What Are You Basing Your Knowledge Upon?

By Scott Shaw

It is a curious condition of life but people base what they think they know upon what they heard from some person, who heard it from another person, who heard it from who knows where? Most people never base their beliefs upon the source of the information.

People spend their entire existence thinking that they know something. But, how do they know it? They think they know it because they heard it from a secondhand source. Or, they heard it from someone who had an agenda.

This is not knowledge. This is rumor. This is speculation. In some cases, this is a lie.

Even if we go to the foundation of religious and moral culture, we are still not at the source. Jesus did not write the Bible. Buddha did not write the Dharmapada. People wrote those books. People who claimed to know what Jesus or the Buddha said and believed. But, did those people who wrote the scriptures actually know what Jesus or the Buddha said or thought? Or, did they simply want to project their own ideologies into what became these holy teaching?

Throughout our existence, in this place we call life, we will each come upon our beliefs. We will come upon them from various sources. In most cases, once a person believes something, it will be impossible to make them stop their belief. This is where the problems with truth arise.

Is belief a truth? No, it is simply a belief.

Most people spend their entire life believing what they hear and not questioning the source. From this, untruths and lies are perpetuated throughout this life-scape. This pattern makes no-thing in life better.

Therefore, before you ever decide to believe anything, go to the source. Not only will this make you a person who bases their beliefs upon foundational evidence but it will also make this life-place much better because it will end the spread of falsehoods based upon hearsay.

Who do you want to be? Do you want to be a person who knows the truth or do you want to be a person who bases their life upon falsehoods?