Global Peace Initiative

ADDONS:

Hidden Gold in beliefs

Introduction

People have slaughtered each other in wars, inquisitions, and political actions for centuries and still kill each other over beliefs in religions, political ideologies, and philosophies. These belief-systems, when stated as propositions, may appear mystical, and genuine to the naive, but when confronted with a testable bases from reason and experiment, they fail miserably. I maintain that faiths (types of beliefs) create more social problems than they solve and the potential dangers from them could threaten the future of humankind.

Throughout history, humankind has paid reverence to beliefs and mystical thinking. Organized religion has played the most significant role in the support and propagation of beliefs and faith. This has resulted in an acceptance of beliefs in general. Regardless of how one may reject religion, religious support of supernatural events gives credence to other superstitions in general and the support of faith (belief without evidence), mysticism, and miracles. Most scientists, politicians, philosophers, and even atheists support the notion that some forms of belief provide a valuable means to establish "truth" as long as it contains the backing of data and facts. Belief has long become a socially acceptable form of thinking in science as well as religion. Indeed, once a proposition turns to belief, it automatically undermines opposition to itself. Dostoyevsky warned us that those who reject religion "will end by drenching the earth in blood." But this represents a belief in-itself. Our history has shown that the blood letting has occurred mostly as a result of religions or other belief-systems, not from the people who reject them.

However, does rational thinking require the adherence to beliefs at all? Does productive science, ethics, or a satisfied life require any attachment to a belief of any kind? Can we predict future events, act on data, theories, and facts without resorting to the ownership of belief? This paper attempts to show that, indeed, one need not own beliefs of any kind to establish scientific facts, observe and enjoy nature, or live a productive, moral, and useful life.

Relative to the history of life, human languages have existed on the earth for only a few thousand years, a flash of an instant compared to the millions of years of evolution. (Estimates for the beginnings of language range from 40,000 to 200,000 years ago). It should come to no surprise that language takes time to develop into a useful means of communication. As in all information systems, errors can easily creep into the system, especially at the beginning of its development. It should not come to any surprise that our language and thought processes may contain errors, delusions and beliefs.

The ability to predict the future successfully provides humans with the means to survive. No other animal species has a capacity to think, remember, imagine, and forecast to the degree of Homo sapiens. To replace our thoughts with intransigent beliefs belies the very nature of the very creative thinking process which keeps us alive.

Before I go on, I'd like to apologize for the sloppy writing style of this article. I intend this as a work in progress as this reflects my thoughts about the subject of belief along with what science has discovered about it. As new information arrives, I either make changes or add information on the fly, so some things may seem out of order, anachronistic or repeated. I have no expertise in neuroscience or psychology and my main source for disowning beliefs comes from my own experience, thus I use the word "I" a lot, something that authors of scientific papers should never use. Sorry.

I learned how to disown beliefs even before I had any scientific understanding on the subject. Many people do not understand how a person can do this so I hope to explain that one can indeed live without beliefs, or at least give them a better understanding about the subject. I also hope to explain what belief means and what it doesn't mean and the problems they can cause. If my experience only applies to me and no one else, then I probably have an abnormal brain. Fortunately the scientific information that has arrived has tended to support my case and diminished the argument against it. Nor do I intend to proselytize or try to convince you that you should abandon your beliefs. Perhaps some people can't disown beliefs, even in principle, because of some unknown reason that I have no awareness of.

Origins of belief

"The closest relative of the chimp is the human. Not orang-utans, but people. Us. Chimps and humans are nearer kin than are chimps and gorillas or any other kinds of apes not of the same species."

-Carl Sagan

Very little evidence has yet appeared about how belief arose in humans. As social animals, we probably have always held beliefs to some degree. Studies of our closest DNA relatives, the apes, have suggested that primate social animals require both followers and leaders. The followers must assume the codes of conduct of their leaders if they wish to live without social conflict. Since there always occurs more followers than leaders, the property of accepting the leaders without challenge and the introduction of language may have led human primates towards the expression of beliefs.

