Yeah, it did look to me as though your were using those two words to carry the same meaning. That was my concern. I've noticed in the past that it seems quite common to see belief as synonymous with faith and then to see faith pejoratively as some kind of "I'm a sheep blindly following the herd" thing. The result is, for example a poster who used to be on here and who called himself, at different times, "creation" and "evolution", who professed not to believe anything. Presumably because of this usage of the word "belief".Pattern-chaser wrote:I agree, although I didn't realise we were doing that. I thought Sculptor1 and I were using the words to carry the same meaning. Clearly, I was mistaken.
For my part, if I say "I believe it's going to rain today" I'm just saying that on the balance of probabilities I think it's going to rain today. I wouldn't see that as particularly closely related to "I have faith that it's going to rain today".
I guess I should probably be talking to the OP. In the first line of that it says:
It's vague, but it sets up the word "belief" to be used in a strange and non-standard way from the start. It looks like Jack is trying to equate belief with some vaguely defined combination of confirmation bias, emotional state, prejudices and faith, for the purpose of contrasting it with knowledge.JackDaydream wrote:In referring to belief I am speaking of the ideas which a person chooses to adopt on a personal level, including values and specific views.