LDS and doxastic voluntarism.

Until about an hour ago I had completely forgotten about an experience I had this summer while I was in Salt Lake City. The entire LDS faith has always been interesting to me, but while I was on a tour of the museum/visitor's center near Temple Square my docent/missionary began speaking very casually about the missionary work around she's done around the world. Curious about it, I asked which places in the world had been assigned missionaries to, as she put it, educate people about Joseph Smith's encounter with the angel Mironi and what came of this. She replied that there were only two places in the world that they were not permitted to send missionaries - the Middle East and China. When I went on to inquire why those two places she gently informed me that there were some places in the world where people were not permitted to choose their own beliefs.

I was blown away by this. The notion that a person could freely choose their own beliefs whenever they wanted to. Now, I can understand that maybe a person can feel spiritually disconnected from the religion she was born into and find spiritual solace elsewhere, but that I might speak with a missionary of ANY religion on day and wake up the next morning and just decide that not only do I not want to be Jewish but yeah, there was a guy who was crucified almost 2,000 years ago and then was resurrected in order to pay for my sins. Maybe the next morning I'd wake up and change my mind about what I believed again.

I learned tonight that this theory that a person can change their beliefs at will is called doxastic voluntarism. I did a little bit of Googling and nothing I came up with endorsed this theory. Mostly people seemed to share my beliefs - that it's, at worst, a forced belief, or, at best, insincere.

Perhaps doxastic voluntarism has worked out for some, but I'm sure I would have to do more than just a quick Google search to find theories that could change my mind.