True or False?

“Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most.” Those are words from the movie Secondhand Lions. At the end of last month, Thinking Friend Anton Jacobs shared that statement and related comments with me and a few mutual friends, prompting an interesting discussion. 

Are there things we should believe even if they are not true? That seems to be what is implied in the above-mentioned movie. Three years ago, my wife and I watched, and enjoyed, that 2003 American comedy-drama film. But I hadn’t remembered the words cited above or the longer statement:

That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil …. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.

My first reaction to the above words was negative, mainly because I think a person always ought to believe in only what is true. How could it be possible, let alone necessary, to believe in things that are not true? If every statement is either true or false (which I think is correct), why should we ever believe what is false?

There are, indeed, many “facts” that can readily be determined as either true or false. But so much of what we encounter in the world are not facts that can be scientifically verified. Often, we must affirm what we believe to be true without any assurance that those things are, in fact, true.

That certainly doesn’t mean we should believe things that we think are false, even though we must realize that whatever we believe might be false. That is far different, though, than believing things that are false.

Michael Polanyi’s book Personal Knowledge (1958) is on my list as one of the “top ten” most important non-fiction books that I have ever read. I spent numerous hours in graduate school reading and seeking to understand Polanyi’s thought. That study became foundational for my epistemology (= the study and understanding of knowledge).

Several years later, my first writing to appear in a published tome was the 18^th chapter of a book published as a Festschrift for Dr. Eric Rust, my major graduate school professor. The title of that chapter is “Scientific Knowledge as Personal Knowledge.”**

Thirty years later, in October 2009, “All Knowledge is Personal Knowledge” was the title of one of my earliest blog articles. In a comment further explaining my point, I wrote,

Knowledge is always tentative. And there is no proof; there is only belief. Thus, there is always the possibility of being wrong. One "can only believe something that might be false," says Polanyi—and he adds that that is his argument "in a nutshell" (Personal Knowledge, p. 312).

Even though everything we believe “might be false,” rather than embracing the idea that we are going to believe what we believe, whether it is true or not, Polanyi emphasizes the importance of “heuristic passion,” the ongoing desire to seek and to find what seems most likely to be true.

Perplexity AI summarizes well Polanyi’s concept of heuristic passion: “He thinks all knowing (from physics to ethics to theology) is personal, fiduciary, and fallible, and therefore always involves passionate commitment and an open‑ended search for deeper contact with reality.”

There is no place for the “lazy” stance of saying we are going to believe what we choose to believe whether it is true or not. No, since none of our core beliefs (including scientific beliefs) can be scientifically proved, we continually strive to examine those beliefs, driven by heuristic passion to seek more adequate, more comprehensive articulations of reality.

If heuristic passion for determining what is true and what is false is necessary for progressive Christians (such as I), it is certainly necessary (and maybe even more so) for secularists on the one hand and conservative evangelical Christians on the other.

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** The title of the book, edited by Robert E. Patterson, is Science, Faith and Revelation: An Approach to Christian Philosophy (Broadman Press,1979). Last month, my wife came across a long letter handwritten by Dr. Rust (over 45 years ago!) in which he thanked me for the essay I wrote about Polanyi for the Festschrift. 

Darwin, Pro and Con

Who was born on February 12, 1809? Yes, Abraham Lincoln was born on that day—and so was Charles Darwin. Lincoln is 15^th on the list of “The 25 Most Influential People of All Time” (see here). Darwin is #9 on that same list, largely because of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, his revolutionary book published 160 years ago, on November 24, 1859.

Darwin’s Discoveries

Born about 175 miles northwest of London, from 1825 to 1831 Darwin studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and then went to the University of Cambridge to study for an ordinary degree, the usual preliminary for theological training.

Rather than becoming a medical doctor or a clergyman, though, Darwin became a natural scientist, and his voyage on HMS Beagle (1831~36) established him as an eminent geologist.

Based on his meticulous scientific research, by the end of that decade he had mostly constructed his theory of evolution, although his seminal book on that was not published until 20 years later.

On the Origin of Species led to a revolution in the way human beings thought about the world and themselves. As a 1999 essay in the Scientific American says, “Almost every component in modern man’s belief system is somehow affected by Darwinian principles.” 

Darwin’s Detractors

From the beginning until the present, however, Darwin has had his distractors. In the years following the publishing of his groundbreaking book, there were scientists who did not agree with his assertions.

By the 1870s, though, the scientific community and most of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact.

The main detractors have been Christians whose belief in a literally interpreted Bible caused them to oppose evolution of the natural world, including humans. One of the contemporary evangelical Christian leaders of this opposition to Darwin was Phillip E. Johnson (b. 1940), who died last month.

