Groundless Beliefs
A. E. Mander
1.卧室英文In future we are going to follow the practice—until it becomes a habit—of classifying propositions according to their grounds. Of every statement we come across, we shall ask: “How do we know that? What reason have we for believing that? On what …ground? is that statement bad?” Probably we shall be astonished at the number of propositions met with in everyday life which we shall find it necessary to class as groundless. They rest upon mere tradition, or on somebody?s bare asrtion unsupported by even a shadow of proof.
蜜汁土豆
2.It may be a belief which we originally accepted as a result of simple “suggestion,” and we have continued to hold it ever since. It has no w become one of our regular habits of thought. Perhaps somebody-somewhere-sometime told us a certain thing, and quite uncritically, we accepted and believed it. Perhaps it was way back in our early childhood—before we had even developed the power of questioning anything that might be told to
us. Many of our strongest convictions were established then; and now, in adult life, we find it most difficult even to question their truth. They em to us “obviously” true.
宏碁显示器
3.But if the staunchest Roman Catholic and the staunchest Presbyterian had been exchanged when infants, and if they had been brought up with home and all other influences reverd, we can had very little doubt what the result would have been. It is consistent with all our knowledge of psychology to conclude that each would have grown up holding exactly the opposite beliefs to tho he holds now, and each would then have felt as sure of the truth of his opinion as he now feels—of the truth of the opposite opinion. The same thing is true, of cour, of many beliefs other than tho of a religious nature. If we had grown up in a community where polygamy or head-hunting, or infanticide, or gladiatorial fighting, or dueling, was regarded as the normal and natural thing—then we should have grown up to regard it as “obviously” natural and perfectly moral and proper. Many of our beliefs—many of our most deeply-rooted and fundamental convictions—are held simply as a result of the fact that we happen to have been “brought up” to them.
4.Of cour we do not cea, when we cea to be children, to adopt new beliefs on mere suggestion. We continue doing it, more or less unconsciously all our lives; hence, to take only the most striking examples, the enormous influence of newspapers and the effectiveness of skilful advertising. Much of what pass as such is not, strictly, thinking at all. It is the mere “parroting” of ideas picked up by chance and adopted as our own without question. Most people, most of the time, are mere parrots. But as we leave childhood, we tend to accept only such new ideas as fit in with the ideas we already hold; and all conflicting ideas em to us “obviously” absurd.
5.优秀班主任颁奖词Propositions that are accepted simply becau “everybody says so,” must be clasd under the same heading. The dogma may not be that of any particular individual: it may be a dogmatic statement which has been pasd from one person to another, from generation to generation, perhaps for hundreds—perhaps for thousands—of years. It may be part of the traditional belief of the people or the race. In that ca, it is part of our social inheritance from some period in the past. But we should fully face the fact that beliefs which are merely inherited from the past must have originated at a time when men
knew much less than they know today. So the fact that a belief is “old” is no argument in its favour.
6.We need especially to be on our guard when we come across propositions which em to be “obviously” true.
7.When we find ourlves entertaining an opinion about which there is a feeling that even to enquire into it would be absurd, unnecessary, undesirable, or wicked—we may know that that opinion is a non-rational one. 初中生物课本
8.When we are tempted to say that any general truth is so “obvious” that it would be absurd even to question it, we should remember that the whole history of the development of human thought has been full of cas of such “obvious truths” breaking down when examined in the light of increasing knowledge and reason. For instance, for ages nothing could have emed more obvious, more utterly beyond question that the proposition that slavery was natural, reasonable, necessary, and right. Some kinds of men were “obviously” “slaves by nature.” To doubt it was impossible.
9.Again for more than two thousand years, it was “impossible to conceive” the planets as moving in paths other than circles. The circle was “obviously” the perfect figure; and so it was “natural” and “inevitable” to suppo that the planets moved in circles. The age-long struggle of the greatest intellects in the world to shake off that assumption is one of the marvels of history.
10.It was formerly “obvious” that the heart—and not the brain was the organ of consciousness. To most people today it ems equally “obvious” that we think with our brains. Many modern persons find it very difficult to credit the fact that men can even have suppod otherwi. Yet—they did.
交通银行信用卡申请11.That the earth must be flat, formerly emed so obvious and lf-evident that the very suggestion of any other possibility would have been—and was—regarded as a joke.
