beliefs

BM is an acronym after all
I found on www.acronymfinder.com The following HUGE list:


BM Beli Manastir, Croatia (automobile code)
BM Black Male
BM Bowel Movement
BM (USN Rating) Boatswain's Mate
Bm Baader-Meinhof (German terrorists)
BM Baby's Mother
BM Bachelor of Medicine
BM Bachelor of Music (degree)
BM Back Marker
BM Back Matter
BM Bad Manners
BM Balanced Measure
BM Ballistic Missile(s)
BM Basal Metabolism
BM Base Movement
BM Basement Membrane
BM Basilar Membrane
BM Bastard Machine (band)
BM Batman
BM Battery Machines
BM Battle Management
BM Bazaar Malay
BM Beachmaster
BM Beam
BM Bearing Mean
BM Beast Machines
BM BeastMaster (Utopia game)
BM Beatae Memoriae (Latin: Of Blessed Memory)
BM Beatmania (DJ simulator game)
BM Beats Me
BM Beautiful Midnight (Matthew Good Band album)
BM Beautiful Music (broadcast radio format)
BM Behavioral Modeling
BM Belgian Malinois
BM Bella Morte (band)
BM Bench Mark
BM Bending Moment
BM Big Mac
BM Big Mouth
BM Bill of Material
BM Biomarker
BM Birmingham Midshires (building society bank, UK)
BM Birth Mother
BM Birthday Message
BM Bismarck
BM Bite Me
BM Bituminous Macadam (transportation engineering)
BM Black Mage (gaming)
BM Black Magic
BM Black Metal (music genre)
BM Blade Master (gaming)
BM Blonde Moment
BM Bloodmage (gaming character)
BM Bloody Mary
BM Blue Merle
BM Blue Moon
BM Blue Mountain (railroad)
BM Board Measure
BM Boatswains Mate
BM Bob Marley
BM Body Mounted
BM Bolliger & Mabillard (roller-coaster maker)
BM Bone Marrow
BM Book to Market (stocks)
BM Bookmark
BM Boston and Maine Railroad Corporation
BM Bound Mode
BM Bounding Method
BM Branch Material
BM Branch on Mixed (IBM)
BM Brazilian Male
BM Breast Milk
BM Brewmaster (gaming)
BM Brian May (guitarist)
BM Brick & Mortar (as opposed to existence exclusively on the Internet)
BM Bridesmaid
BM Briefing Message
BM Brigada Militar (south Brazilian military police)
BM British Midland (Airline)
BM British Museum
BM Broadcast Management
BM Brogan Maintenance (military slang)
BM Bronze Metal
BM Building Manager
BM Bull Moose (political party)
BM Bundesministerium (Federal Ministry, Austria)
BM Burma
BM Burning Man
BM Burst Mode
BM Bus Monitor
BM Bus Mouse
BM Bushmaster
BM Business Machines
BM Business Management
BM Business Manager
BM Body Mounted
BM Bolliger & Mabillard (roller-coaster maker)
BM Bone Marrow
BM Book to Market (stocks)
BM Bookmark
BM Boston and Maine Railroad Corporation
BM Bound Mode
BM Bounding Method
BM Branch Material
BM Branch on Mixed (IBM)
BM Brazilian Male
BM Breast Milk
BM Brewmaster (gaming)
BM Brian May (guitarist)
BM Brick & Mortar (as opposed to existence exclusively on the Internet)
BM Bridesmaid
BM Briefing Message
BM Brigada Militar (south Brazilian military police)
BM British Midland (Airline)
BM British Museum
BM Broadcast Management
BM Brogan Maintenance (military slang)
BM Bronze Metal
BM Building Manager
BM Bull Moose (political party)
BM Bundesministerium (Federal Ministry, Austria)
BM Burma
BM Burning Man
BM Burst Mode
BM Bus Monitor
BM Bus Mouse
BM Bushmaster
BM Business Machines
BM Business Management
BM Business Manager

Endymion, your questions are NOT stupid or idiotic!!! They are meaty and relevant! As you work on figuring out what belief is, here're a couple of tidbits that might be useful:

The Christian concept of hope (the Greek word in the Scripture is "elpis") means "confident expectation." It in no way connotes the idea of wishful thinking. And elpis roots in Christ's Resurrection. (The whole of the Christian faith does.) His Resurrection is the pivot of Christian conviction, the proof of its validity.

Re: beliefs


LMTO!!! As one who formerly taught English, I relish that comment! (Tho I am used to YW's style :wink: )

WOW! That is OUTSTANDING, and bull's eye, Anon! I might just use that as my signature for a while. Kudos! (ENCORE! ENCORE!)

PTMDAD, great list! (even if BM isn't an acronym)

i'd agree to your observation, with this proviso: in practice, all systems of inquiry regarding truth have limitations, but whether this is necessarily the case for all systems is unknowable. with regard to science, i think it worth mentioning that scientists themselves have on occasion established limitations at a theoretical level, as in the case of the Heissenberg uncertainty principle.

Re: beliefs


Why thank you kind sage. I never knew I had it in me.

