Independence, Objectivity & My Inability to Become an Expert on Anything

I like my religious experts like I like my x-variables: Independent.

And that's where I've got a problem.

I don't have enough time to watch Family Guy, so I definitely don't have enough time to become an expert historian, astrophysicist, philosopher, evolutionary biologist, and everything else that seems necessary to come to a solid, well-researched, conclusive position on the truth regarding the possible existence of God.

However, I can't trust anybody, including historians, astrophysicists, philosophers, evolutionary biologists, and everybody else who seems to know the information I need for a solid, well-researched, conclusive position on the truth regarding God's existence. 

I can't trust them because nobody's independent when it comes to religion, and if you're not independent of a thing, I have to assume you're not objective when you give public support for that thing.

You know how we're not supposed to talk about religion in polite company? That's because (1) no one's independent when it comes to religion, (2) people who aren't independent get pissed off, and (3) it's not nice to piss off polite people (no matter how much fun it is to watch them).

Independence is HUGE in the accounting profession because a financial statement audit is worthless if the CPA firm performing the audit is biased. We'd say the firm is "independence impaired." It's more politically correct.

Independence is like pasties for accountants. Without it we may not be allowed to work.

When I say that no one is independent when it comes to religion, I'm not saying that no one can be objective. What I am saying is that everyone's objectivity is suspect because nobody's independent.

CPAs are required to be independent "in fact and appearance." Independence "in fact" means not being affected by influences that may compromise one's professional judgment. It means having a mind set that allows "an individual to act with integrity and exercise objectivity and professional skepticism."

Most religions — either implicitly or explicitly — do not make room for professional skepticism, let alone amateur skepticism. And a lot of atheists will applaud their fellow atheists for doubting all religious belief, but pounce on them for doubting their atheism. 

Independence in appearance means that you conduct yourself in such a way that a reasonable and informed third party would conclude that your integrity, objectivity, and professional skepticism had not been compromised. 

CPAs have identified several threats to independence. I've restated them as they relate to religious belief. Although these threats may not actually impair your independence, they all impair the appearance of independence.

Advocacy threat — If you actively promote or defend a specific position regarding religious truth, your independence may be impaired.

Familiarity threat — If you have a close, longstanding relationship with a religious (or atheistic) community, your independence may be impaired.

Undue influence threat — If a religious (or atheistic) leader attempts to coerce you or exercise excessive influence over you, your independence may be impaired.

Self-interest threat — If you benefit from a set of religious (or atheistic) beliefs being true, your independence may be impaired. 

This independence crap applies to me, too. I can't trust myself to be objective because — just like everybody else — I'm not independent when it comes to religion. 

I get pissed off about religion sometimes. How does that make sense? I'm an agnostic. How can anyone piss me off about religion? If someone says I'm full of shit about God, I believe I'm obligated to say they're probably right. But sometimes I find myself getting defensive which belies my independence.

A material aspect of why I stayed in Christianity as long as I did was because the switching costs were so high. Everybody's religious switching costs are incredibly high. Whatever your worldview is, it's why-adjacent.* When your worldview changes, everything in your life is subject to change. Everything. 

Changing worldviews is possibly the ultimate of self-interest threats. Therefore, no one is independent. No one can be trusted. Not me. Not you. Not Deepak Chopra.

*I'm talking about your Simon Sinek "why": your nearly-impossible-to-verbalize core purpose.

My School Was Not Haunted: How Instincts and Reason Can Mess with Your Brain

Before my career change to accounting, I taught eighth-grade math for eight years at Dixon Middle School in Provo, Utah. The school was crazy old. While I was there, it celebrated it's 70th anniversary. That means lots of dead people suffered the universally traumatic experience of seventh grade on that campus.

Regardless, my school was not haunted.

First off, let's be clear. Any self-respecting ghost wouldn't haunt a middle school. It's too easy. Thirteen-year-olds are tormented enough by each other. A ghost would just be one more in a long line of people telling particularly sensitive seventh grade girls to "get out."

