Scrutinizing Core Convictions - Internal Coherence

 

It only makes sense to scrutinize your core convictions if you assume that truth matters and you either have reason to doubt and you don’t see doubting as a sin. Truth matters only if reality cannot be reduced to subjective preferences or ideas and if the mind, our reason (which for me includes an intelligent, well-educated heart) can engage with reality in some way, however limited, however fallible.

 

If you believe you possess the absolute Truth – say it is unmistakably given in the Bible as your congregation reads it; that part of this Truth is that human reason has been utterly darkened by sin; and finally that it is a sin to try to know the Truth by thinking or using human reason in any way – that you are called on just mindlessly to believe – then the value of scrutinizing your beliefs will make no sense. Worse, it would be a form of blasphemy. All the people who don’t believe as you do are lost sheep. You alone with your congregation have The Answer to life’s problems. Of course, it may be easy for an outsider to recognize just how irrational that is, though no one can prove you false, no one can definitively refute you if you are sincere. You might not be. Your religion might be the expression of resentment, of the ego-power of being part of the elite, of the enjoyment of the thought that all those who have looked down on you will burn in Hell. But it need not be the expression of an unbound ego. For the sincere person, doubt must wait until life challenges part of the dogma you live by. Perhaps your child, who you know to be loving and decent, loves another of the same sex and you cannot image your child in Hell. In any case, no logic or science in the first place, but only life can challenge such belief systems constructed to be absolute and immune from refutation. Such belief systems depend on a touch epistemological bubble and a loud echo chamber – usually the church congregation. There are also many non-religious versions of this (e.g. MAGA, WOKE, Scientology, Naziism, Marxism-Leninism, the Scientism of a Carl Sagen or Richard Dawkins).

 

If truth doesn’t matter because a central dogma of your meaning-ecosystem is that truth is relative to the individual – “truth relativism” or “subjectivism” – then critically scrutinizing your beliefs will not make sense. “Subjectivism” or “truth relativism” is the proposition that when someone makes a claim what makes that claim true or false is not reality but the person’s private feelings, desires, or wishes. Why would someone believe such a prima facie absurd proposition? There are the usual suspects of bad reasons associated with the fat, relentless ego: to vaccinate your private feelings, wishes, or desires from outside criticism, for example. More seriously, you might believe either that human reason is utterly incapable of knowing anything important (you might be a skeptic) or even that the very idea of ‘reality’ makes no sense given that an unperceived, unconceptualized, undescribed world seems an empty concept. We, autonomously or slavishly, define what is real, and thus what is true, through our feelings, wishes, and desires. To refuse to just accept your belief system (your “identity”) can only be an attempt to gain power over your feelings, which is a form of disrespect. So we often get a kind of Kantian morality with this, complete with a new categorical imperative: Do not call into question anybody's beliefs, identity, feelings unless such beliefs, identity, or feelings call into question anybody's else's beliefs, identity, or feelings. 

   Imagine that metaphysical philosophy achieves the status of dogma in a person or a culture.  [By ‘metaphysical’ I mean a belief or a philosophy that is not scientifically falsifiable, not definitively supported by intersubjectively verifiable evidence, and not subsumable under precise technical terms with stipulated definitions. Moreover, it interprets reality as a whole, or at least humanity as a whole, sub specie aeternitatis.]

    I almost cringe everytime I hear the expression ‘truth’ prefaced by a personal pronoun: my truth, her truth, their truth, etc. I hear it all the time from my students (I rarely let it pass without comment.) Gwenyth Paltrow said of the man she accused of lying about a skiing accident after a lawsuit in which he sued her: well, that was ‘his truth.’ Oprah is a profit of truth subjectivism, as when she asked Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex: “How do you feel about the palace hearing you speak your truth today?” It seems every time I force myself to listen to a Trump fanatic or a gender ideologue they speak about ‘their truth.’ I hear vocal activists for multiculturalism exclaim we should celebrate diversity and difference rather than take our differences seriously in philosophical or theological discussions. Well, we all have our own truth. I cringe because I can only interpret such language as expressive of a culturally powerful narcissism rather than a consistent philosophical skepticism.

