Belief

We all believe in something.

There is no greater fundamental truth than that, I think. It is more than an instinct, more than something that is "wired" into our brains. Believing in things is essential to our state of being; it's innate to our very essence as sentient beings. We believe, not because we want to or or because we need to, but because we are incapable of doing anything else.

It's always been one of my private amusements that, despite how scientific and how rational we are in today's modern world, we have blinded ourselves into thinking that we have evolved beyond the need to believe. We see studies about how the need for religion is some kind of brain chemical, or something, and we smile smugly, thinking that we have come so far beyond the primitive ways of our ancestors as they looked up into the night sky and saw gods among the stars.

We do not realize that science requires belief. Do you disagree with me? Consider the scientific method, which is at the core of every science, regardless of discipline. You make a hypothesis. You test it. You draw a conclusion from the empirical data you collect. And repeat the process, adding to our knowledge of the world as you go. Do you want to know why something works the way it does, or how it works? Test it scientifically. You don't need to have faith when you have facts.

But one thing that always amuses and interests me is that one must have faith that the scientific method itself works. You must believe that it works, because scientifically, there's no way to test whether or not it does, because if the method does not work, the entire endeavor is flawed. I could go into a long, hypothetical example to prove what I mean by that, but we've all seen the Matrix, so we can imagine how the world as we perceive it might actually be a lie, or illusion, or simulation, and thus any conclusions we would draw about the world using observation of that world would be erroneous.

I don't mean to say that science is wrong. I do, in fact, think it is most probable and logical that science works, that the scientific method works. But I do recognize that I am choosing to believe in it, that it is not simply a "given truth." Just as we scoff at the primitive beliefs of mankind thousands of years ago, so, too, will our descendants look at us in thousands of years and say something like: "Can you imagine that people in the twenty-first century used to believe that human minds were controlled by egos and self-esteems? What nonsense!" Because they will have newer beliefs that are all their own, be they scientific or otherwise.

We all have to believe in something. Even the self-defeating nihilists among us have something that they believe in. We always will believe in something, no matter how advanced we become or how far into barbarism we retreat, because it's simply impossible for us to do anything else.