Last time I had a conversation with B about beliefs. Afterwards, I scribbled on a piece of paper a cloud of scattered thoughts on the topic. This post attempts to record (and perhaps comment on) these thoughts.

Some people "believe in" what could be an explanation to the world. They call this their "religion" or "belief" (or just "how the world is"). What I think is that the act of needing/wanting an explanation, should itself be what "belief" means.

(^ I invite you to think of it this way: Some people don't really need an explanation, or say reason (to be fair, perhaps I should say "explanation which is strong to a certain degree") in order to believe something (e.g. "religion"), whereas some people do. I am one of those who "do".)

Beliefs are - by my definition/description/understanding - statements that are not inferable through logic. However it is a type of belief to believe this term should be defined this way.

(^ I.e., I think of "belief" as being something like some axiom of the world. "Beliefs" should be intuitively obvious, rigorously defendable, and somewhat necessarily needed in order for the world(WTM) to work in the way we observe it to be.)

"This provides no evidence against there being a God." - Isn't the act of "needing evidence to believe something is true" - in its own right - a belief?

(^ Neither does it provide evidence for there being a God. The "act" is of a point of view somewhat similar to the statistician or perhaps mathematician's one - there could only be evidence against, but never evidence for.)

  • This system is consistent.
  • However this is not evidence for this system being "true".
  • Stating something doesn't make it "true" (regardless of whether this happened or not it is in fact true).

(^ The "system" refers to Christianity. This isn't a complex thought.)

Ultimately, I might ask questions that (kind of by definition its nature) no one can answer. (I guess this is the case.) But if the person goes "just because!", and I don't accept that as a valid answer (WTM), the reason I don't accept the answer would be an inference（逻辑后承） of what I already believe, hence not allowing anyone or anything to change my belief (WTM).