Foundation of Belief

Before I get started here are a few definitions of the word belief.

• The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another.
• Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something.
• Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.

This article in essence is diving into the nature of the words that define belief, along with providing an example of a belief in an idea and not having a belief in an idea. 

 

Truth within Belief 

We can see that in two of the three definitions, truth is a part of the meaning. Truth of the information for said belief. What's important here is to consider the nature of information and how it can represent a particular truth value. 

Let's say we have 3 pieces of information, denoting as i, that support a belief, which will be denoted as, b. 

• Information proving statement of belief
• Information proving statement of belief
• Information proving statement of belief

What's important here is that this is a belief in a philosophy, word, theory, idea, etc. It is NOT not believing in something, i.e., I do NOT believe in fairies. 

The importance of this distinction is because if we are proving that there are no fairies, then we can use all information that isn't a fairy to support our claim. We could even go so far as to say that something that looks like it could be a fairy is not a fairy because of the subjectivity and perception of what a fairy would mean to YOU. 

Therefore, in order to believe in something, it is important to focus in the belief of something's existence, not the belief of something inexistence. 

Let's say we have the following example of applying all of this information above. 

 

Example Time 

b = God exists 

i 1: The Bible is the history of God's son, Jesus.

i 2: I choose to believe the universe was created by something instead of nothing. 

i 3: There is a divide between good and evil, and while subjectivity in experience is present in reality, it is not in morality when truly understood.

Okay, great. We have truth and/or confidence in this belief that God exists. 

But wait. What if information is shown to this believer that all of this current information is not truth. What happens then? 

Let's say someone claims that the Bible is purely fiction and there is no way to prove any of the text like we can with science. 

Let's say that someone claims that the big bang came from nothingness and that doesn't need a creator for something to come from nothing because of quantum physics showing that reality is mostly made from nothing anyway. 

And let's also say that someone claims that there is no divide between good and evil and that subjectivity is shown with morals all the time given all the commandments in the Bible can have exceptions to them.

Okay, fair point. Now what? 

Well. Nothing really. Those are all reasons to not believe in God's existence because any information can be presented to someone to show the lack of existence in something. 

So who's "right"? I'll answer that with a question. 

If you were someone who wanted to create your own universe, how would you allow beings to have free will? 

This demonstration shows that while information can be claimed given experience, it doesn't mean that the beliefs are the same. I look at the information that can be claimed that God doesn't exist and still belief that he does regardless of what another person's decided to choose for themselves. 

As generally mentioned prior, it is normally easier to prove the inexistence of something than it is to prove the existence of it because anything that isn't the what is believed is proof of its inexistence.

Even further, we can analyze the interpretation of the definitions a step further and recognize that the word truth is in 2 of the 3 definitions. Trust and confidence is in the first one and that, to me, leaves room for belief to have a layer of trust involved with whatever is believed. Understanding that the big difference between believe and trust would likely fall into the topic of a belief can be believed even if it isn't fully trusted, and therefore confidence takes its place as allowing the belief to be believed. 

 

Conclusion 

There are two paths one can take when it comes to their choice of beliefs, assuming the person believes that belief is a choice to begin with. 

• One believes being right to others matters more than the belief itself.
• One believes the belief itself matters more than being right to others. 

Lastly, what person do you believe is more likely to consider the perspective of the other person in their conversations with others? From my perspective, I can already see how the information shared to not support God's existence can also support God's existence too, but do you believe someone who doesn't believe in God's existence would care to see the same about the information that was claimed to support his existence? 

In the end, the choice it yours.