The flight attendant calls for everyone's attention: "Ladies and gentlemen, the pilot and copilot have both become ill, but don't worry -- two people have volunteered to land the plane. First we have Chris, who has 10 years of experience flying this model of airplane, and has been employed as a professional pilot for 20 years without incident. However, Chris comes off as a little nerdy. Next, we have Bill, who has never flown before. But look how confident he is. Doesn't he just seem like pilot?"
The choice is clear. None of us would hesitate to place our trust in the qualified candidate. And yet, time and again, people choose to ignore the expert in favor of actions and opinions that have little or no rational basis. Why would anyone do this? The answer is simple: Fear.
It's often easy to see why people would avoid the rational choice. Many parents choose not to vaccinate their children because they have been misled. A falsified study and a celebrity endorsement started the ball rolling, but there are few things more potent than parents' fear for their children. So the fear of autism wins out because it seems immediate (give the shot, cause the condition) whereas the fear of measles seems abstract (I've never met a person with measles, and maybe I can protect my kids from encountering any). When fear meets bad science, lives are lost.
The same is true with global warming: Those who deny the overwhelming scientific evidence and expert consensus feel no urgency ("it snowed today! So much for global warming!"), but they do fear a slowed economy should action be taken. And so rather than choosing the "qualified pilot," we end up with global-warming denier Lamar Smith, R-Texas, serving as chairman of the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, which will steer our policy on global warming. This choice will have an enormous impact on people's lives worldwide, primarily harming the poor, who are less equipped to adapt to global crises. It's a choice made not out of rational thought, but out of fear.
This pattern repeats in a multitude of issues. People denounce the role of expertise on the Alaska Judicial Council even though the system works, because lawyers just seem untrustworthy. People denounce the expertise of biologists, even though evolution is overwhelmingly accepted by the world's scientific community, because humans evolving from lower life forms just seems weird. People denounce the idea that the universe is 13 billion years old because it just seems too like too big a number -- even though this not only ignores experts in science, but also experts in theology, for whom using Genesis to deny evolution and an "old" universe represents a misunderstanding of the purpose of the book.
Fear eclipses truth. People naturally react with fear when someone tells them their deeply-held beliefs are wrong, and in the absence of legitimate information -- to protect their preconceptions -- they latch onto less valid or downright discredited sources. This fear is at the heart of confirmation bias, which causes people to believe only the "facts" that support what they already believe. It is the lifeblood of propaganda machine Fox News, which uses the word "elite" as an insult, and speaks of a Harvard education as if it were a liability.
For many issues, this is not a problem. If a person wants to believe that the book of Genesis describes six literal days of creation, that's not going to hurt anybody. However, if a person is so fearful that expertise might challenge a preconception that they tamper with the judicial system, expose children to disease, or endanger millions with global warming, then that fear erodes the well-being of society at large, and in many cases, endangers lives.
We've all heard the stories of experts who have been proven wrong. And we all know that it is our duty to challenge authority when authority is wrong. But we must make this challenge evident and with rational thought. It's not enough to say it just seems wrong. The bar is set much higher than that. We define ourselves by our choices, and our choice to deny expertise defines us a people of fear, rather than a people of reason.
Rev. Matt Schultz is pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Anchorage. He sits on the steering committee of Christians For Equality, and he moderates the interfaith group "Better Together."
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.