Delmarva Today 10-8-21
Harold Wilson’s guests are Dr. Adam Wood, Department Head and Professor of English at Valdosta State University; Dr. Grant Wilson, Professor and Graduate Program Director Dept. of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts; and Dr. Christine A. James, Professor Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies also at Valdosta State University. And also joining Wilson is Don Rush, Associate Program Director – Senior Producer News and Public Affairs.
This is the third and final hour-long special program in the series on belief.
In the first program in the series what belief is, how our beliefs are developed, and the role they play in our decision making, and our actions was discussed. The second program considered how beliefs change. The role of rationality, analysis, and self-reflection in that process was reviewed. The current programs look at the present nature of our beliefs as we see them playing out in the fields of politics, religion, and culture.
It has generally been accepted that our beliefs are grounded on verifiable information that corresponds to our real-world experience of the way the world works. Through our experiences, information gathered, rational processes, and self-reflection we build models of the way the world works and construct the beliefs that guide our ethics and our actions. Because we can never know everything and yet must still act, this is an ongoing process.
But what happens when a society encounters ideological beliefs or models of the world that share little or no sense of reality? Tomorrow we’re going to take a look at beliefs in the realm of politics, religion and culture that in fact do appear to share no sense of reality and review what kind of dystopian world might follow in their wake?
Dystopian might be a bit of an overstatement here but what is meant by that term here is a political construct and culture pressed into some limiting, controlling, authoritarian structure. But what are the chances as we are confronted by firmly held beliefs that appear to share no sense of reality?