Beliefs are not facts
from the book “Useful Not True”:
Whenever someone says, “I believe …”, then whatever they say next is not true. If it was a fact, there would be no need to declare a belief.
You don’t say, “I believe in squirrels.” You don’t say, “I believe squares have four sides.” It’s just a fact, so there’s no need to take a stance.
You say “I believe” when it’s not a fact that everyone can see. Since people view it differently, you share your perspective on how you see it.
A belief is something you think is true, without proof. A fact is an objective reality — something proven true — verified with conclusive evidence.
No beliefs are true. If a belief was proven true, it would no longer be a belief.
Galileo believed the planets orbit around the sun, but he didn’t have proof. Hundreds of years later, when it was proven true, it ceased to be a belief and became a fact. But in his lifetime, it was just a belief.
Beliefs are a stance on what’s inconclusive. You have to say “I believe …” because it’s not the only answer. It’s not a fact. (Not yet.)
Thanks for this post.
I'd add a bit of nuance: A belief isn’t the opposite of truth - it’s the opposite of certainty. It’s about how confident we are, not whether something actually is the case.
Something can be true long before it’s proven. The planets didn’t start orbiting the sun only after we had evidence for it - that was already the reality. Galileo’s belief happened to align with the truth, even if he couldn’t fully prove it at the time.
Saying “I believe” often reflects humility or incomplete information, not falsehood. It signals that we’re open to being wrong, not that we are wrong.
So rather than saying beliefs aren’t true, it might be more accurate to say: beliefs are claims about truth that haven’t yet been fully verified. And some of them will turn out to be right.