EMOTION AND LOGIC
Since
we can see that childhood indoctrination, threats of punishment, cultural
isolation, biased argumentation, cognitive dissonance, low self-esteem, and low
intelligence lead people to illogical conclusions about religion, the question
should now become how to undo the effects of some of these phenomena. One of
the primary findings of persuasive psychology is that, outside of the rare
instances of instinctive and biochemical factors, people are
tied to their opinions through emotional and/or logical deduction. In
other words, people believe that certain concepts are true for emotional and/or
logical reasons. Therefore, in order to instill a new belief into an individual,
we must remove the existing belief by appealing to people through the exact
avenues by which they have derived their beliefs.
Let us consider a hypothetical scenario in which we
are entrepreneurs who have just opened a business on the top floor of an old
city skyscraper. Everything is set to go, but there is one
major problem with which we need to contend. The only business
consultant in the entire city refuses to take the elevator to such a high
elevation because he has deduced that something tragic could possibly take
place at that height.
Since our first impulse is
to conclude that the man has a fear of heights, let us first consider that this
is in fact the correct scenario. We must now ask ourselves whether this man has
a fear of heights for emotional reasons or for logical ones. Barring the
presence of a series of tragic events that have taken place while the
consultant was in similar structures, it is a reasonably safe assumption that
the man has a fear based on emotion. This should be nothing new to us because
we realize that phobias are typically emotional fears often attributed to
isolated events that took place at an impressionable age.[i] Therefore,
the next logical step here is to ascertain why the consultant is afraid of
heights. If he cannot articulate a legitimate reason and relies instead on such
explanations as “I just get scared when I look out,”
we know we have made a safe assumption that the man holds his belief for an
emotional reason.
How do we eliminate this
fear? Should we bring in the experts who built the structure to ensure him that
it won’t fall? Should we show him the evidence that demonstrates
the skyscraper was constructed according to proper
building codes? Should we show him the statistics of how unlikely it would be
for a tragic event to take place at that height? None of these measures would
likely work because the logic falls on ears that are deaf to reason. The man
has an emotional fear of heights, thus we cannot appeal to his senses through
pleas of logic. As he is perfectly aware that millions of people go into tall
buildings every day and return to the ground unharmed, what good would it do to
tell him what he already knows? Instead, we must appeal to his emotion. One
such recommendation would be to have the man ascend the building slowly, allow
him to look outside on each floor, and let him adjust to his surroundings each
time until he feels comfortable progressing up the skyscraper. Such methods are
how psychologists often remove unreasonable fears in their patients.[ii]
Let us now consider a
situation in which the man thinks that the building will fall because he
believes that old skyscrapers are not as safe as the newer ones. Instead of
having an emotional fear, our business consultant has formed
what he believes is a logical reason to avoid ascending the building. Do we use
the same measure as we did in the previous scenario? Will having him slowly
ascend and allowing him to adjust to his surroundings alleviate his fear? No. Why
would such a tactic fail to work? The man has a logical fear, thus we cannot appeal to his senses through pleas of
emotion. We must show him the evidence that the building was constructed
according to code. We must bring in the experts who built the structure to
ensure him that it will not fall. Such methods are how we appeal to logical intellect
in order to remove unreasonable fears from reasonable people.
Religious beliefs, like the
beliefs of the consultant, must also be held for
emotional and/or logical reasons.[iii] With
this in mind, how should someone free of indoctrination approach the practice
of convincing others of their false beliefs? As before, we must delve into the
history of the individual’s beliefs to find the avenue from which they
originate. I would be confident that if we undertook this exercise in a large
group of people, almost the entire sample would have built their beliefs upon emotional reasons. Remember four conclusions
we reached earlier: 1) Children are introduced to the
emotional components of Christianity before the logical ones. 2) Notions of God
being perfect, Jesus loving us, and heaven being for the saved are consistently instilled in children long before they are
approached with evidence and arguments that weigh the genuine or fraudulent
nature of such claims. 3) Smart people believe dumb things because they are
very gifted at coming up with ideas that support their irrational viewpoints.
4) Apologists are masterminds at creating quasi-logical reasons for the defense
of their emotional beliefs.
If our tentative conclusion
is accurate that religious beliefs are primarily built
on emotional grounds, we now know the avenue that one should take to change the
incorrect beliefs held by Christians. This discovery, of course, does not
destroy the layers of conditioning that one will have to fight through, nor
does it remove the individual’s propensity to invent absurd justifications to
eliminate cognitive dissonance. It does however demonstrate the near-certain futility
in trying to convince someone that the gospels are unreliable by pointing out
factual discrepancies like the year of Jesus’ birth. People with emotional ties
will emotionally cling to the gospels’ veracity in this instance while the
apologists’ absurd “Quirinius was a governor twice”
or “Quirinius was a co-governor” explanations
alleviate their cognitive dissonance.[iv]
Life, however, is rarely as
black and white as we can make it in hypothetical scenarios. Often we find
emotional and logical reasons for religious belief closely intertwined. The apologists
who purport that they have all the answers have in reality weaved a tangled web
of what they believe are logical defenses for the
foundational beliefs and emotional attachments acquired from the most persuasible stage of human development. While simply
clearing the emotional attachments before destroying the perceived logic may
work for ordinary individuals, this tactic will surely not work on those who
have come up with clever ways to convince themselves that their beliefs are
solid. With a network of logical and emotional bonds to wade through in order
to reach the apologist, how does one even begin? For the answer, I believe we
should revisit the business consultant scenario offered earlier.
Let us now consider a
hypothetical situation in which the consultant has a combination of emotional
and logical reasons for not wanting to visit us at the top of the skyscraper. Not
only has he developed an emotional fear of heights beginning at a young age, he
has also convinced himself of the legitimacy of his fear by reinforcing his
decision with a network of misinformation built upon logical inaccuracies. Now
the man has created a wall of what he perceives are legitimate reasons as to
why his emotional fear is a sensible one. How do we handle this situation?
Since we wish to invoke clear thinking in order to get
people to drop their misplaced beliefs, we must decide whether emotion or logic
is the biggest initial obstacle of instilling rational thought. This choice
should be obvious since emotion is often irrational, and logic is closely related to rationale itself. In short, we cannot begin
appealing to logic when emotion is in the way. We must defuse as much
irrationality as possible before we can begin to utilize reasoned arguments in
support of our position. We cannot simply usher the man to the top of the
building by allowing him to adjust to his surroundings because there will come
a time when the logical fears of being higher than floor three will be
outweighed by the emotional fears of being higher than floor ten. The amount of
success in this initial step of tackling emotion will vary from person to
person, but through much time and effort, we might be able to force the man to
make enough concessions on his emotional beliefs to eliminate enough emotional
irrationalism so that we can illustrate how his logical fears of floors four
through nine are misplaced. If this much easier step of tackling logic proves
fruitful, then we simply lather, rinse, and repeat.
