Space For Doubt

Do you have any control over what you believe?

Let’s say we’re outside at noon on a clear sunny day. I say I will pay you one million dollars if you can make yourself believe the sky is red and not blue. Then I ask you take a lie detector test (or let’s pretend you have no choice but to answer honestly) “Do you really believe the sky is red?”. What would the outcome be?

Let’s choose something more nebulous. “I need you to believe the flying spaghetti monster is the real God”. Can you do it? Despite there not being any evidence for or against (as much as evidence can prove the non-existence of something), you would of course say “No”, as every ounce of logic in your brain says “NO!”.

As a kid I used to believe it was illegal to leave a light on in the car while driving at night (90’s kid). I have since come to know that is false. Therefore my “belief” was changed automatically when presented with new reliable information. I didn’t have to TRY. It was an entirely autonomous change.

Mankind once believed the earth was the center of the solar system. As we accumulated more and more evidence to the contrary, it became an untenable position to continue to hold. No one today still believes that. The speed at which this theory become fully abandoned was slow, however it was not due to any falsity in the facts themselves. No, it was the fault of deeply ingrained brainwashing/indoctrination and a distrust of the messengers of these new facts.

I posit that most people have, at best, minimal control over what they believe. For myself, I do not think I really have any control over what I believe.

I used to believe (and I say that loosely as I was never bothered enough to closely inspect my belief) in young earth creationism. However after years of research, reading, discussions, and discovering overwhelming contrary evidence, my mind changed. Not due to me wanting it to change. It just did. The evidence was too overwhelming and made my previous “belief” no longer viable. I could not believe that again unless presented with corroborating evidence that somehow invalidated or logically explained away ALL of the counter evidence.

I say “logically” because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You can’t just say “God just did it that way” at every juncture of disagreement. That holds no water and will win you no points. That is a textbook case of forcing everything you see to fit through YOUR preconceived idea of how it MUST be. A belief that something must be true does not make it so, despite however intense your mental gymnastic attempts may be.

Imagine before our modern understanding of peanut allergies (or just allergies in general). Say a random person just went into rapid anaphylactic shock one day and quickly dies. It could easily be explained away as “God smote him”. Or before our understanding of what an eclipse was, the people would say “God blotted out the sun!”. [These celestial events were historically always deemed to be caused by God(s)]

Surely you can see how answering every contradiction with “God just did it that way” is a silly argument. Just because you don’t know how something works doesn’t make your opinion correct.

This is a long winded way of saying that at no point have I felt that my deconstruction journey was within my control. I feel sort of like a raft adrift, bumping into this or that. Accepting and digesting what I’m encountering but seemingly not in the drivers seat. It can be an uncomfortable feeling.

“Changing” your mind is incredibly uncomfortable and if modern day politics is an example of anything, it’s an example of how people would rather go to jail, die, and be publicly excoriated, before they admit to changing their mind on any previously held view.

However….it’s the seeds of doubt that are planted when even the staunchest closed minded individuals are exposed to legitimate and convincing new knowledge that pose the risk. Over time, after being repeatedly confronted with stark conflict-causing information, one’s mind will tend to be changed without much (if any) of a conscious decision to do so.

This can sound scary. When I first had this epiphany, I too was a little scared. But in that fear, do you know what I found? Comfort.

How could this be a comforting thought? Is this not again just another thing that seems out of your control? However…this concept of belief not being a choice really played a key role in a future revelation that my wife and I had later on. For that, you’ll have to just keep reading 🙂

Peace.