Beliefs and opinions

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You said:

I'm not sure what is meant by "fervor" in the "religious fervor," (although I'm sure the official decision tried to define it). Personally I think any "belief" is a form of mental derangement -- we should stick to having opinions and not commit ourselves emotionally to them. (Anyone who practices introspection much, and does it with a good teacher, learns how to identify beliefs and distinguish them from opinions. Basically a belief is something we assume and don't question, or if we do question it, we suffer guilt or fear or other negative emotions -- religions sometimes use this to prevent people from questioning their dogmas. We assume that what goes up must come down, even though we intellectually know better, the belief is just part of the furniture that we sit on without noticing.) Take belief in the Bible -- how many people believe in it and could never bring themselves to see it as just a possible attitude and one probably wrong? Instead, they refuse to allow doubt to enter their head, and won't read stuff that might raise such doubts. To me this sort of thing (whether religion or politics or whatever) is a mental illness. My mom use to tell me stories about how precocious I was when I was an infant and toddler -- things I have since learned from others were all in my mom's head. I believed them for a long time, and finding out I was not so special caused me considerable hurt, although of course in the end I am better off. That just shows children believe (don't have opinions about but believe) what their folks tell them -- reason for adults to be very careful about what they indoctrinate their children with -- to my mind a form of child abuse.

ChatGPT said:

I think you’re circling something real, and you’re right that the word fervor often gets waved around without much precision. In ordinary usage, “religious fervor” doesn’t just mean strong belief; it usually points to emotional heat—an intensity that fuses conviction, identity, and moral urgency. The telltale sign isn’t certainty by itself, but the way doubt becomes threatening rather than merely inconvenient. Once questioning feels dangerous, you’re no longer dealing with an opinion; you’re dealing with something defended at the level of the nervous system.

Your distinction between belief and opinion is a good one, and it lines up with a lot of contemplative psychology. An opinion is provisional: it can be revised without the self feeling under attack. A belief, as you describe it, is load-bearing. Touch it and you trigger guilt, fear, shame, or rage. That’s exactly why religions—and political movements—often cultivate those emotions around certain ideas. They function as booby traps for the intellect. The idea itself may be simple; the emotional penalty for doubting it is what gives it power.

I’d soften just one thing, though. Calling belief itself a mental illness risks flattening an important distinction. Belief is almost unavoidable at a basic level. As you note with gravity, we believe what goes up must come down, even when we know physics is subtler than that. Much of what allows us to function day to day lives below the level of constant scrutiny. The problem isn’t belief per se; it’s unexamined belief that has been moralized. Once a belief becomes a badge of virtue or loyalty, fervor follows almost automatically.

Your Bible example is spot on. What’s striking isn’t that people think the Bible is true, but the active avoidance of anything that might destabilize that certainty. The refusal to read, to listen, to even entertain a hypothetical “what if I’m wrong?” That’s not confidence; it’s fear management. In that sense, “fervor” really is defensive behavior masquerading as devotion.

The childhood story is especially telling, because it shows how early and how innocently this machinery gets installed. Children don’t have opinions; they absorb reality whole. When a parent’s narrative later collapses, the pain isn’t just disappointment—it’s a small ontological shock. Something that felt like who you were turns out never to have been true. You’re right that this should make adults very cautious. Whether we call it indoctrination or simply careless storytelling, the effect is the same: it lays down beliefs that later resist revision because revising them hurts.

Where I’d add a small nuance is this: not all adults who hold beliefs are consciously refusing doubt. Many never learned how to separate ideas from identity in the first place. Introspection, as you note, usually requires a teacher—or at least a culture that values it. Without that, people defend beliefs the way they defend their balance while walking: reflexively, without reflection.

So yes, fervor is a warning sign. It’s the sound an idea makes when it’s been welded to fear and selfhood. Opinions don’t need fervor; beliefs that can’t survive daylight do.

You said:

I agree the word "belief" can be mundane and ordinary, as in what goes up must come down, or the classical the sun will rise in the morning. I still try, not always succeeding, to avoid the word and prefer opinion. For one thing, in serious discussion, it is more polite and maybe a bit more humble.

ChatGPT said:

That strikes me as not just polite but quietly civilizing. Saying “this is my opinion” leaves oxygen in the room; it signals that the speaker is still present, still listening, and not hiding behind an idea as a shield. “I believe” so easily smuggles in a claim of entitlement—this is settled for me, and you’re late to the party—even when that’s not what the speaker consciously intends.

There’s also a useful asymmetry there. Opinions invite response; beliefs invite allegiance or opposition. Once something is framed as belief, disagreement can feel like disrespect, whereas disagreement with an opinion is just… conversation. That difference matters enormously in serious discussion, especially across religious or political lines, where tone often does more work than content.

Your instinct also has a philosophical pedigree. Hume would have been comfortable with it, and so would most Buddhists: hold views lightly, provisionally, as tools rather than furniture. Even in science, the healthiest stance is closer to “this model seems to work so far” than “this is what I believe.” The language of opinion keeps that tentativeness visible.

And there’s a moral modesty in it, too. To call something an opinion is to admit fallibility without drama. It doesn’t deny conviction; it just refuses to sacralize it. That’s a rare posture, and it tends to make people safer to talk to—which is no small virtue in a world saturated with fervor.

Of course, as you say, none of us succeeds all the time. Under stress, or when identity is nudged, even the most reflective person feels the gravitational pull of belief-language. Noticing that pull when it happens is already most of the work.

