What method or methods do you use in testing if your beliefs are true or not? Do you apply different methods for testing different things in life, or do you test all things in life using only one method?
How confident are you that these tests work, and would you be willing to change the method(s) if a more reliable method came along?
Why do you feel the method(s) you utilize now work the best, and can you present tangible results that you could show others using these methods?
These questions are extremely vague, so feel free to explain things in more depth to fill in the gaps if you so desire. If you have questions begging more specific examples for clarification, feel free to ask. I hope others will answer with their perspectives as well.
Please be respectful in interacting with others, but I do encourage tough questions if any cross your minds.
Those are really excellent questions Sigurd.
I would like to start with an aphorism from the Hebrew Bible:
“The naive or inexperienced person is easily misled and believes every word he hears, but the prudent man is discreet and astute.” (Proverbs 14:15)
Catholic theology rejects the caricature that faith is simple, unthinking obedience to a set of rules or statements. This standpoint is actually a heresy that we call fideism.
The medieval scholastic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas held that faith was not mere convinced, untested opinion: on the contrary, he argued that it should be understood as a mean (in the Platonic sense) between science (i.e. demonstration) and opinion.
Thus, both the Bible and mainstream Christian tradition have never held that faith should just be accepted because it's so clear that it's the truth:
“Test everything that is said to be sure it is true, and if it is, then accept it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21)
The traditional teaching of my church has never viewed faith simply as a matter of believing a collection of bits of information that God has revealed. St Anselm’s phrase, "faith seeking understanding" (fides quaerens intellectum), is applicable here. Catholic doctrine proclaims that human faith must be guided and completed by reason.
However, that doesn't mean that I subject every one of my articles of faith to scientific, empirical validation. I don't apply just one method for testing all things in life. I believe in a "twofold order of knowledge": natural reason (philosophical speculation and scientific enquiry) and divine revelation, which in my tradition are regarded as the "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth", both equally important and irreplaceable in their very distinct orders. Different methodologies apply:
Hebrews 11: 1-3
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
From the canons of the First Vatican Council (1869-1870):
This council was summoned by Pope Pius IX by the bull Aeterni Patris of 29 June 1868. The first session was held in St. Peter's basilica on 8 December 1869 in the presence and under the presidency of the Pope.
Chapter 4
On faith and reason
1. The perpetual agreement of the Catholic Church has maintained and maintains this too: that there is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only as regards its source, but also as regards its object.
2. With regard to the source, we know at the one level by natural reason, at the other level by divine faith.
Hence, so far is the Church from hindering the development of human arts and studies, that in fact she assists and promotes them in many ways. For she is neither ignorant nor contemptuous of the advantages which derive from this source for human life, rather she acknowledges that those things flow from God, the lord of sciences, and, if they are properly used, lead to God by the help of his grace.
12. Nor does the Church forbid these studies to employ, each within its own area, its own proper principles and method...
I can know some truths with high degrees of certitude by 'natural reason' guided by math and validated by empirical validation: for instance, I know that the earth isn't flat and that the heliocentric model of the solar system is correct whereas the geocentric is wrong; I know that no matter where I go in the universe, the law of gravity will still apply because it is universal. Same with the laws underlying quantum mechanics - indeterminacy, probability. These truths and others like them have been tested and backed up by bucket-loads of validating empirical evidence.
But I think there is a maximal limit to what humans can know definitively about reality through the use of our natural reason and by means, say, of testable predictions. There are certain things even in science that, in principle, cannot be proven empirically. Simply put, the horizons place constraints on how much we can ever hope to know empirically about reality. There comes a point when you can "see no further".
To quote the poet St. John of the Cross (1542 - 1591), "It is of such true excellence this highest understanding: no science, no human sense, has it in its grasping. He who reaches there in truth, his knowledge increases so that knowledge has an ending, all knowledge there transcending". But I don't even mean this in the strictly religious, mysterian sense per se - I mean due to factors like the particle horizon and our inability to observe anything beyond the Big Bang, other than by means of hypothetical calculations: which are without any possibility of accompanying empirical data that could substantiate whatever putative explanatory entities one believes fit the math.
So, in terms of these aspects of reality that may "lie outside the domain of scientific inquiry", I think it would be foolish for someone to claim that they know something in this sphere definitively, so I never claim to do so personally.
Every speculative philosophical and religious idea deriving from divine revelation falls into that category: it may be true, it may be out there - but we can't prove it other than through personal reflection and philosophical speculation, or personal experience say with prayer or mysticism. But such means only provide proof for the individual - they cannot be used to compel others to believe in things that are inherently untestable, even though they may make sense philosophically to a certain person, and have kind of elegance and 'explanatory power' for them, in the absence of the ability to test.
In this way, God is put forward by theists like myself as the reason for nature, the explanation of why things are the way they are (why we have something rather than nothing, to reference Leibniz). And God is outside what the realm of science can viably investigate and test - because science has physical and principal limits contingent upon what we are physically able to observe, whether directly or indirectly (in terms of testable consequences).
Whatever the "ultimate reality" or lack thereof beyond what is knowable through scientific inquiry may or may not be, that ultimate reality can be apprehended differently from diverse points of view: meaning that no single point of view regarding it is the complete truth. How could it be? We can't test it against empirical data. This fact reminds me to be wary of reifying or absolutizing my own religious beliefs at the expense of those of others.
I think it would be irrational to posit belief in such 'unfalsifiable' things, if one is touting the idea in question as a viable scientific theory on a par with evolution, general relativity or the Newtonian paradigm of classical mechanics (given that science has to do with testable observations rather than metaphysical speculations detached from empirical data about the world we live in). That's why 'Intelligent Design' applied to biology is pseudo-science.
But in my judgment, not all technically unfalsifiable beliefs are "irrational" to hold and are of equal implausibility in, say, the philosophical sense. I think it's valid and respectable to deduce speculative "hypotheses" within the boundaries set by scientific knowledge, that does not itself pass the bar (i.e. for 'falsifiability') to qualify as scientifically falsifiable but which still has merit.
Apologies for the length and convolutedness of my post, I just wanted to lay out my thinking in this regard!
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