It sounds like you are too nitty if you don't want to put bets into the pot without villain drawing dead. When I believe that I am 80% in a poker hand I would usually bet. If i'm 51% then maybe check back for pot control or bet small for thin value.

In any case, I wouldn't attribute more than a 50% probability for either of these 2 scenarios (since I actually believe in infinite scenarios, some even unimaginable to us), but these 2 would have a higher probability than any other scenario.

It sorta sucks that there are seemingly only 2 options open to people: theist or atheist. Either you believe this specific set of XYZ or you don't believe anything. It sorta gives more credit to the theists who believe the specific set of XYZ in a way. I feel like if there were more choices, including stuff like "computer-programmer-ist" and "the universe is a super-organism-ist" then it would better illustrate that all these probabilities are way under 50%.

I am anything but nitty and would classify myself as SLAG...so long as we're deep. In any event, I too would say "I believe I have the best hand" if I'm 80% (or 60/55/51), but that's speaking colloquially, of course. We're trying to be a bit more concise with our terms here.

Okay. (I really think you need to get away from attributing percentages to any of this, except when necessary, as they don't really mean anything.)

Those choices are available; they just fit under one heading or another.

EDIT: I noticed that, somewhat inconspicuously, you didn't directly answer the last question.

Right, so given that I believe in the likelihood of these scenarios, I can choose to either classify myself as a theist or atheist. However, that seems to do little to help define either category. So in other words, "theism" will seemingly always remain closely synonymous with "christianity" or "judaism", etc, which is unfortunate IMO. I was just pointing out that if theism started to be recognized by the masses as a super broad spectrum of a variety of many different beliefs, it would take away some credence from the 3-4 major religions, since you would have more decent options to choose from, say 20 for example. This would illustrate further that they are all theories IMO (to a certain extent since there would seemingly be less chance of any one being right. You and I know this intuitively and obviously, but I think the classification would help for the masses to see that it is on the same theoretical level/has the same or more probability of being true.) Maybe at the end of the day I am just a covert atheist trying to mess up the theists by pretending to be one of them and spewing a bunch of broad spectrum stuff to take away credence from their very specific stuff. /early morning rant.

I think this may depend on our definition of belief at the end of the day, but I'll give this a try: So in your scenario with the 4 blue marbles and 1 white marble, I would bet money that its a blue marble, but I wouldnt bet my life. Do I believe that it is a blue model? Yes because my definition of belief doesn't require 100% certainty. So for another example, I am a small business owner with a startup company (IRL), and I believe that my business will grow and become successful. This is far from a wild hope, I logically expect it to be successsful, but It's certainly not 100% certain. More than 50%? Definitely. So I think this would be a fair use of the word "believe", no?

In any case, my theoretical bag of theism/atheism marbles would have every possible color imaginable (and some colors that we cannot imagine/fathom), so I guess it's a little harder to say "I believe it is a blue marble", since none are even close to 50% (sorry I can't get away from the % thing I just don't know how else to express it). But yeah, I can see how saying "I believe in XYZ theory" could be misleading, maybe a better way to say it is that "I am excited about the possibility of this theory", etc.

edit: this also ties in with something that was in another RGT thread: "can you properly define someone by what they dont believe (atheism), why not define ourselves by what we do believe? I'm curious to see whether you accept or reject this, and if you accept it - what might you say that you believe to define yourself?