- values – from valoir, from the French meaning, ‘be worth’; one’s judgment of what is important in life
- beliefs – the mental acceptance of an idea and the assurance of its truth
- to know – ‘to recognize or identify’; to be absolutely certain or sure about something.
- fact – a thing that is indisputably the case
We say a lot of things in the rhetorical battles that seem to occupy the majority of a lot of people’s time in this country these days. If you listen too long, you might become convinced that there isn’t anything that we don’t disagree on. But if you listen closely, you might find some of what is being said just a little odd.
Strike up a conversation with a politically astute Evangelical Christian and you will hear something about values. What they say, in essence, is that they have the right to use the democratic process to create laws that reflect their values. Specifically this has meant going after laws that reflect their desires about abortion and marriage, but it is a foundation to all their political action.
Similarly, enter a conversation with a politically astute scientist or scholar and you will hear something different. The essence of their position is that values should not overshadow facts, and laws shouldn’t be enacted just to enforce a particular opinion about how to live. Specifically this has meant going after laws that focus on the use of natural resources and the effect of human activity on the environment.
The scientific stance is not simply a rejection of values; rather it is an assertion of independence from will to absolutes in contravention to evidence. Belief, in this view, should only be used to fill in the gaps that punctuate the evidence, and belief built upon the evidence is better than belief based on belief, that is, circular systems of belief or tautologies.
Obviously there is a tension between ideologies built upon these two foundations. What is this tension all about? It’s about what we say, of course.
When we begin with values, we begin with a judgment of what is important in life, but that judgment may be irrespective of reality. If a value is founded on an assurance of truth that cannot be proven, that is, a disputable truth, than the judgment of importance becomes itself unprovable. There isn’t anything wrong with this, per se, but building an ideology upon a disputable truth results in an unprovable ideology, which is, essentially what a religion is. When we say that we have the right to ‘live according to our values’ we are saying that we have the right to live according to what we think is important.
On the other hand, when we begin with evidence, that evidence is locked into a relation of some sort with reality. How the evidence is interpreted, and how punctuated it is with belief to fill-in gaps, really matters in any assertion that an ideology that begins with evidence is provable. These days, the problem with claims of provability is that many of them depend substantially on complicated theories that have yet to be proven for substantial portions of the system. ( The more strictly evidential a system is, the less able it is to overcome the limitations of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, two rules which significantly restrict what and how you can apply evidence within a system of understanding. ) When we say we believe in facts, we are saying that we believe in the reliability of those who report to us of their studies.
Thus, the actuality is that many of those who claim to be factual ideologies are no less disputable truths than those asserted by religion. The difference between ideologies that are both dependent upon unprovable truths, then becomes one of what is taught (and what is not), what is questioned (and what is not), and who is doing the thinking (and who is not).