It’s very common and very well-known that people will, to an extent, choose their facts to fit their beliefs. But for many the facts they choose aren’t necessarily even well-founded.

If you are a conservative, you probably prefer generally lower taxes, and you can find well-heeled economists who generally prefer lower taxes and lower spending over higher taxes and higher spending. Likewise a liberal or leftist can find economists who support higher taxes and higher spending. The issue is not “settled” and as with anything in economics (besides rent control, which is universally known to be bad) there are voices on either side.

But there are some things that are uncontroversially accepted as true by all the experts in their field, and for some reason there are people that argue against it for no reason whatsoever.

When I was in school, I remember a debate about teaching evolution. To cut to the chase, many Christians (not all by a long shot) have thought that evolution undermines their religion, and no matter how much evidence there is for it, these Christians will choose facts to fit their beliefs. That includes denying evolution, but also denying the fossil record (which supports evolution) and the age of the Earth (which supports evolution). This sometimes means denying modern microbiology and cancer biology (which are evolution in action). It’s fairly well-known by anyone who isn’t a Christian that this is a Dumb Thing To Do, and that picking your facts based on your beliefs just leaves you looking stupid.

But then I found that while the Christians do it, the anti-Christians do it too.

Let’s be clear: some atheists are just people who don’t believe in God. That’s fine, everyone has their beliefs. But some atheists are better termed anti-theists, they are people who oppose religion and its existence entirely. And it is these atheists that have constructed their own theories of “Intelligent Design” to support their ideas. Often these theories try to prove that Christianity is not only false, but that is is a complete con from start to finish and that no one truly believes in it anyway.

The Atheist version of Intelligent Design is the “Jesus Myth Theory.” This is the idea that not only was Jesus just a mortal man (not the son of God), but that there was never even a person called Jesus at all, and that this is proof that Christianity was an invented scam. To be blunt, this idea has no more credence than Intelligent Design, but so-called rational atheists who turn up their nose at the stupid Christians with their stupid Intelligent Design will still believe this idea because they have chosen their facts based on their beliefs. I may write a post later about the evidence for Jesus’ existence, but the point I’m trying to make is that even communities which are adamant in their own rationality can wind up being suckered into myths just because those myths agree with what they want to believe.

Let’s get one thing straight: EVERYONE believes that they’re rational. Everyone believes that their opinions are backed by evidence, backed by science, fundamentally true, and that only the dumb and misled would ever believe something different. That’s what makes the self-professed “Rationalist” community so misguided: claiming you’re the only community focused on rational beliefs is just admitting that you’ve never spoken to a community different than your own.

EVERY community believes they are the rational ones, believes they are driven by facts and not emotions, believes that the others are ignoring facts to suit their opinions. And the Rationalist community has it’s own Intelligent Design theories just as the Atheist and the Christian communities do. A good Rationalist, Atheist, or Christian should of course never believe something just because their compatriots believe it, or just because it would support some of their ideology, but a good Rationalist, Atheist, or Christian must also recognize that they probably have biases themselves and that their own community probably harbors an “Intelligent Design” theory all its own.

In the hallowed halls of Twitter and social media it’s widely believed that only the Left of the political spectrum knows and respects science, all right-wing beliefs are obviously false and dis-proven by data. The the exact inverse is believed on the right. I know both communities are havens of their own misinformation. I have seen too many on the Left tell me that supply and demand don’t exist, that building more housing doesn’t lower rent and cost and that inflation is driven only by corporate greed and not supply or demand. I have likewise seen the misinformation on the right over gun deaths, drug crime, vaccines and the like. I’m sure some of my own beliefs are misinformation, but we are all the heroes in our own stories and so self-reflection is very hard.

But I just wrote this post because even if I’m only screaming into the void I wanted to remind people that everyone thinks they are rational. Your political enemies who you consider irrational and emotional idiots are human just like you, and they arrived at their beliefs through the exact same human mechanisms you did. Are you sure anything and everything you believe is true? Are you sure there could never be any evidence that supports your opponents? Don’t dismiss people are idiots just because they believe something else, most humans are just as rational as you.