Can We Approach Any Topic Without Bias?

*This piece is part of an ongoing effort to think through theological questions in real time. It is not meant to be a polished or exhaustive argument, but a careful exploration of how Scripture, reason, and coherence interact on this issue.*

Is it possible to approach any topic without bias?

A lot of people would say yes, and that we need to do everything we can to limit bias to the point of eliminating it. Now, while I agree that we should do everything we can to limit bad bias when we are trying to understand truth and work through a problem, the issue is more complicated than that.

Bias colors our lens. It makes it harder for us to see the truth, or even just to see clearly what is in front of us. But one of the biggest difficulties is that bias is often hidden. It is usually not something we are fully aware of. In many cases, it functions as a blind spot.

Philosophers often treat bias as something they want to identify and remove. They ask, “What is it that I hold behind the scenes that is coloring the way I see things?” That is a worthwhile goal. But it is almost guaranteed that we have not found everything. We are, in many ways, blind to our own blind spots. And bias is often one of those blind spots.

So there is definitely a sense in which we cannot approach a subject without bringing something with us. But this is where an important distinction has to be made.

Not every presupposition is a bias.

A presupposition is a prior commitment, assumption, or starting point that we bring into a discussion. In that sense, presuppositions are unavoidable. Everyone has them. Bias is narrower. A bias is a presupposition that distorts judgment, or at least has the potential to do so. So while all biases are presuppositions, not all presuppositions are biases. That matters because people sometimes talk as if every prior commitment is automatically a problem. But that is not really true. Some presuppositions are bad. Some are good. Some are fairly neutral. The real issue is whether the presupposition helps us interpret rightly or whether it improperly controls what we are able to see.

So I am not convinced that we are capable of approaching anything with no presuppositions at all. And I am not convinced that all presuppositions are bad. What I am convinced of is that bad presuppositions, or biases, need to be identified because they can distort what we are seeing.

That means it is sometimes okay to bring a certain prior commitment to the table. But it is almost always best to know that you are bringing it. If you are aware of it, then you can examine it. If you are not aware of it, then it is much more likely to control your thinking without you realizing it. That is one reason I would agree with the general point that there is no such thing as a truly bias-free or presupposition-free engagement with a topic. Everything we bring, including how we learned what we learned, how we were taught to think, and how we learned to apply ideas growing up, shapes the way we approach questions. In that broader sense, presuppositions are unavoidable.

But does that mean the attempt to reduce bias is bad? No, not at all. We should absolutely try to identify distortive presuppositions and keep them from controlling our thinking. The problem is not the attempt to think carefully. The problem is pretending that we can somehow become completely neutral.

This came up for me in relation to a previous video I did on the role of philosophy in theology. Should we use philosophy? Some people approach theology purely from reason, purely from philosophy. But even that is not a neutral move. Simply saying, “I am only going to approach this through philosophy,” is itself a presupposition. Why philosophy? Is it more objective? Maybe in some cases. But that depends on the topic.

If the topic requires actual data points, then pure reason, cut off from those data points, is probably not going to get us very far. If we are dealing with something that requires information from reality, then reason by itself is not enough. Reason works best as an interpretive tool. We take in data, we consider the relevant facts, and then we use reason to ask the larger questions. Why does this function the way it does? Where did it come from? How does it fit into the bigger picture?

Those are philosophical questions. But even the decision to prioritize philosophy in a certain way is itself a presupposition. And it can become a bias if that methodological commitment excludes relevant data simply because the method has been absolutized.

So I am not convinced that we are capable of approaching a subject with no presuppositions at all. I am also not convinced that every prior commitment is bad. What I would say instead is that presuppositions are unavoidable, while biases are those presuppositions that distort judgment or tend to do so.

That is why we should focus on identifying the presuppositions we bring to the table and asking whether they are helping us see clearly or preventing us from doing so.

Overall, I think this is a fascinating topic because it gets into the heart of epistemology, how we know what we know, and what we are even capable of knowing in the first place. At some point, we simply have to deal with the fact that presuppositions are unavoidable. The goal is not to pretend we do not have them. The goal is to identify them, test them, and make sure they are not distorting our pursuit of truth.

Claiming to have no presuppositions and no bias whatsoever is just not reasonable.