Stop Thinking? Hmm…

posted by Sam Richards

I have no idea who this guy is. I guess he’s a former child actor who now works for God. As I have not watched TV in the past thirty years, he remains a mystery to me–even though he seems to be quite popular in our mainstream media outlets because I see his face a good deal on the Web.

That said, he says something here that leaves me a bit perplexed and I’d like some of you to respond. Listen to the clip and get back to me.

“When you learn how to skip to a person’s conscience and circumnavigate the intellect, the subject of evolution disappears.” Poof. It’s gone. Someone questions you about evolution? Just change the subject. Amazing what can happen when we stop thinking.

So tell me what you do when the complicated questions that you cannot immediately answer come at you in a fast and furious way, when your world view is called into question, or when you accidentally and inevitably step into that gray area that so many of us unsuccessfully try to avoid so much of the time. Do you just stop thinking like this guy says you can do in the case of evolution so that the conundrum disappears? Or do you stay in the ring and wrestle with the challenges that are difficult to pin down?

Here’s the issue as I see it. This short little video clip might be taken out of context, to be sure. However, it doesn’t really matter for what I’m asking because I see lots of people turning off their intellect when confronted with things they can’t explain. This includes believers of all sorts of ideas, including scientists and sociologists, and not simply religious folks.

And I know what you might say. You might remind me of what I said the other day in class with regard to religious beliefs–that fealty to God comes mainly from faith. But the problem is that faith is not separate from the intellect. Most people who have faith will give you very logical and rational reasons for why they have their faith. Sure, a great deal of many people’s faith is conditional and based on convenience. Perhaps it’s “I have faith that the Pope is speaking for God but I don’t want to get my girlfriend pregnant so I’m using condoms–even though the Pope/God says it’s a sinful act.” Pure convenience to avoid the inconvenience of having a baby to take care of while taking classes.

Or people posit “There are immutable laws that govern the universe (e.g., gravity) and thus no reason to postulate some otherworldly causality.” A convenient observation until you take the time to read theoretical physics and discover the many brilliant scientific minds that have been led to God when they discover that many of these laws are not as immutable as they previously thought. Pure convenience to avoid the inconvenience of having to read another book.

It’s all faith implicated with rational thought.

So the question is as follows: If we live our lives both “believing” and “thinking,” then when is it acceptable to stop doing the latter for the sake of the former? In other words, do we abandon ALL rational thought or just when thinking would force us to confront some ideas and observations that don’t immediately make sense or mesh with what we want to believe?

The message of the gentleman in the video is that some “truths” he has discovered just happen to accompany a particularly complicated mix of riddles (like evolution) and that it’s okay to “circumnavigate” them so you don’t have to deal with what you don’t want to risk understanding. I’m not so sure I agree.

Once again, it doesn’t matter if this has been pulled out of context because that’s a message I’ve heard all of my life from people who want to avoid thinking about something–like the pervasiveness of racism or where fossils came from or whether it really does lower the morale of the troops if gays and lesbians are allowed to serve in the military.

By the way, those of you who are not disposed to faith persuasions don’t need to use this post as an opportunity to bash those who are. Rather, use it as an opportunity to rethink how you navigate the world of ideas.

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