Obsequious - compliant to excess

It's 5 a.m. as I write this, and I've not had any sleep so far.  Our clocks sprang forward last night and collided with a 13 hour sleep make-up my body decided to have and created some insomnions and maybe a hadron or two.  So I'm awake when the opposite is exactly what I need to do. 

A quick quote that relates to some of my recent thoughts, from Carl Sagan: "Well, it seems to me that there is only one conceivable approach to these matters.  If we have such an emotional stake in the answers, if we want badly to believe, and if it is important to know the truth, then nothing other than a committed, skeptical scrutiny is required."  The skeptical mind immediately sees the wisdom in this.  A friend pointed out to me that the key phrase missing in a theistic mindset was the "if it is important to know the truth"; so I'd like to try to evaluate this claim a little more in depth.

"These matters" I think should be applied to anything - I don't recall exactly what Sagan was talking about, but "these matters" should be any claim, really.  There is only one honest way to approach issues in which it matters at all if the matters at stake are true or not.

"If we have such an emotional stake in the answers" - while I believe the goal should ultimately be to remove emotions from an evaluation, as humans, it is mostly impossible.  Something as simple as a rock-paper-scissors match has an emotional stake in the outcome.  So questions in which the answer will affect our lives in any way are bound to our emotions inextricably.  And even questions which don't necessarily affect our lives as well.  Anything that would require us to change our mind I believe is tied up with the emotions in some way. 

"If we want badly to believe" - seeking out confirmation to what we already think.  The emotions involved with changing your mind are all here.  If you want badly to believe something, it's usually because of something you already have in your head.  The desire for proof of what you think seems to be a big motivator. 

"If it is important to know the truth" - this is where my friend seems to have the largest problem.  I can't think of a whole lot of people that would say the truth isn't important.  Most people have no problem with little white lies, and deceptions of that sort, but will agree that for the big things, the truth is important.  The whole ten commandment thing of no false testimony and Jesus saying multiple times "I tell you the truth..."  The Bible seems to point towards truth being important.  And since Christians are my most common "target" (only due to the sense of familiarity), I'll stick with that.

So - those are all the "if"s - it seems the only one that is up in the air in applying it universally is the "wanting badly to believe," which might have more merit than I gave it, but moving on...the "if"s apply for the most part to any human being with a brain.  So I must then look at the "then."  If it follows, we have something to work with.

"Nothing other than a committed, skeptical scrutiny is required."  The only thing that you can give to something that matters so much is every single thinking ability you have available.  Critical thought and skepticism are absolutely required.  This "then" follows only because it is necessary to search for every nook and cranny for places where you might be wrong.  I've tried to establish that every evaluation involves a certain emotional stake; the higher that emotional stake is, the more thought that needs to be applied.  It is required.  Requisite.  Necessary.  Nothing else will do.  You have to commit to the scrutiny of the claim and you have to commit to the skepticism.  This is only so because you have to make sure you are not giving your emotions more credit than they deserve.

So, anyway - that helped me understand a bit more on how universal such a statement might be.  So my question now is, would a Mormon/Muslim/Scientologist/etc. agree with it?  The only thing that I can think of right now is the common claim similar to "He works in mysterious ways."  But still, that seems to only be a rationalization of the potential results of such evaluation, and nothing to do with the method itself.  I'd be very interested to see if people disagree with the statement and if so, why? 

I can't think of any reasons, but it is now 6 a.m.  I might think of some later, but if you have any, please comment.  It might help me use this line of reasoning with people, and it makes me happy to see comments - even if you tell me this line of reasoning is balls.

Comments

[Mark Horn]

The difficult, thing, I think, is not in accepting the validity of that statement, but in learning how to apply 'skeptical scrutiny' in the first place. I've said this before, but I think it's important to 1) not become to arrogant about the fact that we, as skeptics, are immune to crazy ideas; we're not, and 2) work as hard as we can, daily, to learn to strengthen our ability to think critically. I think, as you alluded to, critical thought is not only difficult, but unnatural for us. It takes work, constantly, because it is something that our very nature rebels against. For instance, confirmation bias: we all have it, and the trick is to be aware of it and attempt to actively minimize its influence on our thought. I love Sagan, I think I'll post my thoughts on that book in my next blog post. Nice one, Matt!