Continuing Thought...
I suspect that a lot of people (if not all people) do mistake belief for knowledge. How do you know something that you didn’t personally experience? And even if you personally experienced it, how do you know that your previous experiences didn’t color your perception? You don’t. You either believe or disbelieve the given facts and correlated experiences.
That’s not such a bad thing, mind you, it would be pretty hard to know most things that we commonly believe. But it does lead to my next question...
When do you give up a belief? If you were faced with an undeniable series of facts, would you change the way you think, or would you unswervingly hold onto the old idea as truth? At what point does emotional and intellectual knowledge become stunted because of an unwillingness to consider new and challenging information?
That’s not such a bad thing, mind you, it would be pretty hard to know most things that we commonly believe. But it does lead to my next question...
When do you give up a belief? If you were faced with an undeniable series of facts, would you change the way you think, or would you unswervingly hold onto the old idea as truth? At what point does emotional and intellectual knowledge become stunted because of an unwillingness to consider new and challenging information?
posted by RT at 1:25 PM
10 Comments:
I grew up in a christian home and became one at a young age but it didn't become anything or mean anything to me until I was in my early/mid 20s. I came to know what I believed to be real in my own experience, and no one or nothing can take that from me.
Yup, I'd change. If you can't adapt, you become isolated in your own world.
But, I won't change because of emotional information but rather, empirical information.
I'd say that point of change comes when you find a used condom in their car and your belief that he was cheating along with previous doubts becomes fact.
Personally, I'm rather chaotic and disbelieve most facts because people are always readjusting, disputing and finding new ones.
Why do you assume I'm talking about religion, Jill?
Yeah, OK. So I talk a lot about religion... But this isn't one of those times :P
(Thank you!)
I'm talking more about challenging common beliefs, (not excluding, but not limited to religion... Which is way I didn't want to say anything, but I'd rather it not go in that direction because religion is an entity all it's own.)
If it helps, think Columbus. Before he set sail, everyone knew the world was flat... A few years ago, we knew we were going to be consumed by our own waste... A few weeks ago, we knew we were prepared to handle the major devastation that a hurricane could cause... Oddly enough, we now think we (with a couple of exceptions) know we're prepared again. (Note: I'm not trying to concentrate on one subject in particular, but it does seem like a pretty good example.)
Thing is, if you blindly follow the norm, how do you learn anything new?
Well, since you're not talking about religion, because that's what I thought, I never believe until someone else has tried it.
I mean really, I'm so NOT buying that teeth whitening stuff until I've had a friend say, "It works!" Yup, twice a day now.
Besides, did you really expect some Jenius comment after the one Vavoom left? I think not!
Rt are you still living in my sons room because I just had this similar conversation with Lloyd. Did you overhear us talking? heheheheh
It was about religion so I won't go there. :)
Josh has a girl hidden in his room? Nahhh he hasn't even hid his first girlie magazine yet.
The belief that facts stay the same is the first one to go!
See? I knew I liked you guys for some reason! LoL
Fear not, we'll get to religion eventually...
Post a Comment
<< Home