Do you want to have true beliefs? I do. Desperately. How do I make sure my beliefs are true? I think truth just means “matches reality.” So, making sure a belief is true just means making sure it matches reality. How do our minds gain access to reality? By observing it. So making sure you have true beliefs is as simple as making sure your beliefs match observation. As far as I’m aware, observation is really the only route from reality to our brains, and as such, that means every other method of getting at the truth is bogus. “This is my tradition” is bogus, especially because people have lots of different traditions. “This is what I was raised to believe” is bogus, because people are raised to believe all kinds of things, some of them false. The great scientist Stephen Jay Gould was raised to be a Marxist. The way he was raised didn’t make Marxism correct. But you know what? Gould was a courageous and honest thinker. He left Marxism the moment he came across arguments that showed Marxism was false. Marxism cannot be right because its claims don’t jive with the way the observable world is. Ask yourself: Do you want to be like Stephen Jay Gould and challenge the beliefs you were raised with, and the beliefs you “feel” are right, or do you want to be the person who shuts his eyes and ears to the world around him and believes whatever he wants, even if it is wrong? I know what my answer to that question is.
