Fact or Fiction – Truth or Lies

Robert Bronsdon (Hollywood Rob) September 2018

In the recent discussion between Sam Harris and Jordon Peterson it was clear that they came hard on the rocks over how one defines truth.  What is truth?  They couldn’t find a definition that suited them both even though they both knew that they needed to find common ground to base their discussion on and clearly they are both really smart people.

The common answer among us of far lesser gifts is to claim that we know it when we see it, but that is not likely to be any truer than any of the truths that we hold as the foundation of our world views.  That leaves us all, even Sam and Jordon, in a significant dilemma.  And while they were discussing things at the very root level, we most likely never manage to even get close to the root of the arguments.  We content ourselves with issues of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or whether Barack Obama is a muslim, but we can’t find the time or the mental capacity to dig deeper into the fundamental truths, if there are any at all.  We all feel that there should be some fundamental truths.  Some of us, Jordon Peterson included, claim that some version of the fundamental truths can be found in religious teachings.  Some, such as Sam Harris, claim that fundamental truths predate the religious dogma and as such, must have come from some innate property of the human condition.

In other words, Jordon seems to say that the religious texts teach the fundamental truths as they evolved and Sam seems to say that the fundamental truths are foundational with or without the religious dogma.  Sam’s concern, and I agree, is that folded into the dogma is a whole lot of really bad ideas, and you can’t scrub them because they are dogma.  In other words, once you accept the idea of a fictional father figure, then you de facto give up any control over your own destiny.  If your god says it’s ok to kill, then you must kill.  If your god says to take slaves then you must take slaves.  For you to fail to do so goes against your version of god.  Or your version of the fundamental truths if that makes a little easier to consider.  Sam seems to be promoting the concept that as long as you allow for different versions of an omnipotent being, then you are bound to have confrontation between the believers.  That is certainly hard to argue against as it is all that you have seen for the whole stretch of recorded human history.  His answer seems to be, let’s keep the foundational truths and discard the dogmas that surround it.

Jordon’s concern and I agree with him as well, is that the dogma is how humans pass on the knowledge of what has worked in the past.  Without the stories, he argues, there is no method to pass on that knowledge.  It is through the stories that we learn the knowledge necessary to navigate the existence that we find ourselves in.  I would suggest that Jordon’s approach to truth cannot deal with the problems that a belief in the supernatural create, and I would also argue that Sam’s methodology does not adequately describe how the knowledge that has been accumulated is to be preserved and taught in the absence of the dogma.

But what is truth?  And what is a lie?

Let’s start with a dictionary definition and see if that helps.  The Oxford one will do;

Truth.  The quality or state of being true.

That which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.

A fact or belief that is accepted as true.

The first definition states that something is the truth if it is in accordance with fact or reality.  So, as example, it does appear to be a fact that the sun rises and the sun sets.  We can all agree that it does so whether we understand exactly why.  It is, indeed, a fact and it is a part of our reality.  So the statement that the sun rises and sets can be called a truth.  It is also well grounded in the second definition.  We can clearly state it as a fact and we can also state our belief that the sun will continue to rise and set.  Regardless of how the sun got there, and regardless of one’s belief in the supernatural, we can all accept the statement as truth.

But the definition has a fundamental flaw built in for it also allows for beliefs to be truth as long as they are accepted.  In other words, truth can actually be defined by acceptance, and not only by fact or reality.  Long ago, people believed and accepted as true that the sun was actually pulled across the sky by a god in his chariot.  It was a truth.  It was accepted as true and therefore it fulfills the definition of truth.  But today almost nobody believes that the sun is actually a chariot driven by a god.  So it appears that a truth that is based on a belief may not as durable as a truth that is based on a fact or reality.  If we are searching for real truth, we probably cannot rely on faith based truths which are not even currently agreed upon across cultures.  If one group believes that Christ was their savior and their god, and another believes that Mohammed was the one true prophet of Allah, then in what way can one make a claim of truth.  Neither contention can be proven as fact.  Both are based in faith.  Both are beliefs and both are accepted as true but neither can be a truth.  For if one is to be true, then the other cannot be true.  Neither can be proven to be in accordance with facts or reality.  Both can easily fall out of acceptance, just as the sun god did, and then what was truth can become a lie for it is no longer accepted.  It had better not be the accepted part of the definition that defines truth.  We have all been way too wrong about way too many things.

So it would seem that we can have a truth that is accepted in fact or reality.  We can have a truth that is accepted in faith.  We can have a truth that is accepted in faith but wrong.  And we can have a lie.

Lie – An intentionally false statement.

Used with reference to a situation involving deception or founded on a mistaken impression.

Here, the operative word is “intentionally.”  In other words, it is only a lie if one intends to mislead.  If one believes that one is stating something that is correct, then a statement which is false is not a lie, it is a mistake.  So someone who tells you that the sun is transported across the sky by a god in a golden chariot is not lying. And he is not telling you the truth either because almost nobody accepts his explanation.  Now you might then assume that all that leaves us is moral relativism or nihilism;

Moral relativism may be any of several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different people and cultures. Descriptive moral relativism holds only that some people do in fact disagree about what is moral; meta-ethical moral relativism holds that in such disagreements, nobody is objectively right or wrong; and normative moral relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, we ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when we disagree about the morality of it.

Nihilism (from Latin nihil, meaning ‘nothing’) is the philosophical viewpoint that suggests the denial or lack of belief towards the reputedly meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.^[1] Moral nihilists assert that there is no inherent morality, and that accepted moral values are abstractly contrived. Nihilism may also take epistemological, ontological, or metaphysical forms, meaning respectively that, in some aspect, knowledge is not possible, or reality does not actually exist.

