Knowing Anything

In all of the discussions I have had as a result of this blog and all of the other philosophical discussions I have had over the last few years there is one phrase which never fails to bug the hell out of me.

“Well, you can’t really know anything.”

People always feel very clever when they roll this one out. It is, they feel a knockout blow to any declarative statement, logical progression or even simple list of facts. “You can’t really know anything.” That’s it. They win.

This phrase, and other’s like it (“Everything is subjective.” “You can’t disprove the existence of God.” etc.) are not conversation starters but rather conversation enders.

Of course, on some level, they’re right.

Are we incredibly limited creatures who’s only ability to understand the world around us is through the conduit of our own narrow senses? Yes. Is it possible that those senses are lying to us? Yes. Are we subjective creatures who perceive reality through the filter of our background, desires and prejudices? Yes. Is it possible that our perception of reality is entirely manufactured? Yes.

We could be locked in a chemical coma with our brains hot-wired, as in The Matrix, or lying in a padded cell in a mental institution. It is even possible that we don’t exist at all.

In fact, once you start going down this road absolutely anything is possible.

And that’s the problem.

If you can’t really know anything, then the sun could rise in the north tomorrow. Pigs could fly and fire could freeze. How could we survive in a world where we can’t know anything?

I’m not saying that ideas like this should never be discussed. Any idea which forces us to rethink our perceptions and preconceptions is a useful tool. Asking the question “Can we really know anything?” is the beginning of a wonderful conversation. Although in my opinion a much more interesting conversation can be had by asking, as my friend, Mike Hoover, does, “How do we know what we know?” There is a lot of mileage and introspection to be got out of that one.

However stating that nothing can be known is in my opinion both irresponsible and even dangerous.

Here’s why:

1. It’s not scientific. Disprovability, is in many ways a more, important, scientific criteria than provability. People often say, “You can’t disprove the existence of God.” Which is true, but so what? As Bertrand Russell used to say. “You also can’t disprove the existence of a flying, invisible, spaghetti monster.” In fact, there are an infinite number of things which I cannot disprove. Science is interested in those things which could be disproved. I could disprove evolution right now. All I have to do is find a porcupine that gives birth to a cactus. However, there is no experiment on earth, or mathematical equation I can produce, or even logical argument I can create to disprove the existence of God or the spaghetti monsters or anything else. If the same statement can be used to argue for or against anything, it has no scientific value.

2. It’s Lazy. Anyone can say it, at any time. It requires no work, no education. There is no research involved or years of labor. It requires no intelligence or discipline. It is, in my opinion, the last argument of a lazy mind and represents, the desire to close, not only the eyes of the speaker, but the eyes of the world.

3. It isn’t useful. And this is really the big one. “You can’t really know anything.” Puts us back in the caves without even a fire to keep us warm.

Imagine two primitive men back in the ice age. One says, “I don’t know why those wooly mammoths come back to the same watering hole every year but I know that they do, so let’s set a trap.” The other says,”Well you can’t really know anything.” Which one of them is more likely to feed his family? Which one of them is more likely to learn why the mammoths return each year? Which one of them will pass that knowledge onto his children and, more importantly, the knowledge that you can, in fact, know some things? In short, which one of them will survive and grow and which one of them will remain stagnant and probably die?

Try saying “You can’t really know anything.” the next time you fly in airplane, drive across a bridge or go to the pharmacy to pick up your antibiotics. Those things, and many others were created by people who believed that knowledge was something that could be gained and used for the betterment of themselves and the rest of the human race.

“You can’t really know anything.” Has the wonderful advantage of sounding, smart, cynical, and superior all at once but it is, in my opinion, a very clever dead end. We can’t know everything. That’s true. The pursuit of knowledge, however, begins with the idea that we can know some things and that knowledge, itself, is worth pursuing.

The Prisoner and The Pawn

Two men.

Both wealthy and respected. Both learned and disciplined. Both the heads of large and influential families. Both doomed to suffering, not by their vices, but rather, by their virtues.

One was a man of faith, the other, a man of science.

The man of faith was the foremost citizen in the foremost city of the known world but despite his power and wealth, he was humble and pious. He knew that the most important values in the world were not those that could be tallied or traded but only felt. He was, in short a devout follower of unseen, unfathomable God and he knew, without a shadow of doubt, not only that his God was real, but that God loved him.

The man of science was born in a city devoted to God where all the teachers were God’s servants and all truth was defined by his holy church. But when he looked around, the truth he witnessed wasn’t what he had been taught and that left him in a terrible dilemma. “Does it take more courage to open one’s eyes or to close them?”

There were those who were unimpressed by the man of faith’s devotion. “It’s easy”, they would say, “to have faith when you are a rich.” It does not take great character to have faith in luxury but faith in suffering is hard and sometimes the greatest lessons come with the greatest price.

