"AHA! You fiend! You are unmasked! Unhand that damsel at once."
That was the word I learned in my youth, when melodrama was in vogue

@maturin1919 Yes, that is one of several definitions. However "believing" a thing to be true would seem, to me at least, to be more active than passive, whereas the reverse may be said about "accepting" a thing to be true. Also, the word "in" frequently follows the word "believe," which clearly makes this stance one of conviction. To believe in something carries more psychological weight than merely accepting something, which almost sounds like giving in--a capitulation.

Why do I need beliefs to function? Why can't I have an evidence-based world view instead?

@anglophone It's not mutually exclusive, as a matter of fact the more evidences, the more reasons to believe.

@anglophone Here is an example. We believe that when we go to bed at night we will wake up in the morning. Do we KNOW we will wake up in the morning? No, but we most probably will so we make plans for the next day/week/month/year and so on. We must have beliefs to function even on the most basic level.

@JustAskMe No, I do not believe that I will wake up in the morning. I accept that there is a very high probability that I will wake up in the morning. Having said that, the word "belief" (and its derivatives) have at least three separate meanings. Ping @UltraTerrestre

@anglophone I don't see any problem with belief per say. Again, I believe it is essential to hold beliefs in order to function. What matters seems to be how We justify Our beliefs. For example "I'm in good health and I live in a fairly safe area with all my fire alarms installed etc..." So I believe I will wake up tomorrow and I can book a time to have a coffee with my friends. I could be wrong, anything coud happen but that seems like a reasonnable belief to hold because like you said, probabilities and all that. On another hand "I read a book about a guy who walked on water, died and came back... The book says it's all true so I believe there is a god and when I die I'll go to heaven and the neighbor is going to hell because he doesn't believe what the book said... " I'm trying to make it short but you catch my drift. Belief is not a bad thing in itself but it demands rational justifications in order to make sense and be valuable. In other terms, not all beliefs are equal. I mean, even faith isn't necessarily negative. But to come back as why the AHA uses the word belief, I just think there's nothing wrong with that, beliefs are not opposed to "evidence based", on the contrary, we base our beliefs on evidence, may they be good (my doctors report, the crime statistics in my area and the battery indicators of my fire alarms) or bad evidence (Tora, Bible, Quran...) . Everybody hold beliefs about all sorts of things and to different degrees, what matters is why one holds a belief. I can't recount the number of times someone told me "Oh, you're atheist so you don't believe in anything." Well, no. I believe in many things just trying to ignore bullshit as much as I can.

@maturin1919, i don't think so, a belief is just a thought that cannot be fully reconciled with reality that people want to think as being true. Then they get all worked about it when pressed about its validity...

@maturin1919 looks like the same definition to me, just worded different...if i "believe" accept something as true and it isnt, thats same as, faith that it is true...
People like to try to make it so they can argue over it.
Have a good day. Got work to do...

@maturin1919 Whereas, I think the same thing, i think there is a huge difference between accepting something as true because of evidence. The preponderance of evidences in lifes reality where these god figures have no existence, i think a mentally ignorant "belief" or insane thoughts in these existences is quite problematic....

@ToolGuy As usual you have the agnostic dead wrong.
But to get off the merry-go-round for a second, and speaking strictly for myself and not all Agnostics, I'm an atheist on a Supreme Deity, okay? No purple dragons in my garage, no fairy cities in the sky.
I'm AGNOSTIC about if there is some other definition of 'god.'
Not an Entity who answers prayers and in general micromanages my life, not one which created the world in seven days, not a Jehovah or an Allah or anyone like that.
E=mc√ means energy and matter are two forms of the same thing. It means EVERYTHING is the same thing.
Light is a particle under an electronic microscope, a wave viewed by a spectrometer. But it cannot be both, which means it is neither; it is something else entirely. So they call it a 'wavicle.'
It wasn't long ago we didn't have these instruments. How long before we have even more advanced ones which further boggle our minds?
The Big Bang is losing out these days to the Big Bounce, which postulates the universe expands to a certain point, stops expanding, then begins to contract, eventually reaching maximum density and explodes outward again.
Unlike the Judeo-Christian idea, this means there never was a time it didn't exist and was created. It's always been here. And will never come a time it ceases to exist
All this means is there is no need to imagine a 'god' who created it, and will some day destroy it or transform it or whatever.
So if we are to imagine a concept we can label 'god,' it has to be something completely different than what most of us were brought up to believe.
Just like Einstein completely transformed our ideas if what the physical universe is, to the point all we DO know is our five senses give us an entirely misleading, inaccurate, incomplete picture.
So too our idea of what 'god' is. The fact is, we have no idea. To even talk about the subject, we'd need a mathmatically precise nomenclature not currently within our grasp.
So that's what agnosticism is to me, as poorly expressed as it is.

@Storm1752 geez. Pal, when was the last time your meds were adjusted?

@ToolGuy Light is not a particle. It's electromagnetic radiation.

I was wondering the same.
There are two I can think of.
American Heart Association. And, American Health Association. But I think neither of those fit that kind of question. I would like to know what they were referring to as AHA.

My favourite band!

AHA is the American Humanist Association.

Anyway, as an agnostic I believe lots of things.
I KNOW using MY eyes the sky is blue.
I believe (think) the L.A. Lakers are the best team in the NBA this year.
I also 'believe IN' them in the sense I think they have the 'heart' and 'guts' to win the championship. In this context ability and skill alone will not be enough, so to predict a championship one must have FAITH they also possess an indefinable, intangible, yet necessary, 'character.'
So, I think if the AHA is asking for an OPINION, 'belief' is the right word.
If there asking for anything more, 'belief IN;' that is, FAITH, is required.
As far as 'knowing' goes, however, as an agnostic there are very few things I'll admit to having absolute certainty about, outside of self-evident definitions.
(Btw, my faith in the Lakers is not sufficiently strong I'll put any money on them.)

I believe I'm alive.
I don't believe IN my own existence.

Why does the Scientific Method need to be falsifiable? I am content with the observation that it produces more useful models of the natural world than any other method I have so far encountered.