That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. ~ Christopher Hitchens*
This statement changed my perspective on the world and perhaps changed my life. I encountered it while listening to a debate in which Hitchens was responding to a representative of some religious tradition or another. The opponent had made a lofty and impassioned, albeit unfounded, claim to the Truth. Hitchens gave no quarter and won the debate thoroughly. This simple axiom clinched my appreciation for the mind of Hitchens.
This mantra has guided my thinking and checked my wild ideas by requiring some sort of evidence for doing one thing or another, or responding to the claims and decisions of others. It’s also gotten me into a bit of trouble, but that’s a blog post for another day.
Recently, I listened to an excerpt** between Niall Ferguson, an historian, and Sam Harris, neurobiologist and prominent atheist advocate. In this discussion, Ferguson brought up his use of “counterfactuals” and the vast requirement attending their use. He spoke specifically of his argument that World War I would had ended sooner and the world would be better off today had the United Kingdom not entered the war.
To anyone who has been through a secondary school World History course in America, this would seem a bold claim. And Ferguson understands that. Defending his claim required discussing the minutiae of economics, internal and international policy, political interdependence, finance, law, etc. He had to imagine in considerable detail the specific conditions resulting from his alternative, his counterfactual. A counterfactual requires this full breadth
Returning to Hitchens’ quote above, there’s another side to the coin. Bold claims require bold evidence. The greater, more bombastic the claim, the more convincing the evidence must be.
Carry this bit of Hitchens with you in the following week. When someone makes a claim, or decides toward one action or another, ask them what helped to reveal that option to be the best one to follow. Or don’t- not everyone handles confrontation well.
But think to yourself- “what makes this true?” If the answer is “nothing,” then is it really true?