Confirmatory Bias & Contradictions

Some interesting thoughts from exchristian.net:

Confirmatory Bias

All human beings are beings are vulnerable to what psychologists call a “confirmatory bias.” This means that we all have a tendency, almost a compulsion, to seek information that confirms what we believe to be true.

Lawyers vs. Impartial Judges

Without even trying to, we behave like lawyers rather than impartial judges. We look for information that fits our views, we remember it better than contradictory information, and we are more easily able to retrieve it from memory than information that might challenge us.

As psychologist Robert Wright put it:

The brain is like a good lawyer: given any set of interests to defend, it sets about convincing the world of their moral and logical worth, regardless of whether they in fact have any of either. Like a lawyer, the human brain wants victory, not truth; and, like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for skill than for virtue.

Bible Difficulties - Contradictions

Evangelical Bible scholar, Gleason Archer outlined this approach in an essay entitled “Recommended Procedures in Dealing with Bible Difficulties.” Here is what Archer had to say about the seeming contradictions in his Bible:

Be fully persuaded that an adequate explanation exists, even though you have not yet found it. . . . Once we have come into agreement with Jesus that the Scripture is completely trustworthy and authoritative, then it is out of the question for us to shift over to the opposite assumption, that the Bible is only the errant record of fallible men as they wrote about God.

Archer’s point is clear. You must decide, first, that only a certain kind of explanations are possible -those in keeping with the Evangelical belief that the Protestant Bible is the literally perfect word of the Evangelical God. Thus, the right approach to biblical difficulties is to search for explanations and evidence that support this point of view.





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