“Surely Sincerity Is What Counts”

Have you ever had someone say to you, “What a person believes really is not that important; what really matters is the sincerity of their belief.”

Certainly sincerity is important. However, the sincerity with which one holds a particular belief must be carefully distinguished from its truthfulness. To illustrate this distinction, imagine that you have a child who accesses a medicine cupboard and pulls out some pills. The child sincerely believes that the pills are sweets. He is so sincere about his belief that it is sweets that he decides to eat it. What will happen to the child? Something very tragic. Despite his sincerity, the child’s belief that the pills were in fact sweets does not change the nature of its contents. He may believe with all of his heart that the bottle contains only sweets but the bottle is still potentially lethal.

One’s belief about an object (or state of affairs) must be carefully distinguished from the actual object or state of affairs. One may be sincere and yet sincerely wrong. Sincerity does not determine truth. It would be cruel to tell a blind man on the edge of a cliff that it doesn’t matter which way he steps, as long as he is sincere. A position can be narrow and wrong, or it can be narrow and right.

Sincerely believing something doesn’t make it true. If I get onto a broken plane and sincerely believe that it won’t crash, my sincerity is quite hopeless. It won’t change the facts. Our beliefs, regardless of how deeply they are held have no effect on reality. The thing that really counts is not the sincerity of our faith, but the object of our faith, and whether that corresponds to reality. True truth is true even if no one likes it, admits it, agrees to it or recognises it; truth is independent of our beliefs - it is about what corresponds to an actual state of affairs.

5 of 5: Go back to Part 4

Dominic De Souza, 4th June 2020