The Tyranny of Moral Certainty

It is distressing to me that I even have to write this.

The title of this post is self evident. Dogmatic, ideological loyalty must lead to tyranny. Either you are an adherent or an apostate. And the apostate inevitably becomes seen as evil or in league with it.

And yet many Americans have been seduced by the siren song of "moral certainty," as the neo-cons have labeled it. Good vs. Evil. We are good. Our enemies, evil. Everything we do is good, by definition. Everything they do is evil, by definition. That is why we can torture people, or at least hold them indefinitely without charge in maddeningly cruel solitary confinement. We are good and they are evil. We are protecting the good by any means necessary. And if you question this, you are abetting evil and standing against good. By definition.

That's the problem. Contradictory facts from the real world have no place to go if the mind is closed and the question already settled. Reason based on rational synthesis of the facts has no place. Minds cannot change if they are closed. Nor can they even understand the alternative way of thinking. Dogmatists believe in big unchangeable truths and the little truths that every day life reveals therefore have to fall in line to support the big idea already affirmed. The Earth is the center of the universe. Period. Never mind that evidence from new technology (telescopes) and mountains of data from observation required more and more tortured explanations to make the two fit. Some of these were admittedly pretty remarkable in their cleverness. But those who we free from the big truth were able to come up with a much simpler explanation (the Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun). One proponent, Galileo Galilei was called an agent of the devil for this heresy and tortured into recanting.

Even to this day, people reject ideas only because they conflict with a big truth. Public radio quoted a man as saying, "science is about facts, and evolution is only a theory, so it should not be taught as a fact." His mind can't even understand the alternative way of thinking. Science isn't about facts. Science rejects the idea of Dogma and Big Truth. Instead it focuses an open, sometimes called skeptical, mind on the little facts, tries to come up with a explanation that fits the facts best, and then makes predictions that can be tested and either confirmed or denied. Further, these test must be repeatable. So the tester has to reveal his methodology as well as the resultant data so that others can scrutinize it and evaluate it. That way, flaws can be found and corrections suggested. Scientific theories therefore are not written in stone, but are simply the best explanation given what we know at the moment. If new technologies bring about new discoveries and the new data doesn't fit the old explanation, scientists propose new theories that fit both the old and new data. Newtonian physics worked great for it's time, but as astronomy and physics revealed new data about the very large and massive parts of our universe that defied Newtonian predictions, it was clear his mechanics had limitations. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, superseded Newton because it explained the old AND the new data better than Newton's theory. That doesn't mean Newton was wrong. NASA used Newtonian physics to make all the calculations necessary to send Apollo astronauts to the moon and back. It just didn't work on the truly massive scales we ecountered after Newton's death.

The idea is that nothing in science is the final word. You don't have to believe in science. You can demand and get an explanation for any scientific theory. And you must remain open to new data and be ready to accept new explanations that explain things better. Despite what the dogmatist say, there is no alternative scientific theory to evolution. In fact, the new discoveries in genetics are fully consistent with Darwin's ideas. Intelligent Design is merely dogma dressed in pseudo science. It is merely an untestable assertion and therefore is not science.

This is basic. Every student should understand this. The fact that they don't is an indictment of our educational system. Science is not magic. It is not the proclamation of someone called a scientist. It is simply a system of observation, prediction and repeatable testing. It must convince the open minded. Democracy requires that our political discourse follow those same ideals. Truth needs to come from the bottom up and not from on high. Hitler was morally certain. So was Stalin and Mao and Franco and Mussolini. That is the way of the tyrant. A democrat has to be willing to adapt to the truth as it is revealed to his or her open mind.

So questioning policy rationales cannot be evil. Good rationales must have good evidence behind them and should convince the open mind. Indeed, questioning is exactly how we find the weak rationales and root them out. Moral certainty is an illusion and worse, it can only lead to tryrany, which I would argue to your open mind, is bad.