Why Facts Don't Matter

Something that discourages me is that epistemology, or the science of how we know things, claims that rational, empirical thinking has very little to do with our decision making. Check out this excerpt from an article in the Atlantic:

“…From an evolutionary perspective, there are more important things than truth… you hear a growl in the bushes that sounds remarkably tiger-like. The safest thing to do is probably high-tail it out of there, even if it turns out it was just your buddy messing with you. Survival is more important than truth... Having social support, from an evolutionary standpoint, is far more important than knowing the truth... And of course, truth gets more complicated when it’s a matter of more than just “Am I about to be eaten or not?” …The natural environment of human beings, like the sea for dolphins or the ice for polar bears, is information provided by others, without which they could not forage, hunt, choose mates, or build tools. Without communication, [there is] no survival for humans.…Having social support, from an evolutionary standpoint, is far more important than knowing the truth about some facts that do not directly impinge on your life.”[i]

I’m dry-heaving a little bit.

Our brains are masters at creating a story, particularly our own story, where we are the protagonist, trying to achieve an ultimate goal by overcoming some great conflict. Any jerk who stands in opposition to our goal inevitably wields the mantle of the hated antagonist. 

You are the epic hero, Odysseus, striving to make it back home to Penelope.

You are Katniss Everdeen, working to liberate the 13 districts.

You are Harry Potter, working to stave off He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

This means we see ourselves, whether we admit it or not, as a rational agent in this mysterious, rich, and complex world, abiding by the Facts and the best ideas.

But in reality, we make decisions according to our social context. If we’re located in a progressive environment where all of our coworkers wear “I’m With Her” shirts, eat vegan chili every Tuesday, and opt for deodorant-free lifestyles to reduce their carbon footprint, the data shows[ii] that we will most likely subscribe to their musky, free-loving ways in order to be part of the tribe.

We’re social apes that need interaction with other humans to survive, no matter how introverted we are: A sense of belonging is of paramount importance for every person. Whether the community you aspire to belong to is your family, friends, coworkers, or bloggers, our ideals align with who we want to be. 

Even if you have wardrobe full of MAGA hats that you press and lint roll every night, if you were to move to an urban area with more diversity, odds are your politics would begin to shift a little, too.

It happened to me.

I grew up in a loving, conservative household with intelligent, hard-working parents, but after going to a liberal school, earning a degree in religion where I came in contact with Muslims, atheists, Buddhists, and Hindus, I got a job in a profession that primarily benefits from progressive legislature. It only makes sense that my ideas would lean left. My ideas and beliefs shifted with my experience.

We have to be honest with ourselves: We are products of our environment, and that has serious ramifications.

I love this quote from Richard Rohr:

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.[iii]  

If we grew up in the South with particular political and theological views, those ideas would most certainly be different if we grew up in the North or in Afghanistan. And how would those particular political and theological views shift if we befriended people from a different social context than our own? While the numbers aren’t absolute, they trend toward inclusivity and acceptance of the “other” when we live and interact with those who are different from our tribe.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advising anyone to throw their faith away. I’m encouraging us all to understand that our beliefs, ideas, and politics are primarily grounded in our social context, not facts. What that means is that we should look to dissolve the boundaries between us, make friends and have conversations with as many different types of people as possible so our tribe is as colorful and variant as the world we live in. From this point, we can have a deeper and broader perspective of how the cosmic clock of reality really ticks.

Remember this: when you look at data and statistics, engage books or news, numbers may not lie, but the interpreters of those numbers certainly do. The best thing we can do to center ourselves in reality is to live as broadly and deeply as we can and let new thoughts and ideas emerge. Work against your brain’s own bias about how it encodes and tags new information by making decisions and seeking experiences that make the whole world, as corny as that sounds, part of your unique and beautiful identity.

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[i] Julie Beck, “This Article Won’t Change Your Mind” https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/this-article-wont-change-your-mind/519093/

[ii] David McRaney "How Your Address Changes Your Politics https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-your-address-changes-your-politics-120899 and I refuse to treat data as a plural noun.

[iii] Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

The Benefit of the Doubt: Why Questioning Your Faith Can Be Good

“And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrased, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers--perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.” 

