We are Nonbelievers, We Don't Believe, Period.

I used to think the position I now hold to was philosophically naive at best, and I have taught university level philosophy classes. Tell me this, do you know the sun will rise this morning, or do you believe it will rise? I know it will rise. Could I be wrong? Yes, but I don't need certainty in order to know something. If a truth proposition has that degree of probability to it then the fact I could conceivably be wrong means nothing. I know it. What does saying "I believe" the sun will rise do? It allows Christians to claim all knowledge is based on faith. Then they slip their Trinitarian incarnational god into that same crack. If the odds for a truth claim are calculated to be 70% then what does faith add to them? 50%? 15%? If we go exclusively by the probabilities there is no room for faith, no reason to believe anything at all. The problem is that we don't have separate words to describe the various probabilities. We only have one word, the word "belief." It covers the whole range of probabilities when we should be using different words to describe them. Other words better describe what we mean, like hope, trust, accept, think, know, conclude, and so on. The word "belief" is a Christian one supporting the Christian faith in the western world. We need a new nomenclature. We are nonbelievers. We don't believe. Let's use language commensurate with what we know.

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