Security And Certainty

A text conversation yesterday inspired me to write this post.  The conversation focused on the psychological effects that result when someone values security over certainty, and vice versa.  A large portion of this post is almost exactly what I texted to a close friend, plus several introductory and concluding remarks, but my texting style actually resembles the writing style on my blog much of the time.

Security and certainty, ironically, are often mutually exclusive, and when one is found in an idea it often signifies the absence of the other.  Other times it does not, but the type of certainty or security will differ depending on the concept in question.  I want to assess the appearance of each in two drastically different epistemologies--faith-based "knowledge" and rationalism.

Many Christians and, indeed, people of many other beliefs derive great security from what they call "faith" [1].  It enables them to feel like their existence and pursuits have meaning.  This security can be very compelling, and I myself know that from past experience when I first became a Christian.  When people have faith in an idea or in a religion or in another person, it can be extremely liberating and relieving to just simply trust something outside of yourself.  The burden of needing to prove everything in order to know it can seem to vanish.  However, this type of worldview often comes at the expense of certainty--and defensibility.  If one cannot know if an idea is true, then one cannot truly defend the idea without appealing to the hypothetical and not merely the knowable.

Rationalism also offers security in the forms of knowledge and proof.  If someone longs for certainty and truth, then it is absolutely--not probably or extremely likely--impossible for axioms and the reliability of deductive reason to fail them.  In this regard, they will never be insecure.  But the amount of things with axiomatic properties is very small, meaning that we can have security and absolute certainty about base epistemology and the core of reality but little more--meaning any longings for ideals, fulfillment, and faith are not secure and therefore can't be trusted.

Note that these two types of security are the exact opposites.  One provides existential and personal security for the emotions, conscience, and desires for something transcendent--but cannot satisfy the demands of logic or a longing for absolute certainty.  The other provides total logical certainty about a limited amount of inescapable truths--but leaves the grand questions about values, meaning, and what people call the "soul" in mystery.

Each of these opposing and contrasting epistemologies grants complete security and is completely unfulfilling, but in different ways for each.  This dichotomy is remarkable in its inverse nature, yet few realize that this is simply how reality is.  It is useless and futile to aim for personal and emotional security about values and meaning while neglecting the other kind of security.  What many people who hold to moral or theological beliefs "on faith" do not realize is that people with entirely different moral or theological ideas--in fact, some that cannot be true if their own are--try to justify their separate beliefs using the exact same fallacious arguments.  Security of the first kind is merely an illusion that comforts but provides no substance; security of the second kind actually provides an inescapable foundation for the possibility of verifying and falsifying the beliefs often held because of the former.

Security without certainty has no justification for its existence.  Only logic can reveal what knowledge we can truly access; anything else is either unverifiable or unfalsifiable.  Do you understand the significance of this?  Do you see that the ramifications of this extend into every aspect of human life?

I fear that many do not.  This truth may be quite unfulfilling, but that does not affect its veracity.


[1].  The existence of God is entirely provable through strict logic and thus does not require "faith" to know or believe in it.  But if faith is defined as a leap beyond pure logic, then the vast majority of all beliefs about anything require some degree of faith to accept.