The Arrogance of Disbelief

     This is gonna be a long one.
​     There’s this thing that people do that has always bothered me. I wrote about it in my diary last year:

     How do you reconcile your belief in nothing supernatural whatsoever with the fact that people you know and love and trust have seen/heard/experienced things that seem to prove there is something else out there? Do you tell yourself that they must have just imagined whatever it was? How does that work for you? People you’ve known for decades, people you know really well. Do they imagine things a lot? Have you known them to see or hear things that aren’t there? Is this a common occurrence? Are you really happy with that conclusion? Does it really seem “good enough”? Is that really easier to believe than the fact that there might be something out there that you don’t know about and/or don’t understand? It seems to me like it’s actually an even bigger logical leap to believe someone you know and trust is randomly “imagining” or seeing shit that’s not there.
​     Another common line you give is that “there must be some explanation.” What you mean by that isn't that it could be something we don't know yet. You mean that it must be something perfectly normal that we’ve seen before and happens all the time, but for some reason this one time it wasn’t as obvious as usual. Okay yeah, there are times when this is the case. But in certain others, it’s clearly not. Again, when it’s someone whose sanity and intelligence you know and trust, what makes you think you’re so much smarter than they are that you know that whatever it was they experienced was perfectly normal but just seemed odd? That is just so…arrogant. You don’t know. You know how I know you don’t know? Because you can’t provide that explanation. You can provide theories, but you don’t know for sure. So then we’re back at that same place again: where you choose to believe something you don’t know, just because you want to believe it, rather than choosing to believe that there’s something out there that you can’t actually explain. And again, what’s the difference between you and them, supposedly, in this case? There is none. I’m sorry, but there is no difference between you choosing to believe it was something science already knows about and me choosing to believe it’s something science hasn’t shown us yet. You just tell yourself there’s a difference because it seems more “rational” and probably more “intelligent” to you. “Smart” people don’t believe in ghosts! Only idiots would believe in something you can’t see. Like, you know…atoms and molecules. Viruses and bacteria. The kind of stuff that people thought was “magic” until a century or two ago. Why is it so difficult to be open to at least the possibility? Why is it such a challenge to say “I don’t know…could be”? I don’t understand that. I don’t understand that level of arrogance.

     While perusing reddit a few months later, I found someone else talking about it, and they went into it a little more and said it better than I ever could. I’ve searched, and I can’t find the actual post I took it from. I thought I might have saved it in my account, but apparently I didn’t. I just copied it directly, without usernames, into my diary, because at that time I wasn’t expecting to ever need to credit anyone. Now I feel bad, because I want to give this person credit. If by some miracle you’ve seen this post, or you are this redditor, let me know!!! Not only do I want to give the proper credit, but I want to personally thank this person for so clearly laying out the exact reasons behind my frustration with this behavior. It’s something that has always made me so angry, and I understood why but I could never have put it so clearly.
     The reddit thread was probably something about “unexplainable” experiences, because those are some of my favorite posts and threads. Someone commented saying they wouldn’t believe such-and-such, and another person countered with the following:

     You can believe someone when they tell you they saw a ghost/monster without believing said ghost/monsters exist. One is about someone else’s experience, the other is about the existence of paranormal activity. You believe she isn’t lying, you believe she experienced something, and because you support your loved one, you look into what they saw/experienced without doubting them. To do anything otherwise is to value your own experiences and belief system over the person you supposedly love, value, and trust. It’s not rational. It’s ego.

     Frankly, this would have been enough for me. This would have given me a simple way to pinpoint and explain what exactly it is that makes me so angry and frustrated with people when they do this. But there’s more – way more. And it just gets better.
     The first person then said, “would you actually believe she saw a monster? Because if [so]...that's not a rational response.”
     And they got this in reply – the most wonderfully worded, clear, brutally honest retort that breaks it down clearly:

     It's not an irrational response. It is a response of the ego where you simply value the limitations of your own experiences and belief system vs someone else's. In this particular example, the "someone else" is someone you know well, trust, and love.
     If you remove the word "monster/ghost" (which is what I'm assuming is the problem here) and replace it with "she saw a kraken/giant squid" ...you would be dismissing that they exist and are very real, simply because you "didn't believe in them" and simply go look at what was hauled in.
     I'm a scientist. I don't believe in a lot of things too. But we (science) have taken a longer time to "discover" things that are known to local communities/fisherman ...simply because we didn't believe them, thought they were kooks, and didn't look. So I'm applying the same logic to this.
   If someone (particularly that I know and trust vs a conman!) tells me that they saw the boogeyman, I am going to believe they saw the boogeyman.
​   Now I may find that my beloved suffers from schizophrenia, delusions, carbon monoxide poisoning, sleep paralysis, a number of other possibilities including as yet unknown disorders. I may also find something that I did not know existed, that aptly fits his/her description i.e. the boogeyman himself.
 
"A frog in a well cannot discuss the ocean, because he is limited by the size of his well. A summer insect cannot discuss ice, because it knows only its own season. A narrow-minded scholar cannot discuss the Tao, because he is constrained by his teachings.” - Zhuangzi
     
      It is not "gullibility", it is being open-minded. It is not being "rational", it is giving into ego.
      The rational thing to do would be to go look, explore, discover, learn.
     Science and "fact" result from experimentation, exploration, and discovery. It is fuelled by curiosity of the unknown.
     Restricting yourself by the limits of "what you believe to be true" is the opposite of rational. That is what is referred to as "faith".
   I believe people agree with me, because they disagree with your stance on calling people irrational/gullible because your "faith" differs from theirs BEFORE you do the investigative part.
     This is literally the argument of flat Earthers and science deniers. I "believe" therefore I will not explore the possibility of anything that differs from my beliefs.
     What you replied in your initial comment was that if someone you TRUST, and know to be sane and compatible enough with your "thinking" to marry (i.e. make a life partner) came to you and said something that did not align with what you hold to be true at that specific point in time, you consider it irrational/gullible to believe them enough to explore the possibility of truth behind what they experienced. That is ego. Critical thinking is thinking critically. Not denial of alternative possibility.

     THANK YOU.
     I have a hard time understanding how and why people do this. No, not “a hard time.” I don’t get it at all.  If someone I trust tells me something, I believe them. Just like the posts say: If I think the person is sane and compatible enough with my thinking, I will believe them, regardless of my personal opinions or lack of experience with whatever they’re talking about. Yes, there might be an already known, easy explanation for whatever it was, but then again, maybe there’s not.
     My closest friends don't do it, and there’s a reason for that. You'll never get close to me if you judge me. I just won’t let you in. We might be "friends," but there will be huge aspects of me that you'll never get to see.
     I was talking with one of them about it recently, and she showed me a clip from a TV show that quoted Walt Whitman: “Be curious, not judgmental.” (But he probably spelled it with an E after the G, because that was a long time ago.) I didn’t realize this was a motto I live by, but it definitely is. It’s not that I’m gullible, and that I’ll believe anything. Far from it. But I know there are way more things in the world than I could even hope to understand – that humanity itself can even hope to understand. And I’m okay with that. I actually like it. And I don’t think that what’s right for me – what I do, what I like, what I think, what I believe – is right for everyone. I’m perfectly aware that I’m a frog in a well...for now, anyway. I hope that when I die, my soul will go on and I’ll learn the answers to some of these things that I wonder – and things I can’t even wonder because I can’t even begin to imagine them. Until then, I’ll wonder as deeply as I can about as many things as I can, real or imaginary. Why the hell not?