Struggles with the Why behind Difficult Questions

Familiar words from Frost: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” After exploring together various mental trails, I want to circle back to focus on what fork in the road makes the most vital difference.

I spent the 2017–18 school-year in Oman. My friends and I there didn’t have the luxury of all being fluent in a single language as we do here. My circle of friends and acquaintances quickly included Indians and Pakistanis working there, for I had grown up in India, and still speak semi-functional Hindi. The limitations of my Hindi and my friends’ English did not, however, limit the things we tried to discuss. Gathered around a few cheap plastic tables outside a café on a street in the southern Omani city of Salalah, the follow-on conversations after a shared meal of delicious curry and roti were sometimes trivial, but sometimes probing, deep, and honest. Our combined linguistic shortcomings contributed to moments that ran the gamut from hilarious, to frustrating, to awkward.

It helped that when I did frequently need to resort to some English vocab, in that setting I reflexively did so in a south-asian accent which helped their understanding. If you’ve participated in or just listened to a conversation in which single sentences were seemingly random conglomerations of Spanish and English, Chinese and English, _____ and English, you can imagine our conversations. That circle of some of my meal-time friends provided me with various elements of food for thought, and contributed very preliminary answers to a casual bet I made with some American friends before going there.

In conversations with my local Omani friends, I didn’t have the Arabic ability to meet them half way as I did in Hindi, so I was limited to conversations with fairly English-fluent friends, several of which I made of adult students in my more advanced English classes.

In both of these conversational cases, I sometimes pushed the envelope of what some would consider wise when you’re the visitor in another country and culture. I found though that many will engage in honest conversation when it’s obvious you’re not lecturing and you’re not trying to assert sociocentric pride in your ‘superior’ country or culture, even if some of the questions you’re posing aren’t easy, and may be thought-provoking to the point of troubling.

One of my Omani students directly asked me, “Why do you discuss difficult things with some of us? And why do you give us honest answers when you know that answer will trouble us?” Why indeed would I be nutty enough to explore topics including science, politics, and religion, when those topics can make for rough sailing even when there are no linguistic or cultural hurdles to navigate?

My childhood in India was because my parents were missionaries, and I was educated in Christian schools until graduate school. Despite a loving Christian indoctrination, I came to realize that when beliefs and evidence are in contradiction, personal honesty requires imposing the evidence on one’s beliefs, and not the reverse. This path toward change and openness to new understanding was furthered by thought provoking experiences while teaching in Lebanon in 80–81, and doing public health work in Rwanda from 91 to April of 94 and the beginnings of the genocide.

As a young man in my mid-twenties, I was still confident that my God and my book were the “right” ones. When the fighting in Beirut flared, I asked my Lebanese students about who was fighting whom. It became clear that the notion of the crusades — that we will fight for, die for, and kill for, our “right” Gods — is beyond dusty history books, it is alive and well — and still leads to people bleeding out, from bullets and bombs if not swords and spears. This confidence in our various right gods clearly has a dark side with a long track record.

As I slowly re-evaluated my truths, I tried to tell myself that the years it was taking were because of intellectual patience, and not because of my desire to find ways to end up keeping those truths. I knew that the Scientific Revolution was fueled in part by the realization that it was not only okay to question everything, including what had been viewed as authority and tradition, it was good to question… and then to test our ideas with the best honest (controlled) experiments we could design. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, to then be willing to accept verifiable evidence, even when we don’t like what it points to, and thus be willing to recognize when we are wrong, and then to change our minds.

When exposed to Soren Kierkegaard’s observation that “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true. The other is to refuse to accept what is true,” I simply added the conscious question: What have the centuries shown to be our best tool for slowly but surely figuring out what IS true? It seemed obvious that it has not been the conflicting claims based in different books, proclaiming different gods. And it seemed equally obvious that it has been the application of the approach of science — putting our ideas to objective tests, and then respecting the evidence, and changing, updating, our always-temporary conclusions.

It seemed clear to me that the value of a science-like approach should also apply to and would offer benefits in the social sciences — from history, to economics, to sociology, to anthropology, and… something else. If I went there, I knew I’d be stepping in it.

