The Rabid Paladin

Everybody knows that blind faith is a bad thing, right? I mean, we’re all clear on that even if we can’t really describe what it means exactly. Most of us have, at some point, known “that guy” (or girl, it’s a gender-neutral phenomenon). You know the one. Impervious to reason. A fanatical exponent of some faith (maybe even your own) whose every expression is one of devotion and doctrinal rectitude. Or the modern expression of the same impulse: a political partisan who clings fiercely to their party line and who knows their talking points by heart and can’t be taken far from them. We can see the potential for harm in that kind of devotion and we eschew it as dangerous and to be avoided.

It is such an off-putting phenomenon that even the accusation that you have blind faith is enough to send you searching your conscience for examples where you’ve gone counter to the party line. Nobody wants to be seen as a predictable drone or mere extension of some collective body with no mind of their own. We’re all individualists here, no matter how alike we might appear on the surface.

The Rational Man

And everybody knows that the antidote to blind faith is reason, right? I mean, the ascendency of reason over religion during the Age of Reason brought huge advances in science and improved the human condition. Reason was such an effective counter to the excesses of faith that for many people, reason has replaced faith as their guiding force when principles collide.

While it is impossible to live entirely without faith (there are simply too many complexities of life to question every assumption or taught truth), many strive to live with as little as possible. Nobody more so than the modern intellectual. Whether ensconced in a university or merely well-read and contemplative, intellectuals worldwide explore boundaries, investigate assumptions, and test hypotheses. And nobody can deny that this is a good thing, at least, not while enjoying the advances of science and technology.

True Faith

Since the LDS church places so much emphasis on education, it should come as no surprise that a great deal of effort has been made to rationalize our doctrine. There are scores of books, talks, firesides, and stories whose purpose (whether explicitly stated or not) is to reassure ourselves that we are, at heart, a rational people.

And that is as it should be.

We believe, after all, that God is the source of all Truth. So if there is anything that can be proven true, it is our duty to embrace that truth no matter how uncomfortable it may make us.

Reasonable Doubt

There is a fundamental problem buried in the above section, however—the concept of “proven true” is a troublesome one even before you get to the fallibility of all human endeavor. What we accept as “proven” can be tricky, and if we aren’t careful, we can end up in places that are murky at best. I’ve seen enough friends and associates of an intellectual persuasion leave the church to suspect that there is something almost deliberate that happens to those who pride themselves on their intellectual capacities. This happens too often to be mere coincidence, which got me thinking (uh oh…).

I don’t know if this is universal and can be raised to the status of a gospel law, but it is so frequent in my experience that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it were. I have noticed that everybody who is proud of their ability to reason eventually finds something that they cannot reconcile with the church. It may be a passage of scripture. It may be a political call to action. It may be a new church program. It may be a conflict with a leader or church authority. The details are highly personalized, but eventually every intellectual I’ve known well enough to discuss this with reaches a point where they have to make a choice between their reason and their faith.

I’ve been there, so I know how painful this can be.

Pride Goeth Before…

I wasn’t being subtle above, so it should come as no surprise that I believe this is a problem of pride. Of course my reasoning is correct and my understanding of the principles involved complete enough to come to rational conclusions. The discrepancy must, therefore, be in our leaders (past or present).

Here’s the thing: we believe and sustain our leaders as not just followers of but as actual representatives of God. Each member of the church is exhorted to gain a testimony for themselves, from God, that this is true (and really, being a member is enough work that I personally don’t understand anyone who would go through it all without having obtained that confirmation).

So an intellectual who finds their own personal point of digression has a choice to make. Popular choices at achieving a reconciliation between faith and reason include:

• Denial. Pretend there is no problem and simply go about your business and hope it doesn’t come up.
• Delay. Hope a solution presents itself at some future point in time—hopefully sooner rather than later.
• Compartmentalization. There’s a problem, but just because the church is wrong about one thing doesn’t mean it’s wrong about everything.
• Justification. The church is wrong from some explainable, and perfectly reasonable, cause (cultural inertia, social conditioning, ideological contamination, whatever).
• Crusade. The church is wrong, but I can help fix it.
• Individualization. God has a general path for everyone else, but mine is different because I have a greater capacity/truth/wisdom/whatever.

People mix and match, of course. A little justification with a pinch of compartmentalization and maybe a little crusade if you get some support. Flavor to taste. The problem with all of those approaches is that they are stop-gap at best. The fundamental problem isn’t going to go away. The disparities between faith and reason will accumulate, causing your discomfort to grow over time. Eventually, it is going to grow to the point where you have two options: you can talk yourself into leaving the church, or…

Humble Pie

You can humble yourself, admit that you may, just possibly, be wrong. After all, if the church really is led by representatives of God and you are in conflict with it, then chances are that you really are wrong. Most people, when asked, will admit that in general they are human, fallible, and can be wrong. Theoretically, at any rate. It is amazing how few can bring themselves to admit this in a particular instance or give an example of it happening. Particularly when they are so sure that they are right. It makes sense and it feels so right. How could it possibly be wrong?!?

