Human minds delight in establishing approved patterns of thought. Such patterns can become orthodox (“correct”) ways of thinking and viewing the world around us. We refer to those orthodox patterns as “paradigms.” Paradigms include presuppositions about what we will find as we view and test the world, and therefore act as filters that direct our observations and conclusions. These presuppositions are as true in study of the Bible in Christian churches and seminaries as they are in any other field or discipline. Though presuppositions can be a positive factor to keep our focus in complicated studies, they can also have a negative influence. The latter influence is illustrated in the field of financial investment by Charles Hugh Smith (https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/heresy-and-us-dollar/63178?utm_campaign=weekly_newsletter) in the following quote (bold and underline emphasis added):
“When confidence in one’s viewpoint is high, it’s wise to seek out contrarian counsel to determine if your convictions are guilty of any blind spots. Since we (and an increasing number of others) foresee a coming currency crisis caused by more central bank money printing, we’ve asked our contributing editor Charles Hugh Smith to argue the other side of the table.
There is only one word to describe the opinion that the U.S. dollar is in a multi-year uptrend: heresy. Understanding why this is so may well be critical to understanding market action in the 2011-2016 time frame.
Embracing the contrarian viewpoint offers little joy, because heretics are constantly being hounded by devotees of orthodoxy seeking their conversion to the one true faith or their crucifixion as mortal threats to the orthodoxy. Why is this so? For two simple but profound reasons. The human mind strongly prefers certainty to uncertainty and simple, fixed explanations over complex, contingent explanations. The human mind has a second, superglue-like quality: Once a viewpoint has been plucked from the swirling chaos of beliefs and explanations, then the mind quickly solidifies that view, resisting any future modification. Very little energy is devoted to questioning the position, while enormous energy is devoted to defending it.
This reality is expressed via “confirmation bias,” the term used to describe our tendency to focus on data that supports our pre-selected view and ignore data which challenges it.
Orthodoxy—fixed positions that are articles of faith to be defended against all challenges—is thus a psychological safe haven in a risky, dynamic world. Having a belief system or global explanation not only offers us the comforts of certainty, it also enables us to make forecasts based on that explanation. Those forecasts become part of the orthodoxy which must be defended.
Being a trader makes one a heretic, because traders see orthodoxy not as a safe haven but as a mortal danger. This is the root of trader expressions such as “Marry your spouse, not your portfolio.” From painful personal experience, traders learn that trading based on orthodoxy eventually leads to crushing losses. The one phrase you will rarely hear issuing from orthodoxy is “I was wrong and I’m radically changing my view.” It’s painful to be wrong; our human pride is wounded when our convictions turn out to be misplaced. It’s also painful to lose money in a losing trade, but when given a choice between the two, adherents of orthodoxy prefer to lose money rather than surrender their convictions.
Investors in many cases would rather suffer crushing losses and lose money than transgress their presupposed orthodoxy and wound their pride by admitting error and changing their orthodox perspective for a contrarian viewpoint. If this is true in the handling of “unrighteous mammon” (Luke 16:11) how much more so in arguments over dogmatic religious orthodoxy where heretics are not only dismissed but persecuted. One virtually never sees the pride-wounding admission, “I was wrong and I’m radically changing my view” in argument over religious orthodoxy, despite the fact that we have the deciding factor of Holy Scripture.
Jesus was very contrarian when viewed by the religious establishment of His day on earth (Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, 7). They considered Christ heretical according to their presuppositions about the Jewish Messiah. But Christ’s strength was in His faithful adherence to the very words of God in Holy Scripture contrary to the human religious presuppositions. In considering the string of posts under this topic, Age of the World, I ask only that the reader would weigh the evidence cited from the very oracles of God (Romans 3:1-2) in reaching conclusions about the topics of age of the earth, creation and evolution.
3 Comments
Leave your reply.