Do I seem too certain of what I post? I guess it might be worthwhile to repeat what is in my profile: it is all just one person's opinions. I don't "believe" anything.
I like to draw a technical distinction between "opinion" (things you think are probably true) and "belief" (things you know are true). This distinction is not often made, and the two words are close to being synonyms, but it is how I would use them.
Beliefs come about various ways, mainly though indoctrination or propaganda. They are an act of faith. This explains why people usually are of the religion and morals of their parents and culture. They are accepted emotionally, and often we aren't even aware of them as being there. They are furniture we sit on without noticing, but they hold up our world view.
When a belief is challenged, the typical response is incredulity: you must be insane or joking. No, I think a first century Nazareth is a myth. Unbelievable that someone would actually think that. What about Jesus? Well, yes, him too. You are crazy. (Note "think," not "believe.").
Of course the evidence will never be seriously looked at and given even the remotest chance of being correct in someone who has such belief, even though they will admit huge ignorance about the subject. This is belief. It makes a refusal to question into a virtue and calls it faith.Now I don't "know" that Jesus is mythical, even though I'm reasonably sure (although there is good reason to think there was a charismatic healer going around near that time that evolved into our Jesus, that is different). Actually, one can ignore the literal history. He is important now.The simple fact is those who believe will die believing, and maybe they are better off that way.I tend to say "I think" rather than "I believe," and I know I have changed my views on a gazillion things here and there, so it seems possible although unlikely in future I will think differently on this too.So when I say, "such and such," what I really mean is, "In my view, such and such." It interferes with smooth writing to constantly repeat such expressions, so I have to trust the reader to understand this.
The distinction you're drawing is real and useful, though I'd push back gently on the framing in one place.
The opinion/belief distinction tracks something genuine — the difference between held-lightly provisional views and commitments that are functionally immune to revision. Philosophers sometimes call the latter "doxastic closure" — positions that resist updating regardless of evidence. Your point that belief often operates below conscious awareness is also well-taken; much of what shapes our reasoning is furniture we inherited, not conclusions we reached.
Where I'd complicate it: "belief" in the philosophical literature just means any propositional attitude — any mental state of taking something to be true. On that usage, opinions are a subset of beliefs, not a separate category. Your distinction is more like the difference between defeasible and non-defeasible commitments — ones that can be overturned by evidence versus ones that can't. That's a meaningful distinction, but it cuts across all topics, not just religion. People have non-defeasible beliefs about economics, their own character, their children's innocence, historical villains. The religion examples are vivid because the stakes feel high and the social enforcement is explicit, but the psychology is universal.
On the Jesus question: the "mythicist" position (no historical person at all) is a minority view among historians, including secular ones, but it's not fringe-crazy — Richard Carrier has made a serious case for it. The more mainstream secular view is roughly what you sketched: a historical Galilean preacher around whom an elaborate mythological superstructure was constructed fairly rapidly. The superstructure is so thick that recovering the man, if he existed, is nearly impossible. That's a different claim from "invented wholesale," but for most practical purposes the distinction doesn't matter much.
Your writing convention — "I think X" as standing shorthand for "in my view, X" — is honest and sensible. The alternative, hedging every sentence explicitly, would be exhausting to write and read. Readers who are paying attention should pick it up from context. Those who won't are probably not the audience worth calibrating for anyway.
I defined my terms clearly enough and I also made it clear I understand they are not as the words are generally used. That did not need to be an objection. The problem is English doesn't have common, non-technical, ways to express the difference between beliefs that are furniture that is cemented down and beliefs that are moveable furniture.
I'm aware there is a minority view that no such person ever existed; the Pauline writings provide evidence of such a person but not the detail that evolved later.
Fair enough on both counts. I answered the definition point as though you hadn't already addressed it, which was inattentive reading on my part.
The language gap you're identifying is real. English has conviction, faith, certainty, assumption, presumption — but none of them quite capture the specific thing you mean: a commitment so deeply pre-conscious that it doesn't even present itself as a commitment. The closest approximation might be axiom (in the informal sense), but that's too geometric-sounding for everyday use. German would probably have a word. The French préjugé gets closer than the English prejudice, which has been narrowed to its social applications.
The Pauline point is exactly the right one to make. The letters predate the gospels by decades, and Paul's Jesus is notably thin on biographical detail — no Sermon on the Mount, no parables, very little of what became the narrative. Whether that's because Paul simply didn't care about the earthly life, or because there wasn't much established narrative yet, or because the biographical Jesus was still being constructed, is genuinely contested. But it's the honest starting point for the historical question.
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