Inescapable Certainty
We live in an age drunk on skepticism. The question before us is how to get sober.
Let us linger a moment to scoff at the absurdity of perfect skepticism, and then address where inerrant knowledge can be found.
By drunk, I do not mean that the joy of wine has put away our worldly cares for an evening of red-flushed, bright-eyed riotous song; I mean our world is in the stumble-footed, soiled-drawers, slurred-speech, and seeing-pink-elephants stage of alcoholic delirium if not alcohol poisoning from the green absinth of secular skepticism.
Let me admit what prompted this column:
A firm fanatic in the faith tradition called secular skepticism recently assured me that twice two is not four.
He proposed this on the grounds that holding two rocks in one hand and two in another will not make four rocks among the rocks in his head. Or perhaps there was some subtlety in the argument that eluded me.
Perhaps he was sincere, perhaps not. Regardless of his state of mind, the doubts of such secular skepticism is treated with glassy-eyed seriousness in the modern intellectual circles, as if worthy of discussion.
The main dogma of the modern age is that no dogma is valid. The prime proof is that nothing can be proved. I kid you not.
German philosopher Hans Albert in 1968 coined the term “Munchhausen Trilemma” to refer to the dilemma that proving a truth is impossible, on the grounds that proofs must be proven.
The name refers to an anecdote of the fanciful Baron Munchhausen, who boasts he once pulled himself free of the mire by tugging vehemently upward on the tight wig he wore, and pulled up the horse he rode with him. Unlike Munchausen, once trapped in the mire of perfect doubt, one has no solid ground underfoot to find solid ground again, no certain means to find certainty.
The Munchhausen Trilemma argues that every proof either (1) rests on an axiom accepted dogmatically or (2) rests on a prior proof resting on an axiom which likewise rests on prior proofs in an in endless regression. (Why this dilemma is called a “trilemma” is unclear, since the third case listed, that of a circular argument, is not an proof at all.)
Both cases violate the principle of sufficient reason. From this, the Munchhausen Trilemma then concludes proving any truth is impossible.
Alas, if the Munchhausen Trilemma proved that no proofs can be proven, then the Munchhausen Trilemma itself could not be proven.
Of course it proves no such thing. Please note this proof rests on an axiom accepted dogmatically, namely, that no dogmatic axiom is valid. The self-evident idea that some ideas are self-evident is not addressed. An axiom recognized as indubitable needs no further warrant hence is neither dogmatic nor rests on a prior proof.
The Munchausen Trilemma, in fact, is a circular augment. It assumes (as a dogmatic axiom) that all dogmatic axioms are unwarranted. There is no warrant for this assumption. And that is the point in dispute.
That a schoolboy in a syllogism of three steps could refute such doubts causes the doubters not one second of doubt. The indubitable fact that the doubters are speaking indubitable nonsense never troubles them.
But secular skepticism is not worth discussion, except to post warning signs to the unwary, as one might mark a stone nigh to a poisoned well with sign of skull and crossbones.
There are five warning marks:
The first warning mark which cautions an honest man to avoid secular skepticism is the skeptics’ undisguised contempt for common sense. Whether the skeptic prevails or fails in his argument has no effect on daily life.
Radical skepticism is a mental illness, or, rather, such deep pride and devotion to one’s untruth that the faithful follower of this cult hesitates not to talk as if he were mentally ill during philosophical or political discussions, but, the moment talk ends, he returns nonchalantly to normal, and smiles the pink-cheeked cherubic smile of the untroubled hypocrite.
His deep-rooted skepticism which prompts him to say twice two is not four would not allow our skeptic, for example, to be shortchanged at the greengrocers. He would not suddenly suffer doubts about the nature of mathematical certainty if he were owed five dollars in change from a cashier, and received instead a pair of two-dollar bills. He would call the manager.
The second mark is contempt for truth. Whether the skeptic prevails or fails in his rhetoric is uninfluenced by the question of whether he speaks sense or nonsense. Both are the same to him.
It is not that speaking obvious untruth vexes him or fails to vex him. Secular skepticism, as a worldview, allows for no category of true and false. The concepts called true and false are not categories in his mind. There is only goodthink and ungoodthink. Goodthink is an idea one ought to recite, and ungoodthink is thoughtcrime, an idea one is not permitted to recite.
The third mark is contempt for the sense of words. The only way to utter a stream of nonsense statements is to change the meaning of words to meaningless. It is an act of verbicide.
