Self-fulfilling scepticism

One of the primary sources of infidelity is ignorance. And what’s the source of this ignorance?

Well, one major source of liberal ignorance is the fact that books are expensive. Unless you live within easy commuting distance of a major Evangelical research facility, you have to buy your own books.

Now, why would an unbeliever sink thousands of dollars into commentaries, introductions, reference works, journals, lexicons, and so on and so forth, if he already thinks that the Bible is bunk and Christianity is myth?

Short answer: he doesn’t.

In addition, most scholarly works are not what you’d call page-turners. You have to have a sense of duty to plow through this material.

An unbeliever has no such incentive.

And to the extent that he does do any investing, he’s only buys liberal literature. He’ll only read one side of the argument—the side he already agrees with.

The rule of thumb is that even though conservatives read liberals, liberals don’t read conservatives.

There are exceptions, but that’s the norm.

So we end up with a self-fulfilling form of scepticism. He’s a sceptic because he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t know because he’s a sceptic.

We run across this all the time at Triablogue. Apostates and other unbelievers who raise old objections as though they were new objections. Raising them as if these had never been answered before.

They are only new to them because they don’t know any better, and they don’t know any better because they have no motive to buy Evangelical commentaries, reference works, and so on in order to acquaint themselves with the answers.

So it’s a vicious cycle of unbelief. Unbelief feeds prejudice while prejudice feeds unbelief—like using one credit card to pay off another.