OK so that sounds quite a heavy title for a post but hopefully it won’t be as heavy as all that!

Over the past couple of weeks in counselling we have chatted around issues of ‘core beliefs’ some of my core beliefs being that I am useless, stupid, ugly, no one likes me, unable to do anything, the list could go on! Pretty much all my core belief’s are negative. As if you needed to know that!

She said that core beliefs are really set during childhood, we develop our core beliefs through what our parents & other influential adults tell us and then they are set and it becomes difficult to change them.

So what about the evidence based belief part of this? Well my counsellor was saying that when we have core beliefs we always look for evidence that supports those core beliefs and dismiss evidence that doesn’t support them, so for example, I see myself as stupid, I build this belief up by looking for all the evidence to support it, when I don’t know the answers to the things people ask or I cant solve a problem etc and dismiss all the clever things I manage to do, when I manage to solve problems or sort things out for myself or for others. Yep that about sums me up!

How else can someone who as a Transport Manager was head hunted on more than one occasion because they thought I was good at the job manage to decide that he is stupid? Quite simply, I dismiss others belief that I am pretty good at it by saying they don’t really know me, etc.

Anyhow, you can see how this whole issue swims round and round in circles, for me I am working very hard on trying to correct some of my core beliefs because I know that others do not share the same view of me that I share of myself, as has been evidenced by some of the things they say and the way that they have spoken about me, I must dig out that list of positive things people spoke about/over me a few months back.

Having gone through my childhood believing that I was useless, ugly, stupid etc I have carried those beliefs into adult life and perfected the belief in my own mind so it takes a lot to over come those beliefs and I need to constantly look for and validate the evidence that supports the opposite views to those that I have thus far believed. After all, as my wife regularly says, do I want to believe the things that my parents said about me when I was a child (and my mother continues to say to this day) or will I believe the things that those who are nearest to me and who love me most say about me? Well there is no contention really when you put it like that BUT life is never quite as easy, its not a matter of flicking a switch and hey presto your mind set has changed.

OK now for the other part of this post, hadn’t intended to write most of the above! What I really wanted to say was, it occurred to me earlier today that the vast majority of people, even those who are highly educated and respected leaders in the field of science, can and do fall into the trap of developing core beliefs then looking for evidence to support their belief rather than looking at all the evidence before forming a belief, indeed it would be pretty impossible to do the latter as the evidence sometimes changes over time.

So, for example, many years ago people believed that the world was flat and the whole of their world view was based in the belief that the world was flat, they never challenged this because all the evidence (that the found) pointed to the world being flat, it took a lateral thinker to challenge this assumption and re-define the whole way we saw the world when he discovered that the world was actually a globe, can you imagine what it would be like if we still thought the world was flat?

There are still those who don’t believe that smoking causes any health problems, these people will point to the evidence of great uncle bob or granddad who at the age of 90+ is still going strong and has smoked 40 a day fro most of their life, indeed if you look only at this evidence you can see why people come to the conclusion that smoking cant be that bad for you, but that is to dismiss the huge number of deaths each week from the effects of smoke, lung cancer etc.

Another example might be the pro & anti Europe camps in this country, those who are anti Europe will look for all the beurocratic decisions all the stupid rules, the costs to us as a nation of being a part of the community whereas those who believe we should be in Europe will look at all the benefits, the grants we receive the good laws that come out of Europe (at which point the euro sceptics say what good laws?) the investment and security the EU offers us, oh and before you ask, I am pretty neutral on the issue of Europe!

When is comes to faith, religious beliefs, we all have a faith, whether we acknowledge it or not, and our faith usually provides the basis of our world view, for some their faith is a belief on God, in some form or another, for others it is a belief that there is no God, whichever camp you fall into I can guarantee that you look for the evidence to support that belief rather than looking at the evidence that exists to see what it tells you, your thought patterns are affected by your belief system.

As a Christian I freely admit that I look for, and see, evidence of God’s creative work in every day life, I can see the way that he has created and written DNA into every living thing, the way that he made the planet to be such a beautiful place, the way that he made everything good.

