About belief

Humanity is no stranger to belief. Belief has raised and ruined civilizations, caused war and death, and has the power to heal. What are beliefs? What are its properties? What is its relationship with truth?

What are beliefs?
Humans live in a complex environment which demands incessant decision making. Inability to make decisions will bring humanity to a grinding halt. Since there are consequences, various techniques are used to find the best possible decision. These techniques require facts, logic and reasoning. Often it is the case that these requirements are not met. Such as, facts may not be available, logic models may not fully represent the scenario, and people may lack the ability to reason certain things. It is this deficit in requirement that gives birth to belief. A belief is an assumed truth that aids in making a decision(s) when a verifiable truth is not available (or accepted to be so).

What are its properties?
Viewing beliefs as objects that exists within societies, a few prominent properties can be easily identified.

Heritable
Many beliefs exist within families and are passed down to the next generation. Generally these traditional beliefs are accepted by the next generation uncontested. That does not mean however, that they are always applied to daily life. Beliefs that are inherited are on occasions ignored, overlooked, and misunderstood.

Unresolved Conflicts
Typically beliefs are formed by different people, in different eras, in different civilizations. These beliefs are not always in harmony with each other. Often there is no conflict resolving mechanism enforced by society. As a result, when members subscribing to conflicting beliefs cohabitate, over time under certian conditions can result in war and violence where each defends his belief against the aggression of the other.

Powerful
Does humanity rule beliefs? Or, do beliefs rule humanity? History is full of events where civilizations have gone to war due to conflicts in beliefs. It can be easily argued that beliefs are very powerful. The two primary sources of power are: time and numbers. The older the belief, the greater its membership, the more power it retains.

What is its relationship with truth?
To examine this relationship we need to first define truth. Truth is a description of an event or object that satisfies all explanations from every perspective of the environment in which it happens or exists, respectively. A belief by definition is an assumed truth. In other words, in the absence of all possible explanations, or all perspectives, best possible description becomes a belief. Beliefs are plenty, truths are few. Beliefs are regional, truths are universal. Beliefs change, truths remain the same.