Its Thanksgiving and I got a chance to catch up on my Netflix selection.

“Merry Christmas” is a 2005 French / German / British production about a real life occurrence during WW1.

It is the story of how it came to be that an entire section of the Western Front entered into a spontaneous truce on Christmas eve 1914. People who were sworn enemies and just hours earlier didn’t think twice about killing one another, ended up singing Christmas carols, exchanging presents, attending a service and even playing soccer.

Aside from the somewhat miraculous story itself, the director makes a greater point about the mental state of soldiers at war.

All throughout these past years I have often wondered about our war in Iraq. What bugs me is the fact that I myself – Joe Nobody in Los Angeles – had seen several reports and predictions by Iraq experts that indicated the outcome of the war and the vacuum left by Saddaam would be a Civil War with sectarian violence and utter chaos. Now if I knew this, you can bet your last dollar that our elected leadership knew this equally well and probably much better. War sucks. I admire the soldiers who can fight it even though they may not agree with it or with their leadership. In “Merry Christmas” the French Lieutenant (far left in the picture) tells hid dad who also happens to be a Major General “I have more n common with those poor bastards in the trenches on the other side than those fat people who stuff themselves with turkey and pontificate about the war “ Our own soldiers have frequently said that in war you fight for the guy next to you, not necessarily the generals, the political leadership or the folks back home. I am not a pacifist, but I sure don’t like senseless war. And to me our entire effort in Iraq was one big misguided mess at so many levels its not even funny.

The following story discusses some key historical factors that I’ve learned in a presentation by Matt Lockhart, a UCLA grad student in philosophy.

How many times have you had conversations with friends in which you would like to convince someone of something and are faced with an utter demand of evidence. It has become a normal fact of life to require evidence for any sort of believe system. In this day and age one does no longer conduct a study. Instead one has to conduct a “scientific study”. Does that sound familiar? As though the usage of the word “scientific” makes the study more accurate, believable or valuable. Yet when we ask a person for the current time we believe them just the same without an equal demand for proof and evidence. What makes one discussion more preposterous than another?

It hasn’t aways been the case. There was a time when Western Civilization was less evidence driven. So what happened?

Mathematics. Thats what.

The cause for our cultural dependence one evidence goes back approximately 80 years when a group of eminent scientists, among them some of the best mathematical minds in the world including Albert Einstein, became very disgusted with philosophical expression of the time. And granted, if anyone can read Hegel – the preeminent philosopher of the early 20th century – and not have their eyes roll back in their head I would be amazed. Hegel was so obtuse and full of meaningless blabber that to this day he is the single author most responsible for driving undergraduate students out of the field of philosophy.

This group of Mathematicians called their way of thinking Logical Positivism .

Positivism was primarily interested in meaningful, provable statements. Much like the field of mathematics. The chief theorem of Positivism, if I can call it that,reads something like this:

” A claim is meaningful and conveys a thought only if it is empirically verifiable ”

This principle allowed its proponents to weed out a lot of Hegels hot air and to concentrate on the essence of meaning. A sentence like “Green grows” would automatically disqualify. A sentence like “Tom grows” on the other hand would be OK.

Interestingly enough Positivism lasted all the way into the 1950’s and then slowly died out. Its demise is attibuted to two reasons: a) it was too restrictive and b) it was incoherent. Now what the heck does that mean? Well it really was too restrictive since it didn’t allow for statements like “Murder is wrong”. How does one produce empirical evidence for such a statement. Yet most useful members of society understand that murder is wrong. Secondly, Positivism was incoherent because it was a self referential statement that did not pass its own standard. What empirical evidence is there for the Positivism theorem ? None. So it fails the very test that it wants to establish.

A new way of thinking became popular. Driven by such famous intellects as Bertrand Russell, Evidentialism came to be.

As a direct child of the previous theorem, Evidentialism stipulated that:

“One ought to believe that for which one has enough evidence”

Well folks, guess what? This philosophy suffers from the same shortcomings as Positivism. And while it doesn’t go as far as to condemn a particular belief on the basis of meaningless language, or simply a lack of meaning is statements, it still is too strong and incoherent. Evidentialism fails the test of its own claim just as Positivism did.

At the same time the entire popular culture is filled with Evidentialism. You see it in magazines in the news and on TV.

So ask yourself this: If a friend tells you that he will meet you tomorrow for lunch – what evidence do you have that you can believe that statement? Or to go back to the previous example of murder – what evidence do we have that causing pain and suffering is wrong? Yes there is the expression of the victim, but is that empirical? Lastly, if an Evidentialist wants me to believe his philosophy, what evidence can he offer that his theorem is correct? It fails to stand up to its own measuring stick.

Both Positivism and Evidentialism are expressions of the conviction that only that which can be proven scientifically ought to be believed. In and of itself that idea might be condensed to a statement like:

“Only that which is scientific is rationally acceptable”

Funny. That statement is not a scientific theory. It cannot be tested. It is a philosophical statement. I even know this statement from personal experience because my first knee jerk reaction is always to look for evidence.

Anyways this lesson in historical thought of modern Man brings me to an interesting conclusion:

“Popular culture will often disparage religious beliefs on the grounds of “not being scientific” and in doing so invoke a principle that is itself not scientific. “