What was this?



I'm simply asking you to explain how you can say the above without believing that it is an accurate depiction of the case at hand.

here's a very simple excercise that'll help you understand what i'm saying here.

READ EXACTLY THE WORDS I TYPE. READ NOTHING THAT I DON'T TYPE. REPEAT AS NECESSARY.

i understand perfectly your reasoning. i reason differently. you need belief to compel you to act. i've no belief and act anyway. i act because i think things through and i act instinctively sometimes finding my instints got me into trouble. therefore, i believe nothing, question everything. simple really.

i see belief as taking a position that some comcept is known to be true and oftentimes to the point of being delusional such as when someone believs something to be absolutely true or factual in spite of evidence that suggests an alternative comcept. as an agnostic, i think the human mind is incapable of knowing anything absolutely other than what we experience. so knowing what i experience requires no belief. they actually happened. for instance, it may be that the only experience i have regarding the big bang is my experience reading what theoretical physicists have written but i don't BELIEVE in the big bang, i just know what i read, find what i read to be plausible but understanding that what i read may some day be shown to be in error.

a god fearing person does not reason as i do. he/she experiences reading the bible or the koran, whatever, just as i do. but where we part reasoning fashion is that the faithfull reason that what they've read they BELIEVE to be fact. absolute fact in many if not most cases. obviously a strong atheist has the same problem with his BELIEF that IN FACT god does not exist. niether can ever know. neither can ever prove himself correct and the other incorrect and niether continuously questions his belief. how can one question what is fact or more correctly what he BELIEVES to be fact?

thought is simply a mental activity, the process called thinking. depending on who's having a particular thought, the thinking can be valid or faulty. you seem to think my thoughts on belief are faulty and illogical. i obviously consider the same thoughts to be valid and logical. i don't BELIEVE it's so, i CONSIDER it so.

would this thread be dead and burried without me or what??

I'm suspicious of the mental attitude here bogie. I mean, why the aversion to belief? I find it impossible to function as a thinking creature without holding belief. You claim to believe nothing. Following your pattern, that would mean that you think that you believe nothing. You've given your reasons for this, however I see no clear distinction between thought and belief, therefore your reasons do not hold.

It seems as though you've equated all belief to religious belief or faith(belief without and/or contrary to evidence). You have no aversion to knowledge, however, so I suspect your personal conception of what constitutes being knowledge is incoherent, because knowledge itself has the necessary element of belief.

The scientific and much of the philosophical community holds knowledge as justified true belief or just true belief. Now Gettier showed where JTB is insufficient for knowledge in a few rare cases by showing how a justified true belief does not always constitute being what we would rightfully call knowledge, but rather JTB can also clearly be a case of epistemic luck. However, there is no good reason to hold that one can know something/anything without holding belief.

Could you explain how it is that one can possess knowledge without holding belief?

all belief is not religious. all religion is belief. i don't see that the scientific community holds knowledge as having anything to do with belief. i will agree that there is no good reason to hold that one can know something/anything without holding belief, however. as i'm agnostic. can know nothing absolutely outside of what i experience. there it is in a nutshell. as i can know nothing that i haven't experienced belief is of no use to me. and as i experience what happens to me i don't need belief to know what happened. in the end, i believe nothing. but we're repeating ourselves again and mostly you repeat the same 'suspicions' as regards my thinking. why not stick to something you are expert in and express your own thinking? of course the thread might just up and die but hey. i'll be kayaking for a day or two so you've plenty of time to word YOUR thoughts on YOUR thoughts for a change.

So we agree that there is no good reason to hold that one can know something/anything without holding belief. To know X...

1. One must believe X
2. One must be justified in believing X
3. X must be true

Well, you've said you're going to go kayaking. That's what you believe will happen. That is what you've planned on doing. Until you actually go, you have not experienced this plan of going kayaking. So by your own definition of knowing only what you experience, you cannot know that you're going to go kayaking. The plan is belief based. You believe that if all goes well, you'll be kayaking, and very well may be as I write this. However, something else could come up which causes you to change your plans. It is also because of this possibility that it makes no sense to say that you know you're going to go kayaking. Should something arise and the plans change, it still makes sense to say that you believed that you were going, because that is all it can be until you're there and begin doing it.



You're repeating the claim that you believe nothing, however you've agreed that there is no good reason to hold that one can know something/anything without holding belief. This does not fit with your claim that you believe nothing. Could you know that you're planning to go kayaking without believing it? You're clearly experiencing making the plans, so you know that you're planning to go, but you can only believe that you will be going. If you did not believe that you would be going, you would not carry out the plans - for much the same reason you would not plan on going to work if you did not first believe that you had a job.



