#STRask - How Can I Help Someone Move Away from the Fact-Value Split?

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Questions about how to help a friend move away from his belief that objective facts about religious issues, unlike scientific facts, are “just someone’s belief” and how to respond to an atheist who keeps dismissing every argument and demanding “verified” evidence.   How can I help a friend who thinks objective facts about religious issues are, unlike scientific facts, “just someone’s belief” move away from the fact-value split? How should I respond to an atheist who keeps demanding “verified” evidence and dismissing every argument I offer by saying it’s not verified?

Welcome to the Hashtag STR Ask podcast. I'm Amy Hall, and I'm here with Greg Kokel. And this is the podcast where we take your questions and we try to respond to them. We try, don't we? take your questions and we try to respond to them. We try, don't we? Probably every podcast. Maybe I need a more specific description. Well, let's get into this, Greg. This first question comes from Chris Brooks. How do you help someone away from the fact-value split? My friend sees what I would call objective facts about religious issues. For example, God either exists or he doesn't. Jesus either rose from the dead or he didn't as just someone's belief and wants to treat them as a totally different thing than facts about things like science. Any idea of how to show him that's not the case? Gee, sometimes I hear these concerns, which are really important ones, and I just feel frustration inside. And the reason I feel frustration is the problem is not with the issue.

The problem is with the person. That is the person that is unwilling to, um, I'm trying to even think the right way to put it, unwilling to converse, engage, discuss in a reasonable fashion. So what if I were having a conversation with somebody and they say, meet me at noon today? And I say, what do you mean by today? I mean, like this date. Well, that's just your personal opinion about what the date it is today. And anyway, I don't even know what noon means. You have noon. I might have 3 p.m. I might be midnight. I might have a totally different way of looking at time. So I don't know when or where to connect with you. You can imagine how absolutely frustrating that would be. Nobody would do that in common affairs

because we share reality. Now, of course, there may be differences of opinion about what the nature of reality is. No problem. We can work with that if we understand that there is a single reality and we each are talking about the single reality as accurately and precisely as we can. But when somebody continues to dismiss a certain claim as a mere belief that that one person may have and others don't share that there's I don't know what you can do about that unless confront the issue itself head on. And maybe the questions that I would ask, he said, well, that's your belief. ask? He said, well, that's your belief. Well, it is my belief, just as everything the other person holds to be true is their belief too. By the way, this is another problem. So let me just talk about this to clear up some confusion. I was listening to Dennis Prager the other day,

and he was making a distinction between a fact and a belief. Well, this is not a sound distinction, because every single fact that you think is a fact that then makes up your knowledge because of the evidence substantiating the fact is still a belief. and substantiating the fact is still a belief. A belief is when someone holds something to be so. It's a mental attitude in which you hold something to be so. I might have the belief. I might hold that the earth is not the center of the solar system.

Now, some would say that's not a belief. That's a fact. No, that is a belief that turns out to be a factual belief. There are other beliefs that are false. Now, this is where philosophy comes in. And, you know, I'm not trying to get hoity-toity, but knowledge is characteristically defined by people who think very carefully about these things as justified true belief. In other words, the larger category is belief. And in all the beliefs that we have, of course, people are aware we have beliefs that we don't know are actually true. But there are some things we know to be true, and those also entail beliefs. You can't have knowledge about something if you don't believe the thing is so. Now, and

anybody who wants to push back at that is just being obstinate. This is just obviously so. To describe belief as, you know, akin, any belief, anything that characterizes as belief as akin to an unknowable leap of faith kind of thing. This is an abuse of these concepts. So everything in this person's case, I don't know, was it Chris that asked the question? I did catch that. But in every case where Chris's friend thinks something is true, he cannot think it's true without believing that it's true, because that's what a belief is. Now, it might be a fact, but there isn't a contrast between beliefs and facts. That is, if it's a fact, it doesn't entail belief. Of course it entails belief if you hold the fact to be so, if you agree with the factual claim.

So, okay, all that said, dismissing somebody's view as a belief is completely wrongheaded. Of course it's belief. The right-headed way to do it is to say the belief is not accurate. It's not a sound belief. It doesn't match reality. Now we can have a conversation. But before that, we are, not we, Chris's friend is talking nonsense. He's just talking nonsense. And I think, you know, I want to be charitable here, but I think the nonsense is appealing. The way of doing it is appealing because it's so easy then to simply dismiss what the Christian is claiming. All right.

That's your belief, to which I would respond to, of course, it's my belief. But I have another belief about my belief. My other belief is that my belief is true. So labeling it as a belief doesn't take anybody anywhere. That's like saying the sky is blue today, you know, or whatever, or grass is green. I mean, speaking of the obvious, bachelors are unmarried males. It says nothing meaningful, All right. Of course, it's a belief, but what the other person is doing is trying to relativize the belief.