Plus middle-schoolers believe anything. Haunt the faculty restroom at the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and I'd be impressed. Get an eighth-grader to think they saw a ghost standing behind them in the mirror, and you're more of an underachiever of a ghost than the eighth-grader is as an eighth-grader.

As a teacher, every now and then, I would have to go back to school at night to get some work done. The janitors were usually the last ones to leave the building, and they would turn off the hall lights with a breaker switch or one of those weird light switch keys. So if I came back late enough, the lights would be off, and I had no idea how to turn them back on. 

My classroom was about three-quarters of the way down a long hall, and if the lights were off, I would quickly become engulfed in darkness to the point where I would have to run my hand along the wall of lockers, counting the classroom doors to find my room. I would fumble with my keys in the dark to unlock the door, and then slap the wall inside my classroom until I located the light switch.

And every time I had to do it, it freaked the hell out of me.

I mean, I kept it together. But it would freak the hell out of me. I'd get real panicky, and I didn't know why.

Late at night, that school scared the crap out of me. It scared the crap out of me when I was a believer, and it scared the crap out of me when I was an agnostic.

I've never believed in ghosts. When I was a Christian, I believed in the Bible, which meant I believed in demons, but I never believed their level of influence or activity was inversely proportional to a room's lighting. 

So I knew I shouldn't be scared. But I was, and I couldn't help it.

But the school WASN'T HAUNTED. 

I realized through that experience that it may be possible that the human perception of a supernatural realm could be completely explained as a collision of instincts and logic.

My instincts were telling me that I was walking down the hallway of death. Makes sense. In prehistory, I would've had a better chance of surviving if I had an overriding visceral repulsion to places where I couldn't see that bear. The one that wanted to eat my face.

Our incessant determination to find causal relationships also aided our survival. If we were able to determine a cause-and-effect relationship, we could leverage it for survival. But if we misinterpreted mere correlation as causation, we were (generally) not any worse off for it. 

So in the hallway, my feeling of dread was real. I knew there was nothing in my physical environment to cause the feeling of dread, but my brain wanted to create a narrative to arrive at a cause-and-effect relationship. 

It's easy to see how early civilizations could arrive at the conclusion of a non-physical universe that coexisted alongside the physical. This would give rise to superstition which would lead to belief in the supernatural which could eventually be codified into religious belief.

Despite my first-hand experience of how spooky it feels at night, there are no ghosts at Dixon Middle School. Similarly, 2004 was the only year in the history of the school that the teachers lost the faculty-versus-student basketball game. Many students thought that was evidence of God's existence. But since that was the only year I ever played, it's merely proof that my basketball skills can ruin a 70-year winning streak.

Personal Revelation & Minor Miracles: I Should Probably Be Mormon

My big brother, Bob, liked to tell me what he learned in youth group. He also like to tell me how he was going to change his life based on what he learned. That was how he would witness to me.

So one night he declared, "I'm gonna stop fighting you." (We fought a lot.) "I might try to defend myself if you start coming after me, but I won't fight back. Instead, I'll let the Holy Spirit thump you."

And at that moment, it was on.

I'd never won a fight, I'm two years younger than him, and he just green lit an ass whoopin'. Please realize, I wasn't mad, and I had no reason to fight him. My heart wasn't in it, but he just wrote a check with his face, and my fist was going to cash it.

Figuratively. We didn't punch too much. We wrestled to submission. So after a few seconds, I was sitting on his chest, pinning his arms with my knees, and slowly lowering a loogie towards his face.

After the loogie-lowering ritual and an extended period of sternum-jabbing, I went through the kabuki theater of repeating, "I'm calling a truce, and I'm gonna let you up now. Are you gonna be cool?" You have to say it about ten times before you confirm to yourself that you have no idea what's going to happen once you release your humiliated, loogie-faced, torture survivor.

