To what extent do we need evidence to support our beliefs in different areas of knowledge?

As a TOK student, I have been taught to question everything around me, rather than blindly believe anything I am told. For this reason, I have learned to ask for evidence for many of the concepts that my teachers, family members and friends tell me about. However, this is usually in topics taught in the educational system such as mathematics and the natural sciences, where evidence and reason are necessary in order to conclude if an answer or theory is correct/ reasonable. In more complex topics such as religion, which relies mainly on faith, emotion and beliefs, evidence plays a very different and often minimal role. This is also often the case with ethics where our morals, and our views of other people are based upon intuition and Perception rather than evidence.

In the area of knowledge of mathematics, language allows us to generalize words, equations and ideas to make knowledge in math universal, rather than dependent on opinion person to person, and therefore relies on facts in order for theories to be formulated. Mathematics greatly requires the use of reason and logic. Reason is a way of knowing, which by the use of known facts and logic, extends our knowledge. There are two forms of logic in reasoning: deductive and inductive. Induction overall is about the human need to look for patterns in observations over time, such as in addition. Because in the past 1+2 has always equaled 3, we expect this to be the case every time we add these numbers together. If someone argued that 1+2 is 6, I would be skeptical and require evidence, as it would be against the ideas that were previously instilled me throughout my education that 1+2= 3. I would require valid evidence for me to go against my beliefs and against what I would conside...

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...at is not really there, affecting not only our perception of the world overall, but also of individuals.

In conclusion, the extent to which we need evidence to support our beliefs depends on which area of knowledge being discussed, as those known for their objectivity and fact-based theories such as science and math require evidence to support the beliefs of individuals to a large extent, while those such as religion and art require little evidence as they are based upon our individual sense perception and faith, and therefore because it is not based upon reason but emotion does not need evidence to be justified, or to be justified at all. In these areas of knowledge, it is only to see how valid a belief is that that evidence is necessary.

We do not need evidence to support our own beliefs, we need evidence to make our opinions and beliefs valid to other people.