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I think the weirdest thing about where I’m at in my faith is that the Scott from ten years ago would know exactly what to say to refute every word I type in the present. I’d grab my mystic, meditating self by the hand and lead “new” me through the Romans Road, through the “belief” verses in the Gospel of John, through the paradoxes and holes in 2018 Scott’s philosophy with sweat on my brow and a rasp in my throat.

But what I didn’t understand ten years ago is that we’ve all been handed a ladder to access God, grounded in our very specific time and space. Often this method of approaching the Divine equips us with rules for ascending:

•         How not to behave
•         How to behave
•         What not to believe
•         What to believe
•         What not to say
•         What to say

 A decade ago, I stuck to this script. I knew precisely how to respond to those angry atheists that pushed their agendas of evolution and twisted notions of liberated sexuality on me. I can hear 18-year-old me talking about irreducible complexity, God creating Adam and Eve, and building an emotional diatribe about the wonders of the “eye.” But it still didn’t change the reality that we all face the possibility of our ladder of faith failing us at some point like it did me. There’s always a chance it stops working for us while our friends and family move up and down their ladders with the ease of the angels in Jacob’s vision. And when the ladder no longer fits our experience of reality, what do we do?

Here are some options:  

1. Ignore your doubts and double down on your beliefs. Treat the compelling argument you read or heard as propaganda: FAKE NEWS—a piece designed to weaken your resolve, and consequently, something unworthy of holding in high regard.
2. Let the ladder of your beliefs crumble and walk away from it.
3. Approach your faith in a new way that can abide with the wild tapestry of your doubts, your longing for spirituality, and your blossoming view of reality.

While option two is fine, I think at some point most of us have will suffer an ache, a cosmic itch that ignoring the world of the spirit just won’t scratch.

Option one is the worst thing you can do. Religious institutions sometimes stigmatize doubt—treating it as an illness that needs an upped dosage of C.S. Lewis or Lee Strobel. Now don’t get me wrong, if apologetics and reasoned arguments bring you back to the goal of loving self and others within the context of having purpose and meaning, that’s great. In which case, your ladder is working fine. But I think for some of us, these are often just band-aids that cover open and festering wounds.

Let your doubt breathe in open air. Explore it to its fullest extent.

Truth will be truth.

If Christianity is a valid way of explaining your reality (and I would argue it is) reading Dawkins, Nietzsche, the Quran, the Upanishads, and the Buddhist Sutras will not affect that Truth.

Our relationship to doubt should never lead to censorship, but to an ever-deepening experience of faith.

In fact, I think doubt is an invitation from the Divine to usher in personal transformation, resulting in a more inclusive and broadening trust in God… something more Christ-like. Which leads me to number three, my chosen path, which I acknowledge is not the path for everyone.

A few years ago, I found myself in the midst of schema that didn’t work. Doctrines that (to me) felt lifeless and wooden, a creaky temple with closed windows that made my spiritual life feel stuffy and repressed. I fiddled with the idea of giving it up. I read some atheist texts and philosophy. Humanism sounded cool for a bit.

But I still felt a presence, a reverence humming within me.[i] Walking away from the crumbling ladder didn’t work, but forcing myself up the rungs as they splintered beneath my feet didn’t either. 

So I rebuilt.

I found that there are ways of approaching God and Christ that enable me to love others without an agenda, without the crippling need to change or convert their lifelong convictions. There was a way of seeing reality that ran consistent with science and didn’t undermine or ignore the realities of the natural world.

All that to say, I know that some of the words I publish and say have hurt those that I deeply love and care about. I hate that I’ve caused any pain. But I cannot in good conscience opt for choice one or two. 

It would be inauthentic, and I would be living a lie.

The words I write are for those of us who have felt or feel spiritually homeless.

The words I write are for those of us who can’t live in the tower of babel we built for ourselves but still feel the hum of reverence, drawing our hearts toward the mystery of Jesus, the unknowable God, and the vast enigma of the Cosmos thrumming through each and every one of us.

If you feel that magnetic pull toward the sacred but can’t accept the ladder you once climbed, be encouraged: there is another way.

It might be a tweaking of the faith you once had, it might be a major restructuring, it may be another religion altogether. But if your heart longs for more--for an experience with the Great Ground of Being, 

keep seeking, 

keep thinking, 

keep loving.

Grace and Peace

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[i] Fonda, Jane. “About My Faith.” Janefonda.com, 10 June 2009.