Beliefs are not equal.
I had a discussion with a gentleman recently who refused to accept that someone could have no beliefs. This because I told him I had no beliefs. I personally don't like to use the word belief. I would rather refer to any position I hold as a model or approximation of the truth. These models are in turn built on assumptions of properties about this world that could change. It is easy to dismiss the difference between approximations and beliefs as mere semantics, but do keep in mind that semantics is the first thing you learn in a Philosophy 101 course, and ensures that everyone begins a discussion on the same page, instead of ending up talking about different things while referring to the same term.
Anyway, I see all views, opinions and theories as merely models that are built on assumptions. Nothing is based completely on evidence of course, as even the most basic evidence requires assumptions of the properties that the evidence is based on. For example, the colour red is not really seen by everyone in the exact same way. Our vision ensures that we all see the colour slightly differently, even if this difference is practically negligible. We still call it red though. This is an approximation. A generalisation. But there's more. We assume that the colour red, like other colours, exists as waves made up of photons. We don't know much about how light exists as energy, but we have created models that explain and exploit its properties to a degree that is useful to us.
Of course, none of this may be real. We may all be plugged into the Matrix. This could all be a dream. The colours may not exist. This universe may not exist. The properties of this physical world that we think we know about may only be a function of a dream world we inhabit and not part of whatever is really out there. But we don't know for sure if this world is fake, and so we act under the assumption that this universe and all the properties in it are real. Because this is the only practical way to live if our goal is comfort and happiness. We don't know if we exist in the way we experience. But it is best to assume that we do.
So in this sense everything is an assumption. But that doesn't mean that all assumptions are equal. There is a hierarchy. If there weren't then any view or model we created, no matter how crazy, could all be equally plausible. So what we do to maintain order in our world is assume that certain things are probably real like our universe and our existence. We then build the rest of our models on top of these basic assumptions.
Now we need to be really careful about how we construct these models, because a lot of them are based on questions that involve incomplete definitions and subjectivity. For example, do we have free will? Luckily, a lot of our models are objective, and built on physical laws whose properties we can approximate quite well. We use mathematical operations to build bridges. Mathematical identities themselves like Pythagoras theorem are perfect and exist for themselves with no exception, at least under the assumptions of the mathematical laws of this universe. We don't know why these identities exist, but we know that they do and how to exploit them. This is not an excuse for a belief in the supernatural. That is simply uncalled for given the evidence. We simply do not know why identities exist. That is all. Any models explaining why will need additional evidence.
You could of course make up your own inductive proof for a supernatural entity that exists outside the laws of this universe and space and time and matter but you would eventually have to face the fact that the properties of this proof are made up by you. i.e the proof works by induction, just like mathematical proofs work, because you assume all the properties needed for it to work, like we do in math. You don't know if these properties are real, you just assume that they are. A logically valid argument will still lead to a false conclusion if its premise is false. If your assumptions are unfounded, then no matter how good your argument, the conclusion you reach will still be only as good as your assumptions. This is why models for God's existence are both perfect and probably wrong.
Moving on, when you build a model, you identify a pattern and make predictions based on evidence. Sometimes, you use other people's models. You act on expectations that another from another model that you know very little about. For example, when you get sick and pop a pill. You don't know anything about what you're consuming. But you take it anyway expecting to get better. Is this a belief?
You could call it a belief, yes. Like the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, given a normal solar system, or the belief that you will be able to walk or talk tomorrow, given no major changes to your body. You could call these beliefs, and they are all based on assumptions. But are they the same as religious beliefs? No, of course not. Because unlike religious beliefs, all these beliefs are verifiable. You cannot know for sure if a pill will cure you, but you know that you can look up the details of the pill if you wanted to. You can examine the skies or your body for patterns if you want to confirm the expectations you have for your model. In other words, these models are verifiable. Not a 100% verifiable of course. Pills do not always work. Solar systems and human bodies do not always work the way we expect them do. Errors abound. Things unaccounted for. The model is updated with new data. This is how critical reasoning works. Religious models are different. They rely, as I have said, on assumptions that are unverifiable. They might lead to useful but false conclusions. Religious belief may be useful, but it is also unverifiable.
So now we have not just beliefs, but levels of belief. There are verifiable and unverifiable beliefs. This allows for some degree of subjectivity, as what is verifiable depends on how good the evidence is, and all evidence comes down to further assumptions, which always comes down to our assumptions about this universe and our existence. But we can say for sure that some beliefs are more verifiable than others, because some evidence is better than others, assuming the basic laws governing this universe. Evidence that holds up to falsifiability and has predictive value will always be better than anecdotal evidence that relies false premise reasoning and confirmation bias. This is not to say that unverifiable assumptions are wrong. This is impossible to tell, but that's the problem.
We are mostly concerned with truth or falsity of assumptions based on the evidence we have. But since we can only examine the evidence in light of what we know about the universe, and since this is itself a series of assumptions that do not take into account what we don't know, then of course anything we postulate about God or a supernatural being could be true. Not probable, but possible. I wouldn't say that assumptions based on rules outside this universe are something we shouldn't bother to think about. But we definitely are limited in the ways we can verify them, given that all our means of verification exist only in this universe.
So yes, perhaps I do have beliefs. I suppose I do live my life along expectations of how the world should work even though I don't always understand why it works this way. These could be called beliefs. And they are certainly different from supernatural beliefs. My beliefs are based on assumptions that are verifiable, at least to a certain extent. I think is a more practical way to live for the moment, compared to holding beliefs that are unverifiable, because at least I can explain why I hold a belief. I can justify my beliefs with evidence. What about you?
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