LOOK! NO GOD!

Deciding What to Believe

We can make an informed and intelligent decision on the likely nature of our world.

Or we can just believe whatever we are told.

Most religions require their adherents to have faith and not to doubt or question their tenets. This ensures that people are likely to remain in the religion.

In the article ‘Existence’, I explained that I build a mental picture of my surroundings – the universe I live in. I called it ‘My World’. I build that picture on the basis of my perceptions and what other people tell me.

In general my world will have a lot in common with the external world (the world that exists independent of me, whether objective or subjective), though it won’t be exactly the same – there are quite a lot of things I will be wrong about or that I will be totally unaware of.

The closer my world corresponds to the external world, the better adjusted to the external world I will be and the better the decisions that I will make. The correspondence becomes closer as I learn more about the external world and so progressively adjust and update my world.

I can learn a bit about the external world through my senses, but, as I am one person and there are billions of other people out there who have seen different things, I can learn a lot more through communication from those other people, either through them speaking to me or through media like books, television, the Internet etc. For instance, I might only know that the earth is round, that Antarctica and Pluto exist, that there was once a Roman Empire and that we are made of particles that can exhibit quantum entanglement because other people have told me.

The trouble is that not everything I am told is true. Much of it is contradictory and thus it cannot all be true. Some people tell me the earth is round; some say it’s flat; some say there’s a god; some say there isn’t; some say abortion is wrong; others say it isn’t and so on.

On each of these issues on which there are different opinions, I have to decide which seems most likely and I build the most likely version into my world, albeit sometimes with the acceptance that that knowledge is tentative.

Doing this involves critical thinking and weighing up of the evidence both ways. What I see with my own eyes is generally not in contention, but what others tell me does need to be critically assessed rather than just being accepted without question.

Of course, the importance of the information to me will determine the amount of effort I put into assessing it and how confident I want to be that my assessment is correct. If I am told that there was a magnitude 7 earthquake in Western China, unless I have imminent plans to go there, I would probably not question it, but just accept it as most likely true. However, if I am told that the spot on my back looks like a melanoma, I would put a lot more effort into checking out whether it is. So, how do I decide how likely something is to be true? There are three main considerations: how well the new information fits with what I already know, the quality of the evidence that the new information is correct, and the credentials of the informant.

The fit with what I know

If I see a photo on social media of a 40-metre shark that was supposedly caught in the North Sea, I would consider it unlikely to be true because, to my knowledge, the biggest sharks ever found are less than 20 m long. If I really needed to be sure, I would probably do some further research starting with checking out the comments on the post, then doing an Internet search on the incident.

On the other hand, if I see a photo of a volcanic eruption in Hawaii with lava flowing over a main road, I would much more readily accept it as true because I was already aware that that sort of thing happens quite a lot there. Again, if I wanted to be more sure, I might to an Internet search to see if other articles back it up.

The Quality of the Evidence

Much of what is posted on social media is untrue: people post as much to persuade others to think a certain way or to do a certain thing as to inform. Sometimes they post just for a joke or to see how many people they can fool. Any claim that is true can generally be backed up with evidence. For instance, if I claim that certain politicians are running a paedophile ring and present no evidence, most people would (and should) take what I say with a pinch of salt. However, if I show a video of a couple of those politicians discussing it in a way that incriminates them and videos of other respected public figures backing up my claim and statements from alleged victims made in court, then people would be much more inclined to consider my claim likely to be true – and quite rightly so.

Many claims on social media are presented without evidence and yet are believed by many uncritical people. Consider chemtrails. Someone came up with the idea that airplane trails are chemicals being sprayed into the environment to control our minds. No evidence was presented. But many people who distrust authority latched onto the idea to make themselves feel better about their mistrust. Other conspiracy theories like 5G and Covid, work the same way.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have scientific publications. There are some 8 million people in the world working as scientists. They publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, around a million papers a year. To be accepted for publication, a paper must be backed up by convincing evidence – e.g. experimental results that are very unlikely to be obtained if the thesis of the paper is not true. The paper is submitted to the journal and the journal editors then send copies of it to a number of other scientists who specialise in the same field. These scientists go through it with a fine-tooth comb looking for any shortcomings in the evidence, any flaws in the logic and any other possible interpretations of the results. If everyone is happy with it, it is then published. After that, much of the scientific community working in that area read it and any one of them, if they find a flaw, can respond to the paper and their response will be published in the same journal.

This ensures that the body of scientific knowledge is based on thorough evidence and free from logical flaws. Of course, it is not absolutely fool-proof – people have gotten away with errors or deliberate disinformation, like the publication of the Piltdown Man, but, because of the safeguards, these are very rare.