Hence words “True” and “False”, in the secular skeptical worldview, are merely words used as advertising gimmicks, flattery, puffery, or propaganda meant to deceive the oppressed. “True” and “False” like “Jabberwocky” and ” Barmaglot” are words that do not refer to anything. The real truth is that there is no real truth.
Hence the skeptic can speak of “my truth” when he means opinion or viewpoint, so that the idea of objective truth has no word to represent it. The hope is that by eliminating words from discourse, certain ideas will simply never be discussed: note the parallel to the Newspeak of Orwell’s NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR.
The fourth mark is contempt for tradition.
The fact that the great majority of common opinion and scholarly tradition sharply disagrees with him likewise does not vex the secular skeptic: Satanic pride proffers him the easy explanation that he alone is wise, a figure akin to Noah in the last days of the Antediluvian world.
He tells himself that just as commoners find it hard to comprehend Newtonian rocket science or Einsteinian relativity or Hegelian mysticism, commoners likewise fail to comprehend arrant nonsense. This is never because nonsense by definition is incomprehensible. The fault is never one’s own. The failure is always to ascribed to the unintelligence of the common man, or his cowardice or malice.
The skeptics’ unquestioned creed runs thus: All lesser men are deceived! Only an exclusive cadre of the self-anointed, brave as the titans who overthrow the gods, know how never to be deceived. Believe nothing! There is no truth! Those who fail to embrace this stark and desolate reality are sentimental cowards or intellectual midgets or both.
Alas for him, the proposition that there is no truth, if true, is false. It is a self-disproving statement.
And again, when he decrees that nothing is certain, one need only ask, “Are you certain of that?” Or when he says nothing is known, ask “How do you know?”
The fifth and final mark which cautions an honest man to avoid secular skepticism is the self-negating nature of the philosophy.
Moderns are obsessed with treating all aspects of human nature and the human condition men are animals, or madmen, or gods, or helpless marionettes of inhuman natural forces.
A cursory examination of Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, or Marx and all their modern epigones leaves no place for a rational creature granted the tools of reason and judgement by whose voluntary operation he comes to distinguish true and false, reasonable from irrational, virtuous from vicious. But without rational judgment, no philosophy is valid, including those preached by Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, or Marx.
None of these philosophers include himself in his theory of human nature. None conclude that his brain, if evolved by irrational natural processes, ergo cannot be trusted to be rational. None conclude that if the human psychology is driven by unconscious drives and trauma, his brain cannot trusted to be sane. None conclude that if man decides good and evil based solely on his willpower, his willpower has no motive, no meaning, and no aim. None conclude that if historical forces determine economic institutions that form ideological superstructure defining one’s thought and philosophy, one’s reason has no purpose, no meaning, and no aim.
The five warning signs near the poisoned well of skepticism, then, are contempt for common sense, for truth, for the meaning of words, for the wisdom of tradition, and most of all contempt for the philosopher himself, who could not exist if his philosophy were true.
This is not philosophy, it is Sophophobia, the fear and loathing of philosophy.
The paradox of certainty is that perfect skepticism cannot exist.
Consider: If one knows for certain that no issue is beyond doubt, the fact that no issue is beyond doubt is itself indubitable.
Or, again, even if one knows for certain the qualified fact that most but not all issues are not beyond doubt, this statement itself “most but not all issues are not beyond doubt” is indubitable.
And again, even if that sentence is qualified, the truth of the statement expressing that qualified sentence is unqualified. A man who doubts knows he doubts and cannot doubt that he doubts.
No matter where one begins the line of skeptical questioning, there is and must be an axiom, an assumption, a foundation, a starting point which starts the questioning process upon which the arguments for and against the position must agree. There cannot be an infinite regress of doubt.
This introduces the central question: if perfect uncertainty is impossible, where is certainty to be found?
To answer this, we must wax philosophical, and ask what knowledge is, what man is, and by what means man comes by knowledge, questions knowledge, and confirms knowledge. Let us finish by contrasting human knowledge with perfect knowledge.
Let us start with a definition:
Knowledge is when a truth is accurately reflected in the mind.
If I look out my window, and see that it is raining, I know it is raining.
Knowledge need not be perfect to be accurate.
I do not know the location, velocity, mass, chemical composition or destiny of each raindrop. I do not know non-empirical facts concerning the rain, such as, for example, what the intentions and purpose of the rain might be, assuming a deliberate mind, natural or supernatural, intended the rain to fall where and as it did.
