Walter Joyce wrote:
I believe that my political beliefs are based on a sense of fundamental fairness, not religion or ideology.
how many people are going to misread what I'm saying? seems like everyone's replying to the heading without reading the content--moderator included.
or was everybody just making this same point for another reason?
Actually SFM I think Walter is on topic. "political beliefs" According to wikipedia "Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true" The definition of knowledge from wikipedia
"Knowledge is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as (i) expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject; (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information; or (iii) be absolutely certain or sure about something.
Interesting that last one " be absolutely certain or sure about something" since that can be how some people express or hold their beliefs. So it is possible to arrive an this point either through knowledge or faith. So if you were to suggest that someone's political view was wrong, is it because their knowledge is not complete in which case one would suppose you can complete their knowledge (since knowlege might be infinite but knowledge of a defined area is not) and correct their mistake. Or if it turned out that their political view was a belief you could challenge it but probably not change it.
Again from wikipedia (I should make a donation) "The relationship between belief and knowledge is that a belief is knowledge if the belief is true,
and if the believer has a justification (reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) for believing it is true.
A false belief is not considered to be knowledge, even if it is sincere. A sincere believer in the flat earth theory does not know that the Earth is flat. Similarly, a truth that nobody believes is not knowledge, because in order to be knowledge, there must be some person who knows it."
So no, some of my political views are not religious because they are knowledge based. However some of my political views are belief based because I hold a view that might not be 100% based on knowledge (and a view is not necessarily a statement of fact). Then there is the problem of the difference between someone's political views who
believes they have all the knowledge and someone who"s "political views are religious"