I don't have a belief system but it may be revealing about people who do.
Of course, it is possible to perceive others as having a belief system. I suppose it depends on what 'belief system' or 'having a belief system' means.
Any other opinions?
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A belief system for a theist is another term for dogma. Inseparable in many cases from their childhood conditioning.
The beliefs we do or not hold about the world help us form a view of how the world is. It's often referred to as a world view, generally belief system suggest a religion. Atheism is simply the lack of a single belief, but an atheist will hold other beliefs about the world. Atheism is not a world view or a belief system, though of course atheists will have world views.
Forming beliefs about the world and the reality we interact with is a complex cognitive process, and it is essential to how we function in the real world. Do you generally wonder whether your light switch will be where you place your hand when you get home every day, or if the light will come on when you flick the switch? Beliefs we hold about the world are not always obvious to us, but we couldn't function without them. Personally I just try to only believe things for which appropriate evidence can be demonstrated.
So a world view can be atheistic by encompassing atheism, but atheism is not itself a world view.
Belief is a subset of Knowledge. It is the lowest level of accepting something to be true and at the same time the highest level. To believe is to accept a proposition to be true. In the case of religions, belief is the acceptance of claims without evidence. In the realm of science, belief is proportional to the evidence.
A religious person will believe the sun is rising tomorrow. Why? Because that is the way God made things. The religious need no further inquiry. The sun will rise just as it always has unless Jesus returns for the rapture. This is religious belief.
A scientist might point out that the sun is not actually rising. Instead the earth is rotating. He will probably assign a 99.99999% probability that we will see the sun tomorrow based on past experience and the fact that the sun has not emitted any massive solar flares and no Earth destroying asteroids have been spotted lately. He might also point out that the sun will only be seen by some people as many will die during the night. Then he might ask, "Does the sun still appear in the sky if you don't see it?" Hmm.... The scientist will always have more questions than answers and will never rely on magic or myth to answer them.
The earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old. There is compelling evidence the sun "rose" from the east, (due to the earth's spin,) Every single day since the earth had enough collected concentrated mass to begin spinning and creating its own gravity.
A simple 4.5 billion times 365 yields 1.642 trillion times the sun has "risen" from the east.
However there is solid evidence that the earth used to spin faster. Quite a bit faster. Even as little as 350 million years ago, evidence points to the day/night cycle of earth spin being less than 23 hours. Additional evidence points to 21.9 hour day 650 million years ago. And extrapolating all available evidence the earth day/night cycle was as little as 10 hours in the beginning, (there is also theory that there was planetary/moon collision early in the formation of the earth that would of had the earth spinning as fast as 6 hour days or possibly less.
All this bumps the number of day/night cycles to at least 2 trillion times. So based on history the odds of the "sun rising tomorrow" is at 99.9999999999994%
Which is by several orders of magnitude more likely than the next powerball ticket you buy will NOT match all the numbers to win the powerball jackpot.
People would be hard pressed to find something more consistent here on earth then the fact that the sun will "rise from the east" tomorrow.
...yeah I like math.
A belief system is an inverted pyramid of increasingly complex, interwoven assumptions, all narrowing down to a vanishing point of total ignorance. The whole thing is inflated and supported by a miasma rising from a pool of decaying bullshit.
1.) The definition of belief (as cited by another here, not too long ago on Saturday 03/03/2018) generally facilitates the ignorance of evidence. (Cognitive data likewise shows that belief generally permits ignorance of evidence!)
2.) We can reasonably function without belief; we can generally be keen on evidence, i.e. scientific thinking. (Scientific thinking has been taking place for several decades!)
3.) Scientific thinking contrasts the very concept of belief, because while scientific thinking generally facilitates that one is keen on evidence, the concept of belief generally facilitates that evidence is ignored.
So both enable that evidence is considered, however belief largely permits ignorance of evidence while scientific thinking generally facilitates keenness of evidence.
4.) I had come to coin a term called "non-beliefism"; which underlines the importance of being keen on evidence, instead of contacting a model that generally permits ignorance of evidence. (i.e. belief)
5.) Atheists have been observed to maintain silly beliefs; for example, there are atheists that ignore valid evidence, that disregard conspiracy theories. Non-beliefism, beyond atheism, underlines the importance of not only rejecting religious nonsense, but any form of nonsense, given proper analysis of evidence!
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