But neither Jordon Peterson nor Sam Harris was willing to accept either of these philosophies.  They both hold that there are foundational truths and that these foundational truths are indeed true.  It would appear that the only real difference between them lies in how those foundational truths are passed on from generation to generation.  Sam states that dogma is bad and increases human suffering.  Jordon agrees that much dogma is bad but counters that dogma is the way that useful survival strategies have been developed throughout human existence and that while he himself does not believe that god exists, he behaves as if god exists.  In other words, they are both atheists.  One believes that there is no god, and the other believes that there is no god but the underlying tenants of a belief in a supernatural being are sound and useful.  In other words, Jordon is willing to accept that a belief can be a truth if it is accepted.

This places Jordon right beside the proponent of the sun god theory.  If his foundational truths are faith based, then they can change as the accepted mythology changes.  If the Muslims wipe out the Christians, then the Muslim truths will be the accepted truths and the Christian truths will be no more truth than that golden chariot.  If the golden chariot is not truth, then how can you claim that the Christian mythology is truth once no one is allowed to accept it.  How can a truth be based on acceptance?  A truth is supposed to be something that is true.  Not true for me, nor true for you but true.  You can claim that you have faith that something is true, but without fact or reality, you can’t actually have truth.  You can only have faith.  And a foundational truth, it would seem, would be a truth that is immutable.  No matter the faith that one has, the foundational truths must be true.

So we have seen that there are some “real truths.”  We can say that it is true that the sun will rise and set.  We can say that if one is to hurl themselves off of a cliff, they will certainly head very rapidly towards the ground.  If the cliff is high enough, we can say that the resulting reintegration with the ground is likely to be unpleasant.  We can say that touching the fire will burn, and we can say that most people will not like being burned.  These are facts.  These are reality.  These are truths.  They are truths that are passed down from old to young throughout the ages and they are independent of beliefs.  In fact, that touching the fire thing is something that practically every human ever alive had to experience for themselves.  Our naive belief that the fire was something to be touched was immediately revealed to be contrary to reality.

It is the nature of being human that we can never know certain things.  Regardless of what one does, no human will ever know what another human is really thinking.  Our thoughts are locked away in our brains and there are no currently understood truth that can reveal what they might be.  In addition to that difficulty, we are also apparently unable to remember much of what we see and do on a daily basis.  This seems to be a result of our not paying a lot of attention to things that don’t directly concern us.  The end result of these fundamental truths, that we can’t know what any other human is thinking, is that we must try to piece together our survival strategies starting from zero inside each human skull.  To do this we employ both stories, and experiences.  Your own mom told you a story about what would happen if you touched the stove, and it was a really good story, but the truth was revealed when you actually touched the stove.  These stories, the foundational truths of any society, are universal and can be either fiction or non-fiction.  Your mother can tell you that somebody touched the stove and got burned and that was bad for them or she can tell you that she touched the stove and got burned and that she didn’t like it.  Both are foundational truth stories.  One is a fiction, the other non-fiction.

But why is the distinction between fiction and non-fiction.  We are discussing stories that communicate foundational truths.  Shouldn’t it be that some stories are true and others are non-true?  But it isn’t.  We all call a story that is true a non-fiction.  This, I would claim, is because every single story told over the campfire or written down is a fiction.  The claim of non-fiction is a claim based on the belief of the teller and absenting verification cannot be justified.  So a story that states that the sun will rise and then set can be verified by every human on the planet.  But a story about how the atom works, or the way the cosmos works, or the existence of a supernatural being, these are fictions.  It does not matter if the brightest minds agree that the story should be in the most prestigious journal.  It does not even matter if it is a foundational truth.  It is a fiction until it is a verifiable fact as clear as the sun raising and setting.  And even then, as the foundational truth of the atom or the cosmos or god is transmitted from brain to brain across the globe, it is plagued with opportunities to return to a fiction through misunderstanding or actual deceit.

And that brings us finally to those great works of fiction, the torah, the bible, and the koran.  It is certainly the case that some foundational truths exist in all three books.  It might be that all three have within their pages useful information that can guide each human on earth through the perilous journey that is life.  And it might even be the case that the foundational truths of the three great religions based on those books could be prized from the texts and codified into a list of usable foundational truths.  But the fictions that have been molded around the structure of those foundational truths will not be abandoned easily.  This is because those who have faith in the truths do not have the knowledge of the reasoning behind the foundational truths.  That reasoning has been lost in the mists of time.  Most can understand the foundational truths through faith, but they cannot understand why those truths might be true.  They can be told that the stove is hot and will burn them but they must experience the hot stove for themselves to get to the truth.  They can be told that it is not good to kill other members of their society, but they don’t really know why that would be a bad idea.  And because they don’t understand the actual reasons that their foundational truths are true, they cannot see how to navigate through the dangers that confront them as they live their lives in the absence of the dogma.  This is disorienting.  Taking away the dogma that wraps around the foundational truths leaves most humans in great distress.  And yet, if the dogma is not stripped from the foundational truths, there will always be humans who believe that they have a divine right to that land.  Or they will believe that it is ok to kill others who are not believers.  Or they will believe that they can take slaves.  Or any number of other activities which will lead to untold suffering. It doesn’t matter if the foundational truths are true if the dogma creates suffering.

So, I have to admit that I find Sam Harris’s point of view more compelling.  While he hasn’t yet developed his ontology as completely as those of the great religions, he is on the right path.  Until the dogma is eradicated, there can be no peace.  There can be no improvement in the amount of human suffering.  The problem that Sam faces is that the great religions have had thousands of years to refine their offering.  Millions of minds have bent to the great task.  But in the beginning all of these hideous ontologies started with one brain in one man’s head.  It is not impossible.  That is not the question.  The real question is; is it possible before we slaughter every life on earth.