After a full year of roaming the Tempe campus, many observations have flooded my brain and passed through the veil of bias that often overwhelms my conscience.
Being raised in a conservative household and attending a private Christian school for 13 years, certainly I am the last person to offer insightful opinions at a public university.
A couple times throughout the semester, I wrote about intelligent design. I was disappointed to see the response, which consisted primarily of insults hurled by overconfident atheists. I was hoping a traditional Catholic would disagree with me or maybe an enthusiastic scientist might compliment my efforts.
Thomas Fuller said, “He does not believe that does not live according to his belief.” With this in mind, we can’t really take ourselves seriously, can we? We already have preconceived notions about what we believe or even how to believe. I wonder how far we can be swayed in a lifetime after a childhood of indoctrination, whether it is strict fundamentalism or ardent liberalism.
Knowing that youth is the time when minds are most susceptible to molding, taking what we know with a grain of salt is imperative. That’s what’s so great about college; everyone takes everything with a grain of salt. This is transition from certainty to uncertainty.
All of this uncertainty leaves a lot of thinking for us to do. And that’s where I become confident in my bias, because the fact that I can be cognitive of cognition is something extraordinary.
C.S. Lewis, the Oxford theologian, said it best: “Suppose there were no intelligence behind the universe. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. Thought is merely a by-product of some atoms within my skull. But if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true?”
Yes, I understand intelligence doesn’t absolutely imply design, but from the atheistic viewpoint, virtually nothing is absolute anyway. And that’s exactly what Fuller was getting at — we all just believe what we want to in the end. If there’s anything I’ve learned for sure at ASU, that’s definitely it.
While some might be eager to succumb to the convenience of not knowing, I am going to ride proudly behind my bias until I can prove it wrong. Even if my pride will never be overcome, at least I can be comforted knowing that I’m trying.
So, embrace your bias, but don’t let it define you. Because as much as this culture might tell us, a belief system, race, level of intelligence, socio-economic status, religion — this is not what defines us. The preciousness of life should be enough to get us by until we get past ourselves.
Reach Houston at hfriend1@asu.edu.
