What is belief?

LRichard said:

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." —Ralph Waldo Emerson​

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Probably my favorite quote of all time. Right up there with:

"We have met the enemy and he is us." (Pogo/Walt Kelly parodying Admiral Perry)

and

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." (Mark Twain)

But I could have picked any of dozens of Twain quotes. He has some interesting things to say about belief systems in "Letters from the Earth."

closrapexa said:

Not to disparage you, but that's also an overused term I don't understand.....

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A statement of belief is not falsifiable. "I believe the moon is made of green cheese." Whether or not the moon actually is made of green cheese does not impact the truth or falsity of the belief, although the belief is not etched in stone and may or may not be altered later in accordance with the facts.

“I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.” —AC

God created man in his image and man created god in his image. Thats a nice little arrangement .

When I was young, I suppose I was even more exasperating (for parents , teachers and priests - they tried to make me an altar boy - maybe if we distract him with Latin, candles and swinging censors he will stop asking all those questions ? ) ; the church was modernising and dropping Latin, in some churches the priest was turning around so people could actually see what he was doing instead of staring at his back for 40 mins. etc.

I wanted to know if it was a sacred ritual set up by God (as they tried to tell me) how they could change it. Well, they were loosing customers - so they decided to gain customers and loose integrity ... if it is divinely inspired it shouldn't change to adapt to the people - the people are supposed to be adapting to it ! Isnt that the point of religion?

They couldn't really answer that ... and decided I wasn't altar boy material after all.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/07/The_Dangerous_Lives_of_Altar_Boys_movie.jpg