February 11, 2020
We as humans seem to have an inherent need to be right. I don’t know how many times in my life people have made statements of confident fact to me on subjects that are wrought with uncertainty. Most of the time I’ll politely respond, “You could be right,” and the confident speaker will usually shoot back, “I know I’m right.”
The reality I’ve seen is that these people who “know” they are right often disagree with each other. For millennia people have argued, fought, even killed over complex issues that are very uncertain. In most cases, both sides of the argument were wrong in spite of their absolute certainty that they were right.
Politicians are constantly arguing that if the government does some specific thing it will have some certain result in the future. They make this claim with confidence and urgency, harshly criticizing anyone who disagrees with them. The reality is that no one knows how the things we do now will impact the future. We can guess at most likely outcomes, but the future is hugely uncertain.
I could call this the Roger Deemer Uncertainty Principle, but I can’t really take credit for it. Many people recognize how uncertain everything is. Ancient philosophers, including the great teacher of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, recognized it.
· Ecc 7:24 "Whatever exists is far off and most profound—who can discover it?"
· Ecc 8:17 "No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it."
· Ecc 11:5-6 "As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well."
Imagine that we could survey people around the world on diverse, uncertain, but important subjects like the existence and nature of God, life after death, human rights, the best forms of government, morality, etc. People disagree and argue over these topics all the time. The results of this survey would reveal an enormous body of contradictory opinion. I think the survey would show that the average person in the world must be wrong in at least 80 or 90% of their beliefs in these areas simply because we believe so many contradictory things. If we could expand the survey to include all people who’ve lived on earth over the past 5000 years, the percentage of contrary beliefs would grow to 95%, maybe higher.
Let’s narrow our focus. We could go with all Muslims in Pakistan, all Jews in Israel, all Hindus in India, all communists in China, or any one of thousands of narrower groupings of people that we’d expect to be more homogeneous. I’ll go with American Christians just because I’m familiar with that group.
I could survey 100 random American Christians on their views on 5 foundational doctrines of Christianity, 5 controversial political issues, and 5 contemporary cultural conflicts, and I’d end up with thousands of diverse, contrary opinions. I’d be forced to conclude that American Christians must be wrong in the vast majority of things they believe because they believe so many incompatible things. Most of these people would be confident that they are right and everyone with a contrary opinion is mistaken. I would find this trend to be true regardless of what nationality, religion, political party, or other grouping I choose.
When you think about it, there’s only one logical conclusion to this matter. We are all wrong in the majority of controversial things we believe, even the important things that we are sure of.
Science. Let’s consider a less controversial field. In science we try to explain physical data that we observe with conceptual and mathematical models that fit the data. Every time scientists collect data that doesn’t match existing theories, we start proposing new theories. Let’s focus only on theories proposed by legitimate scientists who understand the data, science, and math. We’ll ignore wacko theories proposed by psychics revealed by their spirit guides and such.
Typically, scientists will come up with dozens, even hundreds, of legitimate theories. Most of them are quickly cast into doubt because they conflict with some data or a long-standing, accepted theory. But even the vast majority of theories that seem promising at first end up being wrong. The fraction of scientific ideas that people have trusted in over time that are actually true is very small. Science is arguably the field of human understanding with the least uncertainty, yet we know there is still great uncertainty in the realm of science. There’s so much we think we know that is wrong and much, much more that we don’t know anything about.
Everything else. I believe this principle of uncertainty extends to all fields of human knowledge: politics, economics, sociology, medicine, psychology, theology, everything. Only it’s worse. In these fields it’s more difficult to apply the scientific method to “prove” anything. Some of these fields of knowledge can’t use the scientific method at all. Usually, the best we can do is apply evidence to reduce uncertainty with certain ideas and concepts, then proceed with what seems most likely, having an attitude of humility and caution.
