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| Paul Wendland, NNIV Salesman, is a member of the Moo herd, bovine in IQ, ovine in courage. |
Wikipedia:
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes.[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority.
Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. As Kruger and Dunning conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others" (p. 1127).[2] The effect is about paradoxical defects in cognitive ability, both in oneself and as one compares oneself to others...
Although the Dunning–Kruger effect was put forward in 1999, David Dunning and Justin Kruger have quoted Charles Darwin ("Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge")[3] and Bertrand Russell ("One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision")[4] as authors who have recognised the phenomenon.
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| UOJ is the path to Rome or Pasadena: either route is the path to perdition. |
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GJ - Indeed. Chesterton noted the same thing -
“Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth: this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert-himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason... The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping: not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
LI gave me a name for this syndrome, which is difficult to miss in the Olde Synodical Conference. As James Tiefel said about the odious Christian Worship in the making, "I have the title, so I will do what I want." I heard Tiefel make fun of The Lutheran Hymnal in his worship class. Tiefel and Iver Johnson moved forward with a hack job worse than the remake of The Jazz Singer: the booze and broads edition of the hymnal.A sober analysis would say that TLH is vastly superior to Tiefel's Church Growth, feminist, Pietist parody.
The almost universal attitude among the clergy is - "I graduated from x seminary, so I have nothing left to learn." That could be Ft. Wayne versus all the others, St. Louis versus all the others, Mequon versus all the others, or the Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie versus all others.
Most of them have a favorite professor who stands between them and the Word of God, so they stick to the instructor's talking points. The same clergy are scornful of laity who have studied the Word of God decades longer, without an intervening filter. A genuine Lutheran will concede that the Holy Spirit teaches through the Word, but the incompetents wave their diplomas around: the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Lutheran Church during the Reformation expected a high level of training for men to be professors or bishops. A doctorate was common. The current Synodical Conference leaders think their worthless MDiv degrees qualify them as experts on everything, even though they could not get a job teaching at a community college with that seminary diploma. They wangle their positions through politics, but imagine the office is their
weapon, not a challenge to devote a lifetime to scholarship.
The Dunning-Kruger effect explains why the LCMS, WELS, and ELS have abandoned Lutheran doctrine for Fuller or Rome, never acknowledging the five-decade slide into doctrinal torpor. They cannot even admit what they have done, spending millions on subsidies to CG projects and tuition, millions more on conferences to bring more false doctrine into their parishes.
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Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Dunning-Kruger Effect in the Olde Synodical Confer...":
Even the self titled conservatives in the (W)ELS have declared Siegbert W. Becker infallible.
Elevating doctrinal ignorance to an art form he said, "But universal and objective justification is one doctrine whose place in the victorious Christian life is clear. Wherever men teach that faith comes first as a condition that must be fulfilled or a work that must be done or even as a fact that must be recognized before forgiven [sic Becker - forgiveness ] is bestowed or becomes real, men will be trained to look into their own hearts for assurance rather than to the words and promises of God. If my sins are forgiven only if I first have faith then I have no solid foundation on which to rest my hope for eternal life. I must then know that I have faith before I can know that my sins are forgiven. But there are times when a Christian does not know that he has faith. And many people who think they have faith do not have it, and many that think they are not believers are believing children of God. In regard to our own faith we may be in error or filled with doubt. But there is nothing uncertain in the truth that is proclaimed in the Gospel. Your sin is taken away, wiped out, forgiven, cancelled, swallowed up in the empty grave in Joseph’s garden. To that we must cling. To that we can cling. On that we can build a solid hope that will not make us ashamed.
In times of temptation when I am no longer aware of my faith, when my heart tells me that I am an unbeliever, I have no place to turn for assurance if faith must come before forgiveness. But if forgiveness comes first, if it is always there, if it is true whether I believe it or not, I do not need to know whether I have faith or not before I can cling to God’s promise. I know that my sins are forgiven whether I feel forgiven or unforgiven. I know that my iniquity is pardoned whether I believe it or not. And when I know that, then I know also that I am a believer." Page 13
http://www.wlsessays.net/files/BeckerJustification.PDF
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GJ - No wonder the WELS clergy and laity listened to Paul Calvin Kelm with rapture and awe. They had already been hynotized by Sig Becker, who did not understand faith, forgiveness, or the Means of Grace.
