Can a belief change a person?

V

Varda

The Bug Lady
Valued Senior Member
When, for example, we hear about someone who went to prison and found god and changed their ways, do you believe that to be true?
 
Sometimes it is true, sometimes it isn't. For every person that finds God and truly turns their life around, there is another that finds God and doesn't. New religion can give you a goal, even a reason to get clean or to straighten your life up, but it's personal strength that makes it happen (or not).

One of my favorite examples of this is from the world of professional wrestling. My favorite tag team as a kid was the Rockers--Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels. Eventually, both got hooked on drugs, and both found Jesus. Shawn has been clean ever since, but Marty has fallen off the wagon a dozen times. So why did God work for one and not the other? Because Marty is weak and Shawn is strong.
 
I do believe that a single event can change your life, but like all habits you have to want to end it, you really have to want to. It's hard and I have the utmost sympathy and understanding for drug users, alcoholics, and smokers...etc who want to quit, It is not an easy ordeal. I've been trying to break a bad habit for the better part of 10 years or so now, but I haven't succeeded, I obviously don't want to give it up that bad.
 
JDawg said:
One of my favorite examples of this is from the world of professional wrestling. My favorite tag team as a kid was the Rockers--Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels. Eventually, both got hooked on drugs, and both found Jesus. Shawn has been clean ever since, but Marty has fallen off the wagon a dozen times. So why did God work for one and not the other? Because Marty is weak and Shawn is strong.
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Then Vince went and did a God angle. I'm surprised that HBK went for that.
 
Varda said:
When, for example, we hear about someone who went to prison and found god and changed their ways, do you believe that to be true?
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Of course.
Sometimes it's a lie.
Sometimes it's a self-delusion.
Sometimes it's real.

Why wouldn't it be possible?
I know that rehabilitation is possible, when people see the errors of their ways. If they do that without "finding Jesus", wouldn't that still be a case of belief changing a person? They believe now, that this is the right way to act.
 
ggazoo said:
Then Vince went and did a God angle. I'm surprised that HBK went for that.
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I gave up on wrestling before that, but I did keep track of it...and yeah, that was messed up. I think HBK felt he needed to repay Vince for letting him come back and be HBK Lite, rather than the raunchy little bastard that he used to be.
 
They change their ways because of prison, not God. If they wanted to change to begin with they would have found this God you speak about long before they were sent off to prison don't you think?
 
Imagine if someone came up behind you, and screamed BE THE BEST YOU CAN OR I WILL SHOOT YOU WITH THIS GUN, AND OBEY THIS BOOK *THROWS BIBLE AT YOU*. We don't know whether the gun exists or not, and some think it does and some do not. If someone is the best they can be, and they believed the gun existed, who's responsible for it?
 
It is not so much that a BELIEF changes their life. What is really happening is that a person leaves one set of friends and joins in with another. it is a matter of a Sheep moving from one wild herd of maraudering sheep and taking membership instead with a herd of well groomed and securely fenced good sheep.

Most idiot people do not have the mental wherewithall to actually have much of an effect on their own behavior. Habit is strong. Will power is weak. But if these stupid morons can only leave one room full of gangster hoods and walk into the next room of respectable working people, then there life will automatically change, by doing what they have always done... going along with ambient peer pressure. Good peer pressure just happens to be better than bad peer pressure... but the force of the peer pressure is always just about the same.

Varda said:
When, for example, we hear about someone who went to prison and found god and changed their ways, do you believe that to be true?
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Varda said:
When, for example, we hear about someone who went to prison and found god and changed their ways, do you believe that to be true?
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Interesting. But also, isn't "love" just another belief? And how many people in the world change their lives for love?

And, of course, the opposite is true - they finally come to realize that their "love" is no more, so they change their lives again ...divorce!

Baron Max
 
Beliefs change, but the individual nature of humans never do.

"Believe, if thou wilt, that mountains change their place, but believe not that man changes his nature."

- Muhammad


Kadark
 
Kadark said:
Beliefs change, but the individual nature of humans never do.
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Wouldn't you then need to define objectively where nature ends and nurture begins?
If you can do that, I'll be praising your Nobel Prize win.
 
Then how can you be sure that "Beliefs change, but the individual nature of humans never do"?
 
Kadark said:
Because of life experience.
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:rolleyes: Non-answer.

Kadark said:
Why don't you stop being such an inquisitive dick?
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I don't equate inquisitiveness with being a dick.
Perhaps if you did not, you could either answer the question, or revisit what you think you are so sure about.

If you can't say where nature ends, how can you say that man can not change his nature.

I'm not saying you don't have some notion of where nature ends - I'm just wondering what you think that is.
 
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