A few months ago, I went on television to have a discussion with about 50 children. These children were invited because they’d been brought up in lots of different religions. Some had been brought up as Christians, others as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs. The man with the microphone went from child to child, asking them what they believed. What they said shows up exactly what I mean by ‘tradition’. Their beliefs turned out to have no connection with evidence. They just trotted out the beliefs of their parents and grandparents, which, in turn, were not based upon evidence either. They said things like, ‘We Hindus believe so and so.’ ‘We Muslims believe such and such.’ ‘We Christians believe something else.’ 'We Henry's believe this and that' :
Of course, since they all believed different things, they couldn’t all be right. The man with the microphone seemed to think this quite proper, and he didn’t even try to get them to argue out their differences with each other. But that isn’t the point I want to make. I simply want to ask where their beliefs came from. They came from tradition. Tradition means beliefs handed down from grandparent to parent to child, and so on. Or from books handed down through the centuries.
En ZO werkt dat in de katholieke traditie Henry. Maar goed, jij bent geen katholiek en gelooft slechts wat meneer dominee vertelt.Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing it because you are told to believe it by somebody important. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope is the most important person, and people believe he must be right just because he is the Pope. In one branch of the Muslim religion, the important people are old men with beards called Ayatollahs. Lots of young Muslims are prepared to commit murder, purely because the Ayatollahs in a faraway country tell them to.
When I say that it was only in 1950 that Roman Catholics were finally told that they had to believe that Mary’s body shot off to Heaven, what I mean is that in 1950 the Pope told people that they had to believe it. That was it. The Pope said it was true, so it had to be true
Of course, even in science, sometimes we haven’t seen the evidence ourselves and we have to take somebody else’s word for it. I haven’t with my own eyes, seen the evidence that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Instead, I believe books that tell me the speed of light. This looks like ‘authority’. But actually it is much better than authority because the people who wrote the books have seen the evidence and anyone is free to look carefully at the evidence whenever they want.
"Revelation" gaan we toch niet echt serieus nemen Henry? Anders quote ik deze motivatie om iets te geloven graag!
En dat geldt dus uiteraard ook voor deze brief, omdat Dawkins geen autoriteit is welke geloofd MOET worden.What can we do about all this? It is not easy for you to do anything, because you are only ten. But you could try this. Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: ‘Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority or revelation?’ And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: ‘What kind of evidence is there for that?’ And if they can’t give you a good answer, I hope you’ll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.
En ja, Henry, ook Dawkins verteld zijn dochter eerst naar rechts, dan naar links te kijken als ze gaat oversteken en dat mag je van mij opvatten als "autoritair". Ik ben van mening dat dit soort "opgelegde" geloven te verifieren zijn (in de krant b.v.).
Wat Dawkins nu juist NIET voorstaat is dat zijn dochter de ET aanneemt OMDAT papa zegt dat ze dit moet doen.
En dat is de reden dat ik zo;n afkeer van traditionele religie heb. ALS jij in een Moslimgmeenschap geboren had geweest, had je nu met hand en tand Allah verdedigd. Je was niet eens in de mogelijkheid het christendom te bestuderen (of iedere andere willekeurige Moslim-tegenstrijdige opvatting).
En zo blijft de vraag open staan.
Waarom geloof je in (de christelijke) God Henry??? En dan niet zoals katholieken er in geloven, maar exact zoals jij Hem ziet?
