The Importance of Belief

a reply to: Peeple

If someone would say, i am insane and know nothing,
it would make that person the wisest and most knowledgeable of us all.

a reply to: eurhythmic

Well, almost everything we engage in is a belief of some magnitude. We're likely predisposed to believe whatever is convenient, comfortable, beneficial etc...even if those beliefs are based in great fictions, frauds, and fantasy (pyramid schemes, government etc). Most societies, cultures, nations engage in a great degree of consensual fiction disguised as factual, rational thinking. However, all belief isn't centered around what is convenient, comfortable, and beneficial....many of the conspiratorial beliefs are none of those...so, "what fuels belief?" seems to be a more pertinent question.

Maybe in order to understand belief in all its glory....you have to examine and explore its antithesis...TRUTH. What's the difference? To expound the confusion....What about a belief in truth as opposed to a belief in no truth? Seems belief is the common denominator to everything...

I'd imagine belief is inevitable....it's how we fill in the blanks and deal with incomplete knowledge and understanding of everything...It's possible that the the nature of the belief is symptomatic to one's character.

I would be curious at what point in human development that "belief" spawns...Does an infant believe in anything?

As we reach maturity....belief becomes this problematic bedrock we build our individual lives and world on.

a reply to: solve

You are insane and know nothing.

Thank you in advance.

a reply to: incoserv

To think without believing something seems, to me, to be impossible, because the very act of thinking requires some essential presuppositions to underly the very act of thinking itself. At least, one must believe that one exists.

The more I try to answer my own questions, the more questions I create - and in doing so, the more I question myself and existence in general. A personal belief of mine is that all beliefs should be fluid and interchangeable, where change is determined by the notion that there is no value in maintaining the current belief (and all that it encompasses).

"To think," first, means that is has been acknowledged to be happening. Otherwise, when does it start and stop? Does it ever start or stop? This forces one to maintain the belief that they can identify what "to think" is, circling back to what one believes it to actually mean. Does that make sense? There is a bottomless pit of questioning that one can ignore, when including the state of existence, which one may be required to believe before one can think.

If one exists, then some kind of belief about the environment that one inhabits must, of necesity, follow. One may believe that all of reality is a construct of one's own existence, but that is a belief.

I agree to some extent, but you must first define our existence. Does existence require us to believe we are "existing" or is it possible that one can exist without believing that they do? If someone else tells me that I exist and I say that I do not, who is correct and why? Sounds stupid, but we would have to have the same belief about what it means to exist for one of us to be wrong.

The point is, without some sort of consensus, we may not exist at all.

I think.

a reply to: Peeple

Belief is the absence of knowledge. There are a few things nobody can know and all we can do is make a decision what we want to believe.

Do you believe that you have knowledge or are knowledgeable? Because the idea that a "belief is the absence of knowledge" would require you to believe that you are knowledgeable enough to know that for sure. Seems like another conundrum to me. Maybe knowledge is the belief that what you know isn't worth forgetting? I'm not trying to push your buttons either, I just love thinking myself into oblivion and seeing how people react.

Adding a video to the discussion that I feel encapsulates some of the topic quite well...

a reply to: eurhythmic

That's just a fact. If I know something I don't have to believe. If I believe it means I don't know.

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: eurhythmic

That's just a fact. If I know something I don't have to believe. If I believe it means I don't know.

Do facts exist without consensus?

I can believe anything to be a fact, but a consensus often dictates whether the agreed upon fact is at odds with my belief. It is possible that my opposing belief may turn out to be a fact that was mutually agreed upon as unbelievable. All based on a belief worth knowing and not forgetting.

In that idea, exists the truth of every pioneer and visionary. The suspension of consensual "facts," based on one's abstract belief. Fact and belief are both meaningful and meaningless - destructive and (r)evolutionary. A belief is the mother of fact, but does a fact need to be believed to exist as such?

The little engine that could.

a reply to: eurhythmic

Hi Eurhythmic.
Thanks for the great music, like 'These Dreams', and others.