As one possibility, perhaps the human animal believes because of an inherent result from expressed genes (phenotypes). Interestingly, some animals have in their DNA a predisposition for imprinted programming. [1] One extreme example of maturation imprinting occurs with newborn greylag geese where they regard the first suitable animal that it sees as its parent and follows it around. In nature geese usually see their natural mother when born, but if humankind interrupts the natural process and a newborn goose first sees a human, then it comes to regard itself, in some sense, as a human, thus compromising its natural life as a goose. Some young animals have a kind of "eidetic" memory; they will believe whatever gets taught to them. Do humans exhibit a similar kind imprinting while young as do many other animals? Or do we learn how to believe from our parents, expressed from role-modelled inheritance? Most people accept, without question, the religion of their youth. The degree that humans have imprinted or learned belief memories, or the ability to control their beliefs, or reduce them remains open for further investigation. Learning about the mechanism of beliefs at this early stage may help us understand the consequences of impressionable teaching and may lead us to modify the strategy of early learning so as to avoid the debilitating effects of unexamined beliefs.

Some evolutionary biologists think that beliefs require an evolutionary explanation because every known culture through history has had beliefs. And if beliefs have an evolutionary survival advantage, how can they serve that advantage? Of course no one knows how for sure because beliefs do not leave behind fossil evidence. Nevertheless one can still propose a hypothesis and the best one I've heard comes from Richard Dawkins. In his book, "The God Delusion," he explains this on pages 172-179. I'll give you a brief section from this chapter. Although he writes about religion, it also applies to beliefs in general:

"My specific hypothesis is about children. More than any other species, we survive by the accumulated experience of previous generations, and that experience needs to be passed on to children for their protection and well-being. Theoretically, children might learn from personal experience not to go too near a cliff edge, not to eat untried red berries, not to swim in crocodile-infested waters. But, to say the least, there will be selective advantage to child brains that possess the rule of thumb: believe, without question, whatever your grown-ups tell you. Obey your parents; obey the tribal elders without question. This is a generally valuable rule of thumb to believe." [Dawkins] (also watch a video of his explanation)

[Humans also communicate these belief rules through spoken or symbolic language. Since other animals do not have the language ability to the degree of humans, that explains why animals do not have religions.]

However, as children grow up, they no longer need to listen to their parents because their brains have now fully developed and they can think for themselves. Unfortunately, evolution has no way to clean up these evolutionary belief traits while in adulthood so the beliefs they inherited from their parents remain.

The evolutionary advantage of utilizing beliefs while young, although they help the survival of our species, can also lead to bad consequences later in adult life but not so severe as to prevent the survival of our species. These bad consequences of beliefs may have led early humans toward violence against members of their own. As early Homo sapiens collected beliefs, some of them must surely have contained beliefs of violence, possibly to protect them from other tribes who might harm them or who they believed might harm them.

The earliest evidence of human culture from Paleolithic and Mesolithic societies show that humans practiced some form of violence against fellow humans. These violent actions appear similar to the brutality of other primate species (chimpanzees, our closest primate relative, for example, reveals they engage in chimpanzee warfare). Later, the skills of human weaponry increased during the Neolithic period, and archeologists have uncovered evidence for executions and sacrifices. Although no one has direct evidence for languages used in the Neolithic period, violence of this kind, no doubt requires communication so they probably had language along with beliefs to justify their executions and sacrifices.

Many early societies believed in spirits and animism, the belief that animals and inanimate objects possess a spirit. Indeed, the Latin word, anima, means soul. The word "spirit" also derives from the Latin word for breath. No doubt ignorance about the nature of wind, breath and movement of animals led them to construct an "explanation" about things in their world. How could they possibly know the difference between beliefs, facts, and evidence? These early societies hardly had anything that we would call multiculturalism, and this alone would isolate their belief systems from other belief systems. Imagine, for example, that you lived in a tribe that held strong beliefs and you came across another tribe that held an entirely different set of beliefs. Without an understanding of cultural diversity, or even the difference between beliefs and facts, how could they not feel threatened by another tribe that held beliefs that conflicted with their beliefs?

With language came the contemplation and study of thoughtful systems. Socrates and Plato introduced beliefs of "forms" of things existing independently of their physical examples. These philosophical beliefs represented superficial representations of an underlying and absolute "reality." Aristotle carried the concept further but placed these forms to physical objects as "essences." He posited the existence of a soul and introduced the concept of an immovable mover (God) to justify matter which moves through the "heavens." These ghostly concepts live today, not only in religion, but in our language. Many times we express essence ideas without thinking about them because they exist in the very structure of common communication derived from ancient philosophers. Since no one can see or measure these essences, the only way to comprehend them comes in the form of belief. Sadly, people still accept these essences as "real" based on nothing but faith without ever investigating whether they exist or not.

