Four weeks ago I wrote about false assumptions and how Christians suffered in the past because of them just as atheists suffer today. Atheism doesn’t have a philosophy or principles to counter these false assumptions any more than it has a philosophy or principles to deserve them. Secular humanism does put forward a set of positive traits and promotes a world view. These are:

1. Need to test beliefs
2. Reason, evidence, scientific method
3. Fulfillment, growth, creativity
4. Search for truth
5. This life
6. Ethics
7. Building a better world

The search for truth is something that both secular humanists and those who belong to one theistic group or another can appreciate. Secular humanists, I think, take a slightly different stance to it though.

Search for truth – A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.

Clearly human beings are creatures of limited perception. We have five senses, none of them particularly finely tuned yet adequate for our survival. They serve us well and have certainly contributed to our success as a species. Our brains interpret the data that our senses provide. Evolutionary shortcuts mean that our brains can be fooled in a number of ways. I remember as a child sitting in a swing at a fairground. The swing was gently rocking but was entirely enclosed by a spinning tube with bright patterns of stars on it. As the tube spun I was convinced that I was looping round on the swing at an incredible speed. Shutting my eyes dispelled the illusion but for a moment my senses where completely fooled by my expectations and assumptions and the limitations of my perceptions. 

Anyone who has been fooled by a card trick or a magicians illusion will understand that our senses and the brain’s ability to interpret data can be exploited sometimes with amusing results.

The reason for the clip is tenuous but it makes me laugh every time.

When searching for objective truth though we seek to explore the bounds of our reality. We can do so through the scientific method using our reason but these are just tools in our search. I think it is best explained by referring to the Bahá’í faith:

Baha’u'llah emphasizes the fundamental obligation of human beings to acquire knowledge with their “own eyes and not through the eyes of others.” One of the main sources of conflict in the world today is the fact that many people blindly and uncritically follow various traditions, movements, and opinions. God has given each human being a mind and the capacity to differentiate truth from falsehood. If individuals fail to use their reasoning capacities and choose instead to accept without question certain opinions and ideas, either out of admiration for or fear of those who hold them, then they are neglecting their basic moral responsibility as human beings. Moreover, when people act in this way, they often become attached to some particular opinion or tradition and thus intolerant of those who do not share it. Such attachments can, in turn, lead to conflict. History has witnessed conflict and even bloodshed over slight alterations in religious practice, or a minor change in the interpretation of doctrine. Personal search for truth enables the individual to know why he or she adheres to a given ideology or doctrine.

Bahá’ís believe that, as there is only one reality, all people will gradually discover its different facets and will ultimately come to common understanding and unity, provided they sincerely seek after truth. In this connection, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said:

Being one, truth cannot be divided, and the differences that appear to exist among the many nations only result from their attachment to prejudice. If only men would search out truth, they would find themselves united.¹

And further

The fact that we imagine ourselves to be right and everybody else wrong is the greatest of all obstacles in the path towards unity, and unity is necessary if we would reach truth, for truth is one.²

I like this description for it’s simplicity. We seek truth for ourselves to help us to better understand ourselves. When we understand who we are we can better understand our place in the world.

Of course we don’t live in a vacuum and face many changes as we go through life. Something that we’ve always accepted as truth might crumble when presented with new information that contradicts it. Other truths might be confirmed or strengthened. As things change we need to constantly reevaluate what we have come to accept as true and be prepared to change our ideas.

Of course no explanation of truth would be complete without calling on Immanuel Kant

Truth is said to consist in the agreement of knowledge with the object. According to this mere verbal definition, then, my knowledge, in order to be true, must agree with the object. Now, I can only compare the object with my knowledge by this means, namely, by taking knowledge of it. My knowledge, then, is to be verified by itself, which is far from being sufficient for truth. For as the object is external to me, and the knowledge is in me, I can only judge whether my knowledge of the object agrees with my knowledge of the object. Such a circle in explanation was called by the ancients Diallelos. And the logicians were accused of this fallacy by the sceptics, who remarked that this account of truth was as if a man before a judicial tribunal should make a statement, and appeal in support of it to a witness whom no one knows, but who defends his own credibility by saying that the man who had called him as a witness is an honourable man.³

In other words we define truth by knowledge but assume that our knowledge is true. The search for truth then is a wonderful form of circular reasoning. Well I disagree. The search for truth is an iterative process. We learn something and test it, modifying our view accordingly. We use this knowledge to learn something else, modifying our view accordingly, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. Each step in the process draws us closer to the actual truth but we must always be aware that we may be close but we’re unlikely to ever reach it.

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI (God’s Rottweiler) disagrees, he believes that truth is ultimately knowable and that “the modern self-limitation of reason” such as that described by Kant is a rejection of all that can not yet be observed. This is particularly so, in his view, where the ultimate questions of truth such as the origin of life or the power of love. &sup4 I’m not sure that I agree that it is self limiting. I’m sure that there is more to the universe than we can conceive of but we’ve barely begun to explore it. How can we tell which tools will best serve us in the future? As we seek to explore the truth of reality we will use our reason and we will use intuition and inventiveness. We will use whatever works the best. I see no reason to reject what has worked so far until it fails to work. If it fails to work.

Tools for searching for the truth aside I think we can all agree that it is a worthwhile exercise. Most religions have some doctrine that they hold as the truth. The Christian faith has the Bible, Islam has the Koran, Hindus have the Bhagavad Gita. Obviously this isn’t observed truth or scientific truth but the faiths often make the claim that they hold an inspired or sometimes revealed truth. Unfortunately there is no way to test the veracity of such claims. 

The important thing, for me, is not where we search for the truth but that the truth that we search for is personal to us.  We conceive things and perceive things in our own unique way so the truth is similarly unique for each of us.  So is the search.  That is why it is important for our growth.

1. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks (London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1969), p. 129.
2. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks (London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1912. 11th ed. 1969), p. 136.
3. Kant, Immanuel (1800), Introduction to Logic. Reprinted, Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (trans.), Dennis Sweet (intro.) (2005)
4. Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief And World Religions, Ignatius Press, 2004

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