Nov 16 2008
Blaming Superstition on Greyhound
Why are there few consistently rational people? By that I mean thinkers who apply the same criteria for explaining and understanding all phenomena, A to Z.
For example: A person finds an apple in his mailbox. Rarely will he conclude that an alien put it there, special delivery. Or that a god put the fruit in his box, first class. No. The man would engage in more rational behavior, such as glancing up and down the street, eyes out for a clue as to how and why it got there. Or he’d check the apple for a return address, and lacking that, shrug his shoulders and think, “must be a prank . . . maybe a kid walking to school hid his friend’s apple as a joke.”
Another person visits the zoo. There she observes animals having sex. She is not likely to think that they are engaging in an evil deed, not likely to conclude that Satan has motivated the zoo inmates to fulfill their carnal urge for his viewing pleasure. No. She’s likely to think that what the animals are doing has a fully natural explanation.
Every day we employ rational thinking as the best means for understanding our world.
But then there are those people who elevate types of events, or even just peculiar events, to a place beyond the reach of a rational explanation.
Lacking a rational answer as to why there was an apple in your mailbox does not elevate it into a special class of events; it does not the make the incident super-natural. It merely makes it unexplained.
People who are consistently rational are often called skeptics. As if it were a bad thing. Contrary to popular depiction, however, the skeptic is not a Doubting Thomas. When confronted with a claim, the skeptic’s first response is not, “I doubt it,” but “how do you know that?” Or, “what are you basing that conclusion upon?”
Skeptics are intellectual party-poopers only if the party consists of unsubstantiated claims passed off as truth. You should try the guacamole. And did you know that avocados are a natural cure for arthritis? The pit is just like a hip joint.
In the world today we skeptics are vastly outnumbered.
While awakening from a dream the other morning, I understood why. Imagine two Homo-erecti walking through a jungle thousands of years ago. Homo One says, “Stop, there’s a snake on the trail; we’ve got to turn back.”
Homo Two asks, “But how do you know that snake is dangerous?”
One says, “Don’t you remember? Three was killed by a snake.”
Skeptical Two responds, “But that was a red-banded snake, and this snake is mostly green. The green snakes might not be dangerous.”
One mutters, “I’m outa’ here,” and turns to leave.
Two stops him. “Before you go,” he says, “could you hand me that stick?”
Two’s funeral was a bare-bones thing. A pit, some dirt, and a pile of rocks.
And that is why, I believe, skeptics constitute a small fraction of the general population. You could say that skeptics are habitual snake-pokers. We don’t like taking anyone’s word on anything; we want the facts so we can decide for ourselves.
Although today’s world is a far safer place — thanks in part to skeptics past, bless their curious heads – the proportion of skeptics to the superstitiously-inclined remains imbalanced. Why?
Put it this way: The person who believes that pledging allegiance to an invisible leader will grant them eternal life is no more likely than the skeptic to get hit by a bus.
So, in considering the preponderance of people with superstitious inclinations, rather than blaming ourselves for our inability to influence their thinking, or blaming schools for not sufficiently emphasizing rationality and scientific thought, I suggest we lay blame squarely on the shoulders of Greyhound Drivers.
