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| Taken in the Bridger Mountains, near Fairy Lake |
People who know me, if asked about my personality, would have to at least
somewhere in that description include my huge tendency toward stubbornness. I
am a person whose default belief is that I am right. When new information or
evidence comes my way, my natural response is to give it WAY less weight than
that which I have already processed. It is less of a confirmation bias than an
anti-refutation bias and it is strong. Though this is my own personal weakness,
it is a weakness that is embraced within the religious community which masked
it from my own scrutiny for a long period of time.
I am a pretty skeptical person, but
this bias makes it difficult for me to change my mind. It is part of the reason
I write this blog and why I have been so active in changing my mind. I have to
be. If I do not make a conscious decision to examine something honestly, I will
naturally dismiss any suggestion that I might be wrong out of hand. Because of
this nearsightedness, I have missed a great many places where I have had
weakness.
One of these places of nearsighted stubbornness was in religion. I told myself
I believed, and from there it was a done deal. There was no amount of evidence
that I couldn't question into non-existence. I used this bias as a tool to rationalize
away the poor justification for my religious beliefs, in attempt to avoid
feared cultural ostracization. In reality these had long since left the realm
of beliefs and become self-enforced dogma. I refused to question these beliefs
and spent large amounts of mental energy trying to avoid seeing any
contradictions or error in them. This is a practice that is commonly encouraged
within Christianity [1], including the sect of my youth [2]. It is simultaneously encouraged to
give no weight to arguments which are counter to the beliefs laid out by the
church while also accepting their claims without consideration of their
rationality.
However, I realized that this encouragement to rationalize was not intended to
have blanket application. I felt it was right to put effort into making belief
in religion rational, but then avoid making that same effort in any other
situation. It was a self-generated "ends justify the means"
situation, where I felt using an irrational tool was acceptable in the pursuit
of this one thing I really wanted. It was OK to rationalize, but just in this
case, just to avoid being an odd person in a community of believers.
Eventually this imbalance became so heavy it grew uncomfortable. I began to
realize that I was not being honest with myself in saying that I believed in
things I did not actually believe in. This became clearly evident in regular
meetings with clergy members when I was asked to affirm my belief. I realized I
was not fully telling the truth in doing so, which contradicted other
affirmations I was asked to make, including that I was honest. Here was a
conflict: Do I accept honesty as a value
above cultural or religious acceptance? For years I did not. Not through any
personal indication, but because it was a somewhat common experience within the
community, I feared that honesty would mean an end to my marriage and severely
hamper my relationship with my son. This was not a decision that could be made
lightly, and I chose to eschew honesty for comfort. I know from conversations
with friends that this is a decision that other people currently face. I would
not fault someone for choosing either side, but it grew weary for me.
A tipping point in my decision to stop rationalizing my acceptance (though for
a long time it was less acceptance and more lack of open disagreement) with
beliefs that were self-inconsistent and disagreed with more consistent
evidence, was an idea I learned from Dave Ramsey. I found a piece of advice he
gives on financial matters to be really freeing in ideas as well. Essentially,
he repeats something to the effect of (speaking about some item that a person
already owns),"Instead of thinking about selling [Some item], think about
buying it. If you wouldn't buy it, you should sell it. Not selling it is the
same thing as buying it again every day."
When I considered my religious beliefs under this lens, the
"anti-refutation" bias was no longer present. If I had all the
evidence I do today, and no predetermined decision to pursue religion, would I
choose to do so? In this light, it was much easier to see that my
self-deception and "sell" these ideas. I did not need to continue
believe the earth was 6000 years old, just because I had already decided to.
Continuing to claim that belief in the face of strong evidence to the contrary
was choosing to accept it anew, which it was clear to me I would not do. If I
would not accept these claims coming to me fresh, why would I keep them around
when I had many refutations of them? This new mindset was revolutionary to my
life. I have applied this tool to change many things about my world view, and
it has allowed me to be more true to myself, removing external pressure and
focusing on weighing the evidence. It gave me the freedom to accept my lack of
beliefs in the claims of religion and not pretend that I wanted them.
I am still weak and prone to judging incorrectly, but I have gained the
flexibility to make my own judgments and refrain from rationalizing belief in
unjustified claims.
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