Avoid the Self Deception of Rationalization: The Blind Leading the Blind
Rationalization: we have all done it. You make up an excuse to justify what you want to believe without respect to the truth. If you want to discover the truth, then rationalization is your enemy.
We are told that we are destroyed for lack of knowledge:
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. — Hosea 4:6
If we fall victim to a rationalization, then there could be consequences.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” — John 14:6
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. John 16:13
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” — John 8:31–32
If we are studying the scripture, we must rightly handle the word of truth, and avoid rationalizations.
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. — 2 Timothy 2:15
Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness. — Ephesians 6:14
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” — John 4:24
So worshiping him requires the pursuit of truth, because He is truth.
Everyone will agree they want the truth, and everyone thinks they have the truth while everyone else is making some logical error. How can two people who both seek the truth draw different conclusions? How can you know that you have reasoned better than someone else? Are they engaging in rationalizations or are you? Someone is!
Attachment to Outcome
One of the biggest impediments to finding the truth is having a concious or unconcious attachment to a particular outcome or a fear of a particular outcome. If you want a cookie that is against your diet you can come up with a dozen reasons why you can rationally eat the cookie. If you don’t care if you eat the cookie or not, then you can rationally reject the cookie because it is against the diet you previously agreed to.
If you have a preconceived notion of who our creator is, what things are right and wrong, or even subtle traditions of thought inherited from your parents then you will automatically subconsciously rationalize excuses to arrive at your predetermined conclusion which is likely a lie.
If you are friends with a bunch of well connected Jews in Israel who have a certain calendar belief, you will have a major unconscious attachment to adopting their calendar to avoid offending them. You may even rationalize that given the ambiguity about the calendar, it doesn’t really matter so long as you call it Passover and Tabernacles and do it in the spring and fall.
Unacknowledged Fears
It could be unconscious fears that are difficult to even acknowledge. For example, fear of not fitting in, fear of losing a following, fear of being rejected, fear of having to change things in your life, fear of going against the crowd, fear of admitting past failure.
When you approach the study of scripture all of those fears are working behind the scenes to guide your interpretation by creating rationalizations. You will come up with a million different “reasons” why the Bible isn’t teaching you must avoid debt or perhaps you really want to eat some bacon so the Bible has clearly declared bacon acceptable to eat now.
Of course, people can rationalize in the opposite direction. They can invent rules to follow because they like being different, better, or the structure. The rules give them a feeling of superiority. They could rationalize reasons why scripture bans bacon because they don’t like the smell and don’t want others eating it around them. Or maybe they are vegans who want to save the lives of the pigs.
And if you ask someone if they are rationalizing, most will claim they are not. They will rationalize why they are rational! Rationalization Inception!
Save Yourself from Rationalization!
If you love truth, then you will have a healthy fear of your own unconscious rationalizations. This is what motivated me to write this blog: I wanted to reflect on my own thinking and ask how I can tell the difference between real truth and self-delusion. This is especially important when my interpretation of Scripture leads me to a very niche understanding that Nuclear destruction of the USA will happen on October 9th, 2024.
Furthermore, if I want to lead others into truth then they will need tools to overcome their own rationalizations! It doesn’t matter how many facts or how much logic you present someone if they are blind to their own rationalizations. You must attack the meta problem of their own reasoning, or they will justify eating the cookie no matter how much you show them the text of their diet or attack the ingredients with logic and cold hard facts.
Reason before Facts, not After
You are much more likely to reason accurately and avoid rationalizations if you do your reasoning before being presented with real world facts. This is the scientific method: create a hypothesis that you can test, use reason and logic to predict the outcome, and then do the test and accept the results according to your initial logic.
If you reverse the process, and come up with reasons after the test has been run then that is more likely to be a rationalization.
For example, if I ask you if a cookie is on your diet without having a cookie in front of you, you will probably answer “no, it is not”. Then if I ask you the same question with your favorite cookie, fresh out of the oven, right in front of you then you might consider “new information” and new definitions of the word “diet” or find a “cheat clause” that you never acknowledged before. It all depends on what the meaning of “is” is.
