Ask a Humanist: Is there objective truth or morality?

Yes – I believe there is such a thing as an objective truth. No – I don’t believe in the existence of an objective morality.

Things are true if they accord with fact and/or reality. Meaning, things are objectively true if they can be proven to be true using the tools of science.

Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.”  Amen for that. So yes, as a Humanist I recognize that there are objective truths that can be known and it is helpful for us to know what is true.

The reason it is helpful for us to know what is true and what isn’t is because – what is true impacts our moral judgements.

The 2nd part of this question is – is there an objective morality. To me, as a Humanist, the answer is no. Ultimately – in the grand scheme of things and on the scale of the universe – NONE of our actions really matter. We are all going to end up dead and eventually have our atoms destroyed and reborn in a stellar explosion. 

As Rick in Casablanca points out, “I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.”

Some people view this – rejection of objective morality as license to do anything you want. It isn’t. It’s just an acknowledgement of the absurd reality we find ourselves in. On the one hand – morality matters greatly to us in the here and now because of the impact our actions have on us in the here and now. And … they don’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things.

Blaise Pascal once wrote, “A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.”  This is especially true of morality.

We can both understand that our actions don’t ultimately matter and understand that they matter greatly right now.  Understanding that both are true is to be enlightened. It helps you to think and act morally while not being uptight about morality.

Why, given the ultimately futility of all moral activity, does it matter to be moral. The answer is because it impacts your life and the life of others right now.  All lives end at some point. The challenge is – how to live life well and fully. The answer, according to every major religion and philosopher is to live a life of compassion geared towards helping others. Why? Why not.  You are only alive for a short people of time. Why not act in a way that makes your life better and the lives of others better? It sure beats the alternative.

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To learn more – get my book – The Humanist Approach to Happiness – or take my life skills course – Living Made Simpler. 

How do we know what is true?

It turns out that what is commonly described as the scientific method really does work quite well.

• Observe something.
• Come up with a hypothesis to explain it.
• Test that hypothesis to see if it is true.
• Revise your thinking according to the results of your test.

Most people are really good at the first two elements of this process: observation and hypothesis. The problem is that they stop there and don’t bother to test whether their hypothesis is correct or not.  Maybe they don’t want to know. Or maybe they didn’t know how to test it. What often happens is that they forget it was a hypothesis and start thinking – it must be true. This seems to be the entire history of apologia (which is basically the study of why God allows bad things to happen to good people).

This is also true of any and all supernatural claims. There is no way to test them. They are supernatural and not natural. We can only test hypothesis about the nature of the universe.  This is why every claim of a “super nature” is an untested hypothesis. EVERY CLAIM!!!!

The same thing happens when people lie to prove “greater truths” that they believe are true but can’t actually prove are true.  They stop at the hypothesis stage and never bother to test.

Here’s the thing about testing and why you should be skeptical of any claim that hasn’t been proven. There is only one type of truth. The truth.  There are no “greater truths” we can’t find. There is also nothing super or extra natural. All there are are people hypothesizing about the nature of the universe and failing to follow through on the testing. 

Don’t be fooled by this sort of lazy approach to knowledge and truth. Even if someone spends a great deal of time “rationalizing” why what they hypothesize is true, if they refuse to test to find out if it is actually true, they are either afraid that they might be wrong or they are too lazy or stupid to find out.

Truth can’t be found out with reason alone. It’s an important tool that can point us in the right direction, but testing and experimentation is the final arbitrator.

For more on this – check out The British Humanist Association’s video starring the voice of Stephen Fry on how do we know what is true from a Humanist perspective.

Searching for the Truth

While truth is important, searching for it may be a waste of time.

Truth, it turns out, is a very subjective thing. And that’s a weird thing to say given that most of us have some idea of truth as being objectively real. Truth is something that exists outside our consciousness whether we know what is true or believe it or not.

The problem is that we can’t ever truly know what is truly true. Not really. All knowledge we have or think we have is filtered through our rather messy brains and so our thoughts and our perception of knowledge is inherently subjective. We can’t help it.  It’s just the reality we have to deal with, as far as we know.

That doesn’t mean that what is true isn’t important. It is. What is real really matters. The more our subjective understanding of what is true matches what is objectively true the more effective we are going to be. So searching for truth is worthwhile.

The problem is that we can’t ever be truly sure if what we think is true is actually true. To be intellectually honest, we have to maintain doubt regardless of how sure we are that that what we think we know is true.  This requires balance.

We have to seek out truth, but accept that we can never truly know what is true. We can’t use the unending search for truth as an excuse not to act in the present. We have to act to the best of our ability based on what we think we know to be true even though it may turn out to be false.

To help me maintain this balance I like to remind myself of this quote by Thoreau from Civil Disobedience:

“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”