Evolving Thoughts

I feel like I am searching for something. And I hope that the something I am searching for is truth. It is tempting sometimes (even though we would never say it this way) to search for confirmation of ideas we already have rather than search for truth. It is easier and less scary to look for back up to our preconceived notions than it is to consider that we might actually have to alter our ideas a bit. But, when we talk about what we are looking for, I think that most people would say they want to find truth. This is a good goal. It is a good thing to look for what is true, to look for fact. If we aren't looking for that, we are attempting to trick ourselves into believing something that isn't real. But, since we generally don't actually think about what we are REALLY looking for, and rather just start the looking, we may well be telling ourselves it is truth when it might be something quite different.

The specific situation that brought this thought to mind was a biology class I was in the other day. Here in university biology, evolution is an assumed fact. There is no talk of alternatives. The prof started off the class by telling us that although evolution is called a "theory," that word means something different in science than it does in everyday English. He went on to say that the theory of evolution has more evidence to back it up than does the subatomic theory of matter, which everyone accepts as absolute fact. I didn't think this was going to bother me. I have always thought that whatever the science is telling us happened, I can reconcile that with my beliefs. I feel that I don't need to run away from what science is telling me, that I can embrace it, and at the same time embrace my faith. I still think this is true, BUT, I got an uneasy feeling in my stomach about halfway through the lecture. Something occurred to me that I hadn't thought much about before.

Okay, I have way too many thoughts bouncing around my head that are related to this to ever get them organized, so I am just going to start typing them out, and hopefully they will make some amount of sense to the people who bother to read them.

I started feeling a little angry at my prof. I was thinking, "What does he know, anyway?" And, the fact is, he knows a lot of things. He is a very intelligent, learned man who has way more education than I do. That is why he is a prof at the university. That is why students believe the words he says. And I am very confident that he believes he is telling them the truth. Maybe he is. The reality is that one of the best places to go to find out more information about a subject are the people who have spent their lives researching it. Obviously it would be best if we could go look at the hard evidence ourselves, but that is usually not an option. This applies to learning all sorts of things. When we are young, we believe our parents when they say that the letters g-o-o-d spell good. When we are in school, we believe our teachers when they say that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids. Some things I can learn by myself, like the fact that I will burn myself if I put my hand on the stove, but for a lot of things, I just need to take someone's word for it. It is the same way with my teachers. Most of the things they teach me they have learned through the words of someone who knew more than them. And up and up the chain it goes, with each person accepting the words of the person above them. I read an article that talked about how any evidence that may have arisen that doesn't support the theory of evolution is suppressed from the public eye. This can happen because the people who are at the top of the chain of knowledge are the ones who tell everyone below them what to believe. It is a little frightening to think that a lot of the things we "know" are simply just things we have heard someone respectable say at some point. This isn't just about biology and evolution. This is about Christianity and faith as well. How many of the things that I "know" about God are things I have actually studied in the Bible and concluded for myself, and how many of them are things I heard a pastor or prof say at some point and accepted it blindly? But then, what basis to I have to really challenge somebody who has put their life's work into studying the very thing I am questioning? Scary stuff, I think.

Another thing that I started to feel as I sat in biology class and as I read a few articles was that everyone is a little bit off. I don't necessarily mean that they are factually wrong in the things they say (although sometimes that is true too) but more that the whole mindset - the whole reason we are actually looking, and the thing we are looking for - is wrong. I don't feel that this only applies to the scientists looking for answers either. I think this goes for Christians trying to interpret Scripture as well. As I read and listened and thought, it seemed to me that everyone is fighting to get everyone else to believe them, and to adopt the same view of life as they have. Everyone is trying to convince everyone else that they are right. This is natural for us humans of course, but I think that we should be putting our effort into something else. Instead of taking our opinion and trying to convince as many people as possible to think similarly, we should be looking at how we can come more closely in our ideas and beliefs to what is actually truth. Of course, there comes a time when we should be helping others towards a more right view, but I think it is much more common that people are trying to bring others towards their view rather than the truth.

Okay, next thought. I started feeling like we are all missing something really big. Like we think we know what the whole argument is about, but really we are way off base. I feel like not only do people (including Christians) not agree on this subject (and many others), but we don't even understand what the argument is really about in the first place. I feel like we have all grown up with a certain idea of what the world is, who God is, and how the physical and spiritual worlds are connected, and although we may realize that our ideas can't be perfectly right, we can't take ourselves outside of them and look at what is really going on here. Last year in sociology, we talked about different cultures, and how some cultures do things that another culture would see as wrong, but it is wrong because of cultural norms, not because of actual virtue. Although someone may realize that they have the tendency to evaluate things from their cultural bias and try to remove themselves from it, that cannot fully be done. We may want to look at a situation objectively - outside of the biases of our culture - but the fact is we are in our culture, and we can never completely remove ourselves from it. We are so enculturated that even the way we think is affected. We can never judge a situation completely objectively - our culture and resulting biases inevitably come through. I feel like a similar thing goes on when we think about evolution, faith, and God in general. We try to look at it all for what it is. We want to find out what really happened, and what is really happening. But the problem is that we are stuck in a mindset. Each one of us has our own biases that play into the way we think about these things. On a larger scale, though, I feel like the whole world collectively has a sort of "global enculturation": that people in general have a way of thinking about things, and we are a little off. The thing is that even if we realize we are thinking about things in the wrong way, we can't escape it. Bias isn't the right term for this, I don't think. It is more of a worldwide understanding of how we talk and think about the basics in life. I feel like the scientists who are researching evolution are stuck in this skewed mindset, and I feel like the theologians discussing spiritual matters are victims to it as well. We are all stuck.

So my thoughts have lead me in what has at times been a depressing journey of thought. Where are we ever going to find truth? Not what our friends, teachers and pastors say is truth, but what really IS truth? We are subjected so easily (and so necessarily) to our biases, to the opinions of those who are above us, and to our desire and belief that we are in the right, is there any hope that we can ever really find truth? Well, I suppose not really. Not in this life, anyways. We will never have things totally figured out. We will always be biased, we will never quite see the grand scheme of things the way they actually are. We are stuck in a mindset that is too small to see the big picture. BUT, this doesn't mean that we just sit here and accept that. Knowing that we can never fully understand the truth, we still push forward with the wisdom given us, and chase after truth. We realize we won't ever quite get there. We certainly aren't there yet, but progress is still to be made. It is similar to our feeble Christian attempts to be godly. We know that we will slip up, and we can't be perfect in our bodies as they now are. But none of that is to say we should sit in our sin and accept it. We need to push on and strive for perfection, even though we know it isn't quite within our grasp. Truth may be eluding us, but may we never give up on pursuing it.