Confusing Interpretation with Meaning
When it comes to studying scripture, we all struggle with remembering that our interpretation is not the same thing as what the text actually says. For example one person might interpret the text as describing a flat earth, and another as a globe. The text does not convey enough meaning on its own to substantiate either interpretation.
Both of these people are looking at the same text, one sees 6 another 9. The person who wrote it intended to communicate only one of those two. If you take your interpretation as the truth then you will rationalize everything else.
Now assume the black letter is “scripture”, the literal Hebrew letters, and the orange letters are “observable, testable, reality”, aka “all of creation”.
Someone who has confused their interpretation with the meaning will end up rationalizing and will stick to their interpretation that it is 9 even if 9+2 != 8 and even if there is no such number as an upside down 2. They will claim the yellow person is making up lies about their observations of “+2 = 8” or that the symbol “8” really means “11” or that “9 + 2” really does equal 8 because + is really a sideways x and 9x2 is 18 and 1x8 is 8.
Maybe they have a lottery card with the number 9 on it. If they can come up with any way to convince others that it is a 9 then they will be rich! They cannot see the truth because they are so attached to the outcome of winning the lottery.
The end result is people fighting over interpretations forever rather than searching for ways to test the truth. It doesn’t matter how long you stair at something ambiguous or subjective it won’t get you closer to the truth. You must find something else to establish it. It is not a beauty contest where we can assume our preference is right.
And of course we can only reliably create and evaluate tests for the truth if we are not bought into any particular outcome.
Flat Earth vs Globe Rationalization
In the absence of rationalization the Flat Earth Debate would have ended before it even got started. This is because both sides would put forth reproducible experiments and only one side would reliably reproduce the results in a manner that can predict the future sun, moon, and stars or the distances and travel times between two points on earth, or a reliable map.
However, if one side believes the scriptures unequivocally say the earth is flat or a globe, then rationalization kicks in to deal with anything that contradicts their interpretation of scripture.
Hypothetically, if a flat earther went to the south pole and was converted by observing the 24 hour sun, the other flat earthers would rationalize that they were bought off and entirely ignore the evidence. Or they would get a really creative theory on how a 24 hour sun could work on a flat earth model even if it contradicts their other theories. Any theory developed after the fact is suspect, especially if it cannot be tested.
Now I am certain they will accuse the globe proponents of the same thing, but how can we really know which side is the one doing it? Maybe I am rationalizing the globe, how could I tell?
I think the proof is in the pudding, those who use a globe model reliably predict the positions of the sun, moon, and stars. They build technologies such as GPS that could only work if their hypothis about the shape of the Earth were correct.
In my own experience writing software projecting imagery taken from airplanes looking at the ground to build a map from tiled images. I can tell you that if you don’t factor in the earth’s curvature your puzzle pieces will not fit and the resulting map will not be functional for the end users. Any flat earth organization could raise a million dollars, lease an airplane, and fly over any city and test their projection assuming a flat earth against projections assuming a round earth. The software could even be tested and calibrated using a simulated camera moving over a model desktop globe vs a flat image. It’s been done by those who understand the globe, but it hasn’t been done and it won’t be done by flat earthers because people will rationalize ways to avoid the experiment, even if it was completely funded. All the while, these same people use tools like Google maps and Google Earth that are only possible by doing this.
Stop Searching too Soon
One of the biggest problems is people stop searching or evaluating when they are content with their existing answer. This is a from of rationalization that protects you from work. You choose to interpret it as a 9 even though it could also be interpreted as a 6. 9 is a nice number, a bigger number, and it is the one you saw first or makes you different from everyone else that sees 6. Maybe you don’t like those who see 6 so you choose 9. All of the reasons for choosing 9 over 6 are not proofs of the author’s intent, but your own subjective preference for the number 9 over 6.
Allowing the ambiguity to exist is choosing ignorance and pretending there is no ambiguity is a rationalization. Now it may be the case that you find a random piece of paper with a number on it that could be a 6 or a 9. You can admit that you don’t know which one and that you lack the evidence to decide. That is intellectually honest, so long as you diligently search for evidence before rationalizing that you lack evidence.