Knowledge need not be immune from reasonable doubt to be known.
For the rain against my window pain is caused by a firetruck hidden above a fogbank on the roof of my house, it is not rain, but looks enough like rain from my viewpoint to deceive a casual inspection. In this case, I do not know it is raining, but I know it looks like rain.
Or, to use a more likely case, if I dream I look out the window and see rain, but then wake, and realize this was a vision in the night, my opinion does not reflect reality with sufficient accuracy to be called knowledge. In this case, I do not know it is raining, but I know I dreamed of rain.
Hence, when I look out the window, and know that it is raining, first, I do not know everything there is no know, since I did not count the raindrops, and there is room for doubt, since I might be asleep.
There is not room for endless doubt, however. If I say to myself, “rain is rain” I know that this statement cannot be untrue, provided I mean the words to be unambiguous.
Man is a creature for whom perfect knowledge, complete knowledge, and doubtless knowledge is confined to three cases:
First, certain statements are self-evident, that is, the mere utterance or apprehension of the statement, provided the terms are known, is sufficient warrant to affirm their truth. “This statement contains five words.”
Second are tautologies, where the subject and predicate refer to the same object but using different terms. A statement that is true by definition is a tautology. “Twice two is four.”
The third are statements or axioms of thought which cannot be contradicted without a logical paradox. “I think, therefore I am.”
Naturally, any conclusion logically necessitated by an indubitable self-evident truth, tautology, or axiom of thought is also true, and also indubitable.
For better or worse, we human are born as babies, and only slowly learn that Mommy’s face continues to exist behind her hands even when playing peek-a-boo. We learn to distinguish hands and feet from other objects in the crib, and to distinguish painful and pleasant actions and reactions. Later, once we toddle and walk, babble and talk, we learn Daddy will reward bad actions and bad words with punishment. Oddly, we do not need to be taught to lie and deceive: that faculty comes naturally. But to be ashamed of lies must be learned.
Please note that these things which we learn before we even learn words are things which, upon reflection, philosophers have identified as being necessary for rational thought to proceed at all, namely, essence and accident, cause and effect, sense and nonsense, right and wrong.
Later still, at roughly age seven, the traditional age of reason, a child is able to learn that certain statements cannot be true unless certain other statements, their necessary axioms or necessary consequences, are also true.
By age fourteen, a schoolboy is able to learn and understand that it certain forms of statements, regardless of the matter of the statement, shows these necessities: these are the formal laws of reason: the law of self-identity (A is A) the law of non-contradiction (A is not non-A) and the law of the excluded third (either A is A or A is non-A. There is no third option.) All these forms are true and indubitable, no matter what terms are substituted for “A” provided the terms are unambiguous.
All these things the child learns either from nature, including the nature of his own thought process, or from the authority of his father, or from someone, such as a nursemaid or teacher, the father places over the child. The significance of this is studiously and fervidly ignored by all modern philosophy: all certainty is ultimate grounded on faith in authority.
Mortals are like a pagan king and his thegns seated at feast in a mead-hall in Northumberland where a sparrow might fly in one door, past the bright midwinter fire, and out the other door, once more into the cold and windy darkness.
Likewise is the things men know. What we know comes from the unknown things beyond the reach of our five senses or beyond the reach of thought; passes for a moment through the light and warmth of reason; but the ramifications and ultimate conclusions are likewise beyond our ken.
We know the rain, but cannot count the raindrops.
Meteorologists can make certain guesses as to tomorrow’s weather, but the wind blows wither it will, and you hear the sound, but canst not tell whence it comes, nor where it goes.
We can deduce some laws of nature by observing and measuring the proportions and causes of repeated natural effects, the motions of stars and planets, pendulums and cannonballs, the interplay of atoms and chemicals, the growth of crystals and plants, the migration of birds in their season, births and deaths of beasts, the history of man, but we cannot see first cause nor final end.
This knowledge is empirical hence conditional, that is, subject to change when new observations arise. It is based on our sense impressions, and only reaches to objects and events whose results come within range of our senses.
We know the laws of reason and laws of morality, but cannot neither question nor justify those laws without participating in the act of reasoning, which relies on those selfsame rules of reason being questioned and justified.
This knowledge is rational hence necessary, affirmed by induction or deduction from the forms of thought without which thought itself is impossible.
