Can you not believe in religion and go to heaven?
every religion says if you don’t believe, you are going to hell.if you don’t believe you won’t be successful.you are not so and so if you don’t believe.however,if a person just believe in something do that make what ever you believe in fact???????????
Belief:
1. "The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in a person or thing; faith."
2. "Mental acceptance or conviction in the truth or actuality of something."
3. "Something believed or accepted as true; especially a particular tenet of body of tenets, accepted by a group of persons."
(A.H.D.)
It seems to me that the trouble all starts in definition no.3. Group belief is systematically reinforcing, even against factual rebuttals.
Despite this, beliefs are often characterized as ’firm’, yet are still prone to failure under the erosive powers of critical rebuttal.
Beliefs can (or not) include stronger emotional attachments than opinions do; yet not as strong as…
Faith, which, by my understanding, is notably stronger than belief. Faith is an ’unshakable’ belief or matrix of interdependent beliefs that the thinker is unwilling to expose to examination, for fear that the beliefs might be exposed as mere opinions, or worse, conjectures, or worst, unfounded superstitions.
American Heritage defines ’faith’ as:
1. "A confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. "Belief that does not does not rest on logical proof or material evidence: faith in miracles."
3. "Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance."
4. "Belief and trust in God and in the doctrines expressed in the Scriptures or other sacred works…"
5. "A system of religious belief…"
Faith resists inspection, and often does so with belligerence. This manifests as…
Zealotry: faith in physical manifestation. This can be as benign as prayer, or worse: proselytizing, crusading and jihadism.
Lastly: Superstition, the feral beast of the belief-family:
1. "A belief that some action or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome."
2. "Any belief, practice, or rite unreasoningly upheld by faith in magic, chance, or dogma."
3. "Fearful or abject dependence upon such beliefs."
Do conjectures, speculations, opinions, and faiths all qualify as ’beliefs’?
What about personal values, or political preferences?
Are ALL thoughts ’beliefs’?
Or does only a certain threshold of strength-of-conviction — with or without supporting evidence — qualify as a ’belief’?
Do all beliefs deserve equal weight? Or is this simply an embarrassed, false equivalency we award to the beliefs of others, out of our polite unwillingness to offend?
|