I think "faith" rather than "belief" would fit. I can believe in a thing after much study, or seeing a thing work time after time. The very definition of "faith" requires a lack of basis. In fact throws rational thinking out the window.

I believe I'll have a shot of bourbon!

RAW is fun isn't he? I've only read the illuminatus trilogy but I hope to make room for more of his books some time.

"Belief is the death of intelligence" - I guess it makes a kind of poetic sense. If intelligence might be the ability to process information and reach conclusions then belief is the end state of that process.

You start with jumble of information and doubt, apply intelligence and then the result is a belief. Whilst it's possible to re run the process, if you do it right you should get the same result both times. After a while, the belief remains and the intelligence moves on. Once you have a strong belief you don't need to think about it any more. That's even the case if you've just picked up a convenient belief and left most of the thinking to someone else.

You might similarly say that meals are the death of cooking. The question is whether those meals are healthy balanced platefuls lovingly assembled from the finest ingredients or the easy mass produced convenience food that surrounds us.

I believe he was wrong.

I disagree, the point of language is as a tool to make the abstract, and the intangible reachable. Without belief it's impossible to have a commensurate frame of reference from which to grow from......

So true!

A person with no beliefs is adrift in a world of chaos. The important thing is to remain open to new and more valid information.

Is there word of "thinking something is true even though its not"? Hubris? That...trait is what negates any intelligence.

...and the beginning of extremism and intolerance. (I think faith is actually the word you might have chosen)

Are you talking about religious belief? This is an unfair generalization.

I have Christian friends who are highly intelligent, progressive, kind and tolerant, including two Ph.D. psychologists.

Christian friends don't hassle me for being an atheist. They love me for who I am.

The theists have been suppressing intelligence since the three wise men ...Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.