David H. Burns wrote:
>  "Believe" and "know" are not synonyms. :)

Part of the problem is that the faithful and the non-faithful use these 
terms in opposite ways.

The faithful think that believing is more "complete" thank knowing. As long 
as you believe, it overrides whatever you might know.

The non-faithful say "I believe X", meaning "I might be wrong, but I think 
this is the truth", while saying "I know X" means "I'm virtually certain 
this is the truth."

So when the faithful person says "I believe in God," they mean what a 
non-faithful person would mean by "I know there is a god and I know what 
attributes that god has". When the non-faithful says "I don't believe in 
god", they (generally) mean "you would have to actually give me a convincing 
reason for me to believe in god, at which point I would know why."



-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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