Argument

The Suppressed Truth Argument

Intro

Everyone lies to themselves sometimes. We avoid the doctor's letter we do not want to open. We do not check whether the cheap shirt was made in a sweatshop. We remember our own part in an argument as kinder than it was. Psychologists have studied this for decades, and they have found something strange: to avoid a truth, part of you has to know where it is.

The research also shows what we lie to ourselves about most. It is not the weather or the capital of France. It is mostly ourselves, and especially whether we are good. People will give up a chance to learn what their choices did to someone else, so that they can feel fair without being fair. They do it even when nobody else could ever find out.

The Bible described exactly this centuries before anyone ran an experiment. "The heart is deceitful above all things" (Jeremiah 17:9). Whoever does evil avoids the light "lest his works should be reproved" (John 3:20). And believers are not exempt: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves" (1 John 1:8). This argument says that when a very old description of human nature turns out to match the modern science this closely, that is evidence the description is true. It is not a charge against unbelievers. It is a mirror for everyone, the writer included.

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In full

The Suppressed Truth Argument is a confirmation argument for the Christian account of the human condition from the specific structure of human self-deception. Its explanandum is not merely that people err, but that they err in a patterned way: they keep unwelcome truths at a distance by managing their own access to evidence, which requires some registration of the truth they avoid (the "static paradox" Sartre made famous and Alfred Mele tried to deflate); they do this chiefly to protect a favourable view of their own moral standing (Batson's moral hypocrisy, the moral wiggle-room experiments of Dana, Weber and Kuang); they do it when no audience is present (the double-blind replication of Larson and Capra); and they are poor at detecting it in themselves while quick to see it in others (Pronin's bias blind spot). A deductive spine (P1 to P6) argues that this shape, together with the fact that self-deception presupposes a truth independent of the self's wishes, is far more expected on biblical anthropology, which predicts a heart that knows, refuses to know, hides from moral exposure and cannot cure itself without an outside Searcher, than on its rivals: a purely rational-agent model, which predicts little self-deception, and the evolutionary theory of von Hippel and Trivers, which explains self-deception as a tool for deceiving others and so predicts its strength where audiences are present. The argument is distinguished from the Suppression of God Thesis, which applies the same mechanism to unbelief in particular; here the datum is the general human condition, and the conclusion is a modest likelihood confirmation of one Christian doctrine, not a proof of God and not a diagnosis of any individual.

Format note

This page is a braided case, the format for new Ris3n Arguments: a valid spine of premises, each held up separately by evidence, by a comparison of rival explanations and by agreement across disciplines, followed by a check against double-counting, a ledger and a defeater gate. It braids four fields. Psychology supplies the measured shape of self-deception. Philosophy supplies the analysis of how a mind can hide a truth from itself, and the rival deflationary account. Objective truth enters because self-deception is only possible about a fact that does not bend to the wish. Theology supplies the prior description, biblical anthropology, whose predictions the data test.

The spine

Validity. P1 to P3 fix the datum and its presupposition. P4 and P5 rate how expected the datum is on biblical anthropology and on its rivals. P6 turns the difference into confirmation. The form is a likelihood comparison closed by modus ponens on P6.

Strength of the conclusion. Confirmatory and limited in scope. The argument confirms one Christian doctrine, the deceitfulness of the human heart, which is part of the Christian worldview and so adds weight to it in the Cumulative Case for Christian Theism. It does not show that God exists by itself, and it says nothing about whether any particular person is self-deceived about any particular belief.

P1, The phenomenon is real

Inductive strand

1. Motivated reasoning. Ziva Kunda, "The Case for Motivated Reasoning" (Psychological Bulletin 108, 1990), reviewed evidence that people reach the conclusions they want by recruiting the beliefs and rules of inference that support them, while keeping an illusion of objectivity.
2. An evolutionary research programme. William von Hippel and Robert Trivers, "The Evolution and Psychology of Self-Deception" (Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34, 2011), propose that the self can be both deceiver and deceived through dissociations between conscious and unconscious memories, attitudes and processes. Trivers develops the case at book length in The Folly of Fools (2011).
3. The philosophers' long attention. Sartre's analysis of bad faith (Being and Nothingness, 1943) and Mele's Self-Deception Unmasked (Princeton, 2001) treat self-deception as a real phenomenon to be explained, whatever its correct analysis.