Eventually I let him up, and he didn't jump me. As a matter of fact, he did exactly what he said he would do. And as I walked away from this decisive victory, my brother's voice echoed in the back of my mind: "I'll let the Holy Spirit thump you ... I'll let the Holy Spirit thump you ... " 

And I realized at that moment that I was getting thumped by the Holy Spirit. 

Personal revelation: Evangelical Christianity is true.

Six years later, I was a freshman at the University of Washington. I was getting ready to transfer to Brigham Young University. God had called me to be a missionary to Mormons. In preparation for my new ministry, I was meeting with Mormon missionaries for hours on end and attending a class called "Philosophies and Doctrines for Non-Members" at the Mormon Institute of Religion. I had dropped all but two of my classes that quarter. I was spending so much time analyzing Mormonism for weaknesses that I only had time for linear algebra and vector calculus. (That's a ten on the 1 to 10 humble brag scale.)

One afternoon, I was sitting in my dorm room, and started to pray. My prayer - as best I can remember it - went something like this: "God, I've been so focused on all this Mormon stuff. It seems like it's been a long time since I've just said, 'I love you.' Well, I love you." 

Without missing a beat, a voice in my head immediately said, "Then why don't you join my church?"

Personal revelation: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is true. 

There are Mormons who would punch their moms during sacrament meeting to have a testimony that good. If I converted to Mormonism, I would have been a rock star with that testimony. I would have been the Kurt Cobain of the LDS Church, mostly because I had voices in my head.

Fall quarter of my sophomore year was pretty amazing, spiritually. I got thrown together with a random roommate who would end up being the best man in my wedding. He's a fantastic guy with a big heart. And he was a Christian just like me.

One morning, he told me about the role I played in a miracle. The night before, he was having a hard time falling asleep. A girl from Bible study was on his mind. He felt like he should go to her dorm room to check on her. But he's such a quality guy, he was worried about his motivations. Maybe he was fabricating some fake prompting of the Holy Spirit just because she was cute. So he was stuck, unable to sleep and unwilling to act because of his doubts about the veracity of this spiritual prompting.

So he prayed for God to show him a sign if He indeed wanted him to go talk to the hottie. And immediately, in my sleep, I said, "Praise be to God! Glory to Jesus!" This was at least the second time God performed a miracle using a talking jackass.

My roommate found her awake in the lounge. He delivered a message of God's love that she really needed to hear that night.

He wasn't lying to me about my ecstatic unconscious utterance. He's one of the most honest, solid guys I know. I didn't consciously experience the miracle, but I have no reason to doubt that it happened.

Minor miracle: Evangelical Christianity is true.

One year earlier, I was attending one of the best classes I took in college: Comparative Western Religions. One day the professor (who was clearly not Muslim) told us a story about a trip he took to the Middle East. The final leg of his flight was filled with passengers who were openly Muslim. In the middle of the flight, the plane hit some pretty strong turbulence.

Turbulence is scary shit. Yeah, you play it cool on the outside, but sometimes you hit a patch of rough air that makes you realize that when a baby bangs a can of Pringles on her stroller, it's pretty fucking scary for the Pringles.

My professor ascertained that the majority of the passengers were quite poor, and this was very likely one of two flights they would take in their entire lives. Bad turbulence is even worse for inexperienced fliers because they're confident that they're going to die.

At this point, a Muslim lady stood up (breaking the fasten seat belt commandment) and prayed a prayer. Immediately the turbulence stopped, and the remainder of the flight was as smooth as a freshly ironed burqa.

My professor had nothing to gain from relaying this story, so I have no reason to believe he was lying.

Minor miracle: Islam is true.

Truth isn't discerned via Holy Spirit thumpings, auditory phantasms, ecstatic somniloquies, or well-timed mini-miracles. Otherwise, I'd be an Evangelical Muslim of Latter-Day Saints.