Does that propagate transcendentalism??

All "facts" are beliefs if you believe them.

You're pretending that "facts" are absolute, but they are not. They are perceptions. People once believed the "fact" that the world was flat. For them it was fact. (Just using an common example).

How many of your "facts" may be like this?

No, just a heck of a lot of water.

You can believe a fact. In fact, it's part of the definition of belief, so saying that facts are beliefs if you believe them is just meaningless word games.
I think you're using the word "belief" to mean "faith". Once again, according to the OED, "Belief was the earlier word for what is now commonly called faith."

No, I see belief as along the hope-belief-knowledge continuum. Faith is quite the opposite - it is an openness, a NOT knowing. It is the willingness to suspend belief, to open oneself to what may be. It is the courage to walk into the darkness not knowing what you will find.

Faith often leads to belief and knowledge, because when you open yourself in faith, you see more of what is and what may be. When you walk into the darkness, you see the light.

Those who have never seen the light have never had the faith to explore the darkness, and thus lack belief in much that others may see and know.

I always thought of faith as a belief without proof, but your definition is pretty similar. However, I wonder how you would come to attain knowledge by your definitions - if belief in a fact is not knowledge, what is? How can I know something if believing that water is wet is not knowledge?

The answer may be one you cannot accept. You can't.

IOW, there is no such thing as absolute knowledge. You can never be SURE about what you "know", because you never know what you may not know. Unless you know EVERYTHING, you can't absolutely know anything.

Knowing is just a more sure form of believing. It is a continuum - hope-believe-know.

When you hope, you wish for something to be true. You open yourself to the possibility that it may be. You entertain it.

When you believe something, you are quite sure it is true. But you have doubt. If evidence to the contrary appears, you will abandon the belief.

When you know something, you are very sure it is true. If evidence to the contrary appears, you will doubt the evidence. You will judge not by appearances, because you KNOW.

Hope may become belief may become knowledge. Knowledge may become belief may become hope.

For some, seeing is believing (knowing). I see a blue box on my desk. I say "I know there is a blue box on my desk." Yet later I discover a holographic projector on the ceiling. It turns out there never was a blue box on my desk - there was only an illusion. I thought I knew, but because there was that which I did not know, now I know differently.

Belief and knowledge tend to close the mind. (If evidence to the contrary appears, you will doubt the evidence. You will judge not by appearances, because you KNOW.) Faith is the opposite. It is UNknowing. It is opening the mind to what may be, releasing preconceptions.

Thus (using these definitions) science excels through faith. Scientists have faith, in that they open their eyes, forget what they 'know', and observe what is. They walk into the darkness, unknowing, to find the light. From this, belief and knowledge forms - scientific knowledge. Even this is not absolute.

It gets even more complicated, because what you find in that darkness is not merely found, but created. Life is not a process of discovery. As quantum physicists are discovering, life is a process of creation. The version of the quantum soup (all possibilities) which you experience as "reality" depends upon... your BELIEFS.

Thus, beliefs/knowledge (what you "know") creates your experience. Your experience confirms and reinforces your beliefs/knowledge. It can be a vicious cycle, or a sublime one, depending on the beliefs. This is why people get locked in belief, knowledge, and denial.

The way out of the cycle is to create belief based not on what is observed outwardly, but on what you choose - so-called 'pure creation'. Arbitrary choice. You become the creator as well as the created. Hence God's famous statement: I am that I am.

This is when you begin to perceive the illusion, the maya, as illusion, and become master of it. That is why and how Jesus and many others perform miracles. Their experience is created from pure choice. For them, the cycle of belief and experience is sublime. Yet nothing is not a miracle - we all create experience. What we call a "miracle" is merely a creation experience which differs from what we consider normal.

I would disagree with this. Faith is not observing what is; faith is "belief proceeding from reliance on testimony or authority". Scientific knowledge is not born of faith, but of doubt, so if knowledge leads to doubt, then that is not a bad thing. If someone came in and told me that the sky had changed to purple, I would doubt this statement; I would go and investigate for myself. If I had blind faith in the bearer of this news, then I would believe this thing without questioning, without investigating, and without "finding the light". What if, in fact, the window were replaced with red glass, creating the illusion of a purple sky? A scientist, doubting the statement that the sky is purple, would investigate and likely discover this. Or, if the sky HAD changed to purple, the scientist would make observations over time, investigate the reason behind the change, and possibly redefine his knowledge of the sky.

not really, the beleif does not change the facts, you can disbeleive that liquid water doesnt boil at 100 degrees, but no matter how many times you do it, it still will boil at 100.

I am my perception of what is. I believe what I percieve to be true. Call those perceptions facts if it suits you.

