Brilliant definition!
Yes. Far too many religions claim to have all the answers, and consider curiosity and rational analysis at best unnecessary and at worst heretical.
the thing is, belief is evrything. whether its knowledge you believe to be correct, belief in your abilities.. belief in your logic, evrywhere. everywhere belief, everything.
as such, it would come to conclusion, studying ones methods of logic, information processing and evrything which has to do with what makes your life is of utter importance to gain control over your believes, and the act of studying them makes recognizing faults at everything easier.
i have Si, i doubt it works the same way for Ni's. but, i can feel pressures inside my head, and then i can read neuroscience pictures which depict what processes im using, then i combine these feelings with said processes and ti all makes much more sense.
knowing where you gain stability and where is the chaos is very important to define. sensing is the stability, and intuition is the chaos. as such, supporting and figuring ways to maintain motivation for each is the key for gaining said stability and on intuitions case, learn to love not knowing and that should allow you to enjoy developing it to an extense where you say you know nothing yet actually the said acceptance allows much more power to your abilities, as you dont rely your identity with irrational feelings on it. it just is, you just love it and trust the chaos. equally, you must maintain the balance by achieving balance on through the use of Se, as without balance there are quickly negative effects inbound.
without mystery, intelligence dies off.. with too much, you get confused.
luckily, we have them both separate and as such, as long as both are developed in balance, potential is unlimited.
and back on beliefs to answer your question, theres no difference between belief and accepted knowledge. the only difference is, the quality of reasoning used. as such, bad quality reasoning seeds more problems than its worth, and you can never have high quality enough through the fact, that we depend on having equally much chaos as order in our lives. both come with their downsides which have to be maintained constantly, which i mentioned already.
"The highlighted describes my personal belief system well. I often tell people, "I will discuss my beliefs with you, but won't put labels on them". I don't, however, understand the underlined. Do you mean to say it is not necessary to question one's own (or other people's) beliefs? What sort of studying??"
there is a difference. studying is analyzing, by developing your ability to do so equals for higher chances at not making fatal mistakes. while questioning is outright irrational (also known as the ti tangents, aka why intps... use their time how they do.), you must look at your belief and really analyze, what is this? how came it be? you need to get an innate sense of understanding, and you can really, never understand yourself enough due the fact a machine can process only limited portion, which is never able to reach itself truly.
in my most recent self discoveries on feelings, im starting to understand better how absolutely necessary they are for enjoyment. like discovering past feelings, learning how to appreciate them all, how to make them useful, .. the only thing which makes life worth living are feelings, you better master the art of enjoying them.
with the understanding you gain, you realize how weakest link in your cognitive functions is actually the master of them all.
"Your post is insightful and to-the-point."
hm, yes im trying to fight my inability to write all my thoughts by becoming more efficient at it to compensate for not expressing everything. thanks to having only two fingers not broken on left hand, impairing writing ability permanently.
right now im severely sleep deprived which caused lower quality in my thought stream.. ugh, the art of self control _is_ hard.. -.- ... for my personality. at least when it comes to stopping Ne once it gets started. on convos that means literally 16 hours nonstop talking, something i used to have a tendency for.
never forget, all functions are connected, as such, study them as whole. Te is master of Fi, fi master of se and se master of ni on intj's.
the higher control you overall gain, you realize questioning them is just useless as you gain complete control over each and every one of them. i momentarily have reached complete control for few times, but ended failing due feedback loops, just like how it works for audio equipment, same can happen with human processing at which point you have to severe the complete control to prevent the loop from getting any stronger. (a loop of feelings gone out of control for example, magnifying into unbearable amounts where you lose the control due inexperience caused by making progress too suddenly. well, you know what happens if you give a grenade to a stone ager. same thing here. aka why maturity is slow process, unless one abuses scientific method of self studying to speed things up ^_^)
which is why weakest is the real master of all. not weak in terms of strength, but in terms of understanding. which is why an intuitor can outscore sensor with their weakest function even if sensor is dom of it, cause strength has nothing to do with its quality. (try telling that to istj's who.. um, for some reason "learn".. uh... car symbols, or something utterly ridiculous like flags, cities etc. that, and then you hear them boasting with pride on their achievements of stucking million useless things in their heads instead of using their time productively.)
"Exactly how do you control your beliefs through scientific means? Do you see a difference between belief and acceptance through factual evidence?"
feelings are part of reality, why should we use any other than scientific method there too? for Fi that means having to develop the said methods privately.
and funny enough, im not surprised at all if scientist has stronger, more controlled feelings and ultimately even controlling their curiosity with the use of "faith" outscoring life time faith based religions. when you try to shape something internal to fit an external image like that of a religion, you lose your ability to have all feelings, not to mention ability of controlling them will decrease, with fading control, .. well you rather be the master of your life yourself.
just look at symphony of science videos, they are clearly oozing of happiness they scientiissts..
you could apply scientific method to learn things which are useless to you, but when you apply that method on understanding yourself to maximize your life, it becomes something more than just a way to understand the world.
(the vid link thing didnt work.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZGINaRUEkU
the problem of teaching sanity to popular religions, is in that science has distanced itself from their level in the magnitude of.. well, lets just say its alike comparing one to an animal, not really fair to compare them.
(im losing composition here, with sleep deprivation inability to remember everything ive written in the post, potentially making me into an endless stream of thoughts. alike to the state of sleeping.) i better go sleep >.<...