So let me ask you specifically (or, given that this is a blog post, ask you rhetorically): can you be wrong even when you are positively, absolutely sure that you are right?

This is “Only” a Test

Depending on your personality, making the choice to be humble and putting your faith in God and His chosen servants can be incredibly hard to do—particularly when you know that you are at least as smart as (and possibly smarter than) those servants are. Even more so if you have made proclamations that will have to be retracted. Would He really want us to do something that is so hard and that makes us so uncomfortable? Well, we know that God isn’t exactly reluctant to ask us to do hard things. And He is forever droning on about being humble (almost enough that you’d think He was serious about it).

Indeed, God takes our humility so seriously that He has been known to offer us occasions to demonstrate that we have heard Him and are doing our best to obey. It is this aspect of Him that leads me to suspect that He has set things up such that events naturally produce these occasions. It could very well be more important to Him that smart people learn humility than it is that His servants get everything precisely right every time they preach in His name.

At any rate, I know that, personally, I’ll take the word of the Lord and His servants over my own understanding every time. Even if I think they’re wrong. You can look at it as a matter of track-record (mine being pretty abysmal even before comparing it to people who are proven right time and time again), but really, it’s a matter of faith. I believe that they’re right even when I think that they’re wrong.

Blind or Dumb?

It’s a hard thing being left without reason to fall back on in our day—particularly if you are in a situation where you are asked to defend your position or decision. That blind faith thing, remember? Some will scorn you. Others will laugh. You may even face professional discrimination (and that’s a possibility even if you’re only a computer programmer). After all, how serious can you be if you are willing to admit in public that you will suspend (and/or have suspended in the past) your own reason when it conflicts with the doctrine of your church?

So let me close with some comfort should you choose faith. God really is right. Following His representatives is not only right, but will help you avoid trials and tribulations that result in more than mere humiliation. The only real question is if our leaders really are His representatives or not. If they truly are, then you have literally no reason in the world to worry.

I read an interview a couple years ago that has stuck with me in odd ways. Some magazine interviewed the inventor of the Ethernet (not a tool for catching the Ether bunny). Ethernet is the most popular way to network computers in a close geographical area. I have a small Ethernet network here at home, and any of you who have a network connection at work probably use Ethernet, too. Before the Ethernet concept, network traffic was highly regulated in order to insure that no data was lost in transition. There were strict rules--each computer had to know exactly where the data was headed and then wait for the right time to send it that way. In order for a computer to send data to another computer it had to map out the route and then wait for the block of time that the network allocated for data to head to that route.

The Ethernet changed all that. The key change for the Ethernet was nothing less than a leap of faith. In fact, that is the source for the name "Ether"net. In this new network, each computer just sends its data out (into the Ether) whenever if feels like it. Each computer simply exercises the "faith" that the data will be taken up and delivered to the correct destination. It works best when each "node" (computer) just assumes that the other nodes will understand the routing information attached to the data and push it on to the next station. This assumed competence is the heart of the Ethernet. Each computer knows the rules and assumes that the others will as well. Since each computer doesn't have to do all the mapping and routing, a lot of time is saved and the whole network goes a great deal faster. That faith creates efficiency. At the time, many people assumed that this faith would crash the network. Because scientists couldn't see and predict what would happen, they assumed that the result would be chaos. When the pioneer in faith (I wish I could remember his name, he died recently and I should try to at least remember who he was) ignored his critics and simply built his network, he showed that their fears were unjustified and the speed increases were, well, compelling.

The reason this concept has stuck with me so long is that the lesson learned by the Ethernet is not just a technological one. This principle of faith has been used profitably in many networks relying on complex routing. FedEx built a business around it despite the proposal earning a C from the professor it was originally submitted to. Wherever you have systems that interconnect, you will see benefits provided by faith between the components.

Our founding fathers knew this over two hundred years ago. They created a system of faith between interconnected individuals and adopted a system that left each component free to make its own decisions--determine its own route in the network. At the heart of freedom is faith. This fundamental principle is the foundation of our representative democracy. Freeing each individual to their own pursuits in a land rich in resources has created, in time, the most powerful nation currently on Earth. This is essentially the message of the Libertarians.

