In my creative writing class, a North Adams guest poet recited an original piece about religion. The following line struck a chord with me:
"I believe Jesus fell in love- then became a God. We deny this fact for lack of evidence."
After posting an entry about Mary Magdalene and her possible relationship with Jesus a couple of weeks ago, I thought this verse was interesting and true. Since there is such a lack of evidence about whether Mary did have a relationship with Jesus or not, people have to rely on their beliefs to determine the truth. Instead of the power of belief, I think that many people rely solely on facts and evidence to prove that statements are correct. However, I think that in certain situations, a person's "gut feeling," or beliefs, should override the truth. Why does evidence have to play such an integral and pivotal part in the society's thought process?
If there is lack of evidence in favour of something and lack of evidence against something, it is fair to believe one over the other. However, if there is conclusive or overwhelming evidence in favour of one of the option, it would be most inadvisable to accept the other option. So, if there is no evidence in favour of or against the hypothesis that Jesus had a relationship with Mary, you can choose to believe either way, just don't assert it as truth.
ReplyDeleteBeliefs, I'm afraid have little power over the truth. You cannot determine truth with beliefs. This is evidenced by the fact that beliefs can run completely contrary to truth. If, for instance, I chose to believe that I could draw a triangular square, I would be severely disappointed, for the truth is no such thing can exist. If I chose to believe that I could jump from a building and then rewind time before I hit the bottom, I would be disappointed to find out that my belief did not effect reality. At one point in time people thought the world was flat, they had no evidence either way, so they could have believed what they wanted, but their beliefs did not change the fact that the world is an oblate spheroid. Beliefs can ignore truth, but they can never 'override' the truth.
Evidence has to play a pivotal part in society's thought process because without it we would not have made here as a species. Without evidence we could not invent things; we cannot build wheels out of things that we believe exist though those things do not. Without evidence we could throw ourselves from bridge because we believed that a magical net would save us. Without evidence we could, during the Salem Witch Trials, hang 19 people for being witches, though no such things exist; they simply believed that witches existed thought they had no evidence to support their beliefs. Due to having believed that belief was better than truth, the people of Salem in 1692 decided to kill those innocent people anyway.
I hope you can see the negative consequences of thinking that belief can override truth; basing society on truth and evidence has gotten us much further than basing society on just beliefs. Beliefs are strengthened with truth; justified and true beliefs constitute knowledge.
Wow what a reaction! I think your explanation in the second to last paragraph is very concise; I did not think of evidence as an "action/ trial and error" process. For example, we know by evidence and trial and error that if a person jumps off a bridge, there is a chance that he will not survive. Observers learn from the experience the evidence that jumping off a bridge is very stupid and foolish idea. A person should think twice about this action if he wants to continue to live a healthy lifestyle with healthy life choices.
ReplyDeleteEvidence is clearly important, but what counts as convincing evidence is not universal. For example, there is some circumstantial evidence that supports a relationship between Jesus and Mary (the fact that marriage was obligatory in their culture, passages from the Gospel of Phillip that describe them kissing, her presence at his death, etc.). There is, however, no text that describes Mary Magdalene as the wife or consort of Jesus - but it's also possible that their relationship was unacceptable, for some reason, to the first and second generations of his followers, and was thus repressed.
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