Ben’s Blog

This is very interesting: Why every Christian should (quite rightly) pass for an atheist.

When I was 17, I came across Sturgeon’s Law, enunciated by sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon, that 90% of everything is crap. Seems to me the law as stated is still probably within a standard deviation or two of being correct.

I liked the idea of adopting broadly applicable principles for living, and as I’m a rampant optimist and flagrant self-deceiver, Sturgeon’s law was helpful in questioning my own hype as much as anything.

I also came up with two of my own (it’s the kind of thing 17 year-olds do):

Everything is harder than you think – which is kind of the counter to Bart Simpson’s declaration, “My opponent says there are no easy answers… I say, he’s not looking hard enough!”

You’re almost never right. So you have to choose on which side you will err. (Actually, when I was 17, I probably phrased that differently: “… so you have to choose which side to err on…” – I’m sure the former is more grammatically correct, but I like the 17 year-old phrasing still.)

Now, I’ve hardly lived by these three pieces of wisdom, but they pop up in my brain every now and then. The first two orient me to complexity and critique, but I like the third best. I’m not condoning ignorance or willful disregard of evidence, but it seems to me that choosing who to stand with, and what to stand for, in a personal commitment that might ask for more than merely intellectual assent, is crucial – whether or not every last piece of evidence has been adduced, and every last argument answered.

Items one and two are about not taking shortcuts. Item three is about avoiding the endlessly deferred journey, never arriving anywhere at all.