"Magical Thinking"
By Todd Strandberg
How can a person know he or she is not in error? Because we are the ones judging our own thoughts, it's not easy to determine if we are up to the task. Surely, there are other folks who consider some of your views to be void of sound reasoning. So the question remains, who is correct?
After many years of contemplation, I've come to realize that magical thinking is one of the most common causes of erroneous beliefs. It is the ability to draw conclusions that are based on a person's desire for what reality should be, not necessarily upon what reality actually is. People simply believe things that have no connection to logical thinking. Here are some examples:
Relics of saints can transfer
spiritual energy. The pet psychic who claims she can read your dog's mind by
looking at a photo of the dog. Doing an Indian rain dance will cause
precipitation to fall from the sky. Wearing your favorite lucky shirt will
improve your bowling score. The Bible contains hidden teachings that only
certain groups can understand.
It's very appealing to believe
one is able to create whatever reality one so desires. Someone who uses magical
thinking will have the satisfaction of always being correct.
However, with the
ability to create your own evidence for your beliefs, there is nothing to
prevent error from creeping into your consciousness.
The imagination is a wonderful
tool for innovation, but without guidelines to govern this creative energy, we
will eventually get off track. Our brains should come with the warning: “Danger,
the lack of a factual foundation may cause a sudden shift from reality.”
Overcoming Bias
One of the biggest obstacles to
truth is bias. There is good kind of bias; then, there is a type that involves
having a preference to one particular point of view, or ideological perspective,
that is not supported by fact.
A negative bias might be someone who thinks all doctors are
quacks. In other words, a negative bias paints with a broad brush, and this is
most often the wrong kind of bias.
Someone’s view that he or she
has no faults is a pretty good indication that magical thinking is causing them
to be biased. No one is perfect, so if you can't recall the last time you were
in error, you might have bias issues.
Someone put together the
following list of questions that are based on the Socratic method of evaluating
an argumentation. These can be very helpful in detecting our personal biases.
What do you mean
by?
How did you come to that conclusion?
Why do you believe that you are right?
What is the source of your information?
What assumption has led you to that conclusion?
What happens if you are wrong?
Can you give me two sources who disagree with you and explain why?
Why is this significant?
How do I know you are telling me the truth?
What is an alternate explanation for this phenomenon?
True-Believer Syndrome
The term, "true believer
syndrome," is largely credited as being coined by M. Lamar Keene in his 1976
book, The Psychic Mafia, referring to an irrational belief in paranormal events,
even after direct confession or evidence that the events were fraudulently
staged. Keene became interested in this phenomenon after he worked to expose
fraudulent psychics, faith healers, and miracle workers.
He would show people that the
person claiming to have supernatural powers was a scam artist, and they would
refuse to listen to him. "The true-believer syndrome is the greatest thing phony
mediums have going for them" because "no amount of logic can shatter a faith
consciously based on a lie," said Keene.
True-believer syndrome proves
that the wrong type of magical thinking can lead to self-deception. Here are a
few glaring examples of this phenomenon:
Flat Earth Society - Based in
Lancaster , California , the name for the Flat Earth Society is self-explanatory
They advocate the belief that the Earth is a flat disk centered at the North
Pole and bounded along its southern edge by a wall of ice, with the sun, moon,
planets, and stars only a few hundred miles above the surface of the earth. They
believe the numerous modern satellite and space shuttle photos showing the earth
as a sphere to be hoaxes. The ability to climb a tall building and see the
curvature of the earth for themselves would probably not sway them from thinking
the earth is not flat.
Crop circles – In the late
1980s and early 1990s, crop circles began appearing in British wheat fields. UFO
watchers claimed the circles were caused by the landing alien spacecraft. In
1991, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted to creating some 300 crop circles
with a piece of wood and some string. They even demonstrated to the press how
they carried out the hoax. Crop circles advocates refused to believe the men had
created the circles. In the face of the revelation, one gentleman maintained his
faith by claiming a special magnetic force had knocked down the wheat stocks.
Money scams - In the mid 1980s,
my own late grandmother had received letters telling her that she was the winner
of a lottery. The only thing preventing her from receiving a huge payout was for
her to first pay a handling fee. Despite the fact that my grandmother never
received a dime, and that supposedly she was winning contests she never entered,
my grandmother continued to send money to these scammers. My grandmother
continued this behavior even after being sternly warned that she was being
defrauded.
Critical Thinking
William Graham Sumner offers
one of the best definitions of critical thinking: "Critical thinking is the
examination and test of propositions of any kind which are offered for
acceptance, in order to find out whether they correspond to reality or not. The
critical faculty is a product of education and training. It is a mental habit
and power. It is a prime condition of human welfare that men and women should be
trained in it. It is our only guarantee against delusion, deception,
superstition, and misapprehension of ourselves and our earthly circumstances."
