Why does Truth matter? an allegory

     Let's imagine the following allegory: 

     Two laboratories exist that currently cannot communicate with one another. Both labs perform research on the same vitamin and have their own respective patients. The vitamin has the same impact on all patients and the impact has always been the same. Additionally, all patients and both labs currently believe that the vitamin has a positive health benefit. With this in place, let’s now imagine that lab #1 discovers evidence that the vitamin actually causes cancer. Lab #2 and their patients are not yet aware of this knowledge. 

     From the perspective of lab #1, we (hopefully) agree that it is now an immoral act to provide the vitamin to their patients (we can assume that none of the patients want cancer). If the vitamins were prescribed to the patients anyway, we would (hopefully) consider this action unethical (immoral). 

     From the perspective of lab #2 (which has no knowledge of the cancer causing issue), we agree that prescribing the vitamins is still a moral act despite the fact that all of these patients will still get cancer. We recognize that the objective moral standard in each scenario is the awareness of knowledge (the available Truth). This is why Truth matters.

     At this point in the story, we have lab #1 no longer prescribing vitamins while lab #2 continues to prescribe the vitamins to their own set of patients. Every action in this allegory was moral despite the very different impacts on wellbeing. 

     From our perspective (as the omniscient reader) we can (hopefully) see a very different side to this story. We can understand how knowledge of Truth is required before a moral decision can be made. Furthermore, we understand the incredible importance of accurate (True) information within a society. We can also imagine the damgage of widespread false belief. Simply put, as our knowledge increases, so also does our ability to undertand moral decisions. If our goal is to reduce harm, then believing in True things is critical in doing so. 

     Faith is not a path to Truth. Faith is synonymous with gullibility. In our current world, 1000’s of faiths exist across the world. All faiths cannot be True. All faiths can be false. 

    Final test question: is there a moral obligation to share this knowledge with those who are currently unaware of the harm? 

(illusration produced by non-existent art team)

Faith is neither scientific nor ubiquitous

     Faith in a particular god (or God or GOD) is tantamount to many religious beliefs. The bible most notably defines faith in Hebrews 11 (NIV): 

“Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see”.  

     In addition to this, many theologians and modern christian apologists (professional defenders of religion) have (re)defined faith in the following way: "the remaining bit of confidence for a belief when evidence doesn’t provide 100% certainty.". In doing so, modern apologists have seemingly accomplished a major goal of making faith an integral part of non-religious beliefs as well.  The idea of faith is now synonymous with a ubiquitous scientific concept: “confidence”. As we recognize, only deductive claims (that are both sound and valid) can be known with 100% certainty. All scientific claims are known with something less than 100% certainty (albeit 99.999999999999+%) due to the requirement of evidential falsifiability. Because of this fact, the apologist can now assert that faith is integral aspect of science itself. 

     To many this may feel like a frustrating “checkmate” position as this massive “movement of the goalposts” actually seems to be reasonable. In reality, this doesn’t present a problem whatsoever as the simple question remains:

What is the actual evidence for the god belief? 

     No matter how much confidence (or this newly redefined faith) we have in a belief, our beliefs cannot be rationally considered as Truth unless there is actual evidence to support the claim. In other words, no matter how faith is defined, Truth requires evidence. 

Top 4: logical fallacies for a god belief

     1) ad populum fallacy: Appealing to popularity to support a claim. Appealing to the fact that many people do something or believe something to validate your claim.

     example: “everybody around me believes this, of course it must be True.”

 another example: ”This has been around for thousands of years, not everyone could have been wrong.”

     The number of people that believe something tells us nothing about the validity of the claim. This may be easier to understand if we look at one of those “other” societies. Another question: If we were the last person on the planet to still hold our faith-based religious belief, then would we still believe it? 

