Let’s consider how we humans find our sources of “authority.” Simply stated, we find these sources in other people, most reliably in people we know as whole persons.
We learn how to be human by observing other humans, at first our parents (more generically, our caregivers) and siblings (and other relatives and friends), then our teachers and peers, then our bosses, co-workers and a widening range of acquaintances (not to forget people we “know” only through television, movies, plays, songs, books, and now social media).
We instinctively evaluate these people as potential role models, both positive and negative. We ask ourselves, consciously or subconsciously, “To what extent do I want to be like that person, live my life the way that person is living life?” We emulate a role model, because we want that kind of life. As we grow to maturity, we move from role model to role model, depending on our experience with that person or that kind of person or with our attempts to emulate that kind of person.
We might like to believe that we reason our way to all our opinions, but seldom do we do so from personal observation or hard evidence. Think about it—how often do you accept something as true or right simply because it comes from a source you trust and admire, people you look up to? Much of the time, right? You are “taking their word for it.”
There is no shame in this. It is how we humans efficiently gain knowledge without having to experience everything ourselves or do all our own original thinking. We depend on our sources having done the hard work of unearthing and examining facts (including experience) and making sense of them through logical analysis leading to rational conclusions.
Who are these sources? All those people mentioned above.
You can also have “anti”-sources—if information comes from them, it must not be true. It works both ways, does it not?
We are attracted to those who seem to be what we want to be. We want whatever secret ingredient they have in their lives that enables them to appear admirable, worthy, or at least content. Often, we discover such people believe in the existence of a spiritual reality that gives structure and meaning to life in the here and now—a grand scheme of things. We ask ourselves: Could I believe in that spiritual reality, too? If only to enjoy the benefits of that structure and meaning in my life?
Yes, you could. We have an option to believe.
What if we have competing role models, as most of us do, including people we admire who are telling us that belief in a spiritual reality is irrational? Can we maintain intellectual integrity when believing such things? They may point out people who believe but whom we would never want to emulate. “Do you want to be like them or be associated with their kind?”
On the other hand, belief in a spiritual reality can never be based solely on reason chewing on observable evidence. It can never be totally rational; it must involve an “intuitive” leap of faith. Some of us can make that leap; others cannot. Given that neither is intellectually superior, both belief and disbelief can be intellectually respectable. We truly have the option to believe and the option to disbelieve. We have a choice.
Charles Darwin as a young adult had a role model he sought to emulate—his mentor and friend at Cambridge University, John Stevens Henslow. Professor Henslow was an ordained Anglican vicar, a sincere Christian, an accomplished natural philosopher (scientist) and esteemed teacher, a very good man with a loving family life. And he strongly approved of Charles as a student and a man. Henslow encouraged Charles to emulate him simply by allowing Charles to participate in Henslow’s way of life and patterns of thought and action, convincing Charles that he, too, could live and think like that. In so many ways, with Emma, Charles followed Henslow’s example in the life they built and enjoyed at Down House.
But Charles had other, competing examples he admired, both before and after his years with Capt. Fitzroy on the Beagle. That mix of influences persuaded Charles that he had no intellectually respectable option to emulate Henslow’s Christian faith—even though Charles acknowledged the key role of that faith in Henslow’s life. Those competing influences must have been strong indeed.
But if Charles had known what we know now, the perspective of history and the advances in scientific, theological, and philosophical thought, would he have seen an option to believe? Would Emma’s letter counseling openness of mind have persuaded him to explore possibilities beyond the reach of Victorian science?
Intrinsically unable to confirm or deny there is a spiritual realm beyond the material realm, Charles might have concluded that the healthiest mindset is to accept the joyous possibility of the spiritual as well as the dead certain reality of the material. Perhaps. Perhaps not. It is not a transition that a mind trained for decades like Charles’s could undertake without a great deal of internal resistance. After all, his mind would counter, where is the evidence?
Yet such a mind tends to unconsciously challenge the validity of any and all evidence or logical argument offered. Skepticism is a critically important tool of science, but it can become a way of life—a worldview—scientism.