I agree with you. Also I think it is important to remember Thomas Kuhn's observation. Science is more concerned with confirming already established theories, or paradigm, than with facing new evidence. As such all evidence is swept aside, until a new generation of scientists come along to question the old views. The history of science is a process of finding descriptive models of the world around us. And as Kuhn pointed out, with each epoch they change (i.e. from Newtonian physics to Modern Physics ).

It is to the point that we think we are very clever to have been able to figure out how nature really works. We go so far as to imagine that we have achieved understanding of the world around us but on a more serious reflection all we did was add another name, and a mystery, in the form of a theory. Scientists speak of energy, quarks, wave functions as if they were on the same status as objects of everyday experience such as rocks, trees and water. The difference between real and invented concepts is that a hypothetical change of a scientific theory may absolve a black hole as a conceptual entity, but it can't absolve a lake or a tree.

I happen to believe that those who think we can find absolute truths are naive and arrogant. If there are any underlying "truths", our models are just pale approximations of them. Therefore, all we really have are beliefs.

Regards.

Re: beliefs


Talk about conundrums! This has been baffling me ever since I first read it. Maybe I'm losing my mind, but, um, are Anonymouse, JJ & Aidan the same folks?

Re: beliefs
A belief is always of an unprovable proposition or idea, so what's an 'uncertain' belief? Don't we just mean 'doubt'?

JJ, you raise a good point. It's been quite a while since I started this thread, so I'm unsure why I used the expression 'uncertain belief'. I do think beliefs can have perhaps not degrees of certainty but degrees of likelihood. For example, the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow would be a strongly held belief by most, but can one be certain until the next sunrise occurs?

Isn't a belief an unprovable proposition? If the proposition is proved tomorrow or the day after, then we leave the realm of unprovable propositions and belief.

I think unproven proposition would be more accurate. A proposition can only be unprovable if it's negation has been proven or is otherwise known to be true, with the exception of the types of formally undecidable propositions encompassed by Godel's theorem.

'Unproven' is OK as long as it does not accomodate 'shall, or will be proven'. 'Unprovable' eliminated the possibility of a proposition being proven, which I said was the domain of belief. I could define propositions of belief as being unprovable, so that 'I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow' is a belief necessarilly of an unprovable proposition.

JJ, if you define belief as an unprovable proposition, then all beliefs are certainly, necessarily unprovable. By 'unproven' I assert neither unprovability or provability, merely the possibility of future proof or disproof; or to put it another way, unproven denotes conditionally provable or unprovable.

...here is my problem.
I can define a person having a belief as "a person acting upon 'unproven' propositions". But if I assert the possibility of future proof (or disproof) of this unproven proposition, then when it is so proven or not proven, it is no longer a proposition of belief. So what would be the point of defining a proposition of belief as being 'unproven'?
So my problem is that I have to say that a proposition of belief must never be proven if it is to continue to be a proposition of belief. So I use the term 'unprovable' instead of 'unproven'. The problem then is that I cannot believe that 'the sun will rise tomorrow'.

A way around it is to say that a proposition of belief is unproven, and that an unproven proposition makes no reference to whether it can (in the sense of 'is possible') be proven.

(Here is another solution which I have copied and pasted from something else I wrote a while back:

''Consider either the statement, 'it will rain tomorrow in Pontypool', or the statement, 'it will not rain tomorrow in Pontypool''? (take care to note that "to consider either.." is a stipulation of the statement). For here I cannot say that a statement that I am to consider, but which I have not yet considered, is necessarily true, or not true, or that there is a possibility of its being true, as I have no statement that is considered or presented.
If it is argued that 'either of of these two statements can be considered
and presented tomorrow', then to ask me to consider them both now in order to present one for tomorrow, which I cannot do, is a presumption of
tomorrow.
Accordingly, the statement 'either it will rain tomorrow in Pontypool, or it
will not rain tomorrow in Pontypool' cannot be considered for its 'truth' as
I have no statement to consider. The fact that we try to justify the case
that a statement is indeed presented, by saying 'this statement is
tautological', that is, a statement which is true in any case, merely
presents the word 'tautology' as a signpost to an absent statement.)

In a religious context..."beliefs" are little more than guesses about the unknown.

And of course...people who make these kinds of guesses fall in love with their guesses and insist that their guesses are something more than guesses...

...and they call this hard-headed insistence...

...faith.

It is all rather foolish.

Frank, are beliefs in a secular context any less foolish than in a religious context? and if so, why?

Probably not....but they normally are not as dangerous.

Fact is, the words "belief" and "believe" in a non-religious context are normally not used the same way as in a religious context.

If one were to "believe" the New York Giants are going to be the Super Bowl championship this year...one seldom would go through the "but this is a deeply held belief" nonsense.

And for the most part...nobody will be killed or tortured because of this kind of "belief."

It might be pointed out that at least "scientific" beliefs can be politely refuted or argued.

There is no argueing with a religious belief. It can be anything I care to imagine. Facts and observations have nothing whatever to to with it.

I have noted that some "Big Bangers" and "ID"ers can come awfully close to being "religious" in their acceptance and interpretations of "facts". (whatever they are)

Naturally I am willing to concede that a fact is whatever I imagine to be true