This concept of true belief keeps popping up through my search to find… whatever. And it’s something that is just itching at me. I think the one thing that keeps me even paying attention to it is that it seems to apply to mostly anyone. In the realm of religion everyone has a belief, even if the belief is to not believe. But then there are the arguments that say not believing takes more faith than believing (in the existence of a god).
So, how do you define true belief? Please try to state any reasons you may have for the definition also, since that’s probably more of what my question really is when you dig deep into it.
True belief is an oxymoron. Since belief is something short of certain knowledge (how short being another subject**), belief can’t be called knowledge or true. IOW, if your belief turns out to be true, it is no longer a belief, it is a fact, truth, knowledge.
**The real bugaboo is how much disparity there is between your belief and the Truth. All evidence points to the universe and Earth coming to be long before 7000 years ago. Therefore the gap (the blind faith gap) is very wide for Creationism but all but non-existent for Creation happening billions of years ago, as well as for evolution. The other factor to take into consideration is doubt. The smaller the blind faith gap, the less the doubt. For me, and the evidence that there is miniscule doubt that the revealed religions are man made, leaves me with deism and atheism on an equal, 50-50 footing, leaving me with a blind faith gap that’s nil, but maximizing the doubt about which of those two might be the Truth.
‘True belief’ has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of a belief. It is a measure of the intensity of a belief. A ‘true believer’ will hold on to the belief much longer and against greater opposition than a simple believer.
I’d say someone truly believes something if they consistently act as if it’s true.
For example, these two people, a Grandpa and his daughter, a girl of 9, were trying to tell me that if you have faith that something will happen, it will happen. I noticed, though, that the lil girl was hungry a lot of the time and the grandpa did labor that he absolutely hated doing - did a lot of things he hated doing - in order to stay alive and avoid trouble with the government and shit like that.
I told them, “I can tell you don’t believe what you’re telling me, not one bit, because if you did then YOU, old man, wouldn’t continue to go to a job you hate every day, you’d just have faith that you’ll get the money or you’d have faith that you’d get a better job or something, and you, girl, would have no reason to be hungry if you can just have faith that you’ll have food. Neither one of you believe what you’re telling me.”
So you are only referring to trivial false beliefs.
What if someone says that he can intimately communicate with someone via his monitor and the internet? He believes that it is a blending of minds. Is that a false belief?
What if someone believes that the physical wiring of the internet is a doorway which allows him(the extra-dimensional self) to meet someone in another dimension? Is that a false belief?
People believe that they have out-of-body experiences.
People are talking to extra-terrestrials right now.
People are talking to gods right now.
Yes, i think this can be true, a truth without existence.
a truth that has not been experienced does not exist and does not prove itself as a valuable sustainable truth
that sort of truth is a placebo
The phrase "true belief"reminded me of Eric Hoffer’s book “The True Believer” which equates true belief with fanaticism. Hoffer said “…in order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.”
Someone once suggested to me that religious fundamentalists/fanatics are the only intellectually honest members of their religions. Everyone else who claims to be Christian/Muslim/what-have-you but ISN’T a fanatic is leading a double-life in which they pretend like they believe something but consistently act as though it isn’t true. Those ones, the “moderate” people as they’re so flatteringly referred to are actually the ones to watch out for.
You see, if the world was split between True Believers and “Everyone Else,” True Believers would be an obvious minority. But that’s not how people conceptualize the categories. When you see religious statistics, it’s not split up like that, it’s split up by peoples’ professed beliefs, in which all these so-called “moderates” - who have more in common with atheists than fanatics, all things considered - statistically prop up the fanatics.
This is true that the one who believes is also the one that wants to stop to understand. Fanatisms used that complete absolute truth to manipulate the intelligence of the individuals and create emotions driven masses. To me, this has nothing to do with freedom. I guess if a couple loved each others like in a fanatic system, this could be certainly called passion but also genocid.
I love it when someone says “I agree” and then when they paraphrase what they agree with, it turns out that they actually believe the opposite of what they said they agree with. Shit cracks me the fuck up.
An agreement is an illusion or a performative way of granting someone’s right on sth when we indeed think he is not.
When two people agree to get married, they never agree to get married with the actual person but with its ideal image. The agreement is uttered but most of the time for the worse. Belief is only the will to agree with your actual will and this is self-deceiptive in the long term.
Love is only an agreement of language with your biology.
A true belief is one that a person earnestly and honestly holds as a belief; of which is usually also a part of their defining characteristics of behavior and social moral opinion.
Is it wrong to fuck a new born baby?
Yes.
That is a true belief of mine; it is core to my character and no part of me would be able to move around that emotional notion that compels me to answer that as being wrong.
In most cases, true belief’s are those that actually lack justifications. They are drawn on emotional responses as they are simply core reactions of your character to a proposed concept or happening.
Is there an afterlife?
If you pause to think about that, then you aren’t using your true belief; you’re spending time convincing yourself of something.
If you immediately whip out yes, no, or whatever the answer may be, then you are answering a true belief.
Especially if you cannot answer why you think that; if someone can answer the first part of the question quickly, but when questioned as to why they think that - stammering and have very poorly thought out arguments for their previous answer - then what you are most likely looking at is a true belief of their character.