Groundless_Beliefs

Groundless Beliefs

By A. E. Mander

In future we are going to follow the practice—until it becomes a habit—of classifying propositions according to their grounds. Of every statement we come across, we shall ask: “How do we know that? What reason have we for believing that? On what ground is that statement based?” Probably we shall be astonished at the number of propositions met with in everyday life which we shall find it necessary to class as groundless. They rest upon mere tradition, or on somebody s bare assertion unsupported by ever a shadow of proof …

It may be a belief which we originally accepted as a result of simple “suggestion,” and we have continued to hold it ever since. It has now become one of our regular habits of thought. Perhaps somebody-somewhere-sometime told us a certain thing, and quite uncritically, we accepted and believed it. Perhaps it was way back in our early childhood—before we had even developed the power of questioning anything that might be told to us. Many of our strongest convictions were established then; and now, in adult life, we find it most difficult even to question their truth. They seem to us “obviously” true.

But if the staunchest Roman Catholic and the staunchest Presbyterian had been exchanged when infants, and if they had been brought up with home and all other influences reversed, we can had very little doubt what the result would have been. It is consistent with all our knowledge of psychology to conclude that each would have grown up holding exactly the opposite beliefs to those he holds now … and each would then have felt as sure of the truth of his opinion as he now feels—of the truth of the opposite opinion. The same thing is true, of course, of many beliefs other than those of a religious nature. If we had grown up in a community where polygamy or head-hunting, or infanticide, or gladiatorial fighting, or dueling, was regarded as the normal and natural thing—then we should have grown up to regard it as “obviously” natural and perfectly moral and proper. If an English baby had been adopted and brought up in a German home, and had grown up with no knowledge that his parents were English, all the sentiments and beliefs of that person would be “German” and not “English.” Many of our beliefs—many of our most deeply-rooted and fundamental convictions—are held simply as a result of the fact that we happen to have been “brought up” to them.

Of course we do not cease, when we cease to be children, to adopt new beliefs on mere suggestion. We continue doing it, more or less unconsciously all our lives; hence, to take only the most striking examples, the enormous influence of newspapers and the effectiveness of skilful advertising. Much of what passes as such is not, strictly, thinking at all. It is the mere “parroting” of ideas picked up by chance and adopted as our own without question. Most people, most of the time, are mere parrots. But as we leave childhood, we tend to accept only such new ideas as fit in with the ideas we already hold; and all conflicting ideas seem to us “obviously” absurd.

Propositions that are accepted simply because “everybody says so,” must be classed under the same heading. The dogma may not be that of any particular individual: it may be a dogmatic statement which has been passed from one person to another, from generation to generation, perhaps for hundreds—perhaps for thousands—of years. It may be part of the tradition belief of the people or the race. In that case, it is part of our social inheritance from some period in the past. But we should fully face the fact that beliefs which are merely inherited from the past must have originated at a time when men knew much less than they know today. So the fact that a belief is “old” is no argument in its favour.

We need especially to be on our guard when we come across propositions which