When Paul says we are all members of the same body with Christ as its head, does that mean we need to make decisions together? What the social sciences call collective intelligence is a counter-intuitive idea that when people come together to “think” as a group, the resulting knowledge attained is more intelligent than even the smartest individual in that group.
But sometimes when religious groups come together, they form violent mobs, not a higher intelligence. Why is that? And, what's to keep religious groups from simply being "dumbed down" by the less knowledgable among them? Surely, if only a minority of group participants are "right" about a given topic, they will simply be out-voted?
In this video essay, I examine collective intelligence as a form of religious epistemology. We'll see why some groups devolve into group-think, why some never achieve collective intelligence and how to avoid these pitfalls. Finally, we'll see how collective intelligence was used in the early Church, how it might reflect the nature of the Trinity and why it just might be the "mind of Christ" directing us to the answers we need in order to fulfill His mission.
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