On dealing with doubt

I recently left some comments in response to this post:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2013/03/on-dealing-with-doubt/  

steve hays

[Jeff Lowder] I have to confess I find myself slightly amused by the very expression, ‘dealing with doubt.’ As opposed to what? Dealing with evidence?…If that strikes you as odd, well, that’s exactly how I feel when I read the words, ‘dealing with doubt.’ It seems to me that any viewpoint which struggles with how to ‘deal with doubt’ is already admitting a defeat of sorts; it comes across as emphasizing the importance of belief over truth.

Sorry, Jeff, but that strikes me as socially naïve. Aren’t you aware of the fact that people can harbor doubts for emotional reasons as well as intellectual reasons?

If the wife of a medical researcher leaves him for another man, he may become very depressed. He may doubt the value of his life’s work.

He doesn’t entertain doubts because he discovered new evidence that undermines his theories. Rather, his doubt is due to his emotional state, which is due, in turn, to what’s going on in his life.

Jeff,

Are you taking the position that people can't suffer from misplaced doubts? Take people who suffer from self-doubts because they had a father who made them feel like failures at whatever they did.

Or what about someone who, due to low self-esteem, doubts that his (or her) spouse truly loves him (or her).

steve hays

Actually, the OTF is a patently one-sided test which persuasively indicates the extent to which atheists like Loftus only play lip service to the rationality of their own beliefs.

By definition, your test is one-sided inasmuch as it's an outsider test of faith rather than an outsider test of belief. It only tests religious beliefs, not beliefs generally.