Description

Willed ignorance is the choice to not know. Stupidity is maintaining a belief that produces negative consequences for yourself and others. The crucifixion is the national symbol of both.

The Christian belief requires avoiding, ignoring, and rejecting information that challenges it — that’s the mechanism of willed ignorance, not an incidental feature of the belief but a structural requirement for maintaining it. The belief is stupid because what it produces is demonstrably harmful: degraded moral function, because the deity’s forgiveness removes the self-worth consequences that would otherwise deter wrong acts; conditioning to submission, through teachings that instruct followers to yield their will to others; and a perception of the world as governed by supernatural intervention rather than by the actions of people — which directs attention and energy away from the actual causes of human problems.

The problem isn’t that people form beliefs about existence. It’s that this belief is internally contradictory, unsupported by evidence, and maintained specifically because it produces feelings that people prefer to the truth. Choosing a feeling over what is demonstrably true, when that choice has consequences for yourself and others, is the definition of willed ignorance and stupidity.

For a thorough examination of the Christian doctrine evaluated against objective moral standards, see Liberty: The Definitive Moral Truth.