Dunemeister
Well-Known Member
Is there anything that you believe while at the same time knowing that you have no basis for believing it other than being told by someone else that it was so?
As Jay said, there's a conflation here between "evidence for" and "basis for", but I'll assume you have roughly the same thing in mind for both terms. If I understand you, you're asking if there are some beliefs for which our only evidence for their truth is that someone we generally trust says it's so. In other words, you're asking if we hold beliefs on the basis of trusted testimony.
My answer is yes. I believe that evil will not have the last word, that God will put things to rights. Nothing in the created order gives me unambiguous evidence to that effect, and you might say that the empirical evidence points in the opposite direction. So be it. I still believe, based on the testimony of scripture that God will indeed put things to rights.
I believe that God is a tri-unity (trinity). I believe this based on scripture as interpreted by the Fathers and other doctors as accepted in church tradition. In other words, I believe this on the authority of church tradition. No amount of mental gymnastics makes the trinity a necessary conclusion, so it's not a position that could be arrived at via reason alone. And certainly there's no empirical evidence for it. But the church says it's so, and I think the church got this right.
I believe that my best friend is currently residing in Japan. I've never been to Japan. I've never seen any photos of my friend near a Japanese site. Besides, such photos could be photo-shopped, so even if I had them I don't know I could trust them. But I know I can trust my friend. Our years of friendship have given me confidence in his character. He tells me that he lives in Japan, and although I have no direct evidence that it's so, empirical or otherwise, I believe it's so.
I believe that there are actual people who stand behind the postings on this site. I've never met any of you, but I'm fully persuaded that the postings on the site are not put there by some kind of supercomputer. I have SOME evidence that y'all are real, but it's certainly not fool-proof. I presume that a modern computer could make the sorts of posts I see here. But I simply know (and therefore believe) otherwise.
I believe that acetaminophen relieves pain. The science that justifies this claim is utterly beyond me, but guys in white lab coats say it's true, and I have no reason to disbelieve them. So I believe it as an operating assumption that if I have a headache, acetaminophen would be a decent remedy.
Examples could be multiplied perhaps ad infinitum, but these are sufficient, I think, to prove the point. People who say that they don't believe anything unless it has been proved to them (or they themselves have proved it) are merely parroting some sort of ideology, probably to present themselves as intellectually independent. Such "independence" is actually intellectually irresponsible.