For a long time, faith was part of how I understood truth. If I prayed, felt something strongly, and believed sincerely, that feeling mattered.
Eventually I ran into a problem: people in completely different religions described the same kind of certainty.
How would I tell the difference?
If one person can pray and become certain Mormonism is true while another can pray and become equally certain a different religion is true, the feeling itself does not tell me which claim matches reality.
That pushed me toward a different question: What evidence could somebody else examine, regardless of what they already believe?
That does not mean feelings are worthless. Feelings tell us a lot about our experiences. They just do not automatically verify an external claim.
I changed the standard
I stopped asking, “Can I find a way to keep believing this?” and started asking, “What would I believe if I applied the same standard of evidence to my religion that I apply to somebody else’s?”
That shift was uncomfortable. It also gave me permission to investigate Mormon history, doctrine, and truth claims without deciding in advance what the answer had to be.
People are free to choose faith. I’m free to say that faith, by itself, is not enough for me to claim that something is objectively true.