Abductive strand

Convergence

Experimental social psychology, evolutionary psychology and analytic philosophy of mind agree that motivated self-deception exists. They disagree about its mechanism and purpose, which is where the argument's work begins.

Objections and rebuttals

1. "Self-deception is paradoxical, so it cannot really happen." Rebuttal. The paradox is about how to analyse it, not whether it occurs. Sartre and Mele both start from the fact.

P2, Its shape

Inductive strand

1. Managing access to evidence. Jason Dana, Roberto Weber and Jason Kuang, "Exploiting Moral Wiggle Room: Experiments Demonstrating an Illusory Preference for Fairness" (Economic Theory 33, 2007), found that when people could choose, at no cost, to remain ignorant of how their choice affected another person, many chose ignorance and generosity fell sharply compared with a transparent baseline. To decline to look in this way, one must suspect what looking would show.
2. The target is one's own goodness. C. Daniel Batson and colleagues, "In a Very Different Voice: Unmasking Moral Hypocrisy" (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72, 1997), gave participants the chance to assign a pleasant task to themselves or to another. Many who chose to flip a coin to decide fairly still ended up with the pleasant task far more often than chance allows. The authors read this as a motive to appear moral, to oneself as well as to others, while avoiding the cost of being moral.
3. No audience required. Tracy Larson and C. Monica Capra (Judgment and Decision Making 4, 2009) replicated the wiggle-room result in a double-blind design in which no experimenter could link a choice to a person. The ignorance strategy persisted, which suggests it protects the chooser's view of herself, not only her reputation.
4. The blind spot. Emily Pronin, Daniel Lin and Lee Ross, "The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others" (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28, 2002), found that people readily see biases in others that they deny in themselves.
5. The philosophical structure. Sartre stated the puzzle: in bad faith "I must know in my capacity as deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived" (Being and Nothingness, part 1, chapter 2, Barnes translation). Mele argues that motivated bias can produce self-deception without two simultaneous contradictory beliefs; on either analysis the evidence is registered and the desirable conclusion wins.

Abductive strand

Convergence

Behavioural economics (Dana, Weber, Kuang; Larson and Capra), social psychology (Batson, Pronin), evolutionary psychology (Trivers) and phenomenology (Sartre) reach the same description from different methods and with no shared theological motive.

Objections and rebuttals

1. "These are small lab games, not real life." Rebuttal. Fair, and the ledger is modest for that reason. But the lab games were designed to isolate the very motive (feeling fair without being fair) that real-life cases mix with others.
2. "People avoid all bad news, not just moral bad news." Rebuttal. True, people avoid medical and financial bad news too. P2(b) says the moral target is prominent, not exclusive, and the moral hypocrisy literature isolates it.

P3, Self-deception presupposes objective truth

Inductive strand

1. You cannot hide from nothing. To avoid evidence about how one's choice affected someone, there must be a fact about how it did. The wiggle-room participants did not change the payoffs by not looking.
2. The truth outlasts the wish. Self-deception is unstable precisely because the fact keeps pressing: the unopened letter is still on the table.
3. The concept requires it. On every analysis (Sartre's or Mele's), self-deception is believing against what the evidence shows; if truth were whatever one wished, the category would be empty.

Abductive strand

Convergence

Philosophy of mind, epistemology and ordinary experience agree: the possibility of lying to oneself is one of the clearest everyday proofs that reality does not answer to our wishes. See Theories of Truth.

Objections and rebuttals

1. "This only shows factual truth is objective, not moral truth." Rebuttal. Agreed for P3. The moral dimension enters in P2(b): what people most hide from is a verdict on their own goodness, which only bites if they take that verdict to be real.