It is sometimes said that scientists worldwide have to go along with the scientific consensus imposed by some shadowy organisation or lose their credibility and their respect – and maybe their jobs. However, no such shadowy organisation has ever been identified. And besides, scientists don’t make their names by agreeing with the status quo – anyone can do that; any scientific advance has to add to or challenge accepted knowledge. Einstein, probably the most celebrated scientist of all time, made his name by showing that Newtonian mechanics, accepted as gospel for over 200 years, was in fact wrong. He didn’t just say it was wrong, he argued the case convincingly. Even though his General Relativity was published in 1915, it wasn’t until 1919 when his equations could be tested empirically during a solar eclipse, that his theory was accepted by nearly everyone as correct.

Supporters of biblical 6-day creation often claim that no scientist would dare to publish evidence for it. But, any scientist who did come up with convincing evidence that creation did occur in 6 days, that the universe was only a few thousand years old and that evolution never happened, would revolution science in a way more profound than Einstein did and would be an instant scientific celebrity. Out of 8 million scientists, one would think that someone would take that opportunity if they could find the evidence. But no one ever has.

A Note on False Evidence

It should be said that false evidence can be presented to back up a claim. For instance, ‘creation scientists’ regularly publish ‘scientific’ evidence for 6-day creation. This evidence might be related to physics, to cosmology, to radiometric dating or geology, to the fossil record etc. The evidence can look quite convincing to those who do not know much about the particular field of science that it uses. It relies on the fact that the audience doesn’t know any better – a technique sometimes called ‘blinding with science’.

For instance, I once attended a lecture presented by a creationist to researchers at the Australian National University. Talking to the researchers afterwards, it turned out that many found some of the arguments quite convincing, though every one of them found flaws in the arguments that used their area of expertise. For instance, a biologist was quite taken in by the evidence from radiometric dating, but found flaws in the biological evidence, while a researcher involved in radiometric dating said that the biological arguments seemed sound, while what was said about radiometric dating was quite wrong with claims about dating techniques that were totally unfounded and presented just to make the results appear unreliable.

The creation scientists had ‘evidence’ for creation, but that evidence would never pass peer review and scrutiny from experts in the appropriate fields. Creation science is published in creation science magazines like Ex Nihilo, where the articles only have to be accepted by the editors of the journal who are not experts in all fields of science, who already 100% believe in 6-day creation anyway, and whose agenda is to convert people rather than inform them.

The Credentials of the Informant

Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and the like have built credibility by consistently making claims that can be backed up and that aren’t later knocked down. They are accepted as credible by the vast majority of the scientific community, and indeed of the world in general. Lesser scientists have to build their credibility though their publications, lectures etc., but even a single publication, because of the process that it has to go through to be accepted, ascribes significant credibility.

A user who anonymously posts something on social media has no credentials. What they post might well be true, but it might well be uninformed or even deliberate lies: we have no way of telling. Critical thinkers will dismiss such claims as not worthy of consideration (unless valid evidence of the truth of the claim appears later). Many people do not think critically, however, but rather just accept anything they are told simply on the basis that it would suit their way of thinking or their beliefs or agenda if it were true.

Religion

Religion falls into this category. Someone comes up with a story, writes it down and gets a few followers. Most religions go no further than that and die a natural death. But some, like say Mormonism, do maintain a following and the following grows. Years or hundreds of years later, what was written is ascribed an authority that comes from the fact that it has been passed down through the generation, sometimes its origin being forgotten and therefore ascribable to divine providence. By that stage, people tend to accept it on that basis, even though there is and never has been any evidence that it is true and even though the author had no credentials, often because we don’t even know who the author was.

There are many religious dogmas in circulation in the world. Most contradict all the others and so at most one can be correct. Deciding which religion, if any, is correct is a logically impossible task because none present any compelling evidence that they are the real one and none have an originator with any credentials beyond simple tradition.

Still, most of the world accepts one religion or another. Do they do this by comparing them all to see which is most likely to be correct? No. In fact, that sort of critical assessment is anathema to most religions because it is known that it will not lead to acceptance of that religion. Instead, religions require faith, belief that the claims are true without there being any compelling evidence that makes that religion more likely than any other (or than no religion at all).

Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

2 Corinthians 5:7 We live by faith, not by sight.

In fact, most religions create a culture in society that respects ‘people of faith’ and denigrates ‘infidels’. Even infidels tend to go along with that idea, considering it disrespectful to decry or argue against someone’s religion. There are three more factors that contribute to the maintenance of religions: early indoctrination, peer pressure and sanctions against heretics.

Early Indoctrination

We are very impressionable when young. This is partly because our world view is just beginning to form and just about any new information can be incorporated into it without in contradicting anything we already know. For instance, we don’t know enough to realise that a fat man in a red suit can’t squeeze down our chimney or that delivering presents to billions of houses in one night from a single sleigh is not feasible.

