First off, there are all sorts of assupmtions to go with this post. I'm approaching this defensively and maintaining that people on the opposite sides of my discussions are making claims they believe, not making the claims mean-spiritedly, and that they actually put some value on discussing questions of life, the universe, and everything. I'm approaching any claim that someone would make about me and the ideas that I put forth as something to be taken seriously and something that is up for discussion.
Now - as to the topic I want to discuss - the claim of arrogance. Dictionary.com defines arrogance as an offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride. I feel it's necessary to define key terms in a discussion, even ones that are supposedly apparent to all parties involved, such as this one. And if that's not an agreeable definition, it's up for discussion, but I'm satisfied with it. Qualifying arrogance as an offensive display rather than just a normal display of superiority I think is an important distinction. If I were to play baseball, my most hated sport, with Cal Ripken, Jr., him simply being there playing with me would be a display of his superiority. But by no means would it be arrogance, I don't know that it would be possible for him to be arrogant in this situation - I suck and he's hall of fame material; if I found such a display of superiority offensive, then I have to believe the problem lies in my thinking and not his skill. Anyway - I think the adjectives used in this definition are important and help separate the negative qualities of arrogance with the fact that we're all different and everyone is better at something than someone else on the planet.
Anyways, out of definitions and into relationships. When another person makes the claim that a scientist or an atheist is arrogant, I immediately ask how. How is it that this large chunk of people all display arrogance that is inherent with the way they think by associating with either label? By defining arrogance earlier, I think a simple answer to this question would be to say that the people making this claim feel offended by the way a scientist thinks. Thus, they are offended and actually feel that somehow it is superior to whatever they have. Right? This is tough for me to try to wrap my mind around, because I've never understood arrogance in the offensive sense. A lot of people say my grandfather is arrogant - he's an intelligent man with a large vocabulary and he's done a lot in his life - he knows quite a bit. I've heard other members of my family say that he was arrogant - and my argument was something along the lines of "Why is it arrogant that he knows a bunch of stuff that you don't? That's just the way it is." This happened 3 years ago or so, and it surprised me to hear the claim - knowing and talking with my grandfather for 22 years (well, 20-ish, or whatever) never led me to believe he was arrogant. Sure I could have been naive and they've also known him a lot longer, but my first assumption is that there is something wrong with the people getting offended by what he is, rather than any true display of arrogance. Like I said, I'm still trying to get my mind around this claim of arrogance about a difference in thinking.
I try to give credit to the people I talk with - I'll attempt to take any claim they make seriously, even if I already believe it to be false. This is part of the "I know I might be wrong" mentality. So, when the claim was made to me that "to scientists, God makes them feel littler than they are" and "curing a disease makes them god," I'll take the claim as seriously as I can take it. One of my first questions (all of these "gods" are in reference to Bible-God) is "If God gave these people the ability to think and reason the way they do, why is it wrong of them to use it?" Or as I put it in a discussion with another person "Logic, reason, and critical thinking are some of the best tools we have to observe and draw conclusions about reality. If God gave us these things, why is it wrong to apply them?" Because my line of thinking leads straight into "Why would God condemn all of these people that he gave these great intellectual gifts to?" You could take stories from the new testament to apply to the situation - the parable of the talents (to whom much has been given, much is expected) and the rich man jesus told "it's harder for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich man into heaven." So there are some answers, but I find them unsatisfactory. Scientists are doing their best to help alleviate human death and suffering. How can such a noble pursuit using their "God-given" tools lead them to a fate of eternal suffering? Why is it that curing a disease makes them God, rather than the more humble approach of realizing that you might have just saved hundreds of thousands of human lives - that is amazing and humbling. I can't imagine having such an ecstatic feeling and being so humbled that I happened to be the one to stumble across a cure for cancer or the polio vaccine or any of the other numerous things that have extended our life expectancy two and three-fold. In the same way that a Christian is "humbled" when they save a soul (which they claim was all God's work through them), I believe that a scientist is humbled more so by doing the same thing to the life that they have and we can all see.
That was a rather large tangent - but I'm just trying to show the sort of thinking I'm willing to take to discuss things with opposing viewpoints - just about every claim made was outrageous and required a million assumptions, but I'm willing to go with it and lead out their claim to it's logical conclusion and try to show them how with this one thing, their thinking might be wrong. And mine might be too. But that's why we discuss it. How is any of this arrogant? If you find any of my claims offensive or any of my attitudes offensive, please tell me, and tell me why, and I can try to fix in the name of politeness or because I'm wrong or try to tell you that you might be wrong to be offended, and here's why. But to be offended simply at ideas is a horrible starting point. If you have bad premises, you're likely to draw poor conclusions.
In conclusion, I find the claim of arrogance to be anathema - on both sides of an argument or debate, any claim of arrogance is a curse. It is a damning curse to the one making the claim, for they've shown that they find an idea so offensive to be off limits for discussion, and thus needing no reasonable qualification, because the idea is arrogant, and that's the final word. And it's a curse to the one receiving the claim of arrogance; by receiving a claim of arrogance, even ridiculous ones, many reasonable ideas are immediately discarded by the rest of society.
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