(The modern skeptic may pause in puzzlement that the laws of morality are included as being as indubitable and inescapable as the laws of logic. Modern skepticism depends on the philosopher never applying the conclusions of his worldview to himself. For this reason, determinists never plead that, lacking free will, they are compelled by their brain atom motions to believe determinism, not because it is true. For this reason, materialists say their thoughts and ideas are made of matter, as brain-atoms clustered without meaning, but never plead that materialism, being such a thought, it merely an cluster of brain-atoms without meaning. So here: one cannot logically question and justify the laws of reason without oneself relying on the laws of reason. Likewise, on cannot logically question the laws of morality if the examinatinon is known to be dishonest.)
All human knowledge rests on something that is unknown, or else something indubitable. Because perfect certainty on all topics is not open to human nature, skepticism has its proper place, even as wine is permitted at mass or wedding, but should be kept from the lips of raging cyclopean drunks.
The philosophical mind is disciplined like a court of law, where any question subjected to the jurisdiction of reason should be open both to honest defense and honest inquiry, without resorting to strawman arguments, ad hominem, or the endless illogical jabberwocky modern rhetoricians use instead of honest debate.
The wisdom of one’s experience, and the experiences of one’s ancestors as embodied in tradition, acts as a jury box, to grant the findings a due proportion and due application to real life, or to nullify the result.
As with a court of law, the philosophical mind must side with precedent, following the wisdom of older courts in the legal tradition, and assign the burden of proof against those arguing to overturn precedent. This, for better or worse, is a limit of mortal nature. We are not created like angels with intuitive knowledge instilled into us from our origin. As children and schoolboys, we must take the teaching of our fathers on faith until our skill at reasoning is sufficient to hear and ponder the evidence for and against each point of what we have learned.
But neutrality in this is not possible nor desirable. There is no view from nowhere. The default assumption must fall with the certainties at first taken on faith, taught by one’s fathers, because otherwise there is no reason to trust the reasoning process itself.
The court of law must assume its own ability to sit in judgement. It must rule on its jurisdiction and procedures. If we put the judge on trial, the court itself cannot sit, and we are all trapped forever in the mire of Munchhausen, the vacuum of perfect uncertainty.
Putting the judge on trial, that is, doubting the very instrument one uses to adjudicate the validity of doubts, merely paralyzes the mental process. This paralysis of the mind is the hallmark of the modern age, and the source of its drunken delirium.
When a modern philosopher, a solipsist or materialist, communist or anarchist, assumes the axiom that all human knowledge is empirical, or is determined by atomic motions, or that all ills of the human condition are caused by private property, or caused by coercion. The solipsist concludes other human minds do not exist. The material concludes his own mind does not exist. The communist concludes utopia will result once totalitarianism eliminates liberty. The anarchist concludes utopia will result once lawlessness eliminates order.
All of these philosophers, and many others, whose philosophy is unmoored from theology, take an axiom and drive it to an insane conclusion, and, when confronted with the insanity, embrace the insanity rather than questioning the axiom. Using reason and tradition as their jury would have allowed these philosophers to avoid folly.
The determinist who realized that putting his philosophy into effect would excuse all vice from condemnation, all virtue from praise, who recoils from folly and revisits his axioms has made use of wisdom to nullify the result of unchecked and imbalanced reason.
As with a court of law, not every grievance or discontent should be heard, but only those which have a real effect in real life. A law court will not levy a fine against the grandson of a tortfeasor who uttered a slander three generations ago, nor award reparations for historical grievances, wars and invasions that are beyond the jurisdiction of the court. Likewise, any philosophy that has no practical effect on how one lives one’s life, treats others, or makes no change one’s view of the cosmos may be disregarded as piffle.
The determinist who has no intention of putting his philosophy in effect, because he is wise enough not to excuse all vice from condemnation, indulges in piffle. He trifles away his time with speculations and debates of no practical result. It would be wiser for him merely to rule the question out of bounds.
Like a court of law, the philosopher should not ask for proof beyond unreasonable doubt. I can voice a doubt whether the sun will rise tomorrow. It is in theory possible that the sun spontaneously collapse into a neutron star, and cease to emit radiation, but were I to start to build a space ark to gather all the animals of earth in hopes of relocating on Proxima, the world would rightly dismiss my antics as mad. Likewise, a solipsist suddenly overcome with a Cartesian fear that all his family and friends are waxwork automatons cunningly devised to deceive him is literally mad.
