The Kinds of Beliefs

People have different kinds of beliefs. Roughly, there are beliefs based on reason and faith, but I want to break it down further.

Positivism beliefs. These are beliefs in proven knowledge, such as 2+2=4 or conservation of energy.

Probability beliefs. These are factual beliefs that you admit could be wrong, but they are justified by sufficiently high probability. For example, you might believe that you will drive to the beach tomorrow, even though accidents or external events could interfere.

Solipsism beliefs. These are untestable beliefs that exist in your mind, such as belief in a God that does not reveal himself in the natural world.

Fantasy beliefs. These are beliefs that allow you to live out a fantasy of how the world ought to be. For example, recycling your plastics may help you feel better about the environment, even though there is no actual benefit.

Alignment beliefs. This is where you profess a belief in order to socially align with others.

When someone declares something to be the truth, I need to figure out which of these five categories of belief applies. If I pick the wrong category, then nothing I say will mean anything to him, because my argument will have nothing to do with what underlies his belief.

This last category of alignment beliefs is particularly confusing. We just celebrated Easter, which commemorates Jesus Christ rising from the dead. This is a core Christian belief. If you want to be a Christian, and align yourself with other Christians, you need to accept this.

If you are a Republican American politician, you need to be pro-gun, anti-tax, and anti-abortion. A Democrat must be pro-tax, pro-immigration, anti-gun, pro-abortion, and favor identity politics of anyone but straight White Christian men.

CNN was recently attacked for saying:

It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.

How could anyone even say something so silly? I think the way to understand this is that CNN has become a left-wing network, and this is a statement that aligns with leftist transgender activists. It is not a statement of fact in the usual sense.

Several have made an analogy between the Woke Left and a religion. This gives the Left too much credit. It is not a religion. They do have a willingness to recite things that are obviously false, but that is not what defines religion. When the Woke Left says things that are obviously false, they are just aligning themselves with their leftist causes.