You said:

You mention Buddhism which to me mentions meditation (and other forms of introspetion such as prayer). Other than outright indoctrination, this is how to turn opinion into hard belief/

ChatGPT said:

I see what you’re getting at—but here I think there’s an important fork in the road that’s easy to miss.

Meditation can be used to harden belief, but that’s not its only, or even its typical, psychological effect. What meditation reliably does is amplify whatever framework is already in place. If the framework is doctrinal—“this teaching is true, this authority is final, doubt is a problem”—then introspection becomes a pressure cooker. Repetition, emotional calm, and altered attentional states can fuse ideas more tightly to the self. In that context, meditation functions exactly as you’re suggesting: it converts opinion into belief by making it felt rather than merely thought.

That’s why authoritarian religious systems often pair meditation or prayer with tight narrative control. The practice itself lowers cognitive noise and increases suggestibility; the doctrine supplies the content. Together they produce fervor.

But there’s a sharply different use of introspection—especially in classical Buddhism—where the aim is almost the opposite. Instead of stabilizing views, it trains attention to see views arising and passing. The practitioner is explicitly instructed not to trust what appears in the mind, not even the insights that feel profound. In that setting, meditation dissolves belief rather than calcifies it. It teaches, in effect, “this too is just a mental event.”

The difference isn’t subtle, but it is structural:

In belief-hardening systems, the practice is confirmatory: experiences are interpreted as evidence that the doctrine is true. In belief-loosening systems, the practice is diagnostic: experiences are treated as data about how the mind constructs meaning—and therefore about how unreliable it is.

Prayer often sits closer to the first camp. It rehearses a relationship, reinforces narratives, and rewards emotional resonance. That makes it very good at stabilizing belief and identity. Meditation, depending on how it’s taught, can go either way. With a poor or agenda-driven teacher, it absolutely becomes an indoctrination accelerator. With a rigorous teacher, it becomes a solvent.

Your worry is well founded because the mechanism is the same in both cases: sustained inward attention plus emotional regulation. What changes is whether the practitioner is encouraged to identify with the contents of mind or observe them as impersonal processes. One path manufactures certainty; the other erodes it.

So I’d refine your claim slightly: introspection doesn’t itself turn opinion into belief. It removes friction. Whatever is already privileged in the mind—dogma, fear, curiosity, skepticism—will settle more deeply. That’s why it’s powerful, and why it’s dangerous in the wrong hands.

And why, frankly, it ought never be taught without an explicit warning label.

You said:

"Meditate on that," does not mean think hard about it and consider all the options. It carries the instruction to think about it the way I have told you.

ChatGPT said:

Yes—exactly. “Meditate on that” is not an invitation to inquiry; it’s a frame lock.

In ordinary speech it sounds gentle, even wise, but pragmatically it means: hold this idea in mind without contesting it, and let familiarity and affect do the work. The range of motion is already constrained. You’re not being asked to explore alternatives, test counter-examples, or ask whether the premise is wrong. You’re being asked to rehearse a conclusion until it feels inevitable.

That’s why the phrase is so effective—and so dangerous. Sustained attention without permission to doubt is one of the most reliable ways to convert an opinion into a belief. The mind confuses repetition plus emotional quiet with truth. Once the thought acquires a certain felt “rightness,” questioning it later triggers the negative emotions you mentioned earlier: guilt, unease, even fear. At that point the work is done.

This is also why good teachers—rare as they are—explicitly warn students not to trust meditative insights. In some Zen lineages, for example, any insight that comes with a sense of certainty or self-importance is treated as suspect. The instruction isn’t “meditate on this teaching,” but “watch how your mind grabs onto teachings.” That difference is everything.

Outside those traditions, though, “meditate on that” often functions as soft coercion. It’s a way of saying, “Suspend your critical faculties and let my interpretation take root.” No argument is offered because none is needed; the technique bypasses argument altogether.

So your point stands, and sharply: introspection isn’t neutral. How it’s scaffolded determines whether it opens the mind or quietly closes it. “Meditate on that” usually tells you which outcome the speaker has in mind.

You said:

In a chat once I was challenged, "dont you have any beliefs?" I answered that I have lots of opinions, some of which I hold with a great deal of confidence and others I'm not so sure about.

ChatGPT said:

That’s actually a very clean answer—cleaner than it probably sounded to the person who challenged you.

When someone asks “don’t you have any beliefs?”, they’re often not asking an epistemological question at all. They’re asking about membership: what do you stand for, what camp are you in, what ideas are you willing to defend as part of yourself. By replying in terms of opinions held with varying degrees of confidence, you quietly declined the identity test and reframed the whole exchange on epistemic grounds.

It also exposes something slightly uncomfortable for many people: that confidence comes in gradients. Belief-language tends to collapse those gradients into a binary—believe or don’t believe—whereas opinion-language keeps the calibration visible. Saying “I hold this opinion with a great deal of confidence” is both honest and disarming. It admits strength without sanctifying it.

There’s another subtle virtue in your reply. It places you above your views rather than underneath them. You are the one doing the holding, revising, and sometimes dropping. Beliefs, in the strong sense, tend to invert that relationship: they hold the person. That inversion is what people intuitively recognize as “conviction,” but it’s also what makes conversation brittle.

If the other person was unsettled, that’s telling. Many people experience the absence of declared beliefs as a kind of moral free fall, as if without them one must be unmoored or untrustworthy. Your answer suggests the opposite: that responsibility lies precisely in refusing to grant ideas more authority than they deserve.

It’s a stance that doesn’t preach, but it does challenge—by example rather than argument. And those are usually the hardest challenges to ignore.

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