I’m suggesting this question as a thread because it seems to underlie many of the other discussions including Intelligent Design, Global Warming, Iraq war, abortion, right-to-die etc.
We all have beliefs. They may be entirely personal or they may be from an external source such as religion, science etc. Each of us also ranks our beliefs and assigns some level of value to them.
On the other hand there are things that we “know”. I know what time it is. I know how to play Merry Blacksmith on the whistle. I would suggest we say we know things because either we have personally observed them or someone we consider credible has communicated them to us.
I think all of us mix together what we believe and what we know every moment of every day. How each of us does it uniquely plays a large part describing our own unique personalities.
But I’m not really interested in our personal beliefs. I am very interested in what role personal beliefs play in public decisions. For example should we start and continue a war in Iraq because of belief in a particular set of political theories? Does it matter if empirical observation tells us that it isn’t working the way the theory expected it to? Is the statement “life begins at conception” a belief, an empirical fact or both? This one is tricky because different people use different definitions to describe what happens when sperm and eggs get together. I recently read that Native Americans do not want any research conducted on any newly discovered human remains that may be 10,000 yrs old because, in part, it could undermine their creation story that their people have been where they are now for all time. The researchers are trying to determine if these are the remains of Asians who crossed the land bridge at what is now Alaska.
As I said, I’m not so concerned with personal beliefs. We all have them and we can do whatever we want with them. I wonder about elected or appointed officials. Should they make decisions that affect all of us based on their beliefs? Or people interacting with the public. Should a pharmacist have the ability to refuse to sell certain legal products because it contradicts their beliefs (morning after pill).
Many contemporary policy debates seem to end up between one group that draws it’s position from a set of beliefs and another that claims that empirical fact suggest of different approach. As science, methods and technology our understanding of how things work is changing rapidly. Being people, our beliefs don’t change quickly.
There’s no right answer here for me. I think we all start from belief. As we learn facts, they sometimes trump my beliefs.