He's trying to say without arguing for it, he's trying to assert that's your belief and it's only a belief and you have no right claiming it has anything to do with reality because I'm labeling it that way so that you have nothing more to say. That's what makes me angry. So I think for Chris, the appropriate thing to do in a situation is say, well, that's just your belief, to ask him, what exactly do you mean by that? and say, well, that's just your belief, to ask him, what exactly do you mean by that? It might mean, he might say, well, that's what you believe to be true about religion, but nobody can know that. All right, why would you think nobody can know that? What if we had really good evidence for that? Okay, wouldn't that then be a matter of knowledge or a feature of knowledge? And if he persists, you might clarify, well, yes, of course I believe that. And this is what I said

a moment ago, but I also believe that my belief is true. It's accurate. Now, do you think my belief is accurate? Oh, if you don't think my belief is accurate, then we can talk about why you don't think it's accurate, and I can give you reasons why I do think it's accurate, and we can deal with the reasons. But this response is not even willing to enjoin the reasons. Consider the reasons. And the person who does this thinks they're doing something profound by simply dismissing the Christian's view, waving their hand with language. to mention. I do think the very first question you need to ask is, what do you mean by just a belief? What do you mean by that? Because maybe you can get him to say, well, it's not actually, you know, do you mean it's not actually true? It's just what you like to think. Is that what you mean by just a belief? Or how would you define that? Now, ultimately, what he does mean is that it's not actually true. So then you can say,

oh, so you're saying it's not true, it's false. Okay, so now let's talk about whether it's true or false. Maybe you can get him to that point that way. I'm not sure. Another question you could ask is, why do you think questions about religion are different from questions about science? Why do you think those two things are different? Because ultimately, I do think what he's thinking in his mind is that they're just not true. They're just all fantasy. So maybe you can bring that out by asking those kinds of questions. And if that doesn't work, the next thing that you can do is try to help him understand that you, even if he doesn't want to look at it that way, just make sure he understands that you are looking at it that way, that you are looking at it in terms of true and false. And you can say, I understand you. That's how you view religion. You just think that it's all a matter of just preference that we can just make up whatever we want because none of it's really true. But the claim that I'm making is that this is actually true, like science facts are true. You don't have to agree with me, but I just want to make sure you understand the claim I'm making. So if you can't get him to discuss it, the next best thing is to make sure he understands the claim that you're making.

And I suspect that if he really understands that, then he'll want to engage because he doesn't want you going around thinking it's actually true. But if you can just get him talking, I think these questions will help. A third thing I thought was maybe what you could do, because as Christians, we're fortunate that our religion is tied to history. So you could start asking about history. Well, can we have true beliefs about history? Do you think that Abraham Lincoln existed? Yes. Hopefully he'll say yes. Okay.

Do you think? Don't be so confident. You never know nowadays. Do you think that William Shakespeare existed? Yes. Do you think that Jesus of Nazareth existed? Well, he'll say yes or no. But guess what? Now you're in a conversation about whether or not Christianity is true. So you could say, do you think that he existed and he actually had disciples and he taught them certain things? Well, yes or no. Do you believe he rose from the dead? Well, he'll say no to that, and you'll say, okay, great. So you think it's false when I say Jesus rose from the dead. In history.

In history. In history. And that's the key here. Now you're talking about concrete reality. So if you can move this into the realm of history, I don't know if there's anyone who denies that we can make true false claims about history. So just move it there and then see if that helps you move the conversation in that direction. Well, there are people that will make that claim, but not the rank and file. These are sophisticates who kind of drum up an unreasonable skepticism. The difficulty, as in Frank Beckwith pointed this out once, every argument that a person makes requires historical facts to be so. So if you offer an argument like,

we can only know two things, whatever, a syllogism to try to prove that you can't really know history. The problem is once you say the first line of the syllogism, your line of argument, and then get to the second line, your first one is now history. So this is a clever observation by Frank Beckwith. You know, he's inclined to see those kinds of things. But it's true. If you can't know history, you can't think. Because you have to know even the steps of your argument that you're offering that become historical the minute that you utter them. They drift into the past. So, anyway.

Well, this leads very nicely into our next question from Doug. Okay. From Doug? Doug. In an online conversation, an atheist kept demanding, quote, verifiable evidence, not just, quote, proof. For example, or that is, that the universe had a beginning is not verified, so can be dismissed. Minimal facts aren't verified. The existence of the mind isn't verified.

That Jesus existed isn't verified. How does one respond? Well, this is an important question because this kind of thing comes up a lot. And what the atheist has substituted is the word verified for the word proof. Now, there is no substantial difference here. These words, in function here in this discussion, there's a difference without a difference or whatever, however that phrase goes, you know, a distinction without a difference, all right? When he asks for verifiable information, what he's asking for is evidence that can lead us to a sound, completely reliable conclusion, all right? And see, this is the other part that consistently comes up with folks like this. What they're looking for is a requirement for knowledge that goes far beyond their standard requirement.

