One of the reasons that I usually try to stay out of controversial debates is because of how polarizing and vicious they get. Take a healthy debate focused on arriving at a solution, add confusion and emotional thinking, and soon you have an argument. Truth, or even compromise, becomes less important than proving the other guy wrong, just so you can sneer in their face. (I am not immune to this, by the way, but I know it, thus my usual decision to avoid engaging in the debates to begin with.)
There are a lot of things about our world that are so incredibly complex that it becomes essentially impossible for any one person to fully comprehend them. Whether we’re talking about economic policy or computer software or evolution or even our own minds. We all instinctively know that it’s impossible to know
everything, even about any one single subject. Yet we argue anyway, and simply dismiss the information that we don’t have as trivial or irrelevant.
It’s human nature, I think, to categorize things. We like things to be settled. Decided. We like to take a mystery, explore it for a while and then reach a satisfactory answer. We make a little check mark by it on our mental list and then we don’t have to think about it anymore.
Generally speaking, this is not a bad thing. We encounter thousands of things on a daily basis where that tendency is extraordinarily useful. When my car’s gas gauge reads “E”, that means I need to fill it with gas again. I don’t have to sit there and
figure out what the “E” means every time it happens. I “know”, based on past experience, what the E means and what I need to do about it. There are times when this experience could fail me, (for example, a broken gauge,) but it works often enough that it is a useful assumption.
Science is like that.
I love science. I love the intellectual challenge of exploring the meanings and workings of the world around us. Some people seem to feel that science and religion are incompatible, but I think they are more like oil and vinegar. They are different in character and cannot mix homogenously, but put them both on a sandwich or a salad, and they taste much better than either would taste separately.
For me, my study of science has only
enhanced my love of God. Every new layer of complexity we uncover simply increases my awe at the amazing universe He created. Learning about God’s creation is, in a way, learning about the Creator.
I find great joy in that intersection. Feeling the delicious friction between our limited understandings of both God and the physical world, and seeking to increase both. Total knowledge is impossible here, but the pursuit of truth unites science and philosophy into two sides of the same coin. It irritates me to no end when people try to separate them completely, as though they have nothing to do with each other.
When we are seeking truth in a complex problem, we can get lost in a desert of confusion and doubt. Is it any wonder that we cling desperately to the first oasis that we come across? Even if there are things about our oasis that we find hard to accept, we stay there, because to leave means risking uncertainty again. We don’t want to keep wandering, so we begin to justify staying where we are.
Thus, anyone who comes by must be convinced to stay, because if they insist on leaving, that casts doubt on the rightness of our own choices.
Sometimes, in our desperation to reassure ourselves, we will begin to insist that our oasis is not just a good one, but that it’s the only one. We declare “Truth” and decide that our oasis is not just a resting point on a long journey, but that it is, in fact, the final destination. That we are no longer seeking, for we have found. We like thinking this, because it lets us stop looking. It lets us stop
thinking. Why should we work so hard when it’s already decided? In addition, anyone who suggests otherwise must be punished, lest they throw the whole group into confusion again.
This is what happens to so many people when they engage in these debates. Whether it’s a political party, a scientific theory, or even whether Picard was better than Kirk. We are so desperate to settle the issue in our own minds that we dig in our heels and refuse to budge, even if it means defending things that you don’t necessarily agree with. How else can we explain the group-think that occurs so often in political debates. Why is it that democrats all have to be pro-choice and republicans all have to be pro-life? The answer, of course, is because a pro-life democrat or a pro-choice republican risks being ostracized and cast-out by their own party. You’re not allowed to agree on some things and not on others. The group demands conformity, and if you’re not with us, you’re against us.
The same thing happens in the evolution versus creation debate, which inspired this essay. The hardliners on each side have settled the issue in their own minds, and therefore anyone with an alternative theory becomes the enemy.
The Evolutionists begin defending their position so vehemently that evolution stops being a solid hypothesis based on scientific evidence and starts being a
Fact that no one can question without being ridiculed. That is a betrayal of Science itself. The scientific method is all about asking questions and seeking the answers through careful observation. Declaring that the issue is settled and will never change is dogma, not science.
The Creationists, and some of the more extreme Intelligent Design folks, are no less guilty in this debate. It’s easier if the Bible is
literally true. It means you can stop looking for Truth, because you can just put it on your bookshelf, as though all of God’s infinite wondrous creation can be contained in a single book.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the Bible. I think there is great Truth and much wisdom to be found there. One thing that I think is particularly helpful is how it illustrates mankind’s tendency to worship the wrong things. There’s a story in the Old Testament about a plague of poisonous snakes visited on the Israelites as a punishment for a lack of faith. God ordered the creation of a bronze snake and said that if anyone was bitten, they need only look at it and believe, and they would be healed. It was an act of devotion and faith. If you had faith, and obeyed God in this matter, God would heal you of the poison.
Only trouble was that people started worshipping the snake itself, as though it had power of its own. What had originally been a symbol of faith and devotion to God became corrupted, an idol, drawing worship away from God.
I’m
not saying that Creationists are idolaters, worshipping the Bible instead of God, but I do think that some of them have taken steps in that direction. They base their beliefs only on the tangible; on the leather-bound pages that they can hold in their hands. When they do that, they have started down the road of holding the symbol above that which it represents. It’s easier to have faith in something you can see, but faith isn’t meant to be easy.
In their zeal, the extremists on both sides of the debate betray the very basis of their own positions.
The pursuit of Truth is not a race.
No one “wins”, no one “loses”. The other seekers are not your enemies, they are your
comrades! Fellow humans, joining us in a journey that will not end in any human lifetime.
I do believe that there is a real Truth and that it is possible to look in the wrong places, and that when we see our comrades going in what we feel is the wrong direction, it is our duty to attempt to persuade them.
But the form of this attempt makes all the difference. When we debate, are we truly trying to guide another in the right direction, or are we just defending our own little patch of ground?
In complex debates, people can be
wrong without being stupid or evil, and people can be right for the wrong reasons. It’s in our nature to want to reduce everything to a simple yes or no answer, but we get so caught up in whether it’s yes or no that soon, we can’t even hear the questions anymore.
When that happens, we might as well be animals, fighting for territory based on pure instinct. Reason, Truth, Faith, and Love are the casualties.
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Related Posts (on one page):
- Are you seeking Truth, or just holding your ground?
- Intelligent Design Again
- Intelligent Design
Name:Christiana Ellis
Name:Mike Meitín