Of course those who are evolutionists will point to the glaciers and carbon dating and various other aspects of the world to show how clear it is that the world was formed out of a big bang and we are all evolved from microscopic beings, or whatever is their particular conviction of how we came to be.

The evidence on any side can and will be overwhelming to the people who hold to that particular belief.

So, who can claim to have THE answers and know the truth? Well I believe that the truth can only be known separate from the ‘evidence’ and comes out of an inner evidence, as a Christian I have had a personal encounter with God and know from my inner evidence that he exists and that there is truth to be discovered, however I can not provide you the reader with evidence that will sway you because you will filter all the evidence based on your pre-conceived views and beliefs.

Many people who have grown up with an abusive father have struggled with the concept of God as Father, until recently, well the past couple of years, I would have denied this was me, I could relate to the concept of God as father, but the truth is that I still had a wrong perception, I have always believed that I pretty much sneaked into th
e kingdom, I wasn’t actually chosen, at the meeting where I went forward to give my life to God I was just one of a number of people and I have always felt that when I stood there God looked at me and just said ‘oh you came forward too did you? OK I will let you in’ this view was really due to the relationship I had with my parents in growing up, always feeling as if I was just tolerated rather than loved, not wanted but there, not being kicked out but still not really being welcomed as a valued part of the family. This mind set has been really clear in the way I have felt about going through the depths of depression over the past couple of years.

Are there issues where you filter evidence through your own belief system rather than filter your belief system through all the evidence open to you? I know that there are still definitely areas that I need to work on, areas where I still believe things and stack the evidence in support of that belief. Mainly for me in relation to my perception of myself, but bit by bit I am dismantling my belief system in an effort to rebuild it on the security of all the evidence available.

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The following is the text of an e-mail I have received in response to this blog post, Mike (the author) is a photographer who’s blog I have been following with some interest over the past few months, He lives in the same area as me and I am hoping to get out with him so that he can teach me camera techniques and help me improve my photography skills. As he says, his response is too long a comment to have left directly on my blog so he chose to e-mail it to me, I am copying it into the end of the original post because it adds soem very thought provoking ideas to my original post, if you wish to find out more about Mike he can be found on his own website here.

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Hi David

Well, as you’ll have now discovered, I’ve stumbled across your blog.

That’s what you get for posting a link to it on Twitter! Heh heh.

Anyway, I wrote this *huge* comment to one of your posts only to find that blogspot wouldn’t accept it cos it had “too many characters”. A bit reluctant to then just consign it to the recycle bin, thought I’d email it to you. Do with it what you will.

Here ‘t is…

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Well, I’ve now returned the favour and bookmarked your blog

Discovered through one of your tweets, and rather pleased about it I am too for this is a fascinating post. Most thought-provoking. And one with which I can only too easily identify. That’s to say, the opening paragraphs.

I don’t think I’ve ever phrased it to myself in quite such terms but for as long as I can remember I’ve always had an awareness that my perception of myself is very frequently at odds with the perception of me that others appear to hold. And generally the latter tends to be rather more positive than the former.

Which in effect, if I’ve understood you correctly, is pretty much the same as you’re saying.

Perhaps I should qualify that for I’m not entirely happy with the terms “positive” and “negative”, in the sense that “positive” could be taken to imply “good” or “nice” or whatever, and that’s not quite what I meant.

More accurate perhaps would be to say that others’ perceptions of my abilities and competencies frequently appear kindlier than my own.

What I’d not connected this disparity with however was the influence my early years viz parents etc may have had in the forming of my self-perception.

Its a fascinating and persuasive notion, and one to which I can see myself giving considerable thought.

But leaving that aside, you then go on to talk of people falling “into the trap of developing core beliefs then looking for evidence to support their belief rather than looking at all the evidence before forming a belief” and, as you rightly observe, in some circumstances it would be almost impossible to do otherwise.

This too set me to thinking. About the statement itself, and about the assumption implicit in the statement, which becomes much clearer with your closing remark. An assumption, moreover, that I suspect we all tend to make… that “evidence” is in some fashion more valid than “belief”.

Particularly if we’re equating validity with “closeness to the truth”.