Critical thinking is what keeps
us out of trouble. Whenever we encounter a situation that could be hazardous to
our mental, physical or financial well-being, we need to pull out the litmus
paper of skepticism.
Imagine a friend named Bob
comes to you and says he has invented a car engine that can get 200 miles per
gallon, and that he needs to raise $1 million to set up a shop that can mass
produce the engine. Bob asks you to contribute $100,000 to the project, and
promises to make you instantly wealthy once the company goes public. Because you
trust your friend, you decide to clean out your savings account and place a
second mortgage on your house. A year later, you find out Bob's engines don't
actually achieve such high levels of fuel economy, and the whole project goes
bust.
Critical thinking would have
saved you and many other people from losing money. It's an appealing idea to own
shares in a company that would be the next Microsoft, but the unlikelihood of
this being the case should have given you pause. There are no cars that get 200
miles per gallon, because the technology to accomplish that is beyond our grasp.
The reason no one created a microchip that could operate at a gigahertz in the
1960s is because it required tens of billion of dollars in research and 30 years
of trial and error before a microchip of this speed was possible.
The usage of critical thinking
does not require us to be cynical of all things. If you drive down the
freeway and come upon a bridge, you don't ask yourself whether the bridge will
collapse as you cross it. You know that any bridge in a heavily trafficked area
will be well maintained. Critical thinking would serve you well if you encounter
a rickety bridge on an old country road.
Wake-Up Call
The stubborn nature of man is
sometime almost immune to any type helpful advice.
People who are flying in
the face of reality will eventually encounter a personal crisis that will forces
them to reassess their beliefs.
Someone may think nothing is
wrong with drinking. When that person loses their job through their drinking, he or she is confronted with
the type of evidence that cannot be pushed aside. Then he or she is forced to
admit to their error.
However, personal calamity doesn’t
require someone to come to the truth. I’ve seen plenty of people hit rock bottom
and still manage to blame everyone else for their problems.
A woman who has been
divorced five times can still think that she’s just had a run of bad luck with
men. A man who wasted his life away on booze can find fault in all the enemies
that drove him to drink.
Anyone who realizes he or she
has received a wake-up call needs to take prompt corrective action. People often
recant of problems they had previously confessed to having. When temptation
comes along, the same magical process of delusion draws them back in. People
need to know that the clock is constantly moving forward. The devil doesn’t care
how many times you press the snooze button; his strategy of victory is based on
the fact that people will continue to hit the button.
God Does Not Use Magical Thinking
A lot of Christians believe
that the Kingdom of God operates on magical thinking. God just makes a wish and
things magically happen. The process may appear to be that simple from our
vantage point, but that can't be how things work. For every complex cause, there
needs to be an intelligent force acting behind it.
God does not have a personal
fairy godmother to grant His wishes. When the Almighty desires to perform what
we would call a supernatural act, He has to fulfill it himself. When Jesus
healed the man of leprosy, the biological composition of the man's infected skin
was broken down and rearranged to form healthy skin. When the Lord walked on
water, either He was made lighter or the molecular bonds of the water were made
stronger.
Magical Thinking's inability to
bridge the gap between the natural and supernatural world has provided an
opportunity for some people to rationalize many biblical miracles. The parting
of the Red Sea is frequently explained as being the result of a wind blowing
away the water. Some folks go into pure heresy by claiming that Jesus didn't die
on the cross; they say He simply fainted and later recovered.
Faith is not a special power
unto itself. It is simply an asterisk that says, "I don't know how God did it,
but I believe He did it."
When believers arrive in heaven, the Lord will reveal all mysteries, and there
will be no more "magic."
Christians Should Not Use Magical Thinking
To see the negative influence
magical thinking has had on the Church, one only needs to open the Yellow Pages
of the phone book and look under "churches" to see how splintered the body of
Christ has become. We all started with one body, and today there are over 10,000
different denominations.
A lot of the walls between denominations would crumble if church leaders were as diligent about scriptural doctrine as the ancient Bereans. I've always liked the saying David Reagan has helped popularize:
If the first sense of Scripture makes sense, seek no other
sense, or you will end up with nonsense.
Here are a few
guidelines to help put believers more in line with Bible-based truth:
1. Check for possible weaknesses
in your own doctrines.
2. Test all new teachings against the Word of God.
3. Only side with views that come straight from the Bible.
4. Never agree to a "loyalty oath" of an organization.
5. Admit that you may be wrong.
Christians need to be mindful
that there is a devil who actively seeks to mislead people. With the Bible being
the only source of truth, it is foolhardy for people to think they can use their
own judgment to separate right from wrong. That’s just magical thinking –a
satanic delusion to take the minds of men off Jesus, who is the Word of God
(John 1:1).