"We are able to declare something true, not because someone else has insisted upon it, not because we fear the consequences of unbelief, but because it echoes truly in the chamber of our innermost soul."
Rev. David Usher, Unitarian Minister, 2007.

Freedom of belief is one thing but what if a belief was untrue? The above quote, a recent Cork wayside pulpit, seems at odds with some of my recent writings but does contain an element of truth, I admit. I will attempt a synthesis. Opinion and fact are sometimes at odds with one another. It is often wise to be sceptical of consensus but scepticism for the sake of scepticism is not to be recommended. To stubbornly hold to an opinion in spite of evidence to the contrary, or despite any evidence at all, is quite different to holding to the truth in the face of overwhelming opposition. 'Gut feelings' may often be valuable but without some reference to the evidence of ones senses these become very dubious.
Many years ago I watched a television program on the astronomer Kepler who placed the heliocentric observations of Galileo and Copernicus on a firm mathematical foundation. Kepler's Laws describe the passage of the planets around the Sun in rigorous mathematical terms. As a young man Kepler had been overwhelmed by the idea that the orbits of the planets could be described by the shapes of the six Platonic Solids. The program ended with three cheers for the scientific method, and told how Kepler's cherished theory had to be discarded as it didn't fit the observed data.
I have sometimes heard Unitarianism described as a rationalist religion. This is, perhaps, not really true. Rationalism, in its strict philosophical sense, does not really mean a profound respect for the faculty of reason but refers to the concept that knowledge is solely derived from the use of reason. Descartes was rationalism's main advocate. Empiricism, the idea that knowledge is derived from sense data, was the response to rationalism, mainly by David Hume. This school of thought asserted that unaided reason could only derive such things as mathematical and geometrical truths, which truths could be conceptualised in the mind without the aid of external sense data. Any other knowledge, most knowledge, was derived from the evidence of the senses, someone's senses. Can you think of an exception to this?
A problem with this approach is what is sometimes called Humean scepticism. If all we have is out present sense data and memory of past events then how can we predict future events with any certainty. If I have observed water boiling at 100 degrees Centigrade in the past I might well be astonished if this did not again happen right now but how can I claim that I am certain that this will happen. All I have is the knowledge that this has happened in the past. The entire edifice of the emerging new science is placed in doubt. Scientific laws cannot be stated with certainty. For instance cause and effect would only be psychological habits, expectations, not an objective fact situated in the real world, or if these do exist they are forever hidden from us. It is a short journey from this to solipsism.
Immanuel Kant proposed a way out of this impasse. While all knowledge begins with the senses the creation of knowledge also involves input from the human organism, he argued with extraordinary precision, rigour and complexity. The phenomenon of cause and effect is a 'synthetic a-priori'. Prior to the arrival of sense data, inbuilt in the human or any other rational animal are aspects of reality that are imposed on reality by such beings. Cause and effect have a concrete existence, unlike in Hume's model, but exist in the observer who is an intrinsic part of the world. This is termed Kant's Copernican Revolution. It might be a loose example of Kantianism but red light as it exists 'out there' is simply electromagnetic waves of about 700 nm in wavelength. This only becomes 'human-experience'
red when waves of this type interact with human sense data processing mechanisms. Think!
Last year two of my major rock'n'roll escapades were the Police in Twickenham and the Rolling Stones in Slane. The Police were my brother's first serious R'n'R interest and we teamed up for the concert. Chatting before the events he remarked that there was a basic difference between the two concerts. The Police tour was a reunion of the band after many years specifically for the purpose of the tour: a Greatest Hits Reunion Tour. The Stones, he continued, were a 'working band'. Suddenly, in the chamber of my innermost soul, a truth began to dawn on me. And here's part of the point at least, this replaced another truth which became redundant.
It has often been said to me by younger, but still not very young, people that interest in 'serious' R'n'R involves, not the current product, but the back catalogue, back to the 1950's. In my youth interest in what was valuable in 1960's music blended seamlessly with 1970's 'progressive music' which has only recently been categorised as 'Prog Rock'. In the early 1970's as I lost interest in children's pop, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones of course came to my notice. These bands were frequently mentioned in the same breath. The Beatles had just broken up and the Stones were, then at least, a 1960's phenomenon and this perception became firmly implanted in my mind. Their early '70's output would have been seen as footnotes to their earlier product. 'Exile on Main St.', 1972, is now considered their masterpiece but was universally slated when it was released. I was ridiculed for buying it and the tattered vinyl double LP on prominent display in my den makes a statement to those capable of understanding it. As the years passed the Stones were often described as 'the Chuck Berry of the '60's'. "Well I like them," might have been my response, "and, hey, I like Chuck Berry too." But the general perception was that the Stones were a 1960's anachronism. However my brother's statement of the obvious suddenly began in me a process of re-evaluation of the nature of the band.
I have all the Stones' albums. Only a minority are from the 1960's. Ten are concert 'live' albums. I saw then in concert in 1983 and 2007 in Slane (possibly 'England's Newest Hit Makers' last concert outside England), Wembley Stadium in 1998 and Wembley Arena in 2003. While there is much of value in the band's 1960's output and a creative peak in the late 60's and early 70's there is absolutely no truth to the idea that a Stones concert is a 1960's revival event. Indeed the classic 1969 'live' album, 'Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out', created the 'solid rock' ethos for the rest of the band's career rather than looking back to high points of the band's very laudable earlier output. It is a fact that the Stones are just as much a band of the 70's, 80's, 90's and this decade as they are of the 1960's. But this 'obvious' fact only struck me last year with my brother's throwaway remark.
The synthesis of sense data is referred to as 'gestalt' by psychologists. As the amount of sense information available to any individual is, on principle, less than the possible total there is an intrinsic fallibility involved in the recognition of truth due to this intrinsic element of error. The 'gestalt' event, the synthesis of the available information into the subjective experience of truth, is basic to the recognition of truth. There is no truth without this but there is always an element of fallibility in any 'truth'.
And the Stones? They're the greatest rock and roll band in the world!

Brendan Burke
Cork Unitarian Church 20 July 2008