Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

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ProgrammingGodJordan
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Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by ProgrammingGodJordan »

  1. As Neil deGrasse Tyson says, science is true whether or not one believes in it!
  2. Pertinently, that one may believe in science, does not suddenly remove that belief is a concept that permits that one may typically ignore evidence, as observed in the analysis below:
    • Belief (by definition and research) is a model, that permits both science, and non-science.
    • However, crucially, belief typically facilitates that people especially ignore evidence.
    • A model that generally permits the large ignorance of evidence contrasts science.
    • Instead, we may employ scientific thinking, that largely prioritizes evidence, rather than a model (i.e. belief) that facilitates largely, the ignorance of evidence.
  3. Unfortunately, I had been a theist up until my 21'st birthday. Fortunately, at age 22 (I am now 27), I finally identified as an atheist. After 4 years of being an atheist, one day I thought about belief, and I recognized that not only was theistic faith invalid, but also, the very concept of belief!
    • As a precaution for preventing myself from absorbing nonsense, I had come to invent something called "non beliefism".
    • Beyond atheism, "non beliefism" enables a state of mind that rejects not merely religious belief, but the very concept of belief.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by Sy Borg »

Actually, atheism is a belief. Agnosticism is the absence of belief. NdGT himself is agnostic for that reason.
ProgrammingGodJordan
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by ProgrammingGodJordan »

1. As far as facts go, atheism is generally the absence of the belief in God.

2. Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
Maxcady10001
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by Maxcady10001 »

I always thought atheism was the lack of belief. I thought it was "I do not believe in God," not "I believe there is no God."
On wiki
Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities.
If you say atheism is the absence of belief, your argument against theists is just so much stronger.
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by Spectrum »

Belief is part of knowledge, thus one cannot abolished 'belief' if one need 'knowledge.'
Note the following definition of 'belief' which is more appropriate to Philosophy.
Wiki wrote:Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty.
Another way of defining belief sees it as a mental representation of an attitude positively oriented towards the likelihood of something being true.[1]
When Einstein constructed E=MC2 in his mind, that is a personal belief and because he has proven it on paper he has a very high personal conviction his theory is true. This is a personal belief and not knowledge [scientific knowledge].

Einstein's E=MC2 was only a speculated scientific theory when his peers agree with his personal belief.
Then Einstein's E=MC2 is confirmed scientific knowledge when his theory was tested and proven with empirical evidences.

The above applies to all knowledge, i.e. scientific or otherwise.

From the above, belief is a necessary transit from personal beliefs and conviction to knowledge.
All knowledge start with a personal belief.
Such personal belief becomes knowledge when proven to be true with relevant evidences.

Belief as defined above cannot be abolished.
Not-a-theist. Religion is a critical necessity for humanity now, but not the FUTURE.
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by Spectrum »

Maxcady10001 wrote: January 6th, 2018, 2:50 am I always thought atheism was the lack of belief. I thought it was "I do not believe in God," not "I believe there is no God."
On wiki
Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities.
I agree [a]theism is a lack of belief in theism.

There is no common belief related to [a]theism.
Some non-theists could be totally indifferent on the topic of theism.
However individual non-theists may have their own beliefs which could be different from other non-theists.
For example, in my case I believe 'God is an Impossibility' on a rational basis and I have provided the arguments here;
http://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/ ... =4&t=15155

Other non-theists have their own beliefs in relation to theism.

I believe Greta's "Actually, atheism is a belief" is insufficient.
There is a need for more details as I had stated above.
Not-a-theist. Religion is a critical necessity for humanity now, but not the FUTURE.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by Sy Borg »

Atheism is not just absence of belief, as is often claimed. Actually, that is agnosticism. Atheism supposes that reality is configured in a certain way, even thought atheists cannot be 100% certain. Dawkins spoke of hard and soft atheism, depending on how one assesses the probability that there is or isn't some kind of god or godlike entity or underpinning awareness.

This ultimately comes down to the question as to whether energy or consciousness is fundamental to reality, or if they were always intrinsically connected. Atheists will say the first, theists will say the second, pantheists and panentheists opt for the latter, and agnostics don't claim to know.
ProgrammingGodJordan
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by ProgrammingGodJordan »

Greta wrote: January 6th, 2018, 7:24 am Atheism is not just absence of belief, as is often claimed. Actually, that is agnosticism. Atheism supposes that reality is configured in a certain way, even thought atheists cannot be 100% certain. Dawkins spoke of hard and soft atheism, depending on how one assesses the probability that there is or isn't some kind of god or godlike entity or underpinning awareness.

This ultimately comes down to the question as to whether energy or consciousness is fundamental to reality, or if they were always intrinsically connected. Atheists will say the first, theists will say the second, pantheists and panentheists opt for the latter, and agnostics don't claim to know.
On the contrary, atheism is generally, the absence of belief:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
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Sy Borg
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by Sy Borg »

A blank statement without reasoning doesn't mean anything. I have questioned the official line, as per Wiki, using reasoning. That reasoning may be either challenged, or not.
Maxcady10001
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by Maxcady10001 »

Saying atheism is supposing reality is a certain way is a knowledge claim. Atheism is not a claim to knowledge but the absence of it. While believing in God is a knowledge claim. The way believe is defined makes any kind of belief a claim to knowledge, so the absence of belief has to be one of ignorance, and atheism is just that. As an atheist I am ignorant of the existence of a God.
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by Steve3007 »

Re: OP.

