Willful Ignorance, Willful Stupidity

 

‘I do sometimes accuse people of ignorance, but that is not intended to be an insult. I'm ignorant of lots of things. Ignorance is something that can be remedied by education.’

Dr. Richard Dawkins

 

It’s become a go-to maxim for atheists; ‘Everyone is born an atheist.’

While that is debatable (and is certainly debated), it is true as true can be that we – all of us - are born ignorant.

 

Ignorant of language.

Ignorant of familial relations.

Ignorant of math.

Ignorant of science.

Ignorant of social convention.

Ignorant of geography.

Ignorant of politics.

Ignorant of god.

 

When we are born, we know nothing but our own basic bodily cravings; hunger, thirst and discomfort. We all start with the same body of knowledge; which amounts to zilch. However, it takes a rather woeful commitment to maintaining ignorance that can be termed ‘willful ignorance’. For one to dedicate oneself to the maintenance of ignorance requires a commitment, an unwillingness to learn. That adamantine resistance to learning will be called ‘willful stupidity’.

 

There is a dreadful meme circulating that asserts comically that ‘You can’t fix stupid!’ As a former classroom teacher, I always recoil at that assertion. Teaching is the remedy for ‘stupid’; patient, directed, personal instruction is the means by which ‘stupid’ is repaired; unless the student is willful in their stupidity. One glib rejoinder to my refutation of the meme is that it is ignorance that can be remedied while stupidity is unassailable and cannot be overcome. The error in this argument concerns the common misunderstanding of the two terms; ignorance and stupidity. 

 

The two terms are not synonymous but they are most assuredly related. I assert that while stupidity is an obstacle to learning it is not a permanent impediment, a permanent obstruction to gaining knowledge. The term ‘a slow learner’ belies the intention of the specious meme; a ‘slow-learner’ is learning, obviously, but at a pace slower than is experienced by brighter, more adept students. Hence, ignorance is rectified; information is imparted and internalized by the slow-learner.

 

Willful stupidity results in willful ignorance. The two in tandem are an adamant obstacle which cannot be by-passed by ordinary means. It is tantamount to one refusing to listen by plugging their ears and chanting ‘nah-nah-nah’ at full voice. Such is the scenario when a ‘Believer’ confronts information that would undermine their belief.

 

The willfully stupid, after hearing the most adroit and erudite presentation of basic evolution, will insist that ‘Evolution is just a theory’ and plow ahead with preposterous assertions and specious talking points of ‘Intelligent Design’ based on their own willful ignorance. One rejoinder popular with the willfully ignorant re: evolution is: “If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” This is an example of stupidity – willful stupidity. Voicing such a preposterously erroneous query reveals massive ignorance of the subject. Such a vapid thought proses obstructs the Believer from understanding the subject matter. When the biologist (or atheist) attempts to assail the presented obstacle of ignorance, the Believer will more firmly plug their ears and resume the chant of ‘Nah-nah-nah’. 

 

A true ‘Dunning-Kruger’ moment has been reached; a state of willful stupidity is established which leads to willful ignorance.

 

As a former teacher with more than twenty-five years of classroom experience, I can confidently say that while each individual may have their own propensity for learning, there are some who willfully refuse to learn. One may have an intellectual hurdle to leap because of genetics, injury or social background but each person, when properly presented with information suitable to their own ability and propensity, will learn. Whether the subject is math or science or language or social convention, one learns unless one refuses to learn – is actively, purposefully opposed to learning – has chosen to be willfully stupid in order to maintain willful ignorance. 

 

To be clear, those who are determined to remain ignorant are choosing to be stupid. That is not to say that they are intellectually deficient or adversely challenged through no fault of their own. Those who persist in their ignorance are stupid; willfully stupid and willfully ignorant.

 

Willful ignorance stems from a desire or a necessity to be stupid. The desire to remain ignorant might be inculcated by cultural back-ground or societal influences. Perhaps the parent or guardian is of a diminished mental capacity and/or willfully ignorant. Perhaps the necessity arises from an effort to protect that ignorance from the information that would undermine or dispel a cherished ignorance.

 

Much of the remainder of this book (blog) will present thoughts, hypotheses and postulations on the errancy of the Bible, the historicity of Jesus, the clay-footed foundation of the Christian Faith and an adherence to the notion of the existence of a ‘Higher Power’. In sum, much of the remainder of this book is citing willful ignorance fueled by willful stupidity.

