The words that we use are crucial to understand the reality we are trying to convey and communicate about. Having beliefs is fine. All the knowledge we have that wasn’t demonstrated as truth is a belief. It might be true, but if we can’t demonstrate it then we don’t know that it is true, and can’t use the word truth to reference it. Thinking a belief is truth is what leads to false worldviews, a false ungrounded superstructure of belief taken as real.
Some things you saw demonstrated to you, but then you can’t demonstrate it again to another. The same for others. You can tell others things that you know are true, and they can tell you things that they know are true. But if neither of you can demonstrate it, the receiver only has a belief and can’t apply the word true to that. We can trust that person and what they say, and believe them. We have faith in what they say, and believe them. But we can’t say we know it’s the truth.
In contrast, imagine doing the opposite. Imagine believing everything is true. Someone can make any claim about anything, even things that didn’t happen, that are untrue. Taking false things as truth warps our perception and understanding of reality. This is why it’s important to categorize belief and truth separately and know how to use these words to structure out knowledge and understanding of reality and what is true or not.
When you accept a belief as truth, you have put your faith and trust in it, and become loyal to it. You become attached and bound to it as what is real. It becomes a part of the building blocks to construct a worldview and self-view. Some are so ingrained that they are the foundation. Removing some beliefs is like destroying a person’s world or themselves by destroying the basis for how they think about the world and/or themselves.
What we need to be bound to is truth. Desires, wants and wishes for beliefs to be true puts those beliefs above what is true. Then we fail to recognize what is true and believe what is untrue.
We can have trust, faith and loyalty in a person. Their actions that garner such trust, faith and loyalty from us. We can believe in them, have faith in them, and champion for them, fight with and for them and stand by their side. Through interaction with them we come to know them by their actions.
It’s not wise to have complete trust, faith and loyalty in someone unless we get to know them first for them to demonstrate a worthiness, a trustworthiness; that they are worthy of our trust, faith and loyalty in them. The demonstrable truth of their objective actions and behaviors is what we use in our application of trust, faith and loyalty to them. We trust that others won’t harm us because they have demonstrated a certain capacity or level of consciousness to us so far. Some people garner more trust, loyalty and faith from us, and some people garner less trust, loyalty and faith.
We judge people by their demonstrable actions. The persistence of their behavior is what engenders trust in them. They could alter their behavior at any time to harm us, to betray us. But their repeated pattern of behavior provides a track record, a history that demonstrates what they are likely to continue to do.
We can be betrayed by misplacing trust, loyalty, faith or belief in someone. The same can apply to the information we believe. It’s worse when you put your faith, trust and become loyally attached to a belief, as the betrayal is more damaging to your psyche. Having faith, trust and loyalty to an idea or belief, does not constitute it as a truth in existence. Making a belief a rock in our foundation can lead to building a house of cards that comes crashing down.
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We can have beliefs as speculative potentials or possibilities, until they are proven wrong. Maybe we can modify a hypothesis, idea or belief to potentially demonstrate or prove it to be accurate, right and true. But if we can’t prove it, then it’s not demonstrably true. It could eventually be verified to be true, but until then, don’t put that much weight into it to make it a part of your foundation.
We can develop theories, such as in theoretical physics. Eventually down the line, decades later, or more, we can develop technology that can verify and prove the existence of a theory. Or disprove it. A sound and rational theory can be pursued, but we should realize that it could be bogus and be ready to abandon it so as to not waste time.
Bertrand Russell had a theory, a paradox, and tried to resolve it for years. He eventually gave up on it. He was attached to an idea, a belief, and wanted to make it true. We have to know when quit while we’re ahead, and learn to let go of beliefs we put so much weight into. Ideas, concepts and beliefs can captivate us because of the trust, loyalty and faith that we place into them. Beliefs are very powerful. We can get very attached to beliefs because we don’t want them to be wrong.
This is one of the large problems in the world. We just want to believe whatever we want to believe, especially with postmodernism, subjectivism and solipsism pervading. Many don’t have an accurate understanding of the difference between truth and falsity, and the difference between truth and belief. There is so much confusion pervading, that we are just believing whatever we want to believe because we think in postmodernist, subjectivist and solipsistic ways; that we can simply believe whatever we want and it’s just as valid as anyone else believing whatever they want. That way, everything simply becomes belief and opinion and there is no more truth. This is how confused and lost much of the population is, unable to think properly.