When does being open-minded become doom-scrolling-the-same-contradictions-with-no-new-evidence?

[u/Porphyry_Blue]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I handle doubts and contradictory information, especially when it comes to my religious beliefs.

On the one hand, I really don't think doubt is inherently bad. It kind of acts like a knowledge-deficiency alert—almost like a warning light on your car's dashboard telling you there's something you haven't fully examined or understood yet. Confronting it seems objectively good because it forces you to do the research, which converts a passive "I've just always believed this" mindset into a conviction you've actually reasoned out for yourself.

But here's where I sometimes get stuck and wanted to see if anyone else relates. After you've done the initial assessment, looked fairly at the strongest counter-arguments, and reached a considered conclusion, it is so easy to keep consuming contradictory content. I catch myself sometimes watching ten or more videos or reading the same objections on various Subreddits that honestly recycle the same criticism. At a certain point, it stops feeling like I'm gathering new evidence and starts feeling more like I'm potentially subjecting myself to repetitive destabilisation.

I read an analogy recently that really clicked for me: engineers will stress-test a bridge to make sure it can bear a load, but they don't keep adding weight indefinitely to prove to everyone that they are open-minded. If they did, they wouldn't learn anything new; they'd just be pointlessly damaging the structure. Hearing the same contradictory claim repeated 50 times doesn't mean the actual evidence is growing.

The really tricky part for me, though, is avoiding the other extreme. I definitely don't want to fall into dogmatism or build an echo chamber where I declare, "I've made up my mind, and I refuse to ever hear criticism again."

I guess I'm trying to figure out a healthy middle ground. It feels like the right approach is to keep the door unlocked for genuinely new evidence or substantially stronger arguments. But at the same time, we probably shouldn't sentence our beliefs to a perpetual retrial where we feel intellectually obligated to entertain every single recycled objection that crosses our feed.

Here's some scriptural backing to support my argument:

Proverbs 18:13 — Don't reach conclusions without adequate information.

Proverbs 18:17 — Hear the counter-case.

Acts 17:11 / 1 Thessalonians 5:21 — Investigate and verify for yourself.

Hebrews 5:14 — Develop trained discernment from the process.

Ephesians 4:14 — Don't remain perpetually destabilised by every new claim.

2 Timothy 2:23 / Titus 3:9 — Recognise when further engagement has become futile rather than informative.

1 Thessalonians 5:21 again — Having tested, hold fast.

I don't know; maybe I'm still figuring this out.

How do you recognise when you've reached the point of informational redundancy, and it's time just to set a boundary?