At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge”
Proverbs 19:27
Scripture teaches us by implication that there are two distinct kinds of ignorance. One is the obvious sort of ignorance that is the result of not learning. This is borne out of laziness, or circumstances, or native inabilities. The person concerned simply does not know the truth. This ignorance consists largely of the absence of knowledge.
But the second kind of ignorance is what we see cautioned against in this proverb. There is a sort of ignorance that is the result of assiduous studying, note taking, lecture attending, and book reading. A person who is doing this is growing in his ignorance, layering lies on top of folly, and follies on top of lies. The person in this situation is told to cease listening to that kind of instruction. If you are enrolled in a school that actively promulgates ignorance, then you need to make a point of dropping out.
This kind of ignorance is largely the result of the presence of error. Those errors can be extensively footnoted, and there can be a broad array of widely recognized authorities who blurbed the book. The entire academic world might be all in when it comes to whatever the particular error might be—whether it is socialism, or Darwinism, or climate change studies, or computer modeling of pandemics.
Smart people, meaning people whose intellectual engine can hit a lot of rpms quickly—they can make the tachometer bounce—can make the most egregious mistakes. And when they are bent on making those mistakes, and they seek to browbeat regular folks with their expertise, it is important for regular folks to simply stay away.
This will be called anti-intellectualism, but that is not what it is at all. Going back to our first point, there are two ways to be anti-intellectual. One is to avoid the life of the mind, to not care about the truth at all. But the other way is anti-intellectual also, and that is to bury the truth under a rock pile of footnotes.
“I have more understanding than all my teachers: For thy testimonies are my meditation” (Psalm 119:99).
