Science and School of Belief: Part 1

Milk is Vital for Hair Growth: A glance at 'The Belief'

She wanted me to play with her and she ran to the playground. I followed her and entered into the playground. A kid of age 4. She started running around me with a doll in her left hand.

"Let us play a traffic game?" I asked her

"How do we play it?"

"you just have to stop when I say red and continue running when I say green"

"okay!"

She followed the rule throughout the game. But children get bored easily, so did she!

"Will you tie the hair of this doll?"

"Sure. How am I supposed to tie it? Will you guide me?"

"Yes!"

She guided me to tie the hair such that it will remain fastened for a long time.

"how the hair of this doll has been fixed to its head?" I asked her

"it's been glued to its head"

"Mhmm; How about our hair?"

"That..." she thought for a moment

"That too has glued;  glued to our head."

"But... how does it grow, if it's glued to our head?"

"It'll grow from the other end... that's all!"

"But the hair of the doll doesn't grow; why is it so?"

"It's because the doll doesn't drink milk... The hair will grow only if you drink milk."

"Really?"

"yes... I drink milk and that's why my hair grows... this doll never drinks milk."

She was so sure about her perception, or she was so sure about her faith in them who taught her that concept...

Of course! it must be her parents who taught it... ;)

Almost everyone says such imaginary tales to make children eat/drink something... I'm not trying to say it must not be done...

but

that's a way a belief develops... She will learn once that these beliefs are not true...

If an adult says the same we would think of himer either as a mentally ill person or a stupid, given that we do not expect any primitive wild human being in our civilized society.

It is certain that we won't call a primitive wild human being 'stupid' if hesher believes that hair is glued to the head... because we know, hesher is unknown about such FACTS... (like the way we will never call the child stupid for what she said... Also, we are likely to appreciate her for her extrapolated imagination and reasoning at the age of 4).

In other words, we expect the whole society to hold certain threshold of knowledge and rationalism!

Now, how do we fix a threshold? What are the measures for setting such a threshold?

Are we trying to expel the school of belief or rather learning through reasoning, making everyone more and more rational, and hence fixing the threshold.