There is an evolutionary reason for this impressionability. When we are young, the people who have most influence on us and do most to mould our thinking are our parents. And our parents are normally very keen to ensure our survival. Thus, children who tend to accept what their parents say without question are the ones most likely to survive to adulthood and pass on their genes. In other words, genes that produce that childhood impressionability are going to become more common from generation to generation and will eventually become ubiquitous.

If our parents bring up to be polite, to not waste money, to hate the people from the neighbouring country or to believe God is watching everything we do, then we will most likely carry those values with us throughout life. In fact, even if we see later that some of those values are inappropriate, it can be hard to shake them: people who grew up in the depression often find it hard to spend money even after they become wealthy. Someone who has a frightening experience with a grasshopper at the age of two might well maintain a fear of them throughout life, even if they become a biologist and know for sure they will not harm them in any way.

It was Aristotle in 300 BCE who said, ‘Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man’.

While this childhood impressionability has its benefits, it can also be used to indoctrinate young people into certain ways of thinking that might be neither correct nor in their best interests. Religion is probably one of the best examples of this. Most children brought up in seriously Christian families tend to remain Christian throughout life. Most children brought up in seriously Islamic families tend to remain Muslim throughout life.

The same goes for other religions. This strongly suggests that religion results from indoctrination rather than from divinely inspired knowledge. Divine inspiration should lead all people to the same religion irrespective of where they live in the world and who brings them up. But that’s not what we see.

Peer Pressure

If everyone around us believes a certain thing, we tend to go along with it. We might rationalise the acceptance of the belief as ‘If everyone believes it, they must have a reason and they must be right’, or we might just accept it without further thought or question.

The advantage of this in evolutionary terms is that it keeps us part of the social group and maintains cohesion of the group as a whole. Being social animals dependent on others for our survival, these things are important.

In Medieval Europe, almost everyone accepted the Christian story and so most people never questioned it. The few who thought otherwise were heretics, deviants. There was something seriously wrong with them; they were evil and needed institutions like the Inquisition to cure them.

In fact even into the early 20th Century, the people in many countries were almost exclusively Christian and they saw people of other religions as misled by the devil.

The same thing applies in many Islamic countries even today except that Islam is the unquestionable truth and Christianity or any other belief is the work of the devil.

In Roman times, nearly everyone assumed that the pagan gods controlled the things they needed like rain and good harvests and so everyone had a duty to pay them the requisite homage. In fact, the main reason Christianity was persecuted was that people were worried that if not everyone paid homage to the pagan god, those gods would be displeased and bring disaster upon the people.

The pagan mystery cult of Mithra with its secret and exclusive ceremonies was very popular amongst the military in Roman times. Clearly this was not a result of childhood indoctrination as children weren’t included in the cult. It was more a case of peer pressure.

Modern cults operate by isolating their members from outside influence and painting outsiders as misled and to be avoided. Those in the cult are then surrounded by people with the beliefs imposed by the cult leader.

Similarly, until recently, mainstream Christianity maintained belief by having the same message come from home, church, Sunday school and regular school, so that it seemed everyone was thinking the same thing. Nowadays, though, at least in many Western countries, most schools don’t push Christianity, and most people don’t go to church. As a result, most people don’t grow up assuming that the Christian story is the truth.

It's not just religious beliefs that tend to conform with those around us. Until recently, most people were superstitious, avoiding anything numbered 13 and worrying if they were told their horoscope offered bad news.

Sanctions Against Heretics

As well as peer pressure, people who don’t accept the religion of those around them can be subject to sanction. The Inquisition is probably the best example of this where heretics were tortured until they either recanted their different beliefs or died. Most of society saw conformity as preferable to torture and death.

The Inquisition has been disbanded now, but Islamic law still contains serious sanctions. Apostacy is punishable by death. Apostacy means changing one’s mind about the truth of the religion. If one was brought up Muslim, then any departure from it is considered to be apostacy. Blasphemy is also a capital offense. Saying that one doesn’t believe in Allah and Muhammed is blasphemy.

Sanctions like these tend to ensure the continuation of the religion. Torture for heresy was a decision of the church rather than a command from scripture and this allowed an end to the Inquisition. But death for apostacy and blasphemy is prescribed in Islamic scripture and so the idea won’t go out of fashion. At present, most Islamic countries don’t enforce these laws. This is to a large extent because of pressure from other countries. But if most countries become Islamic-majority, then there will be less reason not to implement full Islamic law. If that happens, it is hard to see how Islam could ever end.

Making a Decision

At present, most people are free to consider the evidence and make up their mind what to believe. Unfortunately, many don’t. They see doubting the religion they were brought up in as a sin that can lead to disbelief and hell, so they are afraid to even consider other possibilities.

But, if you are reading this, then you are not one of those and you are in fact considering the evidence and on your way to making an informed and intelligent decision.

Image Acknowledgements

Einstein: Wikimedia Commons

Noah's Ark: StockCake

Students: Flickr

Lift buttons: Wikimedia Commons

Inquisition: Flickr