After I had shed my religious filter for life’s information and decision-making processes, I spent about a decade and a half just keeping that to myself. For nearly all the people I knew well, this wasn’t a welcome conversation.

I had a new filter, what some would call a new bias. The track record of the approach of science, now with a half-millennium of history behind it, told me that this was the best and most honest (though not perfect) way to evaluate and re-evaluate information and to make decisions on where I would stand on issues. But I didn’t say anything to anyone about my internal change.

Many months after 9–11, as I watched our national focus shift away from al Qaeda and trying to capture bin Laden to the run-up to invading Iraq, I could read and hear which portion of America was urging caution and questioning the justifications used, and which portion of America was gung ho about getting on with this invasion. The strong confidence I had witnessed (and I had had) as a young man, that “My God” was the right god, and by extension that “Our Book” and “Our People” were also right, easily led to people rallying to war “For God and Country.” It was then that I realized that anything resembling fundamentalist religion was not only not the solution, it was core to our problems, our tendency to draw sharp lines of Us vs. Them, and then being willing to quickly and enthusiastically turn those lines into action.

I had seen localized levels of chaos in Beirut, and then seen more ugly and much broader chaos in the launch into the genocide in Rwanda in April of 1994, and so began to re-evaluate my silence.

In the sights and sounds and smell of death, I had seen the fabric of civilization significantly fray. I began to engage in conversation, to write and to speak. I couldn’t find a way to feel that I was being a responsible citizen of America or in a global sense, or even being a responsible dad to my kids, if I kept silent about the risks that tend to go with strong faith.

In addition to the risk that those of strong faith tend to be quick to jump on the bandwagon of war in the name of their god, I shared two additional risks. The second is that those of strong faith tend to believe that everything is in their god’s hands, that there is a supernatural solution coming, and therefore that we don’t need to take natural or man-made problems seriously much less urgently. The third is that those of strong faith tend to have formed the habit of believing what they want to believe, and expecting those beliefs to be respected, which they interpret as going unchallenged.

When a person has repeatedly experienced an absence of direct challenge to their particular articles of faith, it does become a fairly absolute expectation, and — here’s where it becomes very practical and problematic — it spreads from expecting religious beliefs to go unchallenged to expecting any number of personal beliefs to be respected, to be treated as equal alternatives, and to not be challenged.

I know a number of people of faith who manage to minimize to essentially zero the first two risks: more quickly jumping on the bandwagon of war in the name of their god, and dismissing problems because “It’s all in their god’s hands and there’s a supernatural solution coming.” But the third risk — that we habituate to believing what we want and expect personal beliefs of nearly every type to go unchallenged — is much more insidious, much harder to successfully self-monitor against.

Although I’ve lived and worked in a number of places, I recently completed a stretch of over two decades living and working in rural Oregon, and I’ve watched America’s recent drift toward increasing polarization. This is certainly multifactorial, but on all sides we must recognize that it is not constructive. To work toward reducing this means increasing real communication, and reducing our temptation toward several things: living in well insulated ideological echo chambers; equating opinions with facts; and expecting our beliefs to go unchallenged.

Some strenuously object to attempting to change the last point. They Want to be able to believe any X, and to have that respected, to go unchallenged. Some have said “So what if somebody believes in a flat earth, or young earth, or old earth, or intelligent design, or evolution? What difference does it make?”

That is an important, question. I worked on offering an answer while in Oman, and on my return to America… and I’m still working on it.

Today most countries have some degree of democracy. We citizens are “passengers on the ship.” We get to vote, and thus hire the crew which runs it. We can hire wise crews which consider the best of evidence in making decisions on how to avoid the worst of troubled waters and dangerous shoals, or we can hire crews with firm and immune-to-change opinions because they are immune-to-the-evidence if they don’t happen to already like it. This habituation to expecting our prior beliefs to be respected, to go unchallenged, shows up in very practical, concrete, ways.

