In every day language, when someone says, "I believe," something, they only mean this is the view I hold, and it indicates nothing about how they came to hold that view. When religious people say, "I believe whatever my leader says," it means they hold their views on authority, not rationally.
In short, you are using an opinion in an argument that began with logic.
Actually my opinion not only begins with logic, but is based on reason from the evidence and logic all the way to the end. I do not believe anything (hold as true) except on the basis of logic and reason. Since you misinterpreted what I mean by believe, your premise about speculation is gone.
Also, I am not a fan of Russell, et. al., and regard this "perfect logical language," nonsense, a pedantic ruse as philosophically useful as his "windowless monads." (Good grief!)
Now you asked: For instance, by saying " I believe 99% of those things the religious believe" do you really mean the majority of the religious tennets you are familiar with or do you mean an actual numerical 99% of the religious beliefs of Zoroastrians, or Christians, or Muslims, etc., or do you mean a numerical 99% all of the beliefs of all religious persons of all of time?
All the above!
And you asked: And how, exactly, would you support that figure?
On the basis that it is very conservative and adequate for a discussion on a forum. In reality the figure is certainly higher than 99%, but may not be quite 100%.
First, all religions disagree, or they would not be different religions. They may all be untrue, but if any of them are true, all the rest are untrue. Within any religion, there are factions. There are factions, because there are disagreements. Therefore, if any religion is true, within that religion, mayber no faction is correct, but if any faction is correct, all the rest are incorrect.
As you see, the field of possibly true religious belief has already become extremely small.
Within the field of religion, there are some beliefs that have a small measure of plausibility. Most religions are absurd from the outset. Of those that have something worth examining, most turn out to contain teachings that are rationally unacceptable as well.
In the Christian religion, for example, virtually every denomination accepts certain traditional teachings as doctrine which both disagree with their own Scriptures and reason.
When I said 99% of those things the religious believe are mostly irrational, I was being generous. There is very little evidence, if any, that anything religious, the religious believe is not superstition. I just did not have the heart to say 100%, with a possible exception or two I have not discovered.
Then you said, I think you can see how supposedly 'logical' arguments seem to end up in so many total and vehement disagreements, with no one actually knowing what the other side means, only what they think is meant (in which case the disagreement is actually with our own understanding of what was meant , not what was actually meant).
...but, I have no idea what it means.
(Warning, the above contains both reason and rhetoric, some serious, some for fun. Watch your step.)
Hank
Try going back and studying the fallacies link you provided and then identifying the fallacies in your post and you will be able to state whatever position you have in a manner that I can understand it. Otherwise, we might as well be speaking similar but different languages. Languages just similar enough to cause us to believe we are speaking the same language without realizing we are speaking some type of gibberish to each other.