(“Closeness to the facts”? Hmm. Even a statement as apparently simple as this raises profound questions.)

But I wonder if such an assumption is justified?

Here’s a few random thoughts…

Can “evidence” be said to exist “in isolation” as it were? Or does it not, rather, derive its status from the interpretation we put upon it?

Even to the extent of deciding which factors are relevant and therefore constitute “evidence” and which factors should be discarded as irrelevant?

Is it not possible that the whole notion of “evidence” is little other than a product of our own perception of “reality”? And if so, would that not actua
lly render it, paradoxically, a product of belief?

It seems to me that the attraction of restructuring (or attempting to

restructure) one’s life upon “the evidence” in preference to core beliefs resides in the assumption that in some way “the evidence” is more accurate, more truthful, or more representative of “reality” (or however you wish to express it) than belief may be.

Yet, as you so rightly observe, “evidence sometimes changes over time”.

Thus, how would we know, were we to structure our lives upon the evidence available today, that such evidence wouldn’t change (or, more pertinently, even be proven wrong by the discovery of more complete evidence for example) tomorrow?

And if there is an “absolute reality” and the evidence available to us at any given time can only ever be reflective of our circumscribed knowledge and/or understanding of that absolute reality and therefore (and inevitably) incomplete, how wise can it be to structure our lives upon such an incomplete (and possibly completely mistaken) basis?

(Bringing this principle right back down to “our own doorstep”, how can others’ perceptions of us constitute any form of reliable evidence when their knowledge of us is far less complete than our own?)

Is it even possible to attempt such an undertaking? How would we know, for example, that we have all the available evidence at our disposal?

Could it not be that actions based on partial evidence may be more erroneous than actions based purely on belief?

And in fact would those actions themselves not be based upon belief…

the belief that we have all the available evidence at our disposal?

Dilemmas indeed!

I think the thing I find most worrying about this is the sense that an “evidence-based life” (for want of a better term) hints of a very mechanistic (one might almost say materialistic) approach, and seems to allow little room for “movements of the Spirit”.

And that, so it seems to me, goes against the available evidence of what humans actually are, or how they live their lives in reality.

There’s another paradox for you!

I doubt if any reasonable person would argue with the notion that certain things are susceptible of being decided upon the basis of the evidence. One example you’ve used is that of the harmful effects of smoking.

I can’t imagine any reasonable person (even smokers) disputing that smoking can be (and generally is) seriously injurious of health. And such a conclusion is based purely upon the available evidence alone.

However, such examples don’t (so it seems to me) necessarily or even logically lead to the inference that everything should be (or needs to

be) evidence-based.

Let’s return to the matter of perceptions of self… one’s own and those of others.

In my own particular case, were I to “buy into” the evidence offered by other peoples’ perceptions of my abilities in certain areas then its distinctly conceivable that my efforts to improve in those areas would be significantly less than efforts based upon my own perception of such abilities.

In other words, its entirely conceivable that one’s own lesser perceptions of oneself can be the motivation to strive to improve. And surely that is a good thing. Isn’t it?

My own “spiritual path” (which, as you may have realised by now, goes by a somewhat different name to yours… though I tend not to place too much significance upon mere labels) demands of me a constant striving, which effort can only ever be based upon my own perception of myself and my shortcomings. Were I to allow it to be otherwise then its entirely conceivable that such striving wouldn’t be anywhere near as rigorous.

Or so I believe

And (returning to an earlier point) should validity even be equated to “closeness to the truth”? How can we ever know what such “truth” is (in any absolute sense) when it must forever be filtered through (or coloured by… whichever you prefer) our exclusively human perceptions? Would it not then make more sense to equate validity to relevancy?

And if relevancy be that which has the greatest potential for impacting our lives, or actually does impact and motivate us to the greater extent, then it seems to me that belief is far more valid than evidence.

Hmm. I’ve just re-read everything I’ve written and it strikes me as sounding somewhat challenging. Its not intended in that way. Its all just speculation reflective of my own virtually constant uncertainty about… oh… almost everything. Apart from my core beliefs of course

fotdmike

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all the best

mike