An Epidemic of Anti-Intellectuals

January 14, 2008 @ 8:30 pm by Pressed

This post is a repost from October 2004

I am so often amazed at the things I hear people say. Some things are without a doubt unintelligible
and irrational. We live in a society that is flooded with humanism, liberal nonsense, and postmodern thought that contaminates the mind.

“He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.” –Richard Whatley

“I think it is true [that] Hitler went to heaven (if such a thing as heaven really exists). He felt that what he did was right, and I think that if what you feel you’re doing is right, in your heart, then you can’t be wrong!” – Korn guitarist James Shaffer, (who apologized for his remarks two days later, quoted in Spin magazine.)

“If you feel that what your doing is right in your heart then you can’t be wrong” is one of the central messages in humanism. The world revolves around me and my feelings and whatever I feel to be right is right and whatever you feel to be right is right and even though our views conflict with each other they are still both right… In reality, the last time I checked 1 + 1 can’t equal both 2 and 7. There are just some things in life that do not allow for everyone’s conflicting theories to be right. There is a right and a wrong! However, if we go with the relativistic theory, then where does it end? Do we remove people from prison and abolish laws because we shouldn’t oppose our own feelings on what is right and wrong? Should anyone be allowed to steal and kill as long as they feel like it is right in their own heart? I don’t think we will take relativism that far, only far enough to justify some of the things we do and believe.

I think you are free to believe whatever you want about religion, morals, and life, but not everyone is free to be right about it. Just because you believe something to be true, doesn’t magically make it true. Believing that God doesn’t exist, or believing that people who do what they “feel” is right in their own hearts can get into heaven because of it, are both false assumptions . It’s just not true.

“In political matters feeling often decides more correctly than reason.” – Adolf Hitler

Here we go again with that word feeling. That seems to be one of the biggest problems when it comes to anti-intellectualism. People are more concerned about their feelings and less concerned about their thoughts, knowledge, common sense, and reason. We live in the “please-me” age where most people are more concerned about their own self pleasure and feelings than the moral and ethical good of society as a whole. The problem is that the desire to gratify ourselves and our feelings often leads to immoral and irrational behavior. For instance in the process of abortion it is the feelings of the women that cause her to irrationally get an abortion and the result is the ruthless murder of millions of children. How is that so different from Hitler?

“So long as we do not harm others we should be free to think, speak, act, and live as we see fit, without molestation from individuals, law, or government. . . .” John Stuart Mill

Here we have some relativism shrouded in good deeds. This statement is an argument for humans to do whatever they see fit for themselves as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. I can somewhat agree with this. I think people should be allowed to believe, think, and act freely, after all, everyone has the right to be wrong. However, my question is, who is to decide what does and does not harm others when it comes to ethics? For example, I would say that abortion harms others because it is the thoughtless murder of another human. But someone else who doesn’t ‘feel’ that a fetus is a real human, they may not see that as harming another person. Here we have a conflict. The same thing goes for Christianity. I see speaking out for what is morally right as something good for other people to help them to see the truth, but others who hear me speaking out against their actions see it as harm to them. When there is no morality or absolute law, things simply end up chaotic. Everything is in conflict.

“A man is not moral because he is obedient through fear or ignorance. Morality lives in the realm of perceived obligation. . . .” Robert Ingersoll

There is some truth to this. I think morality is an obligation, however the problem with this statement is that it is found in only what is perceived by the individual. If I perceive that it is my moral obligation to feed the poor, then in doing so I am being a moral person. Not because I am obedient to some ‘moral law’ but because I was obedient to my perceived obligation. The problem with this is similar to the last one. Who is to decide what is moral? It’s left with the individual and whatever they perceive. Again, we arrive at a place of chaos. There is no standard of morality that everyone should follow, it differs by perception.

“Has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? . . . No other human institution comes close.” Carl Sagan

While I believe that science is valuable, it is constantly finding itself wrong. Science has changed so much over the years, not because the world has changed, but because scientist realized that the old theories were completely wrong and had to change things. So, has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy of science? I think there is a religion that goes beyond the accuracy of science, and if science doesn’t prove what the Bible says now, it will soon enough when it catches up.

“A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.” - Robert Frost

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So what is the problem? Here are several other quotes of people who have recognized some of the problems we face in our present society.

“We’re captive to this culture of relativism. There’s no truth, so who are we to impose our values on anyone else? All anybody can do — like a business school teacher — is help people think through problems and arrive at their own conclusions while telling them that no conclusion is any better than any other — a formula for disaster. This is what modern worldviews teach. But what happens when you allow people to arrive at their own moral conclusions? They do what is right in their own eyes, and we end up with the likes of Enron and WorldCom.” –Charles Colson

“It isn’t that we don’t know where to look for guidance in how to build lives of personal integrity and governments and institutions that reflect them. It is that we have chosen to ignore such things in the pursuit of immediate gratification.” –Cal Thomas

“In the context of narcissism, the mystery of children killing becomes less mysterious. That we have more such killers than we used to isn’t so much about guns and bullies as it is about our Me-First culture, a convenient mechanism of which is media fame.” –Kathleen Parker

“Santana High did everything modern schools do to reduce the chance of violence. They had counselors, conflict resolution, anger management and the rest. We are finding that without basic morality these are useless.” –Mona Charen

Pressed

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