Belief creates the actual fact

Being convinced that something is achievable, makes it achievable. This is obvious in many cases. If you know something is achievable, you will doubt less, take more risks and go straight to the target. This is true in many types of progress, be it in personal performance or in group performance, in sports or in music, in technical innovation or in entering new markets.

But we could also revert the sentence: the actual fact creates belief. In many cases, we have belief because there is already some evidence that the goal is being achieved. Very often cause and consequence can't be clearly distinguished. They just reinforce each other.

There are goals that seem very difficult to achieve. Things like real human progress: "no more war", friendship and tolerance. Let us call it "peace". Can belief create peace? Yes, but this belief is very difficult. In that case, we can start with faith. In my language (Dutch) there is only one word for belief and faith: "geloof". This is a pity, because faith is not the same as belief. Faith is rather a combination of willingness to believe, loyalty and trust. But this Dutch ambiguity now leads me to the question if faith can create peace? Can faith create belief?

Well, it can't be proven scientifically. Historically, we can't demonstrate any real progress. In two thousand years time, we have moved as far as an asthmatic ant with a heavy load of shopping. Do we want to believe in peace? Yes, we want to believe and we should believe but at this point in time, it seems to remain a matter of faith.