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Belief is something that man has held since it evolved into a "person" as such. Explanations of widely held beliefs must start at the beginning of belief and answer the question; why do we believe in [insert deity]? The answer to this has more to do with our perception of the world and human psychology than with the existence of an almighty being that created the earth, in whatever period of time it is claimed, and created man, whether in its own or an original image. The source of these traditions is unlikely to be based in truth but in an unscientific quest for an explanation of the world around them. The basis for which came from the unerring belief that natural phenomena, such as the seasons, must be effectively produced by a sentient being and could not simply be a fact of life. When new sciences were founded many scientists were accused of heresy and magical witchcraft by the Christian church simply because they contradicted what had been deemed possible and impossible before.
To believe something is to become totally immersed in it to the extent that things that previously existed in one form transubstantiate into another. In primitive religion, this consisted of persons wearing masks in what they believed was the image of a god becoming that god. The transference was total in a similar way to the conversion of bread and wine to body and blood, or the Hindu idea of statues in the shape of a god actually being that deity. Under Aristotelian logic, where by if an item or person is one thing then it cannot possibly be another as well, even at a later time, the idea of transubstantiation is illogical. It is impossible for a change to occur in the basic fabric of what an item is. Today this view may bee seen as being slightly naive as it is obvious that chemical or nuclear reactions may be able to create such a change. To remove this inconsistency the definition of such logic must be altered to say that the change must occur to all observers and not just those that believe in the god, and that the change must be spontaneous, thus not attributable to the natural sciences.
Belief and faith are similar entities as they are interrelated. A belief is a principle accepted by the believer as true or real but usually with neither any comprehensive truth of its veracity nor its falsification. It may also apply to trusting, or being confident in, the veracity of such ideas. Faith is belief taken even further, to the point at which it is unshakable even without evidence. Hence, belief may be thought of as being a weaker form of faith, and a basis for the effects faith has on the average person.
Faith has become a great aid to the sick and suffering since the foundations of organised religion. In all religions and religious doctrines, the priest is expected also to be a healer, of the soul if not of the body. Shamen in prehistoric times also had the position of doctor from which tradition the term "medicine man" has entered the English language. In the Middle Ages Moslem priests and Christian monks acted as the doctors, in deed only in recent times have the professions of priest and doctor been separated. The shaman acted as a faith healer, as to a great extent priests have ever since, although the healers did find many medicines in the chemical concoctions they mixed their general modus operendi was to cast out dæmons from ill people. The major idea behind such a ceremony was that it was the dæmons were what caused sickness. An extension of this belief and the faith that lead to such a cure actually working is the tradition of exorcism in the Catholic Church. It has been shown that faith healing, if the faith is strong enough can actually work. The theory is that it is either resorted to so late in the illness that the patient is already on the brink of a breakthrough and that actually believing that the dæmon caused the illness, and has been expelled, may cause a psychological change in the patient. A patient in great fear of death may believe they will survive for example, or a patient in great pain may ignore it as if it were no longer there since they believe it has gone. The demeanour change in the patient may result in the illness being overcome more quickly. Indeed many illnesses may be cured psychosomatically, especially mental illnesses. Magic and miracles committed by priests or other holy men is usually similar to this, at least in essence. The question of religious magic however is beyond the scope of this text, to be explored later.
The fact that belief may challenge what the nature of god is will be explored elsewhere but it is suffice to say that those who truly believe there is a god and that, what ever it is, it is omnipresent, may actually "see" their god. The power of belief has been examined as being psychological and of having the ability to completely alter a human mind. Visions may be one manifestation such influence over the mind, visions of deities are scarcely reported by atheists to which believers would respond by claiming that god does not wish to appear to those who doubt it. Surely, this cannot be true since a deity would wish to show the truth to its doubters to convert them, for a deity to speak to believers may surely be termed preaching to the converted. An explanation for this effect would be that the mind of the worshipper is so affected by thoughts of god that it sees a vision of god and hears it speaking. To examine this the psychology of belief needs to be expanded upon. Visions of god are in many ways identical to the immersion of a child into a game it is playing. Leo Frobenius examined the events surrounding such a game; a bored child that is distracting its parent at work is given three matchsticks to play with and told to leave the room. Outside the room the child plays "Hansel and Gretel" giving each of the matchsticks a character from the two eponymous heroes and the witch. Later the child emits a loud shriek whilst rapidly entering the room, the parent is told that they have to take the witch away as the child can no longer bear to be around it. The child has begun to believe without suggestion that the matchstick, that was not previously any more that, is actually an evil witch. Such belief in transubstantiation, as shown by most children, is a basic part of human psychology. In adults, such flights of fancy are suppressed and ignored, except by the religious communities, as infantile. A vision may be identified with as being the transubstantiation of an item, or the air, by the mind by persons whose minds are absolutely immersed in the existence of god. The idea that an item may become god is obviously the same psychological effect.
Faith and belief act as comfort blankets for the real world; they are what people use to explain their world, and to make life perfect for them - or at least explain why it is not quite what they wanted. Atheism expels this blanket from the atheist's world but usually results in their in ability to understand the way the world is or to cope with the belief of others. When something goes wrong in the life of an atheist they have no god to turn to and thus nothing to blame but the way life is. Faith may be viewed as the first psychiatrist just as for centuries the mental health of believers has been maintained by their priests. Belief, being powerful in the mind, acts to make the believer happy.
"Religion is the opium of the people.": Karl Marx