Certain urgency. Some situations demand that we throw caution to the wind. Consider a group of soldiers engaged in combat. Their commander receives some intelligence that the enemy is massing in a certain location, preparing for a decisive strike. If the intelligence is correct, many lives will be lost and the war effort will suffer a severe blow. The commander can prevent that disaster by launching a surprise attack on the enemy before they are prepared, but he must trust the intelligence. In combat, military intelligence always comes with uncertainty. What if the enemy has set a trap to ambush the soldiers when they attack? The commander must evaluate the level of uncertainty in the intelligence and choose whether to trust it or not. If he chooses to attack, he must convince his soldiers that the intelligence is trustworthy and the cause urgent enough to justify the risk they will take to launch their surprise attack.
Many times in life we must act with urgency and trust what we believe to be true in spite of the uncertainty. I believe wisdom calls us to acknowledge the uncertainty realistically and accept the risk, in order to achieve the greatest good possible. We should not ignore the risk and pretend it’s not there. We shouldn’t arrogantly assume we’re infallible. Better that we proceed with humility, striving for the greatest good in an uncertain world.
What to do. Uncertainty may be an unsettling concept if you’ve never considered it before, but once you think it through, the implications are rather good and lead to peace of mind.
When you realize how much everyone is wrong, you don’t get frustrated with people for being wrong so much. Less anger allows you to enjoy life more.
It’s easier to not judge others when you know how wrong everyone is, including yourself.
It’s easier to be humble when you realize that you’ve no idea how wrong you are in your own opinions.
Knowing that so many things we believe might be wrong allows us to be more flexible and adapt to new data.
We can still be decisive with this understanding. We focus on choosing the most probable possibility instead of feeling like we have to know everything for certain. (In reality, we usually choose what we think is the most probable possibility anyway. We just like to convince ourselves we know things for certain because we feel better about our decisions when we’re certain.)
Even when you disagree with someone on nearly everything, you can sense unity in the fact that you’re both human, wrong about many things, and hopefully right on a few points.
Seek all the truth and wisdom you can find. Knowledge and understanding are good. Remember that pride and self-confidence are foolish, because no matter how much you know, you're still in the dark on many things. When you're tempted to get frustrated and judge others who are wrong about things, remind yourself that it's okay for them to be wrong. Everybody's wrong about many things. They're human. In spite of their flaws, you can still love them, find things to enjoy together, even find common ground to experience unity and bond with them.
I’m wrong; you’re wrong; we’re all wrong. We can embrace that understanding and thrive with it.
(The post above was not my first attempt to address this concept. Below are a couple earlier reflections with similar thoughts.)
September 7, 2018, We’re All Wrong. Be Humble.
I once had a pastor who frequently emphasized the importance of doctrine. He was a great teacher who knew the scriptures. He could open people’s eyes to life giving spiritual truths.
Before that time in my life, I thought doctrine was boring and dangerous. People often grow legalistic and proud when they emphasize doctrine too much. Christians tend to criticize and look down on other believers when they disagree on doctrine. Sometimes they even make fun of other doctrines that they think are false, ridiculing them with sarcasm. (Ridicule is haughty, by the way—something God hates, according to Proverbs 6:16-17.)
The truth is, doctrine is important and dangerous because we’re all wrong. God wants us to eagerly and diligently search for truth, but we never get it quite right. We can grow tremendously in knowledge, wisdom and understanding, but we’re all far from perfect. There are things we all believe that are wrong, so we need to remain humble, avoiding criticism of those we disagree with and never looking down on them or ridiculing them.
I’ve often wondered how far I am from complete truth. How much of what I believe is off the mark? It’s difficult to assess, but I can generalize and try to grasp how often the average person gets things right and start from there.
Consider all the things people have believed in the past that we’ve discovered were wrong. Direct observation is good. People have always observed that the sky is blue, the sun radiates warmth, if you get flammable things hot enough, they’ll burn, etc. When we ask why things we observe are that way, we’re usually wrong. Throughout history people have guessed at why the sky is blue, why the sun radiates warmth, and why things burn, and most of this guessing has been wrong.
