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Absolute Truth is Deliberate Ignorance

"Any nation that expects to be ignorant and free, expects what never was, and never will be."
                   --Thos. Jefferson (attributed by David McCollough)


It isn't really road rage.  It is religion rage.  They meet in a public place, ready for combat, armed with big Bibles, and read and pray and intimidate each other.  It is passive-aggressive, writ large.


They read Bible verses to each other the way satisfied people read fortune cookies, but they aren't satisfied.  As they understand it, what Paul of Tarsus or never-to-be-known editors wrote, is the word of God.  Obscure sentences become pure enlightenment, and universal demands.  


It is not unusual for there to be poorly disguised arguments.  Something Paul reputedly said about what Jesus reputedly said about what Moses reputedly said about what God reputedly said on top of Old Smoky, all covered with fire, soon turns their composure to ill-disguised ire.  


They believe they are reading magic words.  They have heard, but do not want to know, and certainly do not believe, that Jesus never wrote anything we have, that nobody recorded what he said, and that most of what they read was written thirty, or fifty, or a hundred years after Jesus died.  There are secrets there, waiting to be decoded!


They don't want to know what generations of historians and scholars know.  They want to be ignorant of those things.  They believe they are quite capable of knowing pure truth, all by themselves, although they may not agree what it is.


In some odd and strange way, many such deliberately ignorant religious believers and equally ignorant and impervious politicians are making common cause.  Political candidates memorize and recite mantras that are, if not deliberately, then conveniently, ignorant:

  • Obama was born in Kenya
  • He is not a Christian
  • Our level of taxation is brutally high
  • Government is evil
  • The less you tax, the higher government income
  • Only Christians can be moral
  • God has chosen America as his special nation
  • If the rich get really rich, the rest of us will get pretty rich
  • Obama caused this recession
  • Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11
  • Eliminating government programs will put people to work
Ignorance is not a crime.  Defending it, insisting on it, reciting it, and requiring it means that sensible conclusions and actions cannot be reached.

Religious beliefs built on deliberate ignorance are absurd, but not necessarily important.  But ignorant political beliefs are a disaster because, by the very nature of politics, it affects all of us.


The alternative to ignorance isn't truth.  Truth is an ignorant claim, too.  What we should try for, instead, is is healthy skepticism, an openness to ideas, facts, and honesty.  
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