Concerning Absolute Certainty

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Concerning Absolute Certainty

By Arlon Staywell RICHMOND — Quite problematic in the search for, and establishment of, truth and justice are the varying degrees of certainty possible and how correctly they are applied.
Absolute certainty can be quite elusive. It is a quality found in ideal realms. While we might have "absolute certainty" that 3+1=4 we are working with ideals, numbers, symbols, definitions and things that are true by definition. If 3 apples were in the refrigerator and we put in 1 more the "absolute certainty" of 4 apples in there no longer exists as it did ex cathedra. The material world sometimes steals apples.
Rather than absolute certainty in the material world we often find only high probabilities at best. We can raise probabilities by checking the back of the drawer with the original 3 apples to ensure they are still there. Since the likelihood of a wax duplicate is extremely low we might obtain a probability quite near "absolute certainty" indeed.
Because practical certainties can seem so nearly "absolute" for the purposes of our daily lives they can be confused with the absolutes they are not.
The conflicts that mark the pages and chapters of human history, varied as they can seem, can be organized quite simply. They are, all of them, differences over degrees of certainty.
High degrees of certainty are generally desirable. We want to be certain that loans will be repaid, that boats won't sink. We want to be certain that our food is not poison. Perhaps as important as that, perhaps more than many are aware, we want to be certain of the meaning and purpose of our lives.
Some higher degrees of certainty that there is some sort of a life after death are popular. Various levels of certainty there is no life at all after death can also be popular. Uncertainty is generally not popular nor desirable. There are exceptions but usually plans need to be made and they need to be made according to one or the other certainties. You will likely need to pick whether you believe in life after death or not. You probably have already picked even if you don't realize it.
The continuing popularity of Darwinism even as modern microscope technology made more clear the absurdity of it ever becoming a theory of abiogenesis is no doubt caused by the human tendency toward certainty, genuine or not. The more things humans can understand and explain the happier they are. So even today people will insist they can explain how life began abiotically despite growing mountains of evidence they are stupid, lying or both.
When people can't explain things they prefer to choose leaders they believe can, even when the explanations are impossible to actually locate. Even though the "big bang" defies known laws of physics and thermodynamics people still heap praise on it because they believe it increases their power, certainty and control.
Our human tendency to seek refuge in unquestionable things, eternal truths, absolute certainties, gods and powers from the beyond likely began, history suggests, with human leaders who perhaps like the fictional Wizard of Oz got the job at first by accident.
Their being more readily available than thunder or lightning brought much more organized followers.
Some god-priest-teacher-kings didn't prosper as well as others, some were outright overthrown, and none of them lived forever. This, especially with the help of writing that could last several lifetimes, led to the search for more enduring politics, religions and sciences. We became peoples of "laws and not men" long before John Adams uttered the phrase. Such leaders as we had were far more obviously only interpreters and appliers of something beyond them, mostly in writing.
A written tradition of notable vitality, prosperity and endurance is the "Judeo-Christian" tradition with its "Ten Commandments." But its origins are likely based on traditions, similar around the world, lost in the mists of the past.
A possible key to its success is its externalization of absolute certainty. The more people recognize human frailty the less prone they might be to it. The less people think they know the more they do somehow. Conclusions are best found without jumping. It might seem paradoxical on surface inspection.
People had tied themselves to absolute certainty in the instant of realizing they didn't own it.
Such is the nature of some human beings however that it is not enough to be the interpreters and appliers of absolute truth. They want to possess it. Interpreters and appliers can't possess God or replace God. So some people contrive "scientific" explanations to dodge the obstacles to their power God placed and, despite their efforts, maintains.
Such pseudoscientists must wonder how there can be a God who doesn't give them all the answers they can use to order the universe.
The explanation is not so difficult really, not for students proficient in free will, with sentient beings things can only be given, not taken.
Most Americans can explain the freedom they defend as being limited by others' freedom. A common image is of the freedom to swing one's fist ending before another's nose. The formula is a rather simple one to follow for priests and nuns, or some of them anyway. The rest of the world tends to get entangled in other people's business. Children can't choose what to eat, what television to watch or computer games to play. Their parents will make many of those choices for them. And parents must provide for their children, are not free to neglect them. However entangled it becomes many understand the necessary limits of their freedoms that devolve from the entanglement. The beauty of a marriage is that the parents-to-be surrender those freedoms willingly. And children are free as children can be having a hold on their parents. Not everyone does understand though. So the rules of marriage become lost to them and some noses get bumped. For them the formula is not so simple.
Governments are unique in their power to coerce. Where government is managed by godly people it will only use its power to coerce against those people who have coerced others first. If you coerce your neighbor's garden shears away from him, government might coerce you to replace, repay or otherwise amend and require surety the incident does not repeat.
Many speeches and articles today especially from Republicans decry the way government in America lately has lost sight of that essential purpose. An especially good book on the matter is by longstanding Governor of Texas, Rick Perry called, "Fed Up: Our Fight to Save America from Washington."
Although his book has a plenitude of facts and figures detailing the size of the problem, it is not so clear on the cause or an effective solution.
Much of the cause is the human tendency, detailed at length here, of some people to assume they have hold of absolute certainty, or very high probability, where they really have no clue at all. They believe they need to coerce the world into an order that only they can understand. But they don't really understand anything much. Doctors can't cure a common cold much less cancer. They wouldn't be able to fix broken bones except that if you hold the bones in the correct position long enough they fix themselves. But people like to believe doctors understand every atom coursing through the body, or that their leaders do. And that is while the doctors fail to support basic time tested Judeo-Christian values toward proper marriages and against homosexuality. Not long ago homosexuality was considered a mental disorder as it should be.
When marriages fail, judges do the best they can to set some price on a parent's responsibility to children. They have done it so often that people have come to believe that there is such a thing as a price, and that they can readily buy out as often as they please. There is no such price. Marriage was established to be once for life and not so trivial as any amount of money small or large. Laws against prostitution are about how sex and money don't mix well. When marriage is so trivialized to some price then indeed homosexuals can have the "same" thing, as do prostitutes.
Part of the problem is cultural inversion. The cities, especially in America, filled with people having weak or no traditions yet they assumed they were better educated anyway just as perhaps many cities in the past really were. So they assault tradition in the names of progress and education.
Part of the problem, the part Rick Perry does seem to understand quite well and better than most do, is its shear size. Unfortuitously for Perry this means the answer is not simple. Calling for smaller government and lower taxes is too simple. If a simple answer would work it would have worked by now. Rather, the answer is long and complicated, like this article.
The size of government is indeed a problem, but the most serious problem is not the size but the purpose. The proper purpose of government is to minimize coercion because God has made it clear coercion should be minimized and because people are happier and more productive when they are not coerced. But calling for "freedom" won't help with people so confused as they are about which are fists and which are noses. That needs to be straightened out first. Then we can reduce government indeed as the founding fathers did.
Totalitarianism is the problem. The source of totalitarianism is that some humans have a penchant for playing God and usually without the slightest clue how to go about such a thing.
Another thought before closing here concerns those exceptions who relish uncertainty and challenge all authority without any idea or concern what might replace it. It is like some romantic adventure to them. They are generally too young and too few to be a real direct threat to authority. They often turn against themselves, sometimes in mid sentence. What harm is more often done is that some charged with authority merely knowing or believing such irresponsible people exist can drift toward totalitarianism. That can prove to be the more serious problem in the end. It never helps to try to cash a check for more certainty than you have in the bank.

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