The Legitimacy of Belief
December 7th, 2007Sometimes I wonder: What is harder, waging war, or making peace?
Waging war is not all that easy. In war we kill, and die, and suffer the devastation of wartime injuries, both physical and psychological, not to mention the loss of national treasure. But to my mind, as hard as war is, making peace is that much harder. Why? In war, we fight for what we believe. And we all feel good about fighting for our beliefs. It gives us goose bumps just thinking about it.
But for peace to happen we often have to give up some of our deeply held beliefs, in a search for something we can believe in even more, like peace. And it’s hard to let go of our beliefs. It’s like letting go of a part of ourselves, because to a great extent, especially in modern times, we are what we believe. Not that it had to be that way, and not that it was that way for most of our existence as a species, but it is that way today.
And so it seems that our beliefs are at the heart of issues of war and peace. What we choose to believe will very much determine whether we head toward war, or toward peace. The question arises, therefore: What are the legitimate grounds for belief? Or put another way: How do we know that what we believe is true?
Would it be too much to suggest that most of us come to most of our beliefs by sheer chance? Let’s take religion as an example, since religious beliefs are often a cause of violence and war. Isn’t it the case that most of us adopt our religious beliefs due mostly to the families we happen to be born into? For the most part, we are Jews, or Christians, or Muslims, or Hindus, or Buddhists because our families are. A Jew could have been a Muslim if only he were born into a different family. Once in a while people convert, but for the most part, that is the exception, not the rule.
Does it make sense that the accident of birth confers legitimacy to our beliefs? And what kind of legitimacy are we talking about? We’re talking about the legitimacy that would have us kill one another in God’s name, no less, because somebody else’s beliefs are different from our own. Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this picture?
Maybe we can point to other sources of legitimacy for our beliefs, sources which can truly confirm the validity of our beliefs. Maybe we can point to Holy Scripture as the confirmation of God’s truth. The trouble is, however, that all religions contain scriptural passages which are not palatable to the modern mind. In Judaism, for example, the book of Deuteronomy tells us that if a man marries a woman, and she turns out not to be a virgin, he is supposed to kill her on her father’s doorstep. I think it’s safe to say that Jews, throughout the ages, chose to ignore this passage. Why? Because it makes no sense. That’s why. And take a look at the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. That’s a trip if ever I took one. And what about the “72 virgins” in Islam? If I’m not mistaken it’s a mistake in translation. It’s really “72 white raisins.”
Why do I bring into question the legitimacy of religious belief? Am I against religion? No. I consider religion as a legitimate pathway to God. But as with all other pathways; we need to stick to the path to get to where we’re going. And when we sense that we’re heading in the wrong direction, we check our compass to get back on track. And to my mind, the best and only compass we have, when it really comes down to it, is the universal moral compass of Common Sense.
Because so much is on the line, we may no longer be able to afford the luxury of false belief, whether religious, or any other belief, for that matter. False belief will embolden us to go to war for the wrong reasons. We may have been able to get away with it in the past, but only at the expense of scores of millions of corpses left behind in the wake of false ideologies. But the potential devastation of modern weaponry makes the consequences of false belief too costly to bear.
And so, I submit to you, for your consideration, the possibility that there is only one source for legitimate belief, and that is our shared notion of Common Sense. If an idea makes sense to you, then believe in it. If it doesn’t, then let it go. We can no longer afford to let the accident of birth, or the content of scripture, or the persuasiveness of religious leaders, to convince us of the truth, when deep down we know that the truth is to be found elsewhere.
As between reason and faith, I prefer to believe in what makes sense. And I have come to believe that only through the language of Common Sense does God actually talk to us. The rest is pretense. And pretense will give us only the semblance of truth, but never the real thing.
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Whatever God there may be, He did give us both intelligence and intuition. Using them could hardly be contrary to His plan…
even within the realm of modern things and sciences, it’s very hard to find some universal foundations on which we might build consensus and a legitimate system of beliefs.
for example, consider the case of that british professor who is a great man in biology and expressed his view about Africans: they are less intelligent compared with other people in other continents, then their situation is less likely to improve… it was probably based on some concrete evidences he had found in some experiments, but many people condemned it and called it racism.
therefore, I think, if any belief is likely to turn into an action, it should be based on a universal agreement… a pragmatic approach, ya?
Two Cents, I agree with your assessment that if there is a God, which I think there is, that the intelligence and intuition He gave us are part of His plan. That combination of intuition and intelligence I call Common Sense, which I define as: The intuitive wisdom to conform our thoughts and actions to universally shared truths and values.
And Mohammad, I agree with you as well that “it is very hard to find some universal foundations on which we might build consensus and a legitimate system of beliefs.” Difficult, but not impossible. If there is any hope for our species, it will begin with an ideological framework which we can all relate to. And actually, I think that the human condition does lend itself to such a universal connection, if we only bother to connect the dots.
The fact that there is racism, and that people are naturally suspicious of statements that allude to it, does not alter the fact that we share much more in common, than divides us. Think of a new born baby, and look to his or her needs, and you’ll quickly come up with universal principles of common sense which we ignore at our peril.
How about “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”? The principle of empathy is a much ignored one in our modern world. It seems far easer to imagine “the other”, whoever that may be, as having alien motivations, impossible to understand and thus not worth the bother. When layered in the sediment of religion, racism, tribalism or nationalism, this feeling of disconnect can be devestating. Social, empathic behaviour is not innate to humans, though, but learned over the aeons. It is important to remember that humans were hunters for hundreds of thousands of years before they became sedentary farmers and eventually urbanites (those of you who believe the universe is 6 thousand years old, “shrug”)and the instincts of violence and competition for survival run very deep in our species. The second story of creation, Cain and Abel, is about these two primal philosophies: whether to advance your lot through peaceful toil or to kill the peaceful toiler and take his stuff. This all goes back to these “leftover” hunter instincts, having no outlet when agrarian societies became the norm, manifesting as all these cliquish feelings that keep most of the planet at each others throats in varying shades. Our problem is really outdated biological software that has become racial malware!
Eric, I think there is a natural tendency to conclude that the violence we see swirling about dates back to the brutishness of the caveman. But actually, I don’t think that’s the case. Whether due to innate qualities, or learned behavior, it turns out that the cavemen were actually quite gentle with one another. Because they were hunters and gatherers; there was no real reason to kill one another. Would you kill your neighbor just to steal a couple of peanuts? Why bother?
It would not have been possible for cavemen to survive for some 2 million years if they were really at each other’s throats. This was borne out by a movie I saw on the Discovery Channel called The Rise of Man. The movie presents a lot of anthropological evidence that cavemen, for the most part, did embody the Golden Rule, as you allude to, “Treat others as you would have them treat you.” This rule is perhaps the corner stone of Common Sense.
The modern tendency to look at people outside our circle as “The Other” is very destructive, as you suggest, and is not in keeping with the legacy of ancient man. None of us is “the other.” We are all here trying to make a living, and survive yet another day, as best we can. We have to somehow find a way to get back to the sense of commonality that is so much a part of the human condition, but that seems to elude us at every turn.