Where Are We?

One of the reasons I wanted to start blogging again is I am troubled by the direction the world is going, and I know I’m not alone in this. I believe I have some of the answers, or at least some of the right cardinal directions.

I’m cringing. That feels like such a pompous thing to say.

But we all have things we believe, and we wouldn’t believe them if we didn’t think they were true, would we? I know some of my beliefs are wrong. I just don’t know which ones. Yet. But that doesn’t mean I must be silent. I don’t have to be omniscient to be helpful, and neither do you.

So how do we know if someone has ideas worth listening to?

I want to sketch out an answer today and fill in the details later. In philosophy, we talk about ways of knowing and sources of truth. If we want to know the truth about something, there’s actually a pretty simple list of places to look.

• Intuition. You can trust your gut, that internal sense of conviction that tells you something is true. You feel it inside, and whether or not you can explain it, sometimes that feeling turns out to be right.
• Reason. You can think carefully about things, and in reflecting on them come up with new insights. They may not be revolutionary, but often they are clarifying, and clarity can make all the difference for yourself and others.
• Sense Experience. You can take in the world through your senses, and that information gives you a wide open window on reality. They may take in your surroundings, information about the people you encounter, and even information about yourself.
• Testimony. You can rely on what someone else has told you. You can’t be everywhere at once, sensing everything, thinking every thought, and having every intuition. You have access to a significant chunk of the world’s knowledge right now through the Internet, but you will never know it all. You have to rely on other people to share with you what they know is true.
• Revelation. Christians usually list revelation as a way of knowing. I tend to think of this as little more than authoritative testimony. If God has spoken (and I believe He has) and if He is the kind of being He claims to me (and I believe He is) then His testimony about Himself, the world, and me is the most trustworthy source of truth.

Now, these sources are not all equal. I believe divine sources of truth are to be preferred over human sources, and sources of truth that are public and commonly held are to be preferred over private experiences. So I end up ranking them like so:

1. Revelation
2. Reason
3. Sense Experience
4. Testimony
5. Intuition

There is much to be said about each of these, and already you may have questions about why I rank things the way that I do. That’s fair. Don’t believe me yet. I haven’t given you any reasons to.

For now, let me just say this: whatever God has revealed is authoritative, so I submit everything else to this on principle. I believe I am responsible to think carefully about all forms of truth, and so reason is necessary right out the gate. I need reason to help me identify what evidence is and what it means. I use reason to understand how to faithfully respond to revelation. My reason isn’t perfect, but it’s what I have to do if I want to take the quest for truth seriously. My experience of the world is also something I’m entrusted with and it’s hard to imagine making sense of anyone’s testimony without taking it into account.

The last two are the trickiest for me. I’m convinced testimony is necessary, and that I must at times set aside my personal experience based on what others have said. Precisely because I can’t know everything, I have to trust other people. The reason it appears to rank so low is because I use the first three to help me determine which testimonies to trust.

As for intuition, I am a very intuitive person, but I want that to take a back seat to everything else. Intuition is more like the icing on the cake than the guts of the thing. It is good, but in proportion and in the right place. In my mind, the one form of intuition that is the most important is the conscience. It is right for me not to take seriously my moral intuitions, even though they may prove to need tweaking.

I think one important step toward a healthy society is to give careful thought to which sources we look to for truth and why. We need to become conscious of how to categorize the information we receive, what we do with it, and why. My list above is in no way the final word. But if you can become more self-conscious about your relationship with the truth, we’re off to a great start.