THE MORE YOU KNOW THE LESS YOU BELIEVE

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

          Welcome back.

            The bumper sticker message in the title of today's post reveals an existential flaw that is suggestive. Choosing to avoid knowledge so belief might be maintained is like drinking a milkshake inside a volcano. 

            The message suggests why private Bible colleges invest wealth and effort to spread bunk instead of history, superstition instead of science, and idolatry instead of faith.

            It suggests why home schooling does the same.

            It suggests a reason for the don't-confuse-me-with-the-facts phenomena.

            It suggests a reason for the Donald Trump phenomenon.

            People deserve to be thought stupid if they believe knowledge should be avoided, even when they are brilliant in other ways. However, to be fair, there is a kind of genius found in the ability to gather a lump of knowledge, twist it into a pretzel, and then fit it inside a straw.

            One must possess the genius of a Van Gough when they paint dinosaurs with white people riding them on their way to Noah's boat:  brilliant but insane. Ignorance is a brain fever with no cure as long as people are self deceived and able to deceive others.

            Indeed, pathological liars sound truthful to themselves and others. It is quite insane to follow a liar.

          Fear and pride feed that mad folly. All of us are afraid of life and death, even as we erect safe havens in our minds that convince us we are not. None of us want to admit when we are wrong--certainly not in public. Fear gathers followers. A leader's pride musters deception.

            I confess. I fear death. "When thoughts of the last bitter hour make me to shudder and grow sick at heart," I do go forth under the open sky. I list to nature's teachings. I read the Bible. I memorize poetry. I seek to tell and show the ones I love the joy I feel living in this time and this place in order to adore them. 

           However, nothing can cause me to repent from this I know:                     

           "Yet a few days and thee the all beholding sun shall see no more in all its course."

            I confess, also, that I am eaten up with pride. I flaunt the fierce arrogance that roils in any son of the working class, but as I see my reflection in the mirror, I must admit what a doofus I am when I am the source of my own pursuit of unhappiness and whirlwind mistakes. 

           Please, Lord, never let me believe out of fear and justify out of pride.  

           If I must choose between knowledge and doctrine, then I choose knowledge because knowing is dynamic and ever unfolding. Any beliefs I possess are informed by science, history, and the academic (not dogmatic) study of religion and religions' scriptures. At least, I like to think that is true.

            Rather, I suspect beliefs are fired up by something visceral. They feel true. Knowing carries a more complicated kind of feeling, but I prefer the complicated feeling. Betting on even numbers in Roulette often feels true, but is not. Going to war against a nation that has never attacked us might feel true, but, well, that's one of those milkshakes I mentioned above.

            I think the bumper sticker is concerned with the kind of believing that stems from doctrines. Doctrines are different from knowledge. They are statements of beliefs. Doctrines tend to be static, fixed, unchanging, and rigid. Doctrines are immovable earths, and no amount of Copernican information will shake them, including the information that they have been in motion all along and only seem to be fixed.

            If ignorance is required to sustain a doctrine, then that belief has been irrelevant for a long time. It became irrelevant as soon as people began to ignore knowledge or science in order to believe it.

            By the way, if I seem to be using the words "knowledge" and "science" interchangeably, I am. The word "science" means "knowledge." Moreover, the word “science” carries with it a method that has made science a special kind of  knowledge, knowledge so powerful it changes what was known to be true into what is now known to be false. Science clarifies and explains. 

           Alas, science, as we all know, heals and kills, but so do doctrines.

            Consider that the message of the bumper sticker is incomplete. Just add one word for a truer statement.

THE MORE YOU KNOW THE LESS CRAP YOU BELIEVE.

            How’s that?  

           Justin Martyr wrote that truth belongs to the Christians. If that is true, Christians need never fear knowing. Indeed, faith, informed by knowledge and experience, is wisdom, and wisdom can save us from what science cannot heal and doctrine cannot justify.

            Next: Brother Justin's audacious truth claim.

            Blessings...