On Adrian Bardon’s Book: The Truth About Denial
(Written on 23rd September, and Edited on 15th October 2022)
Personal reasons have made The Truth About Denial the worst book I’ve ever read, as well as the best and an impetus for self-awareness. The first three chapters are excellent, however, after that, it’s all pointless. In the book, Adrian Bardon seeks to demonstrate how our preconceptions and beliefs define our unwillingness to accept factual claims and the outright denialism in science, politics, and religion, which is pretty frequently brought on by pride or prejudices.
He adopts complex psychological concepts to explain social phenomena, societal structures, shifts generally, economics, left and right political ideologies, chauvinism, racism, etc., using motivated cognition and rationalisation as the basic premises. He puts an attempt to explain rationally how many reject and critique topics like evolution and climate change. He discussed at length something that particularly stuck with me:
“If the intention was purely to find the best explanation for the data we have, the theory of evolution would not have survived. But the intention is different. The intention is to find an explanation with the condition of not allowing any reference to any intelligent, purposeful being that is beyond nature. Once such an assumption is made, the theory of evolution becomes “the best” option. It is like deciding to explain a great meal at the dinner table without any reference to a cook. With such pre-judgment, something that is otherwise unreasonable starts to appear as the only option. Then, for instance, the wind that blows in from the window may become “the best explanation.” One can start speculating: “Perhaps the wind mixed the ingredients in precise measures somehow, opened the oven, and set it to the right temperature, etc. We just do not know how exactly and we are still working on the details…”
This is what naturalism is all about!
The author argues that group thinking and the tendency to support only the causes of your ideology or movement would be to blame for, say, the reprisals and hostilities one would encounter if one just dares to challenge the theory of evolution, or its epistemology, naturalism.
He goes on:
“Similarly, once the option of a being with infinite knowledge, wisdom, and power is rejected from the beginning, the theory of evolution is perceived as “the only scientific/logical/reasonable” view. Such speculation is considered reasonable simply because of this intention to negate the option of a transcendent being.”
It seems as though, naturalism – the whole concept – serves as the religion of the scientific community, or an in-group, as Bardon would say.
What then makes the book the worst I’ve ever read? Religion! For me, religion is constantly involved in everything I do. It’s my paradigm. This chapter attempts to downplay the role of religion as one of, if not the core, of every civilisation known to man, from the dawn of time to the Enlightenment, which saw the West denouncing the concept of religion, and Nietzsche’s compounding religious skepticism as he rejects anything transcendental; “God is dead”, to here, the contemporary modern world.
Ironically and amusingly enough, our author asserts that religion is a thing that was developed by humans to satiate their needs through various psychological processes, but he blatantly ignores his intellectual stance and motives in doing so. Adrian Bardon can’t dispute the fact that these belief systems – religions – have existed for a significant chunk of human history and that very few people have gone as far as to deny the existence of some sort of Divine Power. It isn’t possible that our belief systems are, according to Bardon, laughable and a model for our motivated cognition or prejudices when despite time and spatial changes, humans have always had some form of ingrained sense of trust and conviction in a Higher Power. This instinctual human connection to God – defined and refined only by the intervention of religion – could never be relegated to the simplistic notions presented in The Truth About Denial or any psycho-philosophical book. It defies all of Bardon’s assumptions about psychosocial phenomena. It’s spiritual, it’s ethereal.
Take the woman, for instance, who, despite losing her father, brother, and husband all at once in the battle of Uhud (the second important Islamic battle), was more concerned with whether the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was still alive. Any defences, arguments and justifications, our author can offer pale in comparison to this conviction, the love and reverence for the Prophet ﷺ. I think this – religion – is no longer about belief formation; vis-à-vis motivated cognition, and neither about maintaining and defending beliefs (viz rationalisation). It’s about the quest for Purpose and the immutable Universal Truth. It’s about the Divine.
Bottomline is, if as a Muslim, Adrian Bardon identifies me as one in denial, or overly biased and emotive, or one that’s so psychologically conditioned, he views his religious standpoint as superior to out-groups, then so be it. Jews, Christians and every other religious devotee out there, attach such a great value to their own faiths.
