Authority

I heard an argument in high school. It said that however many billions of people believe that buddha is god. How can multiple billions of people be wrong? I think that the point where this argument has traction is the idea that we all feel, see, and sense relatively the same things, how is it that we don’t all agree? I can seem to make sense that the majority must be right.

The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the only way that people come to believe something is by experience and reason. The truth is that people come to believe in things like buddha by authority also. In many cases large amounts of people believe in something almost entirely on authority and only a little bit on experience and reason. Some may have an experience and then have a set of beliefs that are based on the authority of the one experience, i. e. an epiphany.

A good example of how much people act based on authority is tradition. The trends of history have very strong holds on peoples beliefs and actions. Billions of people could be believing based on part tradition, part experience, and part peer influence.