AstroAg17 said:
What does it mean to believe? The definition I've always seen is that belief means you hold something to be true. But that's an incomplete description of reality in nearly every situation. The times when we can say that one thing must be true to the exclusion of all others are rare. So why believe? Why hold something to be true when you know it may not be?
That's kind of a tough question!
First, I would suggest there is a difference between intellectual belief and faith. Just as there is a difference between knowledge and Knowledge, the proper noun denoting some kind experience with Actual Reality (i.e., God) rather than a posit.
I'm not sure I've ever had Knowledge, or that I ever will. But, I have seen and read things that lead me to believe that others have had Knowledge. By necessity, this is ineffable -- any words are just posits themselves, right?
But I also think things can be true in a contextual or particular sense while not universally true, like the myth of the solid object.
So I think believing in something is accepting it as a posit, and then that posit is subject to further experience. If you believe in it (even in an abstract way, not necessarily as a discrete thing as you noted) it will guide your expectation of future experience. Every belief is either confirmed or not every time we use it to predict the future. Of course, we can have incorrect confirmations (heliocentric, flat earth, tricks of inertial frames, whatever) -- but there's no way around that because literally everything we believe is a posit based on admittedly flawed experiences.
I can't make any further confession about my knowledge or claim some special insight about God because I am not particularly pious or holy. The Fathers tell us that experience of the Divine can actually happen with the senses, that when our mind (
nous) is purified, we can actually see whats there all along. This is the root of the Hesychast controversy between St Gregory Palamas and Barlaam - Barlaam thought this was nonsense.
However, I
have experienced things, which in the jargon of the current discussion generated posits, and these posits have been affirmed by things I've read that other people have experienced. Much as when I learned a little more about physics my understanding of physical phenomena I'd experienced improved, when I learn more about my faith, some of the things I've experienced personally have been given a new insight.
So I believe for two reasons: one, I've had affirming experience. Two, I find it useful for me in a predictive capacity when I interact with reality. And truthfully, that's the only rational reason to believe anything, right?