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Different ideas that humans hold help shape their psyche over time. Some ideas occur simply- for instance the interaction between cognition and emotion can influence a single thought in a few seconds or minutes. Other ideas are much more complex and can influence a person over a long period of time. These ideas can be political, religious and spiritual or just common ideas related to how they manage their lives.

The different types of ideas that people hold can be grouped into different categories. I already mentioned how there are religious ideas and common daily ideas - but there are more categories that can be described such as delusional ideas, ideas related to emotional speculation and ideas that are more concrete and mathematical.

People can make instinctual and deliberative decisions, and similarly, there are deliberative and instinctual ideas. A deliberative idea can be more or less concrete (like mathematics) and an instinctual idea can also be more or less concrete. The question then is what combination of deliberative and instinctual classifies the different ideas, and how much emotional speculation is involved.

If an idea is held and it becomes reality then how it influences the person changes significantly usually. For instance, someone may have the idea that they want freedom of speach, however obviously if the government is restricting their actual freedom of speach it might greatly impact their emotions. So the interaction between the ideas and goals that people have with how these goals occur in reality is significant for a persons psychological, spiritual and emotional well-being.

Are religious beliefs political ideas?

Religious beliefs are different from political beliefs - although in order to incorporate some beliefs into society they might need to be political policies.

For instance, Jesus's message of an earthly and heavenly kingdom could be viewed politically as democratic or 'positive' governments to take over the earth. Jesus's message was just a religious way of phrasing a political message - there are different ways of thinking about certain concepts. One way is religious - but that often relates to more practical beliefs that people think about every day.

Maybe the trinity in Christianity of God, the Son and the Holy Ghost can be seen as a division of power like how the government of the united states tries to have a balance of power between the presidency, the congress and the supreme court.

However, how God influences peoples lives is very different from how the government influences peoples lives. God created the world, Jesus was sent to bring a kingdom to God's world - and the holy spirit resides in each person.

So does an earthly kingdom mean that all government policies could come from god? What about the ways in which people treat other people - perhaps that could be considered to be like the holy spirit - something that guides our actions and behaviors. God creating the world at the beginning of the universe is very different from a current earthly kingdom or a spirit residing in each person.

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Source:  OpenStax, Consciousness, emotion and cognition. OpenStax CNX. Jul 11, 2016 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11886/1.5
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