Sometimes I find myself surfing the internet and meeting some people with totally incredible beliefs, and that, at first glance, seem totally absurd to me, which makes me wonder how it is possible that people believe these things? question that quickly evolved into why do people believe false things? which finally made me wonder, why do I believe things that are false? and the answer is that I believe in false things because I think they are true, because from my perspective it seems true and not false, because they appear to be true, and that is, in fact, the definition of false, which is not what it seems, or what only appears to be real, but is not. For example, someone who thinks the earth is flat is not very difficult to understand, because when you look at the horizon, it seems that the surface of the world is flat. However, what something looks like to a person is not determined by the thing itself, the perceived object, but by the subject who perceives it, after all, a machine flying in the sky can look like an airplane to me, a alien ship to another person, or a kind of star, animal or god to someone who lived a few centuries ago.
This is explained because we see the world, not as it is, but as we are, it is like when we are walking down the street and we see a stranger who looks like someone we know, and we confuse him with this other person, but when we get closer we realize that it is someone else. In this case, the stranger resembles the acquaintance for two things; In the first place, because there are traits that make it seem like the other; and secondly, because we know the acquaintance, because if we did not know the acquaintance it would be impossible for the stranger to remind us of him, to confuse them, and thus form a false judgment in our head. What this means is that we are predisposed to see things in reality, when we saw the stranger we were predisposed to see an acquaintance, and when someone sees an unidentified flying object, for example, and thinks it is an alien spaceship, they only see this for two things, because the object looks like a spaceship, but how does he know it looks like a spaceship if he haven't seen one? It's because he's already seen spaceships, he's seen them in movies, in books, etc., and therefore, he makes that association, but if he didn't have that influence, if he hadn't had the idea of how it's supposed to look an alien spaceship, then he would never have thought to see one. That is the second reason why he believes he has seen a spaceship, because he already knew what one looked like. He was already predisposed to see a spaceship there, because his beliefs condition him to see the world that way, and as long as this person continues to consume content related to spaceships and aliens, he will continue to prepare for future sightings or similar things.
All people see the world as they want to see it, and not as it really is, if everyone saw the world as it is, then we would live in the truth, but we perceive the world limited by who we are, things seem in a way that they are not and is because we are predisposed to project what we already know onto reality. It's like a big confirmation bias that we all fall into. It is like a phrase I heard for some time that there are enough good things happening in the world to be optimistic, and also bad things to be pessimistic, but everyone looks at only one of these things and then sees the world from this lens.
The fact that things seem like something they are not is why many describe the world in which we live as illusory and apparent, although a closer examination reveals that it is not the world that is illusory, but that it is our perception of the world, due to our human limitations, which creates the illusion. It is this very limitation that makes the human, if he does not think deeply but is content to live on the surface, lose himself in appearances and live in falsehood. The knowledge of oneself then becomes key when it comes to discovering our own failures to perceive the truth and reality as it is, and to discern what is true from what is false.
The world is not always as it seems to us, and that may be a difficult lesson to learn, but one that at the end of the day, you must internalize to live closer to the truth and less to appearances.
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I think religion and beliefs do in fact contain wisdom to them that was useful in someone's life. When I think of how Islam and Judaism treat the aftermath of someone's dying, I.E a time period to only grief is useful and considered wise when you remember that the concept of 5 stages of grief being relatively new.
However, there is an aspect of religion or how some people see religion that is like a Rorschach test in which they see what they want to see, or basically it is a reflection of themselves.
Yeah, right, I agree with what you say. I was not thinking, in fact, in religions when saying all this, I think that people can reconcile religion with deep thinking if they make use of reason, a case of this is that of Saint Augustine in Christianity, who says that it takes faith to believe, and reason to understand, but neither of the two alone.
I think we all have beliefs, and at a certain point, we have to get used to that because we don't know the whole truth, and no one owns the truth. But to the extent that we scrutinize our beliefs by reason, then we can move away from beliefs that are mere illusions, and closer to beliefs that are true.
Every belief is kind of interpretation of reality and judgment based on our experience and knowledge until now. It is a subjective perception and this is not truth itself. So that, people can have different opinion about the same issues. But I think, beliefs should be based on logical judgment and right knowledge. Thanks for brainstorming post.
Absolutely. And thank you for stopping by!