We are forever being told we need to keep open minds. Close-minded people tend toward confirmation bias. We wouldn’t want to just see what we expect to see, right?
Hey, an open mind is a wonderful thing. But an open mind needs to be open the same way a baseball glove is open.
Let’s pretend truth is the ball, and the batter has just whacked it into the outfield. The truth-seeker lines himself up under the arc of the earthbound cowhide spheroid, intent on making that critical catch. After all, truth is important, right?
The ball descends, picking up speed. The fielder waits, glove open. There is that tantalizing moment of contact, and …*WHAP* … the ball bounces out onto the field and rolls away into the grass. Truth escapes the truth-seeker.
Why is that? Because the fielder’s glove never closed.
An open mind is a great thing until the moment it locates that long-sought truth. After that, if you want to do anything useful in life, you need a mind that shuts like a steel trap and clings like Velcro®.
That ain’t the conventional wisdom, but it’s a fact. That alleged “truth-seeker” who never grabs onto the thing he says he is seeking so avidly, who never holds on for dear life when the word of God is right in his hands … that man is a liar. He wasn’t seeking at all. He was playing at it in hopes he would be excused for his error if God regrettably turns out to exist, while retaining his ability to live his life as if God doesn’t.
He wants to have his cake and eat it too.
Even open-minded people need a set of criteria upon which they will cease to be open-minded.
What are yours?
No comments :
Post a Comment