Okay. If one said, okay, there are claims about gravity, but they're not verified. There are claims about planets around solar systems, but it's not verified. Of course, in each of these cases or whatever else you might claim that seem to be obvious truths right now based on our scientific understanding, one can always just simply assert, well, they're not verified. Well, we have this, this, this and this evidence for it. Yeah, but that's not verification. That suggests the truth. It might move you in the right, but it's not verification. That suggests the truth. It might move you in the right, but it's not verification.

So what we discover here as the word verification in practice becomes an insurmountable standard for knowledge. And they have done this on purpose, after years of listening to these kinds of comments, it may sound like an uncharitable thing. I'm just offering description. I know they've done this on purpose because they don't do this with anything else. It's only with these kinds of questions. Do they make these kind of outrageous demands, okay, regarding knowledge. We don't know the universe had a beginning. There's hardly a scientist alive dealing in cosmology that does not believe that.

And there are a number of reasons. One of them, Big Bang cosmology. The other one is, I mean, even Einstein gave in to that. And he didn't want to. He cheated for a while before he acknowledged his efforts as being a magnificent blunder, the worst blunder of his life. And he finally acknowledged the origin of the universe because, you know, the evidence is so great. And one of the events that was so powerful is when he looked into the telescope, you know, there in Los Angeles, Mount whatever that place is. Is it Wilson? Mount Griffith Observatory.

And he went, there it is, the expanding universe. Okay. And then so for anyone to say that the origin of the universe has not been verified, that the universe had an origin, is to make a specious remark. That in itself shows that this is an individual who is not interested in the evidence. individual who is not interested in the evidence. They're interested in whatever, not changing their mind is what they're interested in, and just dismissing all the evidence. By the way, the eternality of the universe hasn't been verified either. I mean, if you want to look at it that way, you see, in any of these issues, they're two sides to the same coin. And so you've got to kind of place your bets where the smart money goes.

And it ain't on the eternal universe. If the universe was eternal, it would be dead right now because the universe is running down. Okay, it's getting cold. And if it was forever, then it would be dead at the moment. All right. And this is quantifiable scientifically. That is verification. All right.

But he's not going to accept that because this individual will not accept anything. So the question needs to be asked here is what counts as verification? That's the issue. And I've said this before. People say, prove to me this about God or whatever, or even now verify. Okay, fine. Define that for me. What counts in your mind as verification for any fact? That's the question. Well, you can also ask him, what in your mind is verified? Well, you can also ask him, what in your mind is verified? Tell me a fact that is verified that you believe. And then you can get an idea of what it involves. You know, what for him has to happen in order for something to be considered, quote, verified?

And what does it mean for something to be verifiable evidence? But if you ask what is verified, then you can maybe get to that a little faster. And Greg, your point is so good about the eternal universe, because if he says, sorry, that's not verified, then you can say, oh, so then is it your understanding that the eternal universe is verified and what verified that for you? And then if he says, no, no, that hasn't been verified either, then you could say, OK, well, it's either one or the other. And so what we do as rational human beings is we take in all the evidence we have now and we make the most reasonable conclusion based on that evidence. Right. And that's on that evidence. Right. And that's exactly what we do. Yes. By the way, 100 years ago, there was a very popular philosophy called verificationism,

and it was based on materialistic philosophy. And basically, verificationism is the view that no fact is verified unless there is adequate scientific evidence for it, empirical evidence for it. Very popular for a long time. Very convenient, of course. The problem with the basic principle of verificationism is that it can't be used against verificationism because verificationism is not substantiated by any kind of empirical observation. And so it died a natural death eventually, and it's not really alive today, not as a valid philosophical viewpoint. In other words, the smart people don't do that anymore,

but it's hung around, and a lot of atheists still kind of assert the same thing. And what is verified is things that science verified. And, of course, there's all kinds of counterexamples. I asked a guy once who made that point. I said, what did you have for breakfast this morning? Oh, I had bacon and eggs. How do you know that? I was there.

Wait, what scientific analysis gives you confidence that you had bacon and eggs for breakfast? Did somebody pump your stomach? Take a look at the evidence? No, you know it because you were there, right? And there's gazillions of other clear case examples of things we know, we know, yet we're not affirmed or confirmed by empirical analysis. I asked one college student during a Q&A once if he knew what he was thinking at that moment. Well, he's not. Yes, of course he does,

but he doesn't know that through science. He knows that through direct experience. Anyway. Well, thank you, Greg, and thank you, Chris and Doug. We appreciate hearing from you. Send us your question on X with the hashtag STRask, or you can just go to our website at str.org and look for our hashtag STRask podcast page. And you'll find a link there where you can come directly to where you can ask your question. And we look forward to hearing from you. We always love getting your questions. So thank you for listening. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.