{"id":10427,"date":"2023-07-25T03:35:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-25T03:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10427"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:09","slug":"bias-and-theology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10427","title":{"rendered":"BIAS AND THEOLOGY"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After noticing yesterday that Simon the Pharisee seemed a textbook example of the human tendency to always be on the lookout for new evidence to confirm our prior beliefs (while disregarding all evidence against), tonight I googled &#8220;examples of confirmation bias in the Bible&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was one of those rare searches that turns up absolutely nothing along the lines of what I was looking for.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Seems like this could be an area worthy of some thought and study.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What Google <i>did <\/i>turn up was lots of Christian websites warning that humans <i>sometimes <\/i>experience confirmation bias and, if we&#8217;re not careful, it could affect our theology.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Sometimes&#8221; is not reality. We all experience this bias and it happens multiple times a day without our awareness.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And it definitely affects our theological formation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s one more reason to hold theological convictions in &#8220;probability space&#8221; and to resist letting too much of our identity get invested in them too soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After noticing yesterday that Simon the Pharisee seemed a textbook example of the human tendency to always be on the lookout for new evidence to confirm our prior beliefs (while disregarding all evidence against), tonight I googled &#8220;examples of confirmation bias in the Bible&#8221;. It was one of those rare searches that turns up absolutely [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10428,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10427\/revisions\/10428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}