Calling out contradictions
Yesterday I was skipping around on the radio when I came to a Christian station broadcasting a story. Read slowly, deliberately, and with almost comical voices for the different characters, it was the tale of a young girl who had seen a TV preacher explaining why next Saturday was the day of Christ’s Second Coming. He had an equation (?) and a book all about it, and that convinced her, so much so that she began putting up posters all around her town. Her parents, good Christians of course, saw this as crazy behavior, but they weren’t sure how to talk to her about it. After all, if they told her that Jesus wouldn’t be returning on Saturday, she’d start to question whether he’d ever return at all! They didn’t know how to get her to stop acting crazy without shaking her faith.
The real issue seemed so blatant I couldn’t believe they were just sweeping it under the rug. What are the actual reasons for believing in the deity of Jesus, and for believing in the apocalypse accompanied by his return? Why is a televangelist’s take on this not seen as credible, but a local church minister’s is? How can you challenge one irrational belief without applying the same sort of scrutiny to your other beliefs? That’s exactly what the parents were worried about — that the “good” skepticism they wanted to teach her would turn into “bad” skepticism (i.e., distrusting things she was supposed to believe blind).
It got me thinking about… well, not exactly hypocrisy, because I feel like that word should be reserved for intentional cases. I suppose I should say contradictions. We all (perhaps to differing extents) compartmentalize various controversies and rationalize beliefs we’re predisposed to, rather than making judgments from first principles. It’s very easy for this to lead to a situation in which you hold very different opinions simultaneously. The more rational you are, the more likely you are to catch these instances when they do occur, and the quicker you resolve the inconsistency. However, understanding the importance of rational thinking doesn’t mean that you never hold contradictory beliefs.
This is more than just the doctor who smokes, or the obese gym teacher. There’s the “creation scientist” who, after being presented with carefully constructed scientific theories that have withstood rigorous testing, demands proof beyond any shadow of a doubt (clearly misunderstanding the concept of science), but who would never think of turning such a critical lens on the religious beliefs that form their large set of assumptions. There’s the pro-life advocate who wants abortion to be illegal because it is murder, but who would never consider assigning sentences of the same magnitude as what murderers get. There are liberals who think of the Constitution as a set of fundamental principles, which justifies giving absolute protection to expression and religion even if that’s not how the Founding Fathers would have interpreted it — but prefer to look to 18th-century laws to justify gun control in the face of the 2nd Amendment. Alternatively, you have conservatives who would oppose the “fundamental principles” interpretation in general, deferring to the attitudes of the Founders to define Constitutional protections — except in cases about gun control where they’re happy to embrace it.
I’m not saying you can’t believe in making abortion illegal while also supporting low sentences for it. What I’m saying is that, if that’s your position, you have to have reasonably subtle logic to back it up. A good way to examine whether your opinion on a topic is rational is to look at the underlying principles and assumptions, and see if you agree with the implications of those assumptions — in all cases, not just in the limited context of the original situation.
I also think this is good to keep in mind during discussions with others. Say you present some scientific evidence to a creationist, and they respond with criticism of the study methods. It’s not worth your time to defend the study; take their point about scientific rigor and run with it. If they really believe in the scientific method, they can’t make a reasonable claim that creationism is science. Rather than just trying to refute every statement they make as though the conversation were some horrible game of Whack-a-Mole, it can be helpful to agree with them while they’re making the portion of their arguments that are better suited to your side.
This way of thinking — about basic principles that reach beyond isolated opinions — seems especially helpful in political debates. Among most intelligent people, the controversy over, say, school vouchers isn’t really about school vouchers. It’s about underlying ways of thinking about political issues, with opposing views on vouchers being obvious conclusions based on different philosophical starting points. Testing and debating those underlying beliefs is more productive (and much more interesting) than trying to deal with the specific policy issue in question.
Update: I found the radio show I mentioned at the start of this post. It’s called Adventures in Odyssey, and you can read a plot summary of the episode here.
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