Is there such thing as a true belief?

The Dragon

Or does the belief turn into truth once proven and verified?

garybuss

Truth is perception. Belief, is accepting the perception.

Satanus

I think believing in yourself is the only true belief. After all, if you can't believe in yourself, what's the point of believing in anything?

S

Ps, christianity encourages exactly the opposite.

candidlynuts

thats awfully philosophical !

let me think.... well, people used to BELIEVE the earth was flat... now they know it isn't.. so that belief became truth.

as far as religious beliefs... thats all they are is beliefs. there is no proof to make them truth. there are too many variants to any "proof" different beliefs propose to make them "truths"

JamesThomas

Perhaps there is a problem of semantics in the phrase "true belief".

There are correct beliefs; for example: I believe that if I stand in the path of a speeding truck, that this body will sustain great injury and perhaps death. In the phenominal universe two things can not generally occupy the same space at the same time without problems.

When it comes to truth/reality, is a belief or thought about a tree, a true tree? Are beliefs about a friend, really your friend, or are they just mental interpritations and drama created in your mind?

When it comes to the actuality of Truth and Reality, there are no true beliefs. Truth is too immediate and vibrantly alive to be captured or circumscribed by a belief or a system of beliefs.

Ponder on what I am saying, and investigate into the dynamics of being, that you may clearly differentiate between a metalized interpretation, and REALity.

This is why there can be great harm in religion. We come to believe that our beliefs are true and real....which they are not. So, we live a lie, and suffer. The mind creates a story and characters which it then fools itself into believing is true, and then worships it's little drama. To worship a deity, is to worship your own imagination. Mental masturbation at it's acme.

IMO

j

poppers

What JT said - it can't be put any better.

OnTheWayOut

Truth is perception. Belief, is accepting the perception.

Heavy concept. Let me add- if it is proven truth, the word
"belief" is not necessary. Yes, we believe the moon orbits
the earth, but belief is no longer necessary- it is proven truth.

The problem with the concept of believing and truth is that
many (such as WTS) reject proven truth or widely accepted
truth that could be accepted by everyone. There is the
Flat Earth Society, granted a joke, but many who think it's
true.

My take on ultimate truths- there is no way to know most
ultimate truths during one's life. Follow your head or your
heart, but don't knock someone else's feelings on the matter
unless he shoves them down your throat.
DO WE LIVE AFTER DEATH? WHAT KIND OF LIFE?

WHAT IS GOD LIKE, IF HE IS THERE?

There are answers, but no human can prove any truths to
everyone else. Many details along the way can be used to
prove some things false.

Narkissos

Is silence truth?

I submit that truth is a qualification of language and its conventional adequation to "reality".

It does imply the self-awareness of language, i.e. that the "word" is not the "thing". But it implies more than that, otherwise there would be no more "truth" in the sentence "apple-trees bear apples" than in the sentence "apple-trees bear oranges". What is at stake is not reality itself, but the consistency of its representation in language.

Without language and its basic trickery (the substitution of words to things) there is no "truth" either.
There is: _

yaddayadda

With all due respect Narkissos, Wittgensteinsian linguistic philosophy is so passe.

A belief is subjective. I 'believe' that this is true/not true. Truth rests on facts. Facts may be either verifiable and demonstrable, or undiscovered and unknown. The trueness or otherwise of a particular belief therefore rests on whether it is based on facts (whether the believer realises it or not). Once a belief is undeniably proven to be 'true' it is no longer a belief, but a fact.

gaiagirl

Along the lines of what has been said, a "belief" is similar to "faith", it is what one thinks or imagines to be true, whether it is actually true or not. Some beliefs MAY be correct, although yet unproven. Others have already BEEN proven, so technically are not "beliefs" any longer, but a demonstrated truth. One example is the sun at the center of the solar system. Many Greeks in ancient times believed this as a result of their own astronomical observations, as well as an orbiting spherical Earth, with a known size accurate to within a few percent of the modern figure. However, although widely believed, and even demonstrated, this view was cast aside by the early Christian church because it did not fit their Scriptures, , and for more than 1000 years it was a capital offense to claim that the Earth was NOT the center of the Universe. Galileo was threatened with execution for exactly such a teaching. So the idea of a heliocentric solar system was a "true" belief which fell into disfavor for a long time, even though it was demonstratably more accurate (positions of planets could be calculated with greater accuracy). The Earth-centered solar system was a "belief" which turned out to not be true, despite many people believing it with all sincerity. A similar example could be made of evolution, an idea which goes back long before Darwin, to at least the Book of Manu. However, Darwin can take credit for collecting a great deal of evidence to support the idea, and for writing a book which explained the idea in contemporary terms which helped further support the case. There was initially a bit of controversey, but most of the world eventually accepted the concept, aided by the tremendous evidence which has accumulated SINCE 1859 in the form of a very complete fossil record (which had hardly been scratched in Darwins time), and DNA research which shows the links between all life forms on this planet. To most people in the world, this has become more than just a "belief", but a demonstrated "truth", like the Sun-centered solar system, gravity, electromagnetism, or barometric pressure. And yet, some, particularly in the U.S., simply close their minds to the evidence, just as their ancient counterparts closed their minds to evidence of a Sun-centered solar system, and CHOSE to believe differently. These have a sincerely held "belief" which is not supported by evidence.

Is there such thing as a true belief?

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