Article 74

The Parlous Consequences Which Arise When Belief Is Mistaken For Knowledge.

At this point in the fourth section of this website, I recall for the convenience of my readers, that my definitive differentiation of the knowledge belief dichotomy and with it those of wisdom/folly, truth/falsehood, right/wrong and good/bad, is derived from my observation that reality stimulates our imaginations to rational beliefs transformable to knowledge by evaluation of their compliance or non-compliance with cause-effect reality, or to those which can only be accepted, rejected or suspended as beliefs beyond this reality-evaluation in pro tem practice or in principle, but which cannot be accepted as knowledge; that, consequently, I have shown that such reality-evaluation of specific beliefs produced the cause/effect craft- and self-knowledge which secured our group-species survival from time immemorial and the cause-effect scientific and technological knowledge which enhanced our welfare from the seventeenth century onwards, while our knowledge-based development of social cohesion was variously disrupted by conflicting religious beliefs, by knowledge-rejecting secular beliefs or by the reaction of ignored-reality in ways which belief is unable to anticipate or avert. 

Again, at this point, I recall for the convenience of my readers, that religious belief in the existence of a God or gods must have been stimulated by our recognition of the need for a cause not only for our own existence but also for the reality in which we exist; but that with such beliefs being beyond reality, we cannot evaluate them by reference to this reality because any such reference is merely a circularity. However, I here recall my earlier conclusions that the Judaeo-Christian injunction to do unto others as you would have the do to you, is a statement of the behavioural knowledge without which we could not maintain the hierarchical social cohesion needed for our survival as the group-species we are; that even this knowledge does not prevent the existence of belief-only social sub-groups within distinct national sub-groups of our human species, nor does it prevent the creation of antagonistic religious subgroups respecting differing beliefs as to the nature of God and as to the details of worship, as exemplified by the past and present violence between the sub-groups of Christianity and Islam and between their respective internal sects; and that, in contrast, all herd animal species inherently recognise the need for this ‘live and let-live’ attitude without which their mutually beneficial group-life would be impossible.

Yet again, I recall that the harmonisation of political beliefs/counter-beliefs within national groups of the human species is fragile and is maintained only by the recurrence of voting for party-specific sub-groups which offer to implement policies allegedly in support of belief or its counter-belief; that nonetheless debates of opinions/counter-opinions which precede such elections, are merely the debates of beliefs/counter-beliefs supported by partially selected facts/counter-facts, evidence/ counter-evidence or news/false-news, no set of which is ever debate-terminating conclusive knowledge; that consequently, the ensuing vote is merely a temporary belief-consensus pending its possible rejection in the next debate and the next election, and so on ad infinitum; and that this repetitive charade can be terminated only by the replacement of belief/counter-belief options, which can never deliver as promised in reality, with knowledge-only options either of whichwill work in reality as promised, the election then deciding which will be implemented; that this replacement of belief with knowledge and the consequent elective choice from knowledge-only alternatives is the objective of this website; and that the parlous state of current belief-only parliamentary/elective affairs can be rectified only by public demand for this replacement. The subsequent Articles of this website will now demonstrate the ubiquitous need to achieve this objective, 21/8/21.