Notice one of the favorite techniques used by dishonest debators is to claim that the other side “has no evidence”. While that can be true, it usually isn’t if both sides are honestly seeking the truth. This is kind of like failing to acknowledge that a 6 could look like a 9 from a different perspective.
Ignoring Evidence without Just Cause
People like to cherry pick evidence that supports their conclusion and are quick to ignore everything to the contrary. They will often “assume” there must be something wrong with the other data point without articulating it. They will accept evidence from one source and reject from another even if both are equally verifiable or unverifiable. Other times they will accept only part of what one source says. Ignoring the existence of “+ 2 = 8” doesn’t help find the truth.
Addressing all evidence is a lot of work, because people can present an abundance of unsubstantiated information. It takes 10x the energy to debunk the lies than to state the truth, but if you never consider that your understanding of “the truth” could be the lie then you may miss the truth. The more you know and understand the truth, the easier it is to spot and demonstrate the lies.
Looking for Tests
To choose between 6 and 9 you must seek out tests. If it means 6 then X would be true and if X is not true then it is probably not 6. And if it isn’t 6, then it must be 9 and if it is 9 then Y must be true. And if neither X nor Y is true then maybe it isn’t a 6 or 9. The key to the test is that you must avoid circular reasoning and prove X and Y without reference to your interpretation of 6 or 9.
This is my approach to proving the Calendar and the Sabbath cycle. This is my approach for testing Prophecy and dates. It is also my approach for debunking other theories. If I can prove a logical contradiction then there is something wrong with the theory or facts.
But all of these proofs are pointless in the face of rationalizations such as:
“There must be something wrong with your proof”?
“I don’t care about your other evidence, I have all the evidence I need… and point at their favorite cherry picked interpretation as if their interpretation was meaning”.
It is certainly possible there could be a flaw with a test, but that is an invitation to identify the flaw with the test and propose a new test that addresses the flaw.
Case Study: Testing Dead Sea Scroll Calendar
Certain solar calendars have the same date fall on the same day of the week every year. This is a nice property and I can understand the appeal; however, it must be tested against scripture.
Certain groups interpret Enoch solar calendar, Jubilees, and Dead Sea Scroll Calendars as resetting the weekly cycle at the start of every year; therefore, the day of the week for each calendar date is the same every year.
If scripture can prove the day of the month and the day of the week at the same time, then it should align with the Dead Sea Scroll calendar if those calendars are true. So you start with the hypothesis that, if the DSS calendar is true, then any scripture we find will align with it.
Now consider. The 15th day of the 2nd month after their departing out of the land of Egypt was a 7th day sabbath. We know this because of Exodus:
On the 15th day of the 2nd month after their departing out of the land…they all grumbled against Moses. And it shall come to pass, that on the sixth day they shall prepare that which they bring in; and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily.
And Moses and Aaron said unto all the children of Israel, At even, then ye shall know that the Lord hath brought you out from the land of Egypt.
And in the morning, then ye shall see the glory of the Lord.
And Moses said, This shall be, when the Lord shall give you in the evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread to the full;
— Exodus 16
See, for that the Lord hath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day. — Exodus 16:29
And of course, if you assume the sun, moon, and stars haven’t changed by supernatural intervention since the Exodus, then it also disproves the Saturday Sabbath.
Of course, Saturday theorists will point to Joshua’s long day when the sun and moon stood still as evidence that there was a supernatural intervention which undermines the ability to accurately simulate the sky past that date. And I would agree with them on that point. Therefore this mismatch is evidence of the long day if they can prove Saturday by other means. That said, they haven’t proven the long day interfered, it is just an assumption that gives them room to discount evidence. In other words, until there is evidence that the long day actually interfered with the physics of the sun, moon, and stars and was not some kind of supernatural “vision” given to the people in the war they must acknowledge the test gives some probability that their theory is false.
The Enoch Paradox and Flat Earth
One of my upcoming discussions with Parable of the Vineyard is whether or not The Book of Enoch is scripture. There are many people who interpret Enoch to prove flat earth and the calendar.