Science has given us insight into many things humans never understood before, but as we’ve learned more, we’ve added more why questions that we can only speculate on. For example, we can now explain why the sky is blue by citing the absorption and florescent spectra of diatomic oxygen, which is the main atmospheric contributor to the blue color we see in the daytime. We can analyze the quantum mechanical energy levels of the vibrational modes and electron orbitals of the oxygen molecule, but we now have dozens of questions about why the energy levels are structured that way, what electrons really are, what protons and neutrons are, how the forces work that hold them together, etc. Each of these questions has hundreds of theories that scientists have explored. As knowledge increases, questions and ideas increase exponentially.
We’ve discovered more and more how little we really know and the speculation we make about why things are the way they are is still off the mark most of the time because there are so many possibilities. Occasionally someone comes up with a new theory that proves to be true, at least to a point, but for every true theory, hundreds, perhaps thousands of false theories are explored.
This is true in cosmology, physics, chemistry, biology, archeology, paleontology, geology, psychology, medicine, and every other field of knowledge, especially theology. It may seem discouraging to think we’re wrong most of the time, but it should reduce arrogance and conflict. If people had any idea how small their knowledge was and how much of what they think they knew was wrong, they wouldn’t take offense to disagreement so quickly or judge others so harshly.
September 7, 2018, My Road to Recognizing Ignorance
I’ve witnessed ignorance all my life—in myself and people all around me. Throughout my life I’ve seen more and more how prevalent ignorance is.
End of the World. My first epiphany of ignorance happened when I was a teenager. I had been reading books and watched a couple videos about end-times prophecy. I was fascinated with all the prophetic images in the Bible and their symbolic meanings. I quickly recognized that all the experts had different opinions. They always disagreed on small details and often had contrary opinions on major points of interpretation. I still respected these experts in Bible prophecy, but realized that no one knew everything. I was comfortable with this little bit of ignorance. We’re all human and can’t know everything. Even experts who know a lot make mistakes and lack knowledge in certain details.
As years passed, I realized the ignorance was deeper than that. The most outspoken and dramatic experts turned out to be wrong on many levels. They weren’t just ignorant on a few details, but the vast majority of what they presumed to know with confidence wasn’t true. And I’m not just talking about a few individuals. I’m talking about all of them. Every single author and speaker who claimed to know the meaning of most end-times prophetic imagery in the Bible was wrong about the vast majority of what they said. Not a few, not most, but all of them were ignorant even though they claimed to know the answers.
Preachers. So, I grew skeptical of things I heard about end times, but over the next decade that skepticism grew to preachers claiming to know what the Bible really meant in other areas also. Occasionally I’d hear preachers speak with confident authority using phrases like “The Lord told me,” or “If you study the original Greek/Aramaic/Hebrew words,” this is what the passage really says.
As a youth I assumed that preachers who spoke with such authority had accurate insight into the original text or were supernaturally guided by God to speak the truth. But I would occasionally notice one authoritative preacher contradicting another. Often, they said things that just didn’t set right with my own understanding, or something in my spirit would make me feel uncomfortable with their message.
If these preachers were accurately communicating the word of God, shouldn’t they be in 100% agreement with each other? But they weren’t even close. Over time, I realized that I could research the preaching of 10 different authoritative pastors teaching on the same passage of scripture and come away with 10 different interpretations. Most differences would be minor details, but occasionally they would differ in major doctrines significant enough for them to argue about and accuse each other of being misled.
So, I concluded that preachers suffer from the same plague of ignorance that interpreters of end times prophecy do. I still treasure a good sermon, but I recognize that I need to study the scriptures for myself and consider its meaning carefully, weighing what I think God is telling me with what others see in them.
Politics. The same pattern repeated in politics. So many people express their view with confidence. Some can debate very convincingly, backing up their opinions with seemingly reliable sources and reason. Many emphasize their view with a sense of urgency, making people think they need to take action to save the world from some disaster.
I’ve come to realize that all of these political viewpoints are wrong—every single one of them. They might have some valid points, but they always make erroneous assumptions, use invalid data, develop logical flaws in their reasoning, etc. The actions they push may be good in some respect, but they’re never as good or urgent as the proponents claim. The things they oppose are never as bad as they claim either. I still listen to viewpoints and I enjoy a good, respectful debate that dives deep into opposing ideas (an extremely rare event), but I refuse to jump onboard anyone’s political agenda. I offer support where I see benefits, but I refuse to demonize those who disagree with me.
