I'm not a big fan of believing things, which seems to irritate people. Usually, when it comes up, I am told that I have to believe in something. The clear inference it that I am lying, too stupid to know what the word "belief" means, or just ducking using the word while still engaging in the activity. Sometimes people just absolutely torture a bunch of innocent words trying to prove that I must be wrong. A popular example is that, being an atheist, I'm told that means I "believe" there is no god. Which, I guess could be true if you believe there is no tooth fairy.
But that is not how I understand or use the word "belief". It is less a noun - the idea being held - as it is a verb - the action of holding onto the idea. I try not to hold things as "true" that I don't (or can't) know to be true. Also, for me, "knowing" something and "believing" something are mutually exclusive. I can't believe something, engaging to some degree in an act of faith, if I know it to be so. We know the moon orbits the earth, taking that knowledge out of the realm of belief.
It would be possible to believe the moon orbits the earth without knowing it was so, but in that case one would actually be making an assumption. Insisting that the assumption is true, which is what believers do, is nothing more than making an assumption about another assumption. That seems a good enough reason to avoid belief, all of itself.
I don't mind making assumptions. We all do it all the time. It is a basic skill for living through a day and it usually works out just fine. In fact it works so well, and is so basic, that we usually forget that we are working with assumptions at all. But it doesn't work all the time and when it doesn't work the results are sometimes fatal. Which is why professions like aviation specifically train people in the art of not falling prey to assumptions. We call it "situational awareness". What it really means is not confusing an assumption with a fact. It is not as easy as it sounds as there are a lot of factors at work.
One is that many assumptions are just one step removed from a fact. It may be a fact that the instrument landing system is operating at an airport shrouded in fog. The assumption is that the indicator in the instrument panel is accurately following the system. But unless the pilot cross checks that indicator with others available, a second ILS indicator, an altimeter, (or two), keeping in mind something as basic as the relationship between speed-over-the-ground and time, he can't know that his aircraft is, in fact, on a safe path to the runway. The fact is the ILS is working. The assumption is the airplane is following its guidance. If the assumption is wrong the pilot is dead.
Another factor at work is even more subtle. Again from the aviation world, it is amazing how many people actually run their aircraft out of fuel, crunching into Mother Earth short of their destination. Inevitably they realize that their fuel situation is critical. However, the desire to have enough fuel becomes so strong they start to believe there is actually enough in the tanks. Psychological needs turn assumptions into belief. (The good news is a surprising numbers of such incidents end up not being fatal.) It is hard to avoid believing a false thing when one's own mind is conspiring to hide the truth.
Sometimes the assumption lies in accepting a fact as, in fact, a fact, when, in fact, it isn't. This can often be a tough one since such non-fact facts often have a long history. For thousands of years it was accepted as a self evident fact that the earth stood still and the sun, moon, and stars revolved around us. The Wanderers (planets) were a puzzle to the sky watches of old and the phases of the moon weren't easy to explain. But the fact of the planet's central roll in the cosmos was embedded so deep that virtually all major religions hang part of their ideology on it. Some of the first to call this for an assumption that was eventually proved wrong paid for their impertinence with their lives. It is hard, and sometimes dangerous, to spot an assumption that everyone else accepts as a fact. So hard, in fact, that finding a contemporary clear example is problematic. Those who try it usually end up out in crank-land where the crazy live in a world foreign to the rest of us. Yet if history is any guide at least one of those lunatics is on to something.
Being tribal animals works against us as well. Some chain of authority is necessary in our affairs, but that requires that we often give more credence to what those in authority tell us than is wise or warranted. My favorite example is the multitude of talking heads that fill the airwaves and Internet. For the most part they are not expert in any subject except talking into a camera or microphone. Yet anything they say carries a hint of fact just because they said it. So ingrained is this respect for authority that, even when they lie to us over and over, and over, again, we still tend to assume anything they say has some basis of fact in it somewhere. Of course sharing the belief of the tribe is basic to what makes us a tribe. Staying a part of the tribe is so ingrained in our evolution it is a wonder anyone ever examines the tribe's assumptions with a critical eye.
Which brings up an even better reason to shy away from belief, we tend to believe what we want to believe with no regard to facts or truth at all. Which makes belief an act of narcissism. This is what I think, so it must be true. I didn't learn it, I didn't study it, I didn't approach the issue with the least bit of skepticism, but I claim to "know" it is true because believing it is true is what I want to do. (It is probably what my tribe thinks as well, but that does not mean I haven't appropriated it completely unto myself.) Belief is not a virtue. Believing things does not lead to wisdom. In fact, as I look around the world, belief leads mostly to violence, intolerance, and ignorance.
Which only happens when those who accept belief as a virtue then confuse it with knowing.
I am not a big fan of belief.
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