The Lexicon of Believers

First off, science is NOT a belief system. One doesn't nor needn't accept the Theory of Gravity or the Germ Theory of Disease on Faith.

“Without a lexicon of all knowledge, you have no basis to make any kind of truth assertions.”

“Well, see… the thing is, you don’t have the complete lexicon of all knowledge, so actually, you can’t make an opinion or an assertion on anything.”

“Faith is easy to prove. You exercise it every day. Have you ever flown on an airplane?” 

“No, what I’m sitting here saying is until you have a complete lexicon of all knowledge you can’t assert that anything is true, because…”

From the mouths of ‘Believers’, we learn that the lexicon – the vocabulary, the word choice – is vitally important. Just as one must be aware of the technical connotation for ‘believe’ and ‘faith’, when talking with theists, it’s essential to avoid language which might infer agency. For example, saying that the sun and moon ‘obey the natural laws’ is problematic because the ‘Believer’ will think that ‘to obey’ infers a master; a god, and ‘natural laws’ then infers a law-giver; again, god. It would be better to say that the movement of the sun and the moon are determined by the natural properties which brought them into existence.

In that same vein, the word ‘create’ implies ‘Creator’ to the ‘Believer’. Any talk of the ‘creation of the universe’ induces the ‘Believer’ to assert that a Creator must be involved proposing with certainty such nonsequitous examples as; 'a painting has a painter; a watch has a watch-maker, a building has a builder'. 

Speaking of Life, the Believer nearly, invariably conflates cosmology with biology. In his mind, life on earth springs from the same source as the cosmos and in a similar way. The notion of ‘abiogenesis’ immediately reverts (for the Believer) to the book of Genesis when the kit and caboodle came about over the course of a short week after a magic incantation was spoken by the Creator-deity. 

To the Believer, life, the cosmos and the order thereof is all done with divine intention. This substantiates the Creator/Creation argument addressed above. This false concept lies at the root of the ‘Believer’s’ difficulty in understanding evolution. They intuit that there was a ‘prime mover’ who at the least, set evolution into motion. BTW, cosmological arguments will always revert to ‘first cause’. Fore-warned is fore-armed.

Another dog-legged bolt in the quiver of ‘Believers’ is the ‘Fine Tuning’ argument whereby they assert that ‘god’ made the universe for us specifically. If the reader is unfamiliar with this argument from the ‘Intelligent Design’, feel free to google it and take two aspirins before reading on.

The ‘Fine Tuning Argument’ is handled by Douglas Adam’s puddle analogy from ‘A Salmon of Doubt’. It addresses the Fine-Tuning’ notion that the universe was made to accommodate us homo sapiens. (Nota bene: Most often, ‘Believers’ will fail to grasp that it undermines their specious argument.)

‘This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in; an interesting hole I find myself in. In fact, it fits me staggeringly well. It must have been made to have me in it.”  This is a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky, as the air heats up and gradually the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything is going to be alright because this world was meant to have him in it. It was built to have him in it. So, the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this is something we need to be on the watch-out for.’

Geraint Lewis and Luke Barnes (two published apologists) offers this rationalization on why this analogy should fail to sway or influence ‘Believers’.

‘Consider more closely the puddle’s reasoning. Let’s name our puddle, Doug. He has noticed a precise match between two things: 1) his shape and 2) the shape of the hole in which he lives. Doug is amazed! What Doug doesn’t know is that, given A) the fluidity of water, B) the solidity of the hole, and C) the constant downward force of gravity, he will always take the same shape as his hole. If the hole had been different, his shape would adjust to match it.’

Their attempt to debunk Adams’ analogy fails. It fails because the two who attempted to debunk the analogy fail to establish that another universe with different properties of fluid dynamics is possible or likely or would in any way effect the puddle/hole dynamic other than represented in the analogy. 

Point of fact, having another universe isn’t even necessary to undermine the analogy; a different puddle/hole dynamic would be observed on any other planetary body of the solar system as it – the puddle/hole dynamic - is dependent on the gravity, density of the planetary body, the possibility of liquid of any kind, atmospheric pressure and whether or not there is ‘air’ which would warm throughout a ‘day’!

