Certitude/Rectitude
Maybe the most amazing thing about Abraham Lincoln is that while he died over 150 years ago, his words are still relevant and true today. One of my favorite Lincoln quotes is this one:
“Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right”
What is so great about this quote is that it is inherently humble — it does not trumpet that we are righteous simply because we have God on our side, instead, it suggests that following God is a balancing act which requires humility and attention on our part — God is always right, while we are fallible.
One of the things that I have noticed about the “faithful” on both sides of the aisle is that they are so certain that their side holds a complete lock on the truth that they forget about the essential fallibility of the human condition. No one person, no one group, no one way holds perfect truth. The real promise of democracy is that we can put together the bits and pieces of truth to build a more accurate picture. Scientists know this is the only way to go from a hypothesis to a proven theory. What I see today is too many people who are certain in their belief — so certain that they cannot accept facts when presented to them. Too many people brandish their deeply held beliefs to support views that do not stand up to the facts. Too many people are willing to discount what is actually happening in the world because they have not taken the time to learn and understand what is going on around them. The people who tell you that the science on global warming is not an established fact among scientists are applying a religious view of the world (ie people of faith generally believe in a general canon) to a group that applies a different standard of evidence — that things must be empirically proven, and that there is room for different interpretations of fact, but that there is no room to derive theses that cannot be supported by fact. As Jon Huntsman has said so well, when 98 out of 100 climate scientists see evidence that tells them that human-caused global warming is real and a threat to the way of life we lead now, there is no questioning the facts. There is room for a certain amount of interpretation, but not for a rejection of fact — it’s time to stop allowing people to spread lies in the guise of imitating the scientific method. To put it another way — what you believe is your own business — what can be proved as fact is not susceptible to whether or not you believe that it is so…
