Thoughts on Doubt, Belief, and Faith.

Doubt is not the opposite of a belief, rather Doubt is the conflict between beliefs resulting in a calculation or a hesitation as mixed feelings and logic battle and vy for a decision.

If you are attempting to do something with two possible outcomes, the outcome that you think will happen and the bet and stakes you raise with that outcome means you believe that outcome is more likely.

If you believed that it wasn’t likely, than you would doubt it. Meaning that you believe that some other outcome would prevail.

For instance if you’re playing at a roulette table and you think the ball would land on red 100%. Then you’d logically bet your entire fortune on that outcome and place it all on Red.

But since you don’t know for sure what the ball will land on, you calculate your risks and assign your stakes and bets based on your faith or belief of the likely outcome.

Doubt is not the opposite of belief. It is the conflict between conflicting beliefs.

Doubt is a state of questioning or being uncertain about something, while belief is a state of accepting or having confidence in something. They are not strictly opposites but rather exist on different points of the spectrum of conviction or confidence.

If you believe something has a 70% chance of happening, then you also believe that there is a 30% chance of it not happening. That 30% is the amount that you doubt the outcome, which is a belief that something else will happen. Of course quantifying doubt and belief by numbers is not actually how doubt nor beliefs work, for they are feelings rather than tangible quantifiable numbers.

Take for instance, Religion.

A Theist is one who believes in a theity or a Deity, one who believes in a God or Gods.

An A-theist is one who doesn’t believe in a God or Gods.

Rather, we use the term doesn’t believe, but that’s a misnomer and a trick of the tongue through negation.

In actuality, it’s not that an Atheist doesn’t believe in god, Rather an Atheist actually BELIEVES that there is no God or Gods.

Both Theism and Atheism are predicated on beliefs, because they simply only have faith in there belief.

The only true religion, outside of leaps of faith, is agnosticism for people simply don’t know. But that’s a bold take and I’m sure you can disagree with me on that.

Point being, Atheism is not a doubt in the existence of god, it’s rather the belief in the opposite.

I Guess where I’m going with,

You can’t hold a negative belief. Beliefs are always positive languaging.

If you believe that there is no god, that’s a belief.

If you believe that you shouldn’t do something, that’s also a belief.

If you don’t believe in Santa Claus, then you actually believe in the absence or nonexistence of Santa Claus. So it’s a belief in the opposite.

A Belief is a State of knowing and inner truth, Logic and rationality (proof) is the rickety bridge that connects beliefs, Faith is the gap between the bridges of Logic and Rationality, and Doubt is the pause before the leap as you determine which Belief to jump towards.

Logic and rationale or proof or empirical evidence or intuition or inner knowing or evidence is a rickety bridge because it’s also subject to collapsing and being destroyed or burned by whim or conflicting evidence. Additionally you can have multiple “Rickety Bridges” pointing to the same belief, or even have a rickety bridge long enough to extend past multiple beliefs. Theoretical frameworks are used as a foundation to construct more tertiary and ‘children’ theories.

We always believe in something, whether we like to or not. Changing our beliefs and our values, requires the rigor of logic and rationality to help sugar coat our whimsical change of heart and minds in our faithful leaps as we overcome the time constraints of our doubts.

The true wise person can hold onto multiple beliefs and entertain multiple possible possibilities. They might dance between beliefs taking jumps and seeing how to get to a proper conclusion. Is it possible to truly believe in more than one thing? Perhaps, perhaps not. It might be semantics. Is it possible to believe in many things? Throughout your life, yes.

So don’t clutch too tightly to one belief by putting your eggs in one basket, for it may be a falsehood. Try to see from the other perspectives and entertain building their bridges of logic to determine for yourself which possibility helps benefit you and your life.

Epilogue,

We all Believe. Logic helps bridge the gap. Faith is a leap switch from one belief to another. Doubt is the hesitation as you weigh the other beliefs into account.

This is an interesting look at the positive Languaging of English. There’s many interesting parallels between positive and negative Languaging as well as reverse psychology.

If we were to apply positive Languaging in our self talks and our own hypnosis and mantras or spell weaving, then we’d have more ingenious outcomes with more efficacy. This is for the Magi who dare to dream, or should I say, ‘I-magi-ne’.

Perhaps I’m speaking in riddles or tongues to the uninitiated. Perhaps. Regardless, you just need to know the foundational truth to begin the journey of understanding the power of words. That truth being;

Words Mean Things

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