What we Believe

So this post is rather long. I apologize in advance.


Everyone, in any issue they are passionate about, has a single position they would like to advance as true, for they believe it true. These ‘true’ positions, however, are often in conflict with each other and all but one must, therefore, be false and some of the facts being misconstrued. But because “we believe in what we want to believe,” the simple facts cannot so easily dissuade people, nor will a lack of facts. The desire to hold truth (and, more specifically, one’s own truth) is more powerful than external evidence.

This holds true for religious, political, conspirital, scientific, or any other type of belief. This makes it difficult for anyone to disprove something or to even install an effective seed of doubt, for one simply refuses to believe or acknowledge that which stands against what they consider to be true.

When dealing with truth, however, we can offer no quarter. One cannot except what is patently false as true simply because it supports a certain world view. To do so would be intellectually dishonest, the death knell of thought.

There are four levels to each persons beliefs. There is 1) what they want, 2) what they want to believe, 3) what they believe, and 4) the truth. Let us take a moment to examine each of these in greater depth.

What they want: Most people, to some capacity or another, want humanity to be peaceful and prosperous. Desires such as these, however, are almost impossible and all people agree. It is highly unlikely that anyone even remotely intelligent would actually believe that man is peaceful, but they probably desire it.

What people want to believe is that which is something conceivable but which there is not enough evidence to stir their belief. Under this category is that some people believe because of its evidence which someone else does not, because, while there is evidence, it is not enough to convince them.

What people believe is simply that which people believe. They may or may not have evidence for their position, but they desire it to be true and have found no reason potent enough to cause disbelief (or they disbelieved the evidence). It is in this category that convictions are held, whether they are religious, political, or even conspirital. Peoples’ world views are generally based on their beliefs and they shape everything people do.

The truth is the most difficult of the four to accurately and fully understand. While many people hold conflicting beliefs and desires, there is always only one truth. Therefore, in each conflict only one of the views can be correct, no matter how convinced the parties are. Jesus was either God or he wasn’t. 9-11 was either a conspiracy or it wasn’t. No currently held view may actually be right (such as the case of quantum physics) but at most only one can be true.

This moves us to the question of how we find the truth. Despite popular opinion, there is Truth. The world, however, often ignores this, and therefore Truth is not firmly grasped by people, and in some cases, is not held at all. For the purpose of simplification, Truth will be considered that which is an accurate representation of the world.

There are certain criteria that help to show truth (we can, in essence, prove nothing, therefore truth is revealed but nigh complete agreement). First and foremost, evidence is necessary for proof, both in the positive and the negative. Positive evidence is offered as proof that Theory is effective in describing the world. Negative evidence simply works to disprove other theories. For example, positive evidence for the dangers of Communism, would be Stalin’s regime, while negative proofs to the same end would show the lack of such horrors in free states (not that free states are without problems, just that the problems are far less than under Communism).

To be valid, evidence must, in someway, point back to an eyewitness of some sort. This could be a person who saw (in our previous example) the death camps, or somebody who knew a person who vanished after expressing anti-Communist ideas. It could be as far removed as a demographist who notes an odd shift in the population. Only one of these people were, in the most basic sense, an eyewitness, but all three noted things that pointed to a death camp. It is also well to notice that only the eyewitness conclusively knew the purpose of the deportation/deaths.

Secondly, the weight of the evidence must be understood. If ten eyewitnesses claim Communism is the best thing that happened to them, while ten thousand said it was the worst, one must lay put extra weight behind the mass testimony. This does not mean that the majority are always right, but when they are witnesses, they are less likely to be hoodwinked.

Third off, proposed or theoretical truth cannot contradict absolute truth. Therefore, one cannot say that birds fly because gravity does not affect them, for that proposed truth contradicts the known truth of the Law of Gravity.

The conclusion we reach here, however, is that no body approaches a study without at least some degree of prejudice, therefore forcing an examination of any issue to be moved from the issue itself to the theoretical realm of truth, where a wrong cannot, under any circumstance, exist along side a right. This applies equally to the study of the Bible as anything else. Many enter their study of the work trying to prove it wrong, or that the traditional view of its origins (such as years written and authors) is false. Needless to say, it is easy to see how the intent can mar the outcome.