facts and beliefs

A friend of mine pointed me to this NPR report on global warming (NPR)-that fewer Americans believe global warming is happening today than 5 years ago, while at the same time, the scientific consensus has become more certain. 

As someone who agrees that this is happening (because I trust the scientists, and this chart:  (source)

  it makes me sad to see so much misinformation, much of it supported by major polluters like coal and oil companies, out in our marketplace of ideas.

But that’s not actually what I wanted to reflect on today. What caught my attention is the issue of different kinds of facts.

Global warming, like other issues of the day is becoming a political battle-divided between Democrats and Republicans, and I notice that the two political parties often have very different views of reality-

Think about debates on questions like

Are fetuses really persons?

Do tax cuts raise revenue?

Is government spending inefficient or wasteful?

Do anti-poverty programs help or hurt?

Is property a right or a privilege?

How should we treat immigrants?

These questions, and others like them are questions about the nature of reality, and they are important things that everyone should think about.

These questions fall on different points on the spectrum between questions of fact and questions of belief. Take abortion-everyone basically has the same set of facts-abortion is the destruction of a fetus, by definition. The question about abortion surround not the facts, but our interpretation of them-is a fetus a baby? Is it murder? Are there some situations where it is justified? These aren’t questions that you can answer easily in a correct or incorrect framework. 

On the other hand, some are questions of fact-global warming is going to happen (or not happen), regardless of what we believe about it.  Human beliefs about Global warming don’t shape the underlying reality.

Some fall somewhere in the middle-you can collect evidence about tax cuts and government spending, and make statistical claims about reality, while at the same time arguing the proper balance between property rights and  caring for the poor.

I think it would be really useful for all of us to pay attention to this distinction:

I think there should be a social safety net because God cares about the poor is a belief statement.

Food stamps have improved the nutritional outcomes for poor children is a question of fact.

It should be a lot easier to change our facts to cohere with reality than to change our beliefs, since they are more foundational. 

The problem is that in our arguments, all of this stuff gets conflated. We pick the facts we choose to believe based on which conclusions we want to draw. I noted with some amusement an article recently claiming that humans developed reason not to better understand the world, but to better win arguments with other people-"It evolved to help us convince others and to be careful when others try to convince us.” Truth and accuracy were beside the point. (link). 

I think it would be better for our world if we as individuals and a nation worked harder to determine where things fall on the spectrum.

In the church, we might say on the current controversy on LGBT issues, for example-

There is significant evidence that gay and lesbian people have no choice about who they are sexually attracted to. There are biological  realities that are correlated with being gay and lesbian. However, biological impulses are not sufficient to justify behavior-there is a lot of evidence that many choices that are sinful have some basis in genetics or birth context.

From this starting point, then we can get into questions of belief-

Personally, I believe God’s sexual ethics are based around covenant relationships, created between two people, God, and a community. That covenant creates a family, where two people work together in that broader community as partners, despite temptation and the challenges of being committed, creating a relationship based in integrity, equality, and mutual love and support. This vision leaves space for a variety of healthy family forms.   

Others believe that God’s core sexual ethic is based around forming lasting pairs to raise healthy children, and that blessing gay and lesbian relationships undermines that agenda.

This is also a question of fact (what God wants is a fact), but it is not a fact we can test in the same way that we can do twin studies and longitudinal interviews to test the permanence and biological basis of homosexuality.

 

At SLMF, we always try to answer questions and provide clarification on an issue before we enter the discernment process-to share the same facts before engaging values questions, and it is a process that is useful in all our debates.