belief is strengthened by new information, honesty compels you to sacrifice more to adhere to it and do more to share it with others.⁷ The stronger the evidence you have for your belief, the greater the burden of proof becomes for any alternative. When your belief is weakened by new information, honesty compels you to reduce your confidence in it.⁸ This means being less willing to sacrifice to adhere to it, less likely to argue in favor of it with others, more open-minded to alternatives, and doing more to find them. When your belief is destroyed by new information, honesty compels you to abandon it. Beliefs can be contradicted through reason or evidence. For example, if you act according to a belief, but fail to obtain the outcome it promises, you have every reason to abandon it. As another example, if you continue to practice a religion whose core doctrines have been refuted, you are being dishonest. It is dishonest to persist in a belief after it has been contradicted, even if you have nothing to replace it with yet.

Do you change your beliefs when given sufficient reason to? One test of your honesty is to ask how long it has been since you have changed your mind on what you would consider a core belief, changed your behavior in what you would consider an engrained habit, or changed to feel differently about something you’ve seen the same way for a long time. The most foundational beliefs, the most habitual actions, and the most sincere feelings can all change, and are likely to as you learn who you are and live up to who you could be. One may squirm at the realization that absolutely nothing is certain—but this is neither nihilist nor does it imply weak positions. In actuality, this kind of complete intellectual humility is the only way to come to the strongest confidence and the most complete and correct perceptions of reality.

Life will provide you with feedback about your beliefs as you live them. New information can either strengthen, weaken, or destroy a belief. As you gain experience and understanding, you either have to replace your beliefs, actions, and feelings with new and better ones, or hold to them with less confidence, sincerity, and honesty than you had before. If you want to be honest, you have to change your mind when confronted with sufficient reasons to. The Lord lamented that so few people were willing to believe the sufficient evidence he provided for the new ideas he taught:

45 And it is because I speak the truth that you do not believe me.
46 None of you have proven me wrong in anything I have said. If I speak the truth, why do you not believe me? (John 8, Author’s Reflection)

Don’t fall prey to the same temptation. If sufficient evidence exists to support an idea, believe it. Throw out every belief whose cost is greater than its benefit, whose sufficient reasons have eroded, or that has been superseded by something better.⁹ Learning requires you to change how you think, feel, and act. If you aren’t changing, you aren’t learning.