They are merely observations of available data, filtered through the sieve of prior experience, and they may or may not be correct, regardless of how widely held said facts or beliefs are.

The terms are interchangable, for all intents and purposes. Calling something a fact only denotes that it is widely accepted as true.

Well put. You said in two sentences what I tried to say in two paragraphs.

You're merely equating faith with belief, or with a kind of belief. Most people use the words interchangeably. You can define them and use them however you like, of course. I make a distinction between them, and I believe my use of them returns more of their original meaning. Most people don't even have a word for what I call "faith".

I first encountered these uses of the words in Alan Watts The Wisdom Of Insecurity - a great read BTW. Especially good for people entrenched in western thinking who want to understand more eastern concepts.

A true scientist doesn't just use doubt. Doubt is merely negative belief. A true scientist uses UNknowing - openness, the suspension of belief. What I call faith. You probably don't have a word for it. It begins with the words "I don't know", not "I doubt such-n-such".

In fact it is because so many scientists mistake doubt for faith that they tend to be so rigid in their thinking. Scientists are historically very slow to open to new ideas and theories, and often resist them despite overwhelming evidence. They are not open-minded (faith), but are entrenched in prior beliefs (and negative beliefs - doubts).

it sounds pretty religious to me.

That is a belief. Something you think you know. You think it is a physical law that cannot be violated. You probably also don't believe the "miracles" people have performed, bi-location, telekinesis, etc.

Your belief that water can only boil at one temperature is based on your experience, which is based on your beliefs. It is like the blue box on my desk. I am SURE it is there.

Once you discover the holographic projector making it APPEAR that water can only boil at 100, you will realize that 'there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy'.

For now, I realize you find all of that hard to believe. Thus, you will not experience it.

Okay, I didn't realize you were redefining faith. I agree - a true scientist does need to be open. But the reason they take so long to come around to forming an opinion is because people rely on them to be "right", and the shit would hit the fan if scientists starting declaring as fact things that have not been thoroughly investigated.

Why don't we stop redefining words that already have meanings, and say that scientists grok things?

I view religion in terms of organized religions - rigid systems of thought and ritual. I can't name any one religion I subscribe to or practice.

It is possible to be spiritual and explore spiritual understandings of God and life without subscribing to a particular religion.

One primary difference is that religion asks you to accept the religion as the authority, an authority outside of yourself. If what people find within them differs, the religion says it is wrong.

Spirituality is the exploration of one's inner truth. There is no outside authority.

My spirituality is more what you might perceive of as advanced science. Science and spirituality eventually merge. Science is approaching conclusions that mystics arrived at long ago (regarding the nature of reality, matter, time, space, etc).

I think you have a rosy view of scientists. Pick up a book on the history of relativity theory, and how physicists behaved as it was introduced and explored. They took so long to come around because they didn't want to give up their preconceptions, didn't want to be 'wrong' (ego), couldn't believe the universe could behave that way compared to their rigid mechanical view of it, etc. They were stuck in their beliefs.

I would say using "faith" as I (and Alan Watts) do is more true to the original meanings and uses of the word. People just became lazy in their use of the word, and pretty much forgot what faith is. Like I said, most people don't have a word for what I call faith. The word doesn't exist because the concept has largely been lost in western thought.

But they're merely words - signposts. I think it's fun to redefine them - reminds us they're arbitrary and that we're making it all up.

"Grok" to me is deep transcendental knowledge, not faith.

The resistance to relativity theory was nothing compared to Galileo's dispute with the church. New theories have to be doubted; it's called "defending" a thesis for a reason. If your theory can't stand up to attacks, then it can't be very good. I will admit that ego is a part of it, which is terrible, but it is not the main reason that scientists are skeptics.

I'm not sure what you mean by "original definition", because I've looked up the etymology and I can't find your definition in there anywhere. In any case, it doesn't really matter. I think I understand what you mean by the word, and I still disagree with your opinion of scientists.

They are absolute because they can be proven. I don't believe anything without peer reviewed proof. (Which is why I reject a hell of a lot of social "science".)

I never used that phrase, so I don't know who you're quoting.

I mean simply the way the use of the word has evolved. I believe people used to have a better grasp of faith as I describe it, whereas now people equate it with belief, and have lost the concept of faith. I could be wrong - I haven't studied that historical question in detail.

For example, the Bible quotes Jesus as saying if you have but the faith of a mustard seed... He doesn't say belief. Jesus very well understood the power of faith, versus the limitations of belief (regardless of what words he actually used).

Now I don't know how all of that wording is affected by translations and such. It's just an example that comes to mind.