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This is too convoluted for me to explain. Let me just try to state it this way:
I disagree, then. I think it's whether you find something true or not.
Oh yeah I do agree (your two examples is less convoluted but I got that same thing from my quote-mine
)but I was talking about the relation between them which is what that diagram alluded to. Like I said the yes or no is 100% but probably true is a variance. Yes or no doesn't really give room for in between but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
You can believe things to be true without being 100% certain that they are. Otherwise, all beliefs would be considered "knowledge"-- We would say "I know" rather than "I believe". Different beliefs have different strengths of conviction.
Beliefs are often considered knowledge in common parlance, that is outside of epistemic philosophical debates. "I think you're right," says both that I believe you're right and that I'm certain you're right.
I don't think so.
Grammatical point taken.I don't think so.
We put the "think" in there to indicate uncertainty. Otherwise, we'd just say "You're right."
As for beliefs equaling knowledge in common parlence, I have a hard time believing that one. Why do we make the distinction then? Beliefs are what we find likely to be true. Not what we know to be true.
My point was that where we can claim "belief" is where the truth (reality) lies. We don't claim belief in the God that we're not certain of (regardless of arbitrary percentiles); we can, and do, claim belief for the things we are certain of. Though I've never seen it but in photos, at Google Maps, and in eye-witness accounts, I believe there's a big tapered steel tower in a far-away place called "France". Though I've no reason to doubt there's an Eiffel Tower, because it is justified by evidence, until I go see it for myself its reality is indistinguishable from my belief in it.
What sense does it make to follow the Dawkins line that we are non-theists at birth, when the evidence provided by developmental psychologists who mostly study young children, tell us that our intuitive or unlearned system of thinking makes us prone towards beliefs in animacy and teleology? It's more correct to say that we are born already well along the road towards theism, except that some of us develop a degree of skepticism by relying more on reason than intuition when answering these questions. And when we get older, we can use our learned system of reason to discount a supernatural belief, but those who continue to rely more on their intuitions than reasoning to provide answers, are going to be more likely to hold supernatural beliefs. And that's why I am skeptical of this new atheist pipedream of a future world free of religion and supernatural beliefs.At most I would claim we are necessarily "non-theists" at birth (and certainly atheists are also non-theists, so there is at least some similarity there). Whether or not we very quickly adopt some sort of rudimentary concept that could be analogous to theism, that I don't know. But I very much doubt the object of that "theology" could be a being other than a parent or another adult - so definitely not what we would generally consider "theism".
You could argue that in the absence of (the knowledge of) theism, "atheism" has no real meaning and therefore a baby could not possibly be either. From a more practical POV, I think we would generally consider someone who is a non-theist to be an atheist and therefore could conclude that we are born atheists (or deists, if you expand the term sufficiently). But that's simply a matter of semantics at that point and I don't think it's really that important to be quite honest. We're also born with the notion that when something leaves our field of vision, it stops existing. So what? Babies are stupid...
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