Liam says to Joe; "where is your God now, when life can be made in a laboratory"?
Joe says to Liam; "it couldn't have happened, but for the presence of God".
It was a short debate involving two non-scientific people, but wasn't it interesting?
While Liam set out to demolish Joe's faith, he was left with a simple retort that quietened him. In this case, the non-believer lost because he had nothing substantial to believe in.
And the believer, far from a theologian, won the debate because he had.
While the above centred on religion, can't it be applied to belief in anything?
There is not a court in the world that can change your belief, should you insist on it, whatever about changing your physical position.
Whether you are locked up or executed even, the will can be more difficult to break than the life.
This has been the case since we began, but appears more vulgar when weighed against advances in civilisation, in its negative state, anyway. There would be no war but for this primitive remit.
With everyday, more civil matters, it is belief that drives everything that is driven with speed, and is more potent than desire.
Most people know someone that gives 100% focus and attention to what they do. They often suceed.
Indeed, if we bring the process further back, not much in time but in our time and pre-birth situation, something kept us going.
Call it innate or a component of our primitive remit; something powerful gets us to our first breath. And it wasn't easy, even if we forget it.
A lot of us know people with such single-mindedness or focus that they appear oblivious to most other matters, and sometimes crazy.
This is the raw side of it, as we can only zoom in on one hundred matters with one-hundredth attention.
Love and its implied blindness are helped by such conviction. If it is not believed in, then failure is more possible and less attention to it will reflect in its result.
Those that use conscious or sub-conscious tools such as affirmation are at least, devoting more time to it.
Many "believe" that self-belief can be cultured, and it probably can but is more difficult for some and dependent on the circumstances.
Someone with fifteen kids, for example, cannot with good conscious become a "new me" too easily. Well not to the extent that a single person can, so there will always be variables, and always be hope, hopefully.
Such family bound people can at the least, take smaller steps towards the bigger picture. A long-term plan can be initiated and five minutes a day towards it, can surely be found.
That person in a crisis, lifting many times their own weight, can do so because the weight itself is not their primary issue and some body chemistry will come to help. This is another component of culturing, and why culturing is possible.
So Joe is more content and secure in his belief, and Liam is insecure and argumentative. No one can really say that either is right. Well they can! But what will work for the individual?
"There must be some benefit to belief, I believe".
About The Author
Seamus Dolly is at www.CountControl.com