P4, The biblical prediction

Inductive strand

1. The heart deceives and cannot know itself. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9, ASV). The next verse names the only one who can: "I, Jehovah, search the mind, I try the heart" (Jeremiah 17:10, ASV). That is P2(d) and its remedy.
2. Avoidance motivated by moral exposure. "For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved" (John 3:20, ASV). That is P2(a) and (b) in one sentence: not looking, in order not to be shown.
3. Knowing and suppressing. Paul describes people "who hinder the truth in unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18, ASV), and says "knowing God, they glorified him not as God" (Romans 1:21, ASV).
4. Before God, not only before others. Adam and Eve hid "from the presence of Jehovah God" with no other human to deceive (Genesis 3:8, ASV). The hiding is directed at the Searcher, which is P2(c).
5. No one is exempt, including the church. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8, ASV); "why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" (Matthew 7:3, ASV), which is the bias blind spot in a sentence.
6. The remedy is to be searched. "Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts; And see if there be any wicked way in me" (Psalm 139:23-24, ASV). See also Argument from the Confession-Catharsis Convergence.

Grammar note. In Romans 1:18 the verb rendered "hinder" (ASV) is katechontōn, a present participle of katechō, "hold fast" or "hold down" (see G2722 - katecho); the present tense presents the suppression as ongoing activity, not a single past act. In 1:21 "knowing God" renders gnontes, an aorist participle of ginōskō: Paul's claim is that the refusal follows a knowing. Both features fit P2(a), a truth registered and kept down. The argument needs only this descriptive reading, not any particular theory of how much each person knows.

Abductive strand

Convergence

The biblical description comes from texts written across roughly a thousand years by prophets, a gospel writer, an apostle and a pastor, in genres from oracle to letter. Its agreement with modern measurement is not one source echoing another: none of the researchers above were testing Scripture.

Objections and rebuttals

1. "Anyone could have noticed people lie to themselves." Rebuttal. Many did. What is distinctive is the specific package: the moral target, the hiding before an unseen Judge, the universality including the religious, and the insistence that the cure must come from outside. Ancient moralists who stressed self-knowledge ("know thyself") often assumed the self could achieve it by its own effort; the biblical texts deny that it can.

P5, The rivals predict the shape less well

Inductive strand

1. The rational-agent model. If the mind were a neutral truth-tracker, self-deception would be rare noise. The directional, motivated record in P1 and P2 refutes it.
2. The evolutionary theory. Von Hippel and Trivers argue that self-deception evolved chiefly to make deceiving others easier: one who believes his own story leaks fewer cues of lying. That theory explains a great deal, including self-enhancement and P2(a). It predicts that self-deception should track social payoffs and audiences. It has to work harder for P2(c), self-deception about one's own fairness when no one could ever know, though defenders can reply that a stable self-image serves future audiences.
3. Critics within the field. Commentators on the 2011 target article, including David Dunning, pressed for laboratory tests of its central claim; the evolutionary account is a strong hypothesis, not a settled result.

Abductive strand

The comparison is a fit test: which account makes the observed package most expected? The rational-agent model fails. The evolutionary account fits much of it with one strain. Biblical anthropology fits all four features without strain, because it was stated in exactly these terms.

Convergence

Psychologists who reject theism (Trivers) and philosophers who reject theism (Sartre) supply the data and the analysis that P5 uses; the comparison does not depend on Christian sources for its premises.

Objections and rebuttals

1. "A theory written after the fact always fits." Rebuttal. The biblical texts were not written after the experiments. The fit is a prediction made two to three thousand years in advance.

P6, The likelihood principle

Inductive strand

The principle that evidence confirms the hypothesis on which it is more expected is standard in scientific confirmation.

Abductive strand

Its rival, that confirmation requires known priors, would also undercut the psychology this argument uses.

Convergence

Bayesian and likelihoodist approaches agree on comparative confirmation.

Objections and rebuttals

1. "The Christian account is unfalsifiable: any behaviour fits sin." Rebuttal. It makes specific predictions that could have failed: if people were most self-deceived about neutral topics, or never deceived themselves without an audience, or saw their own faults as easily as others', the biblical picture would fit worse.

