The Insult of Ignorance
Often times when I get into a conversation with a fundamentalist Christian, they tend to get offended by the mere possibility that they don’t know everything. I think people of reason and fundamentalists have a very different view of knowledge and a much different view of what it means to lack knowledge.
As a person of reason, I am well aware that I don’t know it all. I know that there are things in the universe that I am ignorant about. The scientific method is the best tool we have to learn about things that we don’t know about and keeps our minds open to new ideas which may fit the evidence better than the older ideas.
Fundamentalist Christians however seem to get offended when they are forced to admit that they are ignorant about a particular subject or piece of knowledge. They seem to consider ignorance as an insult rather than an opportunity to learn.
It seems to me that this is in large part to their insecurity in relation to knowledge in general. Fundamentalist Christians subconsciously know that they are ignorant about science and the world around them. They know that they are hiding from their ignorance with the myth of their religion. To the fundamentalist, God is the answer to every question, but when their true ignorance is exposed they get defensive, angry, and insulted.
“Ignorance is of a particular nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it.” –Thomas Paine
Filed under: anti-intellectualism, education, god of the gaps, ignorance, Religion
