Intellectual Polarization

Many intelligent, forward-thinking people these days are falling victim to a term I’d like to just kind of throw out there…intellectual polarization.

An intellectually polarized person is basically a walking, breathing, self-replicating caricature; a mindless wind-up doll operating only in accordance to its programming as dictated by some arbitrary outpost of The Great Culture War.

While there have always been people who factor religious, metaphysical, or spiritual elements into their answers to life’s questions, lately there seems to be a growing rift between those who do and those who do not. Fundamentalists of any sort can be rather stubborn, and the writer of the Proverbs reminds them all, "It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way."

As history stampedes upon its fascinating course towards global unity it seems America is becoming an increasingly divided country. Once the land of untold opportunity and plenty for all, an overpopulated citizenry now struggles for ostensibly limited resources amidst deep socio-political and economic rifts under the psychological pressures of a glamorous and affluent culture. We find expressions of this division in a series of intellectual dichotomies: Rich vs. poor, Republican vs. Democrat, scientist vs. religionist, pro-life vs. pro-choice, peace vs. war, activist vs. apathetic, traditional vs. progressive, et al. The situation has deteriorated to the point that we can’t even mention the idea of God in class or utter the name of Darwin in seminary without some insecure citizen getting all up in arms.

In the false dichotomy of science vs. religion, the first and perhaps most major event concerning the separation clause and the origin-of-life debate was the famous Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925, whose intellectual poison was identifiable as early on as William Jennings Bryan’s polarizing opening statement that haunts us to this day: “If evolution wins, Christianity goes…” Unfortunately for those Americans who are not evolutionists or Christians, these words have tainted the context of the entire public education system ever since.

We can test gravity, measure electromagnetism and formulaically standardize the chemical composition of sulfuric acid, but the beginning of the universe was a one-time event and attempting to define its ultimate cause by simply studying the aftermath is not unlike attempting to define the exact attributes of a rock thrown into a pond by studying the outermost ripples in the water. Obviously, there are both inherent disadvantages in the situation, let alone the dwarfing magnitude behind the idea that perhaps Somebody threw the rock.

Despite the pervasive misconception that the two fields are mutually exclusive, science and religion actually represent complementary templates for human attempts at answering life’s basic questions. It is true that science deals with the realm of accessible, observable phenomenon, but a similar argument can be made for religion as well. Although genuine differences exist between them, science and religion do not deal with separate realms; rather, they are better represented as two branches of a common ancestor, and that common ancestor is truth. Of course it goes without saying that neither all science nor all religion is always true, and that some science and some religion is undeniably false.

A good general guideline is that the truth usually lays somewhere between two extremes, and in the final analysis the scientist and religionist are both in the same unsteady boat. After all, both are actively engaged in a search for answers, both work under the disadvantage of insurmountable difficulties and with the exception of the quantum physics department both believe in an objective reality that is what it is regardless of man’s opinions about the matter.

When taken to extremes due to intellectual polarization that is often emotionally-based, neither side wishes to yield, and as could be expected, religion generally demonizes science or any other field that disagrees with orthodox doctrine – and science is generally intolerant of religious, spiritual, or metaphysical explanations concerning the past, present, or future. On one end we have the dogmatic, intellectually polarized religionist, spewing subjective dogma that he or she doesn’t always necessarily know how to explain nor care to, and often embarrassingly attacking scientific discoveries that impart absolutely no challenge to their faith. On the other end we have the dogmatic, intellectually polarized scientist, refusing to acknowledge anything that cannot be tested empirically and often mistakenly basing an entire world view on the lack of testable, observable evidence for the religious, spiritual, or metaphysical aspects said to support material existence.

The history of science itself rests on a foundation of thinkers open-minded enough to embrace both religion and research. For many of these pioneers, the research was evidence of the religion. While another needless battle in The Great Culture War rages on, the important question is worth restating: Regardless of your education, your current belief system, your lifelong faith, your faith in reason or science or rationalism or religion or extraterrestrials or any pre-commitment to atheism or theism or agnosticism or whatever, are you intellectually polarized?