Is this a silly question, leading to confusion? Belief only has any relevance to faith when we’re asked to accept something relating to an abstract concept as a truth when that something could not possibly be truth; backed by nothing. Is belief relevant to knowledge based on scientific enquiry?
We should not bracket or place the unprovable and insubstantial, with tangible, evidence-based knowledge; but this is exactly what we’re doing when we ask whether people believe in angels, demons, UFO’s, Illuminati or other, as yet unprovable objects and fantasies. And yet people do accept them as if their existence were not an article of faith.
Do people believe in the sun and the moon, the changing seasons or the chairs they are sitting on? These objects and phenomena exist. But when we want to examine something strange; something we don’t understand, have never defined or examined before, we have to ask a different set of questions, including defining the meaning of the question itself, not whether it is believable. What is this phenomenon? Can I see it, feel it, touch it, smell it? Is it influencing my life? How does it work? Are there recurrent regularities and irregularities? Beginning this way, with an open mind, anyone can take a focussed look at all the evidence.
Believing in something without investigation is to accept, implicitly, the thing exists to be believed in. That, is a matter of faith. Blind faith.
Caitlin Johnston once said,
“Atheism and secularism, once fringe positions, are now mainstream as people have discovered that they don’t need to allow their lives to be controlled by words written by long dead men, in far off lands from historical and cultural contexts which have no relevance to our own circumstances.”
You need blind faith to believe something ephemeral, and people will not allow that to happen anymore.
A sincere and honest investigation into any question of faith will force humanity to expand its consciousness, consider truths and possibilities it, collectively, has never considered before. I believe there is a growing need to apply this approach to the issue of the future direction in which humanity can grow. Instead of the current direction in which humanity is being encouraged, nudged and driven.
Covid is real. There are so many different ideas about what Covid actually is, but the predominant scientific consensus seems to be that it is a mutated flu virus; in the same category as the common cold. Many people die of flu, around the world, on a seasonal basis. During the recent pandemic, flu disappeared; we did not see flu for well over a year. Instead, people died of Covid. Here, there seems to be an article of faith I cannot reconcile.
I had a surprise a couple of days ago when I typed a common phrase into a popular search engine. The understanding I held of this phrase was at odds with all of the dictionary definitions presented to me by the search engine results. Being an ardent empiricist, my world-view has been carefully built through experimentation and the reading of specialist magazine articles written by experts at the publicly available cutting edge in their field of endeavour. I like to think that by reading widely, from as many different sources as possible, my knowledge of a subject is well informed, underpinned by a thorough understanding of common knowledge.
I used to believe, Conspiracy Theory is an alternative assertion, developed from the same physical and intellectual evidence, articles and principles employed to develop the original theory. Same evidence and observations found, upon investigation by many advocates, to be strong enough to challenge an established truth. Or, to paraphrase, an alternative theory based on the same evidence.
As humans, our brains are wired to accept the first version of any event we are shown. To overcome an established theory, the second, alternative theory, must have evidence stronger than the evidence we accepted for the first.
I must overcome my opinion bias to accept recent search results. Conspiracy Theory now means a belief that a powerful cabal of people are working to take control of the world, this planet.
