A theory.. is it wrong to believe it?

Question

my motto in life is: "if you truely believe something to be true, then it is. Unless proven otherwise." this theory kinda has been proven that it works.. eg. placebos.

this just shows if you truely believe something to be true with no doubt in your mind, your mind will make it real almost.

so if you apply this in religion wouldnt that mean that nothing is wrong nor right.. its just what you believe that matters? so if sumone believes otherwise (in another religion), its just something that works better for them than the one you have.

the part in my motto that says: "unless proven otherwise" means that for example that you know d**n well the earth is round. so if you go on truely believing that your just plain stupid cuz its proven to be not.

my question is.. Is it wrong to believe such a theory i myself have found and use it in almost anything?

Answer 1

It may be better to seek a good perspective on reality.

Answer 2

Wrong?  In what sense--ethically or practically?

Ethically, you need to have that belief grounded in some values.  You're not free to just go ahead and think "other people don't deserve to live" and then act on it just because you have an epistemological opinion that everything you believe is true unless proven otherwise.  Right?

Practically, I think you're in danger of falling into solipsism.  That's the believe that your mind is the only thing you know to exist, and anything outside your mind is unproven and therefore dismissable.  Most philosophers prefer some degree of skepticism; you are supposed to invest reasonable doubt upon things until they are proven.

Note that your placebo example fails, because the placebo effect has, in fact, been proven through exhaustive double-blind experimentation.

Now, if we push these points hard enough, they all get fuzzy around the edges.  At some point we must admit that we're all accepting certain unproven (perhaps unproveable) propositions.  But I think you'll want to look harder at your thought processes here and figure out the wide range of places where your internal belief does not cause external reality to reflect it.

Answer 3

So what happens if I truly believe that your motto is fallacious?

Reality is not defined by what you believe.  This can easily be demonstrated from the fact that two people can believe contradictory things.  Clearly both can't be true, so at least one of those two people must be wrong despite their certainty.  Just because you believe something and it hasn't yet been proven false doesn't mean it's true.

Answer 4

Here is the problem with your theory:  if you know something is true, will you bother LOOKING for that kind of 'until proven otherwise' evidence?

I am reminded of Thales of Miletos.  Ancient Greek dude.  He decided that the reason that water seemed to be pretty much everywhere was because everything was made of water and water alone.  Stone was just a particularly hard form of ice and air just a different kind of steam.

This sounds a little silly now because we know that even water itself isn't elemental and can be broken up into other stuff.  We can chemically make and destroy water if we wish.  But would we know this if everyone had just decided that Thales was right?

Or any of a number of other things:  if we decided the world was flat would there have been any voyages... if we decided the sky was a hard done would there have been any spaceships?  And what if we decide that our eyes and mind can deceive us?  Then it's not even POSSIBLE to come up with proof!  You can just sweep it all under the rug as an illusion or a mistake.

Don't get me wrong.  If your rule of thumb works for you, I say keep using it.  But I would say that it's a good thing that not EVERYONE follows that rule and that there are some who even do almost the opposite:  if something is truly believed to be so, that is when you should try to find proof that it isn't!

Answer 5

If you think it is wrong, then it is wrong. If you think it is right, then it is right.

Answer 6

No, it's not wrong. In fact I found it true either.

Answer 7

Whatever floats your boat.

Answer 8

This is actually a deep question. To rephrase it, What is the basis of morality? Many fine scholars have written about this, - David Hume, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Jeremy Bentham,   John Stuart Mills,  George Goode, and so on.

As for the first part of your question, theories are not meant to be believed in; they are more or less suitable explanation for how the natural world exists. Also, due to factors like random chance, most scientists would agree that to establish proof is much harder than to establish probability. If you hold out your arm and drop a rock 10,000 times, you can reasonably conclude that gravity is at work here. But for some experiments 10,000 attempts is too little, you can see that to establish concrete proof no one has time for. This is acutely important in medicine, where delays mean the loss of life.  So studies are done by sampling and subjecting those samples to statistical analysis. This can still give us useful data, even if noting is proven.

As for morality, there are two basic camps, the absolutist and the relativist.  The absolutist says something is right because it is God's will (regardless of the consequences). A current between them is the lex talionis, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life."

A relativist would say that this law was made when humanity was barely civilized. Things have changed a great deal since then, and shouldn't that be taken into account? Some schizophrenics for example go on murderous rampages inspired by complete paranonia. These people are not in touch with reality. Do we need to execute them? Most people would say no, it is enough to lock them up.

Justice is not justice unless it is bound up with mercy. A justice system that operates only on laws is a tyranny.

However, relativism is a slippery slope. Let's take the age of legal consent (to have s*x, get married, and sign contracts on your own). In the world this age of consent is all over the place. In Japan the age of consent is 13. Does this mean Japan is a nation of pedophiles? In most of the USA the age of consent ranges from 13 (in Nebraska) to 16,17 and 18 elsewhere. What should be the age of consent? It's clear that we have to draw a line somewhere, but any line we draw would be arbitrary. (The Bible gives no help on this at all, as the concept probably didn't exist. Mary was probably about 13 when she married Joseph, a much older man. And yet this is the most holy marriage in history.)

There is a lot of room for investigation on the topic of morality. Good luck!

Answer 9

I really like your theory. Religion is what people make of it, that is what makes religion so personal. But then you have religions such as Christianity that take a beautiful thing, and remove the personal aspect of it. I believe religion is people exercising their deepest emotions and curiosities. So no, i actually think your theory is quite accurate.

Answer 10

nope believe what you wish.

Answer 11

It doesn't matter what you "truely believe". There is reality and there is falsehood.

A religion, for example, no matter how sincerely believed, is a philosophy until shown, by evidence, to be real.

There are either gods or there are not...close your eyes and believe real hard and nothing will change.