Epistemology

This post is basically a thumb sucker, but I need to get past it before I can write anything substantive. Many have observed that the U.S. seems to be divided into epistemic silos -- maybe two main divisions, with subdivisions and maybe a few fragments off to the side. The people in each silo get most of their information from different sources, and they use different rules of inference. This means it's nearly impossible for them to communicate about the issues that divide them.

I think this is largely true, although I'm not sure its accurate to say that my side is actually in its own silo. I think a better analogy is that a lot of people are in a silo, and a lot of other people, like me, are outside of it and free to explore reality and find truth wherever and whatever it may be. That requires us to decide what is true based on what we observe "out there," in reality, along with the application of logic and rules of inference. This requires a certain amount of work, and it also requires accepting pain, disappointment, disillusionment, and sometimes arguing or parting ways with people. 

One example of the discomfort and disappointment that comes with being an open-minded empiricist is the so-called Problem of Evil, which our current interlocutor Ecclesiastes rubs up against but can't fully engage. The modus tollens* version of this is: If an omnipotent, omniscient, good god exists, there is no evil. Evil exists. Therefore that sort of God does not exist. (Hat tip to Tony Pasquarello.) Religious apologists have struggled for centuries to find a way around this but they have failed. The absurdity of their efforts is demonstrated every day by the people whose houses are destroyed and neighbors killed by a natural disaster who are shown on television saying "I thank merciful God for saving me and my cat." I guess that's a little less offensive than the athletes who thank God for causing them to win a race. Think about it

Anyway, belief in a just and merciful God, like libertarianism, is internally logically inconsistent, and inconsistent with observable reality. So why are so many people unshakeably committed to it. (I'll leave the question of libertarianism for another time, although it does in part depend on the just world fallacy.) Part of the explanation obviously is that they have been indoctrinated from earliest childhood. We take it for granted that people who are born into Catholic families are Catholics, people born into Baptist families are Baptists, and so on with Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Zoroastrians. Of course some people convert to other faiths or become secular, but most do not. 

A second reason is community. Belonging to a faith also means being part of a supportive group, and denying faith means shunning, expulsion, condemnation by the people one is connected with most strongly. A third is comfort, immersion in denial of the most painful truths about existence. Sadly, the comforts of tribalism also require disdaining or condemning people who are outside of the tribe. That, I think, is at the heart of our troubles.

* A syllogism of the form "If P then Q: Not Q: Therefore Not P."