The hardest part about trying to be an objective thinker is that you often find yourself sandwiched between your own bias and the bias of another person. If you can acknowledge the biases in both of you, that seems like an intellectually honest thing to do, but then you often won’t project the air of confidence people expect from others before they even begin to respect their opinions. You often lose either way, and are more or less forced to hide your pain.
Later this evening, I’ll be attending a movie with friends that acts as a summary of numerous conspiracies and strange sightings -style episodes. I actually like that stuff – a friend got me watching the Why Files on YouTube last year – but I can probably guarantee you that I will disagree with most of the conclusions. It just got me thinking.
The last time I found myself in the incredibly awkward position of disagreeing with almost everything being said in a group, I tried to think to myself: what is the right way to approach the situation? I came up with 3 principles to keep in mind: 1) I don’t have all the answers, 2) this person may know more about the subject than I do, and 3) this person may actually be correct. I think if you can go into a subject acknowledging those 3 things, you can more or less keep yourself in the right frame of mind to have an engaging discussion that doesn’t turn sour.
That being said, what exactly do you do if everybody has the same opinion except you? This happens a lot in churches because so many people are radically conservative, and although I tend to lean conservative myself, I very easily become disgruntled with the smugness that accompanies group-think. Say something politically conservative in front of most evangelical churches, and people will start wooping and hollering in support. Ugh. Just because I have an opinion doesn’t mean it’s a good opinion, but it’s very common for people to take disagreements as an insult to their intelligence, and I’ve no doubt done this as well. Are people really so sure of themselves? Am I really so sure of myself?
My general approach to conspiracies is that strong claims require strong evidence. We know for a fact that things sometimes get covered up, so it’s not unreasonable to assume things are being covered up as we speak. But saying that a conspiracy is plausible is very different from saying that it is ‘just so’ simply because it’s plausible. When it comes to this sort of thing, I generally consider myself a skeptic, not as some sort of intellectual power-move, but there often simply isn’t enough evidence to conclude one way or the other. Who killed JFK? The whole thing is suspicious, but until more evidence comes out, I’m pretty undecided on what the big picture really includes.
To be fair, though, I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with having convictions or strong opinions, but the way that you carry those in your heart can have a tremendous impact on others, for better or worse.
Take evolution, for example. I’m an evolutionist. I believe in God, of course, and I’m also a Christian, but I don’t believe that Genesis lends itself well to a literal historical interpretation, for a lot of reasons. From what limited evidence I saw when I began studying evolution in earnest back in high school and college, it’s almost undeniable, at least in its very general form. But, due to a complex history, while the first evolutionists were also Christians, it became a weapon of atheism against Christianity, spawning whole generations of hatred against it. It was not always so. For myself, I didn’t just magically wake up one day and decide to ‘rebel against God’ or anything like that, it was something I saw born out repeatedly through all of the sciences, and it became less and less convincing when people in church would dismiss it and say terrible things about anyone who believed it, calling them idiots, etc. I cannot fully communicate in one blog post how destructive that was to me, as I simply wanted to find the truth and found nothing but hatred among Christians, but I live it to this day. It is simply not something you can discuss in church, because almost everybody ‘knows’ it’s false, because because.
Granted, I don’t often feel the urge to argue for evolution. First of all, I’ve been outside of the debate for a long time, and even if I had stayed up with it all these years, it wouldn’t mean I have all the answers. There are no doubt people who don’t believe in evolution who know way more about the debate than I do. But that being said, those who feel the strongest against evolution have never, in my presence, presented the sort of reasoning that would convince me evolution is some giant hoax/conspiracy/etc. I don’t mean to be a jerk when I say this, but people tend to play their hand, and it’s often exposed by their attitude. When you can’t disagree or discuss something with another person, it’s kind of a sign of how that person has chosen to see it, regardless of any evidence. The number of people I can have honest conversations with about evolution can probably be counted on one hand. Either it hasn’t come up with my other friends, or I feel completely unsafe sharing any of my ideas on the subject with them. And that’s too bad, because it’s a huge subject with tons of nuance that otherwise invites a lot of interesting discussion. But I am only too human, and feeling hated or otherwise laughed at for my ideas is never a fun experience. I guess I’ve just learned to keep my mouth shut.
The other thing to remember with conspiracy theories in general is that so often, even if they are true, there is nothing we can really do about them. One idea that I’ve encountered several times, which still rings true, is that people tend to fixate on these conspiracies as the sense of control they have over their own life diminishes; it’s like diving deep into all of the rabbit-holes becomes a way of feeling power over a world in which they otherwise feel powerless. Once again, that’s not to put them down as people, or to say that they are necessarily wrong, but I’ve learned in my own life to question my own motivations for learning. Is it actually to make the world a better place? Does it have some sort of utility in my daily life? Or do I just want to feel smart about myself?
That all being said, I actually enjoy a bit of alternative archaeology, as it tends to keep archaeology on its toes. I watch a few YouTube channels that have probably done more for Egyptology than most Egyptologists, so there is something to be said for the amateurs sometimes knowing more than the professionals. But they are also very reasonable channels who focus on architecture and culture, and not aliens!
Update: I did disagree with most of the movie sections, but not all of them. But the conversations went far beyond those subjects, and were really interesting. It was a lot of fun!