What do you figure would be left, if we removed all beliefs?

But what is belief?

Our brains have a bios called DNA that controls the basic operation of bodies by ensuring we breath, eat, excrete and procreate. Those urges create other urges - if we are strong or rich, good looking, we have greater chance to procreate and fulfill the programming in DNA.

On top of that, our brains uses its neural network to index all stimulus from our senses. And from that indexed information make weighted judgements using logic that allows us to travel to moon and beyond.

People don't believe in religion. They have faith in religion. Faith that those directly involved in the religion have told the truth.

a reply to: eurhythmic

I think you will enjoy this talk by Osho... It is called:
I do not believe in believing.

I would suggest belief isn't in our DNA but rather what we have been hypnotised to be for example when I was about 11 I couldn't wait to be a dad at 21 and be a family man because that is what I was hypnotised into believing was the perfect life during my teenage years I then hypnotised myself through various other mediums and by the time I was 21 I couldn't think of anything worse than being tied down by the weight of responsibility....even now 11 years later t=and after about a decade more of self hypnosis those basic NEEDS that apparently lie in your DNA simply are not there for me I operate on a pleasure basis not a procreation basis I will be the last to carry my family name and I am comfortable with that so here is to 50 maybe more if regeneration becomes an actual thing of living for the pleasures life brings

a reply to: eurhythmic

I don't have to explain to you what a fact is. But since I'm trying to be nicer to people I hope this helps.

originally posted by: incoserv
René Descartes famously propositioned, "Cogito, ergo sum." If that is correct, then to be is to think and the think is to be. To think without believing something seems, to me, to be impossible, because the very act of thinking requires some essential presuppositions to underly the very act of thinking itself. At least, one must believe that one exists.

If one exists, then some kind of belief about the environment that one inhabits must, of necesity, follow. One may believe that all of reality is a construct of one's own existence, but that is a belief.

One may believe that everything came out of nothing by pure chance, that existence - without intelligence, purpose, intent or design - just accidentally beleched out all that is. This, in itself, is a belief system that requires more "faith" than any religion, to affirm that a cosmos that operates on the principle of entropy organized itself spontaneously out of the great void.

One may believe that the cosmos and all that dwells in it is the creation of an intelligent being that crated it all with design, intent and purpose.

Any of these underlying perspectives constitute a belief and form the basis for a belief system, and one cannot think and therefore be without going there.

So my answer is now, it is not possible to exist without belief.

It is suggested that no one truly understands 'the Cogito'. Is there really a 'thinker'?
No belief is required.
Perhaps it is merely you, believing in beliefs?

originally posted by: EmmanuelGoldstein
a reply to: eurhythmic

I agree that a lack of belief = belief.
I don't think we could exist without beliefs. Everything requires belief.
The problem comes when you actually start to settle on beliefs. Then we dare to think some things are actually "true".
That's when the problems begin.

We need to move on from one belief to the next one, throwing the old ones away. Nothing is ever still, or real or true, we should never settle.

Can't see how a lack of a belief = belief.
Could you try to explain it a different way please?

If 'everything' requires beliefs: then what about no thing?

originally posted by: solve
a reply to: incoserv

I had a bit of an existential crisis yesterday when i noticed that i could 3d print a fossil from the correct material and crystalline the material and surface, and on top of it all embed it in a matrix so someone could find it later,

i could fool a scientist, would never know its a fake.

Needed to take a couple of long breaths.
All kind of weird (SNIP) started going around the poor ol ead.

edit on 30-5-2019 by solve because: (no reason given)[/editby

Will not ever again laugh at crazy jeebus people, when they say that maybe dino fossils were put in the ground by someone, or maybe jeebus or god is testing your faith. I thought it would be impossible. It is not impossible.

Excellent thoughts, questioning everything that is thought to be 'known'.

Incoserv was suggesting that all of science may have many parallels with religions, and that may help to expose it all as just another set of beliefs.

What do you figure might be left, when we strip=away all beliefs? extra DIV