WHAT REALLY MATTERS: TRUTH OR BELIEF?

Definitions


*Truth is the state of being in accord with fact or reality.

*Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.

So these 2 words are intimately related.  Of the 2 concepts, our beliefs are arguably more important to us because they are truly under our possession and our individual actions are necessarily dictated by them.

Our current state of beliefs

Yet, in practice, our beliefs had proven to be highly unreliable.  According to a Harris Poll in 2009 of 2,303 adult Americans, the prevalence of belief in the following entities were found to be in high percentages:

God                                                     82%
Miracles                                               76%
Heaven                                                75%
Jesus being God or the son of God        73%
Angels                                                 72%
Hell                                                      61%
Darwin's theory of evolution                    45% (the only scientifically-verified theory)
Ghosts                                                42%
UFOs                                                  32%
Reincarnation                                       20%

It may shock us to know that many more people believe in miracles than in the veracity of evolution.  This is especially alarming if we remember that false beliefs will lead to faulty actions!

The biology of beliefs

To psychologist and science historian Michael Shermer, who is adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University, this is hardly surprising and he has a ready explanation.  In his book, The Believing Brain, his theory of "belief-dependent realism" contends that beliefs come first, and explanations and justifications for these beliefs only follow afterwards.

Apparently, the brain is a belief-forming machine that does this not by analyzing data with logic, but by actively looking for patterns in sensory data and then infusing them with its own meaning. Once formed, our brains subconsciously seek out confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs and thereby reinforce them in a positive feedback loop.

In other words, beliefs arise from subjective, personal, emotional and psychological factors as influenced by family, friends, culture and society. They are rarely the result of dispassionate analysis of the facts.


Methods of fixing beliefs

According to Charles Sanders Pierce, beliefs are fixed in 4 possible ways:
(1)  Method of tenacity - you hold on to your beliefs stubbornly regardless of any contrary evidence.
(2)  Method of authority - you subscribe to beliefs as dictated by figures of authority.
(3)  Method of congruity - beliefs are held for their intuitive reasonableness.
(4)  Method of science - scientific beliefs are discoverable by subjecting fallible hypotheses to a continuous process of independent testing, experimentation and evaluation by sensory perception.  Only beliefs established by the scientific method are considered safe and reliable enough to help us match them to reality.  So, how do we get people to adopt the method of science and reject the methods of tenacity, authority or congruity?

Is education the answer?


In his paper "The Effects of Education on Americans’ Religious Practices, Beliefs, and Affiliations" published in the Review of Religious Research in August 2010, Philip Schwadel contended that increases in education does not uniformly lead to declines in religious participation, belief, and affiliation. Apparently, education influences strategies of action, and these strategies of action are relevant to some religious beliefs and activities but not others. For example, education negatively affects exclusivist religious viewpoints and biblical literalism but not belief in God or the afterlife. Education positively affects switching religious affiliations, particularly to a mainline Protestant denomination, but not disaffiliation. Though education is positively associated with questioning the role of religion in secular society, it does not increase support for curbing the public opinions of religious leaders.  So, the effects of education on religion, and on a wider scale - its effects on the fixing of beliefs are complex.

How then can we improve the belief-forming process?

A qualitative enhancement of our beliefs can only come about from a personal psychological readiness to improve and a deeper social and cultural shift towards a humbler and more honest evaluation of our own opinions and prejudices.

At the same time, we should also realize that non-scientifically derived beliefs like religious beliefs can play a useful role in reinforcing group cohesion and social co-operation on the one hand, and in encouraging altruistic and moral behavior among their adherents on the other.  An esoteric understanding of the metaphysics of existence may also help to ease the existential anxieties of life, something that is too much to ask of science!