It’s a simple trick. When you’re discussing philosophy with someone, or just thinking about it, make one small distinction concerning your personal beliefs.
Separate “why do I believe this?”
from “how do I justify this?”
Those questions rarely have the same answer, and the difference is key. Let me explain.
I’m an atheist. In the past, when religious people asked me why, I’d respond: “because I’ve looked at the world and seen no evidence for God.” Debate usually ensued. But one day, it dawned on me that I was answering the wrong question. The absence of divine evidence is one of the ways I justify being an atheist, but it’s not why I am one. I now respond, more honestly: “Because I was raised in an atheist family, in a secular country, and no subsequent experience has swayed me.”
Then, if the person is interested, I may rationally defend atheism like before, through the absence of evidence, the problem of suffering, or the argument from inconsistent revelations. I still employ judgment to justify my position. But I no longer conflate justification with cause. My judgment didn’t make me an atheist – circumstance did.
Arrogance occurs when we assume that our beliefs are sprung only from ourselves, not our environments. It can be a nice, smug feeling, but in truth it hurts us, because it leaves us much more afraid of challenge. Scrutiny of our beliefs feels like an attack on our intelligence. In my old debates, I argued quite arrogantly, from a place of fear, because I thought exactly that: My atheism was the work of my intellect.
But since I learned to separate justification and cause – the antidote to arrogance – I’ve had far more rewarding discussions with believers. We acknowledge that we’re both children of our environments, who stumbled clumsily upon different beliefs; then we proceed to scrutinize both beliefs, fairly and methodically. The debate transforms into a joint examination. Arrogance becomes curiosity.
Not all beliefs come about as incidentally as my atheism, of course. We can adopt ideas willingly and rationally. We can change our minds about things in response to new evidence. In those cases, cause and justification are less disjoint. But even then, the separation keeps us humble. The antidote is always effective.
In his Discourse on the Method, Descartes says that no one in the world thinks they’re short on good sense. “[…] every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.”
I tend to agree. Atheists, believers, progressives, conservatives, materialists, idealists, we’re all confident in our own rationality. We picture a rich substrate of logic inside our minds, from which our beliefs sprout like sunflowers.
But beliefs are much more like weeds, stubborn and unruly, carried by the wind from neighboring gardens.