Does Robust Knowledge Require Both Consensus And Disagreement?

“Robust knowledge requires both consensus and disagreement.” Discuss this claim with reference to two areas of knowledge. Tyrion Lannister once said “you should never believe a thing simply, because you want to believe it.” This quote promotes the betrayal of our own desire to believe what we are inclined to believe in, and instead become skeptical of those ideas and knowledge. But why does this matter? To elaborate furthermore, in order for people to produce robust knowledge they first must first disagree and come a consensus in regards to it. For the most part this claim proves to be true, however it’s reliability is dependent on what area of knowledge is being discussed. To go more in depth the disagreement and consensus of knowledge
This is due to the inclination the natural sciences have to reason and sense perception. To elaborate further more, when people question or disagree on the reliability of the knowledge within this area of knowing, the natural sciences utilizes reason in order to disprove any doubt of its reliability. They do so by uncovering new evidence that only works to support the knowledge and strengthen it. A real world example of this is the infamous vaccine debacle. Since the 1990s a correlation between vaccines and autism has been created and publicized creating a long lasting debate about whether or not vaccines are harmful. According to the Washington Post article “Despite measles outbreak, anti-vaccine activists in Minnesota refuse to back down” by Lena h. Sun, the largest measles outbreak in decades within Minnesota occurred due to people refusing to be vaccinated, yet anti-vaccine activist continue to rally against vaccines due to confirmation bias. However these events just come to support what many credited scientists have argued and proved before, that vaccines in fact aren’t harmful and only prevent illnesses such as measles from spreading. To further explain, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention clarifies that scientists learn about the safety through the clinical trials they run, a step in the process of completing the scientific method.
This is because usually the disagreement brings forth new evidence that further disproves the claims and beliefs held by certain religions. A prime example of such thing occurring is the previous one discussed. The article “Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God” by Adam Gabbatt, describes how in his new book “The Grand Design” world renowned scientist Stephen Hawkings argues that a “creator” wasn’t necessary for the universe. Moreover Stephen Hawkings claims that "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing”. Through this argument Hawkings is denouncing Sir Isaac Newtons theory that the universe couldn’t have been created from mere chaos. Hawkings provides evidence such as an observation made in 1992 of a planet orbiting a star that wasn’t the sun showing to explain that the universe wasn’t in fact created by a god or designed in a manner to “please us human beings”. From this real example of disagreement occurring within the religious knowledge systems we can see how skepticism has only weakened and come to disprove the belief that god created the universe. It becomes difficult for religious knowledge systems to counter argue these claims due to their limitation of evidence they have access, for instance case Christians only have access to the Bible and few other scriptures and nothing else.