Orthodox religionists hinged their "sacred" philosophies upon the shoulders of ancient philosophers. Plotinus reorganized Plato's work as the bases for Platonism which lasted for many centuries. Thomas Aquinas became the foremost disseminator of Aristotle's thought. Aristotelianism and its limited logic still holds the minds of many believers. Today people still believe in inanimate objects, spirits, gods, angels, ghosts, alien UFOs, without ever questioning the reliability of their sources. Belief and faith can overpower the mind of a person to such an extent that even in the teeth of contrary evidence, he will continue to believe in it for no other reason than others around him believe in it or that people have believed in it for centuries.

"Religion. n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."

-A. Bierce

The meaning of belief

To establish a common ground for the general concept of belief, I hold to the common usage of the term from the American Heritage dictionary:

Belief: 1. The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in a person or thing; faith. 2. Mental acceptance or conviction in the truth or actuality of something. 3. Something believed or accepted as true; especially, a particular tenet, or a body of tenets, accepted by a group of persons.

Believe: 1 To accept as true or real. 2. To credit with veracity; have confidence in; trust.

In its simplest form, belief occurs as a mental act, a thinking process in the brain that requires two things: a feeling and a logical statement. To "believe" requires a conscious feeling of truth. To communicate what this feeling refers to requires some form of logical structure such as spoken or written language. Thus a belief requires a thought and a conscious feeling of "truth" which, according to neurological brain research, stems from the limbic part of the brain (discussed in the mechanism of belief, below). Thus, belief occurs as a thought with a feeling or emotion "attached." In other words: Belief= emotion + logic. Because belief requires emotion, it also represents a psychological state, not simply a mechanical thinking state.

In all cases, I refer to beliefs as occurring in an aware state of consciousness. Beliefs here do not refer to subconscious thoughts, or any mental activity occurring below the threshold of consciousness. Nor do beliefs apply to sleeping and dream states, or to unconscious habits, or instincts. When a person owns a belief, s/he consciously accepts their own belief. The degree of feeling to which one accepts their own beliefs, as valid, can vary from mild acceptance to certain absoluteness. Thus it would prove meaningless to say that a person has beliefs without them knowing it or for them to deny their own beliefs. Obviously, a person who does not believe in something, does not believe in that something; a person who believes in something, does believe in that something. Belief requires conscious acceptance.

How belief confuses arguments

In the mildest form of belief, that of acceptance without absoluteness, a speaker or writer could simply replace belief words with more descriptive words to avoid confusion.

Note that in most instances, one can replace the word "believe" with the word "think". For example:

"I believe it will rain tonight."

can transpose into:

"I think it will rain tonight."

Most simple beliefs come from the expression of the experience of external events. From past experience, for example, people believe that dark clouds can produce rain, therefore, we attempt to predict the weather by forecasting from past events. However, to believe that an event will occur can produce disappointment if the prediction never happens. To make a prediction based on past events alone does not require believing in the future event, but rather, a good guess as to what may or may not happen. We can eliminate many of these simple beliefs by replacing the word "believe" with the word "think." The word "think" describes the mental process of predicting instead of relying on the abstraction of belief which reflects a hope which may not happen. And if we replaced Aristotelian either-or beliefs with statistical thinking we would reflect probable events instead of believed events.

Belief represents a type of conscious mental thought, a subclass of many kinds of mental activity. Thinking may or may not include beliefs or faiths. Therefore, when I use the word "think" I mean it to represent thought absent of emotional belief.

If "think" won't work as a substitute for belief, then it should prove easy to find another substitute word. For example:

"Our challenge then, is to believe only evidence claims that are likely."

can transpose into:

"Our challenge then, is to use only evidence claims that are likely."