One can doubt anything, merely by writing the words “I doubt” before a statement denoting any proposition whatsoever. A moment’s reflection, however, reveals any number of statements whose result would be self-disproving: “I doubt that I exist” or “I doubt truth is true” or “I doubt logic is valid” or “I doubt reality is real” or “I doubt virtue is good.”
Such doubts are not reasonable, and need not be entertained. The only thing one need know about such doubts is that they contradict themselves.
Let us take it as a first rule that any philosophy is false that eliminates the philosopher who enunciates it.
Reasonable doubt can and should be entertained, at least in youth, to test and doublecheck all the knowledge received from one’s traditions, from Socrates to Christ to Aquinas to Newton to Descartes to Marx to Montesquieu. Youths who have been indoctrinated rather than educated will be surprised at how much modern thought is simply unjustified and unpersuasive.
Reasonable doubts can and should be entertained about conditional and provisional knowledge, but, again, only when the doubt is warranted.
This is particularly true and urgent for any generation whose admiration for science outstrips their knowledge of science, or any awareness of the limits of scientific knowledge.
The idea that empirical science rests on metaphysical assumptions that empirical science itself cannot question nor justify is so alien to modern thinkers that I have yet to meet a single physicist who acknowledges this or even understands the concept.
Modern education has taught generations that “metaphysics” means mumbo-jumbo. They are taught that cause and effect is a conclusion of experimental observation, not an axiom assumed a priori, without which experimental observations cannot be observed.
Nor is holding conditional conclusion somehow shameful. One is allowed to be convinced, for example, that the death penalty is a proper and proportionate punishment, even if one harbors some doubts. These are matters where reasonable men can differ, and a belief where one’s neighbor holds a different view is not necessarily any sign of mental negligence or incapacity on his part.
The question is always to ask what is the basis for the doubt. One separates reasonable doubt from unreasonable by examining the reason or lack thereof. “You cannot be certain!” is not a sufficient reason, by itself, for doubt. Evidence that the opposing view is wrong is sufficient reason.
And, like a court of law, there is no reason to reopen a case that has been decided, if there no new evidence, no new argument, being presented. It is wrong to be so closed minded as to not listen to a honest case calling one’s cherish beliefs into question; but it is likewise wrong to be so open minded that one must ponder the obvious, or treat logical absurdities with dignity. As the old saying goes, be not so open minded that one’s brain falls out.
This leave the vast majority of human knowledge and experience in a condition of uncertainty. We can trust our senses, but, from time to time, a mirage in the desert might deceive us, or a cleverly-placed mirror, or some odd quirk of the optic nerve. We can trust our memories, except that, from time to time, we conflate or confuse events, or forget them entirely. We can trust our teachers, if they fear God, and teach impartial truth, not fashionable partisan theory. We can trust the authorities placed over us, if they fear God, and show a long history of readiness to punish their fellow authorities for breaches of the public trust. We can trust tradition, except where it has gone astray, and brought ruin in its wake.
So in all cases, we are groping though the mire of Munchhausen, wading through opinions and theories that are mostly true or largely true, more likely than not, with very few stones of certainty on which to place our full weight.
All the largest, deepest and most dire questions of life and death and afterlife, the origin and eschaton of the world, the meaning of existence, the nature of love, and the roots of virtue, are beyond the reach of human reason and human sense to know without doubt.
Such is the human condition.
The heartless Stoic might be willing to endure the endless darkness of the unknown and uncertain without flinching, because he is disciplined to desire nothing beyond the power of his will to enact, so he permits himself never to crave knowledge of what cannot be known. He carries on with his duty regardless, ever preparing himself to face death unafraid.
Likewise, the brainless Hedonist might be willing to face the eternal and infinite abyss of the unknown with an aimless giggle, and drink and wench and be merry, because the despair that is the proper response to this Tartarus is not pleasing to him. He puts the matter from his mind, and seeks soft suicide through distraction and dissipation.
But the human condition is not the only condition there is. A close examination of the axioms and conclusions of metaphysics, Pagan or Christian, Aristotelian or Thomist, points to the existence of an uncaused first cause, not only of the natural motions of the cosmos, and the laws of nature, but also an uncaused first cause of the supernatural nature of human thought, volition, conscience and consciousness, and the laws of reason and morality.
