You’re not going to like the answer to this, even though it’s true. You really don’t know.
How about those “nutritional facts” on the side of a cereal box, for example? How do you know that they are right? Not just the raw numbers, e.g., the number of calories, which are iffy enough, but what about the percent of daily potassium requirement? Does the person writing the information for the side of the box really know how much potassium your body requires daily? I have some serious doubts.
This brings us to the ultimate source for many, probably most, of the things you know. You know because you were told by the smartest person in the universe. That would be they. How often do you hear, “They say that ….” Therefore, I have come to realize that they knows everything. That is why we trust they so much. Much of what we know, we know because they says so.
They says, for example, that positive reinforcement works much better than negative reinforcement. It is too bad that they wasn’t around when God was writing the law. The Bible might be a much more positive book, and humanity might have done a lot better.
I can remember the teacher in a class at University of Oklahoma stating, “There is actually no research substantiating that positive reinforcement is more effective than negative reinforcement.” Such a statement makes you wonder how much else they got wrong.
Which brings us to the more significant question, who is they? The truth is that you don’t know. Who is it that is telling you how much potassium your body requires today? Or who is the they that had us believing for decades that positive reinforcement is more effective than negative reinforcement, even though no evidence exists to support this conclusion?
More significant yet, on what is they basing his opinion? The positive reinforcement assertion suggests that they is any academic authority. He is an authority because of his position, not necessarily because he is right or even because he has research to support his assertions. Beyond that, they is the combined prejudices of the academic community. Pronouncements compatible with those prejudices, regardless of how unsupported by research and how counterintuitive, are adopted and repeated as gospel truth. Such pronouncements constitute the wisdom of they. And pronouncements differing from the prejudices of the academic community, regardless of whether they are well-supported and intuitive, are banished from the wisdom of they.
The view that positive reinforcement is more effective fits comfortably into a humanistic worldview and, even better, demonstrates yet another way in which the harsh, judgmental biblical worldview is erroneous. Those negative Christians are such a blight to our society. It is good that they has proven yet again just how unscientific, how Neanderthal, their worldview is.
In the previous several posts we have been dealing with the influence psychology wields because it deals with practical and profound issues of life. As a result of this influence, we have been cautioning how important it is that the evangelical community be certain of the validity of the assertions of psychology. How do we know that the concepts of psychology are correct? In most cases, we can have absolute certainty because they told us.