Dismissing climate change has strong and direct parallels to dismissing the risks of tobacco (credit here to “Merchants of Doubt” by Naomi Oreskes), and this dismissal must be challenged. Dismissing the current risks to our national and global environment, air, land, and sea, must be challenged. Dismissing the destructive challenges to democracy posed by easy money, corrupting money, in politics, must be challenged. Dismissing the distinction between fact and opinion, between real/verifiable fact and alternative ‘fact’ must be challenged. Dismissing the risks of unnecessary and easily exacerbated cultural conflicts must be challenged. We can and must learn to move past the fairly human obsession with competing with ‘others.’ On a crowded planet with stressed ecosystems, meeting the sheer scale of the challenges of our times is going to require figuring out how to cooperate in meeting and solving our mutual problems.

I feel I should clarify here what I’ve clarified many times, in many places. I am not advocating that everyone should just become straight-up atheists. I am advocating that people of any and every faith should moderate their faiths (recognizing that they could have been born into a culture and faith they now consider to be their worst enemy), and should consciously and actively self-monitor against these three risks so as to prevent the risks becoming realities. We can do better at the honest problem-solving and the cooperation needed to meet the scale of today’s problems.

Both in America and around those plastic tables outside my regular café in Salalah, I asked a few extended questions. The first is, “What is the greatest determinant of most people’s faiths?”

After some conversation, which sometimes meanders, but other times cuts right to the chase, we reach a consensus that it is the coincidence of birth… the family, culture, and century into which a person is born. We’ve illustrated this truth in time with Thor, Zeus, etc., and in culture with India-Pakistan, Iran-Saudi Arabia-Israel, Thailand, Mexico, and more. It isn’t comfortable, but people get it.

The second question involves a more extended illustration.

I’ve asked my discussion partners to imagine a big hotel to which we bring two people of every faith on earth, including the many offshoots of all those faiths. From each faith, one of the two people must be a top priest, rabbi, scholar, mullah — highly educated in his faith’s literature and dogma; the second person need not be a scholar, but should have a reasonable general education and be a very sincere believer.

These hundreds of people of faith, arranged in their pairs, are told that they will be provided with a comprehensive library, internet access, and food and water, and asked to create an initial document listing 50 central, important, beliefs of their faith, while including distinguishing beliefs which make their faith different. “You will all be locked in the hotel until you have met and discussed enough to persuade each other on what “truth” is so that you can write out an agreement on One list of 50 truths which at least 95% of you agree to.”

“When will they come out of the hotel?” I ask.

They always smile and say, “Never.”

I then ask them to imagine a second hotel, to which we bring scientists who have various disagreements on broad or specific ideas held within science today.

These scientists make their lists of 50 things they hold to be true, again including some that are distinguishing (on which they disagree with others). Again, they are provided with food and water, and library and internet, and laboratory equipment and space as needed, and then locked into this continuous science conference of a hotel where they can meet, argue, go back to their labs for weeks, months, or years, and meet some more. They are told that they can come out when their current lists have changed to where at least 95% of them agree on One list.

Again, I’ve asked when they’ll come out. My discussion buddies have each time been insightful enough to note that while they might be stuck there for years, even for decades, that they wouldn’t be stuck there forever. They’ve seemed to know that while science isn’t perfect, and there are strong egos and disagreements, that science produces a forward movement as it develops consensus around ideas which are very well supported by verifiable evidence.

In both America and in Oman, the group response to these two questions and illustrations is neither completely uniform nor always good humored. I’ve seen people sit in stone-faced silence as others participated in lively discussion.

Now, you may remember a casual bet I mentioned at the outset of this conversation. As I contemplated my options on ending a career as a science and then history teacher, I looked around at America’s increasing divides. I’d heard various Americans dismiss Muslims as close-minded and dangerous as a whole group while considering themselves to be enlightened and open-minded. It occurred to me that I could teach English in the Middle East, and live among and work with these Muslims. My casual bet was that I would find close-minded Muslims, But that I would also find open-minded ones, and that it wouldn’t be starkly different than in our good ol’ U.S. of A.

I’ve seen individuals doing open and honest exploration, with puzzled reevaluation-in-process written clearly on their faces in both America and Oman. And I’ve seen that stone-faced silent resentment of any challenge to one’s beliefs, and a clear unwillingness to even contemplate change in both our culture and theirs.