Nothing comes from nothing, so the natural world can neither (1) arise from no cause, by mere chance, or by mindless process nor (2) be the product of an infinite regress of causes. Like the Munchhausen dilemma given above about the origin of certain proofs, a close examination shows a third option.
Perfect knowledge is not available to the human condition. But knowledge is available, some of which is certain, some knowledge is open to reasonable doubt, much knowledge is doubtful to the point where it is merely more likely so than not. Beyond this is a vastness of opinion, some sound and some unsound, matters taken on faith, matters of personal wisdom, judgment, prejudice. Imperfect knowledge would not be open to the human mind unless perfect knowledge existed in actuality. (Such perfect and certain knowledge cannot exist merely in potential, as something that might be known but is not now known, for then it would not be certain.)
We humans can see the rain through the windowpane, but we cannot number the raindrops. However, that number must exist, for if it were zero, the rain would not be seen.
However, to be known, a knowledge must be reflected accurately in a mind. Perfect knowledge hence, if it exists in actuality, must exist in a perfect mind.
The raindrops do not have an actual number, since the act of numbering is a thought, unless there is a mind to count and number them.
Perfect knowledge, to be perfect, must include the most primary of first causes and the most ultimate of final ends. Every necessary and contingent fact would have to be known: the location of all atoms and all stars and all souls, and all their properties, their natures and intentions. Such a mind would by definition be omniscient.
This omniscience, knowing as well all the causes and ends of moral truth, could not be imperfect in virtue, goodness, and benevolence.
It would be a paradox if this omniscient being knew all the cause of all things, himself included, but was not the cause of all things. Hence, omniscience implies omnipotence. The All-Knowing is the Almighty.
The question then becomes whether the Almighty could, out of the infinite benevolence of His being, overcome the sad limits of the human condition, and grant inerrant certainty to creatures otherwise incapable of discovering or confirming such truth.
He could create a cosmos whose order and beauty, seen in stars and seas and mountains, but also displayed in the mighty forests, teaming shoals and schools in the flowing rivers, and flocks to fill the skies, all manner of beasts and creeping things, who hunt and hide and mate and migrate and hibernate each in his due season, displaying a harmony of intentional purpose clearly beyond the ability of beast or bird or flowering plant itself to decide. The order of nature shows engineering solutions more clever than human genius can approach.
He could moreover implant in the human nature an instinctive or intuitive awe and wonder at the sublime beauty found in nature.
There may be, perhaps, a natural explanation for why men are attracted to mates, or to the smell and sight of healthy foods, and repelled by disease or disproportions. He has a reason to enjoy the sunlight and fear the dark: for these things aid his prosperity and fecundity, and the light of day decreases the threat of hidden dangers.
But there can be no natural explanation for why snowfall or waterfall should seen impressive or sublime to the human mind, nor the rainbow, much less the sleek shape of panthers, the majesty of lions and eagles, the stripes of the tiger. One cannot eat a rainbow, so there is no natural reason to find it attractive. If anything, snowfall and hunting cats are threats to human longevity: it is counter-intuitive that we should find them handsome.
The Almighty could moreover implant in the human nature an instinctive or understanding of the laws of morality and the laws of reason, so that even tribes far scattered across the globe express some very similar version of the Golden Rule, knowing well that the way to treat others is measured by how one wishes to be treated.
Again, there may be a natural explanation for natural sentiments inclining mothers and uncles to care for those with whom they share a bloodline, or for tribesmen to share dangers and rewards among their hunting bands, or farmers to share toil irrigating and planting, for each man’s self interest in not served in such cases by mere selfishness. But there can be no natural reason for acts of altruism extended to strangers and sojourners.
The voice of conscience which whispers in the soul of every soul, aside, perhaps, from psychopaths, cannot be other than the voice of heaven. If this voice were natural, merely the echo of cultural indoctrination, it would differ from tribe to tribe as the words in their several languages and dialects differ. If it were supernatural, it would not differ from tribe to tribe, just as the fact that all human tribes have a language to express themselves does not differ.
The Almighty could likewise implant a universal custom of sacrifice, found among all men of all races in all periods of history and prehistory: a custom so deeply rooted in human nature that nature cannot account for it. This is supplication to the unseen, an act of gratitude, and as expression of fealty. Such behavior would be perfectly irrational and perfectly wasteful if not prompted by supernational reality.
(To be sure, skeptics dismiss all such natural and instinctive sacrifice and worship as being irrational, but then are at a loss to explain how such irrational generations gave rise to rational creatures like himself. By an irrational process of evolution or historical accident?)
