On Full Disclosure & Knee Jerk ReactionsEnough with the whining about lack of full disclosure in (a)theist discussion. There are very logical reasons for not painting oneself into some silly little mental category that is both culturally fabricated and deduced via subjective experience. I believe it is ultimately foolish and non-productive for a group of people to assign themselves emotionally-charged and socially-conflated labels while attempting to have anything even remotely close to a rational discussion. FAR too often it's more of the same in the blogosphere: Consider your average internet (a)theist discussion: Believer A shows up on atheist website B and leaves some comment C that falls anywhere between Cro-magnon man and Einstein on the intelligence scale. Atheist commenters D – Z then proceed to accost believer A anywhere from Bill Cosby to Christopher Hitchens on the respect scale, each according to their own ideas of what A believes.
The Instinctive Off-SwitchToday I overheard somebody make a statement that really caught my attention and got me thinking. The topic of discussion was Oscar Wilde's book De Profundis, in which Wilde talks about his views on many things, including art, Christ, and art and Christ, which was particularly interesting but a different story altogether. In response, a person whom we'll call J, said, "I was brought up Catholic so I have developed this instinctive off-switch that flips as soon as I feel God is unnecessarily being drilled into my head."
I didn’t get the impression that Wilde was unnecessarily drilling God in anyone’s head. Rather, he seemed to be speculating on alternative interpretations of God. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Wilde hints in the book that he gives little credence to the God of Catholics and Christians. It seemed to me that the instinctive off-switch flipped in error, at the mere recognition of language that provided cerebral cues as to the subject matter. These cues may or may not have been interpreted correctly, and I couldn't help but wonder how often logic gets obscured by this psychological tendency.
It cuts both ways. Many believers have an instinctive off-switch which flips as soon as anybody presents an objection to their beliefs. Evolution is perhaps the penultimate example. At the end of the day, whether in the head of an atheist, a believer, you, me or the guy at the 7-11 down the street, instinctive off-switches always hinder critical thinking to some degree. We would do well to identify and uproot them.
How about you? Do you have any instinctive off-switches?