Have you ever noticed how many crazy people there are out there? I’m not talking about folks who sport wild hair and a sandwich board that declares “The end is near”. I’m talking about those people who, for some inexplicable reason, fail to share your views on religion or politics or sports or the weather or … you name it. It turns out that there are a lot of crazy people out there.
To be sure, we usually don’t write them off as crazy. We tend to prefer kinder, gentler terms, like irrational or provincial or strange. But whatever we end up calling them, our indignation underlies a deep, comforting thought that if they really understood all that we do, and if they had our luminous powers of clear thinking, that surely they would then agree with us.
In my 2011 book You’re not as Crazy as I Think: Dialogue in a world of loud voices and hardened opinions I analyze and critique this pervasive tendency to marginalize dissenting groups by imputing to them cognitive or moral deficiencies. Moreover, I provide a strategy for overcoming these tendencies and becoming a people who, above all, pursue truth in all things, including a recognition of the truth that is found in all those dissenting opinions.
In this episode of the Tentative Apologist Podcast we are going to listen to a talk I delivered at Concordia University College in Edmonton on the central themes of You’re not as Crazy as I Think. It seems to me that in our day the voices are louder and the opinions more hardened than ever. That other guy really isn’t as crazy as we think. And the sooner we all come to terms with that fact, the better we all shall be.
For those interested, here is the first chapter of You’re not as Crazy as I Think.
