(May 7, 2015 at 1:45 pm)Neimenovic Wrote: I swear, if I ever hear 'believe in evolution' again I'm going to stab a bitch
Belief is defined by psychologists as the psychological state in which one accepts a premise or proposition to be true. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy had this to say:
"Contemporary analytic philosophers of mind generally use the term “belief” to refer to the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true."
So, if you accept the premise that evolution is true, then make no mistake, you do believe it.
But that doesn't mean that all beliefs have equal merit. Beliefs based on demonstrable evidence and valid/sound logic (as with evolution) have much more credibility than beliefs based on faith, emotion, etc (as with belief in a god).
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
