“All men by nature desire to know.” So begins Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Unlike Pascal’s alleged “God-shaped-vacuum,” I think Aristotle’s dictum is an accurate statement concerning human nature. Nobody wants to be stupid, nobody seeks to be ignorant. Thus, the intellect is any easy target for people in disagreement with one another. If I can show that my position is “more rational,” I win. Whether or not “rationality” is sufficient to establish many kinds of facts is the subject for another blog, but besides this problematic issue, some groups simply label themselves as smarter than all others and leave it at that. For either side in this (or any other) debate this is an unrealistic and useless way of going about knowledge-seeking.
Before launching into today’s rant, let me begin by stating something that I think we can all agree upon: There a lot of stupid people out there. There are at least a lot of people who are stupid about certain things. The fact is that as much as we would like to think otherwise, smart people do (and believe) stupid things. Consider Nazi Germany. These people were obviously not stupid - you don’t nearly take over the entire world by throwing idiots at it. Yet the same culture that gave us Beethoven, Einstein, and the Volkswagen, cruelly murdered over 11,000,000 people. What the heck?
Many smart people are stupid when it comes to their beliefs. I am not just talking here about false beliefs - many false beliefs would not count as stupid until the believer should know better. For example, prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls it was false, but not stupid, to think that many books of the Old Testament were not recorded accurately throughout the centuries. Now, a generation later, it is simply ignorant to hold to such a view. This issue of believing while in ignorance of the facts is related to another stupidity issue - believing without good reason. It is one thing to be misinformed or ignorant of the facts, but to not even seek reasons for beliefs - especially important ones - is simply irresponsible. To take an example from my faith community (like the PC?), I once worked in a government office doing a job that required about four months of training before one would even be allowed to work without supervision. Pretty tough stuff apparently. Yet when the Benny Hinn show came to town all of a sudden there were about 20 of these folks who couldn’t wait to buy tickets. What, again, the heck?
On the other hand there are atheists and skeptics who can’t think their way out of a wet paper bag. I know a guy who was raised in a charismatic-fundamentalist-whacko type church who is a skeptic now. Not much of a shock there. The story would not even be interesting if it was not for the fact that he basically seems to follow his kid brother’s beliefs like a lemming, yet ends up with strong opinions on the issues. When his brother was into Christian apologetics, his MySpace page was filled with philosophy quotes and Christian apologists. Then his brother got into Universalism and all of a sudden he’s got universalist arguments cut-and-pasted into his blog. A few months later, when his brother converted to atheism, guess what? That’s right - his page is now filled with raunchy photos, pop-atheist “friends,” and blogs devoted to simplistic, outdated anti-Christian propaganda. Mind you, all these changes came about within a year or two. This does not seem to reflect a careful approach to belief. (I am tempted to send his brother a bunch of books on toilet repair and see if they both end up in janitorial service!).
On the other hand I had a wonderful talk over Thanksgiving with a family member who has migrated from “cultural Christianity” to Deism (yes, apparently there are still deists in the world!). In her words, Deism is Theism minus revealed religion. She therefore disagrees with much of biblical teaching. OK, so we obviously disagreed - but our talk was fantastic! We both found ourselves commenting on how nice it was to be able to intelligently discuss our beliefs and the reasons for them without anger or emotive appeal. It was one of the best conversations I’ve had in a long time. We also discovered that we both needed more information to correctly asses the other’s beliefs. She referred to Thomas Paine, who I had not read, but she did not act like I was an ignorant fool because I had not gotten around to reading Age of Reason yet. I asked what she had read concerning Jesus’ resurrection (because some of her arguments against it were based on false assumptions) - and she admitted that she had not read anything substantial yet. OK, so we both had some homework to do. But we’re not idiots. I don’t think she is stupid for arguing from flawed assumptions, and she does not think I am stupid for not having read more on Deism before rejecting it. But we also agree that it would be stupid for either of us to think we couldn’t learn more - and that gaining that knowledge might change our views.
I think we can all agree that there are stupid people everywhere. But, for the most part, they are not stupid per se. Most limit their ignorance to certain areas. Thus, to lump people into a given category, note that many of them are stupid about things related to that category, and conclude that everyone in that category are stupid, is fallacious reasoning. Yes, there are a lot of Christians who could not go head-to-head with Richard Dawkins, but there are a lot of atheists who could not even go head to head with Lee Strobel. To fairly compare the intellectual value of various belief systems their best representative thinkers should be compared, not simply their best-sellers nor even their best-bloggers. Dawkin’s sorry treatment of Thomas Aquinas, for example, can be attributed to his lack of philosophical sophistication. Antony Flew, however, would not have that excuse (perhaps a bad example since Flew is a theist now!). Should I base my opinion of atheism on the cut-and-paste blogs of a 23 year old kid with no training who thinks he’s out-thought Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, and Craig by reading books by the likes of Dawkins, Carrier, and Loftus? That seems unfair. Not because his [and by "his," I mean, "their" (and by "their," I mean whoever they quote)] arguments are not worth considering, but because they have already been answered by people who know a lot more than we do. What both he and I should do is read the best from both sides, understand them, and then make our decisions.Unfortunately that takes more time than virtually anyone has.
This, I think, is the real issue. There is a lot of bad information out there, and we can’t investigate everything. I don’t even know how many email alerts I’ve received that snopes.com debunked years ago. The more I dig into many areas of thought the more I realize that their pop versions are as flawed as they are ubiquitous. Slogan-beliefs such as “religion has caused more death than all wars combined,” or, “the church has always held back science,” or, “Captain Picard was better than Captain Kirk,” have been soundly refuted by those in the know. But who has had time to read the real scholars in every field? This lack of knowledge does not equate to stupidity, although it might show how bad education has become. The real problem arises when ignorant people think they are educated.
And this is also the case with beliefs of all stripes. There are ignorant Christians who do not have the first clue as to why what they believe is true, and yet are fervent in their faith. There are zealous. yet ignorant, atheists as well. What really annoys me is the fact that many people, again on both sides, simply label others as idiots for believing what they believe. Atheists have certainly taken this approach. Their message is simple: “Atheists are the smart ones.” Many of these guys really believe that they are the only rational people on the planet. Although their writings often reveal otherwise, they simply repeat the “we’re rational and you’re not” mantra regardless of the mass of academic criticism they face (see Brandon Dahm’s The God Delusion Series for a good critique of Richard Dawkins - a smart and popular atheist who has seriously overreached his abilities to the acclaim of neo-atheists everywhere). True, both Christians and Atheists are sometimes guilty of this, but while no one would take seriously a church that called itself “The Only Church of People Who Think for Themselves,” or, “The First Church of Smart People,” atheists have gotten away with referring to themselves as “Free Thinkers” and forming “Rational Response Squads” for some time.
Anyway, here’s the point of this blog: If Aristotle was right then no one truly desires ignorance of the truth (although many avoid it for emotional / volitional reasons), and there are both smart and stupid people on both sides of most intellectual debates. Regardless of which side we are on, rather than act like we are the sole possessors of rational belief and simply label all other beliefs as inherently stupid, let’s just agree to deal with the issues. Let’s also not embarrass ourselves, nor others who share our beliefs, by thinking that parroting pop writers (or even substantial writers, if we don’t understand them) gains us the right to claim intellectual superiority. Quips do not equal arguments, and quotes do not equate to knowledge.
Note: I am indebted to Ian Hegger for the title of this blog - I don’t remember its original context, but I just had to use it!
