What is belief?

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Walker
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What is belief?

Post by Walker »

Some folks steer clear of belief, saying it’s a filter that influences perception of reality.

Some say different.

“What you are is a belief; if you let one belief go, you must replace it with another; otherwise, you will drop dead. I am telling you, a clinical death will occur. It is not the near death experience of those ‘near death’ scoundrels.”
- U.G. Krishnamurti

What do you think about belief?
Nick_A
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Re: What is belief?

Post by Nick_A »

Walker wrote:
Some folks steer clear of belief, saying it’s a filter that influences perception of reality.

Some say different.

“What you are is a belief; if you let one belief go, you must replace it with another; otherwise, you will drop dead. I am telling you, a clinical death will occur. It is not the near death experience of those ‘near death’ scoundrels.”
- U.G. Krishnamurti

What do you think about belief?
I would agree with Krishnamurti that life is an expression of beliefs. If so the question becomes how beliefs are created and if they differ from programmed conditioning.

As i understand it there are basically three sources of belief. The first are bodily beliefs created by our sensory experiences. If the body senses for examplethat fire is hot, it believes that it is harmful to jump into a fire. Bodily beliefs are vulnerable to preconception. A person may be in a doctors office about to receive an injection and the body tightens up in fear of pain. However if there is no pain the body was just reacting to a preconception.

The second are intellectual beliefs founded upon dualistic thought and comparison of facts leading to verifiable conclusions. Intellectual beliefs are vulnerable to insufficient facts. A valid conclusion may not be true because of insufficient facts.

The third are emotional beliefs. These are a person's attempts to experience relative quality. Emotions either accept or oppose quality. The process creates their attitude. Emotional beliefs are almost always expressions of attitudes. These attitudes are easily expressed either as blind belief or blind denial. The attitudes creating both blind belief and blind denial are almost always acquired habits.

Taken together they create programmed conditioning where intellectual, bodily, and emotional beliefs often in experiential conflict become unified in imagination producing all the horrors of programmed conditioning.
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HexHammer
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Re: What is belief?

Post by HexHammer »

There should be a distinction between the scammers and samaritans.
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A_Seagull
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Re: What is belief?

Post by A_Seagull »

Beliefs are the basis for decisions and subsequently, actions.
Dubious
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Re: What is belief?

Post by Dubious »

A_Seagull wrote:Beliefs are the basis for decisions and subsequently, actions.
A good way of putting it. Beliefs supply the motives for almost all decisions and actions. If not true what else might its underpinnings be?
sthitapragya
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Re: What is belief?

Post by sthitapragya »

Belief is an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof. A hypothesis is a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. I got this from google but just about sums it up.

So I will disagree with Krishnamurthy because he seems to be thinking of belief and hypothesis to be the same thing.
wirius
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Re: What is belief?

Post by wirius »

A belief is an assertion of reality. Whether that belief is rational, or actually is real, is a question of knowledge.
ken
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Re: What is belief?

Post by ken »

Walker wrote:Some folks steer clear of belief, saying it’s a filter that influences perception of reality.

Some say different.

“What you are is a belief; if you let one belief go, you must replace it with another; otherwise, you will drop dead. I am telling you, a clinical death will occur. It is not the near death experience of those ‘near death’ scoundrels.”
- U.G. Krishnamurti

What do you think about belief?
I think belief is one reason why most people can not see Reality, yet. Letting go of beliefs un-covers the Truth.
Impenitent
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Re: What is belief?

Post by Impenitent »

beleaf is what tree huggers do

-Imp
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NielsBohr
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Re: What is belief?

Post by NielsBohr »

Walker wrote:Some folks steer clear of belief, saying it’s a filter that influences perception of reality.

Some say different.

“What you are is a belief; if you let one belief go, you must replace it with another; otherwise, you will drop dead. I am telling you, a clinical death will occur. It is not the near death experience of those ‘near death’ scoundrels.”
- U.G. Krishnamurti

What do you think about belief?
Well,
I would say that - first of all - a filter does not ""influence" perception of reality", as a filter has no influence: it only diminishes what you get.

Some get angry, because they think that "belief" = "belief in God" = "belief in church" = anything else.

But in any work as well as in any task, the man wait for a result, what is a belief. To say - for some - that the belief is a filter is absurd, because in best case, they did not experience it, so prove their own belief,
and if they are part of those, they begin to tell us they have a belief and that it biases their view.
Walker
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Re: What is belief?

Post by Walker »

NielsBohr wrote:
Walker wrote:Some folks steer clear of belief, saying it’s a filter that influences perception of reality.

Some say different.

“What you are is a belief; if you let one belief go, you must replace it with another; otherwise, you will drop dead. I am telling you, a clinical death will occur. It is not the near death experience of those ‘near death’ scoundrels.”
- U.G. Krishnamurti

What do you think about belief?
Well,
I would say that - first of all - a filter does not ""influence" perception of reality", as a filter has no influence: it only diminishes what you get.

Some get angry, because they think that "belief" = "belief in God" = "belief in church" = anything else.

But in any work as well as in any task, the man wait for a result, what is a belief. To say - for some - that the belief is a filter is absurd, because in best case, they did not experience it, so prove their own belief,
and if they are part of those, they begin to tell us they have a belief and that it biases their view.
Hello.

Do you think the following is belief, and is your thinking about the following based on what U.G. says is the life-need to believe, or is it based in something else?

*

Only the physical exists.
Thoughts exist.
Therefore, thoughts are physical.
Belief is a thought, therefore belief is physical.

Humans and rocks are physical, but different.
Humans and thoughts are physical, but different.

Thoughts are not physical in the same way that rocks are physical.
Thoughts are physical in the way that thoughts are physical.

Two people can simultaneously hold the same thought in different locations.
Two people cannot simultaneously hold the same rock in different locations.

UG says that belief is necessary for life, just as lungs or heart or kidneys are necessary for life. That certainly bolsters the obvious physicality of thoughts.
Last edited by Walker on Thu Sep 08, 2016 4:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: What is belief?

Post by Terrapin Station »

Walker wrote:Some folks steer clear of belief
Actually they do not. Some folks SAY they steer clear of belief, because they have a belief aversion, usually because they associate belief with religion, and they have a misconception where they think that all belief is faith-based (in either a narrow (religious-exclusive) or broad (general epistemic) sense), etc. But no one can "steer clear of belief" unless they're simply not conscious.
What do you think about belief?
That everyone has a large amount of beliefs, and hopefully, most of them are supported by rational arguments and/or empirical evidence, even if it's just rational argumentation of empirical evidence of practical/instrumental utility. Some beliefs will necessarily be taken on faith--there's no avoiding that, either, but I'd hope that people have more rigorous support requirements for most of their beliefs.
Last edited by Terrapin Station on Thu Sep 08, 2016 4:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: What is belief?

Post by Terrapin Station »

sthitapragya wrote:Belief is an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof.
Even with a proof that P, you'd still believe that P, you'd believe that there's a proof that P, you'd believe that such and such counts as a proof, and all sorts of things.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: What is belief?

Post by Terrapin Station »

I think it's amusing when people say things like "I have no beliefs."

I say, "Oh, so you don't believe that 2+2=4."

They shouldn't be surprised when they say, "I don't believe that 2+2=4" that people respond with, "You don't?? Just what do you think 2+2 equals instead?"

It suggests that they're simply not familiar with normal language usage.
Walker
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Re: What is belief?

Post by Walker »

That leaves only abnormal, i.e., philosophical.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH97lImrr0Q
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