Does It Matter What We Believe In?

Does it matter what we believe as long as we are sincere?

This rhetorical question is often asked about religious belief with the answer clearly expected to be “No, it doesn’t matter what we believe as long as we are sincere” and some would add “and try to live a good life”. Surely, in a world of relative values and relative truth, it is impossible for anyone to say that their religious beliefs are right and those of others are wrong. This is the generally accepted “wisdom”.

We do not however use this same argument where scientific theories are concerned. We are very accustomed to the idea that science advances by putting forward various competing and mutually exclusive theories about the nature of reality which are then tested against that reality by repeated experiments. The aim is to prove or disprove the different theories in order to arrive at the one that best describes the real situation and scientists accept that most of them will be discarded as having been wrong. Just because a good scientist sincerely holds
to his or her theory does not suffice to make it right or protect it from experimental evidence accumulating against it if it is wrong. There is truth and there is falsehood in matters of fact.

It may be said that these are issues of scientifically provable facts and the “facts” of religious belief are of course less open to such “proof”. Quite so but it does illustrate that not all commonly held approaches to truth assume that truth is just relative to each individual and therefore varies according to different points of view.

If we consider politics ( where the “facts” are also less provable ), no-one says that it doesn’t matter which way we vote because of course all the party leaders are sincere in their political beliefs. In fact, there will be a real difference in the way that the country is governed if we follow the different philosophies of the main political parties. It will matter what we believe and which way we vote. Different beliefs lead to different consequences.

If there is a bomb planted in the room where you are using this computer, it will make a big difference whether you believe it is there or not. You can believe quite sincerely that there really is no bomb and that the whole thing is a hoax or a bad joke but if it is actually there……..BOOM! If you had long since fled the room, however, you would have a very different experience because of your different belief. It seems that in everyday life, it does
matter what we believe. We can be sincerely wrong!

In the realm of religion, it would appear self-evident that such differing beliefs as the primacy of love, forgiveness and non-violence or the necessity for holy war (both sincerely held views by some) will have hugely differing consequences in an individual’s life and on the lives of those around them. In fact, the paths of those of differing faiths will diverge directly in proportion to the scale of the importance in practice of the differences of their beliefs.