I hope you have a good time. Kayaking is cool. I'm always putting my thoughts to 'paper' and doing my best to make sure that it makes sense.

I think belief can be something useful as well as extremely dangerous. In my experience, since humans are subjective, belief is always present based on 1. what we learned implicitly and explicitly, 2) what we chose to belief, 3) what our experiences are, and 4) how much or little we know. Therefore, "critical" thinking is never a mistake.

Everybody has to believe in something.
I believe I'll have another drink!

-W. C. Fields

Sure, but you can have a drink and still be a critical thinker, can you not? The question is not if you're a believer or not but what it is you believe and how you reached those conclusions. Hitler was a believer and so was Buddha.

nope. never BELIEVED i'd go kayaking. simply made plans to. that i experienced making plans i simply know that i planned to go kayaking because, as you yourself said, i couldn't know i'd go kayaking as something could have come up to prevent it. had i BELIEVED that i'd go kayaking and didn't, my belief would have been meaningless. now that i've experienced my kayaking trip i know it took place. i don't BELIEVE it took place, i experienced it happening so i KNOW it took place.



sure it does. i keep saying there is no good reason to hold that one can know something/anything that he hasn't experienced himself WITHOUT holding belief and that will happen. that's my point. belief is meaningless if i can know nothing other than what i experience then i cannot believe anything without experiencing it. i never said others don't hold belief. indeed they do. your original question asked for thoughts on belief. i gave you mine. where you and i agree. when a person believes something to be fact, they believe they have knowledge that the fact is true. where we part ways is that while you seem to think that knowledge can exist without experiencing it, i do not. to believe is not to know. belief requires faith but having faith that something is does not make it so. we can only know what we experience so believing i know something that i've not yet experienced, my kayak trip for instance, is not possible for me. i understand it would be possible for you to believe that tomorrow you'll go kayaking but your belief would be meaningless because as you say, it may not happen.



no, i've been saying all along that i could not know that i'd go kayaking. i only knew that i planned to go kayaking. using the past tense, planned, says that the planning already happend. i cannot know that what i plan to do in any future time that it will actually happen. i could believe as so many do that i'll win the lottery if i'd just buy one damn ticket but i consider such a belief to be delusional so i don't believe such and spend my money on other things like kayaks.



kayaking was cool, thanks, soul. i only OCCASIONlly put my thoughts to 'paper' having many, many other things to do and i always KNOW they make sense to me. but then i have experience with my thoughts that you don't have.

Facts must be validated from outside of the examiner's mind(no circular reasoning). Truth can only be identified by the creator. By denying a creator, truth cannot be established. Belief is subjective truth and thought is temporary belief.

very interesting way to put it, blues. belief is selective truth. in fact i've often been told that i could CHOOSE to believe in god and why wouldn't i make that SELECTION if it meant eternal salvation. truth is subjective so belief is subjective. but is thought temporary belief or is belief temporary thought? seems to me the latter is more correct. i was brought up to believe that jesus was the son of god and now i no longer believe such. i now regard any belief to be temporary at best and meaningless. if beliefs in fact do change or fade away, and many seem to, i'll no longer waste time believing anything and question my thoughts continuously. i thought i found truth in god. but it wasn't so. i thought i found truth in santa. but that wasn't so. i'll not take anything on faith ever again. belief requires faith so i cannot believe if i refuse to take anything on faith alone.

Glad you had fun. I've a group of family/friends who are white water rafting as we speak.

--

I'm still puzzled a bit...



So you're saying that you made plans to do something that you did not believe would take place? Doesn't that seem like an odd thing to say?

odd to you i suppose, soul. try this. step out of your shoes and into mine for just a moment for the sake of discussion and consider that to believe something to be fact is to know it to be fact. now consider as i do that you cannot know anything other than what you've experienced yourself. also consider as i do that to believe something requires faith and remember, you have no faith in anything and question everything as i have often stated that i do. now plan a kayaking trip and tell me all the things you know or believe about the trip after the planning and before the actual trip.

do you know that you've planned a kayaking trip? sure. you've experienced the planning, gassed up the car, loaded the kayak on top. you're ready to pull out at the crack of dawn. no belief required here nor do you even have faith that your planning is complete as you may keep asking yourself if you've forgotten anything. wouldn't want to be up a creek without a paddle, for instance. did you load the sucker or not? after all, you question everything, just like me right?

