In the third section of Orwell’s 1984, O’Brien explains to Winston, “We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull.” He’s arguing that anything can be true, as long as the individual in question wholeheartedly believes it. A person’s perception of the world, in fact his or her entire worldview, depends upon what he or she believes is true.
Here’s a small example. For centuries, people believed the world was flat. Scholarly books said the world was flat. Teachers taught their students that the world was flat. Any person you stopped on the street would have told you the world was flat. In fact, the world WAS flat.
I can see you shaking your head and muttering, “No it wasn’t, you idiot; it was spherical, just like it is today.” But step outside of yourself for a moment. For the people who lived in centuries past, the world WAS flat because they believed it. That was their truth. Everyone in their world believed it. They acted on it. Their world view encompassed it, and their Earth was flat. Many other ideas were true, in their times, because people believed them. Before modern medicine and the discovery of micro-organisms, the Miasma Theory stated that disease was caused by “bad air.” Before the discovery of genetics, the theory of Maternal Impression stated that the thoughts and emotions of a pregnant mother affected the physical appearance of her offspring (see Genesis 30:37-39). Countless other examples abound. Yes, they were wrong, factually speaking, but that’s not the issue at hand. The issue I’m trying to breach here is this: How do we decide what is true? Example after example of “truths” being proven false indicates that what is true for any one individual is inextricably tied up with what he or she believes.
Are you with me so far?
Good.
Because now I want to talk about religion.
I find myself increasingly annoyed by people who insist that their religion is the one true path to righteousness, the one true way to know the Greater Being, the one true recipe for a holy and blessed life, or the one true means to reach a blissful afterlife. They’ll insist that the tenets of their religion are TRUE without taking into account the point I’ve just made: truth is tied to belief.
Since I’m most familiar with Christianity, I’ll use it for my example. Don’t read this as an attack on Christian beliefs. I just don’t know enough about other faiths to write about them without risking some serious errors. So. Christians believe that roughly 2000 years ago, the Son of God was born into human form, was sacrificed through crucifixion, and through his sacrifice, he forgave the sins of humankind. (I know there’s more to it than that, but those are the basics.) If you ask any practicing Christian whether those statements are TRUE, he or she will undoubtedly tell you that they are. If you then proceed to ask how he or she KNOWS they’re true, the Christian will undoubtedly say “It’s in the Bible.” If you ask how he or she knows the Bible contains the truth, the Christian will say “I believe it.” Bingo. Truth is tied to belief.
In fact, none of us who are alive today were alive when the Bible was written. There is no more proof that the Bible contains the actual, historical truth than there is for Beowulf or The Epic of Gilgamesh. (Oh, man. I just FEEL myself losing friends here…but stick with me, okay?) I’m not saying that the Bible isn’t true. I’m saying that we all need to think about where the truth comes from. This leads to a philosophical idea called epistemology. The principle questions of epistemology are “Where does knowledge come from?” and “How do we know what we know?” It’s the study of truth and the source of truth.
So. As I said before, I’m not telling anyone that the Bible is untrue. What I’m saying is that some people believe the Bible with their whole hearts and souls, and for those people the Bible is true. Others don’t believe it, and for them, it’s just a book. Before you write me angry comments on this post, participate in a little mental exercise with me. Imagine a holy book for a religion other than yours. Take your pick: the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur’an, the Tao Te Ching, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. Choose any you like, as long as it’s part of a religious tradition that you don’t practice. Now, ask yourself this question, “Does this book contain the truth?”
I imagine many heads shaking side-to-side: no. If that’s you, please realize that there are hundreds of thousands of people in the world who believe that the book you’re currently dismissing as fiction is the sanctified holy truth. For Muslims, the words of the Qur’an are every bit as true as the words of your own holy scripture are to you. Why? Because they believe it. Christians find truth in the Bible, followers of Hinduism see truth in the Bhagavad Gita, and believers in Bahá’í find truth in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. Their families raise them to believe it, their communities reinforce it, their cultures treasure it, and they invest their souls in it.
See where I’m going with this? I’ve said it before in this post, and I say it again. Truth is tied to belief. What that means (and many people refuse to acknowledge this) is that DIFFERENT PEOPLE CAN HAVE DIFFERENT TRUTHS.
With that in mind, I wish people would think twice before they tell believers of other faiths that their beliefs are wrong. I wish they would stop trying to convert each other. I wish they would realize that every religious tradition on Earth is as valid as every other. I wish they would believe what they’ve been raised to believe and let other people do the same.
Could we do that? I believe so. All it takes is for each of us to step outside of ourselves and see that no matter what the issue (science, as discussed earlier; religion, as discussed in the last few paragraphs; or pretty much anything else), truth, at its core, lies in belief.
O’Brien was right.
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