A belief is an energy-saving shortcut the brain uses to predict its environment. A fact is a thing that can be externally verified as being proven or true. 

Three chords and the truth 

When songwriter Harlan Howard coined the phrase: three chords and the truth to describe country music’s values of simplicity and honesty, he could hardly have imagined the perilous state of truth in the twenty-first century. In his time, people felt more able to look up to their community leaders, politicians and the media for moral guidance, but today we can barely trust a word that is uttered, written or recorded. Yet fake news and propaganda is hardly new and was certainly around in Howard’s time. It has a long, chequered history, most recently in Soviet Russia, yet the victors of wars have always had the power to reinvent and retell the past as they saw fit. The Chinese government censored the Tiananmen Square massacre to downplay events, Republican politicians rewrote the events of the storming of the U.S. Capitol building in 2021, President Trump warned pregnant women about taking paracetamol, moon landings, the Holocaust, flat earth, vaccines, elections, climate change, aliens and just about anything else you can imagine, is subject to accusations of conspiracy theories, lies and misinformation. Worryingly, expert testimony is being undermined and even discarded, in favour of information that suits a pre-held biased belief or political agenda. If the facts are inconvenient, you simply pump out a lot of misinformation around them to confuse everyone, so people don’t know what to believe. 

Verifying our sources

More than ever then, it is important for us to be able to distinguish between facts and beliefs so that we know when we are being sold a dummy. To do this, we have to verify our sources of information. People love to gossip and inflame situations, so a bloke on Facebook or YouTube who isn’t qualified on the subject, is not likely to be trustworthy. That said, many qualified people also have their own agenda for promoting certain viewpoints, and you can bet that if they are also trying to sell you their latest book or treatment programme, that their opinions may be biased. The fact is, it’s very difficult to separate facts from beliefs and opinions. Before we get into the nature of what facts are and how contentious they can be, let’s look at how we form beliefs in the first place. 

I believe

We all construct our own truth, a personal, world-view mindset that we feel is right and just, from our own experiences, thoughts, happenings and memories we collect over our lifetime. Our beliefs are shaped by people we know and trust. They emerge out of our environment, and the people and things we have been exposed to. Even the world’s greatest thinkers were products of their time, influences and circumstances. Beliefs enable us to distill complex information into convenient categories and in this way they act as shortcuts for thinking. 

Much like the way blobs of wax ebb and flow in the oil of a lava lamp, our beliefs are fluid and through each telling our truths are retold, or rethought. And belief is biased. We seize information that shores up our world view and reject information that doesn’t. Of course, our beliefs (hopefully) have some factual basis, but even then, those facts are often subjective and aren’t always so stable as we would like them to be.

When we come across the views of others, we tend to compare our beliefs, which makes us feel either validated, bemused or threatened. It can seem so jarring and unnerving when our beliefs are undermined or opposed, especially by a stranger, but it is not often that conflict makes us change our mindset. Usually, it makes us put our walls up even higher and protect ourselves from the external threat. Letting our guard down, bringing down the walls and being open isn’t easy for any of us, especially if we have been hurt in the past. We cling to what we know and mistrust what we do not. 

Finding truth

If belief is biased and personal then, how do we find the truth? How can we teach ourselves to build a world-view based on certainty and righteousness? This isn’t so easy as it sounds, because while facts are defined as things that can be externally verified, truth is a slippery beastie, so let’s look at some definitions of it:

• Absolute truths: these are universally valid and unchanging statements or beliefs based on incontrovertible facts. Sometimes called objective truths, they are what science and mathematics are based on. In maths, these are called axioms: 1 + 1 ‎ = 2 etc. but there are few things in life that are this certain. From a scientific perspective, knowledge is empirical, it changes in the light of new discoveries. Scientific truth then, is dynamic and constantly in flux, rather than being fixed and certain. Often, scientists are making the best predictions they can from the evidence they have. Sometimes scientists make grand claims, which isn’t helpful, but this is called speculation and is not much different to an educated guess. Things are muddled further by the fact that all religions claim to be centred in absolute truth. Jesus is God, Allah is God, Elohim is God. There are no compromises on these ‘truths’ in any faith. The problem with this is that religion’s ’absolute truths’ are not based on rigorous scientific or mathematical facts. They cannot be observed or measured and in any case, they alter from faith to faith and person to person. How can every faith be absolutely true, especially when they often seem to contradict each other? Which religion is truth and which is a lie? This means that religious faith cannot be an absolute truth, it must be a belief.  
• Relative truths: these are socially constructed truths. Law and order are examples of relative truth. They are often cultural in nature too, so what you think is right in your area, might be different to what someone else thinks is right in another one. Because of this, relative truths are complex. There are civil laws, common laws, customary laws, and religious laws such as Islamic Sharia laws, Jewish Halakha and Christian Canon laws, which all constantly change. 
• Moral truths: are based on subjective, contextual beliefs around morality. Social justice, education, good parenting and religion are all examples of moral truths. Again, there are few universally accepted moral truths, perhaps with the exception of extremes such as murder, torture, and rape. Permissive, liberal morals often conflict with the ones gained from more traditional backgrounds. The fact is, there are no correct morals, only alternative ones. Morality then, is fluid and personal. 
• Relativistic truths: these claim that all truth is subjective and that no objective fundamental truths exist. This is a philosophical argument that has been picked up by real world politicians, YouTubers and reality TV stars. Relativistic arguments deliberately aim to subvert notions of truth in an attempt to gain an advantage over others. They are manipulative, not supportive, and they often are used to deliberately confuse people so as to hide an alternative agenda.

Reclaiming the truth

Reclaiming truth from the throat of lies, misinformation and fake news is often extremely difficult, not least all because we construct ‘truth’ according to pre-existing world-views that have evolved from birth according to our social, environmental conditions. A traditionalist will construct facts and information to verify their world-view, a liberal likewise. All this means that there cannot be a single, verifiable, incontrovertible truth, only a personal perspective. What we can do however, is to position any of these personal truths within a broader moral and relative framework, to act as a barometer of their authenticity. If your world-view is morally good, if it is virtuous and kind, then it’s a good bet that you are on the right track to finding truth. If your views upset, injure, harm, alienate or offend people, then it’s likely you are on the wrong path. Wherever we see individuals, groups or movements manipulating truth, or subverting morality in order to promote their own personal agenda, we can be sure they are wrong, because their values are not virtuous. Virtue and kindness should always be our guiding light when seeking the truth, and this is perhaps the only thing we can be sure of. 

Paul Carney is an author, former teacher and educator, who is now retired. His political position is a liberal centrist who has some traditional, non-religious, spiritual viewpoints. Make of that whatever you will. To help me in writing this article I referred to the following website: Psychology Today Ralph Lewis MD