[+/-] Truth versus fact
I have a friend who became a christian fundamentalist after having questioned her faith for years. One evening, on a beach, she proclaimed, "If there is a god let me see a shooting star right now!"
A shooting star crossed her path.
Whether she actually saw a meteorite is irrelevant. My friend believed she saw it and now believes the Earth to be 6,000 years old. When faced with "evidence" that points to the existence of the supernatural, and evidence that the Earth is four billion years old, she chose the former and disregarded the latter.
When creationists in Kansas demand evidence that evolution exists, yet do not demand evidence that god exists, it really pisses me off, but it also exposes a philosophical divide: theists value truth; non-theists value fact.
A theist will tell you that there is an eternal absolute truth, revealed in the holy texts of their religion. They will selectively use facts -- or bend them -- to fit their truth. The fact that most shooting stars are visible in the evening is irrelevant, as is the fact that statistically, this event is probable. The "truth" that the star was a message from a deity overwhelms fact.
A non-theist, in contrast, is less concerned with truth and more concerned with fact. If new facts are uncovered (for example, discovery of the various behaviors of subatomic particles) the truth is changed to reflect these new facts. If the truth of the Newtonian universe is replaced by the truth of the Einsteinian universe, so be it.
If one day we could obtain enough facts to prove the existence of a supernatural deity, scientists would accept it, eventually. In contrast, if we could prove that such a god did not exist, theists would still balk.
The fact of evolution points to the truth that life's complexity was not designed intentionally, but evolved from simpler forms. One day new facts might be uncovered to challenge this truth. On that day, the scientifically literate, rather than balking, will rejoice for the advancement of human knowledge and understanding.
A shooting star crossed her path.
Whether she actually saw a meteorite is irrelevant. My friend believed she saw it and now believes the Earth to be 6,000 years old. When faced with "evidence" that points to the existence of the supernatural, and evidence that the Earth is four billion years old, she chose the former and disregarded the latter.
When creationists in Kansas demand evidence that evolution exists, yet do not demand evidence that god exists, it really pisses me off, but it also exposes a philosophical divide: theists value truth; non-theists value fact.
A theist will tell you that there is an eternal absolute truth, revealed in the holy texts of their religion. They will selectively use facts -- or bend them -- to fit their truth. The fact that most shooting stars are visible in the evening is irrelevant, as is the fact that statistically, this event is probable. The "truth" that the star was a message from a deity overwhelms fact.
A non-theist, in contrast, is less concerned with truth and more concerned with fact. If new facts are uncovered (for example, discovery of the various behaviors of subatomic particles) the truth is changed to reflect these new facts. If the truth of the Newtonian universe is replaced by the truth of the Einsteinian universe, so be it.
If one day we could obtain enough facts to prove the existence of a supernatural deity, scientists would accept it, eventually. In contrast, if we could prove that such a god did not exist, theists would still balk.
The fact of evolution points to the truth that life's complexity was not designed intentionally, but evolved from simpler forms. One day new facts might be uncovered to challenge this truth. On that day, the scientifically literate, rather than balking, will rejoice for the advancement of human knowledge and understanding.
posted by Nanovirus @ 16:51 permalink
your thoughts? 6
6 Comments:
What if 'God' is just a being (or series of beings) that is (are) simply more powerful and at a higher stage of evolution than us? Maybe this entity doesn't even consider itself a god, and is continually amused by our silly little mortal pre-occupations.
The Universe is a vast place. Even if one has faith, why humans should think that there is only one path to the divine, or why they should even have the arrogance to believe that God exists for only theri species is absurd. Since there are countless numbers of galaxies out there, it's not against all odds that there is life as evolved, or even more evolved than us. Maybe they have gods, too.
So the question I would ask Christians is how they can be so sure that their god is the right one. Their answer is always "faith", which isn't an answer at all. It certainly wouldn't hold up in a court of law:
"How do you know this man is the killer?"
"Because I believe he is."
It's absurdly laughable.
I would say that theists value certainty rather than truth. "Truth" implies some correspondence with reality, while "certainty" just means you have made up your mind regardless of what is true.
So it is no wonder that the Bushies love to speak to the "truth" so that you ignore the "facts".
Electro:
But you forgot one crucial point in this little courtroom analogy. All the witnesses are alive.
All the witnesses to the so-called miracles that happened in Jesus's time (which to those people proved he was God) -- they are all dead.
The Bible is not a historical record. It doesn't hold up as well as all the pictures, eye-witness accounts, documents, and footage we have of the Holocaust.
Whilst I agree with your sentiments I doubt that any philosopher would be happy with your truth/fact dichotomy. A fact is just something which is true, a tautology, an analytic construction. Good article but work on the philosophy.
If the current pravelent theory of evolution is true, how does on explain the "fact" that some diamond samples that are billions of years old, contain C-14 with a half life of 5700 years, also a "fact"? Wouldn't all of the C-14 be long gone after just a few thousand of those billions of years?
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