Freud said:
"If it were really a matter of indifference what we belive, then we might just as well build our bridges of cardboard as of stone, or inject a tenth of a gram of morphine into a patient instead of a hundredth, or take teargas as a narcotic instead of Ether; but the intellectual anarchists themselves would strongly repudiate any such practical applications of their theory."
Intellectual honesty requires a match between the real world; the practical world where things either WORK or do not work at all.....and the state of mind inside your head.
If there is any mismatch at all the blurred line fuzzes out into failure to recognize what is real and what isn't.
REAL or ARTIFICIAL?
Jehovah's Witnesses replace the real world with an artificially constructed one. They build an artificial intellect for themselves with the help of the Watchtower and meeting attendance. They carry this intellectual substitute to households and practice it on their children.
The ability to think clearly is gradually replaced by an induced blindness. A special-effects team goes to work in the brain and uses CGI to erect facades of phony "reality" replacing the real world.
Soon, the actual human intellect has been dismantled.
When a JW sees a neighbor they don't SEE the neighbor at all. They now see a worldly goat marked for destruction who must be avoided lest bad association taint them with polluted false worship of a satanic empire.
We who have formerly been these meta-humans know this process well.
Many of us have had to rebuild our intellect from the state of destruction into what we need to function in a hand's on real world of cause and effect.
HOW SUCCESSFUL have you been? Are you yet intellectually honest? Or, do you carry some semblance of ___blank out__into your daily life from the habit you learned as a JW drone-clone?
SLIP SLIDING AWAY
Do you often find yourself slipping into the ___alternate universe__of the world you "prefer" rather than the one that "is"?
Do you accept your responsibility in building your own life with your own choices? Or, do you live in a kind of daydream expectation that "things will all work out somehow"?
Do you cling to a belief system constructed for the purpose of "feeling good"? Or, do you face facts and acknowledge that there may be nothing at all real about any superstitious or mystical ideas peddled around the world by gurus, shaman, priests and holy men?
Can you tolerate skepticism or do you seek solace in cherished mental constructs that grant you an invisible friend in the sky who is watching out for you?
Do you find yourself saying "I HOPE SO" ?
Do you rely on what you call "gut feeling" rather than rational data or demonstrable information in the form of evidence?
When you explain your views do you find they are vague? Or, are they connected to actual definable definitions that can be written down and explained from premise to conclusion?
Do you find conversation about facts and evidence to be irritating and does it make you uncomfortable to have to explain yourself?
Can you be at ease with NOT knowing something? Or, do you always choose to "believe" what makes something ___seem___sensible?
If you don't know the facts about something you may guess or form a hypothesis as a kind of "work in progress" until the facts come along.
As long as you openly acknowledge to yourself that you DON'T YET KNOW you keep investigating. But, if you lie to yourself and simply start to BELIEVE without further investigation--you become intellectually dishonest.
In short: There are stages of "knowing". The bottom stage is just guessing or being told.
You have a responsibility to "Truth" which is investigation and skepticism.
Once you think you know and stop being curious your honesty dies. Why? Because all the facts are seldom known completely. Consequently, maintaining a wary eye and questioning intellect is a SAFETY NET.
What is True should welcome debate. A lie cannot stand up to a true fact.
What is Untrue demands unquestioning obedience!
The RED FLAG for intellectual dishonesty is when open discussion is made out to be an act of DISLOYALTY to AUTHORITY.
ARE YOU INTELLECTUALLY HONEST?