(March 20, 2019 at 2:19 pm)Catharsis Wrote: The point of believing is not being convinced the creator exists.
Believing, if I may say what I think, is doing what the creator finds meaningful.
I think this is an important point. I suspect that in history, this is what most people have meant by "belief," in a religious context.
Maybe I mentioned earlier that "belief" can be assent to a proposition ("I believe the world is round") or commitment to a value ("I believe in equal rights for women"). This is a bit too simple, but I think relevant to religion.
It's interesting to go through the New Testament, and everywhere that Jesus or Paul says "belief," read it to mean "commit your life to." And everywhere they say "Kingdom of God," read that to mean "what our world would be like if we cared about each other."
Some verses support this reading more than others, but I suspect that at first Christians had something much like this in mind. Narrowing the meaning of the word "belief" to just "I hold it to be a fact" probably comes from our modern view that every text is supposed to be read like a science book.