    But to the dogmatic skeptic, though as a dogmatist you can make your truth-relativism immune to definitive refutation, there is something to say. If it is true that reality doesn’t talk back to us, that ‘reality’ is a construct, a projection of our feelings, wishes, and desires onto the blank screen of Being, then either that is true or false. If it is true or false, then it asserts something about reality – namely, it is just a projection of subjective or intersubjective feelings, etc. If you are right in maintaining truth relativism, then most of the world’s religions and philosophies are wrong. You are part of an elite, just like the Southern Baptist who knows the absolute truth of Being. Relativism/subjectivism turns out to be another form of dogmatic absolutism.

  I don’t think this is a knock-down argument. I think it is the beginning of a discussion. To deny that to keep your life free of doubt would be possible, but there is no reason for me to admire that attitude or assume it makes sense for me or you. To embark on a discussion already is to leave dogmatism behind, to become an apostle of reason.

   In any case, to the belief system I earlier described like this . . .

Nature and reality are constructs. Gender is socially constructed rather than an inherent or natural attribute. An individual's behavior conforms to societal gender norms, and they are performing a gender identity. Subverting gender norms exposes their performative nature and reveals the instability of gender categories. Gender identities are produced through repeated acts, and they depend on their continual performance for existence. Power relations shape discourse, and discourse constructs social reality, including gender.

…that would be my reply. It’s up to the individual to decide whether to open their mind or keep it closed. To a belief in dogma as part of one’s core convictions, I would oppose the belief in the spiritual demeanor the love of truth together with the moral implication that the unexamined life is unworthy of a human being.    

 

 . . .

   

Another example of how internal incoherence surfaces with dogma presses against life is the picture of nihilist belief system:

 

Life has no inherent meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. Moral values and truths are subjective and not absolute. There are no ethical standards grounded in reality. The universe is indifferent to human existence and lacks any inherent order or purpose. Traditional beliefs and established social structures are often baseless and should be critically questioned or rejected. Human existence and endeavors are insignificant in the grand scope of the universe. In the absence of intrinsic meaning, any sense of purpose or value in life must be individually created or assigned, as it is not inherently present.

To this I offer the reply of C. S. Lewis:

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it?... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if i did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist - in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless - I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality - namely my idea of justice - was full of sense. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

 

I am not claiming that Lewis’ argument is a knock-down argument. I am claiming that if the nihilist’s mind is not completely enclosed inside of an epistemological bubble with an echo chamber, he would find a discussion there. Once you discuss, you will probably learn something, gain insights or different perspectives. Learning presupposes that there is something there to learn. Reality can disclose itself – never fully – in discussion.

   The willingness to discuss is already giving up dogmatism.

. . .

  So what about the axiomatic beliefs – the dogmas – without which we cannot have any belief system at all, if I am right? I would say that there are indeed some things you cannot doubt, some things presupposed by the love of truth. Here is an excerpt from a conversation in a Woody Allen movie, Crimes and Misdemeanors (his best, I think), spoken by a devout Jew in response to being pressed by an atheist-nihilist sister: “If necessary I will always choose God over the truth.”

   There is a sense in which I would criticize this. If the Bible says God commands us to stone adulterers, and all of our heart and mind tells us that this practice is an abomination, then the truth trumps God. If God says ‘Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone,’ then no evidence or argument will convince me that this is wrong.

   If choosing God over truth means choosing Goodness itself and Truth itself over finite, fallible human truths, then what the character said makes sense. If choosing God means choosing a God over Goodness and Truth itself, then it doesn’t make sense.

   The love of truth is bound to the love of Goodness, indeed the love of Love. It is bound to the hope and faith that Truth discloses Goodness and Beauty. It is bound with the faith that loving the truth is a way of realizing the goodness in myself, that it is part of my human vocation to struggle with all my power to disclose as much reality as I can understand and bear. It is bound with a faith that the world is at bottom not evil or meaningless, and thus evidence that suggests that it is or could be cannot be the last word. The love or truth, the commitment to a self-examined life, the faith in the openness of reason to reality is all bound with faith, hope, and love. Logically, that is not falsifiable. But life – as with the other examples – can press against the faith, hope, and love that motivate the love of truth.

   All belief systems have a core of ‘faith’ (negative or positive). Some add hope. Others love. We are finite. We can’t be otherwise.