Bias, Presuppositions, and Intellectual Honesty
The Unbiased Illusion
I was listening to someone recently who claimed he wasn't biased. He believed he was objective and not influenced by anything but logic, reason, and science. He said this in the context of why he supported his particular candidate for president. He couldn't understand how people could be so stupid as to vote for the other candidate.
Sound familiar?
His Facebook page is filled with memes that make fun of the other side. He has articles that definitively prove that his stance on whatever was correct. What was interesting was all the views he expressed were precisely in line with his party affiliation. He dismissed any challenges calling his view into question.
What bothered me was that he was completely unaware of his own biases. I do not find this person to be unique. Most people I encounter these days are heavily influenced by information that is anything but objective. Nowadays, "Fake news" is defined as whatever the opposition is reporting.
Aids to Bias
This is a serious problem with the advancement of algorithms that track and feed us according to our online behavior. Documentaries such as Social Dilemma reveal the dark side of social media that provides people only the information they want to see.
The truth is everyone has a bias. We all have things that we presuppose to be true. A presupposition is something that is tacitly assumed to be valid from the outset. Everyone lives by faith, even the most ardent scientist. How can this be? The scientist believes many things before he or she even starts an experiment. Would you like some examples?
“A presupposition is something that is tacitly assumed to be valid from the outset.”
The Illusion of Objective Science
Science is based upon observation. By observation, I mean things that can be experienced by the senses, especially sight, though smell, taste, sound, and touch can and do play a significant role. Let's take sight, for example.
What exactly are you "seeing" when you see an object? Light hits the retina. The retina converts the information into electrical impulses that are sent along the optical nerve. The occipital lobe then converts the signals. The brain then takes this data and interprets it according to how the brain is hardwired and shaped through experience. Once the information is "seen," the person has to analyze the information further to make sense of it.
Newborn babies or blind people who recently received their sight have to grow in their understanding of the sense data they are "seeing." In my example, we've come a long way from light hitting the retina to a person understanding the data. I haven't even touched on what exactly is light, and whether it is absorbed, reflected, or generated by objects in and of themselves.
As you can see, something as familiar as "seeing" is based upon a multitude of presuppositions. How do we know we are "seeing" the object as it exists after the information has gone through processes in nature and our brain? This is just one assumption the scientist has to have to do science.
I could go on about the uniformity of nature and how the philosopher David Hume called the very foundations of science into question. On what basis do we know that events in the past will consistently perform the same way in the future? Hume says we don't know. Science has to assume that they do; otherwise, how can we do science? In other words, the scientist has to accept a set of presuppositions to do science. So even the scientist lives by faith. And if this is true of the revered scientist, how much more for the rest of us mortals.
I started this post talking about a person who believed he was objective in all his views. If something as precise as science has presuppositions, think about how many assumptions someone must have to hold a particular political viewpoint. Indeed, everyone truly lives by faith. Will a person be honest about their presuppositions or be intellectually dishonest by denying he has any?
There is only one way out of this labyrinth. It is to be intentional and honest about your presupposition. One of the most critical tasks we have as human beings is to dis-cover our presuppositional bias. What do you hold to be true? What do you take for granted to assert that any of your views are correct? Have you ever examined your presuppositional assumptions?
How To Discover Your Presuppositions
The late Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias boils down the most critical questions to origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. How you answer these questions will help you identify your bias, presuppositions, and what you take for granted in your thinking.
Origins deal with the question of from where do we come? Some say matter always existed. Others say that God created us. Did we evolve over millions of years? Or were we created by God as talked about in the book of Genesis? What about the Big Bang? How you answer the question of origins will help determine the presuppositions you hold to make sense out of life. As you answer this question, you can discover why you think the way you do.
The next question that will help you identify your presuppositional foundation is the question of meaning. What is the meaning of life? Is it to get rich, help others, serve God, win, and propagate children? Perhaps you do not believe there is any ultimate meaning in life. That in itself is a presupposition by which you interpret reality, assuming there is any such thing as "reality." Perhaps "life is but a dream" as suggested in the childhood song, Row Row Row Your Boat.
