This was originally posted March 25, 2009.

At the last Grab a Brew, someone asked a question: “Would you rather be right with no evidence to back you up, or wrong, but with good evidence for it?”

I had never heard or considered this question before. My own answer was immediately obvious, but as he continued, it became clear that this is not only another area in which our beliefs differ, but that it is actually the source of our differences. It is the question at the root of all other questions.

I did some research the next day to get some background information. I found that the idea was first proposed in 1877 by William Kingdon Clifford in his essay called “The Ethics of Belief”, and came to be called Clifford’s Principle. Quoting Clifford:

The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it; not what it was, but how he got it; not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him. … It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

In his essay, Clifford argues that it is morally wrong for someone to believe in something he cannot prove, regardless of the outcome. In a purely rationalistic worldview, it is true that we can only make progress if we build on a foundation of that which can be proven. It follows that if I believe something that I can’t prove is worth believing, then it is not worth believing. This is why Grab a Brew always comes back to the same three topics. We believe a lot of unverifiable things about the universe and the nature of reality. They see this as a moral travesty.

But what is truth? Is it that which can be proven, or is it that which corresponds to reality? This is our disagreement, and in the end, it reduces down to the question of whether or not God exists. If he doesn’t, the universe must be purely rational, and truth can only be that which is proven. However, if God does exist, who is to say truth is rational?

How much is truth worth? If a man says, “I’ll only look for my lost object in the well-lit corners of the house”, and further still, “If my lost object is not in the well-lit corners of the house, then I don’t want to find it!”, it’s clear that he does not place much value on the lost object. But when he determines to find what is lost, even if it means tearing apart the house panel by panel—then we can be assured that he values the lost object more than anything.