by Marino

One thing that I think that's very important to have in mind when discussing people's beliefs is their desire to believe in something, and what's behind this desire. Personally, I feel that the most common motivation for beliefs is social rather than "rational" (I'm using the quotes because a social motivation can be considered rational in it's own way. I'll try to explain what I mean by these terms bellow), and this goes for skeptics and believers alike.

A "rational" motivation, as I see it, is closely linked to curiosity, and to an unbiased desire to get to the objective truth regarding one matter.

A social motivation is a little more complicated to explain, but here's my try. When we're kids, and we start becoming more and more aware of the rather complicated world we live in, we start thinking of many questions. Whether we give voice to these questions or not, we have a natural desire to have them answered somehow. But many of these questions are very complicated to answer, many don't even have a definitive answer we can reach by ourselves in our childhood’s.

A very important part of growing up, or so we're lead to believe, involves having some answers to these complicated questions. In fact, that's so important that you don't want these answers just to quench your curiosity. These answers are also fundamental in determining where you fit in in society, to what kind of group you belong. And belonging to a group is really important, and people will often go to great lengths to achieving it - and that includes fooling other people, or even themselves. This is what I call a social motivation for believing in something.

Now, before the believers throw the first stone at me, let me repeat that I'm not implying some sort of division such as skeptic/rational, believer/social. I know many people that could be called "college atheists", and their quotation of skeptic mantras (such as "James Randi Challenge", or "Sagan's Bulls--- Detection Kit") sound as boring to me as some of the believers' mantras (such as "Millenary Oriental Wisdom", or "Science Has Failed to Answer The Truly Important Questions").

One of the main characteristics of a socialy motivated belief is the reliance on authorities. A quick visit to any bookstore should be evidence enough of what I'm saying, but even before the advent of self-help books that tell us everything we need to know about life, the universe and everything in such a way that we don't need to overtax our brains (in fact, in a way that we don't even need to use them at all. All we have to do is smile and pretend the question was never there) people were very found of having someone with an impressive sounding title telling them the answers they needed.

Once you accept a certain set of answers as basic and fundamental truths, you'll find yourself as part of a group. And now comes the nasty part of it: every human group needs antagonists. I'm a complete moron when it comes to philosophy, so I won't try to say this using words such as "dialectics", but the fact is, since you had to pick one set of answers, then that means that there were at least some other set, and it appears to be a rather important thing for a group to oppose, somehow, groups which picked these different sets.

(a quick note: I'm being rather simplistic but please, try not to be too simplistic while interpreting what I just said. This is not a "why can't we be friends" situation, but rather one in which a set of answers (and, therefore, a group embracing it) looses it's meaning (and, therefore, is useless, meaning, the group who picked will have to pick another set) if it does not disagree with some other set)

Let me try to give you all a real life example of what I'm talking about (and one that's not related to skeptics and believers! Wow!). I can't recall if I mentioned here on the board, but recently I did a course in film history. As part of this course, right now I'm having to do a study on D.W. Griffith, and his film "Intolerance" in particular. Now, to make a decent analysis of "Intolerance", I need to read on many topics, including: Griffith's life, the history of censorship in movies, the state of the classical narrative style when the movie was filmed, Griffith's earlier movies, etc. There's another topic that may not seem very important at first glance (after all, I'm not talking about "Birth of a Nation"), but IMO it is still fundamental for understanding what "intolerance" meant to Griffith: the American civil war.

To make a long story short, I went to the university to get some books. The ones about film history were quite easy to find, in the Arts Institute library. Then I went to the History Institute library to find some general book on the American civil war. When I got there, the librarian was talking to a doctoral student. I interrupted them and explained what I needed. The guy gave me a puzzled look and turned to the computer to see what he had.

Meanwhile, the doctoral student turned to me and, after some small talk on why I was interested on the topic, he said:

"Every day I thank god for the American civil war"

"Why", I asked him.

"Because if it wasn't for it, the U.S. would have invaded Brasil and taken over the Amazon".

Now this is a very popular belief down here. Foreigners, and particularly Americans, are always trying to take over the Amazon in one way or another. The guy started to tell me about this plan that described how the Americans would "come all the way down to the rain forest, incorporating all the territory they crossed". I was saved by the librarian, who told me that the books on American history weren't listed on the computer; if I wanted them I could search the library myself. Oh, well, the library was enormous, but if there was no other way...

After walking through dozens of stacks of books, I finally found the rather small section that contained American history books. At least half of them were on Native American tribes. There were three or four on the civil war. I took the two most promising ones ("Ordeal by Fire - The Civil War and Reconstruction" and "Battle Cry of Freedom - The Civil War Era", both by James McPherson) and went down to check with the librarian. He was still chatting with the doctorate student, who again started to tell me about some other conspiracy of the evil gringos.

I couldn't hold myself and commented on my disappointment regarding the American history section. Both the student and the librarian laughed, and the formed turned to the later:

"Tell him how we feel about the U.S. here at the History Institute"

"It could explode, for all we care", was the man's answer.

"I was aware of the feeling", was my reply. "But that's precisely why I am disappointed. I thought that it was important to know about what you criticize. The more you know, the better the criticism".

The two guys exchanged glances, the librarian said something like "yeah, strike from the inside", but I decided it was time to take my books and leave.

Now, I believe these guys are idiots. But tell me, what use would a dialogue with them be? What would be the point of criticizing them? Their position was based in a social motivation - they lacked the interest in studying American history, and saw no point in having a comprehensive section on the subject in the library, because the group they were part of (and thus the beliefs they embraced when they became part of this group) hold those opinions.

To bring my little example in perspective of what I am trying to say in this message, supposing I were from another History College, I believe that the most effective way of countering what I perceived as stupidity and ignorance would not be some kind of direct confrontation, like, for instance, taking every thesis that came out of that institute, and every published article by a teacher from it, and exposing it. No, the best course of action, IMO, would be making sure that every thesis coming out from my institution, and every published article by someone who's part of it didn't have the same flaws, in such a way that, by comparison, their flaws would be clear.

Getting back to our reality now, I believe that we give too much attention to what we perceive as "woo woo". In this way, not only we waste our time with stupid discussions that won't enlighten ourselves in anyway, but also we provide the believers with an easy target for their necessary antagonism. Gosh, how many times we must tell Zak about testing his claims before we realize that he's simply not interested in reasonable debate, or answering our questions, or anything but picking posts he can answer in an evasive, vague, but still aggressive way? Someone once wondered on why he kept returning here. The reason seems clear to me. There are believers lurking, probably many from his board. In direct, emotional confrontations like this (have any of you ever seen a transcript of a creationist "debate"?), people will simply stick with the group they feel that they belong to.

And even if we (skeptics) manage to "convert" someone to our group, I don't believe that that's what we're after (at least it's not what I'm after). The most probable is that the person will just switch groups, and trade the old authorities for new ones. Big deal.

If there's something to learn from Fred Askew's post (I can't remember right now if it was the one in the original thread. It's the one where he tells his story) it is, IMHO, that every person must find his or her own way toward rational thinking. And if we're to help people on this way, the only way we can do it is by example - not by confrontation.

Marino

Last Modified 15 January 2001 by Russell