Belief in Truth

If there is a truth, it is better to believe. What you believe may be the truth. You may have the truth.

If you don’t believe in anything, you have given up on the truth. It’s certain that you don’t have the truth.

There is a truth. Either x = y  or  x = not y. One of them must be true. Either Peter is human, or Peter is not human. One proposition must be true and the other must be false. I don’t know which, but looking at Peter I form a belief as to whether or not he is human and I treat him accordingly. If I think he is human I may talk to him, if a cat, I may stroke him. If you don’t believe in anything, what would you do? Run away from Peter? Run away from life?

Some might say they only pretend to believe. They treat Peter as human because that seems to work. Very well, but if the whole of reality is treated like that, we are in a sorry state.

We normally get pleasure from figuring things out, from trying to understand reality, from striving to achieve our small goals in this real world. If we thought nothing was real anyway, what would be the point? If we thought our life was nothing but a game or an illusion, why would we care? Why do we feel anger and resentment, joy and attraction? Because we believe we have a reason to.

We mostly believe in what we see and when something is slightly hidden from view, we make a reasonable guess what might be there. We do it because we believe there is a truth.

When something is far away or hidden behind a thick veil of mystery, it is more difficult to form an idea of what might be there, but it’s still a good thing to try. You may be wrong, but you may also be right, and if you don’t search you will not find.