Faith on account of empirical evidence is knowledge but this does not mean that knowledge, or propositional knowledge, can be based on nothing else than empirical evidence. This is what empiricists have taught and which they have not been able to prove conclusively.

Faith in spite of empirical evidence is false belief and cannot be knowledge by definition. Judging from the principle of truth, such faith can never be justified and must be vehemently rejected. A belief which is typically unjustified because it contradicts empirical evidence is, for example, the belief that the existing plant and animal species would be created by one personal being instead of having evolved from other existing, or from presently extinct, species. (It is here that the genesis of the world and the genesis of false belief coincide symbolically.) The apotheosis of this moldy belief from the Directory of Discarded Ideas is that the earth would be created by one personal being in a certain number of days. Of course, one can have different opinions on what empirical evidence is exactly, and what we believe or 'know' to be indubitable, empirical evidence today might not be accepted as such tomorrow (altho we are seldom willing to reaccept what has been refuted as rubbish, but which we 'knew' to be evidence yesterday). The disagreement between those who trust the scientific account (even if only the present, scientific account) and those who belief in a supernaturalist account is no disagreement about empirical evidence, but is one which results from the profound difference between recognizing the ground-facts and ignoring or disregarding them. The 'evidence' of religious creatures is at the most the propositional fact, or the quasi-event, that something has been written down in age-old documents or has once been said by an ancient of days, if said at all. (That is how certain monotheist believers come to claim, for example, that they 'know that their redeemer liveth'.)

The question whether a belief is unjustifiable or not is not the same as the question whether telling a story is unjustifiable or not. One may tell a story of which everyone knows that it is false but which everyone likes because it is beautiful, educative, amusing or something like that. When such a story is told, it is done as if it is true, but it is the context in which it is told which makes clear that one does not believe, and that one does not claim, that it is really true. In the context the story is recognizable as a piece of prose, as a fairy-tale or as mere mythology. Hence, it is quite possible to read the supernaturalist tales of ancient, sacred scriptures and even to enjoy some of the mythological, fanciful passages of those writings, and to pretend for a moment that they are true, without believing that they are or were descriptive of reality at all. It is the belief in those tales and the propagation of those tales as true stories which flagrantly violates the principle of truth.

A belief is not necessarily unjustified in the absence of empirical evidence, for the criterion of empirical evidence can only apply to factual belief, that is, belief about the world as it was, is and/or will be. Especially a fundamental normative belief, that is, a belief about the world as it should be according to the most general principle or principles, is always belief in the absence of empirical evidence (but --so one may argue-- so is a fundamental factual belief too from the apriorist or mixed apriorist-empiricist angle). It is particular normative views which, in addition, require their own empirical evidence. For example, if every act is right which makes sentient beings happier, the justification of the belief that a certain act is right depends on the empirical evidence that the act in question does indeed make sentient beings happier. But the fundamental normative principle underlying this belief itself cannot be proved or refuted by empirical evidence. On our ontology there are at least two spheres (in addition to the factual one) in which the rule of empirical evidence is not operative, or not operative in a decisive way. And even if one does not adopt the explicit recognition of a separate, objective, normative sphere, the implicit recognition of norms and values cannot be avoided when one uses language which is partially evaluative, and when one does acknowledge goals and objectives to strive for.

Every fundamental normative belief, whether left implicit or made explicit, must be held in the absence of empirical evidence since the correspondence which should exist between the normative proposition about reality and the norm in reality cannot be perceived in the empirical sense, nor can the norm itself. It does not follow, however, that we may hold any normative proposition true. The least which is required is coherence of such a normative proposition with all other propositions considered true or false, and with what has explicitly or implicitly been taken to be normatively superior. We thus espouse coherence as criterion of truth even tho we might be forced to accept what is least incoherent when the option of coherence is not open to us in practise. Yet, coherence itself (let alone minimal incoherence) is no proof of truth: a coherent system may be false. Of two coherent beliefs which are incompatible with each other, at least one must be false. In the case of factual belief empirical evidence may show which system is mistaken, or it may show that both systems are mistaken. If, and insofar as, belief is normative, it is not empirical evidence either which can demonstrate which one of two incompatible coherent systems is at least wrong, or which belief in one of two incompatible minimally incoherent systems is at least ungrounded.

It is banal to remark that empirical evidence cannot be used to justify normative belief. The crux of the matter is that it is the normative significance of empirical evidence on the basis of which normative belief can be justified or must be rejected. As explained in The normativeness of 'purely descriptive' theorizing (3.2.3) this entails that every normative belief is unjustified which does not embrace a principle of truth, which does not embrace a principle of relevance and which does not, in a coherent way, indicate what the goal or goals are to determine what is relevant or not. Moreover, if two coherent normative systems both encompass all these principles and goals, but the one is simpler than the other, while not being less comprehensive, it is only justifiable to hold the simpler belief according to a principle of conceptual austerity. (Like the principle of coherence this principle is expressive of a propositional norm, no ground-norm and even no norm of correspondence.)

We have now provided a number of criterions to determine what beliefs are plainly false or unjustified. From this it does not immediately follow that there is only one justifiable factual, modal and normative belief even if there is, or were, only one true factual, one true modal and one true normative belief. If we already formulated at this place, for example, the fundamental principles of the normative doctrine which is the sole justifiable one in our eyes, this formulation would still leave many important matters open to widely divergent interpretations. This should have become regrettably clear with respect to truth: 'everyone' is in favor of truth and willing to pay lip-service to a principle of truth or truthfulness, but the interpretations of what is true vary from the belief of the most dogmatical and obscurantist supernaturalist to the analysis of the most critical and clear-sighted scientist.

In this chapter we have roughly sketched the minimum and very beginning of what we ourselves understand by 'truth' and by a 'principle of truth', or rather what we do not understand by it. Instead of continuing this discussion on truth at this place, we should first consider the next concept and principle which any adequate normative doctrine must recognize: that of relevance. However important truth may be, it is no excuse for irrelevance.