Dogmatism vs. Prayer

We usually think of dogmatism as a “religion” issue, but this isn’t true at all.  There is scientific dogma, educational dogma, and political dogma, too. Dogmatism is the tendency to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others.  The word comes from the Greek word dogma, which means literally “what one thinks is true.”   Sometimes to be dogmatic is to follow a doctrine, a set of rules or beliefs that have been passed down and never questioned.   Dogmatism can also simply be an arrogant assumption on the part of a person that what he or she thinks is true without any regard of evidence to the contrary.

We need to be liberated from the bondage of dogmatism in all spheres of life.  Whatever the truth about our world, it is undoubtedly far more wonderful and complex than anything we have thus far understood or suspected.  Our knowledge, in spite of all we think we know, is fragmentary.  If  we know only in part, then it is a tragic mistake to allow ourselves to be in intellectual bondage to a closed system (our own little worldview—what  we think we really know about the world).  The world is far larger than my grandfather envisaged and it is far larger and contains more mystery than I now envisage in my little philosophy.  

There is, for example, a naturalistic dogmatism that says we live by a system of impersonal natural laws and  that all events are controlled by these laws. The dogmatic assumption made from this assertion is that God cannot affect events in the world, because the world is governed by these independent and autonomous laws.  Isn’t it at least thinkable that there could be invasions into this causal (closed) system?  Is it illogical to think that God (the Creator) is superior to what we call natural law?  Isn’t it possible that the world is much more than we now know or think?  

G. K. Chesterton wrote, “The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them.  The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.”  We must be liberated from our doctrines before we even attempt to engage in prayer.  For what good is prayer if God cannot affect persons, events, and situations in this world?

Big Bend National Park, Texas