Although those are heavily supported by evidence, they don't have proof, only evidence, and are therefore beliefs. — BlueBanana

This makes no sense. Looks like you've ran out of arguments, given the evidence that I've laid out before you :)

a practically infinite amount of beliefs supported by evidence. For example, the existence of one's physical body — BlueBanana

And why would you need to believe in empirically observable things, like the body?

evidence-based argument has also always been a part of religion — gurugeorge

Yeah, that's not actual evidence. You can quickly see that religious "evidence" is not actual evidence, because religious stuff contradicts scientific stuff. If religious stuff was evidence, it wouldn't have been separated from modern science back in the scientific revolution.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_revolution)

I might even go as far as to say most of the beliefs are based on evidence and are the most logical and likely conclusions that can be drawn from that evidence. — BlueBanana

You might feel that way, but I can't find any evidence that most beliefs are based on evidence.
Instead, just like sources in the OP state, most beliefs generally occur ignoring or distorting evidence.

People tend to distort actual evidence to fit their pre-conveived notions, and in doing that they are not paying attention to the evidence, but actually ignoring it.

Could you please show me evidence to support your belief or claim that most beliefs are based on evidence, because I don't detect any, and I've gone through many many many pages of search results (I didn't just stop at the first page although it agreed with what I am saying) and I also checked many google scholar results.

It sounds like you're conflating faith and belief — gurugeorge

Nope, I actually took a look in the dictionary, and alas, belief is defined to especially occur without proof or evidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/belief

Nonsense, you may not think it's good evidence, or you may think the arguments based on that evidence are wrong - and you may be right. But it's simply untrue to claim that religious beliefs aren't based on evidence. — gurugeorge

Come on, it is empirically observed that religious beliefs generally don't care about evidence.

It is very strange that people use the products of science (these forums, computers, internet) while avoiding the fact that religious beliefs contradict science.

But belief is based on evidence, it's just that sometimes people make mistakes in the interpretation of evidence, or in the construction of beliefs based on evidence. To condemn belief as such on the grounds that beliefs are sometimes mistaken is ludicrous. — gurugeorge

People don't have to be perfect/without mistake to avoid belief.

Science is something that has for a long long time, been allowing us to constantly consider evidence, without considering all possible evidence. Since we can't consider all possible evidence, we will make mistakes, but if we follow the evidence, we minimize error.

Belief on the other hand, by definition says that people are mostly not even required to follow the evidence. Most of all, believers tend to twist the evidence to suit their old beliefs, even when they know those old beliefs contradict evidence. This means it is not an issue of simply making mistakes, but instead adhering to old beliefs regardless of evidence. This is no surprise, because the by definition, belief can happen especially without evidence.

A quote of mine: This means that belief tends to facilitate that old mistakes are kept, regardless of belief updating, whereas abandoning the concept of belief is reasonably a way to prepare the individual to be ready to discard mistakes, and move on.

When it's all said and done, it doesn't matter how much belief or passion people put into their work, they must generally follow evidence in order to make progress.This means progress can be made with zero beliefs. (Unless you feel scientific evidence or whether things work in practice is dependent upon people believing in it?)

Religious beliefs too are based on evidence. "Gods" are first-pass explanations of natural phenomena, God in the classical sense is an attempt to explain the existence of anything at all, etc., etc. — gurugeorge

Religious beliefs are not based on evidence, just like there's something called "Christian Science", which doesn't actually make it science.

There are things wrong with believing wrong things, but there's nothing essentially wrong with belief. Many of the beliefs you're pointing out there (like religious beliefs) are high-level or superficial beliefs that have very little effect on how people navigate the world on a day-to-day, moment-by-moment basis. (There's a lot of belief stuff, the bulk of the iceberg, so to speak, that's been "solved", that functions very well.)

The massaging of statistics to align all the bad things with religion is also quite tendentious - it's more or less rationalist boosterism, and quite unbecoming for rationalists - in fact (speaking as a rationalist) it's a bit embarrassing. — gurugeorge

Well something that allows people to mostly ignore evidence (namely belief), is actually counter to how humanity has progressed. Regardless of how much passion or belief we may want to pour in our work, none of that matters if we don't keenly follow the evidence, which belief does not enforce, by definition.

Do you have any proof of any such "massaging"? Because without proof, it would be embarrassing to make the claim you made.

Lawrence Krauss has something to say about "nothing".

How much is needed? I hope we can get a toolbar that says how much we need to raise every month to cover the costs if possible. We had such a feature at the old PF. — Posty McPostface

Sounds like a cool idea

There's nothing essentially wrong with belief. — gurugeorge

Reading this thread and your message reminds me of an article I recently read:

Half of all Americans believe the media make up anti-Trump stories

Then after that, I remember the following:

84 percent of the world population has faith; a third are Christian

Then I remember how happy one of the places I recently visited was, and why:

World’s Happiest Countries Are Also Least Religious

So, I definitely can't say "there's nothing essentially wrong with belief", because I would be lying.

a=b is meaningless if no one believes a=b. — Cavacava

For one thing, equations don't work because somebody choses to believe in them; so whether or not a scientist may chose to believe in some equations, does not impact whether or not those equations are valid.

If equations cared about scientists believing in them, then many scientists would be able to believe in their equations (no matter how wrong those equations were in reality), and equations would then work after sufficient belief was placed upon them. But we know life doesn't work that way; instead we simply follow the evidence until some workable thing gets implemented eventually. This is what has enabled us to make progress, and no matter how much belief or passion we may want to put in our work, it fails unless evidence is followed.

Beliefs that are evidenced by facts or our abstraction of the facts, are essential to our survival and progress. — Cavacava

I don't think so. I can't get over the fact that evidence can be valid, without being dependent on whether or not people chose to believe in that evidence.

You speak of evidence as if it were a simple thing, yet I think that evidence is the result of beliefs — Cavacava

Science is something that enables us to progress, by mostly looking on evidence, with out the need to look on all possible evidence.

I would say based on data, belief mostly encourages people to ignore evidence. Could science really thrive based on something that enables people to mostly ignore evidence?

Yes people can believe what ever they want to believe, but that does not make those beliefs knowledge. Knowledge as true belief implies the ability to demonstrate with evidence that a belief is rationally coherent, even if it can't be proven absolutely true. — Cavacava

Exactly. This makes me think beliefs are not necessary, because we can ignore beliefs that don't deal with evidence, and also, we can ignore beliefs that deal with evidence.

We could ignore evidenced based beliefs, because those are redundant, as the evidence doesn't care whether or not people believe in it.

The status of evidence as such must be concluded, otherwise it is not evidence, and if conclusions are required then knowledge is required and if knowledge is required then belief is required. — Cavacava

I don't think so, because I know many Christians who believe world was made in 6 days, and those beliefs disagree with science evidence. We can maybe then say scientific evidence doesn't care about beliefs?

Can evidence care? What? — Noble Dust

As in, can evidence exist without belief?

The first sentence is both ungrammatical and a misquote.
Sentence two is either incoherent or intentionally backwards. And so no. 3 cannot follow. — charleton

I think he says it in a book called "Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind".

Without a belief it is just stuff we are observing which ultimately may form a pattern to create a belief. — Rich

I don't doubt that patterns can form beliefs, but does evidence actually require belief?

I can think up some scenarios where evidence doesn't require belief.

We all have beliefs, some we care about more than others, and we look forward recurring patterns of these beliefs (possibly shared with others) that we might call evidence or some confirmation. But beliefs change as does evidence as we evolve. — Rich

I know evidence changes.
But does evidence need beliefs?