Adams made a wonderful point with his earthly puddle. Does it disprove ‘fine tuning’? NO. Analogies are never required or expected to do the heavy lifting of being the crux of an argument. (It’s a bit like calling the game because the mascot’s costume was torn.)

Another side note: Apologist are forever inventing brand-new ways of being ironic. How do apologist support ‘Fine Tuning’ and Intelligent Design and at the same time hold as True the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Flood, the Tower of Babel, Exile in Babylonia, the Exile (and enslavement) in Egypt, the 40 years in the desert, Sodom & Gomorrah and the entire Jesus story? Massive cognitive dissonance, that’s how. Notice that all of these ‘finely tuned’ and ‘intelligently designed’ events were either total fuck ups or ragged responses to despicable circumstances. 

To wit: World kind of gone sour? 
Flood the place and kill everything.

Good plan! Clean, efficient, focused, ethical. LOL!

Once again, the ‘Believers’ come with a quiver full of ‘intention’. Where there is intention – in their addled pate - there is a prime mover with intention; a ‘divine one’. With that ‘divine intention’ comes the old saw about ‘working in mysterious ways’, the ineffable plan, infinite inerrancy, uber-ethicality and doing shit way above our pay-grade and beyond our comprehension. 

However, there is no evident intention to the formation of the universe or for life to form on this small iron-cored rock in an inconsequential star system in a non-descript spiral galaxy. No hand or finger of ‘god’; no ‘breath of life’ stirring a man of mud to be father of humankind. No talking snake, No magic fruit trees in a magic garden. Not really much of anything substantive at all in the ‘Wholly Bobble’ as far as verisimilitude goes. Ne’er mind evidence of Moses or Aaron or Abraham or Adam or god.  

The Hubble and the Webb space telescopes have shown that there are trillions – TRILLIONS - of galaxies each having billions of stars and further trillions of planets. It must be remarked that these two astounding kits of technology (Hubble and Webb) do not reveal every single galaxy, star or planet to us on earth. That is; the trillions upon trillions of now visible stars and star systems are not the sum total in the universe in which we find ourselves (much like Adam’s sentient puddle)

Time for a bit of science…

The earth formed from debris about 4.5 BILLION years ago (4, 500,000,000); the human species (homo sapiens) didn’t appear until about 150,000 years ago (give or take). That means for almost the entirety of the earth’s existence, humans were absent and more than likely unable to exist on the planet –even after it had formed in a solid.  If this place was made for us, it had almost 4.5 Billion years of renovation to undergo before it was habitable by our species.

Compared to this single series of facts alone, the Wholly Bobble cannot provide even circumstantial evidence of a ‘god’. The circumstances of our existence do not include a ‘designer/creator’. That entity is NOT part of the circumstances and thus any argument that introduces such an entity is dealing with circumstances that do not evidently exist. (As if investigators would provide circumstantial evidence inculpating the butler but never establishing that the butler was there or even existed. Tantamount to blaming a baby for a murder (or a symphony!) that occurred before the baby’s birth. Ludicrous!)

Only a ‘Believer’ would stand by their ‘Faith’ and assert the immeasurable universe was ‘created’ just for us. 

For more on the ludicrous lexicon of ‘Believers’, be on the look out for the forthcoming ‘Word Tics’ and ‘The Atheist Experience Quotes’.

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The Matrix & the Crocoduck

 

Instinctively circling to escape the box in which they find themselves, a ‘Believer’ might move on successively to the Origins of the Universe, infinite regression, a Cosmological argument of some dubious stripe, stridently citing the Big Bang Theory without any more understanding then they brought to their pathetic gibbering about Darwin or the geologic column or carbon dating.

For example, the ‘Believers’ apparent inability to understand the most rudimentary, foundational precepts of evolution or the Big Bang or abiogenesis is proudly paraded on full display. This is sign that the ‘Believer’ has lapsed from conversational mode to the echoing of a suppositional script of talking points. 

(I contend that when that word ‘abiogenesis’ is uttered, the Believer only hears ‘genesis’ which triggers thoughts about the Biblical account.)

On evolution, one often hears an erroneous postulation that if ‘Darwin is true then two chimps could have a human baby, or that a new hybrid species should appears (e.g. a croco-duck); or the faux coup degras: ‘If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?’

