Question

4. A discussion of personal worldview as a means to countermand cognitive dissonance. How might a distinctly Christian worldview function in this role?

Answer 1

Cognitive dissonance is a conflicting situation involving attitude belief or behavior, due to the conflict between the behavior and belief produces mental discomfort that leads to an alteration in one's belief behavior or attitude. When there is an inconsistency between the attitude and behavior something has to be an alteration to reduce the inconsistency. There are various ways to reduce the dissonance, but it depends upon the person how to take these steps for reducing cognitive dissonance,

The cognitive dissonance theory is first introduced in the new testaments by J Gager in Kingdom and community (1975) for Christian disconfirmation of belief relating to death, judgment and the final destiny of the soul and mankind, there is a great difference of opinion regarding the theory as Malina argues that cognitive dissonance theory is inappropriate to the early Christian theory and the experiment by Festinger that is regarding faith and behavior in which a cult man was receiving the messages from the space failed and it was assumed that the message has come that due to change in the behavior and brought so much good and light in the world that God called off the pickup and the cataclysm, that shows that they were saved and their belief changed with circumstances.

The belief that Messiah the Jesus second coming to earth was dated between 21st March 1843 and 21st March 1844 there was no event of Jesus arrival than the next date was give as 22nd October 1844. that time also the second coming of Jesus never happened, with not coming of Jesus on earth the belief that emerged is that the date was right but his second coming happened in the heaven and he had begun investigative judgment of the world, this is the belief that was created and now no one knows when would he returned to the earth. These are all examples of cognitive dissonance where the belief and attitude changes to reduce the mental discomfort.

But within Christianity, there are several beliefs that are debated