Belief Does Not Equal Evidence

When you believe something strongly enough you will find evidence for it everywhere.  Perhaps that is what underlies the irrational and unbending political positions taken by some.  For example, if one believes that the president is a racist/bigot/white supremacist then one will see proof of that everywhere.  When he makes a bland statement that there are bad actors on both the left and the right that will be seen as an assertion of bigotry and support for the KKK.  Then, when he states that people should respect the flag, that will be taken as some sort of code directed to white nationalists.  When his travel ban is directed at some but not all Muslim majority countries it will nonetheless be seen as further proof of his anti-Muslim racism.  When he states his opinion that players who disrespect the flag should be fired that is interpreted as a fully anti-Black call to action.  So, as one mounts up this litany of “evidence” it is easy to become more and more convinced of the initial belief and now, when someone asks “where is the proof of your assertions that he is racist/bigoted/etc.?” the believer can point to these “facts.” They can delight in sharing statements by fellow believers that cite the same “evidence” as further proof that their own beliefs are accurate. The only problem is that these are not facts.  They are interpretations of often quite innocuous statements or of opinions that simply agree with that interpretation.  They prove nothing except that one is desperate to believe what he or she believes and have a reason to listen to no other points of view.

Here is the problem:  beliefs do not create evidence.  Instead, evidence supports beliefs.  Labeling something or someone as a particular thing does not make it so just because it fits into our subjective view of reality.

This is the same problem we see with the Russia investigation.  Many who could not accept that Trump could be legitimately elected found that the idea of his collusion with Russia to win would make a good justification for their disbelief as well as a possible way of overturning the election.   We now have nearly a year of investigation with absolutely no evidence of any such collusion.  The investigation broadens.  It looks to Trump’s business dealings of decades ago, finding anything to grasp at that can be interpreted as collusion.  Anything to support that dearly held belief, a belief that cannot be shaken despite the lack of actual evidence. 

When we let what we believe reshape what actually is we are not living in reality.  And, when one does not live in reality, one cannot realistically address the problems of reality, let alone find solutions to those problems.  Moreover, when one’s reality is nothing more than a reflection of their inner beliefs, they will likely be unwilling to entertain ideas that conflict with those beliefs because those contrary ideas are really an attack on what for them is their reality; it is an attack on themselves.  Such thinking is not rational (actually it is perhaps the result of not thinking at all, but rather of being led by emotion).

When one’s belief system structures and is the skeleton of one’s reality, any attack on that belief system is an attack on the person him or herself.  The believer must defend it at all cost, even when there are no actual facts, no evidence to support it.  They will interpret what is in a way that will support their structure.  Our beliefs are always to some extent and in some way self-serving.  But when they become the very core of our reality then we tend to lose the ability to question them or to be open to other ways of looking at things.  We lose the ability to have any sort of dialog with one who does not believe exactly as we do. 

We can all think of examples of mental illnesses that would be explained by this living in a world of beliefs rather than realities.  The problem is that when it comes to politics it seems that far too many are suffering from this malady.  In studying this sort of phenomena in today’s political landscape a researcher at Univ. of California stated, “What we’ve got is this contest of moral visions that has become a factual fight because of this tendency of people to change their factual beliefs to fit their moral inclinations.”

Our beliefs and the emotions that underlie them are not the same as facts or evidence.  When we confuse the two, when we create evidence from beliefs rather that beliefs from evidence, we are clouding what really is with our conceptional and emotional pictures of what we think it is or should be.  Of course, we all view reality somewhat subjectively and there is often more than one reasonable interpretation of a piece of evidence. But when we reach a point where we find it acceptable to ignore all reason, all rational input, in order to prop up a reality that we want and wish to be true, we are setting up a world full of antagonism between competing belief systems if not a world of complete chaos.

Just because one’s mind chooses to accept a proposition as reality does not make it so.  Reality is not simply subjective consciousness; it is made up of physical and objective facts.  Physical reality is perhaps not the only reality (philosophers and psychologists may debate this forever), but it is the reality that we all share and the one in which we must live together.  Of course we will all view that shared reality somewhat differently, and it is those rational but real different perceptions that can form the basis of deep and productive dialog.  These dialogs can lead to better understanding of one another as well as to genuine improvements to the shared reality.  But, with no shared reality we are really all left isolated in our individual belief systems, systems that respond only to our own control and that have little if anything to do with the shared world of objective and rational evidence.