ONE of the most common criticisms of beliefs is that they are divisive. It is a valid concern: beliefs can indeed lead to violence. Yet the human condition is such that we refuse to confine ourselves to what is demonstrably true, and reach beyond this limited and restrictive domain to offer sometimes shallow, sometimes deep, and always unprovable answers to the great questions of life.
Unfortunately, many have failed to master the art of learning through disagreement. In a recent discussion, the head of one of Britain’s public-service broadcasters suggested that many younger people seemed to lack the skills to discuss alternative viewpoints in terms other than outright rejection. Research points to the emergence of “Young Illiberal Progressives” who “have very little tolerance for people with beliefs that they disagree with”.
Their exposure to short-form content (such as online videos) and ideological online echo chambers seems to create an incapacity for critical reflection and unwillingness even to consider, let alone to discuss, ideas that they find challenging.
No exploration of “believing” can, therefore, avoid discussing how perceived conflicts and tensions arising from this basic human instinct and practice can be mitigated, or perhaps even redirected in a creative and constructive manner. How can we create a social space within which other people’s beliefs can be explored intelligently and responsibly, free from external pressure and influence?
HOW can we integrate the multiple elements of human understanding? Edward O. Wilson’s Consilience (1998) is an important, though flawed, attempt to offer a unified account of human knowledge, which sets out to make connections across disciplines in the quest for meaning and a proper understanding of the human situation. “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.”
Stephen Jay Gould argues that while the differences between the sciences and humanities must be respected, they have a genuine potential for synergy. Why should we not acknowledge and respect the differences between these disciplines and, at the same time, “find some meaningful order in the totality”?
Both Wilson and Gould point to the concept of “wisdom” as a means of coordinating and holding together a rich and diverse range of insights. So, what are we to understand by “wisdom”? Recent empirical studies of the nature of human wisdom suggest that one of its core capabilities is to hold potentially conflicting ways of thinking together in a creative tension.
While there is no consensual definition of wisdom, it is clear that a common theme is a deep knowledge base that enables meaningful living, particularly coping with complexity and ambiguity. Where some would see diversity of beliefs as intrinsically incoherent and self-contradictory, a wise person recognises that we have to learn to see our world and frame our experiences from multiple perspectives rather than from within a single limiting perspective or controlling paradigm.
At the very least, we need to be able to create a map of insights that we cherish, whether we can integrate them or not. A patchwork quilt of beliefs and values can begin to form building blocks of wisdom, even if the question how they are to be coordinated remains open. In my view, Socrates was right in suggesting that a wise person is aware of their own ignorance, and thus is open to learning from others; has realised that reality is complicated, and does not try to force everything into a preconceived mould; and has conceded the finite capacity of the human mind, and does not limit reality to what we can rationally demonstrate.
Acceptance of “divergent perspectives”, which entails the virtue of intellectual empathy and willingness to embrace and learn from others, is now regularly cited as a key aspect of wisdom. So, how might this be correlated with beliefs? A key point here is that intellectual empathy enables us to gain insight into other people’s emotions and beliefs — to understand why they believe certain things, the difference that this makes to their lives, and whether this belief, when properly understood, is something that we might wish to appropriate and incorporate into our own ways of thinking.
Wisdom requires humility, realising that our own perspective is not the only one, and coming to understand how much we do not know. It is by engaging rival perspectives and world-views that we arrive at wise judgements about how best to make sense of this world and live accordingly.
The issue here is being willing to see things in a new way and explore the quality of the intellectual vision that this alternative belief system enables. C. S. Lewis is one of many writers to note how literature opens our eyes, offering us new perspectives on things, which we can evaluate and adopt. “My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. . . In reading great literature, I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see.”
Reading literature, Lewis suggests, enables us “to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as our own”. In using this image of multiple eyes, Lewis is urging us to learn from others, who may have seen something that we have missed. We expand our own vision of reality through borrowing someone else’s eyes and trying to grasp what they have seen.
CHARLES TAYLOR once remarked that “understanding the ‘other’ will pose the twenty-first century’s greatest social challenge.” I think he is right. Yet one of the biggest challenges facing this manifesto of understanding is a disturbing human personality trait: dogmatism. While the term “dogmatism” can be defined variously, its two central themes are an excessive confidence in a belief or belief system that is not adequately grounded in the evidence, and an authoritarian style of discourse which is used in the defence of such beliefs or systems.