Darwin on Trial (1991) was Johnson’s influential book widely read and cited by conservative Christians.

Darwin’s Defense

Since I am not a scientist, I have no way to authenticate Darwin’s scientific assertions. As a student of Christian theology and philosophy, I can (and will) offer a limited defense of Darwin.

I suppose there was a time when I did not accept Darwin’s theory of evolution as being correct—but even though I grew up in a conservative Baptist church, I don’t remember that ever being a live issue.

I also don’t know when it was that I first accepted evolution as being “true,” but by the time I had finished my seminary and graduate school courses/seminars under Dr. Eric C. Rust, my major professor, I no longer had any qualms about affirming the truth of evolution.

Because of Dr. Rust, who was a trained scientist as well as a theologian, I accepted a both/and position with regards to science and religion rather than an either/or position. That meant accepting both evolution and divine creation—and a rejecting both Darwinism and creationism.

The importance of that position became abundantly apparent when I began teaching Christian Studies to non-Christian students in Japan. Almost without exception, the students had been taught evolution in high school and believed it to be scientifically true.

Of the (literally) thousands of non-Christian students I taught, if presented the choice between science (evolution) or Christianity based on a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation stories, 99% or so would most likely have quickly chosen science.

I was happy to be able to emphasize that such a choice is not necessary. It was only in my last years in Japan that I was able to augment my assertions with the writings of Catholic theologian John Haught of Georgetown University.

Haught’s books God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (2000) and Deeper Than Darwin (2003) are highly significant books for theologically evaluating evolution. I highly recommend them.

Christianity Today or Christianity Yesterday?

Last week as I was having coffee with friends, I mentioned that I was really enjoying Philip Yancey’s book Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church (2001). One of my friends didn’t know who Yancey is.

Yancey (b. 1949), I explained, is a widely read Christian author who has written often for Christianity Today. My friend then asked this rhetorical question: Isn’t that a rather conservative magazine?

In response, I told him how Eric Rust, my esteemed seminary professor, referred to it as “Christianity Yesterday.” (An article in it had criticized Dr. Rust, accusing him of being a liberal.)

CT’s 60th Anniversary

The next day I opened the new issue of CT, as it is often called, and saw that it was the 60th-anniversary edition. After awaking from a dream in 1953 and feeling led to found a new Christian magazine, Billy Graham was successful in getting the first issue of CT published in October 1956.

I was impressed with the cover of the new anniversary issue: the picture of a painting by Makoto Fujimura, the Japanese-American artist I recently introduced (see here). The painting’s title is “Grace Remains—Nard,” based on Mark 14:6-9. 

"Grace Remains -- Nard" by Makoto Fujimura

Through the past 60 years, I have read CT off and on. For several years now have been getting an email from CT almost daily with links to articles and other information. I have mixed feelings, however. There is some good and helpful stuff, but at other times I agree with Dr. Rust: it seems like Christianity yesterday.

The “Radiant Center”

My positive feelings toward CT are because of people like Yancey, who is still one of the fourteen “editors at large.” It is hard to find fault with people like him. He is the author of the scintillating book What’s So Amazing About Grace? (1997), and he, among several others, has written many superlative articles for CT.

In Soul Survivor Yancey tells about writing the cover story for a 1983 issue of CT. It was about Gandhi. Yancey remarked that he “was not prepared for the volume of hate mail the article generated” (p. 171). Many of his conservative readers thought he/they should not praise a “heathen” (non-Christian) so profusely.

In my book The Limits of Liberalism (2010), I call for seeking Christianity’s “radiant center,” between the extremes of fundamentalism and liberalism. In many ways Christianity Today, and certainly Philip Yancey, is a good example of a publication, and a person, in that center—although the magazine would definitely be on the right side of the center.

Beautiful Orthodoxy

The cover story of the new issue is “Beautiful Orthodoxy,” which is also the title of editor Mark’s Galli’s short new book, which I’ve just read. The book wasn’t bad, but I was a bit disappointed with it.

To the degree that Galli and other editors at CT thinks that “beautiful orthodoxy” and Christianity today requires blanket condemnation of any abortion by any woman and the denigration of LGBTQ people, I’m afraid it needs to be considered “Christianity yesterday.”

The growing percentage of the “nones” in American society is not so much because of their rejection of “orthodox” Christian doctrines but rather because of the condemnatory, intolerant, and judgmental attitudes of purveyors of traditional Christianity.

While I take great exception with much of what Bishop John Shelby Spong writes—he is an example of the liberal extreme—I do think he makes a valid point in his 1998 book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die.

We need a Christianity today that focuses on meeting current challenges rather than just seeking to preserve yesterday’s ideas and practices.