The Difference Between Belief And Evidence

Evidence or proof are often used to support a human’s own theories and beliefs as a form of authentication. An example may include how in today’s world we wouldn’t consider something to be completely true unless suitable evidence is presented, when that is the case us humans would retain a firm belief in it. There is a common phrase that states that “seeing is believing”, it implies that you can only believe in something once you have seen it happen before you. This topic question would force you to question yourself and the trust you have in your beliefs. Usually, belief is what one might consider as a truth not necessarily depending on the evidence of some sort. Beliefs initially were thought to be real by many even when it has not been proved with evidence. Belief is the root cause for our way of thinking, while faith, according to St Paul is, “the conviction of things hoped for and the assurance of things not seen”. In the case of past events like for example in history we are not always sure of the facts presented to us, and since we never had existed in the earlier period world we can never say if history was true at all. It is mostly built on beliefs or claim.

When registered documents or ancient books and writings support these claim they became stronger and considered facts. A human’s belief system does not always work on the basis of evidence. Belief is made up of many diverse incidents which influence people’s mindset and their behavior. Hence, there is a high chance for someone to simply believe something if it is implanted within their belief even if the evidence is very less or not at all. For e. g. parents embed thought in children’s mind that God exists, when in reality we don’t really have a concrete evidence to support this. No one has actually seen God. But as we grow up the power of beliefs that are embedded within slowly decline due to many extrinsic or intrinsic factors (explain more what this means). Very little evidence is presented in case of religion. It is somewhat an area where people believe in it even after being aware of the less evidence or sometimes no evidence at all. Here, it’s a personal choice whether to believe it or not. This is reffered to as faith, which makes them believe in certain things, But this is only a starting point. Faith has two primary meanings. It can be used as a synonym for trust in the secular world, and notably, in a more dogmatic sense, for all-or-nothing belief in, and personal commitment to God or Allah, that is central to most denominations of Christianity and Islam respectively. This is a good example of the polysemy of language. You put your faith into something that is good. (explain more and organize idea) In art there is an absence for the need of evidence, especially when considering art that is abstract. If you place the artwork created by Salvador Dalí, called “Lobster Telephone”, if you place it in front of an art critic or historian they would have a different point of you than a regular bystander, since they are bound to have entirely different opinions and views on it. The bystander may think of it as a quite strange, meanwhile the art historian would see the beauty in the piece. There is absolutely no physical evidence to tell a person how to feel about a certain piece since many comments and criticisms are based off of the individuals emotions.

Somebody’s feelings can’t be adapted even if evidence is presented to them, this portrays how evidence is unnecessary when discussing art because it’s quite personal and several people would have different views on the message of the painting that would lie beyond it.

Ethics is also an abstract area of knowledge because there is never a right answer when it comes to what is right and what is wrong. People normally base their ethical actions on their gut feeling or intuition, and no amount of evidence can prove or disprove if a persons gut feeling or belief system is valid. What is right to one person could be completely wrong to another person, so ethics is very individualistic and depends on a matter of things. A common ethical dilemma in America is the problem of the death penalty. It is a sentence that is imposed by the law which removes the legal life of a person who has committed a crime. Many people would say it is ethically wrong to deny a person right to live, which is every human’s right. On the other side, according to important legal persons the crime is deemed serious enough to be punishable by death. Neither side is right or wrong, and neither side could come up with legitimate evidence to prove that the death penalty is right or wrong. Ethics is very situational and solely based on a person’s intuitive perspective, so no evidence would not be necessary to support someone's beliefs.

As for beauty, how do we know exactly what it is? And can it ever be objectively measured? You would be able to use a few areas of knowledge for this. E. g some may argue using science, that individuals with specific proportions and symmetrical faces are beautiful, within ethics they may say that at any specific rate, beauty is subjective and people shouldn’t be put in categories since we are all somewhat beautiful. Using mathematics Dr Stephen Marquardt used ideas of perfect proportions to create the ‘golden mask’ which is a template of how the ideal face should look. Evidence is a kind of theory that affects the human mind a lot. Humans tend to believe things which have at least some kind of evidence attached to it. Human belief system is biased to the dissimilar ways of knowing. It acts according to the way they come to know about something. Psychologically it can be very difficult for our mind to accept something that has been taught to be right is in fact wrong.

15 July 2020
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