Here’s the truth, unvarnished — nobody really knows much of anything with absolute certainty. We think we know, but we don’t know. For example, without a DNA test, you don’t know with absolute certainty that your parents really are your mother and father. There have been well-documented cases (albeit rare, but they do exist) of babies being accidentally switched at birth by the hospital. The odds are dramatically in favor of your mother and father being your real biological parents, but it isn’t an absolute certainty until the DNA tests have been performed.
I’m not saying DNA tests are absolutely necessary — nine times out of ten the eyeball test is good enough, but on the other hand, looks can be deceiving.
Many people believe they can make certain claims with absolute certainty: claims such as “God exists!” or “God does not exist!” or “climate change is real” or “evolution is a fact” or “the moon landing was faked” or “the Earth is flat” or “there are only two biological sexes”, which are all knowledge claims that can never be proved beyond reasonable doubt to the complete and total satisfaction of another human being who arbitrarily disagrees with the original knowledge claim. None of them can be proved, meaning there are zero exceptions.
In my book The God Conclusion I endeavor to make and reinforce this point, saying the probability that a supernatural God exists can be demonstrated to be extremely high using only logic and scientific evidence to argue my case, but I make it emphatically clear that the existence of God cannot be proved beyond all doubt. If you don’t want to believe that God exists, you will always have the option of employing unreasonable doubt as the reason for rejecting that conclusion, because we all have free will. I believe that God exists and there are only two biological sexes. I do not believe that climate change presents an imminent risk of ecological disaster or that the moon landing was faked, but I cannot claim to know these beliefs with any sort of conviction resembling absolute certainty. The only way I could know if the moon landing really happened would be for me to have been there and experienced it for myself, and I was not. What I believe and what I know are not the same thing.
I do believe the moon landing really happened for a variety of reasons. I grew up close enough to Cape Canaveral to actually see the rockets lifting off into space in the distance. I have flown to Australia and lived there for six months, which strongly implies to me that the Earth is round simply because of the time differential — when it is day in Australia it is nighttime in New York and Atlanta, and I do not understand how that would be possible on a flat Earth. Even so, I lack the hubris to claim absolute knowledge that the Earth is round, or the moon landings really happened. I can only claim to believe what I believe, while supporting those beliefs with a solid foundation of logic to the best of my ability.
Now I’m going to make an audacious claim–nobody can ever know anything of significance with absolute certainty. What do I mean? Take the example of the DNA test on your parents. You get the results back, and they say your mother and father are (or are not) your biological parents. So what? You’re now trusting the results of a test. How do you know the test was conducted properly? How do you know the results haven’t been fabricated? You’ve only shifted your faith from your parents to some faceless employees of a DNA lab. How do you know they are reputable? The answer is, eventually we must put our trust into someone or something. Maybe it’s the people who have claimed to know and love you for your entire life. Or maybe you feel more comfortable trusting the bureaucracy and authority figures. But eventually you must trust someone. When our loved ones die, we trust their bodies to funeral homes, where we believe they will be treated with respect and dignity. When cremation has been requested by the family, the body is sent to a crematory, where the remains are incinerated and then the ashes returned to the family. It’s a mind-numbingly stupid business model that is basically a license to print money–you’re given something to burn, you burn it, and you scoop up the ashes and put them in a cup or a box.
Yet in 2002, police investigating the Tri-States Crematory in north Georgia discovered more than 300 corpses strewn about the property. Body parts were discovered lying in the woods. Three hundred thirty-nine bodies, many in advanced stages of decomposition, were discovered. Coffins were found stacked in rooms. On further investigation, families discovered they had been returned concrete dust instead of the ashes of their loved one.
The point of telling that horrible story is not to make you paranoid about using a reputable cremation service when and if the need should arise. I’m not going to suggest that you follow your deceased loved one every step of the way from the funeral home to the crematory and watch their body get consumed by the flames. The point of telling this story about the Tri-States Crematory is to point out that no matter how much we trust an authority figure, we cannot know with absolute certainty that they should be trusted. We have to trust someone, at some point. Otherwise we risk our paranoia becoming insanity. However, we should not place blind trust in anyone, or anything. If someone makes a knowledge claim such as “(macro) evolution is a fact!” keep in mind they are passionately expressing their opinion, not true knowledge. That minor variations occur between generations is a well-known and observable fact, but the idea that animals can shape-shift into entirely different organisms over very long periods of time is not knowledge, it is a belief. Why can it not be claimed to be knowledge?
Simple. It cannot ever be observed. It takes too long. It can only be inferred.
It’s okay to believe things that you know you can’t prove, but it’s intellectually dishonest to claim to be able to prove things you can’t, and it’s important to understand the difference between belief and proof. Evidence exists that may lead us to a strong conclusion, but we still cannot honestly call this evidence proof, because proof only belongs in mathematical theorems and a court of law.
It doesn’t belong in a philosophical conversation about existential truths.
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