Expressing your beliefs as a percentage

It may help him understand the difference between a belief and a conclusion. I am 100% sure of my belief that GOD created all that is, seen and unseen.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Certainly a distinction worth exploring. So how sure would you say you are of the conclusion that there is a creator of "all that is seen and unseen"......?Edited by Straggler, : Typo

It's not a conclusion it is a belief. And I would say that my confidence in that belief varies between 0% and 100%.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

OK. But are the two things entirely unrelated? Well what about your confidence in the conclusions of science pertaining to things like the Big Bang and evolution? That is what the thread was originally asking about.To what extent do you believe in these things? To what extent are you confident in these as conclusions?Aren't your beliefs and your conclusions innately entwined?

Not at all and that is what I am trying to point out.Conclusions are based upon evidence that can be examined using reason, logic, rationality and consistency, however beliefs are not subject to reason, logic, rationality or consistency.The evidence for something like the fact that evolution happened can be listed and examined by anyone and those that use reason, logic, rationality and consistency will all arrive at pretty much the same conclusion.Beliefs are totally different though, and not subject to those constraints.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Can you give an example of something which you have concluded to be correct but do not believe to be correct?Can you give an example of something that you believe to be correct but have concluded to be incorrect. Beliefs and conclusions are not necessarily the same thing but to pretent that they are unrelated is silly.

Of course not since neither of those questions even makes any sense (AbE: to me. To others it might make sense). You are of course free to believe that.Edited by jar, : AbE:

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Can you explain why you don't think they make any sense?If beliefs and conclusions are as unrelated as you suggest why wouldn't you hold beliefs that contradict conclusions (or vice versa)?

I certainly can't explain it for anyone other than myself, but I do know of folk that will, as an example, admit that all the evidence refutes a Biblical flood yet still believe the flood happened.I find that, again, strictly speaking of my own beliefs, that when evidence is presented sufficient to get me to question one of my beliefs, the belief must be tempered based on the conclusion that results from the evidence. But that is just me.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

No it's not. That's normal.That is why so many who do believe in things like creationism spend so much time convincing themselves that their belief is evidenced.That is (in my opinion) why even the most rational theists convince themselves that agnosticism regarding gods is the justified conclusion rather than the balance of evidence leaning towards a form of tentative atheism.Accepting that one's conclusions actually contradict one's beliefs just goes against the human grain. The link between beliefs and conclusions is just too prevalent and innate to be dismissed in the manner that you have thus far suggested. So rare as to be statistical anomolies?

I have no idea how rare it is.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Well let's concentrate on the beliefs that you do know about. Your own. So for you there is a relationship between conclusions and beliefs. Presumably this applies regarding the extent to which you believe in evidenced things like evolution etc.? (which are the subject of this thread) Is there any area outside of your religious beliefs where the distinction between your beliefs and your conclusions is so distinct?

Sure, for example in what my favorite ice cream is at the moment, love, which fountain pen is my favorite, what to wear, which coffee to drink next...In fact I'd say that most of my life lies in the area of beliefs as opposed to conclusions.The topic though was on "Expressing your beliefs as a percentage" and I find it really silly to try to assign percentages to beliefs. As an example, you quote me as saying "I am 100% sure of my belief that GOD created all that is, seen and unseen." while right this minute I'd say I am 85.625% sure of my belief that GOD created all that is, seen and unseen. Ask me in five minutes and the numbers will likely have changed.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Are these beliefs?Would you say that you believe that your favourite ice cream flavour is "insert current favourite ice cream flavour here"....? Such things are not usually called beliefs are they? Your belief in God may well be directly comparable to wholly subjective and transient preferences like favourite ice cream flavour etc. But such things are not usually referred to as "beliefs". But your belief in things like evolution and cosmological models isn't based on the same transient whims is it? It is based on evidence. It is certainly silly to assign percentages to wholly subjective whims like favourite ice cream. But nobody has asked you to do that. Nobody but you is referring to wholly subjective whims as "beliefs".Whilst you can argue that providing percentages to things like the estimated probability of evolutionary theory being true is of dubious worth it can give an indication of where you stand with regard to the evidence and how much confidence you have in it. Ultimately Butterfly's question may or may not be "silly". But it didn't deserve your patronising and flawed response based on conflating evidence based beliefs with subjective whims.

This is pretty much what I was asking for.I was attempting to see how many different versions of creation there was on this forum and how confident the members were with their particular interpretation. I have spoken to people recently who are 100% sure of YEC and 100% sure of their personal interpretation of YEC. I was speaking to a guy who described himself as a Charismatic Evangelical. Even in light of all of the evidence, he advised he was 100% sure his particular version of his chosen faith was the only correct version. I actually asked him to express his confidence as a percentage and he advised it was 100%.I was hoping to get a cross section of different religious people.