Finally, the Almighty could communicate with His creatures either by speaking words aloud in the ears of Abraham or Moses, or sending visions to Daniel or Saint John.
He could arrange the cosmos to bring forth signs and wonder at such times and upon such petitions that doubters are left without excuse, for the order of nature cannot be interrupted, or used for a deliberate purpose, except by a sovereign able to lawfully veto natural law, or use it for His ends.
The Benevolent and Omniscient Being can neither deceive nor be deceived. The prophet, hearing his words or seeing his visions, has no rational reason to without his full assent to whatever truths are revealed to him.
The prophet himself is no more omniscient than any other man, but the words he speaks doe not come from him, but from an omniscient source.
The only doubt open to man is to ask whether the prophet is a true prophet or a false one. They cannot all be false for the same reason not all money can be counterfeit.
Again, those who produce signs and wonders as warrant to show in whose name they speak can be trusted. Their words can be trusted to be inerrant, that is, without error, precisely because they are not human words.
Again, if one hears such things second or third hand, the doubt is open as to whether the avenue of communication is true: that there was no scribal error in writing down the prophecy, or malicious mis-transcription or mis-translation. False scripture as well as false prophets must be detected and disbelieved.
Finally, since all prophets perish, or are assumed into heaven, the benevolent and effective means of preserving the revealed truths told to prophets for the benefit of future generations is to select and establish a special chosen nation of people, or establish a Church, into whose hands both the task of preserving the revelation and the means to carry out the task is given.
This is a communal and not an individual task. In a community, disputes will inevitably arise over which prophecy is valid and how it to be interpreted.
If the people or the Church is apostate, or if the God they serve is fictional, there is no correct interpretation to prefer, and no possibility of inerrant knowledge.
Otherwise, if God is real, since the task is communal, the community as a whole must reach a consensus. The scripture itself gives the rule to use to discriminate between true prophets and false: namely, the prophecies of false prophets do not come true, or the they do not agree with prior prophets known to be true.
Like a court of law, it relies on precedent.
As when Jesus of Nazareth arose among the Jews and preached a doctrine astonishing to the faithful, seemingly blasphemous, a certain amount of doubt was warranted. The signs and wonders produced both by Him and those who acted in His name are sufficient to quell honest doubts to those who saw it at the time, not to mention the wisdom and antiquity of His teaching. He denounced the innovations of Pharisees and Sadducees, who no longer followed the worship as given to Moses, or who followed the letter and scorned the spirit.
It is invariable habit and history of God that when false doctrines arose among the Chosen People, to send a prophet to warn and call them back to the proper path of faith. No such prophet arose in times then or after to rebuke the Christians, nor are there any wonder or miracles credited to those who denounced Him.
The destruction of the Temple is interpreted by the Christians to be a sign that the true temple now exists in spiritual form among the congregation of baptized and faithful followers of Christ. The Church is the Temple.
The faithful Son of Abraham knew and knows full well that the Torah, the scripture of the laws and the prophets are inerrant. Some, perhaps, these days may entertain doubts about the other writings. For better or worse, with the Temple destroyed, and the Sons of Aaron scattered, there is no magisterium, no divinely authorized teaching authority among them to settle the matter.
It is otherwise with Christians. Disputes arising in the interpretation of revealed truth are settled by properly constituted ecumenical councils, authorized by the Archbishop of Rome, after prolonged and scrupulous debate and examination of the inerrant writings of scripture and the errant, albeit most wise, writings of the Church Fathers, acting in concert with the light of natural reason and the voice of the Holy Spirit.
Naturally, human nature being what it is, those who refused to accept the lawful authority of the Magisterium had no choice but to fly into schism, sever communion, and establish their own line of apostolic succession.
Naturally, each is required to claim his own denomination keeps faith with the original Church as established by the Antenicene Fathers, by the Apostles, by Christ: but this claim can be affirmed or denied in the same way true scripture from apocrypha can be distinguished, or true prophet from false: by comparison with the originals whose heirs they claim to be.
No schismatic denomination, East or West, even purports to have Magisterium, that is, an inerrant teaching authority, which the original Church clearly and unambiguously claimed to have, it is difficult or impossible to for a heterodox denomination to affirm such the claim of continued inerrancy reaching back through Christ to Moses to Abraham to Adam.
