John Tryon I call myself agnostic but I’m not really.
You’re talking about a “right to believe”
But I don’t really understand belief.
I understand degrees of certainty
How certain are you that something is true
Also what is true and what is not true in a statement
These I understand
I understand contractual social statements : we believe in the Father Almighty maker of heaven and Earth etc.
It’s a declaration of social Unity, and a deviation from the Declaration means exclusion from the group or some kind of Rehabilitation
But none of it answers for me the question of “belief”
I think I figured mine out Though.
There’s a notion of the Bayesian brain.
Bayesian inference you have your prior beliefs and if evidence comes along that updates your prior beliefs then you update your beliefs
that leaves you with your posterior beliefs
That’s how it’s supposed to work
But I never understood Bayesian because my brain is in a continual doubt mode
I even doubt my own doubt which allows me to believe certain things
Even that’s on a contingency basis, that is there is room for – what they call the god of the gaps but I don’t like that phrase –
And a little bit of “if it doesn’t harm anything then do what you will”
So I can’t say that I know what belief even is.
I have a feeling my brain is so noisy that it overwhelms my priors – at least my conscience awareness of them – and so I’m in a continual doubting mode.
I turn to deduction frequently.
If your organization wants a right to make a statement, as long as that statement does not result in harm – through actions carried out based on those statements, by all means.
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