Good and Bad Reasons for Believing Things

Richard Dawkins is one of the world’s famous scientists. He is a world class thinker who “kicked the hornets’ nest” with his 2004 book The God Delusion. But Dawkins is not only an anti-theist. He is also one of the leading exponents of evolution and his recent 2009 book The Greatest Show on Earth is the clearest and most comprehensive presentation available of the overwhelming evidence supporting Darwin’s great theory. I shall in future weeks be writing a few pieces on Dawkins and Evolution. But first I want to refer to a letter he wrote to his daughter Juliet when she turned ten. In it he explained his thinking on good and bad reasons for believing anything.

It’s a brilliant letter in which he offers Juliet a simple but powerful way of dealing with the many things that she will be told by all sorts of people throughout her life. As a grandfather of four precious granddaughters, it’s a message that I would like to pass on to my fabulous four as well as to readers of this blog.

Dawkins’ good reason for discovering and believing what is true about the planet and the universe is to look for evidence to support what is being asserted. The best evidence is what we learn by direct observation. But often, like detectives, we have to gather evidence from a number of sources to see where it all points. The bottom line is that evidence provides the best reason for believing something to be true. So he advises young Juliet: “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”

He also warns Juliet about three bad reasons for believing anything. They are ‘tradition’, ‘authority’ and ‘revelation’.

Tradition means beliefs handed down through generations from grandparents to parents to children. Tradition can stretch back over hundreds of years. For example, Roman Catholics believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus, didn’t die but was lifted bodily into heaven. Other groups, Christian and Secular, disagree, claiming that Mary died like everyone else. This belief about Mary being bodily lifted into heaven (called “The Assumption”) appears to have originated about 600 years after Jesus’ time and was made official Catholic belief only in 1950 by Pope Pius XII. Dawkins encourages everyone, including the Catholics, to ask for the evidence that supports such a belief – and not to accept it or any other tradition simply because it’s a tradition that has been taken seriously over a long period.

Authority is the second bad reason for believing something to be true. Because the headmaster says so doesn’t make it so! Because Muammar Gaddafi or even Nelson Mandela says something is the case, their authority does not make it true. It needs to be tested, backed by evidence and sound, logically reasoning. So, we should not accept anything as the truth, just because it is spoken by an important person. In addition, because the Bible (or the Koran or whatever other text) says something is true does not make it true. Truth always needs evidence and solid arguments to back it up rather than conferred or claimed authority. In short, Dawkins is advising his daughter not to accept what is claimed as the truth either on the authority of the person making the claim or on the authority of a written claim to truth. Such people and such writings may indeed contain the truth about our world, but that truth always needs rational and evidential support.

What Dawkins and most of the great scientists and philosophers seem to be saying is: “do not rely on any authority to back your stance; instead, search for evidence to support your position and follow the path of reason before energising your proposals with the passion needed to make them happen!”

Revelation  is the third bad reason for believing anything. “Revelation” is the claim that some or other divinity, spirit or ancestor has communicated a truth to you. In South African history the Xhosa prophetess, Nongqawuse believed that the spirits of three ancestors revealed to her that the Xhosa people should destroy their crops and kill their cattle, both being their source of food and wealth. In return, she had been promised that the spirits would sweep the British settlers into the sea; replenish the granaries and fill the kraals with more beautiful and healthier cattle. Sadly, Paramount Chief Sarhili believed her and ordered the cattle killing frenzy that destroyed between 300 000 and 400 000 and led to a serious famine. What evidence was there that the truth revealed to her was indeed true? What is the evidence to support the so-called revelations of the three main monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity and Islam? Asking for evidence and sound logic is essential in any discussions about the truth of the many religions of humankind! It is also essential in weighing up the truth of the myriad superstitions and bizarre beliefs that abound in modern society.

I reckon that the insights that Richard Dawkins shares with his daughter Juliet in his letter to her some years back are really inspiring and they can be summarised, more or less in his own words, like this: the universe and our life in it is so wonderful and awe-inspiring, our discovery of its treasures so exciting and ongoing that a readiness to believe without enquiry everything that is presented to us by tradition, authority or revelation is a sad and ultimately dangerous disengagement from reality.    

Randall Falkenberg