I broadly agree with Spectrum's assessment of the definition of "belief" in his first post here. Belief, in itself, is simply the conviction that something is true. The concept of belief, in itself, says nothing of the reasons why the person holds that conviction. It could be related to some sensory perceptions that they've experienced directly. It could be related to someone else's sensory perceptions about which they've heard or read. It could be related to a series of logical/mathematical arguments that themselves model patterns in a whole load of previous sensory perceptions (as in Spectrum's Einstein example). Or it could be various other things.

So the idea of abolishing belief is as absurd as proposing to abolish all mental activity.

I presume what ProgrammingGodJordan is really talking about is a very specific kind of belief: a belief which cannot in any way, directly or indirectly, be traced back to sensory perceptions. There would then be a big argument as to precisely which specific beliefs fall into this category.
Steve3007
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by Steve3007 »

Incidentally, ProgrammingGodJordan:

Does your name indicate that you are called Jordan and are very good at programming? Or does it indicate that you are called Jordan and have written a computer simulation of God? Grammatically, as far as I can tell, it could be either.
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by Consul »

Belief is one of the mental states called propositional attitudes. Not everybody likes this technical term, because it presupposes a contentious ontology of propositions; and it has been argued that the objects of propositional attitudes aren't really propositions (as abstract sentence-meanings) but states of affairs. Nonetheless, it's a widely used standard term, so I'll use it here too. When the propositional attitude in question is belief, what kind of attitude do we have here? It's affirmation or assent. To believe a proposition is to think (with a "yes-feeling", as Bertrand Russell said) that it is true, to take it as true. (Alternatively, one can say that to believe in a state of affairs is to think that it obtains, that it is the case, that it is a fact.) In the general sense in which "belief" is used in the philosophy of mind and psychology, there is no connotation regarding whether or not a belief is epistemically justified, whether or not the believer has evidence or good reasons for his belief. So belief doesn't exclude knowledge! Actually, given its traditional definition, knowledge is a kind of belief: justified true belief. And knowledge doesn't exclude belief either! "What I know, I believe." (L. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §177) It follows that "belief" is not synonymous with "(blind) faith".
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Hereandnow
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by Hereandnow »

Consul:
To believe a proposition is to think (with a "yes-feeling", as Bertrand Russell said) that it is true, to take it as true. (Alternatively, one can say that to believe in a state of affairs is to think that it obtains, that it is the case, that it is a fact.)
The latter does not sound like an alternative. Certainly both being the case and having a yes feeling happen usually in the same doxastic event. In fact, it is hard to imagine the one occurring without the other.

In the general sense in which "belief" is used in the philosophy of mind and psychology, there is no connotation regarding whether or not a belief is epistemically justified, whether or not the believer has evidence or good reasons for his belief. So belief doesn't exclude knowledge! Actually, given its traditional definition, knowledge is a kind of belief: justified true belief. And knowledge doesn't exclude belief either! "What I know, I believe." (L. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §177) It follows that "belief" is not synonymous with "(blind) faith".

This seems muddled, but perhaps I'm missing it: no connotation between belief and justification? But the essential meaning, what about this? I mean, if belief does not connote justification, then it is the nuance of the word's value-in-usage that is in play. But clearly, all beliefs are taken as justified unless there is a matter of delusion or "willful" belief, both of which are extraordinary cases. Belief is coercive, and even the most insane belief possesses an argument that is convincing in the world within of a madman. It is not the justification that is missing, but the facts that are brought to bare upon the understanding.

Belief does not exclude knowledge? But why would it ever be taken otherwise? Unless, as some hold, there is no knowledge exclusive of justification, and arguments hold together coherently, not foundationally (whatever that foundation may be grounded in); hence, one could conceive of belief without knowledge given there is no such thing as knowledge in the foundational sense. But then you bring in the tradiational definition of knowledge. I guess you are simply covering two perspectives?
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Hereandnow
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Re: Belief (not just religious belief) ought to be abolished!

Post by Hereandnow »

Belief should not be abolished. How could you ever get by without generalizations like 'believe'? They are conveniences, handy ways to express what is upon analysis, complexities. I believe it will rain today and I leave it at that. But if you take the matter to task and ask do you really believe that? Meteorology is not an exact science; the forecaster cold have had a bad day; you could be hallucinating the whole affair; Maybe you're a brain in a vat!; and: what do you mean by these term, like 'rain' and 'today'. You had prima facie reason to believe only. And this is based on justification, but defeatable (defeasible) justification.
But here is the rub: beneath your prima facie belief there is abiding assumption that this belief could be wrong, and this holds for most believing. You know there is some chance, some even Cartesian doubt, that it could be wrong. And this makes belief, this manichean tool of cognition, always suspect.
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