(n.) Assent to a proposition or affirmation, or the acceptance of a fact, opinion, or assertion as real or true, without immediate personal knowledge; reliance upon word or testimony; partial or full assurance without positive knowledge or absolute certainty; persuasion; conviction; confidence; as, belief of a witness; the belief of our senses.
(n.) A persuasion of the truths of religion; faith.
(n.) The thing believed; the object of belief.
(n.) A tenet, or the body of tenets, held by the advocates of any class of views; doctrine; creed.
Example Sentences:
(1) You can see where the religious meme sprung from: when the world was an inexplicable and scary place, a belief in the supernatural was both comforting and socially adhesive.
(2) Our parents had no religious beliefs and there will be no funeral."
(3) The sexual attitudes and beliefs of 20 children who have been present at the labor and delivery of sibs and have observed the birth process are compared with 20 children who have not been present at delivery.
(4) Responding to a “We the People” petition, launched after Snowden’s initial leaks were published in the Guardian two years ago, the Obama administration on Tuesday reiterated its belief that he should face criminal charges for his actions.
(5) The spirit is great here, the players work very hard, we kept the belief when we were in third place and now we are here.
(6) The Hindu belief system accommodates this by prescribing use in such a way that this effect becomes beneficial.
(7) Despite tthree resignations and his reputation as a tribal operator in the Blair-Brown wars, however, his belief in the party he joined on his 15th birthday is undimmed.
(8) There can’t be something, someone that could fix this and chooses not to.” Years of agnosticism and an open attitude to religious beliefs thrust under the bus, acknowledging the shame that comes from sitting down with those the world forgot.
(9) It's not egotism, it's something else, a weird unshakeable belief.
(10) He restated his belief that it was in the national interest to remain in the EU, and said he was "confident" he could secure a successful renegotiation of Britain's relationship that could be put to the public.
(11) One view of these results stems from the belief that contraception is a necessary evil and the pill is the closest to a 'natural' sex act.
(12) What emerges strongly is the expressed belief of many that Isis can be persuasive, liberating and empowering.
(13) Following the cognitive orientation theory, we hypothesized that beliefs concerning goals, norms, oneself, and general beliefs would predict the extent of improvement following acupuncture.
(14) Curriculum writers and instructors of preservice elementary teachers could be more effective if they were aware of this group's beliefs about school-related AIDS issues.
(15) It is our belief that the reproductive and maternal capabilities of the colony-born females were adversely affected by the practice of removing neonates from their mothers at weaning and raising them with age-mates.
(16) But whether it arose from religious belief, from a noblesse oblige or from a sense of solidarity, duty in Britain has been, to most people, the foundation of rights rather than their consequence.
(17) The definition of midwife is given as midwives trained in a community setting to assist in delivery within the confines of accepted cultural beliefs.
(18) It has arisen from semantic errors, and a belief in ischaemia for which there is no scientific evidence.
(19) Many well-meaning female leadership development programmes share this belief, teaching women to negotiate, network and make decisions “like a man”.
(20) Hillary Clinton said that people who are pro-life have to change our religious beliefs,” said Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal in a statement released by the American Future project , which is backing his undeclared presidential campaign.
Credulity
Definition:
(n.) Readiness of belief; a disposition to believe on slight evidence.
Example Sentences:
(1) When President Obama stands up and says - as he did when he addressed the nation in February 2011 about Libya - that "the United States will continue to stand up for freedom, stand up for justice, and stand up for the dignity of all people", it should trigger nothing but a scornful fit of laughter, not credulous support (by the way, not that anyone much cares any more, but here's what is happening after the Grand Success of the Libya Intervention: "Tribal and historical loyalties still run deep in Libya, which is struggling to maintain central government control in a country where armed militia wield real power and meaningful systems of law and justice are lacking after the crumbling of Gaddafi's eccentric personal rule").
(2) With much of the work supposed to be completed by December, it is stretching credulity to believe that much more than token consultations with patient groups can take place.
(3) This leads to the paradoxical result that some of our most famous and successful journalists are also the profession's most credulous sycophants.
(4) When 11,000 jobs and a lot of pensions are at risk over the collapse of the ailing store group from which he extracted £586 m, let’s not waste any more time on King Phil (I’ve informally stripped him of his knighthood), his hurt feelings or embarrassingly vulgar yachts, except to say that – yet again – that Tony Blair was a credulous sucker for a rich man with tax-shy habits.
(5) It doesn't exactly stretch credulity, however, to recognize that banks provide bonuses to the best producers – whether they produce derivatives, mortgages or foreclosures.
(6) Given the inertia on even the most modest legislative response to the mass murder of schoolchildren, those still credulous enough to believe that our governance is representative of popular will are either Barnum-sized suckers, or worse, tacit participants in tragedies soon to come.
(7) Credulous voters will agree and feel placated, but in actuality, such measures will make little if any difference.
(8) The Crown Prosecution Service should not be so credulous in future.” But the CPS expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the trial.
(9) I think he’s a dangerous manchild with an army of credulous misogynists at his disposal.
(10) Pretending that the government's current forecasts and plans are certain and reliable, when the ones made only three years ago turned out to be anything but, stretches credulity.
(11) What we see is not meritocracy at work at all, but a wealth grab by a nepotistic executive class that sets its own salaries, tests credulity with its ridiculous demands, and discovers that credulity is an amenable customer.
(12) The boy insists he is not among the stone-throwers, an assertion that stretches credulity.
(13) It strains credulity to accept that a secretary of state who handles all her communications on a home-brewed server never passed classified information,” Fiorina said.
(14) Hague's campaign included parading Kaminski before the Jewish Chronicle and the more credulous blogger Iain Dale at the party conference: Dale's interview is reprinted across five pages in Total Politics , of which Lord Ashcroft owns 25%.
(15) The pirate's credulity regarding the US authorities' bogus ransom negotiations may make for a happy ending, but it's also the moment when America's superpower seems almost tragically all-consuming.
(16) Kiev's police chief later claimed that he ordered the assault, but that strains credulity.
(17) That suggestion, which always appeared unsatisfactory, now stretches the bounds of credulity.
(18) Equally credulous were those who, on the Monday evening, circulated reports that rioters had broken into London Zoo – thanks largely to a single, poorly-lit picture of what appears to be a tiger on a stairwell , with the irresistible subject line: "Oh my god – reports of tigers roaming around Primrose Hill."
(19) But the manipulation does not just tell us how sly operators view the credulous masses, but how they see themselves.
(20) Ghosts are not phantoms floating on the periphery of village life, the concern only of children and the credulous.