The Protestant claim that their truncated 66-book canon scripture of the Sixteenth Century forms its own self-executing magisterial authority, whose meaning is plain to any layman who reads it when guided by the Holy Spirit, is a self-defeating claim. No document interprets itself, and no passage in scripture authorized Luther or Calvin to retain nor remove books of scripture from the canon.
Likewise, prophets arising outside the Church, and outside Christian tradition, teaching and preaching matters that cannot be reconciled with received teaching, violate the method scripture itself gives for distinguishing true prophet from false.
Not as a matter of dogma, but as a matter of logic, no man can have the authority to prophecy against the Church. Any visions or visitation, signs and wonders, that purport to overrule the knowledge already affirmed to be inerrant cannot themselves be inerrant.
Suppose a skeptic finds himself sinking in the mire of Munchhausen or adrift in the cold winds of the bottomless abyss of Nietzsche. The skeptic’s task at such an impasse is not to pretend that he can enter a perfect void of perfect ignorance, like Descartes, question everything, and reason himself to perfect certainty. Perfect ignorance perfectly prevents even the first step of any questioning or reasoning process.
No, instead, like a court of law, the task of the skeptic is to accept the traditional learning of his fathers, the philosophical tradition of Athens, the scholastic tradition of Rome, the spiritual tradition of Jerusalem, and only to doubt what doubts are reasonable, and have evidence to sustain them that outweighs the contrary evidence.
All this no doubt seems risible to the agnostic or atheist, who, born in the modern day, and taught nothing but gibberish and garbage in school, cannot bring himself to believe twice two is four.
But, again, the only way to find indubitable knowledge is to start with the self-evident, follow tradition, and find a source of inerrant knowledge not suffering the limits of the human condition.
Perfect uncertainty is nonsense, merely a mire that drowns the unwary. Human knowledge flounders in vast solitudes of uncertainty, like treading a pathless bogland by night, deceived by winks of will-o’-the-wisp. The claims of each sedgy pathway must be tested carefully by the soggy footstep but only absurd claims need be dismissed without a proper hearing.
For better or worse, the atheist worldview is self-disproving. If atheism is a true and honest philosophy, then neither truth nor honesty exist, because no law of morality nor reason can or does exist higher than what human convention decrees: and whatever human convention decrees, human convention can veto. And if neither truth nor honesty exist, atheism cannot be a true philosophy, nor honest.
The agnostic may claim that the proposition of supernatural sources of inerrant knowledge is beyond human knowledge. None can see the unseen, or understand the ineffable, nor comprehend the infinite and eternal. The normal empirical means of adjudicating propositions cannot reach claims about the supernatural.
Unfortunately for him, the agnostic was not born into the perfect void of Descartes. He was not born into a world where no claims, no reports, no evidence, and no repeated testaments of God exist.
To the contrary, not only is Christendom flooded with such reports, and with physical evidence of miracles from the Shroud of Turin to the Mantle of Guadalupe to the Rocks of Las Lajas.
Moreover, the Christian claims form the basis of Western Civilization, including, whether he admit it or not, the axioms of the agnostic who affirms that empiricism is the normal means of adjudicating truth claims is accepting an axiom which only Christian metaphysical belief can affirm: affirmation of the rationality and consistency of the cosmos is alien to the mysticism of the Buddha and the harsh pragmatism of Confucius.
So, being lost in the bogland of human uncertainty, the claim that a wellspring of inerrant certainty exists cannot be honestly dismissed until it is examined. To take the steps to examine the claim requires as least the tentative faith in the proposition that it might be true, and requires a firm faith in the proposition that one’s reasoning powers are sufficient to prove the true or disprove the untrue.
In any case, faith in not blind faith any more than skepticism is blind skepticism. Each must be employed in a reasonable fashion as reason dictates. Each discipline, such as Euclidean geometry, or Anglo-American law, rests on assumptions or axioms, definition and common notions that must be accepted or else the discipline cannot be studied at all. But the axioms of thought itself form the laws of reason. Reason cannot prove or disprove reason without relying on reason: it that sense, it is an act of faith.
Likewise, any honest study of the Christian claims of inerrant knowledge, if pursued to its root, will stir up the Holy Spirit, who will then come hunting for the wayward soul, and seek a way to lead her to the light.
If you doubt this, dear reader, I invite you to put it to the test. Be skeptical for once, and actually examine the proposition strictly and objectively.
You will find inescapable certainty awaits.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
