What is a fact? Is something only a fact if you can prove it or is it merely something that is the way it is whether you can prove it or not? I was talking with an individual recently who told me that in order for something to be a “fact” it has to be absolutely uncontested. The problem with that definition is that I contest it! There is a real difference between the nature of a fact (facts are that which correspond to the way something really is or was) versus determining what the facts are.
Let me ask you a very simple question. Who is your mother? Now that you have responded let me follow that up with another simple question. How do you know she is your mother? Likely you answered “I know my mom is my mom because she told me so, my dad confirmed, my grandparents confirmed it, everything I know about the woman and my past life experiences seem to confirm it.” So then, is it a fact that (your mother name here) is your mom? Well, that depends on reality. If indeed the woman you called mom carried you in her womb for 9 month and gave birth to you then yes it is a fact. If she didn’t, then no it is not a fact. (Please note that I am not trying to be insensitive to adoptive parents and adopted children. I certainly recognize that as valid motherhood!)
It could be that your mother breaks the news to you tomorrow that you were adopted and that your birth mother is someone else. But even though that is possible, is it unreasonable for you to have a real amount of certainty that your mother is really your mom? Of course not. You have taken it on reasonable authority and it has been corroborated by many lines of evidence and you belief that you mom is in fact your mom is completely rational.
Now notice that I just did something funny in that last sentence. I dared to use the word “belief” and “fact” within the same sentence together. But aren’t beliefs and facts opposites? This is what many in the world would like to tell you today in an attempt to completely invalidate the truth claims of “religious believers.” Yet I would submit to you that this idea that “belief” (faith, confidence, trust) is the opposite of “fact” is a foolhardy use of the term belief. In fact epistemologists (philosophers who study in the area of knowledge) suggest that knowledge should be understood as a “Justified, true, belief.”
In other words, if I am to be able to say “I know that Lori is my mother” then that statement must be justified by the evidence that I can come up with to support my knowing, it must indeed be true that she is my mother (corresponding to the way things really are), and I must believe she is my mother. All three of those components are necessary for me to “know” that Lori is my mom. Sometime we think we have knowledge when in reality we don’t. If I said “I know Lori is my mom” but then found out today that I was adopted then it turns out I didn’t know what I thought I knew. Or if, perhaps, I said my friend Michael Licona is my mom then I wouldn’t have knowledge in this instance because it is neither true (corresponding to reality) nor is it justified because I could come up with no evidence to support it. If all I have is a belief about Michael Licona being my mother then I don’t have knowledge. At least when I said “Lori is my mom” that was justified it just didn’t end up being true. Finally, Lori could be my mom in reality, I could have ample justification for acknowledging this as a fact, but I could still not believe it and then it wouldn’t be knowledge. So knowledge is constituted by these three things in harmony, that what I claim to know is 1. Justified 2. True and 3. I believe it. Otherwise I don’t have knowledge.
What this means is that it is possible to think we have knowledge about certain things when in reality we don’t. What we think we know can be undermined suddenly when new information appears. Furthermore we can cease to know true things if we stop believing them. Let’s say for instance that a person knows that Jesus rose from the dead. They have justification (evidence), it is true (it really occurred) and they believe it. If it is proven that Jesus never rose from the dead then they didn’t actually know what they thought they did. On the flip side, if a person stops believing Jesus rose from the dead (even if it is a historical reality) then they cease to have knowledge concerning this fact.
So let us come full circle to our original question. What is a fact? A fact is something that is true (it corresponds to the way things are or were). A fact is a thing that has brute existence and my belief in it doesn’t make it any more or less real. That is what a fact is. How can we determine what facts are? We determine them by investigation of evidence so as to form justification for why we believe something is a fact. And if we have end up with justification for our belief that something is a fact (true) and we are correct that it is a fact (true) then we also have knowledge.
Now, with all of that being said, what about certainty? As we have already stated, it is reasonable for you to assert as a fact that the person you call “mom” is indeed you mother but, even so, it is not beyond any possibility that this is false and you do not know what you think you know. Indeed all kinds of things we take for granted as facts are not above being questioned. Rene Descartes’ famous thought experiment involved doubting everything one could possibly doubt in order to find some base line of knowledge that was absolutely certain. He asked questions like how can we really know that we as individuals exist, or other people outside ourselves exist, the external word exists, etc.? Could not these be mere illusions, or perhaps I am only a figment of a demons dream? Philosophers have even posed questions like “How can we know that the world wasn’t created 5 minutes ago with all of your memories and experiences just implanted into your mind?”
The “fact” of the matter is that we all take certain things on faith. That is not to say we take things on some mystical blind leap but, rather, that we decide to trust something for a set of reasons. For instance it could be that my senses are wrong and that although I perceive the external world and other persons and object in it that they are in reality not there at all. But a better question is, given what I perceive why should I believe that my senses are generally unreliable? Common sense dictates that my senses seem to tell me the truth most of the time. Not that they cannot ever be fooled, they can, but generally they are reliable and enough so that I was able to drive to work today without dying.
Some things we may hold as more certain than others. For instance when Descartes proclaimed “Cogito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am” he decided that this was the most certain thing there is. If I am thinking then it is necessary that I first exist in order to think. Regardless of whether Descartes achieved his goal of getting from this starting point back to rational belief in the external world and even God, he makes a fair point here in his famous statement.
As such my degree of certainty that I exist is extremely high. My degree of certainty that my friend Jeff Piepho exists is slightly less certain although highly certain. My degree of certainty that my mom is indeed Lori is pretty high, albeit less certain than the fact that Jeff exists at all. Not that I doubt my mother exists but the certainty that I have that she is truly my mother is logically less certain than that Jeff actually exists. I am highly certain also that the pyramids in Egypt exist although less so than all of the things I’ve mentioned before because I have never seen them myself, nor touched them myself. Even so, I have very good reasons to believe in the pyramids of Egypt because they are so well documented, I know people who have been there; I’ve seen pictures, etc.
So then, after all of this mental exercise, here is another question: Is it a fact that God exists?
If you’ve been paying attention then you know the answer is “It is a fact that God exists if indeed God does exist”, because your belief or your evidence doesn’t actually affect the brute nature of facts. A better question then is “Can a person have reasonable certainty that God exists?” To which we can answer “Yes!” There is indeed ample evidence in support of idea of God’s existence to make belief in God rationally justified. Furthermore if you have justification for God’s existence, you believe God exists, and he really does exist then you can say “I have knowledge that God exists.” Indeed I would argue to say “I know God exists” is perfectly rational just like saying “I know ______ is my mom” or “I know that there are pyramids in Egypt.” It’s not that any of these things are beyond contestation or that something couldn’t ever disprove what I think I know, but I am well within my reasonable mind for saying I know these things.
All of this is said to establish that there is a difference between the existence of a fact and the acquiring of certainty that you or I or we know that fact. Whether a certain claim is contested or uncontested that has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not that claim is factually accurate. The only thing that makes a fact a fact is if it really corresponds to the way things are or were (it is true). It is our job to have justified beliefs about things that we deem to be true if we want to argue that we have knowledge, it is not our job to make facts uncontested. I have reasonable certainty that I know God exists.
