In
the late 1980s I made one of the most important decisions in my life. I created
what we now call the BHC Primary Guideline and committed to
following it, no matter where it took me.
My Belief System will
be
Large Enough to include
all Facts,
Open Enough to be
Examined and Questioned, and
Flexible Enough to
Change if Errors or New Facts are discovered.
Every
Exploring Our Biblical Heritages Educational Email is written to help
you use the BHC Primary Guideline to examine your own Belief
System. It was around 2015 that I learned that the Realities
through which humans experience life – everything we sensory perceive and
imagine is generated by the brain through a biological process
– and that is FACT. The brain creates Belief Models
and uses them to generate Realities.
The
BHC Primary Guideline was created to deal with Religious
Belief Systems, but today we know that humans do not have neatly
compartmentalized and separated belief systems – religious, political,
economic, etc. All Belief Models exist within a brain’s neural
networks. Therefore, by learning how to explore Religious
Belief Systems as part of our Biblical Heritages, you are also learning how
to explore all Belief Systems.
In
the 1980s when I created this guideline, no one in their wildest dreams would
have been able to imagine the world we live in today -- Google, Facebook,
YouTube, Twitter, Smartphones, Amazon, Zoom, Bitcoin, Driverless Cars, NFTs,
etc. In our world, we have fewer face-to-face life experiences with
others and more face-to-devices life experiences.
Human
brains have shifted from generating deviceless Realities
to Realities in which devices provide most of the information
the brain uses to create Belief Models and generate Realities. The lines
between the two types of Realities are blurring. People are confusing things
they imaged (subjective individual realities) with objective
realities of the physical world.
The
BHC Primary Guideline can be used as a GPS for the Brain
by distinguishing between fact-based beliefs and other
types of beliefs. I will now share related information from Adam
Grant’s new book, Think Again: The Power
of Knowing What You Don’t Know (pp. 16, 24-25, 29). I highlighted key points for
emphasis purposes.
_______________________________
Mental
horsepower doesn’t guarantee mental dexterity. No matter how much brainpower
you have, if you lack the motivation to change your mind,
you’ll miss many occasions to think again.
Research reveals that
the higher you score on an IQ test,
the more likely you are
to fall for stereotypes,
because you’re faster
at recognizing patterns.
And
recent experiments suggest that the smarter you are, the more you
might struggle to update your beliefs.
One
study investigated whether being a math whiz makes you better at analyzing
data. The answer is yes — if you’re told the data are about something
bland, like a treatment for skin rashes. But what if the exact same
data are labeled as focusing on an ideological issue that activates
strong emotions — like gun laws in the United States?
●
Being a “rocket scientist” makes you more accurate in interpreting the results
— as long as the results support your beliefs.
●
If the empirical pattern clashes with your ideology, math
prowess is no longer an asset; it actually becomes a liability.
The better you are at
crunching numbers, the more
spectacularly you fail
at analyzing patterns that contradict your views.
●
Liberal math geniuses did worse than their peers
at evaluating evidence that gun bans failed.
●
Conservative math geniuses did worse than their peers
at assessing evidence that gun bans worked.
In
psychology there are at least two biases that drive this pattern:
Confirmation Bias:
Seeing what we expect
to see.
Desirability Bias:
Seeing what we want to
see.
These
biases don’t just prevent us from applying our intelligence -- they can
actually contort our intelligence into a weapon against the truth.
My favorite bias is the “I’m not biased” bias, in which people
believe they’re more objective than others. It turns out that smart
people are more likely to fall into this trap.
The brighter you are,
the harder it can be to see your own limitations.
Being good at
thinking can make you worse at rethinking.
_______________________________
The
quotes on the graphic above are from Steve Jobs of Apple and Mike
Lazaridis of the BlackBerry phone. They reflect the power of the above
biases. But when it comes to beliefs about God and Jesus, the
power of those biases are multiplied exponentially. So, keep the BHC
Primary Guideline handy. Chances are very high that some of
your trusted belief will be challenged, too. One of the most asked
questions among Biblical Heritage Explorers is this:
Are you seeing “what is”
or “what you expect to see or want to see?”
Shalom,
Jim
Myers
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