It has been said that human beings are animals of high intelligence, if not the highest intelligence. But a super-intelligent being landing here from outer space might question our intellectual superiority. He/she/it might say, "If you're so smart, why do you wage wars? Why do you foul your world? Why do you arm, only to obliterate yourselves? Is this what you call being intelligent?" From this line of questioning, I'm sure we'd have to admit that we're not so intelligent after all -- crafty and clever and inventive, yes, but hardly intelligent.
How did we arrive at this dilemma? Actually, I suppose the dilemma has always been with us. The dilemma is over how we will control ourselves, as individuals and as nations. This has been the central issue facing theologians and philosophers since the beginning of human civilization. The dilemma we all face is that of the human condition itself. And the dilemma has always posed the same question in every age: "How do we know that which is Good?" We might paraphrase this by asking: "What's most important -- knowing how the world works or how we should live?"
The subject of this sermon today is knowing. "How Do We Know?" This is part two of five sermons designed to help us all think about life, meaning, purpose and especially the human enterprise of trying to bring it all together in understanding -- an enterprise that has another name: religion.
Last week I spoke on what it means to be human. To be precise, I spoke about what it means to be. Being -- that's an area of philosophic study called "ontology." And seeking to understand what it means to be human is, I maintain, essential to the task of conceiving, evaluating and communicating our religious faith. What we think about ourselves as human beings, what we think of human beings in general, essentially shapes our worldview and our religious faith. Our humanness gives us the perspective by which we observe the universe. We cannot look outwardly until we first look within.
Our humanness begins with our wonderful bodies and our remarkable brains. It is then shaped by our society through human interactions and events. It expands into unique selfhood as the free-willed individual asserts him/herself, and guided by reason, has the potential to establish great ideals and values.
In my sermon last week, I ended by saying: "To be human is to participate in Being" (capital B). Cursory and inadequate, yes, but still, an attempt to define what it means to be human. Now, today, another task: To seek to define what it means to know. One of you might say: "Whaddaya mean, know? I just do, that's all. I just know!"
I wish it were that simple. In preparation for this sermon, I perused at least 20 books and as many shorter statements about knowing, knowledge, self-knowledge, truth, revelation, etc., etc. Everything I read led me to another written source, and during this research, I've collected materials for at least three other sermons. Human beings are profound thinkers, they are the only meaning-making animal, and their vast libraries prove this. In frustration, I finally had to shut the books and say, "Enough!"
But let me try anyway. First of all, knowing about knowing is not simply what we do in normal everyday thinking about grocery lists, schedules, meetings, check stubs, etc. I'm speaking about the basic assumptions by which we guide our lives. I'm speaking about our knowing about ourselves and about what is good and how we shape our lives to conform to the good. I am speaking about knowing about living. Such knowing is not given to us automatically, it comes only to those of us who think long and hard about it. As Francis Bacon said, "We are what we know, and knowledge and human power are synonymous."
The pathway to our true human potential is through our knowing how to live the good life. This knowledge is self-generated through contemplation and thought -- never easily gained. Socrates once said: "The unexamined life is not worth living." Rollow May copied Socrates when he wrote: "Probity (integrity/uprightness) is an ethical attitude which we must achieve if we are to fulfill ourselves as human beings. Seeking truth is the function of the whole person."
And so with all this as introduction, let me begin this treatise on knowing with the assertion that each and every one of you has an epistemology. (Don't worry, it doesn't show unless you are in an argument.) Though we don't come to it out of a conscious decision, every one of us has as a foundation of our belief system an assumption regarding knowledge. That is what epistemology is all about. Epistemology is a fancy six-syllable Greek word that deals with how and what we know -- how you decide what is true for you. Theories about knowing abound. The Old Testament Genesis myth of Adam and Eve states that, through eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Adam -- and I suppose Eve as well, for the sexist Old Testament omits her -- Adam became as a god, able to discern good and evil, no longer innocent and unknowing. God made humans thereafter mortal.
In the New Testament, the Gospel of John (1:1) tells us: "In the beginning was the word (Logos) and the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us." Here Logos, or knowledge, is given metaphysical status. Logos, according to John, is God. Knowledge seems always intertwined with metaphysics whether within the Bible or with ancient or modern scholars. Let's face it -- the act of knowing is mysterious. From where does inspiration, the original thought, the sudden insight, the "AHA!" experience come from? What enables the human mind to do what no man-made computer is capable of -- to think in abstractions, to create new concepts?
Plato, perhaps our first recorded philosopher, delved into epistemology. He studied ideas and differentiated between those ideas derived from sensory experience and those ideas gained through intellectual perception. He conjectured that certain ideas pre-existed within some intellectual ether of Being, ideas flowing within the ongoing stream of collective human consciousness -- "a priori" ideas, or knowledge that seems to come from out of nowhere, not deduced or discovered. And, for Plato, supreme among such a priori ideas was the conception of goodness.
Even before Plato, his mentor, Socrates, said: "Out of the knowing of the good, the doing of the good follows." And a century before Socrates, Buddha reportedly said: "All we are is a result of what we have thought."
