The point is that there are also nonreliegious definitions of “believe”. One sense of “believe” is “To have confidence or faith in the truth of.” For example: “I believe he has left town.” in answer to an inquiry about someone’s whereabouts.
Ed
Derleth I think you’re going to beat your head against the wall trying to convince people you don’t believe anything. That just isn’t consonant with the way most people use the word belief. You’ll get much farther understanding how others use the word.
That being said, I understand what you are saying.
I strongly disagree. You are using a much more strict definition of belief then the rest of us. Expect very few to agree with your position.
Actually a belief can be a logical conclusion based on the evidence or it can be a random idea unrelated to the evidence (go look at the definition). And assuming you are human, you have them whether you like it or not.
It seems like the more important question is whether “not (believe X)” is the same as “believe not X”. It seems like there is a difference, but I think we would need to find a good definition of “belief” from a predicate logic standpoint to figure this out.
Luckily, based on past experience, nobody reads my posts, so I believe that I have a lower standard of proof than other (read) posters.
Having said that, this question of belief is a wonderful red herring thrown in by people who believe in something that others deny. A bigger question is, ‘what in your life, would have to change for you to stop believing that something does not exist’. I might not have believed that there are vampires, but recently it seems that there is at least one on this very message board. They might not be from Transylvania, but who cares? Where they come from or what they actually do, or whether they are going to live forever has no impact on my world view.
If you believe in God (and I’m guessing that’s the thing you’re sticking to), then the question asked of you has to be: ‘what would make you change your mind?’. If the honest answer is that everything in the world that happens only strengthens your belief in the almighty, then good luck to you.
If I see one thing that looks like a unicorn, then my ‘belief’ in the lack of unicorns will falter. Nothing in my life will change, but that particular belief will falter. If it proves to be a horse with an unfortunate growth on its head, again - nothing in my life will change.
If I see a battalion of animals that look like horses, but not only have horns on their heads, they also seem impervious to magic, then I will probably toss aside the bottle of gin that I’m drinking but, again, ultimately it will not affect my world view. Nothing in my life depends on unicorns existing or not existing.
The same works for gravity. If I drop a plate, and it falls towards the ceiling, I’ll be surprised and amazed, and probably doubt my sanity, but I will not have a crisis of faith. I repeat, NOTHING in my life is staked on the absolute truth of the theory of gravity. I can count on it, but I don’t ultimately care if it’s 99% right instead of 100%.
And that, IMHO, is the difference between ‘belief’ and ‘living as a human, unable to explain the entire cosmos 100%, but still being able to find the door handle every morning on the way out of the house to get to work’.
I’m an atheist and I don’t believe that there is a god. That is to say, I don’t have a belief in the non-existence of god, but rather I don’t believe that the case for god has been made.
I once explained the atheist / agnostic thing to a friend. I’m agnostic about whether you’ve got a pistol on you. You might or might not. I’m atheist about whether you have a phaser.
It’s utter stupidity to try to equate atheism with belief in a religion. The world isn’t binary and atheism isn’t “the mirror image” of theism.
Derleth, although also an atheist, I’d like to chime in that it seems to me, too, that you’re using an ideosyncratic sense of the word believe. The word you mean, ISTM, is faith. Faith is belief without evidence. Belief based on evidence, OTOH, is an ordinary, common English usage of the word.
I don’t really care. I’m pretty sure they’re fantasy, but I’m not going to say I absolutely believe they don’t exist. Just because they ‘might’ exist doesn’t mean I’m packing stakes and garlic whenever I go out. I don’t think there’s enough of a risk to bother.
You’re confusing possibility with probability. I acknowledge that there’s a possibility of vampires, I just don’t think it’s probable. So much so that I don’t even worry about it. Pretty much the same with god.
…I’d believe George Clinton was gonna tear the roof off the mother-sucker. 
Yes, this is accurate. (See below about the specific word used here.) It’s important to only draw from an experience what was contained in it.