Because belief statements contain logical propositions, one should consider if emotions and feelings have anything to do at all with our logic. The anecdote about Archimedes running through the streets crying, "Eureka!" after discovering the relationship between mass and volume describe his emotion after making his discovery. This could have led him to believe that density equals mass divided by volume, but do feelings and emotions add anything at all useful to his logical statement? If feelings really do add to our logical structures then why not add them to our mathematical statements? One could, for example, make up a table of ordinal words to express the intensity of the feelings such as "eureka!" (for the highest emotion), "good!" (for a lesser emotion), "meh" (an ambivalent emotion), etc. We can then plug our emotions into our logical statement:

Now we have an attempt to use mathematical statements as beliefs. Belief = emotion + logic.

As you should see by this silly example, the variable of emotion, not only does nothing to help the equation, the belief could vary from person to person. And if the holder of that belief dies, so goes their belief. Archimedes died with his beliefs but mathematicians today might think of his equation as: D[meh] = M/V, yet the truth value still holds even if no one believes it.

The example above appears silly when you attach an emotion to a mathematical statement, but the very same thing happens when you use beliefs in your language. Once you take out the emotional aspect of your belief from your statement, it would not, by definition, equal a belief. You would simply have a propositional statement. "I believe that it will rain," would turn into, "It will rain." Now if that seems too certain an expression, simply describe your uncertainty such as: "It probably will rain tonight", or "It may rain tonight." In a mathematical statement you might include a probability number.

Belief words can have many meanings. They can range from a guess (I believe so) to absolute certainty (I BELIEVE in God). So when a person uses a belief word in a sentence, the reader might get an entirely different meaning than you intend. It could mean just opposite of what you mean to your audience. For example, If you say to religious people that "I believe in science," they might think you mean it as an absolute in the way they believe in god. It comes from this very kind of misinterpretation that can lead a religious person to think that science represents a religion. Realize that some religious people quote-mine popular scientific literature just to prove what some scientist believes or has faith in. Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Danniel Dennet, for example, have all used "belief " in their books and speeches but with the intention of justifying their belief with evidence and logic. The reader, however, might think of it as the strong version of the word. So why use belief at all? To avoid this problem, simply don't use belief and faith and substitute it with a more descriptive word. Of course if you do have beliefs stronger than mild forms of belief, for example, if you hold supernatural beliefs, then of course, you should use the words belief or faith.

Many kinds of concepts occur without the need for belief. People can invent rules, maps, games, social laws, and models without requiring a belief or absolute trust in them. For example, a map may prove useful to get from point A to point B, but to believe that the map equals the territory would produce a falsehood. Humans invented the game of baseball, but it requires no need to believe in the game, or to attach some kind of "truth" to it. People can enjoy baseball, simply for the game itself. Technological societies invent "rules of the road" and construct traffic lights, signs and warnings. We do not take these rules as absolute but realize that they form a system of conduct that allow mass transit to exist. If any confidence results from the use of models and rules, it should come from experience of past events predicted by the models rather than from the emotions connected to beliefs.

Examples of non-beliefs

Many people misunderstand what constitutes belief and what does not. For many, belief has so infiltrated their minds, that everything perceived or thought incorporates a belief for them, including all of their knowledge and experience. This hierarchical, top-down, approach, in effect, puts such a person entirely within a world of solipsistic reasoning. Why? Because all thoughts describe a belief for them and since beliefs only occur within the mind, every belief refers to the self.

However, beliefs have no bilateral symmetry requirements; although one can believe in knowledge, one can obtain knowledge without owning beliefs; although one certainly accepts their own beliefs, not all things accepted require beliefs.

Consider that if one defined belief to incorporate all forms of thought, then the word belief would become tautological and meaningless, not to mention that knowledge and experience would fall as a subset of belief. Need I remind the reader that words differ not only in their spelling, but in their meanings? The following gives examples of non-beliefs:

Acceptance: Although belief requires some form of acceptance, not all things accepted require belief (beliefs have no bilateral symmetry requirements). Examples: I can accept the premise of a fictional story, but I do not for one moment believe in it. I can accept a scientific hypothesis without believing in it. Computers accept data and produce solutions, but computers have no consciousness, let alone beliefs. Many arguments can take the form of Devil's Advocate to oppose an argument with which the arguer may not necessarily disagree.

Action: Although many people believe in the actions they perform, one can act without beliefs (beliefs have no bilateral symmetry requirements). Actions can occur out of a desire, a submission to an authority, or by unplanned events or even by mechanical means completely absent of humans. Examples: I can act a part without believing in it. I can act from a set of rules, but I do not need to believe the rules. I might act from an order from the police or government. I may act out of a desire to achieve something. There occurs no action which requires belief.