The term “dogma” has a neutral sense of a belief that is seen as being of critical importance for a belief system or scientific theory. Early Christianity, for example, recognised two such dogmas — the two natures of Christ, and the Trinity — which gave Christianity its coherence and focus. This terminology is also regularly used in the natural sciences. The “central dogma” of molecular biology, for example, concerns the asymmetry between genomes and enzymes: informational asymmetry, in that information flows from genomes to enzymes, but not from enzymes to genomes; and catalytic asymmetry, in that enzymes provide chemical catalysis, but genomes do not.
Dogmatism, however, designates a different category of discourse, which can be framed as a tendency to regard the beliefs and principles of a specific individual or community as objectively and self-evidently correct, despite their deficient evidential foundations and the existence of viable alternatives.
Whereas “good thinking” leads to a confidence that is proportional to the evidence available, dogmatic beliefs are held and asserted with a confidence that masks their being grounded on inadequate or biased thinking. Although some suggest that dogmatism is characteristic of religious people or beliefs, the evidence clearly indicates that it is linked with a wide range of domains, situations, topics, and issues — particularly politics.
While the Enlightenment project of the 18th century emphasised the importance of open-mindedness and the destructive nature of dogmatism, the 20th century witnessed the emergence of a new authoritarianism, made tangible in the rise of Fascism and the cult of submission to strongmen such as Mussolini, Hitler, or Stalin.
Our concern, however, is not so much with an “authoritarian personality” (someone who prefers a social system with a strong ruler) as with dogmatic beliefs or hardened belief systems — ideas that clearly cannot be shown to be true, but which are asserted and enforced as if they were absolute certainties.
A dogma is a belief that commands acquiescence and assent as a matter of obedience to a charismatic individual or a controlling community — such as the Soviet Communist Party during the 1930s and 1940s. Though having the epistemic status of a belief or opinion, a dogma is treated as a truth whose denial constituted irrationality or mental illness. It is worth recalling that Pravda (the Russian word for “truth”) was the official organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1991, which informed its readers what they ought to think. This was the “truth” that Party members were required to acknowledge.
The psychologist Judy K. Johnson argues that dogmatism is “the arrogant voice of certainty that closes the mind, damages relationships and threatens peaceful coexistence on this planet”. For the philosophers Richard C. Roberts and W. Jay Wood, dogmatism represents a “disposition to respond irrationally to oppositions” to certain tenets of their beliefs, often leading to ridicule rather than engagement, evasion rather than discussion. Dogmatism can be seen as an epistemically unjustified certainty arising from the confluence of cognitive, emotional, and behavioural characteristics that lead to prejudicial closed-minded belief systems.
A “dogmatic” person is likely to be intolerant of ambiguity, to encourage an in-group vilification of out-groups, and to develop a form of mental compartmentalisation which protectively encloses its own declarations in barbed wire, while sealing off contradictory beliefs in such a way that they do not pose a threat. Such people tend to think in highly polarised terms, preferring reductive simplifications over acknowledging the complexity of the world and life, and adopting an “arrogant, dismissive communication style”, talking at others rather than with others, and preferring personal disparagement to serious engagement with the issues — precisely because such an engagement is seen as threatening.
As Johnson points out, this sort of “defensive cognitive closure” leads to rival or conflicting ideas’ being judged immediately and automatically as “ridiculous”. People holding rival views are not simply wrong; they are often denigrated as “stupid” as well.
What can be done about this? My training as an academic immediately suggests a set of solutions. Go where the evidence takes you — and be honest if you are going beyond it. Be willing to confront ambiguity and live with uncertainty. Talk to people with opposing views, partly to ensure you have grasped their positions, and partly because of the importance of maintaining personal relationships in the face of disagreements. As a scholar, I make a point of reading works advocating alternative perspectives and talking to those who hold such views, partly to ensure I have understood them properly — but more importantly, to ensure I can hold my own views with integrity in the face of rival beliefs.
But this won’t work in the face of dogmatism, because the problem is ultimately psychological, not evidential. The issue is an “intolerance of ambiguity”, which leads certain individuals to perceive an ambiguous situation “rigidly in black or white”, often leading to rapid evaluations and unreliable foreclosures of complex issues — such as medical diagnosis. An ability to tolerate ambiguity is increasingly being linked with well-being. Perhaps we shall see more research on how to confront and cope with dogmatism in the future, as a way to help us to understand others and achieve greater social cohesion.
This is an edited extract from Why We Believe: Finding meaning in uncertain times by Alister McGrath, published by Oneworld at £18.99 (Church Times Bookshop £14.99); 978-0-86154-921-4.