In a series of studies by Solomon E. Asch (1955),1 it was found that three out of four people tested agreed with a group of people giving false answers on some comparisons of the lengths of lines. In each of these experiments, an unsuspecting subject was put in a room full of three or more people collaborating with the experimenter. Everybody was shown a pair of white cards. On the left card was a single line, while on the right card were three lines of differing lengths. The object was to identify which of the three lines was equal in length to the single line on the other card. In some cases, those collaborating in the experiment were to give correct answers, while in other cases, the collaborators were all to give a certain predetermined incorrect answer.
Some of the subjects agreed with the group on all comparisons, and 75% of the subjects incorrectly agreed with the group on at least some occasions. In cases in which the standard line was ten inches in comparison with a "correct" comparison line length of three inches, there was still appreciable yielding to the group "consensus" that the two lines were of equal length. Some of the subjects later said that they actually saw that the lines were of equal length, while others were simply so concerned with appearing different, that they went along with the group consensus. Many of those who did not succumb to the group consensus nevertheless viewed their disagreement with the group as a personal deficiency, believing that they were judging incorrectly.
These studies demonstrate to us that we cannot assume, simply because most people now disbelieve Christianity, that Christianity is false. The consensus is a very powerful force in determining a person's world view. This is especially the case if almost everything one reads is written from within a framework opposed to the Christian world view. C. S. Lewis writes:
We can make people (often) attend to the Christian point of view for half an hour or so; but the moment they have gone away from our lecture or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite position is taken for granted. . . . Our Faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defence of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books.2
C. S. Lewis was well aware that the consensus has changed from an earlier Christian consensus, and that climates of opinion change rapidly in all fields of thought:
But the doctrine of Satan's existence and fall is not among the things we know to be untrue: it contradicts not the facts discovered by scientists but the mere, vague "climate of opinion" that we happen to be living in. Now I take a very low view of "climates of opinion." In his own subject every man knows that all discoveries are made and all errors corrected by those who ignore the "climate of opinion."3
Examples of this principle could be multiplied almost endlessly. Einstein's theory of Relativity is an obvious example. Another would be the development of non-Euclidean geometry by Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855). According to the "parallel postulate," through a point not on a line there exists a single line parallel to the given line. Many people tried to prove it as a theorem, but without success. Among them was Gauss, who soon concluded that Euclidean geometry was not the only possible form of geometry. By 1820, he was in full possession of the main theorem of Non-Euclidean geometry, but he did not reveal his conclusions until others published on the subject in 1829 and 1832. The reason for Gauss's silence was that the intellectual climate of the time in Germany was dominated by the philosophy of Kant. One of the basic tenets of his system was that idea that Euclidean geometry is the only possible way of thinking about space. While Gauss knew that this idea was totally false and that the Kantian system was a structure built on sand, he valued his privacy and his quiet life, holding his peace in order to avoid disputes with the philosophers. In a letter to Bessel in 1829, he wrote, "I shall probably not put my very extensive investigation on this subject into publishable form for a long time, perhaps not in my lifetime, for I dread the shrieks we would hear from the Boetians if I were to express myself fully on the matter."4
In all academic fields, the consensus is constantly shifting. Yet, the consensus is very convincing for most people, even though it keeps changing. Let us therefore not be led astray by the antisupernaturalistic and anti-Christian presuppositions that now dominate our culture, but let each of us examine the evidence as objectively and independently as we can and draw our own conclusions, even if they fly in the face of the predominating world view.
1 Solomon E. Asch, "Opinions and Social Pressure," Scientific American, November 1955, vol. 193, no. 5.
2 C. S. Lewis, God In The Dock, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970), p. 93.
3 C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1962), p. 134.
4 Werke, vol. VIII, p. 200. The Boetians were a dull-witted group of the ancient Greeks living northwest of Athens.