Agreement: Although belief requires some form of agreement (believers agree that their beliefs have validity), not all agreements represent beliefs (beliefs have no bilateral symmetry requirements). However, for some people (myself included), agreement requires no belief at all. Examples: I might agree that Captain Kirk served aboard the Starship Enterprise, but I hold no beliefs in Star-Trek fiction. I may agree with the rules of football, but I do not need to believe in football in order to understand the game; I may not even like the game! I may agree with any premise, without believing in it.

Knowledge: Knowledge comes from awareness of the world, or understanding gained through experience. Although people may believe in what they know, knowledge has no requirement for belief (beliefs have no bilateral symmetry requirements). Examples: I may have knowledge of a story, poem or song, but I have no need to believe it. I know the rules of many games, but I do not believe in games. I know the mathematics of calculus, but I do not believe in calculus. I have knowledge of information, but I do not believe in information. I have direct knowledge of my existence through sensations, thought, and awareness, but I do not believe I exist: I know I exist (even though I may not know how I exist).

Information: Although many people believe the information they receive, information received does not require belief (again, beliefs have no bilateral symmetry requirements). Examples: the information from books, stories, science, theories, fiction, religion, etc., all represent communicated ideas, but one does not need to believe in any communication in order to utilize it.

Differences between beliefs and thinking without beliefs

The two charts above represent a visual abstract concept of the differences between the paths of belief and the path to knowledge. Both paths represent a form of thinking or mental activity. Note that the chart on the left shows a convergence point at the bottom where simple beliefs and thoughts coexist. At this level, they appear virtually the same with the only difference amounting to its semantic designation ("believe" can substitute for "think" and vice versa). However as each path progresses, they diverge; the path of belief progresses towards intransigence and the path of knowledge leads to factual knowledge. Each progresses as a matter of degree and each forms an independent path. For example, beliefs requires no external evidence whatsoever (examples: belief in ghosts, gods, astrology, etc.) The path of knowledge requires no reliance on beliefs (examples: the observation that the earth orbits the sun and airplanes fly, etc. appears regardless of whether you believe in them or not.) However, the path towards knowledge requires external verification (observation and testing) whereas the path of belief does not. The path towards workable knowledge (facts) must agree with nature if we wish to utilize it. The path of belief requires no agreement with nature at all (although it might coincide with it).

Unfortunately, the usual practice of thinking involves the combination of beliefs with theory and factual knowledge (see the right chart). Most people tend to own beliefs of facts and knowledge, including perhaps the most rational people of all-- scientists and philosophers. A hypothesis or a theory may lead a scientist to strongly believe in his or her theories, the verification of test results may lead them to have faith in the results, and an established fact may lead some scientists to dogmatically hold to its verification (even if later evidence contradicts it). Thus even a scientist can attach beliefs to theories, faith to verification, and dogma to facts. Although scientists rarely approach intransigence (although some do), they usually believe in their data and theories and most philosophers believe in their philosophies and most of them will die with their beliefs. As Maxwell Planck once said, "A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Fortunately, scientific dogmatic beliefs do not appear as prevalent as it once did in the last two centuries. Scientists like Freud, Jung, Velikovsky, and even Einstein held stubborn beliefs bordering on inflexible religious-like thinking, even when presented with evidence that contradicted their beliefs. I suspect that much of the reduced degree of dogma in the scientific community today results in better communication (especially through the internet), and a broader understanding of the sciences around them, and a humbling realization that some other scientist will call them out on their theories, but it still occurs to an unnecessary degree in my opinion.

If facts about nature come from nature itself, then every scientific fact can stand as the evidence alone and the theories that explain those facts. At no time do we need beliefs to understand facts and theories. Nature occurs without human beliefs and so does reliable evidence. And once we understand our facts and theories we call it knowledge. There simply exists no apparent necessity for attaching beliefs to knowledge.

