Why We Think Differently from "Them." Noetic Effects of the Fall

Ever wonder why your neighbor thinks differently than you do? Especially unbelievers? Ever wonder why so many people "just don't get it"?

Here are Albert Mohler's noetic (epistemological) effects of the Fall. To say it another way, here's where our mental faculties break down.

• The reason is hostile to God. We are bent away from the holy.
• Ignorance of facts--we don't know what we don't know!
• Forgetfulness--we lose information we once held.
• Prejudices (tribalism, etc.)
• Limited perspective--we can be only one place; we can only be one person.
• Distractedness--we are quickly knocked off course mentally.
• Intellectual pride--we are "puffed up" in what we think we know.
• Dogmatism--we hold too strongly to constructs we ought to abandon.
• Intellectual fatigue--we can't think hard enough, long enough.
• Illogical conclusions--inconsistencies in logic and worldview (formal and informal fallacies).
• Willful denial of data, also called "invincible ignorance."
• Intellectual apathy--we aren't passionate enough to pursue the truth ardently.
• Vain imagination--we create concepts that do not exist.
• Miscommunication--we fail to hear accurately and learn from others.
• Partial knowledge--we hold to incomplete sets of facts.
• Emotional reasoning--the mind is ruled by the emotions instead of the other way around.

Cited from Albert Mohler, The Way the World Thinks: Meeting the Natural Mind in the Mirror and in the Marketplace.  Desiring Gop 2010 National Conference. Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God. (10.2.2010). www.desiringgod.org.