There is a difference between Reality and my personal perception or experience of reality.

Some people try to say that subjective experiences are reality. If two people go into the same space and one experiences the space as chilly and perceives it as chilly, while the other one perceives and experiences the space as warm - which is correct? Well, the answer is that the room has a speciic temperature at any given moment, that temperature is independant of the experiences of either person. The temperature of that room is the reality, the experiences are merely personal perceptions of reality.

There are people who claim that the experiencing event creates reality and yet I would point out that until man learned to preserve his thoughts in writing that the experience died with the death o the one who experienced it. For example, in Illinois, a few miles to the east of St. Louis, MO is a site which for about 5 centuries was the largest settlement of humans north of the Rio Grande in North America. This place is now known as Kahokia.

There have been some artifacts found and there are some hypothesis which have been able to be produced concerning the views of the people who lived there, but over 98% of their experiences have no affect upon present day life. Why? Well, unlike the ancient writers of China or Greece, these people did not possess a written language. There experiences did not truly change reality because their experiences could not be preserved.

And yet if the written record of a people's experiences is destroyed, there experiences again cease to have any affect upon the lives of other humans. In Alexandria, Egypt, there was a giant library 2000 years ago. Those writings no longer exist because they were destroyed in a fire.

All the experiences of human kind have until now had no statistically significant affect on any astral system except for the Solar System and until the 1950s even our own solar system was barely touched by all the experiences of human history.

Thus, I again assert that there is a difference between reality and all the perceptions of reality created by the experiences of all humankind throughout history.

There are therefore different kinds of beliefs. Some beliefs are subjective. Is this room chilly or warm? Your answer is a belief and yet it is merely a perception.

There are also model beliefs. Both Farenheit and Celsius are merely human created models for measuring reality. But these models are arbitrary. Celsius is based on the arbitrary assertion that there are eactly 100 degrees between the freezing point of water and the boiling point of water. And yet the model could just as easily have been based on defining a degree as being a tenth the size of the Celsius degree. Thus arguing that there are 1000 degrees between these two points. Therefore scales of measurement are merely models and therefore perceptions of reality.

Vocabulary, Language, Semantics are all forms of attempting to create symbolic models of reality of personal perception.

Some people confuse convictions and faith. Not all convictions are faith. Faith requires that the one who believs have no firsthand experience of that which is believed, but instead that the believer relies on the assurances of a testifier and the reliability and trustworthiness of the testifier.

For example: Religion claims that God has given a message to man. ( Different religions believe in Different messages (writings) but most claim that mankind received a revelation from Deity. ) Most religions claim that humanity is ignorant of certain topics and that God informs man and offers assurances to man concerning those topics. When a person believes in the assurances of the writings of such a religion, he believes by faith in the trustworthiness of the revealer and of the words of the revelation.

The opposite of Faith is opinion. Opinions are convictions which are not based on the testimony or assurances of another.

The idea of having "Faith in Yourself" is an oxymoron because faith requires a suspension of your own personal convictions and an acceptance of testimony concerning a topic of which you are ignorant. Juries are expected to believe the testimony or assurances of witnesses, therefore, if we can move the word "faith" out of the religious realm then it would be accurate to refer to a jury having faith in the words of the witnesses.

Thus we see that there are various types of beliefs. I have listed experienced perceptions, modeled perceptions, faith in testimony and opinion in this article. I would appreciate hearing from any readers concerning other categories of beliefs.