Two great philosophers of the Enlightenment held metaphysical ideas about the human process of knowing, though not so much as did Plato. Rene Descartes said: "The power by which we are properly able to know things is purely spiritual." Immanuel Kant felt: "The imagination ... follows principles that have a higher seat in reason."
This short poem by my colleague Robert F. Kaufmann, titled "No God," conveys a similar sentiment:
I can't prove it, but
I have a most positive idea.
There is no God.
I have thought things through
to the beginning,
and I am certain.
If there were a God
before there was a beginning,
Then where did God come from?
I am certain you can't answer that.
I am also certain
of one other thing.
This bothers me more.
I have thought things through
to the beginning,
and I don't know:
Where does an idea come from?
There are a few who contend that it is impossible to truly know anything. They are called "radical skeptics" and their philosophical school is called "nihilism," which, translated, means literally "nothing matters," because such things as truth and reality are beyond the scope of human knowing. Critics of nihilism say that the consequence of nihilistic belief should then drive nihilists either to silence or to suicide, since nothing matters. But most of us aren't that skeptical. Your and my presence here in this church testifies to our own faith in the potential meaning of existence. Ours is a religion constantly seeking out greater meaning and purpose in life.
It is my thesis that there are four fundamental sources of knowing that undergird belief systems that guide human beings. Those four sources are: (1) External Authority, (2) Sensory Perception, (3) Rational Deduction, and (4) Intuition.
The first source, External Authority, recognizes that we believe some things because people whose judgment we trust tell us they're true. As an example, I believe Plato and Socrates existed -- I accept the testimony of sources I've come to respect. Similarly I trust the road map to get me to a place I've never been. All of us rely on authorities we've never seen. Our modern technological society wouldn't work if this were not so. There are limits, though. Healthy skepticism helps us to weave our way through the forests of authoritarianism. In matters of religion, we Unitarian Universalists are at our skeptical best, trusting ourselves as the prime authority.
Sensory Perception is the second source of knowledge. I know what I see, hear and touch -- empirical evidence tells me what is true. I know this pulpit exists and that you are out there and that you are looking at me and that you seem to be listening to me. (I hope, even those of you with your eyes closed.)
The third source of knowledge is through our Rational Deduction. Some things we believe because we deduce them to be true through logic and reason. If, for instance, two things are separately equal to a third thing, they are all equal to each other. Also, an object cannot be in two places at the same time. Reasoning thusly, I can say that you are all here and not out on the sunny beach. (I do know that if I get too abstract, that even though your faces show me you're here, your minds may well be at the beach.)
Fourth, we are informed by Intuition -- an awareness for which we have no authoritative, empirical or rational basis. We've all had "hunches," intuitive insights that sometimes are verified by experience. Einstein's theory of relativity started as a hunch. Thomas Edison supposedly got some of his greatest ideas from dreams.
Religion describes intuition as the "still, small voice within," or the Holy Spirit. However called, intuition lies deeply within the human religious impulse. As Pascal said: "The heart hath reasons that reason knows nothing of."
(For the philosophers among you, I must state that there are subcategories of knowing such as "subjectivism," "representative realism," "epistemological realism," etc., etc., but I choose not to lead you into those intricate areas of epistemology.)
Looking at the four fundamental sources of knowing, I'm sure we can agree that no one source is infallible, nor can it stand alone. For instance, considering external authority, if a prominent historian says that Napoleon died of a brain tumor, I'm inclined to believe him. But if a surgeon says I have a brain tumor and need an operation, I'm going to look for a second or even third opinion. Authorities can be fallible. When it comes to sensory perceptions, we know that we all perceive differently. Any trial lawyer can show us this. And rational deductions can be in error. Medieval scholasticism was full of errors due to false premises, such as the Earth being the center of the universe.
There is a story about a Sunday school teacher who wanted to teach her children about the evils of alcohol. She set out two glasses, one filled with water, the other with gin. She placed a worm in the water glass. It swam vigorously around. Then she put the worm in the gin, where it shriveled up and died. "Well, children," she asked, "what does this prove?" To which bright little Johnnie replied, "It shows us that people who have worms ought to drink gin!" Yes, rational deduction is not always "100 proof" correct.
And finally intuition. We know it must be used with caution. It can be a valuable tool if used in consort with authoritative, empirical and deductive knowledge. Fortunately, we are coming to respect intuition more, even in the calculating business world. But we know that if we go entirely with our feelings and intuitions, we'll be fools. As the old joke about marriage goes: "Anyone who gets married purely on the basis of puppy love is doomed to lead a dog's life."
A pragmatic person would use all four sources of knowing as a basis for his or her decision-making. Each source should support the other in a sort of congruency. But the final decision is ultimately with each of us when we choose what we think to be true. We consider each source of our knowing, we consider the paradoxes, contradictions and half-truths and then we seek to blend them all into a harmonious whole. Usually we are only partially successful. The truth we follow is not always crystal-clear, but the best we can deduce at the time. As Unitarian Universalists, we know that things are seldom black or white. We learn to live with ambiguity.
In short, the Unitarian Universalist epistemology that I propose is one that integrates the traditional sources of belief and seeks to test and refine them in a dynamic, ever-unfolding apprehension of the "truth." But no matter how we know, it's what we know and what we do with our knowledge that makes a life. Determining truth and living by it -- that is the essential task of life.
