I was thinking about this over the last couple of days, but maybe you can relate to this. Have you ever watched two theists debate? It doesn’t matter what kind of theist they are, they can share the same faith or they can be completely different, but it’s really not very impressive if you approach it from the outside.

Why is that? Here’s my explanation and why I think playing those games is ultimately pointless.

I saw a short video of two Christians debating some theological point a while back and it was all I could do to keep from turning it off. One was a Baptist and the other, I think an Anglican or something similar, maybe Catholic, I honestly don’t recall, but both of them were trying desperately to trot the Bible out in defense of their particular theological positions and I, as someone who doesn’t give a crap what the Bible said, just got bored.

Had I been there, I would have asked both sides to demonstrate the validity of the Bible first before it could be used to support anything, but of course, that would never happen. Neither side really cared if the Bible was worthwhile, it was just taken entirely on faith and each of their chosen readings, that was automatically true too, just because that’s what they believed.

Of course, that doesn’t actually make anything true. I care about truth and how you actually defend your views. If you have to rely on faith, you’ve lost before you begin. Faith is just wishful thinking and a lack of coherent evidence.

This works the same way, even if the religions are not the same. Take a hypothetical Christian debating a Hindu. The Christian is going to treat the Bible as authoritative and the Hindu is going to use one of the books their religion deems holy and the problem just plays out the same way. Neither of them can demonstrate their books, nor does either care. The debate goes nowhere because neither are actually concerned with the truth, only with their own faith-based interpretation thereof.

It occurs  to me that this happens, even beyond religious lines. I’ve had my fair share of philosophical discussions of late and more often than not, the philosopher will pretend that because a guy said a thing and they like that thing, it must make that thing true.

No, that’s not how reality works. A thing is true, or possibly true, if and only if you can show that it is. I don’t care what a guy says. I care if that idea can be demonstrably defended in the real world. Those things that can’t be, no matter how much either side likes the idea, truth is no longer part of the equation. Your preferences don’t make truth. They make opinion and really, opinion isn’t all that impressive either.

It’s like debating the speed of light in a vacuum. I don’t care what you think it is. I don’t care what you want it to be. The only thing that matters is how  you determine what it actually is and that takes more than your opinion. You need to be able to present a testable methodology that produces concrete results. Your feelings don’t enter into the accuracy at all. It either is or it isn’t. Your emotional state has zero impact on the truth.

Unfortunately, I’m finding more and more people these days who are more interested in emotional comfort than objective fact. They want to be comforted by “what if” than concerned with “what is”. I want to know what the speed of light actually is, whether that’s 299,792,458 meters per second or 10 feet an hour, reality is the defining factor for truth and my feelings don’t remotely enter into it. I don’t care what makes you happy. I care what’s factually correct. I don’t care why you feel a particular way, I care how you rationally and demonstrably came to your conclusion and that’s just not happening a lot lately.

So my question is why not? What’s going on in the minds of people who, at least supposedly, are rational? Why has this become more about the feels than the reals? Worse, perhaps, why are so many people in capable of seeing where they’re going wrong? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to explain it but they seem incapable of understanding. They are so wedded to their emotions and to their beliefs that they can’t see anything beyond it. “You just don’t understand!” It’s far too common. No, it’s not me with the problem, it’s you. You’ve developed a worldview that relies on accepting your beliefs uncritically, simply because they cause a particular chemical reaction in your brain. That doesn’t actually mean anything though and if you’re incapable of stepping back from your indoctrination and looking at the world objectively, or at least as best as you can, then what’s the point of trying to talk to you?

Personally, I’m getting really tired of having to talk to people who can’t get past their emotions. They ought to be better than that. It’s really sad that they’re not.