Faith is an appalling method of ascertaining a truth.
I've been interested in critical thinking for a few years now, and for the past year I've been more specifically interested in epistemology, the science of knowledge. It sounds pompous like that, but it's one of the sciences that has left its mark on my daily life.
How do you know what you know ?
And how can we be sure it's true ?
The example of God
I am always horrified to see how many believers are absolutely certain that God exists. While the tangible and concrete evidence of His existence is basically nil. The arguments I hear most frequently fall generally into two categories.
The first family of believers is based on faith. Faith is believing without proof in God and accepting that one has no proof.
Faith is an appalling method of ascertaining a truth.
Other arguments often used by believers are rarely based on measured, observed and validated phenomena. Rather, they are based on what I think is the biggest problem in man and his relationship to knowledge.
In one sentence, it could be summarized as follows :
- When someone makes an assertion, the arguments about why the assertion is made, do not matter.
All that matters is why he believes the statement to be true.
The dog's paws
Let's take a simple example. Mr. Dupont claims that a dog has four paws. You listen to his justifications for this assertion to find out whether you agree with him.
- Wrong justification : "A dog has four legs, because it allows it to be balanced while running"
- Good justification : "A dog has four legs. I've seen many four-legged dogs in my life."
The first justification is an explanation of why the statements made, the second justification refers to an external truth and elaborates why Mr. Dupont believes a dog has four legs.
Why is the first statement useless? Because justifications like that can be produced for any assertion. For example :
- "A dog has three legs. It's enough to run, and it's lighter to carry than four legs. So it's more efficient".
Have fun creating "credible" justifications for why with any theory, and you'll develop an awareness of these bad justifications.
A useful argument presents data and elements external to the proposition, which cannot simply be the imagination of the person formulating it.
Examples of bad arguments
Disclaimer : this does not represent my real opinion.
- Immigration is a scourge, because it takes jobs from local workers.
- Immigration is a blessing, because it creates a cultural melting pot.
- God exists, because it is the only way to explain the existence of our complex universe.
- God does not exist, because there is too much war and destruction on our Earth.
These arguments are worthless. One of the leading researchers in the field, Deanna Kuhn, even defines them as non-arguments. They do not provide any element of knowledge because they never refer to anything external to what the person formulating them imagines in his or her head.
Here is a reformulation of these assertions followed by real arguments:
- Immigration is a scourge, because according to one source, increased immigration leads to increased unemployment among local workers (caution : I don't know).
- Immigration is a blessing, because we see the birth of artistic currents that would never have seen the light of day without it, such as ...
- God exists, because many phenomena observed as such and such miracles have taken place as a result of religious interventions (caution : I do not believe this to be true).
- God does not exist, because no inexplicable "miraculous" phenomena have been reliably observed and scentifically measured.
A useful argument presents data and elements external to the proposal, which cannot simply come out of the imagination of the person formulating it. And the more external elements - data, references, names, dates - the more reliable, or at least verifiable, the argument is, because these external data are verifiable.
We get fooled all the time, me first
It would seem that it is better to run with either worn shoes, [...] or completely barefoot.
Once you've developed an alertness to the arguments, you never stop questioning yourself. I discovered three weeks ago that I was being fooled by a theory that seemed to make sense to me :
To run without injury, you need running shoes with good shock absorbers.
It seems so logical. You need shock absorbers, because they limit the impact of the shock between the heel and the ground. Note that I wrote this justification without connecting it to any external element. I wrote it sitting at my desk without getting outside of that argument.
No scientific reference, no personal testimony, no expert opinion. I realized that I believed that because that's what people told me, that's what the salespeople told me, and that's what the ads told me.
At this point, it's a collective belief.
But in order to believe it, you have to confront it with reality and test it. In fact, when you read the literature on the subject, you learn that the issue of shoe shock-absorbers is much more complicated than most people think. It would seem that it is better to run with either worn shoes, shoes without shock absorbers, or even barefoot. If that surprises, great news : I invite you to read the wikipedia page on the topic. By the way, many runners avoid expensive cushioned shoes, even in the professional sphere. For long runs, not for sprinting.
I started running based on a belief I had. This belief was based on non-arguments. Saying "a shock absorber under the heel it limits the shocks", without citing a source, it does not shed light on the truth of the matter. I could tell you "a shock absorber is less good because it reduces proprioception", but it has no value either. Because I'm not referring to any external element.
A new world
Sounds depressing, but it's actually great news. By developing your vigilance to non-arguments, you rediscover the world from a new angle. You learn to remember why you believe in one theory and not another. And, most of all, we become willing to let go of a belief when better evidence is presented. Personally, I frequently run barefoot and have no tendon or knee pain. Just a pain in my ego that blindly believed in one theory without any justification.