You're really not paying attention to anything we are saying. Even your own definition of belief says that it is a psychological state where you believe something to be true. If you say you are not sure, than you cannot be holding a belief. Having a belief is an active position, one must make an active conscious decision to believe a claim. It is ridiculous to say you don't know whether you believe something. You either believe something or you don't. The problem seems to be that you think not believing means you must disbelieve it when in fact it only means you haven't reached a conclusion which is what you keep saying is the case and why I keep saying you don't yet believe.
You're just avoiding making comments on anything we say. You completely ignore our responses and keep babbling on about being uncertain.
Stop conflating belief and knowledge. This is the whole point. You may not know Santa Claus is a myth but I bet you believe it to be. You cannot be sure that atoms are made of electrons, protons and neutrons, but if you have examined the subject and the evidence, I'm sure you can formulate a belief.
Most atheists and theists alike do not make that claim. A claim about knowledge is different than a claim about belief. That you cannot understand this very basic distinction is laughable.
Who is claiming knowledge except for your straw men?
This might be true for some people, but not the people that are TRYING to have a discussion with you. As a scientist, I am fully aware of the many things we do not know. This is why I have mentioned that theories never prove anything. We can only disprove things in science. Everything about life begins with some assumptions, which leads to the conclusion that nothing can be known absolutely.
It is not hard or scary. We do not know a great deal of things. No new word is necessary because you are misunderstanding the discussion.
Straw man. You have made up your mind and it is closed to new ideas. No one is claiming any special knowledge, this is your mistake and an apparent lack of reading comprehension.
You aren't even disagreeing with us, you are disagreeing with a caricature of your own design.
What value is a faith one can hold on to or let go as one wishes? It is just a blind mental concept which clearly has no worth at all. That is blind faith and the less blindness you have in life the better. I do not ask you to believe, I ask you to know. Only a state of mind that one has reached by knowledge, by realization, has any value. You can term it right-belief if you wish, but it is not belief, it is knowledge. Dont believe in some vague truism. Search for truth. Seek it out. But dont hold on to any belief or concept. This is a sign of weakness of the mind. It is lethargy; it is a lack of caring. It is an injurious way to save yourself from the work of seeing your self. Blind faith is an escape from the effort for self-realization. In a sense it is nothing short of suicide because once one falls into this culvert one becomes incapable of climbing the peak of truth. These paths lead you in two opposite directions. One is the ditch you fall into; the other, the lofty summit you have to climb. Faith is an easy thing because a man is not required to do anything. In that sense, knowledge is not so easy. Knowledge is the complete transformation of life. Faith is the outer apparel; knowledge, the inner revolution. Rather than allowing you to reach the peak of atonement towards which your spirit is striving, a simple faith can easily throw you back into the slumber of blind belief. Religion is not faith but unfortunately, religions are. What is religion to me does not coincide with what the concepts of the worlds religions appear to be. On that score Karl Marx was right to brand religions as opiates but profoundly wrong to say so about real religion! You have been told to have faith in the shastras, faith in the words of God, faith in the teachers. I do not say so at all. I say: have faith in yourself. It is only by knowing your self that you will be able to know what the shastras have said, what god has said. For one who has no faith in himself, following any other faith will be in vain. Can you stand on someone elses feet? Buddha said, Be your own lamp. Be your own refuge. There is no proper refuge but the refuge of ones own self. And I say the same thing.
Christ, Buddha, Vishnu, Zarathustra, Horus... are all the same energy. They all say / said what Buddha said. What good is anything if you can let it go as you wish. (non-material, that is)
are you talking to me?...dude, read. The Vatican openly supports evolution.
...I hear a lot of people say 'why believe in some supposedly inspired people' and go and quote some other 'supposedly inspired people' to make a point.
...yeah, just the first part though. The rest was open.
just because the vatican accepts evolution doesnt mean the people understand or accept it. a ton of christians in this country still dont accept evolution. most of it is due to ignorance. when is the last time you heard a christian person properly explaining evolution?
...I know what you mean. It's not the most widely spread idea. But it is the truth, that's what I was expressing. I think most of the, say, 'generic christians' are well with the idea of spiritual evolution. I could see how it would be hard to make a 'flip'.
spiritual evolution?? they dont get to make up their own religious version of evolution. they either believe the facts or they dont.