Beliefs

I was reading an essay by Bertrand Russel and one of the assumptions he destroys is that people who are not very knowledgeable think that they have little idea about the world around them. On the contrary, these very people have a detailed set of beliefs which gives a structure to their world. They have a rain God who causes rain, the sun God which gives light, the moon God which gives light at night etc. etc.

There are people who do not see the pattern that these people see in the world. I guess the more mentally capable have a different structure that defines their world. Their need is much more than mere material. God, Reality, consciousness, Nature, Purpose, Cause and Effect - the list of mental constructions to give more structure to and hence more control on our world for them can go on and on.

And all these constructions are based on our need. There are people in this world, who only need good material things and their mental constructions of the world that they observe very much satisfy that need. So they create a God who takes care of the things around them that they can not control, and all they have to do is to pray once a day. They believe that doing what they do is the right thing, by word of God, at most times spoken by some spritual Guru they worship, and doing it will take them closer to their God. They have assigned moral value to loving their family, city and country, mostly in that order. I often find that a Guru or a teacher should be a facilitator in helping people think. I guess when we believe in whatever the guru says, it becomes the outsourcing of the highest order, where we have allowed someone else to do the thinking for us.

That was a slightly different tangent, but what I want to assert here is that most people will not essentially accept that their life is nothing but a random collection of molecules on a random planet in a random solar system in a random galaxy in the universe. This thought is quite depressing. But rather than 'depression' being the cause many people don't quite know world beyond the work that they do and the society that they live in. So experts might get quite frustrated at why do people who know little about about climate and care less to accept what the experts say about the way we are damaging our environment. After all they are experts and these people are ignorant fools. Shouldn't fools be listening to experts? Hardly do the experts realise that how inconvenient it is to for them to accept what they are saying. I find it quite frustrating talking to a devout people, about the inconsistencies in the their religous books, which were written a few centuries ago, at a time when our awareness of the world was a minute fraction of what it is now. But, the experts should view this problem in a different way as I found out in my interactions with deeply religious people. It is not that the devout do not see the inconsistencies, they do not want to see them.

I often say that every one has the right to be happy. And in their pursuit of happiness they make assumptions about the world and themselves which makes their life worth living and more happy. For example, armymen are often made to believe that they are morally and socially better than any civilian, including the politicians, because they are serving their nation, and it motivates them to even risk their lives. Terrorists are totally convinced about their version of the world where God has chosen them to fight the infidels for Him and if they do eventually die they will be taken care of in heaven. And at times when I find myself quite frustrated with my meaningless life, I often convince myself that there isn't meaning to life anyway and if there are people who think there is, they have only made assumptions and hence what they think is not essentially true. So if I seem to be wasting my life, so is the Prime Minister of India.

But all these beliefs are extremely important, because without them we would not be able take a step in any direction. I can still use skepticism to show that moving in a direction might not be in anyway better than not moving at all, but if disproving everything is good, then we are stuck in a situation where we can disprove the good in the policy of disproving everything. I mean skepticism can be turned on to itself. So what is good is what makes you feel better. If that is the case what right do we have to object to others beliefs. They are after all beliefs that make them feel better. If they are wrong aren't we guilty too?