Doubt

Doubt is a central concern of Faith is Not Blind (Bruce C. and Marie K. Hafen), which treats it not as the enemy of faith but as part of faith’s “natural growth process”: “Encountering surprises and uncertainties is actually part of faith’s natural growth process,” and “faithful questions are valuable.” The Hafens anchor the posture with Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s line — “First doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith” — and J.R.R. Tolkien’s “not all those who wander are lost.”

The book also makes an epistemic argument about how doubt is weaponized. It draws on the “merchants of doubt” playbook — the tobacco-industry strategy to “amplify uncertainty, create doubt and undermine scientific discoveries that threaten their interests” — and argues that critics misassign the burden of proof, treating a single raised question as if it were a guilty verdict. The Hafens counter that “one unresolved question can’t offset a mountain of answers that are resolved”: not knowing where one sheep is doesn’t mean the ninety-and-nine are lost. Social media, they note, trains people to expect short answers and to confuse manufactured doubt with knowledge.

Context: In Latter-day Saint discourse, “doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith” comes from a 2013 General Conference address by Dieter F. Uchtdorf; “merchants of doubt” refers to the 2010 book by historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway on industry-funded campaigns to manufacture scientific uncertainty.

Where this appears

• Faith is Not Blind — “first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith” (Dieter F. Uchtdorf); the “merchants of doubt” playbook that manufactures uncertainty; a single unresolved question doesn’t overturn a mountain of resolved answers