A large part of my personal
philosophy is bound up in the recognition of moral absolutes, Truth,
Justice, and Mercy, with Truth at the top of the list. I seem not to be
alone in the search for Truth -- the quest is older than Diogenes
-- but many people put up unnecessary roadblocks to their own search. Dialog
with one of them (Cary Cook)
-- initially direct, but now only indirectly -- stimulated my thinking
on the burden of proof in the case of the allegation of lies.
Cook has spent a lot of time and effort carefully defining his concepts. He acknowledges that for "a statement [that] is verifiable but not falsifiable, [the] burden of proof rests on him who says it is true." He makes no complementary concession for the reverse. I consider the asymmetry significant. I came to this conclusion before looking to see what he had said about it, and was gratified to find him in agreement.
Imagine some statement P, which person A claims is true, and B claims it is false. Apart from any individual facts of the matter, if the burden of proof is on the claim of truth, then any additional data brought to bear on the topic can be dismissed without further effort by asserting it too is a lie. To show that P is true may require examining all the facts of the universe, to demonstrate that there is no inconsistency between any of them and P; whereas to show P is false requires only examination of any single accepted fact that contradicts it.
Therefore, when the naturalists want to argue (as Cook did in our brief
direct dialog) from "a prejudice against unnecessary miracles that would
have been as easily explained by human ignorance or lying," the burden
of proof is on them to show that the alleged miracle report is a lie. This
they normally cannot do apart from a presupposition of naturalism (what
I called "Axiom 3x" in
my essay), which invalidly asserts that miracles can be precluded because
they cannot happen.
People tend to project their own values on others. Therefore, if they think everybody is lying, they are more likely to not be telling the truth themselves. Honest people tend to assume others are honest.
Much more reliable than that, people are more likely to lie for personal
gain than if it brings themselves only harm. But because Truth is a moral
absolute, people will be motivated to tell the truth even at personal cost.
Chuck
Colson, one of Nixon's Watergate insiders, points out that a handful
of men in the most powerful office in the world, who had everything to
lose and nothing to gain by confessing to the truth about the "cover-up",
these guys could not contain the secret for two weeks. This is a powerful
discriminant.
Tom Pittman
2008 January 8
What Really Matters
Living in Crete
On Truth and Honesty
Open Source Truth
On Persuasion