There are some who interpret Enoch to support the solar calendar, which I just disproved with scripture; therefore, if they hold their interpretation to be the only correct interpretation of Enoch, then I can safely assert that they cannot claim Enoch is scripture. Others interpret Enoch in support of a Sliver Lunar calendar; therefore, Enoch must be tested against that interpretation as well.
If they insist that Enoch can only mean flat earth, and I take them at their word, then all of my evidence of the globe can be brought to bear as evidence that Enoch is not Scripture.
If they acknowledge that Enoch can be interpreted as compatible with a Globe then they have just given up their scriptural “evidence” for flat earth because it could be a 6 or a 9 and it requires other outside facts to disambiguate.
They are then forced to claim that the Bible can only be interpreted as Flat Earth, when in reality billions interpret it as compatible with the Globe.
If the Bible told me the sky is green and I look up and see a blue sky, then I would assume my interpretation of the Bible must be mistaken. Maybe it was green in the past, but it is blue now. Same applies to Flat Earth. If they insist that it is green today because the Bible “says so”, and people with eyes to see and accept that the only interpretation is that the sky is green. Then they must conclude the Bible is false and cannot be trusted. Likewise, many people who accept the interpretation that the Bible teaches flat earth use that interpretation as a rationalization for rejecting the Bible. This is why Flat Earth interpretation of the Bible is often promoted by atheists looking to discredit the Bible in the eyes of those who understand the globe.
Adam, from Parable of the Vineyard, has already conceded to me that Enoch and the Bible could be legitimately interpreted under the globe model; therefore, I can avoid the flat earth debate with him. His argument for flat earth must now be built entirely upon non-scriptural evidence given his statement that scripture is ambiguous and could legitimately be interpreted either way. His only basis for choosing is the science and observations made and not divine revelation. He will also admit that he has not studied the arguments for or against flat earth throughly even though he has attended Flat Earth conferences. I must commend his humility, even if he does teach Flat Earth with more certainty than is warranted by his own admissions of ignorance.
Anyone adopting a minority opinion should have a mountain of evidence that they throughly understand and can present.
I bring up Adam’s statements because they have been made publicly. Adam and I are friends and my target is the rationalization, not the person. We all rationalize, but we are not all humble. Adam is an example of a very humble individual who seeks God and truth, but nevertheless, in my opinion, is caught up in rationalizations he is unaware of. If Adam is blind to his rationalizations, then I could be blind to my own and that is a humbling thought.
Acknowledgement of Unconscious Rationalizations is First Step
Once you are aware of this blind spot you can be pro-active in seeking to counter it. Then you are less likely to be deceived and more likely to discover the truth. You will question every fact, you will allow for multiple potential and contradictory interpretations to remain ambiguous without assuming your preferred interpretation is the meaning Yah intended.
That said, people can get very creative at interpreting things to mean the exact opposite of what they mean and not all interpretations are valid. For example, if it goes beyond just a change in perspective or choosing a different variant of the Strongs definition or alternative homonym.
For example, claiming the a 6 or 9 could be interpreted as a 3.
So while we should try to understand everyone’s perspective, we cannot give people license to claim things could mean anything or add inappropriate context.
Patience with our Brothers and Sisters
Now that we are aware of all the ways we all fall victim to self-deception via rationalization we can have patience with others.
Philippians 2:3–4, “ Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.”
Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” … Jesus also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?…
How can you say, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while you yourself fail to see the beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. — Luke 6:37–42
When it comes to rationalizations we are all blind men and we need to work extra hard to remove the spec from our own eye before judging others as blind.
October 9th Rapture and Fall of Babylon
So am I right about October 9th being the fall of Babylon and the Rapture? I did my best not to rationalize by disassociating myself from the outcome. I wasn’t looking for rationalizations to support every feast day that we come across, like many watchmen do. I wasn’t looking for signs in the stars on every night.
Woe unto you that desire the day of 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light. — Amos 5:18
Our desire for the rapture can blind us to our interpretation of scripture, and therefore the “Woe” is partially realized through our own continual self deception via rationalization.
Now that I have stuck my neck out there on an interpretation of Scripture pointing and History at October 9th, 2024, I must be extra diligent to continue considering new information even if it means recognizing a major sunk cost in promoting my current understanding.