On the Big Bang, (which I contend ‘Believers’ love to cite because it’s so easy to remember; Big! Bang!) ‘Believers’ launch into either ‘infinite regression’ or ‘something from nothing’ arguments. These arguments are typically based on an erroneous and weak grasp of the subject matter or slide to arguments which are a ‘special pleading’. The ‘special pleading’ argument can be summed up with one monosyllabic word; ‘god’. 

So, I propose that fear and ignorance are the two-pronged basis for most ‘Believers’; fear of being wrong, fear of ostracisation from the group and fear of the abyss of the unknown coupled with ignorance (often willful ignorance) of basic science, logical argument and critical thinking.

The counter to that contention is that there are many quite educated, erudite and intelligent ‘Believers’ and apologists for god and religion. I willfully concede that point but use it to point out that the ignorance spoken of beforehand was alternately both willful and unwillful. Believers who are otherwise intelligent, erudite and educated are willfully ignorant of their own logical fallacies when they attempt to pretzel-logic their effort to reconcile science with their concept of god as father-creator. 

‘Infinite regression’ and ‘something from nothing’ along with ‘special pleading’ are the principle bolts in their quiver. Obtuse points of foggy philosophy are cited to muddy the waters and derail arguments; they are the shiny objects in the distance which can’t be focused on as the field of vision oscillates and changes continuously.

One such foggy philosophy is ‘solipsism’. Solipsism is often called ‘the brain in a vat’ concept. It is the philosophical concept that only one's own mind is certain to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. It’s plopped down by the ‘Believer’ when the going gets rough; ‘How can we know anything?’ is pleaded as a distraction. Special pleading often arrives in the argument of pure solipsism.

(Think ‘The Matrix’)

This concept links aptly to the ‘Believers’ argument that the ‘mind of god’ is unknowable by us mere humans. (Notice the introduction of weasel-words presupposing that god exists and has a consciousness. It also infers a corporeal form and a brain.) Augustine or some other Church Father is quoted to support this contention; again, the Believer feels assured that the coup degras has been delivered with a fortune cookie deepitie: “We can know what God is not, but we cannot know what He is.” - Saint Augustine.

A bit wordy for a satin pillow…

When pressed up against the walls of the corner ‘Believers’ have backed themselves into, it seems they will invariably – and rather sheepishly – claim that they had a ‘Revelation from god’ or that the Holy Spirit entered them and guides them on the path of righteousness. Sometimes, the ‘Believer’ will relate a dream they had which they take as the direct contact from god. Quite typically, the revelation/dream/Holy Spirit epiphany will be extremely mundane and unremarkable to any but the most sympathetic fellow ‘Believer’.

Nice story, dude!

Perhaps the primary argument produced as ‘proof’ or evidence of a ‘higher power, a ‘creator’ or an almighty ‘god’ is the fact that so many adherents to the notion of the existence of ‘god’ is the proliferous religious experiences which are purported to be direct revelation from ‘god’ or the ‘Holy Spirit’. Paul/Saul’s epiphany on the road to Damascus is a prime example. The children at Fatima or Bernadette of Lourdes are cited by Catholics as revelations which prove ‘god’, the Trinity or the continued existence and power of the Blessed Virgin. More mundane revelation comes in the form of adherents ‘speaking in tongues’ or being ‘possessed by the Holy Spirit’ or what is claimed as immunity to poisonous snake bite as evidence of godly protection. 

As these are all personal, intimate experiences, there can be little to offer to disprove the claims that the experiences happened. There can be little to disprove that the hallucinations of schizophrenics or psychedelic adventurers happened either, but few take such hallucinations as being ‘divine’ or revelatory of deeper truth. 

To be clear, none of these internal experiences should be considered as evidence, no matter how epiphanous or revelatory the claim may be. The verisimilitude of peyote eaters or magic mushroom eaters as proof of another dimension would then by necessity be lumped with the stories of being ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’. This cannot be done without substantial bolstering evidence that a ‘spiritual realm’ exists. 

That would be appealing to a mystery to solve a mystery. That is special pleading writ large and should be discounted by a rational skeptical observer.

I contend that if the Believer had had psychedelic experiences enough that such departures from reality were common-place, then the ‘revelation’ would have been determined to be nothing more than a passing brain state devoid of supernatural intent or content. This would put ‘mystics’ out of business, of course.