Assessing Personal Beliefs

During the 6th to 2nd centuries BCE, several challenges contributed to philosophers and leaders revising existing belief systems and developing new ones. Some of the countries where these changes were evident are China, Greece, Egypt, and Mauryan India. As countries developed, differences between members of the same societies emerged and led to conflict and more diversity. Although several different challenges, such as religion, caused leaders to revise existing belief systems and create new ones, ultimately it was the challenges of new methods of education, various wars between countries, and the influence of different cultures that contributed to the new belief systems.

The belief-bias effect is when people make judgments based on prior beliefs and general knowledge, rather than on the rules of logic. For example, when a student takes a history test and answers short-answer questions based on their prior beliefs and general knowledge about the time period, rather than thinking about the course material’s relation to the test. To maximize people’s abilities to effectively reason or make decisions, students should be taught about the belief-bias effect, so that they make fewer errors when trying to answer questions.

When Jon Mitchell discusses belief in his essay, "A Moment with Christ. The Importance of Feelings in the Analysis of Belief," he is sourcing belief as having three different "modes of cognition" (Mitchell, 1997, 77). A reader knows this essay will related to Christianity, and given the New Testament's messages and other input during one's life about believing in Jesus Christ and following his role model thesis, it is interesting to investigate what Mitchell really means by modes of cognition, vis-à-vis belief.

Item learned for Christian Faith, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understandings in all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your path

Consider how the effect of a new perspective has been reflected and developed in a literary text or texts you have studied. Discuss the ideas developed by the text creator about the effect an individual’s perspective has on personal beliefs.

As was discussed during our first post for the week, Capon (2002) stated, “You judge yourself by taking your stand on the law’s demands rather than on my righteousness which is yours for the believing” (p.368). The Gospel demonstrates that God has provided everything for our salvation including the death of His son. The only thing we need to do is to believe. Kinnaman, S. & Lane, L. (2010) stated, “While other religions teach that something must be done to earn God’s favor and salvation, Christianity teaches that Jesus has already secured our salvation. God reaches out to people in Christ, rather than people reaching out to God” (p.37). It is critical to comprehend that to stand on the law means to try to justify oneself before God on account of our own actions. The truth is, that we cannot follow God’s law to perfection, and can never accomplish what it demands.

Furthermore, while taking the spiritual belief system selector quiz, I realized that a lot of these questions were very straight forward on what you believed in. When I finished the quiz my top result was “Mainline- Conservative Christian Protestant.” I was not surprised that I fell into the religion of Christian because I was raised as a Christian my whole life because my grandfather is a pastor.

All Christians want, or should want, to increase their faith. But those who have given their lives to Christ have come to realize that success does not come from our own human attempts; we always fail. When you leave God, ypu are only left to our individual assets, which infects us with greed, pride, inflexibility, irrelevance, selfishness, and disappointment. God is the only one that will not fail, so we should follow in his footsteps at all times.

An occurrent belief and a dispositional belief, as defined by Bonjour, is very similar. On one hand, an occurrent belief is “what happens when the person has the proposition explicitly in mind and accepts or assents to it” (Bonjour 29). What this means is that, the person must have been thinking about that proposition at that very moment and has either agreed or disagreed. On the other hand, a dispositional belief is where one has previously explicitly considered & consciously accepted or assented to the proposition in question, and as a direct result of this prior acceptance or assent would accept or assent to it again if the question were explicitly raised (Bonjour 29). For example, if someone proposed that humans need oxygen to survive and

John 17:17 says, Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. James 5:16 says, Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. John 8:32 says, “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” I think there are seasons in your life when you realize being honest and loving yourself is far more important than pleasing other people. People always come and go in your life for good reasons and for bad reasons but at the end of the day we have to feel good about ourselves and our choices. The Bible is a good source of realizing that God is where we need to get our values from. God is the one who will help us find ourselves and if we are genuine with Him then how can we NOT be genuine and true to our self in today’s society. Christian sincerity and authentic genuineness is what we need. We need to show the world we are not fake, we genuinely love and want to be loved the same way. Christianity is about showing others how genuine Jesus was and how he meant for us to be in our daily lives. He was always true to himself, with his disciples, and with people who wanted to prosecute

This is not an individual exercise we should perform ourselves but this is established when the Lord’s holy people gather together. When Paul describes “Lord’s holy people” he is describing the unity of the church and when the believers come together they make each Christian stronger. When the saints or believers come together as one they form the body of Christ which establishes each church community. It is there that each believer will understand the width and depth of God’s love that is in store for them. The church is the foundation of God’s love and the people must exert this love toward others for the love of God to live

We must build our lives according to the codes of scriptures. This is called obedience. It is in studying the words of Christ and applying them as a guide to our lives that we begin to understand who God is, and who we are as his children. Where else can we learn about his love, mercy and grace? Where else is His nature so clearly demonstrated than in His words? Where else can we learn about ourselves, about how sinful and dependent we are of God’s love and grace?

The first thing to begin with is simply recognizing what people are called to “put to death” their former lifestyle denying those things to enter in their lives. The best part about it is that we aren’t alone; God wants to help us during this process. We live in a manner focused towards heaven where others are now available to gain a glimpse of Christ through us. The next step is to accept the challenge Paul has given us of walking towards “putting on the new self” and beginning to grow in knowledge of who God is and where our identity is rooted in Him. The image that we now follow is in Jesus Christ. God wanted us to live in this new life being rooted in Christ, and Paul

This paper will explore one of the three problems raised by Stich, in Chapter 7 of his work Cognitive Science and the Concept of Belief, for Fodor’s account of propositional attitudes. It will begin with a brief explanation of Fodor’s theory of folk psychology and his ideas of propositional attitudes, and will continue with an in depth analysis of Stich’s critique of Fodor’s representational theory of mind, specifically Stich’s discussion of the problems posed by ideological similarity and the consequences said problems have on the strength and validity of Fodor’s theory. Finally, it will conclude with my response, on the behalf of Fodor, to the problem formerly stated.

“4 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. 2 But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God 's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone 's conscience in the sight of God. 3 And even if our gospel is hidden, it is hidden to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus ' sake.6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”