As Chucky says, there are some beliefs that as a pragmatic matter, we treat as certain. Maybe we're actually living in a computer simulation, or it's all a dream, but there isn't anything to be gained by even bothering to think about that. We navigate through spacetime assuming that the immediate apprehensions of our senses are generally accurate. The familiar objects around us are really there, the ordinary processes of cause and effect work, the sun is in the sky . . .
There is another category of belief that I am quite certain about. I do not apprehend with my senses directly that the earth is approximately spherical (diameter slightly greater at the equator than pole-to-pole), that it rotates, producing the illusion that the sun, moon and stars move across the sky, and that it revolves around the sun, which is actually a star but it's only about 91.5 million miles away instead of multiple light years. I am quite certain that the earth is about 4.54 billion years old (exactly when the molten blob qualified as "the earth" is perhaps a judgment call) and that all life on earth evolved from a common ancestral cell that existed at least 3.7 billion years ago.
Note that although I am quite certain of every assertion in the previous paragraph, nobody believed most of it until quite recently in historical times. The ancient Greeks new that the earth was approximately spherical and Eratosthenes measured its circumference quite accurately in about 240 BC. Copernicus figured out that the earth revolves around the sun, but he kept it a secret until just before his death in 1543, and it took a while before people generally came to believe it. Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1854, but it wasn't until the 20th Century that the age of the earth became known, along with the mechanism by which the sun shines, and the mechanism of heredity, and the theory of evolution became plausible and then generally accepted.
Note, however, that there are people who do not believe some or any of this. I'm not sure how many of the flat earthers are sincere, and how many are just goofing, but clearly some really do believe it. And there are a whole lot of creationists who don't buy any of those Satanic lies about the age of the earth, or evolution. How can it be that what I know with absolute certainty some people know, with equal certainty, to be wrong? And why, under the circumstances, am I so confident?
Next time.
1 comment:
Because your beliefs are based ultimately on facts/observations. Even though most of them are based on long chains of inference and deductions, those chains have been tested, with maximal skepticism, for any chink/flaw that might have broken them. And even the possible sources of uncertainty have been acknowledged and factored in to the amount of faith we can have on the correctness of that chain.
Granted, the totality of all that data and reasoning are beyond any individual's ability to comprehend. (I'm never going to comprehend photosynthesis!) But we have confidence in the 'priesthood' that has constructed this edifice because their 'religious' practices are based on an almost complete lack of faith and a complete skepticism about any claim they are asked to accept. This fanatical insistence on demolishing any assertion made to them means that those few that survive this hell are likely to contain a good deal of truth. Even these provisionally accepted claims will again be subjected to intense scrutiny as other additions to the edifice being constructed cast a shadow of doubt on them. The fact that every belief is (ideally) subject to review as other beliefs emerge gives you this certainty.
Competing ideologies generally start from the other end. They start with something that is "known" to be absolutely true, and construct explanations consistent with that knowledge. With enough effort a (pretty) consistent structure can be assembled. As you have repeatedly pointed out, the Bible is an especially silly starting point for this approach. The difficulty is that as these explanations inevitably become increasing baroque believers are asked to accept increasingly strange explanations. But since the initial premise is necessarily true, all the rest is, too. Certainty is thus baked in to the system.
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