This is shifting things around again. All the atheist would need to attribute those qualities to the being would be more evidence, at least to the point of pragmatic certainty (like how we’re pragmatically certain vampires don’t exist). It might be difficult to demonstrate some aspects but that’s the deity’s problem. 
In response to these two posts and a few others, all I can say is that I’m using the word the way it’s been used in the thread I linked to and similar exchanges in other threads. If it makes more sense to replace it with ‘faith’, be my guest. We do, however, need to agree on the basic definition for this thread to work.
Junior Spaceman: I read and agreed with your post, with the above caveat about the word ‘believe’. I was certain I put this thread in enough context to avoid a merely semantic dispute.
I thought I was using the word how it was used in the relevant context. I also thought I provided that context. I was wrong.
Well, that is gratifying. Now I need to work on Larry Borgia (with a stake and garlic, perhaps) and Stealth Potato (with a tinfoil radar dish).
Yes, thank you! I’ve never seen the word belief to express certainty. In fact I’ve only seen it used to signify that someone is unsure about something and could be wrong.
“Did Jones write this?”
“Yes he did.” This implies that you are certain Jones wrote the paper.
“I believe so.” You think he wrote the paper but you could be wrong.
Again, you are playing poker. You believe your opponent is bluffing. But you could be wrong.
I believe that there is probably another intelligent species in the Universe. I have reasons for my belief. But obviously there are arguments against the position. I could be wrong though we’ll probably never know for sure.
Even the phrase “religious beliefs” means those unprovable tenets of a given religion. One could oppose them to religious facts, such as “The Current Pope is named Benedict” or “Genesis is the first book of the Bible.”
Derleth, can you restate your position but without using the word believe as you’ve used it? I assume it’s a little more complex than just replacing believe with faith so it seems like it’s better to have you do it than for us to infer what your position really is.
Really? Why should I?
You say unicorns and vampires don’t exist. I can point out real unicorns and real vampires. And if those don’t meet with your approval, neither of us knows what might exist.
You just said that you KNOW these things do not exist. But imagine what might be awaiting us, not just here in this one universe (vast and filled with endles posibility though it is), but in the possibility of endless spirals of creation and being which may exist in other universes. Possibly they exist, possibly they do not. It may well be that we can never reach those mysterious lands to learn what may be. But it would be a sorry, sad, withered little soul who could not dream of them.
OK, there’s a room somewhere, and there are thirty children somewhere. Which of the following statements are opposites? Which mean the same thing? Which might mean the same thing?
I believe all that of the children are in the room.
I do not believe that all of the children are in the room.
I believe that all of the children are not in the room.
I believe that not all of the children are in the room.
That’s a semantics argument.
We know children exist and we know rooms exist.
However, we don’t know anything about purple and green children with seventeen arms who speak Esperanto stacked up like cordwood in a room I built out of popsicle sticks and chewing gum at the center of the earth. If I believe that, then it is my burden to prove it to you. Until I do, you don’t have a belief system about it one way or another. If I do prove it and you still deny it, then you’ll have a belief system regarding the point being made.
I may as well say you have a belief system about the 47 other crazy notions I have running around my head, even if you don’t even know what they are.
b, c and d all seem to oppose the claim of a in some manner, from where I am sitting. b and d seem to be saying the same thing. a and c are directly contradictory.
Actually, it’s not an argument at all. It’s series of questions.
I have no idea what this means. Why might you as well say that? What does my belief system have to do with anything?
Your main point–that not believing X is not the same as believing not-X–is sound. But the abovequoted comment is not right. For example, you, Derleth, believe the sky is blue, exactly because of all the evidence that points toward it being true that the sky is blue.
-FrL-
Believing there is no God is a belief, unless you have perfect knowledge, it is something you can never ever prove, therefore it is a belief.
Belief in science includes that the science was done honestly and no major mistakes are made, it is belief that the people presenting the science are being honest, it involves trust.
There is a difference between stating that God does not exist, and answering “no” to the question “Do you believe in God?”