WHY THE INTELLIGENT OFTEN LACK COMMON SENSE

It seems that the most intelligent, gifted, and educated have lost any sense of common sense. For one thing, their beliefs have become detached from the obvious physical and scientific realities like binary sexuality. Instead, they believe that gender is whatever we choose, irrespective of what our eyes tell us. It’s like the absurd fairy tale in which everyone is pressured to say that the king was wearing clothing, when he wasn’t. It was only a child who was willing to speak the truth.

Why is a child able to see more clearly than educated elites? One of the reasons is that he hadn’t been hardened against the Truth:

·       For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. (Romans 1:21-22 NIV)

When we reject God, we become blind to everything else of importance. Ironically, we might think that we are wise, but we are really fools? How is this possible? For one thing, this is a recurring Biblical assertion (Isaiah 29:14; 44:25; 1 Corinthians 1:19-29; 3:19), but how do those who reject God become foolish? Does God deprive them of common sense? Instead, it seems that God gives up on them, allowing them to go their own way and to reap the inevitable consequences:

·       Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. (Romans 1:24-25)

Why do we reject God in the first place? We want our own way, especially sexually, and know that we’ll be judged for it (Romans 1:32; 2:2, 14-16). Therefore, we hate and reject the Judge and deny His existence. NYU Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Thomas Nagel, had argued that no one can be impartial about God for this reason:

·       I am talking of...the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true...It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God. I don't want the universe to be like that...I am curious whether there is anyone who is genuinely indifferent as to whether there is a God. (The Last Word, Oxford University Press, 1997, 130)

However, when we reject God, we also reject ourselves – our mind and conscience – anything that might remind us of our moral unworthiness and our impending judgment. Even the prospect of death and annihilation becomes a more comforting prospect. As a result, we attempt to deny and harden our minds and conscience against this prospect and to compensate for our never ending sense of our unworthiness.

This is especially true of the gifted, privileged, intelligent, and of the upwardly mobile who believe in their ability to achieve success and happiness. They are better equipped to look away from the impending doom and separation to a future temporal hope. For them, God is experienced as a great weight around their neck holding them back from their “good life” of self-indulgence. Those who are more philosophically minded have convinced themselves that the “good life” can be attained by doing the right things – the pursuit of a professional career, attainments, acclaim, and even the “virtuous life” to silence their conscience.

It doesn’t stop there. Those who reject God also reject the idea of moral and spiritual truth. Why? Because if there is moral/spiritual truth, then it gives support to the voice of the conscience, which tells them that they are guilty and deserve punishment. Therefore, “spirituality” is not about truth, but about whatever makes them feel good about themselves.

Consequently, they are strongly opposed to any religion that has any rigid moral requirements regarding love and justice. Nevertheless, having been created in the image of God, we are moral beings. Therefore, once they reject God, they must find a God-substitute. They usually achieve this through non-theistic forms of religion. Even the belief in evolution has become a religion, since it represents a rejection of moral absolutes. Michael Ruse, evolutionist, philosopher, and atheist had admitted:

·       “Evolution came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity…an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality... Evolution is a religion.” https://creation.com/michael-ruse-evolution-is-a-religion

·       Dr. Lewis Bounoure, Director of Scientific Research in France, is quoted as saying, “Evolution is a fairy tale for adults.” (Erwin Lutzer, Seven Reasons why you can Trust the Bible, 133)

Evolution is a religion for the highly educated, but it has also been militantly evangelized throughout society. It is a religion that promotes moral relativism, which denies the existence of any real and objective moral truths. It also pays another dividend to those who have denied God. We are utterly surrounded by evidences of God’s unfathomable intelligent designs. For those who reject God, these are a continual reminder that He exists. However, evolution has become their counselor, reassuring them that all of these artifacts can be explained naturally, without recourse to a Creator.

Those who reject God must also become moral relativists. Why? They understand that if moral law exists, apart from our thoughts about it, a moral law Giver must also exist. Therefore, once they have rejected God, they will also reject any real moral law, anything that could possibly condemn them. This means that they cannot say unequivocally that rape, torturing babies, and genocide are evils. Instead, to be faithful to moral relativism, they have to admit that these “evils” are simply relative to the culture. To accomplish such mental gymnastics, one must be highly educated.

Nevertheless, our nature still requires a source of moral affirmation. We still need a way to think of ourselves as “good” in order to combat the never-ending sense that we are not good and require the mercy of God. Therefore, because we do not serve God, we need to find an idealistic cause to serve, something to give us meaning to fill the void.

I am not against idealistic causes but rather those causes we embrace to make us feel good about ourselves and not because they are good. The late poet, T.S. Elliot, shared this concern:

·       Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.  https://heidelblog.net › 2015/07

The highly educated are adept at creating their own morality and idealistic causes, even as they deny the existence of any real (objective) moral laws. In place of these, they often opt to find the “truth” within. Well, how do they know whether or not certain of their thoughts and feelings represent “truth” for them, rather than their fears and feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy? If moral truths are just things that we create, then there is no objective moral standard by which to know when we have discovered the “truth” within. As a result, we simply choose which thoughts and feelings make us feel good and reject the others. Puff, we have our religion.

Some are even candid about this. After Erasmus had read his brother Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species, he boasted:

·       "In fact, the a priori reasoning [for evolution] is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts won’t fit in, why so much worse for the facts. [This] is my feeling." (The Journey, Os Guinness, 154)

Erasmus believed because it supported his rejection of God.

Although my language is harsh, please do not think I am looking down on you. These same critiques I also apply to myself. I only have one thing that you do not have – the love and mercy of God. By knowing that He has fully accepted me, as unworthy of Him as I am, I have been enabled to look at myself and my various schemes to deceive myself in order to compensate for the bad feelings I had about myself. In a word, my Savior Jesus has given me the courage to confront and to soberly accept myself.