Rise of atheism: 100,000 Brits seek 'de-baptism'

[appolose]

Final-Fan said:

A.  "I believe that cheese looks and smells and feels like so.  I further believe that what looks and smells and feels like so is cheese."  These are beliefs.  You appear now to be denying the existence of absolute BELIEF, which is completely different from doubting absolute KNOWLEDGE.  Worse, you just said that having such a belief is a self-contradicting definition, which is not only wrong but nonsensical.  Besides, how do you know how I define the word "bachelor"? 

Belief sets exist that can be contradicted by sense data
"butbutbut you can just believe something else"
Belief sets exist that can be contradicted by sense data
"butbutbut that sense data could actually mean anything if you interpret it differently"
Belief sets exist that can be contradicted by sense data
"butbutbut any specific interpretation is just an assumption"
Belief sets exist that can be contradicted by sense data

To put it more politely, I'm not ADVOCATING that, I'm just saying that it's POSSIBLE to do so, which satisfies my goal of disproving your "ANY" statement. 

B.  But this isn't ABSOLUTE knowledge, it's knowledge within the sense data (input) of its own internal consistency with your output.  Do you deny that when you output what you perceive as "pressing Y on the keyboard" a Y appears on the screen?  Do you not expect that if you should output "pull the trigger of a loaded gun that is pointed at your body" you are going to receive input "PAIN"?  Life may be an illusion, but it is a VERY complete one, which is getting dangerously near to my point.

A. As I understand you're trying to making a point to contradict my "any" statement and I'm apparently not making it clear enough that there's a fundamental problem which would make this clearly an impossible scenario to arrive at.

You pose a person with belief(s) X, then says he also has the belief that sensedataY must indicate Z. (Or however you would correctly transcribe that in this form.) 1. Since we're discussing a method of truth... I wonder how you got belief X in the first place. It just ignores the whole issue of legitimately arriving at a belief which is fundamental to this. 2. Saying that a person can believe that sensedataY must indicate Z is already impossible according to what I'm saying. It goes against an inevitable admission of the intellect (and no, I didn't mean to imply that the belief was contradictory, rather it's wrong by rational analysis). SensedataY is not an indicator of only Z and no other no matter how much you want to assert that someone just believes it is. SensedataY indicates about a million different beliefs. Thus you can't set up this scenario. The point you're trying to make can't happen according to the fundamental problem I'm positing with using sense data to arrive at any belief. I can't ignore that and pretend someone can legitimately believe sensedataY must indicates cheese. That's the issue, so tell me how I'm wrong in saying that since it would make your point impossible to truly occur.

If you held the meaning of bachelor that I do... then the point would come through. I know you can define a word any way you want. I was merely trying to exemplify the kind of problem I'm trying to communicate: similar to contradicting the meaning of your own word. It's in the realm of rationality.

A. and B.

Next, the distinction between belief and 'absolute knowledge' is semantics and, I'd add, what allows the subjectivist generation to revel in contradiction - have their cake and eat it. Unfortunately, explaining this only gives it undo attention. When I person says they believe something... it means they believe it's the right belief... and that inevitably means they think the other opposing beliefs are not the right beliefs. They believe they know something... they believe they know the things it's not. Go figure, that's not much different of how philosophers have described so-called 'absolute truth'. Knowing that you know something without other possibilities being true. Whether people legitimately arrive at that place... it's just what is meant when they say it.

This example might not be as effective as my explanation: "I believe Z and also that A - Y are demonstratively false. ...Oh, but I'm not saying I know that." (???)

The only thing I can gather with the use of "belief vs. knowledge" is that, through this, people are either 1. exposing the fact that they're really not so sure they believe something in the first place or 2. that by making this distinction for themselves they don't feel obligated to make an account or case for it (mainly because they know they can't or don't want to lol) 3. there's ambiguity since we use the word 'belief' to describe someone elses 'knowledge' which we think isn't actually knowledge at all.

Touching on point B through this - however you decide to name the "consciousness" of interactions with various sense data, it's just going to mean some sort of knowledge. When I know to hit "Y" on the keyboard to make it show up on the screen... that's right, I don't believe I came to know that through sense data. Again, there are other methods of truth proposed.

Pardon me if I'm coming across abrasively.  I'm only going for emphasis :)