Questions: Mutiny on the Cereal Aisle

"First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we believe."

- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg,
German scientist, aphorist, and satirist
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I recently received a card from a dear friend of mine named Benjamin Schnell.
Ben and I are modern-day pen pals which means we mail handwritten letters to each other about twice a year. In my case, it’s likely to be a postcard.

Toward the end of our college days together, Ben, then a graduating theology major, wrote a final term paper on a particularly sensitive point of SDA theology--the Investigative Judgment. I read it. We discussed it. And over the two years since that final semester, we've continued discussing religion--mine, his, and others'.

In Ben's most recent letter, he describes an old idea about the interplay of emotion and reason in establishing and deposing belief.

"...we manipulate evidence to come to the conclusion we want to come to. The more we know about the issues, and the higher the stakes, the more likely our emotions are going to alter our understanding of basic facts,...It's very interesting. I find myself and others putting questions on the shelf until we can come to a satisfactory "Adventist" or "Christian" answer. Until we find an answer that jives with what we want to believe, we'll keep manipulating the evidence or looking from different angles. Unless the stakes aren't high. In that case, we'll let the evidence say whatever it seems to be saying on the surface..."

I think we can't help but enter a place of doubt as we age and see more of the world because eventually (if not frequently) we encounter some "thing" that we cannot explain. When this happens we are faced with questions. Two of the most basic are 1) Can this be explained by my belief system? and 2)If not, what do I do not only with this troublesome "thing", but with my seemingly inadequate beliefs?

"Anyway that's where my brain has been recently...," writes Ben.

I am reminded of Elliot, a man who recovered from the removal of a brain tumor only to discover that he could no longer exercise the power of choice. His power of analysis remained intact, but not the power of choice. Sitting at his desk staring at a document to be signed, he could provide every possible pro and con for selecting a red pen to do the job; yet, just as easily, he could list advantages and disadvantages for using the black pen resting beside it. The incessant analysis paralyzed him for hours. He was, perhaps, the most rational man alive, and he was a cripple because of it. If an afternoon with black and red pens spelled frustration, a visit to the cereal aisle at the supermarket summoned his doom. Nothing left the shelves.
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For more on Elliot, listen to this RadioLab Short:
http://www.radiolab.org/2008/nov/17/overcome-by-emotion/
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Neurologists found that an important part of Elliot's brain had sustained damage post surgery, the part responsible for his emotions. It seems man cannot live by reason alone. An emotional impulse of some kind appears necessary to accomplish even the simplest choice. Black or red? Chex or Cap'n Crunch?

When it comes to matters of existential importance, what's the proper potion? Two parts reason, one part emotion, seasoned with Adventist education?
Is "I don't know" an acceptable answer?

It's high time I wrote Ben a biannual letter. As I compose it in my head, a voice with a British accent says:

"Oh, look, Miss Modern, the Post- is just arrived again. It seems one needn't leave a forwarding address for them to find you...What luck!"

Tah-dee-dum.