     2) Fallacy of not having enough time to understand, or not being able to understand a claim, or not liking the idea of the claim, etc.- suggesting that our lack of understanding or attitude towards a claim has anything to do with the possible Truth of a claim.

     example: “I don’t understand Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, therefore it must be wrong.” or “I don’t believe Darwin’s Theory of Evolution because I don’t want to be related to a gorilla”. This is one we will run into very often when discussing complicated things. This type of fallacy is often associated with willful ignorance As a reminder, Reality doesn’t require any one individual’s approval or recognition for its existence. Did anybody hear that tree fall?

 Particularly valuable here is the phrase, “I don’t know (yet)”. 

 We will discuss this idea in more depth in other posts. This fallacy described here is often referred to as the fallacy of personal incredulity or the argument from ignorance.   

     3) burden of proof fallacy- attempting to shift the burden of proof to justify our position. 

 example: “You cannot seem to disprove my claim that the blue 7-legged unicorn is real. Because you can’t disprove it, it therefore must be real….duh!“

     It is critical we understand exactly where the burden of proof rests when discussing the Truth of any claim. This may seem relatively simple, but this idea often becomes very lost and distorted in conversation. 

     4) confidence fallacy - suggesting the amount of confidence we have is somehow relevant to how True our claim is. 

     example: “My friend was unable to explain the Theory of evolution to me. Because of his lack of confidence I am going to assume evolution isn’t a real thing.”

 another example: “My friend was able to talk at length about how the Earth is exactly 5012 years old. He was so eloquent plus he had charts and graphs and everything. I am going to believe him because he was so confident!”

     This one is a big league part of our conversations surrounding faith. Because we are asked by our religious institutions to have complete 100% confidence in god, we will often feel as though we are right. Feelings are not an indicator of Truth. Likewise, if we have conversations with people who are not 100% confident, we may feel as though we “won” the conversation because of our confidence in our belief. 

reminder: the only thing that matters in the determination of Truth is logical reasoning and evidence. 

What is evidence anyway?

     Evidence is the term applied to the information indicating whether a claim (synonym for a belief, hypothesis, statement, or argument) is True or not.

Because we are imperfect systems (we are fallible), the information provided to support a claim of Truth must satisfy each of the following three ideas.

1) the information must be observable (measurable).

-we must be able to measure the claim in some way. 

If the evidence to support your claim is not observable, then it becomes impossible to detect. If we cannot detect it whatsoever, then we cannot logically include this as evidence toward your claim. 

2) the information must be repeatable.

-we must be able to repeat the findings through experimentation. Findings that are not repeatable through subsequent testing cannot be used as evidence. This is another word for a miracle. Most faith-based religions we have recognize miracles as a source for our justification in a god-belief. Because our senses are faulty, we cannot use a single incident as evidence of anything. Is there a greater chance that the laws of space and time were bent for us personally, or that our blood sugar may have been a bit low? We require repetition to eliminate known errors of our senses and our bias. 

3) the information must be falsifiable (testable). 

-we cannot use circular logic to support our claim. It is not logical to say something is True because it is True. Likewise, it is not logical to say something is True because it cannot be proven false (outside of pure deduction). To be falsifiable is synonymous with our claim being testable. Logically, these two words have nearly identical meaning. Something which cannot be proven false is synonymous with it not being testable in the first place.  Therefore, if the evidence cannot be demonstrated to be possibly be wrong then we logically cannot use towards the validity of a claim. 

     Because we could always be mistaken (and are innately biased), the scientific process as a whole requires a level of peer-review to further process any evidence provided toward a claim of Truth.

Truth and morality: an inseparable love affair

     Truth itself is the objective standard for our morality. Logic and reason (including the scientific method) are the only current demonstrable paths we have to understand what is True. As such, faith is not a path to Truth as we require evidence to determine what is True. Additionally, because we are not omnipotent, we (humans) by definition do not understand the whole Truth. Our understanding of morality is therefore subjective in any situation we may encounter. 

     Furthermore, Truth changes with time as we (humanity) continue to learn about ourselves and our environment. This is why our morals change (hopefully improve) with time and also why scientific education is so critical to a functioning society.