The man of science knew that closing his eyes to the truth would be easier, but the call of knowledge was too beautiful to ignore and so he opened his eyes ever wider and began to study. He measured the movements of the planets and the stars. He touched earth and stone. He sought truth in fire and water and the more he learned, the more he came to understand that the word of God, so long spoken with certainty, was at best in error and at worst an outright lie.

How do you keep your faith in the face of tragedy? How can you love a God who takes away everything you hold dear? The man of faith watched his wife and children die of disease. He lost his fortune, his status in the community, and his home. Even his health deserted him and this once proud pillar of society became homeless, destitute and diseased. He valued faith above all other things and now faith was all he had left.

If you are going to argue with God, you better have your facts straight. Years went by. Decades. The man of science spent long nights charting the stars and long days working out the mysteries of their movements. Even when he was certain he had unlocked their secrets he returned to his studies and sought out his own mistakes. Doubting what the rest of the world takes for granted might be the pathway to new knowledge, but turning the light of doubt on your own preconceptions and fallibility is the first step towards wisdom. When he was finally certain, the man of science told his story to the world and it almost cost him his life.

Everyone told the man of faith to abandon God. “How can you love a God who clearly doesn’t love you?” “How can a just God allow such suffering to be visited on a just and faithful man?” The logic, they said, was self evident. “Either God does not exist, or, if he does, he does not love you.” The man of faith listened patiently but in his heart he knew the truth.

In 1633 Galileo Galilei was called before the inquisition in Rome under the charge of heresy. His believe in a heliocentric universe was in direct contradiction to the geocentric universe described in scripture. Galileo was imprisoned and forced to recant his views. However, there is a legend (probably apocryphal) that after admitting, under threat of torture and death, that the earth was the stationary center of the universe, he whispered under his breath, “And yet, it moves.”

Job never gave up his faith and, in the end, God returned his health, wealth and status. That God was also responsible for his suffering is the wellspring of a great debate. How can we love a God who could so callously torture one of his most devoted followers simply to prove a point to Satan? Is Job a saint to be admired and emulated, or a fool?

The journeys of faith and science are both long and difficult. They both require dedication and discipline. They both often mean pitting yourself against the prevailing culture and enduring the derision of the world. However, in the end, these two journey’s are walked in opposite directions. The discipline of science is one of doubt, of seeking facts not feelings, of believing not what we wish is true but only what can be proven. The discipline of faith is internal. It is about letting go of doubt. It’s power is derived not from the head but from heart. It is a way of finding hope, when logic would say all hope is gone.

Science and faith can both save lives, change civilizations and, perhaps, even move mountains but they have walked so long in opposite directions that they have lost site of each other and that might be a tragedy for both.

On the Power of Faith

Those of you who know me, or have read my blog, know that I am not a religious person. Logic, consistency, objectivity and provability are the standards by which I try (albeit at times unsuccessfully) to live my life. Those standards, are frequently at odds with those of religion, which value faith above all other things.

This predilection for the scientific perspective has naturally led me into one heated discussion after another with my more religious friends. These discussions invariably end badly, with me disappointed in my friend/opponent’s inability to see the inconsistencies in their faith while they are equally frustrated and sometimes angry with, what they see as, my patronizing attitude towards their most, cherished beliefs.

So, rather than once again reviewing my litany of Biblical inconsistencies, mocking the biography of Joseph Smith, or trying to explain the criteria for scientific proof, I have decided to examine the question of faith from a decidedly different angle.

Let us first stipulate that although it is possible (albeit, in my opinion very unlikely) for one, particular religion to be literally true, it is impossible for all religions to be literally true.

If the tenants of Hinduism are correct about reincarnation then Judaism must be false in it’s belief in only one life on earth . If, as the Jews believe, the Messiah has not yet appeared, then Christianity must be false as it is based on the divinity of Jesus. If Jesus was, as the Christians believe, the last great prophet, then the followers of Mohammed must be following a fraud.

If one is true, the others must be false. Consequently, since none of the religions of the world represent a majority of the religious population, it follows that the vast majority of religious people on the planet believe in a doctrine which is not true.

However, the fact that most religious people on the planet must be wrong does not effect the intensity of their faith.

The question is, “Is it possible that something which is not literally true can have real and transformative value?”

Here’s a story.

A Jew, a Muslim, a Christian and a Buddhist walk into an AA meeting. All four men have struggled with alcoholism for many years. All four men have tried, over and over again, to fight their addiction with will power and all have failed. All four men begin the twelve step program by admitting they are powerless over their alcoholism. All four men turn their problem over to a higher power. All four men define that higher power differently. Yet, all four manage to do something they have never been able to do on their own.

They stop drinking.

And who gets the credit for this transformation? God? Buddha? Allah? Jesus? If Jesus helped the Christian quit drinking who helped the Buddhist? Who helped the Jew? They cannot all exist and yet all four men found help.

So, what gave these men the power to do what they couldn’t do on their own?

Faith did. Not truth. Not God. Faith.

