More Nagging About Seeking Truth

I mentioned a book a week or so ago, The Beginning of Infinity. 
 
So far, it’s talking about seeking truth (explanations) versus seeking authority and certainty. On page 29 it says, 
 
Old ways of thought, which did not seek good explanations, permitted no process such as science for correcting errors and misconceptions. Improvements happened so rarely that most people never experienced one. 
 
Old ways of thought were unquestioned traditions. 
 
It makes me wonder, as curious as I can be, do I actually have some areas I am unwilling to consider, to seek explanations?
 
Do I have assumptions about people, ideas, politics, even my feelings, that somewhere deep down I have no intention of exploring?
 
Are there some things I’d rather be wrong about than know the truth?
 
If you are like me, you see people fooling themselves all the time. But do you know when you’re doing it?
 
Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions. (1 Tim 1:6-7 ESV). 
 
But wait, what were these “certain teachers” swerving from?
 
The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (1 Tim 1:5)
 
A pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. This makes sense. A pure heart cannot “make confident assertions” about something it doesn’t truly understand. Neither can “a good conscience” or “a sincere faith.” 
 
Sincere Faith
 
Faith implies not having total objective certainty of knowledge. To pretend would leave you without “a good conscience.”
 
Thus, “an impure heart” shuts down honest truth seeking when it serves itself to believe a lie and then confidently assert it, either to itself or others. 
 
There’s nothing wrong with having faith. I have loads of it. It’s just no good to confuse faith with sight. 
 
It’s right and scary to be open to being wrong. That is, it is pure hearted to admit when faith is faith and certainty is certainty. 
 
We should want to know what is true, versus what we need to be true. The author’s point in the above book as that true progress in the world started when thinkers in the Enlightenment were willing to seek explanations that he calls “a good explanation — hard to vary — it is not yours to modify…It is the ability of some of them to solve problems beyond those they were created to solve.” 
 
His example of this was the “axis-tilt theory” for why seasons of earth change throughout the year. It’s the kind of knowledge that can be applied to any planet in the universe with pretty good certainty. 
 
An example of a bad theory, according to the author, would be an earlier Greek version of why the seasons changed:
 
Long ago, Hades, god of the underworld, kidnapped and raped Persephone, goddess of spring. Then Persephone's mother, Demeter, goddess of the earth and agriculture, negotiated a contract for her daughter's release, which specified that Persephone would marry Hades and eat a magic seed that would compel her to visit him once a year thereafter. Whenever Persephone was away fulfilling this obligation, Demeter became sad and would command the world to become cold and bleak so that nothing could grow. P.19
 
It’s an explanation, but we know it’s a bad one, because we could not apply it to every planet. The Greeks created a “truth” that couldn’t be verifiably true or universally applied.
 
So I ask again, in what areas might I be fooling myself. Do I love the truth as much as I always say I do? 
 
I will re-assert one of my more core values here: The outcome of the truth is the right outcome. 
 
God, help us want to see and give us courage to accept what’s true.