Some would point out that I didn’t pick to go try this informal study surrounded by ISIS, and indeed I didn’t. But I would point out that I’m not comparing this to the Westboro Baptist Church either. Further, and more importantly, fundamentalist evangelical Christianity makes up a Much, Much, greater fraction of America’s society than ISIS does within Islam.

Can we learn that (to quote Sen. DPM) “We’re all entitled to our own opinions, but we’re not entitled to our own facts”? Can we face the fact that some claims about reality (some beliefs) are indeed checkably connected to reality, and some Are Not? This fact is central to what makes opinions Not all equal.

Among those in both cultures whose first reaction is resentful silence, some have hung around and ended up expressing themselves, and after I’ve listened to them, some of them have done a little more listening. I’ve shared that while I realize that I’m stepping on toes and it’s often not welcome, that if the Titanic (yes, they know that movie in Oman too) is headed for an iceberg and many passengers are preoccupied with sipping their tea and enjoying the beautiful sounds of a string quartet, that efforts toward alerting more of the passengers and then hiring a crew which pays deliberate attention to verifiable facts might turn out a lot better than not disturbing the peace until it is too late to make a difference.

In our recently more polarized American culture, some Facebook friends have posted fact-checkably wrong info, and when I challenged the point of their post, they’ve asked me to quietly move on if I don’t like something they post. I’ve responded by encouraging them to challenge me if and when they feel I’m factually wrong, or on the wrong side of history. It has made little difference. It’s as if too many now actually Prefer their self- and technology-made echo-chamber. In order to be left alone in theirs, they offer the bargaining chip of leaving you alone in yours.

This is the something else I referred to stepping in. Politics is ostensibly forbidden territory around the Thanksgiving table, but it has also become off limits if what you’re about to do is break into a person’s or a group’s echo-chamber with other information or perspective. If we’re going to avoid the troubled waters and dangerous shoals our ship — or the whole ship of civilization — could face, we need informed, concerned, involved, and aware fellow-passengers who can and will engage in constructive conversations based in real, verifiable, facts. These conversations can’t be expected to be easy or comfortable, but they can be civilized, and connected to checkable evidence in science and real lessons from history.

Here we are. I know people who genuinely think that other people of faith X or Y are thoroughly evil and must be fought, or are simply badly deluded and must not be accepted or allowed freedom, While they think that their unique beliefs are right and make them part of this God’s special people. They won’t engage in an attempt at public dialogue on how we establish truth, won’t thoughtfully challenge (very different than dismissing) other belief systems because they don’t want their own challenged… but they’ll support a general cultural war and a military one aimed primarily at those ‘other’ people.

Among the many forks in the road of life, at which intersection is it that our choice can make the most vital difference? I submit that it is this: every time we — as individuals or as societies — realize that there is a contradiction between what we believe, what we claim as our truth, and what the best evidence and consensus around it says, we have a choice… we can try to impose our beliefs on the evidence by dismissing, manipulating, selecting from among it, OR, we can impose the evidence on our beliefs, being willing to recognize that we had been wrong, and then updating, changing our minds, and moving constructively forward.

This isn’t necessarily easy, it doesn’t come naturally; so, considering the intensity of some of the arguments this may generate, we have to ask if it matters. What difference does it make? Well, any scientist who won’t impose the evidence on his or her prior beliefs, and change their mind, won’t be able to honestly and effectively solve problems, and will become irrelevant in their field. And, with the scale of our challenges today, if enough concerned citizens won’t step up to this level of honesty, we too won’t effectively solve problems, and civilization itself will become irrelevant.

I am sure that we Can do better, and that we Must do better. I continue to explore, to push frontiers, to ask uncomfortable questions, to see what we’re willing to consider, to learn, and I check for the ways in which we’re willing to change. And I challenge any fellow-citizen, any thinking fellow-human anywhere, if you want to consider yourself to be honest and open-minded, let’s walk our talk; at that fork in the road, let’s take the right road until it becomes the one more traveled. That will make all the difference.