The Placebo Effect

The placebo effect is really a study in the power of the human mind, or, depending on how you look at it, the power of bullshit. Tell a patient that the sugar pill they are ingesting is a cure and you vastly increase the chances that they will recover. This isn’t psudo-science or new age mysticism. This is carefully documented scientific fact. Our health is intimately linked to our state of mind.

The placebo effect can work in the opposite way as well. In a recent study, the arms of a group of students were rubbed by a plant which they were told was poison ivy. 80% of those students developed rashes consistent with that plant’s effect, despite the fact that the plant they touched wasn’t poison Ivy at all.

Since scientists are seeking real drugs and techniques which can consistently combat disease, they spend most of their time trying to eliminate the placebo effect from their research. Consequently, we think of placebo’s as a statistical anomaly or an experimental nuisance. However, I think that is a mistake.

These results are not inconsequential. They are substantiated and significant. I do not believe that our perceptions and beliefs can magically change the world around us (as we have been told by self help books like The Secret) However, there is no doubt that our beliefs can have powerful, transformative effects on ourselves and by transforming ourselves we do change both our perceptions of the world and how we act in it.

If faith in a tiny pill can cure disease, how much more powerful is faith in an omnipotent and loving God?

So, let us return to our AA members and examine, once again, how they managed their recovery. They knew that they could not beat their drinking on their own. They put their faith in a cure and the cure worked despite the fact that, for at least three out of four of them, the cure must not exist.

Is it possible that something which is not literally true can have real substantial value?

The answer is yes.

Here is a description of a religion.

You go with your family and community into a beautiful space. You perform rituals which are probably not all that different from what your great grand parents performed. You sing, read, and pray in unison. You listen to the wise words of elders. You meditate and contemplate your own life. You ask forgiveness for your inequities. You fast. You dance. You celebrate together and you mourn together. You lend your strength to the rest of the community when you can and take strength from the community when you need to. You have faith in a meaning and a power beyond this world.

The question is, which religion did I just describe? The answer: Pretty much all of them.

So, what do we conclude from this? That the major religions are nothing but plagiarists, callously stealing ideas from each other, or is it possible that the stuff religions do, fasting, singing, praying, is simply good stuff, regardless of whether the doctrine it is designed to support is true?

Almost every religion has the story of the wise man, Christian monk, Hindu ascetic, aboriginal Holy Man or Zen master, who turns his back on society and goes into the wilderness where, through a process of fasting, self denial, meditation, or even drug induced hallucination, has a transformative experience.

Again, what do we conclude from this. Do we see the transformative experience as evidence that the particular mythology the holy man subscribed to is true despite the fact, that that mythology is in direct contradiction to the holy men of other sects who had similar experiences or do we instead conclude that putting the mind and body through a profound change, fasting, deprivation, silence, torture, etc...can be transformative with or without any mythology at all?

The truth is that if you put the human body and mind in an extreme situation, whether it is fasting on your Yoga retreat or going through basic training in the marine corps something will happen, something profound.

Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela had their transformative experiences in prison.

So what do we tell our four AA members who’s faith saved their lives? What do we tell the billions of people across the globe who gain solace, hope and a sense of belonging from their religious traditions. What do we tell the men and women who have had a religious experience so profound that it has not only transformed their lives but, from their perspective, the entire world?

Do we tell them that these experiences are nothing more than dramatic examples of the placebo effect? Do we explain that songs, architecture and ritual do not prove the existence of God? Do we belittle the most important experience of their lives by explaining it?

Can you imagine how insulting that would sound?

Faith is real. Faith is powerful. Faith helped Gandhi and Martin Luther King stand up against impossible odds. Faith helped Jesus forgive his murderers. Faith might even have helped your team win the super bowl.

The truth is that all of the elements of religion; community, tradition, music, mediation, art, prayer, the personal spiritual journey, and yes even faith, can be positive and valuable additions to a person’s or community's life. The problem arises when that genuine value is seen as absolute proof that the particular doctrine they believe in must be true.

And that is very, very dangerous.

Faith exists beyond rational thought and is therefor easily manipulated and very difficult to argue with.

Our four AA men’s lives were literally saved by their faith, so how can they argue when their faith calls upon them to persecute homosexuals, burn down abortion clinics, or raise the shout of global Jihad against all the infidels who oppose the god that saved their life.

Faith has spilt it’s share of blood and the only hope we have is that we find a way to mediate the power of our faith with the power of reason.

In my opinion, the myths of Samson and Jonah are just as likely as the myths of Hercules and Loki or, for that matter, Superman and Spiderman.

However, I will acknowledge that your belief in those stories and your participation in the rituals that go along with them can have lasting and positive effects on your life and that of your community.

All I ask in return is that you acknowledge that believing in a thing beyond reason, beyond logic, can be as dangerous and destructive as it is beneficial.

I support your right to choose faith but I hope that it will be faith tempered by reason and compassion, a faith which is at once humble and forgiving, self-critical and patient.

In short, if your faith helps you strive to be a better person, then we have nothing to argue about.