11. Which are you more afraid of: Being too gullible and believing things that aren't true, or being too skeptical and missing out on something important?

This is another question about trust, but this time the trust is in your own intuition about what is true and false. How far are willing to go to follow a hunch that you can't prove one way or another? Are you more likely to let wishful thinking run away with you, and so make a fool of yourself; or to keep life at a distance, waiting until all the uncertainties are nailed down before you proceed?

Our discussion tended at first toward religious gullibility and skepticism, probably because this touches on a controversial trend in Unitarian-Universalism generally: the increasing acceptance of ritual and irrationality in UU congregations, and a growing sense of dislocation among UU humanists. (Count me among the irrational.) One way to avoid this sectarian split in your discussion is to point out that secular projects also require faith, or perhaps even gullibility. Consider the early union organizers, who said things like: "They can't fire all of us. If we stick together we can win this." If everyone had waited to see proof of this, there never would have been any proof.

Negative examples of gullibility are almost too easy to come up with: the victims of Jonestown and Heaven's Gate, all the people who fall for get-rich-quick schemes, etc.

Readings

There's a sucker born every minute. -- P. T. Barnum

Test everything. Retain what is good. -- St. Paul, 1Thessalonians 5:21.

It happened that one of the Twelve, Thomas, was absent when Jesus came. The other disciples kept telling him, "We have seen the Lord!" His answer was, "I will never believe it without probing the nail-prints in his hands, without putting my finger in the nail-marks, and my hand into his side." A week later the disciples were once more in the room, and this time Thomas was with them. Despite the locked doors, Jesus came and stood before them. "Peace be with you," he said, and then to Thomas: "Take your finger and examine my hands. Put your hand into my side. Do not persist in your unbelief, but believe." Thomas said in response: "My Lord and God." Jesus then said to him, "You became a believer because you saw me. Blessed are they who have not seen and have believed." John 20:26-29.

If you build it, they will come. --from the movie Field of Dreams

You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoy, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers. And yet you are sure, as I am sure, that were the world confined to these hard-headed, hard-hearted, and hard-fisted methods exclusively, were there no one prompt to help a brother first, and find out afterwards whether he were worthy; no one willing to drown his private wrongs in pity for the wronger's person; no one ready to be duped many a time rather than live always on suspicion; no one glad to treat individuals passionately and impulsively rather than by general rules of prudence; the world would be an infinitely worse place than it is now to live in. --William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience