I was listening to Freethought Radio the other day and the speaker, Dr David Eller, was talking about belief and came to the conclusion that phrases like ‘I believe in god’ or ‘I believe in dragons’ were, essentially, the only real instances where we can use the word ‘belief’.
As he quite rightly pointed out, there are many commonly used phrases that we can use that include the word ‘belief’ - like ‘I believe that liver tastes terrible’ or ‘I believe the earth is round’ or ‘I believe in Evolution’ when in fact, none of these phrases are actually correct.
We don’t believe that liver tastes terrible - what we really mean is ‘I find liver unpalatable’. We don’t believe that the earth is round - we really mean that ‘the evidence is so strong that I accept as a fact that the earth is round’. Similarly, we don’t ‘believe in Evolution’ - as with the earth being round proposition, the evidence for the theory is so overwhelming that we also accept that as a fact.
To state that we ‘believe in god’ (or ‘we believe in dragons’) is actually the correct usage as what we are really stating is this:
‘Even though all my senses tell me that a god doesn’t exist and even though there is absolutely no real evidence to back up my belief - I still choose to believe there is a god.’
Like the dragon myth, belief in a god (or gods - you really do need to state which one it is that you believe in) is just simply another case of irrational thinking.
Why some of us choose to do this has been covered here many times so I won’t go into that, but I found his reasoning to be fantastic and put religious belief into clearer perspective for me. The reasons that humans choose to believe something that has no basis, evidence or proofs for is a complete mystery to me.
And that really is the key to the whole ‘belief’ concept - mystery. Humans, since the dawn of time have always had to have mystery in their lives.
Something to lift them out of the drudgery or the danger or the despair.
Just something to believe in that is above all that.
Reality check - we now live in the 21st Century. I can understand forest tribes believing in the supernatural, I can understand elderly people who have been brought up in a belief structure since they were children believing in a god.
But honestly, it’s time that the rest of the civilised world grew up and let go of our ‘grownup Santa Claus’ and just got on with living the one precious life that we have.
Tags: churches & cults, faith
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