Posted on 07/03/2018 6:55:35 AM PDT by Heartlander
There are some things that you can be absolutely sure of. The Earth is round, it goes around the sun, everybody is going to die someday, and tax day is going to come around every single year. But if you feel that you've got the one correct answer to a question that's a little more controversial, then you might want to double-check that. It turns out, the more certain you are about something, the less informed you're likely to be about it.
According to a new study by Michael Hall and Kaitlin Raimi from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, people with a high degree of what they call "belief superiority" had the largest gap between how informed they believed they were and how informed they actually were about the subjects they were so opinionated about. First, let's clear up what, exactly, belief superiority is. It's not just how confident you are in your belief; it's how much you believe that belief is better than those of other people. In other words, confidence is an absolute value, but belief-superiority is a relative value based on what you think of others' opinions.
It's yet another version of the Dunning-Kruger effect, where the most qualified people feel the least confident about their abilities and the least qualified are the most certain that they've got the skills to pay the bills.
For this study, the researchers gathered their participants through Amazon's Mechanical Turk, which allowed them access to people of a wide variety of demographics and viewpoints. When they asked those people about some politically contentious topics, they were able to find which of them had the greatest sense of belief superiority. Then, they compared how those participants ranked their own knowledge about those subjects and how much they actually knew. Then came the fun part.
After they compared people's presumed knowledge against their actual knowledge, the researchers then presented them with a spread of headlines from various sources. They included a mix of headlines that were belief congruent and belief incongruent — that is, some headlines that participants would agree with and some that they'd disagree with. The participants were then asked how likely they would be to read each article to the end. You might not be too surprised to find out that the people with the strongest sense of belief superiority were also the least likely to read articles that didn't jibe with their previously held beliefs.
In other words, not only were they less informed about the things they felt the most strongly about, but they were also less likely to seek out information that might expand their knowledge about those things. It's not all bad news, though. For one thing, the participants with the bias against headlines they didn't like were absolutely aware of that tendency in themselves. And secondly, the researchers found that when they tried methods to lower their sense of belief superiority, those same participants were more likely to try reading horizon-expanding think pieces. So maybe the answer is that the next time you're feeling especially fired up about something, it's a good moment to step back and consider a different point of view.
Jesus Christ is, of course, the primary and most important exception to this argument:
“I am the Way and the Truth and the Life... No one comes to the Father except by Me”
But it’s faith more than anything
The more I read the word, the more I endeavor to not do that
Those who endeavor not to read the Word too much. will inevitably never believe what it says.
My point was that I try to read what the bible actually says, not what I see between the lines, which I see as different from reading “in context.”
I see now why you bristled at what I said. Sorry about the misunderstanding.
You should check out John Warwick Montgomery’s evidential apologetics. Something for those who can’t abide shallow explanations and thin dogma. There’s various schools of apologetics, evidential being based on the rules of evidence that we routinely use in daily life, in law, in weighing historical evidence.
F.F. Bruce is another of my favorite writers. Don’t know that he’d be considered an apologist exactly. Certainly a major scholar.
OK, that’s interesting, and I’ve heard something like it before.
Two things:
1. As I believe I have been saved eternally, the fate of the unsaved soul is of minimal, if any, relevance to me and not worth arguing with fellow believers.
2. When faced with alternative interpretations of doctrine, it is my habit to assume the more... restrictive version, thus avoiding assuming a permissivenes which may or may not exist.
(Short version for phone posting. Cheers!)
I’m with you. The reason that issue is so important to me, though, is that I don’t see it as a benign teaching. Put yourself in the shoes of a man who has never heard of Jesus. You’re living your life, having good days and bad days, but overall, as with any natural man (your “animal” existence) you are living and taking one day at a time.
Then some guy comes along and says, “believe in jesus and be saved!”. And you say, “Saved from what?” He says that God is going to torture for all eternity all men who don’t accept his death as an atonement for their “sins”.
The guy is gonna say, “you’re nuts”. Happens a lot.
But what if he answeres, “Saved from death. After your body dies, you will be given a new, imperishable body to live in the ages with your creator.”
Now, he may or may not accept, but trying to first make his situation worse, and with no scripture to back it up, is not only pointless, but seriously damages the credibility of the message.
Unfortunately, even reading the original language carries a degree of ambiguity.
Unless the reader is conversant enough in the original language to know, for example, the English word “butterfly” has nothing to do with dairy products, their knowledge only reinforces exactly what the article describes.
I wonder how many Scriptorians that follow your method can explain exactly why the same exact word they see in Strong’s is translated into one English word in this context, and a barely tangentially related English word in that?
Not nearly enough.
Of course even reading the original language has *some* ambiguity. However having a Strong’s, and a Vines and a few other resources renders moot and silly the disputes about which English version is ‘best’ and sometimes makes one roll their eyes when trying to discuss the Bible with people who only know one translation and insist on that one being taken literally in the English language!
And, conversely, if you’re going to preach the Gospel in San Francisco, you ain’t doing it for fun or social acceptance!
How does that make sense given thatChrist’s earthly relationship with the Father was unarguably unique in human existence? One can not read the Bible and draw any other conclusion but that Christ was able to draw on resources no one before or since has been able to draw on with anything like Christ’s consistency and confidence.
Ah, but when it comes to doctrine is not the same danger present for the same reason?
By what Scriptural basis does one tell women they don’t have to cover their heads, and why is that same rationale not valid in other circumstances of Scriptural command? Finally, and most importantly, how does one know God ratifies such a rationales?
IOW, everyone knows the least. /jk
I find myself in agreement with what bgill sez here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3668039/posts?page=8#8
Great questions for discussion, I agree.
+1
“It turns out, the more certain you are about something, the less informed you’re likely to be about it.”
That’s just an attack on confident people. The left want everyone to be unsure, wishy-washy, timid, scared, afraid, and insecure.
It’s the only way to validate how they already feel.
I didn’t post what you are responding to.
No, but you agreed, and experience tells me you might be more analytical about discussing it than Wardaddy.
Note I did not call him on referring to God’s Son as “created.”
“I find myself in agreement with what bgill sez here:”
Amen.
Amazing how context can make all the difference at times.
I am reminded of the many episodes of, “Threes Company”. Their whole series was based upon misunderstandings as they all took things they heard out of context.
The non-believers I know (non-believers in ANYTHING, not just Baptistic Protestant Christianity) already believe in annihilation. I suppose, not having asked, that whether, hearing of the possibility of annihilation, they would prefer it over living with God, which some have told me they can only imagine as being a colossal bore. Whether such people are reachable with the notion of the place described below... is a matter for the Holy Spirit’s work.
Revelation 19:20:
And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
Revelation 20:10:
And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
Revelation 20:14:
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
Revelation 20:15:
And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
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