The knot

The strands are independent. The behavioural experiments (Dana, Weber and Kuang; Larson and Capra; Batson; Pronin) come from separate labs and fields. The evolutionary theory (von Hippel and Trivers) is a rival interpretation of overlapping data. The philosophical analysis (Sartre, Mele) is conceptual. The biblical texts predate all of them. Two overlaps are counted once: the wiggle-room study and its double-blind replication are one family, entered in the ledger as one row for P2(a) and a separate row only for the no-audience feature; and Romans 1:18-21 is used here for the general human condition, so it is not counted again for unbelief, which is the separate subject of the Suppression of God Thesis.

The ledger

Prior-agnostic: the ledger asks only how expected each datum is under each hypothesis. The ratings are reasoned judgments from the sections above, not measurements. "Rival" here means the best naturalistic account, the evolutionary theory of self-deception.

Net. Most rows are even, which is honest: the evolutionary theory is a good theory. The edge for biblical anthropology comes from the moral target, the no-audience persistence and, above all, the advance description of the whole package. The confirmation is modest and real. It belongs in a cumulative case, not at the centre of one.

The defeater gate

The evolutionary explanation. The strongest objection is that von Hippel and Trivers have already explained the data without God. Self-deception evolved because it helps us deceive others; the moral target is explained by the social value of appearing moral; the no-audience cases are explained by the need for a consistent self-image that will hold up when audiences return; and the biblical texts are simply good folk psychology, as one would expect from shrewd observers of human nature.

The reply has three parts.

1. The argument concedes much of this. The ledger rates most rows even. The evolutionary theory may well describe the mechanism by which the heart deceives. Christian anthropology has no quarrel with a natural mechanism for a real condition.
2. Good folk psychology is the point. If the biblical writers were "shrewd observers" who got human nature right where the ancient optimists about self-knowledge got it wrong, that is a modest point in favour of the reliability of the texts on the human condition, which is exactly what this argument concludes.
3. The theory leaves the remedy unexplained. On the evolutionary account, self-deception is adaptive; dissolving it should usually cost the agent. Yet the clinical and confessional record suggests that being fully known and disclosing what was hidden is often healing (see Argument from the Confession-Catharsis Convergence). Biblical anthropology predicts that: the hiding is a sickness and the cure is to be searched and forgiven.

What the gate concedes: this argument does not defeat the evolutionary theory of self-deception. It shows that a much older account predicted the same data and adds something the newer one does not: why being known heals.

Concessions

• Grant: believers deceive themselves too. Now collect: that is a biblical prediction (1 John 1:8), and a worldview that names its own adherents as self-deceivers is not flattering itself.
• Grant: self-deception has natural mechanisms. Now collect: a natural mechanism for a real condition is what a creation account expects; the question is whether the condition is described truly.
• Grant: this argument cannot tell whether any particular person is self-deceived about God. Now collect: then neither side may assume its own position is the unbiased one, which leaves the evidence to be weighed on its merits.

Cheatsheet

The 30-second version (read aloud). Psychologists have shown that people will choose not to look at what their choices did to someone else, so they can feel fair without being fair, even when no one could ever find out. We spot bias in others and miss it in ourselves. And to avoid a truth you have to know where it is. The Bible said all of this long before anyone measured it: the heart is deceitful and cannot know itself, people avoid the light so their deeds will not be exposed, and even believers deceive themselves if they say they have no sin. When an ancient description of human nature matches the modern science this closely, that is evidence the description is true.

Fast facts:

1. Dana, Weber and Kuang (Economic Theory, 2007): offered free ignorance about their effect on others, many chose it and gave less.
2. Larson and Capra (Judgment and Decision Making, 2009): the effect held up double-blind.
3. Batson et al. (JPSP, 1997): coin-flippers still gave themselves the better task far more often than chance.
4. Pronin, Lin and Ross (PSPB, 2002): we see bias in others more than in ourselves.
5. Von Hippel and Trivers (BBS, 2011): self-deception as an evolved strategy, the strongest rival.

The closing line. We hide from the truth about ourselves exactly the way the Bible said we would, and we are healed exactly the way it said we would be: by being known.

