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How We Know Things

The method the Church teaches returns yes for every religion that uses it. Read this one first.

The point in one sentence

The method the Church teaches for knowing it is true produces the same result for people in mutually contradictory religions, which means the feeling cannot be what tells them which one is right.

The method being taught

Moroni 10:4 to 5: ask God "with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ," and He "will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost." Read it

And what it confirms is exclusive. D&C 1:30 calls this "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth."

Belief tracks geography, not evidence

If a spiritual witness identified the true religion, belief would not cluster this precisely by birthplace.

73%

of people live where their religion is the local majority

97%

of Hindus live in just three countries

87%

of Christians live in Christian-majority nations

Source: Pew Research, Global Religious Landscape

The problem

Muslims, Catholics, evangelicals, Hindus, and FLDS members defending polygamy all report the same thing: warmth, calm, certainty, for beliefs that cannot all be true. Compiled cases
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy treats religious diversity as "a prima facie defeater for the veridicality of religious experiences in the same way that wildly conflicting eyewitness reports undermine each other." Source
A 2025 study in Cognitive Science found the identical asymmetry in every faith group measured: answered prayers strengthen faith more than unanswered prayers weaken it. Hits count, misses do not. The study
The largest controlled test of intercessory prayer ever run, 1,802 cardiac patients, found no benefit. Harvard Gazette

The question worth sitting with

If you had been born in Riyadh to a devout Muslim family, prayed with the same sincerity, and felt the same peace confirming the Quran, would that have been the Holy Ghost?

When they say

"Other people's experiences might be real too, just incomplete." This is the most thoughtful answer available. But it does not solve the practical problem. If the same feeling confirms "Joseph Smith was a true prophet" for one person and "Joseph Smith was a false prophet" for another, the feeling cannot be what distinguishes them.

"Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith." President Uchtdorf said this in October 2013, and to be fair he said it in the same talk where he admitted "there have been times when members or leaders in the Church have simply made mistakes." Full talk The question is whether the standard is symmetric.

"You have to actually do it properly." Notice the structure. A positive result confirms the method. A negative result is blamed on the seeker. That means no possible outcome could count against it.

Why this should make you question

Everything else on this site bounces off a testimony. That is by design. But the method itself is testable, and it fails: it returns yes for every religion that uses it, including ones the Church says are false.

I ran this experiment exactly as prescribed, for months, and got the opposite of the promise. The only explanation the Church had was that something was wrong with me.

This page is part of a 76-topic library. Every claim links to its source, most of them the Church’s own. Read it on the full site or browse every topic.