Everything Controversial. I’m the same way with philosophy, morality, religion, and many other controversial subjects where opinions are as diverse as fish in the ocean. I thoroughly enjoy studying and comparing the various beliefs and thinking about their implications. I even have my favorites that I feel are most true and good. But I strive to recognize the good and bad in all of them.
In all of these areas I find foolish people who think they’re right. Out of all the possibilities, they know which one is best, the one that’s truly good, and they think everyone else is stupid because they don’t see it the same way. It seems wise to me to consider that with so many possibilities, so many opinions, so much disagreement among highly intelligent experts, we have to admit ignorance. We can learn as much as possible, and think things through carefully, but the best we can hope for is to be a little bit right in the midst of our enormous ignorance.
Drama. Recognizing our position of universal ignorance could nearly eliminate social drama.
I see it all the time on social media, frequently in the news, and even in direct human contact occasionally. Someone is ranting against someone or something. They’re usually accusing them of being stupid, selfish, greedy, vain, hateful, or evil on some fashion. The truth is, when people seem stupid, they’re usually ignorant. When you get angry at someone for their ignorance, you’re a hypocrite because we’ll all in this sea of ignorance together. We are all clueless when we judge the hearts of others. At least 90% of the time we have no idea what’s going on in their heads—why they say and do things.
Correctness Bubbles? What if God put correctness bubbles over our heads one day a year so we could see how foolish we are? Imagine bubbles that glowed brighter when we said something true and good but turned darker, sucking light from around us whenever we said or did something harmful or wrong. I think we’d all be discouraged to find ourselves in a cloud of darkness before the day was half over. Perhaps God allows us to live in deluded ignorance of our own ignorance because we can’t handle being aware of how little we really know.
God. I mentioned God as if I knew he existed in the previous paragraph. God is one of those ideas that many people foolishly think they have figured out. I’m quite certain God is real, and that the Gospel accounts of Jesus Christ record real, historical, supernatural events. But I’d be foolish to presume I’m any less ignorant about God than anyone else. But since I’ve chosen to believe in God, I often ask myself, “How much is God involved in his creation?” I also wonder, “Why does God leave us all in such a state of ignorance?”
I can guess at answers to these questions, and such speculation might be fun and enlightening. Assuming with confidence that any such speculation is true would be presumptuous.
Action. This approach seems to apply to most of life, but sometimes we need to choose. It’s easy to say, “I don’t know why God leaves us in such a state of ignorance,” and just leave it at that, but sometimes we need to act on a most probable truth.
For example, the US has been arguing about abortion rights for many decades. Which right has priority, a woman’s right to choose what happens inside her body, or the right of a fetus to live. Some people believe that a baby’s right to life begins at conception making abortion murder. Some believe it begins before conception and that even birth control methods that prevent conception are immoral. At the opposite extreme are those who believe a woman’s right to make choices about her body come first and the baby has no right to life until birth when it breaths air. And there are hundreds of ideas that put the baby’s right to life somewhere in between conception and birth.
We can each decide what’s moral and right for ourselves, but what’s the government’s role? Where should the laws protecting women’s rights and the right to life for a fetus draw the line? You could say, “I don’t know,” and just leave it to others to decide, but then you’ll be guilty of inaction.
In situations like this, I believe we all have a responsibility to educate ourselves as much as possible and make a choice. We have to pick a most likely truth and act on it. But as we take action, we need to remember our ignorance. We don’t know everything. We could be wrong. Fight for what you think is right, but respect those you disagree with.
End of the road. Understanding the state of ignorance in all humanity, including myself, has led me to:
· seek understanding diligently,
· speculate on possibilities eagerly,
· pick the most likely truth when necessary,
· keep reasonable options open as much as possible,
· respect other opinions,
· avoid presumption,
· and not be judgmental.