Cross-examination

Round 1, The data

• Q: Do you agree people sometimes avoid information about themselves that they suspect is unflattering?
• If they say yes: then they agree with Jeremiah 17:9 and John 3:20 on the data. Now ask about the shape.

Round 2, The target

• Q: Why would people avoid learning the effect of their choices on others even when no one could ever know?
• If they say reputation: ask whose reputation is at stake in a double-blind study.
• If they say self-image: ask why a self-image of goodness matters so much to an animal shaped only by survival, and note that the Bible predicted exactly that concern.

Round 3, Turning it around

• Q: Is this argument a way of calling atheists self-deceived?
• Answer: No. It applies to everyone, believers first. The question is which account of human nature fits the evidence.

Dodge table

Live-cite kit

Scripture (ASV):

• Jeremiah 17:9: The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9, ASV)
• John 3:19-20: And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved (John 3:19-20, ASV)
• Romans 1:18: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hinder the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18, ASV)
• 1 John 1:8: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8, ASV)
• Psalm 139:23-24: Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts; And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:23-24, ASV)

Scholarly:

• Jason Dana, Roberto Weber and Jason Kuang, "Exploiting Moral Wiggle Room" (Economic Theory, 2007).
• C. Daniel Batson et al., "In a Very Different Voice: Unmasking Moral Hypocrisy" (JPSP, 1997).
• William von Hippel and Robert Trivers, "The Evolution and Psychology of Self-Deception" (BBS, 2011).
• Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943), on bad faith.

Aphorism: "You can only hide from what you already know is there."

Connection to Scripture

• Jeremiah 17:9, the heart that cannot know itself, with God as the Searcher in the next verse.
• John 3:19-20, avoidance motivated by the fear of exposure.
• Romans 1:18-21, truth registered and held down.
• Genesis 3:8, the first hiding, before God with no other audience.
• Matthew 7:3-5, the blind spot.
• 1 John 1:8-9, self-deception among believers, and its cure in confession.
• 2 Corinthians 4:4, blindness described as a spiritual condition as well as a psychological one.
• Psalm 139:23-24, the prayer to be searched.

Scholarship

Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record.

• Jason Dana, Roberto A. Weber and Jason Xi Kuang, "Exploiting moral wiggle room: experiments demonstrating an illusory preference for fairness," Economic Theory 33 (2007). doi:10.1007/s00199-006-0153-z open access
• Ziva Kunda, "The case for motivated reasoning," Psychological Bulletin 108 (1990). doi:10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480 PubMed 2270237
• Tara Larson and C. Monica Capra, "Exploiting moral wiggle room: Illusory preference for fairness? A comment," Judgment and Decision Making 4 (2009). doi:10.1017/s1930297500004009 open access
• Alfred R. Mele, Self-Deception Unmasked (Princeton University Press, 2000). doi:10.1515/9781400823970
• Emily Pronin, Daniel Y. Lin and Lee Ross, "The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28 (2002). doi:10.1177/0146167202286008
• jean-paul sartre, being and nothingness (1956). Open Library
• Robert Trivers and Santiago Foz (argentino), The folly of fools (2011). Open Library
• William von Hippel and Robert Trivers, "The evolution and psychology of self-deception," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (2011). doi:10.1017/s0140525x10001354 PubMed 21288379

See also

• Ris3n Arguments, the hub of ris3n's original arguments
• Arguments, the master index
• Suppression of God Thesis, the same mechanism applied to unbelief; this page argues from the general human condition and does not diagnose unbelievers
• Engaging the Conclusion-Fixed Skeptic, how to talk with someone whose conclusion is settled in advance, applied with the same humility to oneself
• Atheism as Escapism, the motive question in a narrower form
• Argument from the Confession-Catharsis Convergence, why being known heals
• Sensus Divinitatis and Innate Knowledge of God, the knowledge Romans 1 says is held down
• Jean-Paul Sartre, bad faith
• Conscience, the inner witness that self-deception works against
• Cumulative Case for Christian Theism, where this argument contributes