Questions, questions

Is an open mind ever too open?

Regular readers of this space will have observed a habit of turning over rocks to see what’s underneath—of questioning values and practices to discover what’s behind them. Religion, patriotism, love, altruism, democracy, capitalism, education and much else have been probed and dissected.

It’s only fair, then, to question the questioning itself. Can the probing go too far? An open mind is often useful, but is it always so? Socrates said that the unexamined life wasn’t worth living. But he wound up dead for saying so. Should he have stopped examining at some point? Should we?

The alternative to questioning is believing. Some might object to this characterization. They might say that the alternative to questioning is knowing. This is true, up to a point. I know that two plus two is four. I know that if I step off a cliff I’ll fall.

But the interesting matters of life don’t allow such certainty. Why am I here? Where will I go after I die? What sort of life should I lead? On topics like these, the only way to silence the questions is to take a position: to embrace a belief.

Belief has great merits. It affords comfort. It gives guidance. It attaches the believer to a community of believers. It makes sense out of life.

With all these good things in its favor, one shouldn’t wonder that belief has been so common among humans. It’s hardly a stretch to say humans are the believing species. The most prevalent kind of belief is religious belief, and there doesn’t seem to have been a human society without religion.

Many believers would say this is because their beliefs reflect the objective state of the universe, which their God created and endowed with the attributes we observe. Of course we see God in the universe: He created it.

But religious beliefs have varied over time and still do. The constant in the equation appears to be not God but us. Humans evolved to ask questions. Is this plant good to eat? When will the winter end? Useful answers were remembered and became part of a culture’s lore.

Some questions lent themselves to testable answers. Overripe fruit gives me a pleasant buzz. How about rotten fish? Not so pleasant.

Other questions were less testable. What happens to us after we die?

Yet answers to these questions could still be useful. Good people go to heaven after they die, and bad people go to hell: where this was accepted, it promoted good behavior.

Just because beliefs are useful doesn’t mean they’re objectively wrong. But neither does it mean they’re objectively right.

In part this is because usefulness can be subjective. It’s useful to monarchs for monarchies to be thought divinely ordained. It isn’t so useful to their subjects.

How about beliefs that are less patently self-serving? Is it harmful for the inhabitants of a country to think theirs is the greatest country ever?

Probably not, unless those inhabitants employ their belief to rationalize aggrandizement against other countries. Unfortunately, such rationalization has been common in history.

Which underscores a frequent accompaniment of belief: a desire to persuade or compel others to believe the same thing. Some of this is a simple desire for affirmation. If other people believe what I believe, it gives me greater confidence I’m right.

Persuasion in the matter of belief isn’t a problem. Compulsion is. And the frequency of compulsion is almost argument enough against the whole idea of belief as a basis for human organization and behavior. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the Western liberalism of the era since the Enlightenment has had the object of freeing minds from prescribed belief.

Another argument against belief is that it simply doesn’t work for some people. They refuse to surrender reason to faith, or they try and their reason itself refuses surrender. No more than the believers do they know the answers to the abiding questions of existence. But they’re more comfortable not knowing than professing something they don’t know.

They don’t deliberately forgo the reassurance belief provides to believers. Rather they realize that belief provides them no such reassurance.

Are they better off than the believers? They might say so. But the believers would claim the advantage for themselves.

This is about as good an outcome as one could hope for. Each side gets what it wants.