The Belief Based on the Assumption of Truth
An example of a belief based on the assumption of truth would be when the Conquistadors first invaded South America. The indigenous people took one look at them and assumed that they were horse-men. In other words, the the Spanish and their horses were a single entity.
The reason was that the people of the region had never seen a horse before, so naturally enough they jumped to the conclusion that they were looking upon a single creature.
Another example would be the AIDS virus. When this first hit in the early ’80s, the belief was that you could catch the disease simply by touching someone who was suffering from it. The British police used to wear surgical gloves during rallies put on by HIV infected people. Their fear was that if they had to arrest anyone, then without the gloves, they lay themselves open to the infection.
When you think about it, beliefs are a pretty good imitation of knowledge. Naturally enough, the stronger the belief, the more likely it is in our minds to be true. Most especially with a strong belief, we’re unlikely, or in some cases unwilling, to wait until we have the full story.
In the first months of the AIDS virus making its appearance, virtually nothing was known about it. What was known was that it was a death warrant and so if I had the virus, then I’d be avoided literally like the plague. The belief that by touching someone has now been proved wrong since all the information is known, and true knowledge has been attained.
But originally, AIDS was considered in the same way as scabies, which can be passed from one person to another by skin contact.
Beliefs, then, are formed by incomplete knowledge, by jumping to conclusions. We’ve seen this all the way down through history. People thinking they could cure themselves by drinking copious amounts of mercury, for instance. Far from curing themselves, they were killing themselves.
The old business of ‘bleeding’ a patient, in the belief that in so doing, all the bad and poisoned blood would be taken from them and they’d recover.
During the terrible plague of the 14th. century, people turned to the church for relief and a cure from the agonies they suffered. This proved an exercise in futility.
The primitive person who’s never seen an aeroplane before, will automatically assume it to be a great bird that makes a fearsome noise. Can they really be expected to jump to any other conclusion?
Even today, when some scientists scoff at the idea of parallel universes, others say that such worlds may be possible. So here we see beliefs, but virtually no knowledge with which to back these ideas.
So we see that beliefs without conclusive proof are just that. Beliefs
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