So, rational Christians, do the "circumnavigate the intellect" Christians bug you?
I was reminded last night of an argument used by Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, both of whom argue against the Theory of Evolution. They don’t do so well, and tend to draw nothing but laughter, derision, and scorn for their remarks… so on their program, when discussing how to counter the factual arguments in favor of the Theory of Evolution, they explained the thing to do was try to ‘circumnavigate the intellect’, saying "when you circumnavigate the intellect, the subject of evolution seems to disappear."
Well of course it does. That whole argument boils down to "if you stop thinking things through and realizing we’re retarded, maybe we can trick you into taking our side". Lots of rational objections to patently stupid ideas disappear if your stance is "ignore reality".
Look at Santa. If you "circumnavigate the intellect", you don’t have to think about all the evidence that he’s not delivering the presents– all the parents out buying the items their children receive for Christmas, all the expenditures they make and the time they spend wrapping gifts, the number of closets that sit full of gifts and all the thousands and thousands of households where the tree is up and the presents are piled underneath for days and sometimes weeks before the event– you don’t have to take a single bit of that into account as long as you decide not to think the matter through and just believe Santa Claus is the explanation.
It becomes much more plausible that storks deliver babies if you just don’t bother to think about all the millions of women who get pregnant every year, our endless storehouse of data on prenatal development, our endless observation of the process of gestation, medical records of it, and detailed documentation of the live births of billions of humans over the years (including years and years worth of footage of women going through the process).
And that’s true of pretty much every fantasy and superstition we can cook up. They’re all plausible if you circumnavigate the intellect, but all of them wither in the light of fact and reason. In essence, every idea you need to resort to such a tactic to justify is one you can be pretty sure is a lie.
So I have to ask, for the Christians who do try to educate themselves, who do try to learn the facts and accept the evidenced position, and try to present their beliefs as being compatible with factual reality… does it bother you to have your faith cast in such a shady light by other believers?
