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you are here: > Self > 3.
Belief systems and ME
| 3.2 |
A review of the concept of belief
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| While we introduced the concept of belief in Chapter 2 of UCA, the word is so important in understanding ourselves and why we do what we do, that it is important to review its meaning and its implications | ||
| 3.2.1 | The concept of belief | |
| The word "belief" is a modern spelling of the early medieval English word bileafe, a translation of the Old English word geleafa , just one of the many translations in old European languages of the ancient Germanic celtic word- zlaubjan (hold dear, cherish, trust in) from which the word "believe" also is derived. | ||
| So it is, one of the earliest recorded definitions of belief is "the mental action, condition or habit of trusting to or confiding in a person or thing". | ||
| After this definition, came the Medieval period definition of belief as "absolute trust in God; the virtue of faith" (with the word faith replacing the Latin word for trust fides. Around the same period the word also acquired the meaning of "a creed", hence the later translations of The Bible and the Apostles "creed". | ||
| Then around 1530, the word acquired its now "modern" understanding as "mental assent to or acceptance of a proposition, statement, or fact, as true, on the ground of authority or evidence". | ||
| 3.2.2 | The importance in all definition of belief | |
| While the meaning of the word 'belief' today is more approximately understood in the contemporary meaning of "acceptance of a statement or proposition being true", the older "religious" definition of "whatever is in the Bible" remains a core (if not hidden) meaning. | ||
| There are two classic sayings of "blind faith" and "blind belief" reinforcing the notion that for many of us, those things that we trust as being true and correct are not on the basis of having viewed "proof", but more on the "trust, or faith" that what we have been told is true. | ||
| Belief systems therefore have a powerful place in our minds, because in these systems and attempt is made to place the human being, the human mind in the context of the world around. | ||
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