Is it Wrong To Believe without evidence?

A Response to William Clifford

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William Clifford makes some pretty strong claims against those that hold to any sort of belief with insufficient evidence. It would be best to respond to him by breaking down his argument into two parts: First, he claims that one cannot begin to believe something until there is sufficient evidence and second, one should challenge all that they already believe. These are the two points that I will address below.

The first of the two assumptions made by Clifford is that no one should begin to hold to a belief until they have weighed all the evidence. He says that this is our “duty to mankind”, and by believing in something with insufficient evidence you affect many around you into believing this false accusation.” He says that the word belief “is rightly used on truths which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning.”

There are two reasons I would disagree with this assumption: First, there is no such thing as being completely unbiased. We cannot be in some sort of “waiting toil” with “free…questioning.” Any belief systems will have certain presuppositions. There is no state where man ceases to hold to any bias where it may be claimed things can truly be studied. Someone has to hold some sort of belief even during the testing of a belief. Contrary to popular thought this is not only true of the theist. At the most basic level this is a misunderstandings of how humans work. At a deeper level it’s clear that Clifford makes many assumptions of his own.

Many of Clifford’s arguments are self-defeating. He is constantly talking about the need to prove things and provide sufficient evidence for them. However, he does not supply sufficient evidence for the things in which he claims. He does not believe in any sort of God and he was convinced to leave the Catholic Church because of Darwinian evolution. Yet he uses the terms “bad action…duty to mankind…Evil” as basic moral assumptions. Where is the sufficient evidence that man has a duty to mankind? How does one come to a logical conclusion that something is a “bad action” or that there is some sort of evil? His thesis is founded on man’s duty to only believe in something with sufficient evidence. The problem is he has not proved, with sufficient evidence, that man has a “duty” to withhold belief until there is sufficient evidence or that man has any “duty” of any kind.

Second, if one were to question everything exhaustively before believing it he/she would never commit to any belief because he/she does not have access to all knowledge. I would agree with William Lane Craig in his book Hard Questions that if we did have access to all the information we would come to the conclusion that the Christian faith is true but then that means we would also be God. Some basic questions arise when we claim that a belief can only be held after “long experience and waiting toil…in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning.” How long must our experience be? How many free and fearless questions must we answer? Is there a point in which the person can say “I have studied long and fearless and what I believe is one hundred percent true?” This is impossible because the parameters are not clear. I am not denying the fact that people can know things or really believe in something because of evidence. What I am saying is that it is impossible to not believe in something until all the evidence has been presented on both sides. Instead we must ask ourselves is our belief system reasonable? I personally use the 3 level criteria for truth (coherence, correspondence, pragmatic). For something to be true or rational to believe it must make logical sense, correspond with reality, and be able to be lived out. But we cannot prove something beyond a shadow of a doubt. Our study must lead us to ask “what is most reasonable to believe?”

Clifford’s second claim that one should challenge those things that they believe is valid. I agree that no one should continue to hold to a belief with a lack of evidence or lack of challenging. I agree with Socrates “an unexamined life is not worth living.” But we must remember that at all times we are going to have a bias about something. It is better to work from what we believe and honestly challenge that. This does not leave man suspended in a sort of “beliefless” state, where they can’t live or do anything until they have proved something to believe in. This is the believer admitting his presuppositions and his existential barriers to unbelief and honestly addressing questions to his belief system.

Though the foundation of Clifford’s thesis was based on certain presupposition it is not completely wrong. Man would not be able to enjoy anything on earth if everything was examined prior to the belief. I have argued that there is no such thing as a beliefless state where man is awaiting something to believe in. My alternate method would be to openly admit that we each individually have presuppositions. We take our presuppositions and we lay them on the table and take the time to ask the hard questions and if there is something much more logical and more consistent with the evidence at hand then one should give up the belief that they hold to in ignorance and pursue where the evidence leads. It is through this method I have decided that I will continue my belief in God.