There are two problems with this over-rosy picture. First, there is a vital companion to freedom that is often over looked--much to our peril. In order for freedom to prosper, an underlying rule of law must exist. This is easy to establish in artificial environments like computer or package networks. Fundamental rules and infrastructure are provided in these systems that allow the faith of the system to have power. In human systems, this rule of law is needed in order to prevent people from having power over others unfairly. Basic guards to our freedom have to exist if our faith is to have any power to enhance our lives. Rules must exist to enforce contracts, prevent coercion, and protect property. The efficient growth of our economy is insured when people are free to contract with each other for their needs and they need to have recourse when those contracts are breached (to prevent swindlers). Leaving each unit (family) to fend for itself can seem cruel or neglectful, but is the key to our prosperity for as long as we remember to provide a system to enforce contracts, prevent coercion, and protect property.

The second problem with this system is our waning faith. We live in an age when people express increasing doubt in the capability and integrity of their fellow citizens. An increasing call in our society is to "protect" various groups from, well, often from themselves. They want to help them, to determine their course for them. Help is nice, but helping people by determining their course breaks the whole system down. If a node (computer) on a network insisted that certain packets couldn't be trusted to arrive safely on their own and decided to regulate the route in order to ensure arrival, not only is the intended packet delayed from its goals, but the whole network suffers a slow down as the route is hardened temporarily and that packet delivered. This is what is happening in our school systems right now as people determine that families aren't capable of determining the best avenue of learning for their children. The result is a hardened system that is frozen in order to hand-deliver certain packets that are feared to otherwise be lost--at a per-pupil cost that is twice the private school average.

And before you think I'm talking about liberals alone, consider that the same fear exists in other industries as they seek the hardening of their own routing systems. The United States sugar industry, for example, benefits from import tariffs that effectively double the retail price of sugar. This tariff limits your freedom to buy sugar at a lower price--oh, and anything that contains sugar is affected as well.

It is no coincidence that lately any new technology that streamlines our economy is introduced to us in terms of how many jobs it will cost. We seem to lack the faith that the people displaced by the new systems will be able to work at other positions in our economy. This lack of faith leads us to make poor decisions that end up hurting many more than it helps by denying new efficiencies that free people to work in capacities that are now more important to all of us. It is good news when the position of a worker in a factory becomes automated, because the labor of that worker can now be utilized in a manner that produces more benefit to all. I know that seems a callous analysis of the despair of a family that must search for new employ. And certainly, there is no small discomfort for those affected as they try to find new positions that will suit them. It would be easier on them if we hand-delivered them to a new destination. But that very hand-delivering (or worse, preventing the implementation of efficient processes) taxes the entire system, slowing everything down and eventually, costs everybody (including those protected) more than a temporary reshuffling will.

Please don't misunderstand. I do not mean that all assistance is useless in our economy and that displaced families should have no assistance. All I am saying is that they should not have protection. By following our instincts to protect (and encouraging the instincts to be protected), we take an inappropriate role in the workings of individuals capable of fulfilling their own routing needs. Displaced families, or even industries, should be left to determine their own course of action given their resources, abilities, situations and inclinations. Any assistance given them should be careful to support that autonomy and very wary of usurping it. Our ancestors understood this principle well when they taught the autonomy of the family and the responsibility of each to look after their own. Looking after your own used to be the way that society showed faith in their neighbors, the faith that they would each route their lives in a way pleasing to them, with an underlying assumption that we could expect them to live up to their promises and contracts. Communities were built and segregated by specialty, not by force and assigned allotment, but by one family choosing to supply food (a farm), one family choosing to buy goods from outside and sell them to their neighbors (a local merchant), one family choosing to pool excess resources to provide them to other families in need of temporary support (a bank). Others chose to ferry goods from one community to another, or connect communities by train, caravan or ship.

Those who consider the "look after your own" principle discredited seek to run the lives of others by restricting what they can or cannot do with their resources. You cannot use your land according to your best judgment because we fear you won't value it highly enough (environmental protection). You cannot use your labor according to your best judgment because we fear you don't value your labor enough (minimum wage). You cannot use imported cars because you do not value domestic cars highly enough (import tariffs). You cannot hire who you want for a job because you might not value the right people enough (affirmative action). You cannot interfere with the established education system because we fear you do not know what is best for your children (don't get me started). All of these represent a loss of faith in the judgment of our neighbors. These are examples where people allow their fears to corrupt the necessary rule of law to purposes that end up weakening instead of supporting our freedoms.

Watch people who want to protect you very carefully. If they aren't providing basic rule of law, then they are sending clear signals that they don't trust you. Beware of any law that seeks to piggyback on the needed functions of government to force people to have the same values they do. It's one thing to protect you from a thug who wants your wallet. It is quite another to want to protect you from the natural vicissitudes of life.