Belief Systems

If you insult one aspect of a belief system it can be treated like you are insulting one’s mother. So how would you feel if someone called your mother false or insulted your wife as simple and easy or your children as bastards? If the belief system is intimate enough to a person, the same feelings of wrath and anger can be triggered as if you were insulting his family. 

By batsman

In my earlier write-up I argued that faith and beliefs are 2 very different things (Faith Re-Visited) and that faith cannot be questioned while belief systems being built up of sets of beliefs over time and which have  logic of their own can. 

Having said that, it is not as if belief systems can be questioned any which way. Being built up over time, a belief system can in a way become a way of life. It can be as intimate as one’s own family. So if you insult one aspect of a belief system it can be treated like you are insulting one’s mother. So how would you feel if someone called your mother false or insulted your wife as simple and easy or your children as bastards? If the belief system is intimate enough to a person, the same feelings of wrath and anger can be triggered as if you were insulting his family. 

So now, there is a need to treat belief systems different from a simple argument over economics, for example. Arguments over belief systems need to be treated with much greater mutual respect. To discuss belief systems, there is a need for long term engagement and exchange of opinions and ideas. Not just that, there is also an even more urgent need to show sincerity with good deeds, integrity and decent actions. I believe this is what RPK is trying to do with Malaysia Today, unlike some people who piggy back on the strenuous efforts of others and shout insults from across the river or even from across oceans. Hopefully Malaysia Today will be with us for a very long time and be part of our lives for the long term. 

Let me try to show how belief systems can be built up with a simple example. This story is by courtesy of antares …. 

Albert Einstein was enjoying tea with his fellow professors. He was smiling while lighting his pipe, a fellow professor asked, “Why are you smiling? Einstein replies “I wonder if God has any choice when he created the universe? 

When one thinks about this story, it would appear as if Einstein having consumed too much cakes and tea gave a silent fart which is why he smiled probably with embarrassment. He probably was also thinking about the creation of the universe as academics often discuss these questions over tea. It is then likely that Einstein associated God with himself and with his well known fertile mind, thought if God did not create the universe (without any choice in the matter) with a tremendous big fart called the Big Bang and that since it occurred in the vacuum of space there was no sound energy generated and was just as silent as Einstein’s own fart. 

Obviously this story is meant to tickle people’s sense of humour in a perverted way and likely spread by the secularists. Whether this story actually happened in reality is anybody’s guess, but Einstein’s name has now being used in a silly joke as has God’s name. Whether Einstein appreciates the use of his name in this way is now out of his control. In time, people actually began to believe that Einstein actually said all these things. It has been built into the belief system by the secularists to make fun of God by using Einstein’s name. 

Although this story is superficial and has no important consequence, it does illustrate how belief systems are built up. In a more serious way, it is believed that Marie Antoinette said “Let them eat cake” when starving rioters were at her palace gates demanding bread. Whether she actually said it or not is of no consequence anymore since it is now a famous folklore and has been built into the belief system of the capitalists. Even when historians recently claimed that she never actually uttered these famous words, it has not affected the folklore. Although this sounds also superficial to us these days, in the days when kings’ heads were rolling in the guillotine, it was no joke and was probably used by the capitalists to blacken the name of the royal family. 

So it is that victors in a fight often add to the belief system because it supports their control and rule. So it is that belief systems have structure and logic of their own and serves the purposes of the people in power and is different from faith which is independent of logic and reason and serves only the person who holds that faith. This is true in religious belief systems as it is equally true in scientific belief systems or even political belief systems. 

In Malaysia, UMNO has shown no inclination whatsoever to engage in a serious way in debate such that people of various religions and faiths can understand each other. Instead it has used the ISA and threats of violence and race riots to stop people from trying to understand each other. 

PAS on the other hand has shown it can engage in a mutually respectful way with people of other faiths and religions. So although the language and terminology that PAS and UMNO use may sound the same, the ACTIONS are very different. 

When one talks about belief systems, one talks about communities which hold on to these belief systems. In a community, there will be good people and bad people. Those who are positive will think that there are more good people than bad people. This is part of the belief system of the positivists. 

Unfortunately when people argue about belief systems in a stupid way especially when they shout insults from across oceans through the internet, both good and bad people on the other side are insulted. This can only benefit UMNO as it feeds UMNO’s negativist belief system that people are essentially immature and must never be allowed to discuss anything serious about religion to the extent of justifying the use of ISA and threats of race and religious violence. 

Luckily, most people with formal religious training have the “cool” and maturity to handle such debates seriously and professionally. It is the secularists and self-interested religionists with bloated egos that go around blasting at everyone. So now there is a need to treat different people differently, giving mature and intelligent people the respect they deserve and the super egos the treatment that THEY deserve, again always differentiating words from actions. 

So I guess it is up to you whether you have faith in people or not, how you treat faith and beliefs – whether you wish to treat them as one and the same thing or to understand them as 2 different and separate concepts. I have absolutely no control except to engage in constructive and long term debate (if Malaysia Today continues to last for the long term and if they still generously wish to post my write-ups apart from other “ifs” and limitations.) as well as in very enjoyable cowboy style rough and tumble “slug fests” with other commenters in the comments section, just to expose the hypocrisy of some commenters who think nothing of insulting the belief systems of others but become hurt and angered by the cowboy style rough and tumble. heeheehee