{"id":190,"date":"2021-04-17T19:21:56","date_gmt":"2021-04-18T01:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/?p=190"},"modified":"2025-10-04T08:27:49","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T14:27:49","slug":"evaluating-your-reasons-for-belief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/2021\/04\/17\/evaluating-your-reasons-for-belief\/","title":{"rendered":"Evaluating Your Reasons for Belief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When you\u2019re studying other viewpoints, and (hopefully) trying to evaluate their truthfulness, it\u2019s important to know why you believe your current views, whatever that reason may be.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean \u201cWhy is this true,\u201d or a reason that would win a debate; I mean just plain old \u201cwhy.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s tempting to look for a good<\/em> reason, especially when asked in person and you want to defend yourself, but presumably, you\u2019re sitting somewhere reading this sometime after I actually wrote it and can think it over without any pressure.\u00a0 This is the question to ask: \u201cWhat is the true reason I believe _____?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Go to Evaluating Your Reasons for Belief<\/a> to keep reading!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

\n

Maybe it\u2019s because you\u2019ve thought about the issue and believe your view makes the most sense given logic and the relevant evidence.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s because it\u2019s what your parents and\/or other trusted people in your life believe and have told you.\u00a0 Especially as young adults, you may discover that your answer is the latter.\u00a0 We haven\u2019t lived for 30 or 60 or 90 years to face challenges and consider and reconsider our views, though hopefully you were less sheltered than I was.\u00a0 (Not by my immediate family, just a natural consequence of the fact that my hometown has relatively uniform opinions as a collective.)\u00a0 Or perhaps you feel like you wouldn\u2019t be as happy if you held a different opinion.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t matter whether or not you have a good reason, or if it would last two minutes in a debate.\u00a0 Just be honest with yourself, and find the answer without judging it one way or the other for the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is this important?\u00a0 First of all, you can\u2019t know that you have good reasons, and that your view is correct, if you don\u2019t even know what those reasons are.\u00a0 If you can say \u201cI hold this view because X, Y, and Z, and here\u2019s why XYZ is right,\u201d then good for you. \u00a0 If you answered with \u201cWell, they told me\u2026\u201d or \u201cIt makes me happy to believe this\u201d or something else, then you still can\u2019t be sure it\u2019s actually true<\/em>.\u00a0 Second, it\u2019s hard to consider other<\/em> views if you struggle to compare them to an opposing opinion that you hold.\u00a0 You have to know your reasoning for the current view in order to weigh them against each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I penned (keyboarded?) this with major views like religion in mind, but it can apply to any view of importance.\u00a0 If the question can be debated – in a serious sense, not counting your disagreement about what the precise temperature outside is – then you should know what and how good your reasons are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any thoughts or anecdotes? I’m always happy to hear them.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you\u2019re studying other viewpoints, and (hopefully) trying to evaluate their truthfulness, it\u2019s important to know why you believe your current views, whatever that reason may be.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean \u201cWhy is this true,\u201d or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[23,22,14],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thinking","tag-beliefs","tag-questioning","tag-religion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}