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.

---

[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 Bible: The Fourth Person of the Trinity?

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.”

-Rumi

If I’m guilty of anything, it’s being a relativist. I’ve given up trying to persuade people what to believe, or what God is or isn’t. I have my ideas; you have yours, and as long as these ideas and beliefs enable us to love, let’s learn from each other instead of tearing one another down because we don’t align on nuanced and (practically) irrelevant aspects of our theology that add up to arguing whether God prefers Chiptole or Freebirds (the answer is Chipotle).

In light of this idea, a wise friend pushed up against my somewhat radical openness at the bottom of his third glass of wine: "If this is your way of navigating the world and your spirituality, what is home base? What do you point to as an authoritative guide for morality and belief?"

A fair critique.

Ultimately, not fighting for a particular belief or theology can look like fuzzy emotionalism that lets people pick and choose what works well for them because it is comfortable and familiar instead of right and healthy, like scarfing hot pockets or pop-tarts when we all know our diets should look greener and probably not come out of a box. Now don't get me wrong, there are theological ideas that we should support and defend, as well as ideas that we should vehemently oppose and condemn. 

But too often we are approaching spiritual “authority” in our life as what dictates wrongdoing and rightdoing. We become so obsessed with this method of being correct that we often ignore the beauty of true religion and spirituality.

In the past, the anchor of my ethics and belief was the Bible. More specifically, a conservative evangelical interpretation of the Protestant Bible, which trumped any argument from reason, science, philosophy, experience, or tradition. But the constant scenes of misogyny, violence, and exclusion made me reevaluate the Bible as an inerrant guide to morality—I think if we’re honest with our reading of the Bible, it’s clear we can’t treat this library of books as “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth,” or some sort of owner’s manual that lays out strict rules on how to behave and think. 

There are over 30,000 Christian denominations that have different views of what the Bible is and how to use it. Maybe this ancient library of poems, letters, and stories wasn’t meant to be a conversation ender--Something that settles the “Christian” view on homosexuality, abortion, science, history, or the death penalty. I think a better way to view the Bible is as a progressive unfolding of how a particular people group viewed and understood God—essentially, it is a piece of art that should promote conversation, community, and debate as we wrestle with how to live in this fascinating and beautiful world in the midst of doubt, confusion, and pain. I know I just spouted a gushing geyser of what some may see as heretical thinking like I was ordering a ham sandwich at Subway, but stick with me.
  

The Bible can be authoritative, but it doesn’t have to be inerrant.

You don’t have to justify a six-day creation,

or attack evolution when virtually every scientist argues it’s an empirical fact.

You don’t have to defend the existence of eternal conscious torment as a primary aspect of your faith in order to be part of this wild and diverse Jesus tradition

or tell our Muslim and LGBTQ brothers and sisters they’re headed there.

The Bible and our tribe’s interpretation of it isn’t the fourth person of the Trinity,

 and I feel as though we are often guilty of exalting it to such a position.

But what do you cling to if the Bible isn’t telling you how to vote or how to respond to your pinko-commie philosophy professor like some gimmicky Christian film?

A tricky question, for sure.

And I think the answer is something a little unsatisfying: we must have a personal ethic that seeks to humanize everyone, fight dehumanization in any form, and cling to the grand mystery of God and capital ‘B’ Being within the context of community. Doesn’t it seem more Godly that we wouldn’t have all the answers to the pressing questions of our time? That ultimately what we should do is search our own experience, the tradition of faiths before us, and the scriptures to come to our best understanding of reality? And even then, shouldn’t we test these theories through the shared wisdom and experiences of our community?

As humans, we want certainty. We want the world to present itself in the concrete dualism of black and white. But that just isn’t reality. Life is a mess of Technicolor that needs reevaluation, rethinking, reinterpretation, and needs it constantly. Isn’t there something embedded within us that wants to embrace this type of thinking—an approach to life that sees more sophistication and enigma than simply the old and stale ideology that repeats “The Bible Tells Me So,” like a broken record that’s been stuck in a monotonous cycle of destructive and exclusive repetition for decades?

I think moving beyond this black and white thinking is the field that Rumi speaks of—a place too full to talk about—a way of living life that promotes inclusion, love, and our profound connectedness to one another despite our differences.

May we learn to sit in the tension of unknowing and mystery, and may we learn to explore this infinite landscape of life with friends as we savor a world too full to talk about.

Grace and Peace.