do you believe that you'll actually go kayaking tomorrow? no. you can't. you cannot believe or know something will happen in the future. you cannot have faith that nothing will happen to prevent you from kayaking tomorrow. remember, you're thinking like me now, not like you. you can't have faith that your car with kayak on top, for instance, will not all be stolen while you sleep tonight because thinking like me you would not call that faith that thieves will not bother your car. you'd call it an acceptable risk as you've not heard of anybody breaking into locked garages to steal worn out cars with kayaks on top lately.

yes, i do associate belief, faith and religion often because i think it a good example of what faith and belief are all about. perhaps the best example. i don't think that a christian or a muslim has any doubt in his mind that he will go to heaven after he dies unless he conducts himself as his scriptures require. so he leads a life based on what he thinks his god has decreed. in his mind it is fact that god exists and woe he who doubts. he believes this to be fact and when asked to prove the fact he simply replies that proof is not possible, it requires faith.

and yet he would never be as sure about going kayaking tomorrow as he is sure about going to heaven or going to hell. he's actually experienced things happening in the past that has ruined his plans to do something and perhaps even preventing him from kayaking as he'd planned in the past. so there is that doubt that tomorrow may not turn out as planned and plenty of reasons to not believe that it will actually happen as planned. to an agnostic like myself, everything that has not happened could very well not ever happen be it a kayaking trip or reaching heaven or hell. so faith may 'warm the heart' in believing that heaven awaits you just as you excitedly await your day on the river but do you know each will happen without a doubt? my guess would be that you'd answer with a resounding 'yes' to the heaven question/hell and a weak 'eh, maybe not, anything could come up,' to the kayaking question. but were you really in my shoes, both answers would be the same; 'can't know.'

Well, I follow what you're saying, and understand why it leads to how you express thought/belief, but I can't agree to how this has been set out. It is not true that "to believe something to be fact is to know it to be fact". Belief is insufficient for truth. Knowledge cannot be false. Belief can, and often is. Therefore, to believe X is fact does not equate to knowing X is fact.



I regard faith as unquestioned trust regarding the truthfulness of a source. To say that one has no faith in anything is to doubt the truthfulness of everything. Do you question your own ability to see things as they are, to make sense of the world around us?

Agreed.



Actually, I would answer that I do not believe in the Biblical conception(s) of the 'God of Abraham' nor heaven/hell, therefore that question is moot. Further, while I would readily admit that I cannot know with unshakable certainty that I'd be going kayaking, I have no sufficient reason to believe that I'd not be going, even though I'm more than aware of that possibility. So, I believe that I'm going and know that my actions reflect that belief. I plan, I prepare, I set my alarm, I coordinate efforts with my friends/family, I prepare a checklist and double check it, etc. All of these behaviors stem from believing that I'll be going kayaking.

call belief what you will. i equate belief as knowing in ones mind what is true or factual without having experienced it and i know many faithful who tell me that god IN FACT does exist and i know many children who way the same about santa. whatever, we were talking about my take on belief which is thinking that one knows something to be true or factual taken on faith alone. i take nothing on faith alone so i cannot believe anything.



i always question my ability to see things as they are. i keep saying i question everything, believe nothing, have faith in nothing that i'm told. i must experience something to know that it happened. i don't believe that the big bang happened nor do i think any theoretical physicist does. steven hawking thinks that the big bang is a plausible theory describing how the universe may have been created because he can look at evidence that goes back to a few miliseconds of the occurance of an event that has been called the big bang. but he has no evidence that suggests what actually happened precisely during the time the big bang occured or evidence of what happend before it occured. he refers to the universe as 'the visible universe' or that universe we can observe and we continue to observe more and more of it with the inveintion of better observation tools such as hubble.

my only experience on the topic is that i've read what hawking and others have stated regarding the theory and it seems plausible to mee too but i cannot know the theory is correct. in fact hawking does not think that the big bang or any theory can be proved to be correct:

'a good theory will describe a large range of phenomena on the basis of a few simple postulates and will make definite predictions that can be tested. if the predictions agrees with the observations, the theory survives that test, though it can never be proved to be correct.'

stephen hawking, the universe in a nutshell. no, i don't have a damn internet link. had to type directly from the friggin' book.

i never brought up biblical conceptions. religion is all encompacing as i see it whether the religion we're talking about is scriputed in the bible, the koran or not written anywhere. a belief in a deity taken solely on faith is what religion is to me and many do believe the biblical conceptions to be true or fact so the question is hardly moot.