Director Roger Nygard traveled the world asking theologians, scientists, skeptics, and everyday people 85 tough questions to try to understand The Nature of Existence! Now that he’s asked the experts, it’s YOUR TURN! To offer your own insights on today’s question, “Why do people get angry when their beliefs are challenged?“, Leave a Reply below!
Often people get angry when their beliefs are challenged because they are unable to differentiate between who they are and their beliefs. A challenge is not a personal attack, it should provide an occasion to prove their own beliefs but since most don’t know why they believe what they believe they feel stupid.
As I discuss in the video in my website link humans keep a virtual image of the world in their heads based on all their beliefs of how the world works and how the fit into it, it is by this virtual image we relate to and navigate the world. This virtual image is vitally important to our ability to function. This virtual image resides in the most primitive parts of the brain, also responsible for emotion and is incapable of language. When you beliefs are challenged is destabilizes this virtual image and the primitive part of the brain perceives this an attack and sends signals to the rest of the brain in the only method it has available, emotions. This reaction is similar to the basic fight or flight response. When an emotion is generated your cognitive mind associates the emotion with the stimulus the immediately preceded it, which in this case is the person or comment that challenged their belief and they feel anger, fear, resentment, hostility, etc. towards that person or comment.
It’s difficult for people to admit that they are wrong because we all want to feel like we know what is what.
We’ll all be gravely disappointed when we wake up in the matrix and realize that we know nothing.
Because they are either wrong, or have no clue how to answer their theology.
By our beliefs we anchor our identity, to challenge a person’s beliefs is to cut them right to the core. Sometimes this can be violence, sometimes it can be surgery.
Actually, its quite fascinating why this is, Its way too complicated to explain here, But if you have the time, there is a great video series on You Tube called The Bomb in the Brain. It explains the science behind this.
Fear. These deep questions are troublesome. Humans like to “know” things, so we invent answers for the questions we cannot answer; problem solved. If you are convinced that your answers are correct, a challenge to them could force you to re-examine them and determine that you actually do not “know”. In addition, you would realize that you have wasted many hours of your life adhering to the ritual for no reason. For some, not knowing but pretending to know is better than just not knowing. I choose to admit my ignorance and just “let the mystery be”.
It’s not fear of the truth but that truth may require personal change, and people don’t like change.
Generally it’s because they don’t know how to answer such challenges and they don’t want to abandon their ideas so instead they lash out in anger. They see that as easier than thinking and less passive than admitting that they are wrong.
I suppose that in some cases they are also fearful of what they have been told happens if they change their minds. They fear parental rejection, hairy palms, rejection of friends, and burning forever in Hell if they change their minds.
Assuming the question refers to beliefs based on faith-
Because if I accept something without proof it means I’m relying on me and me alone- I say it is true because I have emotionally and psychologically provided and/or generated what I need to support it. So if you challenge this, there is no other way for me to take but as a personal attack. I may not be aware of this process on a conscious level, all I know is that you’ve really gotten under my skin.
But if you were to challenge my belief about why stars shine, I need only point to many decades of established research by thousands of people into astrophysics, nuclear fusion, spectrography, etc. I might be surprised that you doubt something so basic as to be taught in elementary school, but it’s not going to have any more effect on me emotionally than if you thought the earth was flat.
Often people get angry when their beliefs are challenged because they are unable to differentiate between who they are and their beliefs. A challenge is not a personal attack, it should provide an occasion to prove their own beliefs but since most don’t know why they believe what they believe they feel stupid.
Belief is a personal experience which has become a personal truth. Why does a country get angry when another invades it? Truth is never the same for everyone.
Belief or faith is like quinine, one has to swallow it. Reasons are many, Social conformity, peer pressure, family tradition, fear of unknown etc. The believers also need to constantly fight against extablished scientific fact which often contradicts with his/her belief. In the process, the believer has to fight with his own logical mind which he/she tries to suppress all the time. To accept the truth that he/she is taking a bitter pill, believers resort to many self denial tricks. First, to create a histerical environment of unconditional love for an invisible entity called God. Second, to apply an attribute called holiness to virtually anything starting from sewer water to dead skin flecks! Organized religion also deliberately try to create a cult like introduicing chants before and after doing day to day task, obligatory add ons like PBUH (Peace be upon him), following specific branding on extravagant architecture, intricately designed relics and elegant priestly robes etc.
All this thing gives a believer an identity which is strongly attached to every aspects of his/her lifestyle. Now add all the prayers and keeping him/herself off the sin from all the temptation of the world over years, and it is understandable how one feels when theologically challanged. Even though the believer realizes his/her mistake, he/she must weigh his/her newly found ‘truth’ with all his/her life’s sacrifice in terms of time and effort in prayers and other rituals. Therefore, even if they have something left to defend, they do it by turning their frustration derived from the self denial into anger and pretend that their feeling is being hurt!
This is not only common in believers, academics also practice the same when challanged by fresh ideas. This time the stake being losing the royalties from all the text books they have already published!
It appears to be a human failing based on the need many of us have for varying degrees of certitude about reality, and because many of us appear to sort of “personify” our beliefs. It seems to me that anyone who gets angry at having their beliefs challenged is usually simply reacting to the exposure of what they already think are gray areas in their belief system.
It is an instinct to avoid failure or defeat. Our ancestors lived in a situation where making an incorrect choice or failing to perform might well mean death for themselves and perhaps their whole group. That instinct still survives in us quite strongly because of the formats of our societies around the world.
When someone’s opinions and beliefs are directly challenged by opinions of others or even by direct evidence, their impulse is to become defensive and unrelenting. Their only alternative is to accept that they may have been completely wrong all along…something they cannot accept because of both the fact that they do not understand what really drives them to resist accepting they could be wrong, and their lack of cognizance to resist that impulse when they do know about it.
One reason people get angry is when they cannot defend those beliefs – and they may feel insecure about the basis of their their thinking (such as when Christians are confronted with what their “good book” actually says).
Another reason people get angry is when the person challenging the belief is so wildly off-base that you are concerned that anyone would think that way (such as when scientists are confronted by creationists).
While it may seem difficult to tell one from another, simple questioning will soon reveal if the beliefs in question are defensible or not. Either way, those that cannot be defended should be trashed.
An emotional response arises when one does not have convincing evidence to present for their side of the argument.
They get angry as they believe their religion tells them to repel hostility with hostility
It’s not Anger it’s Fear disguised by the ego.
Anyone who gets angry when their beliefs are challenged has built their beliefs on a shaky foundation. No one likes the feeling of the ground
they are standing on moving. So, the anger is really fear that they will be left with no place to stand.
Because it involves the fundamental values at the core of their motivation.
Short answer; cognitive dissidence. It threatens what they see as the basis of their existence. It demands something more than a knee-jerk response or a submission to authority. Too scary to contemplate and anger is a typical response to fear.
The fear of loosing ones cherished beliefs my lead to anger.
The fear of loosing ones cherished beliefs may lead to anger.
cause they like them, are afraid of anything other than them, and people like to have a reason to fight