Think about the following: Regardless of how strongly one has attached faith to scientific facts, no matter how religious the disposition of a scientist, there has never appeared a single workable theory or scientific fact that required the concept of a god or superstitious idea. Not a single workable mathematical equation contains a symbol for a "creator." There occurs not the slightest evidence for ghosts in our machines or in our bodies. Even the most ardent non-believers can live their lives in complete accord with nature and live as long as the most fanatical believer. The same holds true for non-religious beliefs and in spite of the temporary mental comfort that belief might bring, (as do drugs) then what purpose can belief serve in the establishment of useful knowledge about the world? Note that when a person dies, so goes his or her beliefs, but if that person lived as a scientist and provided a world with a workable piece of knowledge about nature, then only the knowledge remains useful. The beliefs during the person's lifetime have no bearing, whatsoever, on the usefulness of the knowledge that he or she brought into the world.

Now you might argue that the knowledge brought to us by persons no longer living still requires people to believe in the knowledge that they brought, but on what grounds and to what degree?

"Have you ever noticed.... Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" --George Carlin

I find it interesting to observe the state of belief in people. They most always see the problems of fanatical belief above them on the chart, but they never accept the disbelief of those below them. Believers always retain just the right amount of belief, it seems, and they unconsciously put themselves in a kind of self-centered, subjective dogma. I contend that most of us do not own beliefs of every kind and, indeed, we disbelieve more than we believe. Just as some believers have fewer beliefs than others, non-believers simply sit at the bottom of the scale. If you can, temporarily, put yourself outside of your own beliefs, you can question why you dismiss the beliefs of others, while perhaps understanding why non-believers dismiss yours.

The degree problem goes away once you understand that the amount of belief says nothing about the usefulness or factual nature of knowledge. If you squint your eyes, pray, or through sheer willpower force your belief to strengthen, will that improve your knowledge? (It can certainly produce falsehoods, but how can it improve on knowledge?) Conversely, if you act on your knowledge without belief, will that change the status of your knowledge? If you think knowledge requires belief between the extremes of strong belief and no belief, then just what degree of belief do you think it necessary for the proper understanding of knowledge?

Some people have argued that all knowledge represents forms of beliefs. Well it certainly can if you believe that and, no doubt, most people do believe that knowledge describes a belief, but that doesn't mean it has to. Even Plato and Socrates defined knowledge as "justified true belief," but this only describes what I already mentioned above (combining beliefs with knowledge), and again, this certainly serves far better than a belief without knowledge (I suppose Plato might call that unjustified false belief). But can knowledge exist without beliefs at all? Yes. And I can give examples.

I could use examples of animals such as insects or reptiles but someone might object on the grounds that they possess some form of consciousness and beliefs, so I will give an example of non-life entities: Autonomous computers. Autonomous drones, for example can take-off, fly and land without a human pilot or even a remote pilot. These aircraft take in information from the world around them through cameras and sensors, process that information, make algorithmic decisions and act on them by navigating, taking photos, or sending lethal bombs to kill enemy targets. To give another example, IBM's computer called Watson (also autonomous) defeated the best Jeopardy players in the world. Its designers made it capable of understanding human language and knowledge by data mining documents, dictionaries, anthologies, and encyclopedias and deriving a correct answer. These computer systems, in fact, posses some knowledge about the world around them, otherwise they would not have the ability to carry out their tasks. These Autonomous computers have no consciousness or emotions, so they cannot possibly have beliefs. Knowledge can indeed exist without beliefs. Humans, too, can act on knowledge even without consciousness. Sleep walking, driving a car while having a conversation, for example, can result in actions from subconscious knowledge even without that person consciously knowing what has happened.

Of course humans do not live like computers and we grow up with beliefs, perhaps even ingrained into our genes, but I submit that to suggest that an intelligent conscious human cannot understand knowledge without beliefs has no bases. Humans have a unique ability to understand abstractions and even abstractions about abstractions (metacognition) At least some humans have that ability (more on this below). One can understand how a belief can adversely affect knowledge and thusly learn to act on knowledge without owning beliefs. Nor do I claim that all people have the ability to disown beliefs. Perhaps some people can't, even if they wanted to. It certainly seems that some people, especially highly religious people, do not have that ability. Perhaps their genetic and/or cultural upbringing forever prevents them from doing so, I don't know. However, to suggest that every human must have beliefs belies the very fact that some of us don't.

I submit that some, if not most, conscious human beings can learn to gather, understand, and accumulate knowledge and act on it without owning a single belief and that this provides far more of an advantage for the advancement of knowledge than a disadvantage.