Perhaps because of our ontological sense of self, human beings seem to be pre-programmed to become either truth "receivers" or truth "seekers." If we are led to believe that humans are by nature evil and sinful, we more often seem prone to become truth receivers, accepting what we are told as true and perhaps going through life being led by rules not of our own making. In matters of religion, we may question very little, freely accepting that which is placed before us as the word of God. To be sure, many people come out of such beginnings and break away. But it seems to be that the majority of human beings lead uncritical lives, doing as their religion and society have programmed them to do. Says Charles Sanders Pierce: "If it is their highest impulse to be intellectual slaves, then slaves they ought to so remain."
And then there are those whose self-understanding is buttressed by their attitudes of hope and love and who feel no sense of dread or lack of self-worth. Taught to be free, some even born of free spirits, their minds are unfettered, questioning, testing, skeptical. They seek truth not for its own finding but for the excitement and zest of the quest. For them, truth is that which persuades the free and honest mind. Some concepts stand forth for them as independently real and yet connected to all reality. For instance, a truth is not perceived only in one's own mind; it is social, that is, perceived similarly by many others, testable by use and by observation of consequences. (How else can one explain the existence of the Golden Rule in nearly every culture?)
Truth tells us that we live in relationships, in community. And without relationships and community, life has no meaning. Truth also beckons us to put meaning into our lives by leading examined lives. This is not easy. For most people, knowing simply means the facts, scientific knowledge, verifiable knowledge. But then there is the knowing that seeks to understand truths beyond the facts -- this is the realm of pure reason. This even, say some, this is the realm also of religion.
This kind of thinking beyond mere data or facts is rare -- real thinking, thinking about thinking, thinking about meaning and asking questions. Today, real thinking seems to be rare. It seems that what we need, worldwide, is a certain moral hunger -- the unfreezing of our old conclusions and our opening up to new alternatives.
Socrates could be our example. Socrates never sought truth as an end in itself; he sought to convey his perplexities to others. And he believed that thinking and talking about the great virtues would eventually affect human conduct. This Socratic way, this questioning search for meaning is that which relentlessly dissolves the old accepted rules and doctrines.
Socrates would never lead us to conclusions; he would simply want us to think for ourselves, as if no other human had thought that way before. And Socrates would give us two guidelines to use as we try to define that which is good and how to pattern our lives upon it. First he would say: "It is better to be wronged than to do wrong." Secondly, he would say: "It is better that you should be in disagreement with the multitudes rather than to be out of harmony with yourself."
In this second proposition, Socrates implies that we live with an internal duality; we do hold a dialogue with ourselves, between the ego and the soul. We can suffer inner shame even with no other witness than our conscience. We are two-in-one. In this regard, Shakespeare caused Polonius to say: "This above all, to thine own self be true." For Socrates, this two-in-one meant simply that if you want to think, then you must see to it that the two who carry on the thinking dialogue be in good shape, that the partners be friends. It is better for you to suffer than to do wrong, for you can still remain the friend of the sufferer -- yourself.
"Knowing": the existential question, the beginning of our search for meaning never served to us on a platter, the result of hard thinking. The purpose of knowing, really knowing, is to discover truth and then to live one's life by the truth. Such knowing comes through strenuous mental activity and moral living. And it is not abstract -- it is real. It is all of our humanness put into action. When truth seekers act upon the truth, they become truth makers. Their deeds example the truth that motivates their actions. And their lives take on their meaning.
In summary, as I see it:
We come to know because of the divine spark within the soul which is conscience. Conscience demands that we act in harmony with others in order to find harmony within ourselves. The truth which all should seek is knowledge of that which is good.
Knowing the good and doing it, that is the task. And doing good not because of some divine, outwardly imposed commandment or fear of divine retribution that may block our entry into heaven -- the Great Pay-Off of being good -- no! We UUs are good for nothing. We seek to do good not for reward, but because it is the right thing to do, as our knowing informs us. Every prophet has told us this, as has every holy scripture. Individual human beings have followed the way of truth and inner harmony throughout history, mostly unsung, mostly little people who yet helped to keep humanity from going over the brink. Today, perhaps they are more numerous than ever before. But will they be enough? Will we be sufficient unto the tasks at hand that demand that whole nations bring to life through their actions the truth of those ancient words of the prophet Micah: "What doth the Lord require of thee but that you love mercy, that you do justice, and that you walk humbly with thy God." Nothing more, nothing less. This is what our knowing commands us to do.
Closing meditation:
We who seek concealment of our shortcomings, may we be taught that conscience gives no quarter. May we come to realize that the truth we banish leaves us empty of all meaning and that the good we would not love returns always to break our hearts. (A. Powell Davies)
So may it be.
(Note: For some of the ideas concerning how we "know," I am grateful to the Rev. Anthony Perrino.)
The sermon in a Unitarian Universalist setting is never the last word on any subject, but rather an invitation to further dialog.
You may want to read other visitors' comments on Rev. Oren A. Peterson's "How Do We Know?" .
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