There is none so blind as those who will not see
Proverbs represent the pithy distillation of wisdom tested by successive generations,and, if deemed true, passed on to next generations. The proverb, “There is none so blind as those who will not see” comments upon the condition of stubborn blindness. A refusal to face the truth or the evidence, for ulterior reasons, leads to the worst form of blindness—a wilful, determined ignorance. Or, as one sage put it, an ignorance that is invincible.
But this kind of blindness is the worst, not just because of its inveterate nature, but because of its moral culpability. It is at root a blindness which is evil since it arises out of an act of the will. In this case, ignorance is not bliss, but wickedness.
It is ironic that modern Athens betrays on every hand this worst form of blindness. Ironic, because modern Athens boasts of its enlightened character. Its much vaunted “scientific method”, its scholarship, its institutions of research, its mass media promulgating knowledge far and wide, its halls of learning, its publicly funded education system, its technological prowess—all play a part in reassuring us that modern man is truly advanced, enlightened, and wise. The modern Athenian citizen has banished all superstition and ignorance from the playground. Or, so the mantra runs.
Every human action, including the discovery and promulgation of knowledge, draws deeply upon a reservoir of assumptions. In the case of learning and research those assumptions will determine from the outset what conclusions you are likely to draw. Evidence or data that conflicts with the pre-determined conclusions will be explained away. There is none so blind as those who will not see.
The honest broker, the truly enlightened, the properly wise commences with a frank disclosure of his fundamental and guiding assumptions. He puts them out there for all to see. He discloses his prejudices from the beginning. He is rigorously self-conscious of them. Of course, this procedure—the only one which avoids the trap of invincible moral culpable ignorance—forces a great deal of humility into academic and learned debates. That's partly why it is avoided like the plague. Declaring one's pre-commitments from the outset forces everyone to face up to the fundamental circularity of all knowledge—which, to the modern rationalist Athenian, is a deep embarrassment.
The dishonest broker will not acknowledge his pre-commitments. Rather, he appeals to the neutrality and objectivity of the facts, of the data, and of his “seeing things as they really are”. His claim to authority is based upon the “evidence”. He presents himself as dispassionate, detached, objective. For him, knowledge is not circular because he, the investigator, has not intruded himself onto the facts. He is not part of the facts. His pre-commitments have not informed him throughout. His net has not determined from the outset what fish he will catch. The dishonest broker, by denying the circularity of all knowledge, including his own, is nothing more than a propagandist.
A couple of examples may serve to illustrate tendency to wilful culpable ignorance. I am currently reading a truly remarkable book (Norman Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? The Search for the Secret of Qumran. [London: BCA, 1995]) The initial modern discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (there were prior discoveries) occurred in 1947. For 50 years it was asserted that these scrolls were produced by a Jewish sectarian community, the Essenes, living at Qumran on the Dead Sea during the time of the incarnation of Christ our Lord.
It has now finally been demonstrated to have been an egregious error. But for 50 years the error held sway amongst scholars, governments, universities, journals and media. Fifty years of error in a supposedly enlightened world! Reputations and careers were made by promulgating the error. Careers were ruined by those with the temerity to question the then current orthodoxy. There is no doubt that the reigning mode of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship for over half a century was flat out dishonest and culpably ignorant. How did this happen in such an enlightened, modern age? It occurred very simply. Here are the steps:
1.Initial scroll research asserted the Essence theory without a full disclosure of the fundamental assumptions lying behind the theory which undergirded it. (In this particular case, the assumptions were utterly baseless, and had never been examined, verified or tested.)
2.Academics began promulgating the theory as established fact—based on the “evidence”.
3.Those who questioned the theory were personally attacked and ridiculed as fantasizing ignoramuses.
4.A wilful sociology of ignorance took over. The more the error was stated, the more widely it was promulgated, the more believable it became. Credulity runs in packs. Repetition means truth. Mantras have huge influence in a culture dominated by culpable ignorance as is the case with modern Athens.
5.As data or evidence was subsequently found that did not fit with the Essene theory, it was explained away (“the evidence was forged”, etc).
Eventually, the theory collapsed and was shown up for the folly that it was from the beginning. So, we had a grand conspiracy—but one where the culpable perpetrators allowed themselves to be duped and then defended their duplicity. They turned out to be nothing more than propagandists. This arose because they suppressed their starting assumptions.
Now, of course, if they had been honest from the beginning and disclosed them, their initial findings on the origin and provenance of the scrolls would have been far more tentative, far less sensational, far more humble, and much more quickly revised and corrected. The circularity would have been evident from the beginning, and therefore much more quickly scrutinized and (in this case) rejected.
A church caretaker once noticed the preacher had left his sermon notes on the pulpit. Scrawled in the margin at one place in the manuscript was the notation: “Weak point—speak more loudly.” The prevailing modern blindness which refuses to accept the circularity of all knowledge and hides fundamental pre-commitments and assumptions has fallen into the same deceit: the modern world thinks that by repeating something loudly and often, it establishes its veracity. Truth becomes a matter of shouting down the opposition. Truth becomes politicized. Truth becomes propaganda.
Another example, far more widespread, is the current prevailing Athenian belief in Evolutionism. This truly has become the Great Lie of the modern world. But it has been allowed to prosper because of the unwillingness of those who recite its mantras and incantations to make its fundamental premises explicit. And for good reason. If they did so, the circularity would soon be scrutinised and shown to be vicious, not virtuous.
Evolutionism asserts the randomness of the universe and insists that randomness accounts for the creation.
Imagine at the commencement of each evolutionist tract the following disclosure was made: “My starting assumption is that the universe is random, chaotic, and the ultimate reality is brute chance.” Who would bother to read further? The very disclosure itself is vitiated by the starting assumption. Or, if the starting assumption is meaningful (that is, we understand the meaning of the proposition) it cannot possibly be true.
Consider some of the assumptions packed into the initial disclosure:
1.“My”: a personal pronoun asserting identity and personality and distinction from those persons who are not “me”.
2.“starting”: the word indicates commencement and implies a procession of events or activities thereafter. Procession implies continuity, connectedness, relation, order.
3.“assumption”: a noun meaning a belief set or a propositional statement, which implies a world where meaning is not only possible but it can be represented in propositional forms.
4.“is”: third person singular, present tense of the verb “to be”, implying continuity of existence, a settled state, non-randomness.
5.“that”: a conjunction, introducing the following noun clause, implying that in the world things such as matter, ideas, and concepts can be joined together and related meaningfully.
We could go on, but the point is made. The initial disclosure that all evolutionists should make only has meaning if the world is anything but what they assert it to be: that is, not random, but ordered in both space and time, such that regularity and continuity actually exist, along with personal identity.
As Karl Popper once said, with respect to Evolutionism: if evolution can be described, it cannot possibly be true. If it were true, it could never be described.
The circularity of Evolutionism is vicious because some of the fundamental assumptions upon which it trades and is built exclude the very possibility of it being asserted or described in the first place. So we are left with loud, insistent repetitions of the nonsense to confirm its veracity. We are left with propaganda.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. Athens is awash with vacuous, wilful, evil ignorance. It is racked with a frenzied suppression of the truth. It has built an edifice of scholarship on a sea of self-contradictory nonsense. Athens is the great charlatan, the peddler of superstitions. But it wills it to be so. It wants it to be so. Anything but the truth. Therefore, God has given it up.
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