Another question that will help you identify your assumptions of life is the question of morality. What is right, and what is wrong? What standard do you use to determine either one? That standard is your presupposition. Some use the Bible; others use intuition; still, others say that "might makes right." There are many ways to answer this question. How you determine what is moral and immoral will help you understand yourself better.
The last question that Ravi Zacharias identifies is the question of destiny. This question completes the loop. Where did we come from is the question of origins. What is the meaning of life is the question of truth. What is right and wrong is the question of morality. Destiny answers the question of where we are headed. Do you think we are continually in the evolutionary process of getting better? Do you believe there are heaven and hell? Do you think we are, as the song says, "Dust in the Wind," that we are headed anywhere, that we are molecules falling through space with no final destination?
These questions not only help you identify your presuppositional basis, but they also help predict how you will think on a multitude of issues. Those who assume God's existence, that we are created in the image of God, and that life begins with conception will be against abortion. Others who believe that human happiness is the ultimate meaning of life may think that a woman's right to choose is more important than giving up a career to raise a child. Many presuppositional factors will weigh in on how you answer abortion or any other problem for that matter.
Being Honest
The point of this post is to call people to intellectual honesty concerning their presuppositions. It is dishonest to say that you have no bias, that all your views are based on science, that you are correct in everything, or that you see everything clearly and everyone else is just wrong. I implore you to have the intellectual decency to admit that you have a bias just like everyone else. I challenge you to take time to think through what your presuppositional foundation is.
There are benefits to this intellectual honesty. You will be able to evaluate news sources better. It's not enough to have someone else tell you something is "Fake news." Imagine not only being able to spot where a news story is factually wrong, but also to understand the news source's bias. For example, a liberal feminist will report the news differently from a fundamentalist Christian or a conservative Trump supporter. Why?
Intentional Presuppositional Honesty
I have intentionally chosen my presuppositional basis. What is it? I hold that the Bible is the only authoritative standard to answer origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. Biblical authors claim their message to be from God around 1,900 times. The Bible declares "God said" or "Thus saith the Lord" over 4,000 times. The Bible is the only self-attesting book in existence. There is no way around its claim to be the word of God. Isn't this circular reasoning? Or course it is. But it is intellectually honest reasoning. God Himself attests that the Bible is His word.
An intellectually honest person will admit that all other theories or philosophies beg the question as well. For science, truth is only that which you can empirically verify. Of course, that statement itself cannot be empirically verified, thereby showing that science's very foundation is self-begging and self-defeating. To believe that government or popular vote determines truth is untenable, especially considering that governments and populations have committed horrible atrocities in the past. How would we even know that an event is an atrocity unless we had a standard outside of ourselves to determine that it is atrocious or not? This kind of reasoning is circular as well. “We know something is an atrocity because we know it is wrong.”
It is impossible to account for logic, reason, or science apart from God as He revealed Himself in the Bible. Without Him, you cannot prove anything. Otherwise, we are left in a meaningless universe devoid of meaning. We are "Dust in the Wind," and dust cannot account for anything, not even itself.
The Bible reveals that God is the only self-existing Being who exists in Unity and Complexity. He reveals Himself as the Author of life (origins), the Definer of the meaning of life (meaning), the Law Giver (morality), and the Giver of eternal life (destiny). These questions cannot be adequately answered apart from Scripture.
Apart from Scripture, there is no way we can know our origins. If we are naked apes that evolved from stardust, there is no way to account for meaning. Molecules in motion have no sense. When morality is not rooted in God's character, it is subject to the whims of humanity, and those whims turn out bloody, as history repeatedly shows. The Bible tells us where we are headed, either to heaven or to hell.
Paul says in Colossians 2:8 that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in Jesus Christ. In Him is where intellectual honesty starts and where it ends. I choose Him as my presupposition foundation. How about you?